bengrunfeld

Spasibah. I was vexing them a long time before this.

The FBI's preference for total secrecy, in complete contrast to the law, is a very scary fact indeed. There are many things that I love about living in America - you get to be at the pinnacle of tech development, you can make a good wage, but all that is starting to pale in comparison to the Government's agenda for KGB-like activities. The USA used to be the champion of civil rights. Now it uses that image to perpetrate abuses of public freedoms that would impress the NKVD.

I checked my inbox. Every email from LinkedIn is 'member@linkedin.com' or some variation. It was kind of hard to believe the rest after that.

Says who?

Yes. Look at the slides Snowden released when he blew the whistle.

http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/06/prism_vend...

Like everyone, I've read a lot about the aftermath of Snowden's disclosures. This is the first time I've read an official condemnation from an industry leader. Amen.

Google's post on the issue: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/3141229

It reads like "We're screwing you, so deal with it."

Couldn't disagree more.

Google won over developers in the beginning because they provided information on search, essentially making the SEO business possible.

Hiding information is a increasingly popular trend that SysAdmin's, above other people, should be wary and distrustful of.

If you vehemently demand that Google (or any other company) has absolutely no obligation to its community, then don't be surprised when you're left with absolutely nothing.

What next? You're going to demand that banks increase fees for the fun of it?

The search button says it all - "Get Ideas", not "Get Info". You can't even choose Broad, Phrase, or Exact. This is a shocking tool. I feel that in addition to its philandering with the NSA, Google is abandoning every principle it once stood for.

Honestly, even technical tests have their limits. Personally, my memory is digital, meaning that I'm rubbish in "sit down and remember 100000 facts about tech" tests, but if you give me time to research a project and put together a solution, it comes out gold. Technical tests do not mirror your working routine, because you have time to discuss, ask advice, and scan Stackoverflow. Poor kid.

Oren is right. Our rights are being taken away one at a time. As an immigrant to America, I can see how the idea of "Freedom" has been so ingrained into the culture that most people simply refuse to believe that the government is taking it away from them. "But we are the Free Country!", they all yell. While this may have been a free country in the past, and may still carry the echoes of freedom, those echoes are fading quickly.

hahahahha!!

Of course their ability has taken a hit. Congress now has their eye on the NSA and they'll be looking to put a new set of policies into place so that they can look good to their voters. Even Snowden said that all the NSA's activities were dictated by policy. So yeah, maybe at the moment everything is running as normal, but that won't be the case for long. Just remember, if you're a senator banging 14 year olds, you don't want the NSA snooping through security cameras in your office. So in addition to the above point, congress will want to put a leash on the NSA out of self-preservation.

Wow, the NSA has just become the whipping boy of the media. Well, they deserved it. They reached too far, and now their ability for worldwide surveillance has taken a massive hit. They should have read the tale of Icarus before going flying.

hehehehe... sorry, my terminology is a bit rusty. For memory, it was service pack 3 (SP3) that fixed most of the security holes that were destroying networks running XP.

Are you talking about their fall in the idealogical sense, that happened in 2000? I seem to remember at least 10 years after that where their software dominated every office I walked into. Even today as far as private cloud goes, they are a major player. Again, this references my point of Microsoft getting a bad name for releasing buggy and insecure OS's.

I feel that many people dislike the idea of him, without exactly knowing what he did during his time as CEO, because the Windows platforms are known as being notoriously buggy and unsecure. XP was a nightmare that caused SysAdmins to cry themselves to sleep until the expansion pack 3 came out, Windows Vista was an unmitigated disaster, Windows 7 was surprisingly decent, and Windows 8 has been hailed as a terrible idea that should have died in its crib.

In the last 13 years, we've all seen the rise of Microsoft, and are now seeing the beginning of it's fall. Ballmer was an extremely important figure in the tech world. I just wish the Operating Systems that came out during his time didn't suck so much.

I'm not overestimating, or indeed estimating, anything. I was interested in other people's opinions. Rudeness pardoned.

Right, but isn't radioactive water like cordial, you only need a small amount to change a much larger body of water?

Ton for ton, I can see your point of how it's only a drop in the ocean, but if that drop is highly radioactive and spreads in the currents, wouldn't that be enough to cause serious damage?

Honestly, internet snarkiness and 2 minute rages aside, I wonder what this will mean for us in the future. I wonder how US crops, the Australia climate, and Chinese drinking water quality will be affected. Is this so bad that Japan has essentially damned the entire region? Or are we going to see a mass die-off of fish around the world? It's just a really scary situation, and totally not cool.

I think right now making noise in any way is a respectable move. If they go to far, then NSA might retaliate against them, and no legal protection in the world would save them. If they keep going the way they are right now, it will keep this issue in the public eye, which is exactly where it needs to be. Yes, the system is totally fucked, but give them credit for having the balls to say something at all.

I completely disagree. Please see my response below, and failing that, search Wikipedia for "Freedom of Speech", and then search the page (Cmd + F) for "privacy".

LoganCale, get them to watch the movie Brazil and then read 1984, and for good measure hit them with a copy of Animal Farm just for the heck of it.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."

I believe that you can't truly speak freely when you don't have any privacy.

This from Wikipedia - Freedom of Speech:

"Freedom of information is an extension of freedom of speech where the medium of expression is the Internet. Freedom of information may also refer to the right to privacy in the context of the Internet and information technology. As with the right to freedom of expression, the right to privacy is a recognised human right and freedom of information acts as an extension to this right."

Right, but this isn't just about teeny-boppers posting pics of themselves partaking in underage drinking on Facebook. This is about journalists being intimidated by government representatives if they start writing an article on their private computer that is embarrassing to a particular senator. Sorry, but that's in a totally different baseball league.

As a new immigrant to the USA, I am simply appalled at the infringement of privacy that is being carried out by the NSA and the government. In Australia, we learned that the 1st amendment protected the Freedom of Speech of every American. How can you have Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press when every private communication of citizens and reporters alike are being scrutinized by secret agencies in the government??

Having gone through a fair amount of tech interviews, I really understand the author's point. On another point, I just wish recruiters would put the salary in the job offers. It would save everyone a lot of time.

Large companies often fall into the trap of lack of communication between departments and individual employees. They get so big they trip over their own feet. I used to work for Melbourne IT, a behemoth with hundreds of employees spanning multiple countries. Customer relations was a disaster, with each customer being told conflicting things by different sales people and customer service reps. Sorry you had such a bad experience.

Without sounding trollish, I believe there is a need for a completely new 'transfer of information' protocol that is as immune as possible to NSA (or other agency) snooping. She's right, the internet is broken. So rather than posting endless articles about how it sucks, and suffering heart-breaking tragedies like Groklaw shutting down, why don't we build something new, something truly beautiful, by which I mean something truly private?

To summarize my point, quoting PJ, "privacy is vital to being human, which is why one of the worst punishments there is is total surveillance..."

That sucks. Are you guys going to move?

I work in an office in downtown Boulder, CO, and while it looks amazing (heaps of comfy chairs, bean bags) there is construction being done all the time and my desk shakes like we're being hit by an earthquake. Down the road from us are Quickleft's offices, and they have a keg of beer on tap and a Japanese rock garden. Jealous.