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posted by takyon on Friday July 17 2015, @08:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the brb-printing-diploma dept.

We often discuss the merit (or necessity) of having a formal degree in technology. This story is another installment in that debate:

The Department of the Interior's computer systems played a major role in the breach of systems belonging to the Office of Personnel Management, and DOI officials were called before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday to answer questions about the over 3,000 vulnerabilities in agency systems discovered in a penetration test run by Interior's Inspector General office. But there was one unexpected revelation during the hearing: a key Interior technology official who had access to sensitive systems for over five years had lied about his education, submitting falsified college transcripts produced by an online service.

The official, Faisal Ahmed, was assistant director of the Interior's Office of Law Enforcement and Security from 2007 to 2013, heading its Technology division. He claimed to have a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and a master's degree in technology management from the University of Central Florida—but he never attended either of those schools. He resigned from his position at Interior when the fraudulent claim was exposed by a representative of the University of Central Florida's alumni association, who discovered he had never attended the school after Ahmed accepted and then suddenly deleted a connection with her on LinkedIn.

TFA emphasizes the falsification he did of his credentials, but there seems to be heavy insinuation that lack of degree = lack of ability.


Official Submission

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @09:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 17 2015, @09:18PM (#210603)

    All employment contracts state the employer owns all code media etc etc and patents the employee creates during the term of employment: ie the employee is owned and can't do hobby opensource projects at home. Why would anyone work for you bloodsucking fucks?

  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Friday July 17 2015, @10:08PM

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Friday July 17 2015, @10:08PM (#210624)

    Ours doesn't. You can even work on personal projects at work. But once you check code into company owned version control it becomes work product and the company owns the copyright and will likely patent it (theyhave a few already). Myself and two other guys do "collaborative" for fun projects during lunch and some afternoons. They usually never go anywhere and get abandoned half-way. Programming doesn't always have to be serious, it can be a lot of fun.

    The last one i worked on was a 5th Edition Dungeon Generator [tageverything.org] with the goal of copying the rules directly from the official guidebook. I didn't finish the passages section and it isn't that great yet. Never even built out a real graphical map, just dumped ascii to the screen. You might have to gen a few to see something interesting.

    My buddy made an online character sheet editor [tageverything.org] for an old 80's game called Heavy Gear. Mostly because he always had issues getting people into the game. Telling them to read the first 60 pages of a photocopied PDF scares away a lot casuals.

    NOTE: JavaScript warning for both of those links. They won't work without it.

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