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Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
51–60 of 83 posts
Re: Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
#52Imagine the uproar if the NSI hired a graphic designer of sorts to make their slides more attractive. I can see the moaning now "They spent HOW much of my tax money making those slides pretty?!?" I expect the NSA's slide to be crappy, because you know, they're spies and stuff not graphic UX experts.
There are graphic designers. I went to one to get a logo made for an internal web app I made. It's just that most powerpoints are made by interns and younger military folk.
Re: Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
#53Imagine the uproar if the NSI hired a graphic designer of sorts to make their slides more attractive. I can see the moaning now "They spent HOW much of my tax money making those slides pretty?!?" I expect the NSA's slide to be crappy, because you know, they're spies and stuff not graphic UX experts.
Keep in mind that those slides were almost certainly developed by a contractor. Who was paid 150K/year. Who was one of thousands of other similar contractors. With little to no real world experience.
The average pay of contractors is between 70k-100k. The only ones making more than that are typically program managers for large contracts or other administrative folk who work on winning contracts for their company.
Contractors are typically not busy making powerpoints, but busy actually working on what they're hired to do since they have to do their hours. The busy work is left to the military folk and interns as stated in the other comment.
Re: Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
#54i worked Lockheed Martin R&D for a couple years and slides like this are par. they are written by the principal investigator for an audience who doesn't give a shit about glitz and glam. these aren't marketing slides.
Re: Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
#55Re: Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
#56If they just put all their slides on Slideshare I would certainly never see them...
Re: Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
#57Nice deck, BUT this is Hacker News, so here's the customary negative feedback: - the "what's the plan" slide is bad: it doesn't convey the original sense that other providers will join soon or have already joined. the tagline makes it look like it's a future plan, when it's actually describing the past. - that "$20m" slide makes it look like it's a lot of money. The original clearly wanted to contextualise it and mak…
For a government program like this, $20M looks like nothing no matter what the context is.
Re: Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
#58Apparently I'm grumpy beyond my years but I find these lighthearted jabs at the NSA counter-productive as they just trivialize what happened. I'd much rather see creations that will help bring about change, like shining a spotlight on the representatives that support these programs. For instance Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence committee , who said "the authorities need this information in case some…
I completely agree and actually would argue that it further pushes the point of why we should be concerned: They cant even make good slides, how can anyone be sure they're keeping the data they collect (legally or not - irrelevant for this point) safe?
I suppose you could also say they spend their time keeping the data safe and not producing quality slides, but i would consider it to be more of an insight into the quality of their overall architecture.
Re: Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also object to any slides that cannot be at least readable printed in black and white. Consider the ink costs - do you think the NSA is made of money?!?
I thought most slides these days print to more 'normal colours'? My university always has slides with dark bgs, images and crazy coloured texts but the PDF slides available to accompany them are always only just the text + any images if they have copyright, and print very well in b&w, if people still feel the need to do that
The need to print in B&W is more about b&w laser vs color ink jets at the consumer level. Quality and TOC is so much better on a B&W laser than paying so much for color ink tanks if you do mostly info doc print outs.
Re: Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.
#60Apparently I'm grumpy beyond my years but I find these lighthearted jabs at the NSA counter-productive as they just trivialize what happened. I'd much rather see creations that will help bring about change, like shining a spotlight on the representatives that support these programs. For instance Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence committee , who said "the authorities need this information in case some…
I didn't see it as lighthearted at all, more like a well presented and terrifying idea that obviously came to fruition. This is a bit more "in your face" than the tacky NSA slideshow.