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Actually, you're wrong

Actually, you've just redefined AI to be an easier problem. AI can't work yet, so you've picked some related research and "promoted" it to be called AI.

"Intelligence" is the ability to succeed on an Intelligence Test, like an IQ test or SAT. Until AI starts to get reasonable scores on those (or the more field-specific Turing Test), it's not AI.

AI is about allowing computers to use concepts approximating human reasoning

"Articifical" "Intelligence". Anything else is incorrect. The expansive definition may be more useful for you in your research, but it is linguistically wrong. Your examples only use parts of a potential future AI system.

This pheomenon is fairly common, and a little interesting. A new thing is invented, with a new name, and a professional class springs up to study and improve it. As they work, they decide to focus on something other than what the word originally meant, so they create a new definition for their own use.

Look at "tank" (a military vehicle). Originally (and to the public, still) it meant "a heavily armored ground vehicle". (As developed in 1918 to survive machinegun fire) But today's professional soldiers define it as "a heavily armored ground vehicle, with weapons capable of destroying something similarly armored". Thus they say that the M1A1 is a tank, but not the M2A3

AI isn't just about making things act like humans. That's only good for human-computer interaction (...) and entertainment

No, there are many more reasons to make a computer act like a human. Economic predictions, military simulations... I won't insult you by listing more.

... be that as it may, it's not the only dark cloud. Here are three more that, each in its own way, address some of the issues raised by Mr. Lanier:

Cloud 1: Information

Let's go back to the middle of the 20th century, to a very brilliant, first generation of serious hackers that included people like Alan Turing, John von Neumann, and Claude Shannon. Their primary source of coding experience involved coding information that could be sent over a wire. - J. Lanier

Claude Shannon, in his paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication (PDF version) begins with the oft forgotten statement that, and I'm paraphrasing here (badly), of course he doesn't really mean "information" as that would imply a whole host of semantic issues he doesn't need to deal with but, what the heck, it's a nice word.

It's certainly an interesting word, but when it comes to what can be stored and/or transmitted, it's the wrong word. That Shannon used it and no one seems to mind speaks volumes about the "programmer's mindset" in the past 50 years and goes a long way towards explaining why GOFAI (good old fashioned AI) has failed so completely.

Information is a phenomenological experience of the mind's response to stimuli. You may find what you're reading here informative, but that does not mean this arrangement of dark and light pixels on your screen is information or that, when I posted this message, information was transmitted. The illusion of information is very real, so real that it makes it difficult to see that behind it is a mind doing some incredibly complex processing and that without mind, there is no information.

The illusion of information is borne on the wings of assumption. Call this a message or posting or whatever, but it is really a designed encoding of data, its design intended to evoke particular responses and guided by my assumption that you read and can comprehend English (one of many assumptions). We are so adept at language that most of what goes on when we speak and listen (or write and read) goes on below the level of consciousness. It takes effort to see that the illusion of information requires mind and even more effort to see that mind requires society (i.e., that minds are social -- they require the shared conventions and knowledge represented by the society they are immersed in).

Anyone who's written even a simple program has experienced the "absence of mind" in the wonderful world of Information Processing/Technology. Without mind, programs are required to simulate particular mind-like functions in order to simulate "information." We state or assume conventions and knowledge (e.g., protocols) in some subroutine so it can "think" about the "information" passed to it. We spend an inordinate amount of effort and time trying to design and follow conventions in our programs. In the "human interface" areas of our programs we expend even more effort trying to get the "stupid" user to supply information according to the conventions our programs are expecting and to decorate (format) information for human consumption.

To the extent that the knowledge and conventions within a program are complete and consistent, the current "art of programming" works surprisingly well. The larger the program, the more difficult the completeness and consistency becomes and the more dangerous the fallacy that information is storable and transmittable becomes. It becomes too easy for a programmer to assume that "information" produced or consumed by some subroutine they're working on is, and will remain informative. One can easily imagine someone at NASA working on a subroutine that transmits thrust information to a spacecraft. Would they ever imagine that what they have encoded in Pounds will be interpreted by another subroutine in Newtons if they believe their subroutine actually transmits the information? (Not that anything like this would really happen, of course.)

Cloud 2: System Boundaries

We need a system in which errors are more often proportional to the source of the error. - J. Lanier

How do we know what is and isn't part of a system? We look outside and see a car, a tree, a person. The tree has a root system. The car has a brake system and an exhaust system. The person has a cardiovascular system. And yet, the best definition I have for a "system membership function" is: Anything that affects and is a affected by a system is part of that system.

A little thought in that direction will get you to the conclusion that it's pretty much all one system and everything we deal with is a subsystem. We haven't evolved to look at the world this way. In fact, we try not to as such a holistic view is far too complex. We'd be stuck in analysis paralysis before we ever got started. We have a tendency to begin with the smallest version of "system" we can get by with and expand its domain only when it's the only way to accommodate some "outside" fact.

In my experience with programming (and technology, in general), the "source of the error" is frequently outside of the "system" we thought we were dealing with. It's not unusual to find that the destination of the error is outside of the "system" we thought we were dealing with, as well. Programmers are all very aware of the effects of system boundary errors (although most would not recognize them as such). These errors manifest themselves in usually annoying, and sometimes frustrating problems. But the consequences can be far more devastating.

In December of 1996, The Bright Field (a 763-foot freighter loaded with 56,380 long tons of corn) was positioning itself to navigate a turn in the Mississippi River when a primary oil pump failed. Automation software detected the failure and attempted to start a secondary oil pump but it wouldn't start so the automation shut down the engine. When viewed from the perspective of the "engine system," the automation behaved in a perfectly reasonable manner (and had this occurred on the open sea, everyone would congratulate the automation designers for a job well done). But if you jump up a level you see that shutting off the engine makes it impossible to steer or stop the "ship system." Jump up another level and on that day in December you see that you now have an extremely heavy ship drifting straight towards a New Orleans wharf. (The crew was able to finally get the engine started but not in time to stop the ship. It destroyed 200 feet of dock, tore the front off of a hotel and shopping mall and injured 116 people.)

Cloud 3: Complexity

If you look at other things that people build, like oil refineries, or commercial aircraft, we can deal with complexity much more effectively than we can with software. - J. Lanier

Note: I assume (and hope) Mr. Lanier meant: "we can deal with their complexity much more effectively than we can with software's."

There is a hint in Mr. Lanier's comment of the belief that complexity is somehow undesirable or problematic. In common usage, complexity seems to share some of the semantic space occupied by complicated. Let complicated handle all things messy, difficult and hard to use. Complexity is about connections (physical, social, ideological, ...) between things and it is the source of power in anything we think productive or capable of fending off entropy.

Having lived near an oil refinery that blew up I have my doubts about our ability to deal with their complexity, and no one needs reminding of what commercial aircraft are capable of. You may be tempted to come to Mr. Lanier's defense here, stating that this isn't exactly the kind of "dealing with" he meant. To which I would reply: yes I know, but that's exactly why complexity seems like such a problem, often times in very surprising ways.

People, it seems, like to forget that: a) complexity is no less productive just because we didn't intend to create it, and b) complexity is not constrained in any way by our good intentions. Programmers are also fond of thinking of their code as something that simplifies things, but new software always increases the complexity of the system. In fact, when it comes to adding complexity, nothing is faster or easier than software (and this is most likely at the root of Mr. Lanier's comment). It's rather interesting to consider how programmers try simplifying something and end up making things more complex... Some guy named Tim tries to simplify the exchange of scientific documents and, voila! out pops amazon.com.

It's worth noting that all or most of the significant "events" in human history have resulted in (or enabled or supported) huge increases in complexity. Language, agriculture, population expansion, civilization, transportation (roads, ships, etc.), writing, the printing press, electronic communication, and so on; they have all increased the connections (usually both in number and frequency) between people. (It's possible that Kurzweil's theory of exponential growth of technology is focused on an effect rather than a cause. It seems more likely to me that complexity is growing exponentially and, for the moment, technology is a parallel effect of that growth.)

AFAIK they're illegal pretty much everywhere in the EU and UK, because of people blowing their hands off. We had to content ourselves with filling welded-up scaff pipe with a mixture of fertiliser, diesel, and polystyrene granules. Sound familiar? It should...

Link1

Link2

Link3

This site is a former bunker for the Federal Reserve Board and once held $1 billion in cash in case of a nuclear attack. It was transferred to the LoC in 1997. (Presumably this cash is now held elsewhere.)

As to delivery systems, they have a lot of planes, and here's an overview of their long range missile technology that is known about publically at this time

They are also stark raving NUTZ. By most accounts the most controlled, closed and brainwashed lock step military regime on the planet. Not the largest, but the most controlled-albeit some other "regimes" are headed that way, including ones large and close, but that's another topic. The thought that people are so desperate there they would risk torture and/or death just to escape to mainland china as a step up should be a serious clue. They also get caught all the time basically committing acts of "mini warfare" against south korea and japan, inserting commandos, etc, kidnapping people, etc, etc. And their only realy exports and R&D of note are armaments, that's it.

Are the effects of space travel and microgravity on ants inherently more interesting for Nerds than the same effects on the web weaving of spiders, or cocoon spinning of silkworms, or the growth of crystalline filaments, or the eggs, development and taxis of Medaka fish, or the tunneling habits of carpenter bees?

Kids from 6 countries participate with 6 projects in this. WTF is so special with ants that hasn't been done before? Is it because "Fowler Highschool" is more easily pronounced than "Liechtenstein Gymnasium" for some people, or what?

Yes, stealth tech came from Skunkworks.
Yes, Skunkworks and Skunkworks derived programs did lots of testing at "Area 51".
No it's not all fiction.
But it's not like aliens came down to Area 51 and gave us stealth. The truth is much more mundane. (But still an excelent read.) Basicly it came down to a little computer program called ECHO I (ECHO 1?).

The gyro story is interesting though. I do vaugley recall something along those lines. But I don't have enough info, to know what happened. Maybe something *is* up there.

As for the consparacy theorist site you linked to, so far all the claims I've seen for extrordinary aircraft later proove to be nothing more than new tech in prooving grounds. How many F-117 prototype flights do you think were mistaken for spaceships by nut-job conspiracy theorists in the 1980s?

"As for the "no fighter plane that *I* know if in the world could possibly turn like THAT!" people, I give you the Russian MiG 35. It doesn't look too radical, but the way it maneauvers is unreal. It uses vectored thrust like the U.S. F-22, but the russian designers have taken the vectored thrust a couple steps further than the F-22's. The diffrence is one of design theory. Western design emphesises standoff weponry and stealth. BVR kills (beyond visual range), where you shoot and kill the other guy before he even knows you're there. Russian designers are still designing for the dogfight. Close in furballs where speed is life. The guy with the most power and the tightest turning radius will usualy win (and in many cases, the guy with the most altitude has a tremendous advantage. Remember: You can always trade altitude for airspeed and vice versa). This kind of combat hasn't evolved a hell of a lot since the days of Baron von Richthofen. Anyway, I saw a demo of the MiG 35 on Discovery Wings. Amazing. The pilot was quite skilled, and a master of his aircraft. He could coax it to do things, that I would have told you were impossible to consistantly do on purpose and in control ina modern fighter aircraft. The man actually put the plane into reverse controled flight. He flew backwards for a short distance in controled flight. The Russian SU-37 also has thrust vectoring, but it's unclear to me which of the two represents a more advanced form of this tech. At any rate, an aircraft like these (or a more advanced generation of the same idea) could have moved like these "impossible patterns".

...located in the beautiful city of Thornton, Colorado, is a whole other story. ... The IKONOS satellite lifted in 1999...Its powerful lens is capable of producing some of the most advanced images ever put in the public eye. Since then, that public has had an opportunity to see some of the most amazing images every produced...And it's the IKONOS satellite, which was contracted, built, and launched by Lockheed, giving us this closer eyeful of the world. "

Movies' exaggerated plots and glitzy special effects have had a major influence on popular culture, even to the point of making the public feel as if the government is really spying on it. The pandering to conspiracy theories and super-agent spy equipment imagery sells tickets...

C'mon. If you're going to post ad copy from Space Imaging or disinfo from TIA, that's fine, but at least have the decency to tell us it's such.

JDAM and SDB rely on GPS

More to the point, the Joint Program Office in charge of the GPS has known about cheap, readily available jammers since at least 1995. There's been an ongoing program since then called NAVWAR (NAVigation WARfare) researching ways to harden military GPS receivers against jamming

yes its political - bad politics.

I could care less if this guy is israeli - what is he doing there? nothing. there is nothing on this trip that this guy can add specific value to. otherwise it would be reported as such.

The only thing this does - and why it is news worthy - is show how much the US is actually wrapped around the iraeli victim finger.

Isreal receives more aid than any other country fortheir military - and get special benefits that other countries dont get.

take a look at the total figures that isreal costs the US.

I think the US should stop supporting this nation - and let it take care of itself for once - Israel has received aid from the US every year since 1948. Time to stand on your own two feet israel - and stop your bitching.

Has there been anything linking the anthrax scare to interests outside the US. most evidence would indicate that the anthrax sent came from the US's own supply. Now it _may_ fall under the realm of terrorism, but it is pretty much established it didn't come from al-quaeda (or Iraq) for that matter.

Check this Federation of American Scientists Chemical and Biological Arms Controllink for the most complete documentation you will find on the issue.

You may also want to ask yourself why the Bush administration didn't downplay the anthrax threat. (Plausible answer-- it would lessen the nation's fear factor...)

Um, Stingers are anti-air weapons, ok? This truck doesn't fly (yet).

(Sure, a Stinger has enough power to destroy it. But so would a $2k LAW)

This is already happening. At least I presume the Global Hawk flew through U.S. airspace to get from Edwards to Alaska. ;-)

Actually, Global Hawk flights over the continental US are now routine as I understand it. And these are not small drones, witness:

Global Hawk:
Wing span: 116 ft
Length: 44 ft
Height: 15 ft
Performance Goals
Range: 12,500 nmi
Approx. Endurance: 35 hrs
Endurance @1200nm: 24 hrs
Altitude: 65,000 ft
True Airspeed: 335 kts
Gross T/O wt: 26,750 lbs
Payload wt: 2,000 lbs
Payloads: EO/IR and SAR

I have no problem with this personally, but I can see how some might get a little nervous. ;-)

According to Ms. Rowley's letter and other bureau officials, the Minneapolis field office believed that the French report on Mr. Moussaoui provided enough troubling information about his ties to Islamic extremism to go to court to obtain a search warrant under the federal law that allows the government to carry out searches and surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases. Under the statute, investigators do not have to show that a subject committed a crime, only that they have reason to believe the suspect is engaged in terrorist activity or espionage on behalf of a foreign power or a terrorist organization.

5-kiloton or smaller bombs are a lot harder to build. In fact, they are talking about it now, because a bunch of rather moronic US politicians want to use nukes as regular battlefield weapons. They are referred to as mini-nukes.

If this explosion was about 2-5 kilotons, I find it hard to believe it was a nuke. That's simply too small.

Are you kidding, or just ignorant? Russia has more nukes than us

US: 7,982 deployed nuclear weapons
Russia: About 6000.

the only biological and chemical weapons we have left are used for training and research only, not research into new weapons mind you, but how to defend against them.

Bullshit. "How to defend against them" is a euphemism for "how to unleash them with minimal losses on our part". And you don't really need new wepons, you already have good weapons...people won't get any more dead with new weapons than with what's already available.

Yes, we are still the only country to use nuclear weapons in war. However, it probably saved the lives of 5 million American and Japanese soldiers who would've died in an invasion, and it ended the war.

Against civillians, mind you, and the war was already won. Japan had been trying to negociate a surrender with the help of russian diplomats for about a year when the US decided to nuke 'em (twice!). The point was not to end the war, it was to get an unconditionnal surrender...kick 'em while they're down.
It also came in handy as a way to scare the rest of the world into submission to US foreign policy...the "we have the bomb" argument was a pretty good one for 10 or 15 years, until others could say the same.

Your utopia will never exist, and besides, I wouldn't want to live there.

How's your best friend Satan?

You also have a severe misunderstanding of the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists' mindset.

I don't know about him, but my understanding is like this: You hit them, they hit you back more, you ht THEM back more, they hit YOU back double more...

Round and round it goes...

So, yeah, keep on picking a fight with Irak, and when the extremists hit you back for them, you can say "see, they hit us, we were right to hit them first", again and agin and again.

www.bovik.org/codeposition/best.gif [bovik.org] (confirmatory experiment you can do at home for less than the cost of building a Farnsworth fusor.)

Umm, sure you can do that at home for cheap, as long as you have a convenient source of heavy water, a highly regulated substance that's a key ingredient in certain plutonium breeder reactors. Of course, it does occur naturally, you could filter it out of normal water at a ratio of about 1 molecule in 20,250,000 [1] if you had enough time. Or you could just make it yourself through enrichment, provided you can find a source of deuterium (good frigging luck) and had at least a few grand to throw at the equipment. There's more in depth information at the FAS site if you don't believe me.

I'd love it if I was wrong and you had a convenient source of heavy water, but I somehow doubt it.

1: I got the 20,250,000 number because deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen which occurs naturally at a rate of about 1:4500 hydrogen atoms, but to make heavy water (D2O) out of regular water (H2O) you have to have both hydrogen atoms replaced with deuterium, making the natural heavy water ratio 1 in 4500^2, or 1:20,250,000.

Hydrostatic shock as it's called, is a myth. Yes, some energy from a bullet can be transfered in the form of a shockwave, but it's such a small percentage as to be discounted.

The only place of any authority I've herd the term mentioned it from the USAF gunnery range training personel, who claimed that the main gun in the A-10 warthog had enough energy to actually do this.

Now, I'm not saying if they're right or wrong, but to their credit, there is more possibility of it being true in this case, then from say, small arms fire, since the weapon they're talking about fires 30mm depleted uranium shells, designed to kill fully armored tanks from the air.

Other than the word of the gunnery instructors, I have no evidence to back up this being anything more than a myth either, though it is far more likley to be true than small arms.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up the weight of the depleted uranium shells (0.74844 kg or 1.65 Lbs), and their muzzle velocity (1067 m/s or 3500 Ft/s).

Then I converted the weight into grains and fed that into the calculator here. I got a result of 314102.56 Ft-Lbs. Convert that to joules and you get 425,865.873284 joules. Sigvigantly more than the 500 joules at the muzzle quoted for a 9mm hand gun shell.

Does this make it possible to have hydrostatic shock with this gun? I have no idea. I couldn't find the formulas. But we are talking about something with almost 1000 times the energy here. If it's not happening with that, it's not happening with anything.

This is what happens when I post right after waking up. I Rambel on without ever making a point.

Que será será.

You do realize that most long distance calls have been monitored in just such a fashion, but automated tools looking for key names and phrases since the fifties?

It's called Echelon and you can read about it at FAS.org's Echelon writeup. Note that there are references to recognizing phrases out of electronic communications as well as to technologies that can recognize phrases in audio streams.

John Poindexter hasn't broken any laws

Sure he has, he just can't be tried and convicted for his criminal acts because Congress handed him immunity.

No, the military gave up on the space shuttle after the Challenger accident. They finished with stuff already in the pipeline, and that was it. There have only been 2 military shuttle missions since 1995.

This brings up something ive always wondered

first of all.. let me just say that NO.. i am NOT wearing a tin foil hat.. However...

what are the conciquences of having all these waves being beamed and bounced around the world? Radar.. Radio.. TV.. Microwaves.. Cell Phones.. Wireless Internet.. and God knows what the military is REALLY using up in alaska.. ect.. ect.. ect..

what are the long long term effects to the earth? the us? dose any one know?

W e l l , I 'l l l e t y o u d e c i d e f o r y o u r s e l f .

W e l l , I 'l l l e t y o u d e c i d e f o r y o u r s e l f .

W e l l , I 'l l l e t y o u d e c i d e f o r y o u r s e l f .

W e l l , I 'l l l e t y o u d e c i d e f o r y o u r s e l f .

Iraq's refusal to admit certain nationalities of weapons inspectors might have something to do with the infiltration of the weapons inspection process by US intelligence agents and the subsequent assassination attempts, something not mentioned on the IAEA one-line summary. Another factor not reported was the number of inspectors per visit (5-ish if I remember correctly) agreed upon with the Iraqis and the violation of that agreement on those occasions. They marched 30 weapons inspectors down to the Party headquarters in downtown Baghdad and demanded admittance. Rather inflammatory, wouldn't you say?

The last bit is straight from Scott Ritter's mouth. His 1998 New Republic article is a good read, though a bit dated.

I'm sure you've heard enough twisting of his words by bleeding heart peaceniks that you're sick of his name by now, but honestly, have a read. He's the closest man to the action that's got the cojones to speak up in a frank and straightforward manner. Not bad for a Marine. ;-)

And before you start doubting his credibility, consider that he's already got a FBI and CIA portfolio started against him, and he's been speaking to crowds around the world for months now. If he was lying in his speeches, he'd have been sued/courtmartialed for libel/treason/etc six ways from sunday by now, wouldn't you say? Ergo I'm more inclined to believe him than commercial/governmental news sources who, while they obviously are reluctant to outright lie, will certainly present facts in a biased manner through ommission.

Interesting that you brought this up.

I was talking to this guy who was a highway patrol officer - and had been one since the early sixties.

He was telling me about our records - and how they are "cleared" after a certain amount of time. Some things go away after you meet court stipulations, others after 3 years, others 7 & 10.

But that regardless of any "clearing" everything about you is permanently held in a NCIC (National Crime Information Center) Database. And this thing holds a ton of info on you. I was asking about acessing your own personal records. He said "No Way. This data is *only* available to federal law enforcment. There is no way for the public to get their records."

I think this is BS. I think that there must be some way you should be able to get to these records to ensure 1) they are correct 2) they dont contain data that isn't pertinent to actual law enforcment....

anyway - if anyone knows how to get this info (like can you hire a PI to get it for you?) let me know.

We all know that truth is stranger than fiction, and here we have an apparently real item straight from the realm of Tom Clancy. Imagine a huge, absolutely huge, central database containing both the official and commercial data of every single citizen, run by the US military ostensibly for anti-terror and Homeland Security purposes, and all of it under the direction of a convicted felon.

Well the database is in development and coming soon, according to the New York Times; and the felon who will run it is disgraced Reagan administration liar, dirty-trickster and cover-uper Admiral John M. Poindexter, who Dubya has taken out of mothballs to keep us all safe from dreadful evildoers.

Poindexter got caught up in a little Federal crime spree called Iran-Contra a decade ago, stood trial and was convicted, but managed to escape responsibility on an odd technicality.

As told succinctly by FAS.org, Poindexter was "Indicted March 16, 1988, on seven felony charges. After standing trial on five charges, Poindexter was found guilty April 7, 1990, on all counts: conspiracy (obstruction of inquiries and proceedings, false statements, falsification, destruction and removal of documents); two counts of obstruction of Congress and two counts of false statements.

District Judge Harold H. Greene sentenced Poindexter June 11, 1990, to six months in prison on each count, to be served concurrently. A three-judge appeals panel on November 15, 1991, reversed the convictions on the ground that Poindexter's immunized testimony may have influenced the trial testimony of witnesses. The Supreme Court on December 7, 1992, declined to review the case. In 1993, the indictment was dismissed on the motion of Independent Counsel."

Now he's in charge of the newly-invented Information Awareness Office, a part of that mixed bag of good and bad, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and he's got his eye on basically every scrap of data about every single citizen. The system Poindy is preparing to unleash on us "will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant," the NYT article says.

And he's in no way embarrassed by his role ensuring that the US military and federal law enforcement and intelligence spooks can quite conveniently spy on the populace. He's said openly that the US government "needs to 'break down the stovepipes' that separate commercial and government databases," the article says.

Poindexter joins a slew of Reagan-era retreads and Iran-Contra alumni now operating brazenly in Dubya's bureaucracy. No doubt he feels quite comfortable among such familiar company, though I doubt I could say the same for the rest of us. ®

Have you boys never heard of SOSUS? Yeah, I'm sure that it was probably also used to tap 'secure' Soviet communications lines, but it was also probably a SOSUS repair truck.

See the Independent Counsel's Report on Iran-Contra: "Poindexter in April 1990 was convicted by a jury on five felony counts of conspiracy, false statements, destruction and removal of records and obstruction of Congress. The Court of Appeals reversed his conviction in November 1991 on the immunized testimony issue."

The White House has defended Poindexter's current role. When asked in a February 25 press conference about the new appointment, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said, "Admiral Poindexter is somebody who this administration thinks is an outstanding American, an outstanding citizen, who has done a very good job in what he has done for our country, serving the military." He was then asked by veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas, "How can you say that, when he told Colonel [Oliver] North to lie?" Fleischer disagreed and said, "I understand. The president thinks that Admiral Poindexter has served our nation very well."

This is a real worry. It hasn't appeared much in the mainstream press, either.

Poindexter's conviction was overturned in 1990. He was not guilty. Federation of American Scientists

FYI - Deployable remote sensor systems are not a new concept. The U.S. Army has been using them since about Viet Nam in one form or another. I had the pleasure of visiting Iraq in order to deploy sensors during Desert Storm. The systems in current use can be seen here.
The system in this article appears to potentially be the next generation of this sensor system.
(Any current or former GSR feel free to drop me a line)

Good example are the Federation of American Scientists pages. Really ugly, but really informative. The uglyness doesn't stop me.

Clearly this is the "killer app" for drug smugglers... pack that baby full of coke and out run and out swim any DEA vehicles. All it needs now is a Stinger mount to deal with those pesky helicopters...

I am a systems engineer at the Raytheon Patriot Test Facility (we have everything but the missiles here) and I'd like to clear up some issues concerning popular beliefs about the system:

1. The Patriot system was not specifically designed to shoot down missiles. It is a mid-altitude SAM platform that happened to work well enough to even CONSIDER trying to hit missiles. It is designed for Air Breathing Targets (ABTs) such as planes/helicopters. It is still the only system that has ever shot down an incoming ballistic missile in actual combat.

2. There have been numerous upgrades to the system designed toward raising its effectiveness toward ballistic missiles including a deployment of a new software build during the Gulf War. The system is highly software upgradable by design.

3. The Patriot system now includes a new launcher and hit-to-kill missile which has been developed by Lockheed. This missile is specifically designed to take out incoming ballistic/cruise missiles. Although due to original design concepts it will probably never be as effective as systems such as Israel's Arrow for these targets.

All of this info is available at FAS.org There are some very impressive stats listed here. Note that the missile hits Mach 1 about 20 feet from the launcher, with a top speed of Mach 5!

After the Gulf War many people heard that the earlier reports that Patriot missiles were blasting ballistic missiles out the the sky left and right over Israel and Saudi Arabia were untrue. This says more about the integrity of news reporting or US military misinformation than it does about any shortcomings of the Patriot system. The system is quite old now and is still an impressive feat of engineering if just for the radar alone. It was never really intended for the role it was touted for during the Gulf War.

Just wanted to offer some clarification =)

The military has been tracking projectiles for a long time. They had mortar tracking radar during the Vietnam War that could track the shell, predict its impact point, and more importantly, back calculate the launch point.

Ahh, you mean one of these. (Well, the Q37 is a little newer than Vietnam, but same idea)

I served for 3 years in target processing for the 10th Target Acquisition Detachment at Fort Drum. We happened to have two such radars.

Fun things, though you don't want to stand in front of one when it is radiating.

More info here. (and don't forget to look at it's younger brother, the Q36.)

It's true that the USA-PATRIOT Act has a number of provisions that are of questionable Constitutionality and dubious value to the War Against Terror (TM, Pat. Pending). However, this article (gratuitous link)is nothing more than gross conjecture without evidence. As we say down here in Texas, he's sellin' a whole lotta bull and not much steak.

It is illegal for a wiretap or datatap to be undertaken without judicial oversight and authorization (see United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297 (1972), holding "Fourth Amendment freedoms cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillances may be conducted solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch."). The expanded tap provisions of USA-PATRIOT allow for a greater level of secrecy to surround specific wire- or datataps (specifically, those approved by the special FISA court for national security issues), but federal law enforcement does not have carte blanche to go around randomly listening in to our conversations. In order for a tap to pass Constitutional muster, it has to be narrowly drawn. Setting up a general-purpose dragnet to pull in data from all library patrons, the vast majority of whom cannot legally be targeted by a FISA tap order, would get drop-kicked out of the most deferential judge's chambers. (Orrin Hatch's statement on FISA taps under USA-PATRIOT is here, and the ALA's interpretation of the Act is here).

The FBI does have expanded powers to grab library records, for purposes of domestic law enforcement as well as international espionage and terror investigations, but that's very different -- if no less disturbing -- than ongoing monitoring, and would be sufficient to trigger the librarians' circumspection. It certainly doesn't mean that the Feds slapped a Carnivore underneath the public terminal carousel.

You're right, it's a "legal" bonus. The International Red Cross has an excellent FAQ page on blinding laser weapons.
The problem with the systems under development is that they don't discriminate between human-operated sensors and machine operated sensors. One system, I believe called Pathfinder, is vehicle mounted and uses a search sensor like the AN/PXX TLOS to monitor the battlefield for the "glint" or reflection produced by sensor lenses, like a target designator or pair of binoculars. It then zaps the sensor with a visible or IR laser pulse. Of course, whether someone is looking through the sensor at that moment is not the Pathfinder's problem. So this "legal" use of lasers ends up blinding people anyway. Even a target designator when viewed through ordinary binoculars can blind, like looking at the sun through an unshielded telescope-- in response to this, during the gulf war the U.S. issued Ballistic/Laser Protective Spectacles and M22 Laser Protective Binoculars. One of the issues with these protection measures is that they only work with a few common wavelengths of laser. I have no doubt that the U.S. will develop defensive measures against wavelength-agile threats, but I still have a problem with the use of blinding energy weapons in combat because let's face it, sight is the most important sense. Unfortunately, our friendly dept. of defense doesn't view the eyesight of Iraqi conscript soldiers with much sympathy. *sigh*.

You're right, it's a "legal" bonus. The International Red Cross has an excellent FAQ page on blinding laser weapons.
The problem with the systems under development is that they don't discriminate between human-operated sensors and machine operated sensors. One system, I believe called Pathfinder, is vehicle mounted and uses a search sensor like the AN/PXX TLOS to monitor the battlefield for the "glint" or reflection produced by sensor lenses, like a target designator or pair of binoculars. It then zaps the sensor with a visible or IR laser pulse. Of course, whether someone is looking through the sensor at that moment is not the Pathfinder's problem. So this "legal" use of lasers ends up blinding people anyway. Even a target designator when viewed through ordinary binoculars can blind, like looking at the sun through an unshielded telescope-- in response to this, during the gulf war the U.S. issued Ballistic/Laser Protective Spectacles and M22 Laser Protective Binoculars. One of the issues with these protection measures is that they only work with a few common wavelengths of laser. I have no doubt that the U.S. will develop defensive measures against wavelength-agile threats, but I still have a problem with the use of blinding energy weapons in combat because let's face it, sight is the most important sense. Unfortunately, our friendly dept. of defense doesn't view the eyesight of Iraqi conscript soldiers with much sympathy. *sigh*.

Firstly, you are aware of the difference between nuclear rockets and anti-matter propulsion, right? Nuclear rockets are basically nuclear reactors with their outputs attached to rocket engines instead of turbines.

Anti-matter drives are not going to be used inside the atmosphere. Using any sort of nuclear rocket inside the atmosphere is retarded. How safe do you want it to be? What are the consequences of a rocket full of uranium exploding over a populated area? Anyhow, chemical boosters work fine (and could work even better if people put their mind to it) for getting stuff into orbit. Getting stuff into orbit is a political problem these days, not so much a technical one.

Moving things around in inter-planetary space is another story. There's all sorts of cool methods: ion rockets, nuclear rockets and laser/solar sails.

Anti-matter propulsion canes all of these tho for energy density; you're getting down into the guts of physics here. No more `let's make this hydrogen and oxygen go boom!' engines, nor `let's use this decaying uranium to heat up some water! w00t!' engines, you're getting matter to convert directly and completely into energy.

So, yeah, no one's going to use nuclear rockets, nor anti-matter rockets inside the atmosphere. Long term, anti-matter looks to be the way to go; it's got the energy density we need and it ain't going to be expensive forever.

This thing will be great as an anti-ship missle countermeasures. Check out this new Russian Weapon, the Sunburn missle, supersonic anti ship missle. If you had one of these lasers mounted on a destroyer, no matter how fast the incoming missle is flying a computer controlled gunner could point the laser at this thing and fry it as soon as it comes over the horizon. A destroyer or an aircraft carrier has enough electricity producing capability and heat dissipation that this would work.

Since you are trolling, don't forget that other countries use and threaten to use nasty weapons.

Oh wait... -1 Redundant

Here's a good site though with tons of examples.

My favorite would be the infamous time when NASA did half its calculation in metric and the rest in SI. ;)

F-bacher

However, there are several dozen other countries doing things far worse than Israel (Sudan for instance, 2 million dead in ongoing civil war, slavery of black Christians, etc), but nobody seems to give a shit about these atrocities. Why is Israel singled out by nearly all countries for most of the evil going on in the world? I think it's because it provides an easy scapegoat. The problems within the entire Arab League can be blamed on Israel, even 9/11 is being blamed on Israel because bin laden claimed he was fighting for the oppressed Palestinians, etc. Of course there are far more oppressed peoples within the Arab Leaque itself, but since they're not oppressed by Israel their story doesn't make it out (Iraqi Kurds, Sudanese Christians, etc).

Bin Laden and cohorts sent out a written statement, explaining why they were going to attack America. American support for Israeli repression was one of the three reasons that they listed. So it is very relevant.

As for biased American news, how many American news sorces even mentioned that written statement?

I disagree- the US became a super power because of World War II; it was a watershed event for this country. While the rest of the world was taking turns blowing up each others factories, decimating their populations, and sowing the seeds of political strife we were ramping up capacity, production, and developing business. The US is a super power for one simple reason- economic power. Think about it- we don't have the largest population, the most educated population, or even the longest life expectancy. We just out spend (usually on R&D) every other country in the world on defense; we even subsidize other country's purchase of our arms, regardless of ethics, to protect our economic interests. Money is the master of (ORWELL=offense)"defense"(/ORWELL). Why are your tax dollars spent in this fashion? Corporate lobbyists own our government.

At the end of the day though, what matters to a country is manufacturing, products, such as software, cars, widgets, etc. It doesn't matter to a country how well your software streamlines production, how many widgets marketing & sales can distribute, or how efficient the line can be if you're not paying employees in your own country to then buy those widgets. Third world countries are smart to follow in Japans footsteps. I know that this is a complicated issue, but I sometimes feel that the relentless American profit machine is its' own worst enemy.

I disagree- the US became a super power because of World War II; it was a watershed event for this country. While the rest of the world was taking turns blowing up each others factories, decimating their populations, and sowing the seeds of political strife we were ramping up capacity, production, and developing business. The US is a super power for one simple reason- economic power. Think about it- we don't have the largest population, the most educated population, or even the longest life expectancy. We just out spend (usually on R&D) every other country in the world on defense; we even subsidize other country's purchase of our arms, regardless of ethics, to protect our economic interests. Money is the master of (ORWELL=offense)"defense"(/ORWELL). Why are your tax dollars spent in this fashion? Corporate lobbyists own our government.

At the end of the day though, what matters to a country is manufacturing, products, such as software, cars, widgets, etc. It doesn't matter to a country how well your software streamlines production, how many widgets marketing & sales can distribute, or how efficient the line can be if you're not paying employees in your own country to then buy those widgets. Third world countries are smart to follow in Japans footsteps. I know that this is a complicated issue, but I sometimes feel that the relentless American profit machine is its' own worst enemy.

Maybe they want to test the real one that this was a prototype for, in battle. Or, maybe they will just use this one again.