Claiming that an enemy that has managed to kill 3,000 people in a single day "isn't a threat" isn't rational, it isn't fear, it's denial.

 
I've got to start using that in abortion debates. I just realized that Planned Parenthood, to a pro-lifer, kills people far more efficiently than al Qaida.

Agreed. What I find worrisome about this is not the money. It's more about the tone and implications of basing the design on Star Trek.

It's disturbing enough to learn that the NSA is spying on US citizens, pulling private emails and phone logs from anyone and everything with minimal oversight, but if they're going to do that, you kind of hope that they're taking the whole thing seriously. You'd like to imagine that it's a bunch of very serious people who view the whole project as a solemn duty, a necessary evil, to be carried out under the most rigorous discipline and restraint.

If there's some reason why all this must happen, if we must have a domestic spy program potentially collecting and reading all of my emails, then it makes it that much worse to imagine that it's run by a bunch of weirdo nerdy frat-boys working from a high-tech version of a blanket fort. You don't want them treating this whole thing like a game of Cowboys and Indians. This is the sort of thing that you expect from a crazy dictator like Kim Jong-il.

Not to be pedantic, but I believe ops was gold, science/medical were blue, engineering and security were red. That's why red shirts kept getting killed-- it was the color worn by the security personnel who were assigned to protect the rest of the crew.

I don't personally care, by the time I was 8 I was already smarter than most of the adults I came into contact with.

With all due respect, I doubt you are as smart as you believe you are if you honestly believe this to be true.

And it's not exactly unique. Caltrans uses the sensors for the FastTrak toll devices to monitor the flows of traffic and respond to accidents faster. It makes a lot of sense and you can opt out by putting the transponder in your glove compartment. You can test that this works (I've done it) by forgetting to remove it from your glove compartment when you drive through the toll collection area. The sign won't signal that you've paid, but the license plate recognition will resolve the fare properly.

Yes, there's a potential for abuse in stuff like this, but the benefit to everyone is undeniable. Faster response from officials to traffic conditions will help alleviate them sooner and may result in emergency personnel arriving on scene sooner and saving more lives. And I'd rather they use a technology that's both cheaper and easy to opt out of than to install expensive camera systems that track license plate numbers and give drivers no way of avoiding being tracked.

What is really cool is when you have two that get along with each other, and IM each other during meetings.

The result is the solution will be coded before the meeting is over.

What is so hard with "replace the drive, get a new pull from GIT"? This should have been a minor inconvenience- maybe a 4 hour delay at best.

The fifth amendment doesn't even apply here. It's a first amendment issue. As a member of the press, his right to report on anything, including secret classified documents, cannot be curtailed. Forcing him to reveal his source falls under that protection because it limits his ability and the ability of other reporters going forward to receive similar offers of assistance from sources. It would be murkier if he had signed any sort of agreement to gain clearance to the documents, but he didn't.

If the situation were different and Risen had been found to have classified documents during a legal search, then he could be compelled to reveal where he got those documents so long as he wasn't incriminating himself. But it's not, he's an member of the press and the first amendment protects the press's right to keep their sources secret.

That's a clever way to try to get around the first amendment. Make everything classified, and then no one can criticize you without being prosecuted for espionage.

And what if the offender is the CEO? Ah, see, there's the big problem you're failing to account for. Sometimes it's the big muckety muck head-hancho who just doesn't seem to care, and you have no one to appeal to. Or even if it's not the CEO, do you really want to try going over the head of some executive to a higher-level executive?

The thing is, I think your example shows that *you* don't understand business. Lots of this stuff is about politics more than it is about technology or security. If you want to succeed (or at least avoid getting fired), you'd better learn to pick your battles.

As someone who has been working in IT for almost two decades, I'm not the least bit surprised. There are all kinds of things that we've given up on trying to communicate. People don't want to hear it. They don't understand what you're saying, they don't want to figure it out, and if you can get them to understand, they still don't care.

In the case of security, it falls into this classification of 'technical things nobody even wants to understand' and also into the classification of 'preventative measures that people will not recognize the importance of, until after it bites them in the ass.' You tell people that it's a bad idea to use "password" as your password, and they'll blow you off. The more you stress the point, the more annoyed the'll become-- all the way up until someone malicious gains access to their accounts. Once they've been hacked, they'll come back angry, demanding, "Why didn't anyone tell me it was a bad idea."

Until there's an actual security breach, people think you're chicken little. They'll tell you, "I've been using 'password' for my password for 10 years and I've never had a problem."

Face that kind of attitude for a several years, and you get awfully tired of warning people.