Re: Paternity tests [was: WSJ: NSA Computer Upgrade]
John Young[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Men usually got a hangup about paternity, and many don't want to know the truth, so the 28% is surely way low, in particular to protect the kids and the wives and to keep the men in harness. Them's the facts of biology and culture and healthy workplace economies. [...] Never, ever have your blood tested, nor your brain. Keep your head up where the sun don't go. Read the papers, call what you see lies, distortions of your motherless bastardy. The Bard dealt with this issue, as he did so many others: Pedro. You embrace your charge too willingly: I thinke this is your daughter. Leonato. Her mother hath many times told me so. Bened. Were you in doubt that you askt her? Leonato. Signior Benedicke, no, for then were you a childe. Pedro. You haue it full Benedicke, we may ghesse by this, what you are, being a man, truely the Lady fathers her selfe: be happie Lady, for you are like an honorable father. Ben. If Signior Leonato be her father, she would not haue his head on her shoulders for al Messina, as like him as she is. - Much Ado About Nothing, Actus primus, Scena prima ... and he here also points out why many men don't bother with testing - family resemblence is convincing enough. I have two daughters. One is the image of my sister as a child, and the other looks so much my mother did at that age that people mistake childhood photos of one for the other. In the absence of any particular reason for doubt, blood tests would be a waste of time and money. Peter Trei
RE: WSJ: NSA Computer Upgrade
On Thu, 15 Mar 2001, David Honig wrote: The motivation for this is that the legals have decided that supporting the children is more important than fairness. Its that simple; some legals will even admit it. "Fairness" is such a slippery word. Is it fair for a child to have no support available? Remember, it's not because of anything the child did. I think the criterion here is that the adult is more capable of coping with the unfairness than the child, hence in a situation where you have to be unfair to one or the other, you favor the child's interests over the adult's. There are similarly motivated restrictions on how much you can deny your spouse when you die. This one I don't hang with. Your spouse is presumably an adult, and ought to be able to cope with not getting the estate. But that certainly doesn't stop it from being a serious shitheel type maneuver to leave your spouse in the lurch when you go, and since you're dead at that point you don't really have that much of a compelling interest in the estate any more... But anyway, this has little to do with crypto... Bear
RE: WSJ: NSA Computer Upgrade
It is likely that a principal reason for the new NSA system is to be able to more efficiently spy on its users, as with intelink, siprnet and niprnet -- and our own beloved Internet whose users and hackers know not what is being logged. Counterintelligence has become a more important function of the intel agencies than intelligence, as with corporations, educational institutions and families who face internal attacks. Exposing threats to kids, church and nation is a hot market. Counterintelligence in all its forms is riding high as a savior of the commonweal. Still there are dark sides to knowing the truth. The reports of DNA evidence showing that up to 28% of fathers are not the biological fathers of children for whom they are legal parents is a reminder that revisionist intelligence is not limited to the spooks as data mining becomes more widely available. And what will come of government as it becomes more subject to internal attacks due to greater access to snooping technology and counter-snooping attempts to hold onto the privilege of knowing what underlings do not? Deutch thought he knew why it was wise to work at home, to avoid the counter-snoops watching him, but the counter-snoops knew what he did not -- they work for themselves not the bosses. Sys admins may well become the power mongerers of the future, or is that already the case. Hayden is dreaming if he thinks he will be able to watch his troops without their knowing and counteracting it. What is worrisome is the prospect of a coup by the info hi-technoids, most of who work for the military or have contracts with them -- out contracts. SAIC, BBN, Mitre, RAND, the telecomms, the satcomms, operators of the thick connections worldwide, coupled with the wizards at the NSA, NRO, USAF, DIA, and so, could put on a formidable putsch, while the oversight committees remain, as ever, three monkied.
WSJ: NSA Computer Upgrade
NSA COMPUTER UPGRADE - [The Wall Street Journal, B1.] What does it take to send an e-mail to all 38,000 employees at the government's premier computing center, the supersecret National Security Agency? "An act of God," says the agency's director since 1999, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden. The NSA, he discovered to his chagrin last year, has 68 e-mail systems. He has three computers on his desk - none of which can communicate with the others. To deal with those frustrations, Hayden is now plunging into one of the U.S. government's biggest information-technology outsourcing deals ever. More than 15 companies, including ATT, Computer Sciences, IBM, General Dynamics and OAO, have formed three teams to compete for a contract set to be valued at as much as $5 billion over 10 years. Requests for proposals went out last week; the winner will be chosen by July. Project Groundbreaker, as the job is called, will be a curious venture by any measure. The winning consortium will take over running the NSA's office-technology infrastructure, including thousands of desktop computers and a Medusa-like tangle of software and internal communications systems. Hayden describes the current setup as "anarchic, convoluted and complex." It is a holdover from the days when the NSA, for security reasons, was broken into dozens of sealed-off compartments. Each bought its own computers, developed its own software and built its own networks, intentionally cut off from the rest of the organization. Hayden now wants to open the place up, at least internally. Whoever wins the Groundbreaker contract will have to meld the current mess into one seamless network, so that for the first time the agency can move around top-secret files as any company would, but without fear of an external security breach. If Groundbreaker succeeds, industry experts predict it could set off a wave of other big outsourcing deals within the federal government. Likely next candidates include the departments of Energy and Defense, and even the Central Intelligence Agency. "This will set the standard for how all similar deals proceed," says Thomas Robinson, president of CSC's Defense Group, which is leading one team that also includes General Dynamics and Verizon. The leaders of the other two competing consortia are ATT and OAO.
