I was reminded of Tim Berners-Lee's opinion on new TLDs since Google recently announced opening the .new TLD to the public.
IMO, as long as the domain _looks_ like a web URL and is memorable then it is good for The Web (tm). Though, I would prefer that control over TLDs would be distributed rather than be in the hands of select large tech companies.
It was probably not a mistake. It was to separate Hypertext from other files. The file: protocol still works in the a browser with a hostname as well. IE: file:///10.1.1.10/files/example.xlsx
I'd like to second this. The "crack team" was the company that won the contract. I've seen first hand of companies hiring just about anyone as a contractor before a contract was even granted. Promises of a high potential salary usually lures these people.
Phones aren't allowed in SCIFs (the facility she worked in).
Hard drives labeled unclassified can be removed from those facilities with special permission but I think hard drives are under more scrutiny nowadays.
Air Force Cryptolinguist training is up to 480 days[0]. So, someone out of high school can sign up to the Air Force and complete the training in a little under 2 years. Her first job as a cryptolinguist would be working at a DoD related agency working on TS material. So yes, you are asked to believe this because this is a common occurrence.
'Premium Fridays' are a bit of a joke in Japan and many people aren't even participating. When they do participate, it's only under the presumption that employees will take their holiday time off. It isn't even free to the employees.
Here's an article[0] that promotes "Premium Fridays" that states:
> [The] Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which is pushing the idea, hasn’t decided yet if its officials will get to join in.
This is supposed to prevent keylogging.. but I think anything with that amount of access to your PC can tap into the browser to read the request before it's sent. So, probably not as good as it sounds.
- HEADLINE: Separate purge-old-kernels command from byobu package
- DESCRIPTION: I like byobu, it's extremely helpful but I would prefer the purge-old-kernels script to be in a separate package. I like to run servers with the minimum amount of packages installed and don't really need byobu since most of my maintenance are remote commands. /boot gets filled up quickly and the purge-old-kernels is a script I think is well written and perfect. I want it separated from byobu, please.
They're using Windows. One of their Systems Administrators forgot to update the CRLs for the Domain Controllers, thereby locking out anyone from logging in with their smart card.
This is not really a new thing and has happened dozens of times over the past decade and a half to various government agencies.
I hate commenting on the internet, especially since it's going to go against almost every idea that the original commenter posted. That aside, here is my advice for studying Japanese. This is purely my opinion and one method that I've been using.
- Try to evaluate where you want to 'end up' with your fluency. If you want a full time job in a business environment then I highly recommend learning polite forms of verbs first. The more that your practice this form, the more comfortable it'll be to use. If you want to talk casually to friends and family, then learning just the plain form is ok. If you want the slow, long, methodical approach to learning Japanese and achieve a much greater fluency, learn the plain form and the negative form at the same time along with the polite form. I highly advise against using the plain form with people you've met for the first time or are dealing with in a business setting. It's very off-putting since it feels like you're talking like a child. I recommend learning the plain form and the negative form at the same time because of the structure of Japanese verbs. Learning both of these forms at the same time will give you an immediate hint as to how all of the other verb inflections should appear. This will become apparent when you're learning conditional, potential, volition and passive verbs.
- Tae Kim's guide is good for understanding many concepts quickly but the website I prefer the most is Imabi.net[1]. It contains more content and is constantly being updated and edited to improve its content.
- Learning katakana right after hiragana is vital if you want to live in Japan. Also, try to associate only the sound with the character, not a mnemonic. Use that time to focus on your pronunciation. Many borrowed words from other languages use katakana and learning katakana at the beginning will help you remember those words faster. For example, a common word used in Japanese is トレーニング. It sounds awfully close to "training" and since it's in katakana, it gives you a hint as to what the word might mean. While katakana words are not 100% borrowed words, it certainly appears to be above 80%. Related to this, do not learn romaji as a way of writing characters.
- I agree, do not avoid learning kanji. Always learn kanji with vocabulary. I don't recommend Heisig's book if you're taking the long, methodical approach I mentioned earlier. It includes a lot of mnemonics that I don't think actually contribute to the actual kanji's reading. Plus, if you do go through the entire series, then you'll still be behind in your kanji learning. There are a lot of words that you still don't know the meaning to! For example, 八百屋 and 海老 don't mean 800 shops and ocean's old. They mean produce market and shrimp respectively. My recommendation is to learn vocabulary and the kanji readings for that vocabulary.
- I don't read manga, personally, but another way to learn conversational Japanese is by watching television shows and mimicking them! (On the other hand, I don't recommend mimicking anime.) If you like manga, then go for it! Just go for your favourite entertainment medium. If you're learning conversational Japanese, then try to find a serious language partner. Find someone who is a native Japanese speaker trying to learn your native language. Allocate 1 hour or a half hour to go over Japanese and another equal block of time in your native language. Native English speakers will have the easiest time searching for a language partner but don't give up if your native language isn't English.
- Textbooks are good for certain circumstances. I believe textbooks are good for the long, slow methodical approach. It keeps you focused and gives you goals to work towards. If you don't like textbooks, then pick up a non-fiction book and try reading! It'll force you to pause, give thought to the meaning of the sentence and look up words/grammar. The non-fiction book method will probably take longer than a textbook though, especially if you're just starting out. Fiction books will be extremely difficult because they will sometimes make up words that won't appear in dictionaries.
- I actually prefer large lists of vocabulary. I get the greatest benefit from lists of nouns since I pick those up the fastest. As the original commenter pointed out, this is definitely not for everyone. Reading books or manga will give a more entertaining method for learning new words. It'll even give you the more nuanced meaning of words. The right and wrong places to use them, etc. Check out the Tatoeba[2] project as well for example sentences using the words you're learning.
For any language you're learning, try to use the language as you're learning it. Try to come up with new sentences based on what you've learned. Try to talk to people using the new verbs you learned. Try using Lang-8[3] for writing.
Japanese is really difficult because although I've been studying it for a year and a half now, I still don't feel like I'm 'fluent'. I can give you examples of things that I've been able to achieve using Japanese but I definitely wouldn't call myself fluent. Using the CEFR, I would probably put myself between B1 and B2 for certain circumstances and maybe between A2 and B1 for other circumstances. Learning Japanese will take time, don't give up.
I'm still on the fence about ordering my Glass. I wear glasses right now and I'm worried that a new prescription (I'm due) + Glass will cause headaches for me. How often do you wear yours?
Honestly, I have no argument for OpenNIC over Google's DNS that will convert you right now. It really depends on who you trust more.. strangers over the internet or a large corp who was the target of espionage. That's really up to you to decide the lesser of two evils.
A cool thing about OpenNIC is that they offer alternative TLDs that aren't part of ICANN's gTLDs. Also, the owners of the public servers strive to be as open as possible with their policies and features, such as no logging or using DNSCrypt. One of them even offers DNS level ad blocking, though I don't like it because I prefer the internet at its purest form and that policy doesn't seem to flow well with their anti-censorship mantra.