Slashdot Mirror
Saving Lives with Design
valdean writes "Last year, the White House declassified an August 2001 intelligence brief entitled: 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.' Among other things, the brief mentions that Bin Ladin 'wanted to hijack a US aircraft.' So why was it ignored? Graphic designer Greg Storey thinks part of the reason is poor design. He set out to modify the format of the original document into a more legible one."
Hindsight is always 20/20
This whole thing is a red herring. Read up on the PNAC and you'll learn that the Bush Administration is filled with people who have been DYING for a war of this kind you have with Iraq right now. Put aside your hatred of Michael Moore for a few minutes to figure out that OTHER PEOPLE have also shown links between the Bush's and the Bin Ladens and Saudi Royals, and you'll see why the Bush Administration wants to conveniently ignore those connections.
It's all moot anyway. They wanted a war to legally embezzle $300 Billion from Americans in contracts, and wanted to fool everybody about it so they could get a second term in the white house. Mission Accomplished.
It's now well-known that Hussein didn't have the weapons, was never a threat, and yet the war was started anyway. They've played it down pretending that they're learning about Hussein's lack of weapons at the same time we are, but that's not true. They knew it all along. Ask yourself about the sort of ethics somebody would need to have to do what they've done.
Now ask yourself if those ethics are consistent with seeing a memo and disregarding it.
Anybody who buys into the idea that the attacks were the result of poor design is a FOOL. The system may be imperfect, but it worked. The memo got to the top of the chain in time for Bush to do something about it. He did nothing.
Not only did they know....they trained him! Aren't we great?
"I fail to see how this has anything to do with Slashdot."
It's fashionable on Slashdot these days to criticize the US.
I don't understand this response at all. The original article examined a process, saw something that was suboptimal, and suggested an improvement. And that's considered criticizing the US?
If we've reached the point where we are unable to improve our internal processes because doing so would admit an imperfection, then we are truly fucked.
The ridiculous bias is one of the things I can't stand about Slashdot, and it is perpetuated by the [meta]moderation system. It's not that there aren't valid points among the anti-American sentiment, it's that the counter-points which are often equally valid and often more cogent get moderated into oblivion.
Slashdot is NOT the place for any politically heated talk because it does not provide a proper forum for discussion. If you read over a thread after the dust has settled, all you see is the groupthink modded up, and anything opposing groupthink modded down to -1. It's interesting when you think about it: there is a form of mass censorship on Slashdot, in which people who speak out against the groupthink are silenced (in that they are modded down), and those who tote the party line cruise high at +5. The ironic part is that these heated discussions often center around complaints about the same sort of censorship by the government. Double-standards and hypocrisy abound.