Your tech career depends on preparing for the cloud

Colonel Travis said:

1.) A clear, concise explanation of executive order authority may be found here, courtesy the Congressional Research Service.

Thanks for that link. :)

lehnerus2000 said:

I am aware of the President's Executive Order ability/power.
I am also aware that it is rarely used, because of the howls of outrage it normally provokes.

It's not used as rarely as you think. It typically only provokes outrage when the executive order is attempting to accomplish something that is not supposed to be within the President's authority, or something where the President's authority in the matter is debatable, or something where the order is a blatant attempt to circumvent an uncooperative Congress.

lehnerus2000 said:

My point is a bit esoteric.
If you have less money, you couldn't donate as much to charities, protest groups or opposition parties.

A computing example (to avoid politics):
Say you needed/wanted a computer, but you were cash strapped.
You would be forced to buy a Windows or Linux "equipped" PC, because you couldn't afford a Mac.
If you hated MS and wished to withhold your money as a consumer protest (about their business practices, for example) you would have to accept the Linux PC.

That is true. Your point is a little lost on me because my government doesn't usually raise taxes when spending goes up, their tendency is more toward deficit spending (bad idea, but I won't go into it here). So the association isn't as direct in the U.S.

lehnerus2000 said:

This would be to encourage people to move to the "Cloud", with its inherently weaker security.
Once enough people are in the "Cloud", you would then launch an all-out assault against them.
They wouldn't even have the option of unplugging their PCs to protect themselves.
This would cause your "Doomsday scenario" (below).

I suppose that is possible. I would envision a similar scenario if the majority of computer users starting switching to Mac and Linux ... the so-called "superior security" only lasts as long as almost no one is targeting those computers. It's like thinking you had a really good hiding place in a game of hide-and-seek, only to learn that you were never found because no one wanted to find you.

lehnerus2000 said:

This is only slightly related to the topic at hand:
I don't know if you've ever seen "Ghost in the Shell" (an anime series).
Most people had computer implants to enhance their abilities.
Most security personnel had enhanced eyesight.
Everyone seemed to be connected to the Internet via their implants.
However, hackers could feed false info to your computer eyes (and security cameras) rendering themselves invisible.

I have never seen the series, but they are not the only ones to use that concept. My personal favorite TV series (Stargate) has an episode similar to this, where an entire planet's population is under the control of a supercomputer that can alter their memories and perception to suit its purpose.

Colonel Travis said:

BCXtreme, you and I agree on many fronts and I'm not trying to bash you - but this stuff is absolutely incorrect.

1.) A clear, concise explanation of executive order authority may be found here, courtesy the Congressional Research Service.

That's a nice link, but I fail to see how that information contradicts what I said...

Colonel Travis said:

2.) Congress cannot give detailed orders to the military. The only things Congress can do is fund it, say where it goes, how long it can stay there, and declare war. The president can trump all of that except the funding part. He can be checked by the other two branches if he does trump it - nonetheless, Congress has extremely limited and specific Constitutional powers over the military.

You're correct, I should not have used the word "detailed". My point was that the powers you enumerated can be used to supersede the President on a basic level if necessary; this is how the President is prevented from simply ordering the military to wipe out Congress and establish a military dictatorship. The military does not answer solely to the President.

Colonel Travis said:

3.) I used to work for a member of Congress. And "whenever you hear about the bureaucracy in this country doing this, that, or the other thing" it is far too frequently because Congress has intruded down to the level of stuff like what kind of @#$%! pencil you must use when writing down info. that's to be reported back to the federal gov't.

I'm not sure when it was that you worked for someone in Congress, but I do know that it has been like this at times (constitutionally, this is how it should be). At present, however, if you've noticed, we're having a problem with bureaucracies going off on their own and exercising broad new authority that Congress never approved. The best current examples are the FCC and the EPA. It's true, the bureaucracies are supposed to operate within legislation passed by Congress (and constitutionally, they have every right to say what kind of pencil is to be used ), but much of what they are currently doing is exercising power that Congress never gave them, and thus by definition they are doing so on orders from either the relevant office head, Secretary, or the President; that's why it's sparking so much contention.

Colonel Travis said:

BCXtreme said:

That's a nice link, but I fail to see how that information contradicts what I said...

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952) - Justice Robert Jackson concurring opinion spells out three specific ways an executive order is valid or invalid. It's not how you had stated, although what you had stated wasn't in left field.

Those three specific ways basically are saying that the President can do what he wants within the scope of his constitutional authority, so long as it doesn't contradict Congress. Which I'm pretty sure is what I said.

But now we're getting way off topic.

BCXtreme said:

It's not used as rarely as you think.

Poor phrasing by me.
It doesn't occur as often as the formation of committees and the tabling of legislation.

BCXtreme said:

That is true. Your point is a little lost on me because my government doesn't usually raise taxes when spending goes up, their tendency is more toward deficit spending (bad idea, but I won't go into it here). So the association isn't as direct in the U.S.

Oh yes it is indirect.
Deficit spending is supposed to drive up interest rates (and probably inflation).

BCXtreme said:

I suppose that is possible. I would envision a similar scenario if the majority of computer users starting switching to Mac and Linux ... the so-called "superior security" only lasts as long as almost no one is targeting those computers.

I would argue that both of those OS are more secure than the "Cloud".
You can remove access to your data (from the Internet) by pulling the plug.

BCXtreme said:

My personal favorite TV series (Stargate) has an episode similar to this, where an entire planet's population is under the control of a supercomputer that can alter their memories and perception to suit its purpose.

One of my favourite series also. :)
I had forgotten about that episode.

A bit off-topic, but I am also wary of digital imaging.
Once film is no longer available, all pictures will be created digitally.
It takes much less effort to fake a digital image, than a film image.
Soon it will be cheaper for "news organisations" to fake the news, rather than to report on it.

The move to put everything on the Internet (and the "Cloud") has very dangerous ramifications.

Soon it will be cheaper for "news organisations" to fake the news, rather than to report on it.

If they aren't faking it now, they sure aren't reporting on it. They do in fact, create more news than they actually report on, and of that, they spin in a way that could be seen as quite fake/biased/one sided and not very true journalistic.

lehnerus2000 said:

Poor phrasing by me.
It doesn't occur as often as the formation of committees and the tabling of legislation.

That is certainly true. (But then again, very few things happen as often as those two. )

lehnerus2000 said:

Oh yes it is indirect.
Deficit spending is supposed to drive up interest rates (and probably inflation).

What it does in reality is make less money available to the private sector, which means fewer loans, which means fewer new businesses, which means fewer jobs. Totally counterproductive.

lehnerus2000 said:

I would argue that both of those OS are more secure than the "Cloud".
You can remove access to your data (from the Internet) by pulling the plug.

Oh yes, without a doubt. Local storage is inherently more secure than cloud storage, nothing can change that. I was merely saying that, at the moment, they all present the same concept of "security through obscurity."

lehnerus2000 said:

One of my favourite series also. :)
I had forgotten about that episode.

A bit off-topic, but I am also wary of digital imaging.
Once film is no longer available, all pictures will be created digitally.
It takes much less effort to fake a digital image, than a film image.
Soon it will be cheaper for "news organisations" to fake the news, rather than to report on it.

The move to put everything on the Internet (and the "Cloud") has very dangerous ramifications.

I'm not really suspicious of digital imaging, it is still very difficult to fake an image well enough that photo experts will be fooled. There have been many, many convincing Photoshop jobs circulated around the Internet that were derailed fairly quickly.

Tepid said:

Soon it will be cheaper for "news organisations" to fake the news, rather than to report on it.

If they aren't faking it now, they sure aren't reporting on it. They do in fact, create more news than they actually report on, and of that, they spin in a way that could be seen as quite fake/biased/one sided and not very true journalistic.

True, they do create quite a bit of their own news. Most of what they do, however, is report on facts, but using twisted and distorted language to convey a bias. I cannot begin to count the number of headlines I have read that totally misinterpreted, exaggerated, or even contradicted, the contents of the article.

Buddahfan said:

Chrome is probably an operating system loaded on some Google Server/s. So from a maintenance perspective some Google employees will have to monitor and maintain it and the software running on it.

From a users perspective Chrome is comparable a folder on your Windows desktop with shortcuts to your applications.

It is similar to the setup in large corporations where the software applications are located on some company server/s and the employees only have access to the applications and nothing else.

The difference between the Google/Chrome setup and the corporation setup in this case is that Google/Chrome is running in the cloud whereas the corporations software is running on one or more corporation server.

One other thing. I would think that Google/Chrome is optimized by design to run in the cloud whereas I don't believe that W7 is.

That at least is how I see it.

yes, but windows 7 and vista both have i-scsi which can easily be used to provide cloud storage.