...his need for anonymity to avoid 'alarming' his family to his clandestine monitoring intentions). He does reasonable cause for suspecting something is going on...

In other words, his daughter is camming with boys and he wants both fap fodder and a plausible story to cover his ass in case he gets caught?

That's just a theory but no matter how you slice it this is a client you don't want.

Militaries should outright own the tools with which they fight. Renting stuff, like, say, hiring mercenaries to do your dirty work always comes back to bite you in the ass and we're smart enough to avoid mistakes like that.

Oh, wait...

The section in the article about the Individual Master File was close to correct. It's not that it couldn't be accessed but once a week, though. There was the Integrated Data Retrieval System that could access it any time. Unfortunately, it was only updated once a week. The updates to the IMF were input via IDRS, so that sometimes led to some weirdness with the two being out of sync. There was an entire list of "cycles" that you needed to memorize as you processed work so that you'd know "If I do this, now, how long will it be before it actually shows up on the system I need it to be on?"

Then there was the BMF (Business Master File) for businesses.

Then things get weird. There's a Master File called the Non-Master File (NMF) for return information sufficiently rare that it's just not linked to everything else. Congress can come up with new statutes that require new forms far faster than they can be programmed into databases that properly link every relationship between every line. The really small-volume, low-priority stuff goes in the NMF. A bit over a decade ago it wasn't accessible except by sending off a paper request for a printed transcript. Now snapshots are viewable via IDRS but those pesky cycles are a far more complex problem.

OK, now, shall we get into the EPMF (Employee Plans Master File) or any of the other "master" files? (I once asked why any file deserved to be called "master" if there were other "masters". The programmers in attendance at the meeting were not amused.)

Enough. IT at the IRS was fun and crazy-making, challenging and boring, something I loved that ultimately was decimated by politics and broke my heart. I'm glad I saw it back in the best of days but I'm awfully glad I'm retired from that place now.

I should add that if you have iron pipes, you can get much of the same protection by grounding to the water pipes at the closest point to where they run underground.

I can't agree. My aunt's house was hit by lightning and charge went to ground via her water pipes. The biggest pipe, however, was a central line running from one side of the house (laundry, kitchen) to the other (bathrooms). The pipe was embedded in the concrete slab foundation.

The heat was so intense the carpet was discolored, the pad below that melted, and the concrete lost all integrity. It turned into a brittle mess that would break under the weight of a solid heel. You could take a framing hammer and break it apart with results similar to what you'd expect if you were using a jackhammer.

She had to have a giant trough of concrete removed from her foundation along the path of the pipes, then new pipes, new concrete, new padding and carpet.

Frankly, I wasn't surprised. Trees on my property have been hit twice and one two doors down was struck just a couple of weeks ago. In every case, the damage to my house was obvious, although only one was serious (as in - killed everything electronic in the house.) Thank goodness for insurance.

Clearly I'm having a "my spelling skills took the day off" day. My apologies.

hapmper == hamper

enough to server == enough to serve

If I find more, I'll just sit here and scream and not bother with another post.

Those regulations hapmper everybody. The folks in the gun lobby will tell you that they are a backdoor attempt at gun control and they make a good case (if you're a firearms accessories and parts merchant, you literally can't drop a simple magazine spring in a box and mail it abroad without mounds of expensive paperwork) until you realize that it screws up *everybody*. Anything can be defined as "arms" if you're willing to stretch the term enough to server your particular agenda and, under ITAR, it's been stretched to a ridiculous degree, already. The anecdotes in the article (yes, I read it, so flog me) are just the tip of the iceberg.

From the article, emphasis mine:

...the operators used software provided by the TOR Project that makes it virtually impossible to track the activities of users' IP addresses. The alleged conspirators also used IP anonymizers and covert currency transactions to cover their tracks. The indictment, which cited e-mails sent among the men dating back to 2006, didn't say how investigators managed to infiltrate the site or link it to the individuals accused of running it.

I'm willing to bet that money transfers and the transfer of goods sold are still far more discoverable than individual Tor users but any assurances of that would certainly be welcome. I hope the Tor Project will be forthcoming with some as soon as some technically useful info is available.

Netflix never buffers on me past the first time it loads the video. And I can just find a video I want and be watching it, without having to think hours ahead about what I want.

Lucky you. What device are you using - your computer, sombody's little black box that hooks up to your TV, a TV with the right stuff built in, or something else?

As a long-time Tivo devotee, I figured to dump my Roku box when I got my new Tivo a few weeks ago. For best connectivity, I used ethernet cable to hook it up rather than wireless. It's been a mixed blessing. I now have one less device and one less remote cluttering the entertainment center and the Tivo is, as always, superb for watching TV.

The Netflix functionality built into the Tivo, however, just sucks. You can't search; you can only view your instant queue. While there's always an iPad on the coffee table that I can use to search and update the queue, then go back to the Tivo to watch, I still find that to be a painful kludge of a workaround.

Once you've scrolled through your queue all the way to the bottom (no navigation buttons or methods that I can find except to hold down the "down" button), starting up the video is not always a smooth process. Sometimes the screen goes black and nothing happens; you have to back out and start over. Sometimes the initial buffering progress bar shows up and, still, nothing happens. Start over.

I will, however, say that once the movie starts, it rarely pauses to buffer. When it does, it generally just stops and bounces completely out of the movie, back to the movie information screen.

I love Tivo and will never give it up but their Netflix implementation is crap. I can't tell you how many times I've found my sister watching a movie on Netflix using her iPad while sitting in the living room, right in front of the main TV/entertainment center, with the big TV turned off.

My point: The Netflix streaming experience varies widely with the method/hardware used to access it.

A-76.

I could have gone all day without that blood pressure spike.

I don't want to be the lobbyist who gets A-76 killed. I want to be the guy who identifies those responsible, lines them up against a wall, and pulls the trigger.

(Calming down...already retired...don't have to endure it anymore...thinking happy thoughts...)

I just retired from a long IT career with a fed TLA.

In all that time, there were two projects that stood out in my mind the most.

For the first one, a division needed software to automate their primary tasks. If such software could be implemented, it would essentially be where 20,000 people a day spent all their time and brought in billions of dollars. The solution they decided on was to survey the end users who were tired of doing everything on paper, find the ones who were the acknowledged computer geeks, then let them design and write the program. They actually turned field civil law enforcement officers into SAs and analysts and coders and let them build what they needed. It took years but when it was done, it was a thing of functional beauty. Actually, it was ugly as hell but it so perfectly met the needs of the field officers that I know of several who actually delayed their retirements so they could spend more time doing a job that was fun again because all the drudgery had been automated away.

Most. Successful. Project. Ever.

The other one I remember was the same sort of thing, a program that some 70,000 would spend all their time in. It was buggy from the start. The people who had to use it hated it. Every upgrade broke reports from the previous version. It was, obviously, done by contractors. At one point, development halted for almost 18 months because someone dropped a dime on the contract developer and their entire staff of Indian programmers with expired visas had to pack up and go back to Asia. The contractor folded up shop and getting another to step in, untangle the mess, and start moving forward was a royal pain.

My point?

Sometimes, coder skill is meaningless. If you have developers and architects and all those other job titles involved in software development who actually work for the government because, at least in part, they are proud to serve their country...then you get better software.

Government software should be created by government employees, not contractors.

Now I'll go back to my place in the 1950s, where I'm sure many of you will say I belong.