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Does the NSA Need More Electricity?
An anonymous reader writes "The Baltimore sun (NSA watchers can't live without it) reports that the NSA worries about overloading the Baltimore energy grid if it were to install new computing capacity at it's Fort Meade HQ. This includes two multi million dollar supercomputers. Some systems are reportedly not getting the cooling they need. The temperature in NSA buildings is raised two degrees to conserve energy, according to the article. The NSA is Baltimore Gas and Electric`s (BGE) biggest customer the sun reports. Former NSA employees fear that a power outage at Fort Meade would have worse consequences than the 2000 "information overload" related outage. The NSA does apparently not have the backup power generation capacity to power the whole facility during power outages. Some point a finger at a new mall build in the area, but a BGE spokesman says the mall is "fairly easily accommodated". Some sources say the problem was identified in the late 90`s. But "keeping the lights on" wasn't a priority. A $4 million computer upgrade to the system that allocates power was postponed for budgetary reasons. (the NSA budged is estimated at $8 Billion) The article reports that the budget documents for listening posts around the world report similar infrastructural problems, in the budgets for 07 as well as previous years. It should be noted that the huge "groundbreaker" IT infrastructure upgrade program is reportedly over budget and late, but not yet fully operational."
there is surplus electricity available from Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.
Everyone knows that terrorists don't like working in the dark.
I wonder how much of that electricity is simply wasted on old and inefficient equipment. Government agencies really don't have much incentive to conserve electricity since they know their "bill" will always be paid, regardless of how large it gets....time to upgrade to blades of Turion X2 and/or Core2Duo servers for all that immoral surveillance....
No Such Agency needs that kind of power.
From the outside, we don't really know enough about their problems to suggest a solution. So, clearly the NSA should bring in an unbiased outside consultant, and brief him/her fully on every project that they need to accomodate. As an honest patriot, I am willing to volunteer.
I could use them in my audio gear instead of buying those evil eastern european/Chinese tubes. :)
How much does it cost to spy on citizens and could these funds be better allocated to building a generator?
<oblig>
NSA: Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL battle station!
Terrori^wCitizens: It's a trap!
</oblig>
"You've got an awfully big computer plant and a lot of precision equipment, and I don't think they would handle power surges and the like really well," -- WTF?
I've worked on several jobs for credit card companies, as an example, an office with 4,000 workstations. The power was connected to the electric company's grid in two different places from two different substations; in case one of the substations went out, the whole building could be handled from the one still going. All of the servers and almost all of the workstations were connected to a UPS with 15 minutes of batteries AND an emergency generator with 24-hours of fuel. About half of the non-computer loads, including elevators, emergency lights, sump pumps, 1/3 of the occupants air-conditioning, all of the A/C for the server rooms, etc. were connected to the emergency generators. Even the refrigerators and freezers in the cafeteria were on emergency power. And this was for a call center. But a facility upon which our national security supposedly depends can't handle power surges?
I'd have thought that at some scale it's cheaper to run your own generator than to rely on external vendors. Don't many organizations much smaller than that (universities, for example) do their own power for that reason? Surely they can even afford a couple nuclear plants - heck, many submarines have them.
Wonder why they don't do that.
With modern networking technology you could put new computers anywhere. So, what's so special about Baltimore? Why not take that shiny new Cray and put it in Cheyenne Mountain, I hear they have room now.
Maybe they should have built their systems near a deep lake, and instead of paying ridiculous prices for AC, they could just pump water from the lake and circulate it. The water at the bottom of lakes is always around 4C, and the cost of pumping it through a radiator type system is relatively very-cheap, reliable, and consistent. It's quite a popular method of cooling near the great-lakes region, I do believe.
The answer is "NO" but its a matter of taking away the need to spy.
k market.html
w ww.worldgame.org/wwwproject/
The NSA has been included on the list of things that failed pre 9/11.
their computer failed for three days.... all of their computer and for teh same three day.
But they should have known that when you wrongly manipulate world economy, bad things will follow,
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stoc
its a force of nature that man is unavoidably subjected to:
We have the resources, knowledge and manpower to eliminate the need to spy
http://web.archive.org/web/20021108011109/http://
The question is: why is it not happening?
with over 6 billion people on this planet, you can be sure the human force causing such a waste is only a fraction of the total count, who typically just wants to live their short life and raise a family, perhaps see some of the wonders of the world and of mans creations first hand.
Amazing how it all comes down to the use of abstractions (the non-real) to communiocate ideas, beliefs, etc. And even more amazing how most people are so easily blinded by those who are very good at communiocating bad.
Maybe the world just has to come to the conclusion that it is far more expensive to do the wrong things than it is to do the right things. That doing the wrong things is simply no longer affordable, before it will change.
So they allocate the budget for the new super ultra-modern computer system (which of course exceeds that budget), and now they need even more money because they "didn't knew" about the energy problem. And next year? They get at least the same budget. So whoever is responsible for that mess is even proud of what he's done.
I for one welcome ... Nevermind...
"the NSA budged is estimated at $8 Billion"
It costs $8 billion dollars to get the NSA to budge? Give me half that and I'll poke them with a stick until they move.
You are assuming that government workers and their sycophant contractors are competent - they aren't. For the most part, the government workers are either egomaniacs, or lazy, or both and the contractors are dishonest, or incapable, or both. Fortunately, there are exceptions, but they are rare.
Why don't they have more generators? Simple, because it is a lot "sexier" to say you have a bunch of Cray supercomputers than one supercomputer and a few backup generators.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is usually crucified.
There wouldn't be a power problem if we'd been allowed to build new plants over the last 20 years.
I live in BGE's service area. Never had a problem, but they've been stressing for years they wanted to build a new power plant and the environmentalists won't let 'em.
You call it spying; I call it transparency.
If the only thing men wanted was to live their short lives peacefully and raise a family, then nobody would care if he was being watched. It is the need to hide something that calls for privacy.
An organization like the NSA is not waste - it is, IMHO, the future. The next thing is to make all their collected information publically accessible. Imagine a world where you could surf the net from work, and see what your wife was doing at home and what your children were learning at school - knowing all that time that your children and your wife can see what you are doing at work.
Of course the only reason this world would appear unattractive to someone is if he had something to hide. Imagine no lying and no cheating. You do something and you stand by it. Proudly.
Arthur C. Clarke wrote a book about this concept, only he had some crazy idea of controlling wormholes that appear in the quantam foam (Or maybe not so crazy, IANAQuantam Physicist). I forget what the name of the book was, but it was a pretty interesting read.
...then they must be very good at their job...
Information is a weapon.
People in power can attack/remove the persons and groups that might become a threath against their own power. This happens even if the threathing groups is working for the good of the nations and they will be elected trough the normalt democratic ways.
Democracy can be just as big threath against the president and his friends as anything else. Is more powe to the president then a good idea?
Why do people belive the power is allways working for them?
The most secretive government organization in the western world is transparent is it?
No, the need to hide something calls for secrecy, see the NSA's illegal spying on US citizens.
IHBT.
The Light of Other Days.
If information were power, the NSA wouldn't need a utility company.
to the Intel Core platform :-)
Veering even further off topic, but interesting how you make that association. One time, I saw a footage of one of the US's big aircraft carriers pulling into some foreign port. That provoked the same sort of emotional reaction in me as the scene in ROTJ where they pan across the Imperial Superdestroyer (or whatever it's called...the humongous one.) The thing is, the intent of both the fictional and the real ships were pretty much the same. That was the observation that most amused me.
Let me fill you suckers in on a little secret. The NSA is run by the Government. The Government doesn't know the meaning of the words efficient or effective. The only government operations which SEEM efficient are the ones they refuse to tell you anything about.
Realize that much of what is classified is classified to cover someone's ass, and not due to national security concerns. Imagine if your company could classify information it didn't want people to know about, what would they classify? All the bad news, that's what. Notice that any and all bad news coming out of the government is directly from employees to the press, and never EVER from officials or press relations offices.
Now you know that the NSA can't even figure out how to get electricity set up so that they can power their billion dollar computers, meanwhile your company, which you consider to be run by dopes probably, has multiple plans to deal with such issues. The reason for this is simple:
The NSA does not design computers, they just buy them on contract from big companies like IBM or whoever. All they have to do is write a check.
This leaves the NSA with the responsibility to plug that computer in, and they have failed at it. And you can take it as a fact that this is the case with almost all government projects. They write a check to a contractor, and then don't have the competence to use what they bought.
All computer room updates are temporary! When you continually upgrade and expand your installation, you continually change your power, cooling, and wiring needs. Facilties engineering and plant upgrades are an ongoing project, not a one-time quick fix. It isn't glamorous, it often isn't pretty, but it is essential. If management waits for a crisis like this before acting, you can bet on three things: the correction will take too long, cost too much, and after the too-late, too-expensive quick-fix they'll ignore it, assuring that the same thing happens again.
get their secret genetic enginered pokemon army program,and use a cluster with 4000 pikachus to power this thing up :3
I suspect that the skillsets it takes to run a significant power-generating operation (especially a nuclear facility!) are fairly different from those that it takes to do cryptography, code-breaking, assassinations, signal interceptions, etc. To bring in that kind of equipment, you have to bring in staff to run it, which costs money & effort. It's nicely seperable from their "main" operations, and can be "outsourced" to BG&E easily. It's a simple case of "it's not our business."
Why do you post Anonymous? if you got nothing to hide. you do like privacy after all
Give out a tempting target and monitor any sudden interest in MD power stations?
All businesses try and keep the buildings as warm as possible in the summer, and as cool as possible in the winter. Its simple thermodynamics. All datacenters do things like remove CRTs in place of LCDs, SHUT THE DAMN LIGHTS OFF, and virtualize/consolidate whenever possible. This whole article could be summed up as:
"Economic reality catches up to NSA, NSA adapts, film at 11"
Or are we all excited because its something to do with both the Gubmint and computers?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Maybe they are building a time machine there ?
Primordial Soup
In my experience, government workers only a) try to make sure nothing's their fault, and b) get as much praise as possible, deserved or otherwise.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
I'm picturing several hundred terrorism suspects running around on a giant hamster wheel.
-b.
Too lazy to sign up actually :)
Ok. I know this is probably not the best way to start a reply but - you are f#&%ing crazy. Ok. No cheating or lying (how this is achieved in your sick little had will remain a mystery to me) but what do you say about, eh, picking your nose? Going to the bathroom? Masturbating? Crying? Doing something you want to remain private, while harming no one? People like you scare me more than the NSA, CIA, FBI or the local police altogether. You're not the quite by-stander. You are the one rushing to get the brown uniforms.
It is not that we are lazy, it is just that there is so much bureaucratic red tape to cut through just to get something done. When you have to get something that has to have paperwork pass through 5 peoples desk before it is approved. Also to compound the problem, Sue from accounting has no idea what a SCSI controller or a UPS are, so it doesn't seem that important to her. Sure YOU know what it is but they wont. And as far as cost goes, that blame lies solely with the contractors. They jack up the price because they know they can because of ridiculous State and Federal contracts that have to be used to purchase these items, which not just anyone can get. Those are just a few problems, but don't blame it on incompetent workers. They are just like any other private business, you can find the same thing happen in any organization whether it is government or private.
-- Yes, I work for the government, and yes I am watching you.
you must have not met too many of us. Yes we don't want it to be our fault, do you want things that go wrong at ur work to be blamed on you? That is a silly statement. I haven't heard too much bragging with the agencies I deal with, but maybe i just need to go to another state.
-- Yes, I work for the government, and yes I am watching you.
So why can't the new power-hungry computers be installed at a remote site, in a place where energy isn't so limited? Is there a reason why they have to be physically proximate to NSA HQ?
Perhaps data transfer would be more difficult (security + size of pipe required), but seems that it might be more easily resolved?
Picture instead interrogators waiting for the arrival of new battery cables to replace the worn out ones.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
They also "jack up" their prices for the Government because of the ridiculous amount of red tape required to do anything for the Federal government. If you're working for a small company, you just go to the owner and ask for approval for new hardware. For the Government, you have to do through several levels and maybe wait a year or five. Also, there are ridiculous and invasive regulations that Federal contractors have to follow, like the Drug-Free Workplace Act that requires them to set up piss-testing programs for their employees, and (less true today) have affirmative action programs to ensure hiring of minorities and women (thus possibly causing more competent workers to get passed up in the name of equality).
If I were doing work for a dementedly demanding entity like that, I, too, would charge 300% of my usual rate as compensation for the headache I'd wake up with every morning.
-b.
Also known as blatant hypocrisy.
Your analysis is almost as overly simplified as the original statement and assumes impartiality of the system. The problem is our current society is a juxtaposition between the everyman (trying to live his/her life and raise a family) and large scale corporations that have evolved to extract increasing revenue wherever possible which in turn is distributed between the top couple percent of the population. Like it or not money=power, and the ability to influence all sorts of things... So you have a small percentage of the population with enormous power and an inherant desire to keep things the way they are. The problem with an organisation that monitors every aspect of daily life should be obvious.
"We" want a corruption free, fair government.
No, seriously. As someone who has worked in government procurement before, you would be absolutely amazed to see all of the nonsense the USG must go through - according to law - to purchase anything beyond small office supplies (and heaven help you if you need to purchase those in bulk).
A few examples:
- It took one month to have a lock changed. Not a lock at a secure facility or anything of the sort, mind you, and preparing the paperwork to create the order form and see that it had all the necessary approvals cost more than changing the stupid lock. But don't worry - that lock was changed without any corruption at all.
- Time to wait for a request for most small items (purchases below $2,500) is at least a month, usually 6 weeks. If it is above $2,500 (and, no, you cannot purchase items individually if it's above that amount - they all have to be on the same PO), at least three bids must be made from different companies and if it is a piece of technical equipment, committees must be formed so that everyone can sit around and argue about what their requirements are for a few months rather than making the process quick. If you're buying a lot of new computers, expect a lag of several months - or a year.
- Let's not even get into the various acts that, on top of that, prevent the government from buying from certain entities, encourage it to purchase from others (minorities, women owned businesses, etc.), and the other groups the government creates to "streamline" ordering that do nothing more than add an additional step to the process.
(Above was with the State dept. - your mileage may vary)
The simple fact is that the government cannot act like an efficient, effective corporation and simply purchase stuff because it has been buried in red tape. Why is it buried? "We" buried it. By "we", I mean American citizens, but especially their elected officials.
Americans taxpayers, reasonably, don't want to pay taxes into a government that is corrupt and practices cronyism. This makes sense and, in spite of all the cynical things you hear on Slashdot, it must be noted that the U.S. government has very low corruption levels when compared to others, and we generally do hold those who break the law accountable for it. However, this (very) relatively corruption-free government comes at a high price - efficiency. An honest employee who needs to get his or her hands on equipment quickly simply can't do it - it must be passed through miles and miles of red tape first. Legislators always love to jump on these little matters when they com up, pound their desks, and demand something be done to stop it, which leads to yet more red tape.
It's a sad, sad day when a purchase must pass through the hands of at least 5 very busy people (and often pass through their hands more than once) to get approval. But that's what I saw.
I left asking myself - is it worth allowing a little corruption to avoid wasting billions a year in administrative fees? I'm not sure I could give that question a qualified "yes", but sometimes the cure can be worse than the disease.
**** NOT opening a can of beans here, so don't even start ****
After seeing how the government does things with purchasing as an intern, I can almost understand the no-bid contracts with Haliburton. Just the bidding process on these contracts would've taken YEARS, and not met the policymakers' desired timeline (which you can see as right or wrong).
**** NOT opening a can of beans here, so don't even start ****
Maybe you don't, but most humans have egos. Thus, if they'd be constantly afraid of having their failures held up for all to see, they'd seldom if ever try anything new. Also, how long would the data collected be available? Are you denying people who made mistakes in their youth the ability to start a new life of which they would be proud? Why should it be easier for some schmuck with a grudge to dig up something that happened 20 years ago and use it against you? Not to mention the potential for stalking, harrassment, etc, by various crazy people.
-b.
This from a guy posting as anonymous coward.
Plus, its more people who need to go through background checks and security clearences.
Given that the NSA probobly handles stuff classified at levels above Top Secret that themselves are classified and only known to the NSA, how hard (and expensive) do you think it would be to find people who can run a power plant AND can be fully trusted to operate that close to all those secrets.
. . . not yet fully operational.
And we all know what the fate of the Death Star was! They outsourced the power used to defend it to the nearby moon of Endor and entrusted it with its least capable troops. To its credit, it did manage to take out a few large starships on its way out.
You'd probably get fired cause your boss would be surfing and see that you're not working, you're making sure your wife isn't cheating on you.
funny how "anonymous coward" supports not hiding.
Funny how the real parent, noit hiding behind anonymous exposes some facts and gets rated flaim bait.
And this proves what? That the original parent is correct!
Most of the electricity generated is used to produce or move heat. Frankly there are smarter ways of doing it.
The solution is to make energy expensive, we'll then start to see more use of heat pumps, district heating, district cooling systems etc. Efficiency levels will go from thirty something percent up to eighty something percent.
Deleted
if it were to install new computing capacity at it's Fort Meade HQ.
Anybody know of a site like /. , but run by people who can spell one-syllable words?
The AOL campus down the road in Northern Virginia is about to have some space they may be willing to sublet. At least they had the foresight to install their own backup generators.
I think it's funny--in a sad, sadistic sort of way--that the government spends so much money on controlling its people. It spends billions of dollars per year maintaining a nuclear arsenal 150,000 times bigger than the Hiroshima bombs. That's pretty fucking stupid if you ask me.
How many millions of dollars are they spending on expanding their control over humans? How much money is being spent every day to power these gestapo deus ex machinae? How did we survive in the 50s without Big Brother sniffing our anuses whenever we made a phone call?
If you took all the money spent on martial efforts and jailing marijuana smokers and spent it on education of the piddly 350 million inhabitants in this country, we'd be much much better off. Here are some other ideas:
1. Invest money in developing and switching to alternate fuel sources. Why not switch government vehicles as a start? It's not like federal employees have a freaking choice about what they drive anyway. Fuck, pick ethanol or vegetable oil. Both work.
2. Invest money in developing permaculture practices and regulation that allows us to get better food that hasn't been poisoned. I lived in Mexico for 10 years, and a hell of a lot of poor people eat better than people here, because they make their own food. Guys, did you know that the cottonseed oil that fast food places fry everything in is not techinically food? That's why we don't eat shirts.
3. Actually send people to actually really truly help other countries rather than just force regime change and build oil pipelines.
The economy is going to eat a big one soon, everybody, and when it does, these rich assholes will still be floating on little man-made islands with their servant wenches while we deal with the fallout--quite possibly literal fallout. Grow a garden, walk outside, meet your neighbors, encourage one another to grow and be competent and healthy. It's important.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Well, I for one believe that humans don't have egos. They aquire them.
Human nature has the excellent tendency of adopting to the world's nature. A transparent society will form people with different habits. A naked man doesn't laugh at naked people.
In a world where every man has a bad history, every man jerks off, and every man envies, nobody is going to point at another man, and say, "hey, he's got a bad history, he jerks off, he envies..."
*ahem* ...
[/rant]
Clearly, this is a job for congress. The NSA is having oversight problems and is out of date. They need to start having planning planning planning planning planning meeting planning meetings to make sure the proper oversight is in place. Furthermore, all systems MUST be upgraded to MS Vista immediatly as part of the 'modernizing the NSA and funding Bill Gates bill'. Yes, ALL computers, I'm sure they can port Vista to whatever they're running. We wouldn't want all of those pipes to get clogged with penguins or something, now would we?
That should leave them about as effective as they are now at identifying terrorist threats and at the same time assure U.S. citizens that none of the police state surveillance initiatives will actually affect us.
...and if you go slow enough while passing the main staff building, you can see what they really do with all that juice.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
The nuclear power plant at nearby Calvert Cliffs, Maryland may be getting a new reactor. This would be good news for the NSA. Maybe the NSA should fund their own reactor at the Calvert Cliffs. National security concerns might expedite the path through all the red tape.
Wow your the only person on the whole internet that has his shit in one sock no kidding and I'm not being sarcastic in the least. I agree with every thing in your post. Phillip
Just like the US did to the USSR in the late 80s, perhaps the nations of the world could bankrupt the USA by flooding the world communication channels with heavily encrypted traffic. The NSA would keep demanding more and more computers and power, draining the nation of its resources.
ERROR 144 - REBOOT ?
It's funny to me how an interesting post about a technical problem--law of unnintended consequences?--is turned into a thread spouting virulent anti-Americanism and conspiracy-driven drivel. (There is no cabal; get over it.) The need for large amounts of power is interesting and applicable to all societies--and presents difficult technical and logistical problems. Development and improved standards of living, from the third-world to the eurozone, will require more investment and innovation. It's in everyone's interest and everyone's problem. Notably, and perhaps ironically, issues such as the one presented in the post will likely lead to more improvement of the power infrastructure than if there was not such a pressing need. Most importantly, the negative factions on this board act as if power requirements are a zero-sum game. They are not. The NSA's use of power is not preventing an inner-city Baltimore family from heating their stove. Likewise, support of one idea does not necessitate denigration of another. An argument should be able to stand on its own legs; if you have to put someone or something else down to make your point, perhaps you should re-examine your position.
>> Former NSA employees fear that a power outage at Fort Meade would have worse consequences than the 2000 "information overload" related outage.
Yeah so the NSA wouldn't be able to scan our emails or filter all our phone calls for key words for a while. Tragic.
Well, there's enough ignorance for me to be modded down within mere seconds to -1 troll. As if everyone alive doesn't know the NSA's role as spy on American Citizens at this point.
Do the research, people.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Interesting topic... How power efficient are any of these machines? A significant part of building these machines is disposal of waste heat as the frequency goes up. Engineers are going to be damned concerned about power consumption and heat disposal. If they don't that means the machine just isn't going to run very long.
Now, compare, say, a Cray XT3 with a distributed project like Seti@home. Both are going to consume power, but which is going to be more efficient at it? Also, considering that the Cray (and the seti@home computer) are both GP machines, it is possible to build a machine that only does one thing. While most would abhor the idea of an Excel only machine, if all you're ever going to do is simulate asteroids crashing into planets, perhaps the machine could be more efficient yet.
In that it corrects some of my mistakes, and I appreciate your comments.
I neglected to mention that my particular experience was in an embassy. Most of the administrative personnel are not American citizens, which means the USG is a bit leary about handing out cards to them. There were only a handful of American personnel running the Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs), and these Americans were very busy in other areas and weren't the type of personnel you ask to make small purchases.
Regarding GSA - we made big orders through them, but only once every quarter/six months or so (don't recall specifics). Shipping big pallets like that from the U.S. can get expensive, and between time it takes to make the purchase order, assemble the pallet, ship it to post, clear customs, etc. it can take months.
My experience will obviously vary from that of many federal employees.
the NSA is proposing the new NSA@home project. ;-)
I'm sure every Slashdot reader will be volunteering CPU cycles.
Letter To Iran
Toronto
s ults.shtml?tt=TT000900
y =Baltimore
GPS coordinates:
N43.641922,W79.387668
average conditions http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/city_guides/re
Baltimore
GPS Coordinates:
39.1573N, 76.7227W
http://www.cityrating.com/citytemperature.asp?Cit
can't imagine WHY that might work in toronoto, and not for the NSA
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
But there's a deeper truth, that I'd found while I was in the Air Force. 99.999999% of classified data is MIND-NUMBINGLY BORING. I did electronic warfare back then, and while it's useful to know the frequency ranges, etc of every type of radar you're likely to go up against, knowing that the BULL SHIT's radar's microfleems are, in fact, subradiate, is more than you really need to know, or even professionally care about.
(and yes, I did steal that line from Dilbert, just in case the radar data I remember from 25 years ago is still sensitive. . .you still have no need to know. . .)
But the bottom line on classified, is that you can probably get most of it from open source, the classified stuff is generally from "special" sources and we have a definite read on both the source of the data, and how good it really is. . .
In the 50's - Don't forget McCarthy and the anti-communist propaganda. And I agree that there is a lot of money-wasting in governments (not only the US). A government is there to serve it's citizens - not the other way around which all to often happens... The problem is that on one hand the government wants to be centralized which in the case of the US is that they want all agencys in the vicinity of DC (exceptions may exists for special cases). Attempt to re-locate agencies to other locations happens, but there is a downside of it - not all employees wants to move (family reasons etc.) and then there will be a drain of competence. (OK - if the government wants to downsize an agency - then they move it.) Anyway - by locating close to the source of energy that would save a lot energy and increase the reliability. The transmission losses in the electrical grid are considerable. (but compared to other types of energy actually acceptable) Some details that you may note are the cooling fins on the transformers, the noise you can hear from high-voltage electrical lines - especially during wet weather etc. And sure - using energy-effecient computer technology is also effective. Sometimes you get more bang with a dual-processor with laptop CPU:s than you get with a single-processor "full" cpu. The downside is that the size and the complexity of the equipment will rise along with the price tag. One problem that exists is that energy actually is far too cheap, which means that we have been stuck with our devices with low efficiency for a long time now. And it doesn't help that all software running on our computers is inefficient either. Just consider our favourite toy for speeding up our transition to the next world - the car. Gasoline engines are in the range of 20% while diesel engines can reach up to 45% (with variations of course). And don't trust the MPG figures either - your driving conditions will have a large impact. Some cars may actually consume less doing 65MPH than doing 30MPH. (I have noted this on a car with automatic gearbox where the transmission losses are humungous at lower speeds). So just start kick your local politican to inform them that cutting down on energy not necessarily means that you have to cut your living standard. Simple things - use flourescent light or even better - LED light - instead of the normal bulbs or halogen lamps. Some tweaking may be necessary - but nothing that's impossible. Be more flexible with the ventilation - full throttle may save time - but not energy. Using a variable-RPM fan and shutting of the sections of your house that you don't use can also save a lot. Air condition units that deploys their heat into the surrounding air isn't the most efficient cooling you can do. By using the AC to heat a swimmingpool instead (or whatever you like) you can make some use of that waste. The efficiency may actually also be improved if the condenser (the hot part of the AC) is sprayed with a fine mist of water, since evaporating water takes out a considerable amount of energy. And pre-cooling the air by seawater from deep seas/lakes is feasible in some cases. If you can't do that - consider drilling two wells of water in your backyard separated by several meters and then draw water from one and return the heated water to the other. During the winter - run it backwards. (depends on how the water flow is underground if it works during the winter). Doing a lot of things on a large scale may prove more efficient, but then it will take politicians and well....
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Correction: there are many cabals, but no individual cabal has the kind of power that the conspiracy theorist's cabals have. The real cabals either compete with each other, or operate in different areas.
The myth of the single central super-cabal is a bit like the myth of God: people invent God to explain lots of little things and some big things, because it's easier to personify everything into a single "person" than to grapple with all of the myriad factors directly. The myth of the super-cabal is a way of grappling with the fact that many different groups of people exercise control over our lives in different ways, most of which are not at all transparent or under our control.
Maybe the NSA should be outsourced to Inida or something. I think there is something there with this idea.... Google really should do some sort of SETI@Home style code that people can pay to run on their network of 100K+ machines. The NSA could outsource their cracking of your BitTorret downloads and all the stuff they are getting from ATT&T to Google. It would be great for the stock market! Buy American damn it!
Did not Sun has some GRID type project the NSA could use?
www.beastproject.org (I will be checking the logs for the IP space from the NSA - as should you all!)
I've never found anyone with clearance to be shy about it. I know three people with an active clearance, one with secret, two with top secret. Those really are the only two levels of clearence. TS is divided in to some controlling keywords, but it's the same basic idea. In either case you are given access only to what you need to know. It's not like the guys with TS clearence know all the government secrets, they know only want relivant to their area.
None of them have ever been shy about the fact they are cleared. It's not like they shout it out as though it's a badge of pride, but if you ask they'll tell you. Generally, you can guess from their jobs they have clearance. They work on things that are, well, secret. They can tell you their general area of work, but not the specifics.
That some group would go around kidnapping all the people with clearance is rather unlikely. There are a whole lot of them and the government would take rather violent exception to that.
Imagine a world where you could surf the net from work, and see what your wife was doing at home and what your children were learning at school - knowing all that time that your children and your wife can see what you are doing at work.
This is certainly a fascinating thought-experiment: would this lead to a world much freer of corruption and cheating, or much more accepting of it?
(Or would there be a difference, if what we call "corruption" today is accepted in this world?)
That said, 1 way transparency IS spying. Your thought experiment couold be interesting if it were complete 2 way transparency. That would mean that all people know what all other people are doing. After all if the governement and people with power aren't doing anything wrong, why do they need to hide so much?
Klein bottle for rent - inquire within.
Sad. I wish I had mod points to help you out. I'm not as radical as you seem, but I do share you're general sentiment.
Klein bottle for rent - inquire within.
http://cgi.ebay.com/GENERATOR-5-9MW-EMERGENCY-BLAC K-START-GAS-TURBINES_W0QQitemZ140012900386QQihZ004 QQcategoryZ106437QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
Error 2101: all your sig are belong to us
Everything we eat contains food and nonfood elements. That's why we shit and piss.
You're right. That doesn't mean it's any good for you.
You might not be happy about it, but you could live on cottonseed oil and a Flintstone's multivitamin
You actually couldn't. Your body needs carbs to metabolize fat. Thus the atkins diet. I'm not sure what kind of sweetener is in Flintstone's multivitamins, but it probably wouldn't sustain the fat metabolic function. Also, the nutritional problem in the US is due to the fact that we have an unnatural view of nutrition, broken down into carbs, protein, and fats, only really dealing with major vitamins and minerals as a means to avoid deficiencies. There's not very much consciousness about trace elements that get lost during processing, and there's a slowly growing conciousness of the harm of chemical additives. Then still, there's no conciousness of the difference between assimilating calcium from green vegetables || dairy || supplements.
Speaking of breaking down the weakest argument in a fairly sound post, how'd I do?
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Whether I WANT it to be blamed on me or not is irrelevant. When I screw up, I pay the piper. I take the blame. Sometimes, a manager will say "I should have been paying more attention; you screwed up, but so did I." But either way, take credit where credit is due.. and take blame where blame is due.
That's called integrity.
We are the fire that lights our world.. and we are the fire that consumes it.
I believe I rather missread the last sentence I quoted:
Nevermind. I'll go sit in the corner now.
KFG
I thought the gubmint got all the power it needed from those alien black hole gravitational generators they have stashed under area 51? You know, the ones that power their secret time-space bending stealth saucers to the secret moonbase where not-dead JFK rules the earth.
there is No Such Amperage.
Trolls day out it seems...
Explained so many times...
Can't believe you are for real... please somebody shoot me in the face... (where is D. Cheney when you need him...)
Why hasn't anyone yet had a good conversation about the reason they need this electricity... Brute Force Cracking??? Brute force cracking requires full CPU power. Full CPU power requires lots of electricity.
Do all you Americans believe that the NSA is keeping you safe by pre-installed backdoors? Or do you believe they are keeping you safe using lots of electricity to power all those CPUs that are busy cracking encyrpted terrorist communications.
Does it go on forever?
And the reason they don't just build a small power plant is...?
Powerplants aren't cheap, and a well-designed UPS solution is a bit more complicated than just a spare power cord.
Using ballpark numbers, $21M/yr and $0.07/kWh gives about 40MW(e) load for our "UPS". Since you always buy one with room for growth, and since this is even more of a PITA to swap out than your average lead brick, call it 100MW(e) design. But how do we make it uninterruptable? Remember, all powerplants have maintenance downtime, even without accidents. You ideally want three plants, any one of which can handle the full design load; this allows for one to be down for routine maintenance, one down for unexpected accident (say, a safety fault emergency shutdown), and one to keep the load going. You also want this as a "ready-swap" load, and a power plant does require a few minutes warm-up time (exact amount varying by type); so, you'll want to run them all regularly, and transfer surplus power to the grid, to offset (say) the Pentagon electric bill.
So, what kind of plant? Since we're doing three, I'd suggest using different types, so as not to put all the eggs in one basket, and further reduce the chance of a single-point of failure. I'll presume the Bolognium reactor from Area 51 is unavailable for this purpose. Wind and solar are too unreliable for this. Hydroelectric doesn't have a convenient enough water source. Geothermal is laughable in this location... although it might be a factor to consider for the Fort Meade Mk II location. Fossil plants (oil, coal, NatGas) have some environmental considerations, but not unmanageable; if necessary, designing the plant to liquify the entire stack output shouldn't more than double the cost. Nukes are compact, but REALLY don't like fast startups; a nuke also will make for an even bigger target for terror attacks... but of course, adding any power plant is going to paint an even bigger target on Fort Meade than there already is. Since it's really only adding another ring or two to the existing target, and since I'm not even halfway familiar enough to address such security considerations, I'll just ignore them. Some other Slashdotter can comment on that design aspect.
So, I'd pick a small nuke plant for the primary Meade power plant, with a liquid natural gas or oil-fired for one backup plant. IIR, it's not hard to convert between those two fossil fuel sources, which might be advisable if there are supply issues. The third plant might be either one; I'm not sure whether the higher simultaneous event/design failure risk of the nuke plants would be better than the additional fuel transport and security headaches for steady fossil fuel supplies. For argument, call it one nuke, one oil, and one gas, with the latter two designed with convertability in mind. I think the coal transport/storage would be the worst of the fossil fuels, so we won't use that at all.
So, we need three plants, each around 100MWe. My Googling suggests a pricetag of 100-200 M$ apiece for those; if you can find better numbers, feel free to note them. We need to arrange for steady suppies of fuel. We need to arrange for additional physical security. We need to find plant operators for all of them... every one of whom will probably need at least a Secret level clearance, to be confident a background check turns up anything nasty. We need to do some environmental work-up, since it's an urban area; "National Security" gets you only so far in Baltimore — although it might be enough to put a gag on the inevitable NIMBY idiots who'll turn out against anything.
So, we're probably talking half a billion dollars for the building of it, plus additional annual expenses including higher than average salaries for plant workers due to the need for a clearance. This isn't peanuts, even with the NSA budget. It's not a bad idea... but it's not the no-brainer it looks at first pass.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
"Power corrupts, but we need the electricity."
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
It costs $8 billion dollars to get the NSA to budge? Give me half that and I'll poke them with a stick until they move.
The key with moving an elephant, or any large entity, is to know exactly where it feels pain... but be sure you want its full attention.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
funny how "anonymous coward" supports not hiding.
Yeah, but for $100 and a good bottle of scotch, you can probably get CowboyNeil to fish his IP address out of the Slashdot server logs.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Re-read the constitution, realize that Benjamin Franklin (the architect of that document) was a genius
Actually, as author of the Virginia Plan that was the de facto agenda for the Philadelphia convention, and one of the later authors of the Federalist Papers defending the final document, James Madison was the primary architect, and the one usually credited as "Father of the Constitution".
As for your modest proposal, I suggest you review your history of the French Revolution. Take them out and have them shot... but dot the legal i's and cross the t's first.
Oh, and "put down the crack pipe", troll.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
While I agree that one shouldn't do things that they wouldn't want others to know about, I still value privacy over transparancy. There are three main reasons I feel this way. First, information can be misunderstood or give someone false impressions. For example, someone used to be an alcoholic, overcame that years ago, yet doesn't get a job because some interviewer stops reading at the word "alcoholic". Second, information can be used maliciously. I'd prefer that stalking and identity theft be as hard as possible. Third, I may have nothing to hide, but why do you need to know everything about me? I'd rather not leave the possibility of something being misused rather than trust people that I don't know to not misuse it.
And then imagine a world in which the British crushed the American revolution, the FBI entrapped Dr. Martin Luther King, and strike organizers who brought us the 40 hour work week were jailed forever. For that's what would have happened had your world been true in the past. In short imagine a stagnant world where no social change is possible because the forces of control are invincible. Sometimes secrecy is needed to hide and gain strength before overthrowing the forces of evil.
We MUST preserve freedom because the outlines of the evil we may need to crush in the future may not be clear to us now, but I'd hazard a guess they are spelled G O V E R N M E N T. Thomas Jefferson said the tree of liberty must occasionally be watered with the blood of patriots. In a world where no one can secretly write manifestos to organize people, store arms in secret, etc, the organization necessary to overthrow tyranny could NEVER arise. It would be like the end of 1984 "imagine a boot heel stomping on a human face forever.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
The NSA is the agency charged with turning electricity into civil rights violations...naturally they'd need more electricity nowadays!
yeah, LOL
Sorry my hippie friend, but it's not going to happen. The transformation would need to be almost instantaneous, and it would need to be completely fool-proof and abuse-proof the FIRST time. If the first incarnation of such a system was in any way flawed (and inevitably, it would be), those who had the ability to abuse it would do so and become nearly-invulnerable 1984-style despots.
But there is an even bigger problem. In a nutshell, in order for your plan to work we would first need a unified system of morality. All of us would have to absolutely agree what is right and wrong (or desireable, undesireable, and tolerable), period. Do you think we're ready to do that just yet? Even when it comes to drugs and sex and other arguably-victimless crimes? Without privacy, there would be no room for debate or change. Homosexuality would still be illegal because homosexuals would be identified and imprisoned (or "corrected", likely via chemical castration) immediately. And, of course, everyone knows that homosexuality is inherently wrong, ya know?
Yeah, I have something to hide. I have a metric assload of secrets. Most are firmly in my past, yet some of them are still very... important, in the I-could-be-killed-or-arrested sense of the term. I'd wager that most interesting, creative non-dronelike individuals have made similar forays outside the laws of the land or at the very least, outside the unwritten laws of society. We CANNOT agree on what "the good life" is so we compromise like crazy and (hopefully) try not to pry into the lives of others so long as they're not affecting anyone but themselves. I have at least a dozen gay friends and for about half of them, they live happy lives with their families because they choose to keep their orientation a secret. In the case of 3 of them (including my own Uncle), the family even for all intents and purposes "knows" about it, but they're allowed to invent whatever flimsy excuse or justification why Mike and Larry live together.
Yes, they're in deep denial, and maybe that isn't very healthy, but it's sure a hell of a lot more healthy than the alternative. My grandmother has for all intents and purposes accepted that my uncle is gay, treats his partner is a member of the family, etc.--but she still vigorously denies that they're gay if one of her friends mentions it. And what if one of her conservative friends could just flick a switch and show her my uncle getting it in the ass... my grandmother would have to make a choice on the spot--conservative Christian morality (and social acceptance that comes with it) or the love of her own son (and the social rejection that would come with it.) Privacy spares her from making that decision.
Yes, there's a chance you could accelerate society's moral growth by removing privacy, but the risk that you'd accelerate it in the wrong direction is far too great.
"Governments are run by people"
Well, I guess that sums up everything. But why must Government be run by People? Why? Why not mice, like the way it should?
Don't believe in miracles -- rely on them.
Absolute proof of questionable act X would either result in society declaring act X legal (thus making it not corruption at all) or society would stamp it out entirely. Privacy allows for shades of gray--with absolute 2-way transparency, every single issue must become black or white--detection and enforcement become so trivial, there's no way the cops could look the other way--the media would give conclusive videotaped proof that they're not enforcing law X and that would force the police to make the decision--enforce it and eradicate it entirely, or don't enforce it and thus effectively legalize it? Of course, we're assuming that public outcry makes selective enforcement impossible--if this is untrue, then the system is flawed and a despotic totalitarianism has been created.
But even if the police could be kept fair and impartial, I don't think this system a desirable thing. Why do I have to stand proudly by everything I've done? Why can't I fuck up once in a while? Why can't I break a few of the more pathetic rules once in a while without having an everpresent iron boot of Orwellian justice slammed in my face? When rules are absolutely enforced they become absolutely unchangable--and I think our society's moral evolution has a long, long way to go, especially in regards to:
1. Active morality--i.e. what is wrong to do? vs. passive morality--what is wrong NOT to do? We place extreme emphasis on action and almost no emphasis on inaction. This is the origin of all undesirable groupthink, "risky shift", and passing the buck. Great evils are perpretrated not by a single person, but by many people spread out over hundreds/thousands/even millions insulated and protected by apathetic people who simply pass the buck instead of standing up loudly and condemning the injustice. This is because the inaction of not saying anything and quietly doing your job/not rocking the boat is only very weakly condemned in comparison to the evil act itself.
2. Victimless crimes--there should be no such thing. There should be a mechanism to protect people from themselves in extreme cases, but it absolutely should not ever result in criminal charges, and it should allow people to do whatever they want as long as they can demonstrate mental and emotional control (which includes rationally explaining their actions and stating that they do not regret them) and as long as they aren't hurting others.
3. Sense of proportion. One need only look at the figures of lives (or dollars, if you want to be exceedingly pragmatic) lost because of traffic accidents or heart disease vs. terrorist attacks to understand this one. We like fighting evil infinitely more than we like doing good--this can tie into #1, but not every example does. For instance, we're extremely obsessed with plane crashes when we're (usually) far more likely to die in a car accident on the way to the airport. If we required anywhere near the same level of safety on our roads (better streets, stricter car safety standards, stricter traffic enforcement on serious/repeat offenders), we'd likely save tens of thousands of lives. But plane crashes are more dramatic, so they get all the attention.
So really this is two points--an obsession with fighting evil that trumps our sense of efficiency and our will to do good, and an obession with the dramatic at the expense of the mundane yet vastly more devastating and tragic. When these two things appear together very strongly (9/11) the result is a catastrophic waste, both financial and intangible (our freedoms.)
4. Capitalistic law--intellectual property, monopolies and trusts, workers' rights (and employers' rights not to be *completely* castrated by unions), taxes, welfare (corporate and individual), political contributions, etc. are all very sticky issues that need to be resolved before we commit to any singular, unchangable set of rules regarding right and wrong.
So yeah, I think it's a very bleak scenario (complete moral stagnation) even if the system was im
Google just setup a datacenter at Baltimore using grid power. A Google spokesperson said "This is perfectly in keeping with our motto of "Do no evil" and our plans to index all the world's information".
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
"If the only thing men wanted was to live their short lives peacefully and raise a family, then nobody would care if he was being watched."
...and looking nervously over your shoulder ALL the time. But you have nothing to hide... do you?
Oh, yeah?
Scenario:
You are having a meal in a restaurant. You aren't doing anything wrong, you have no secrets to hide.
I am standing next to you - not doing anything except watching you. I don't move. I don't speak. I just watch... intently... quietly.
Guaranteed result after 5 mins:
You shout something like, "WTF IS YOUR PROBLEM??!"
But I don't reply. I just stand there. I don't move. I don't speak. I just watch... intently... quietly.
And you think this would be OK?
"Of course the only reason this world would appear unattractive to someone is if he had something to hide. Imagine no lying and no cheating. You do something and you stand by it. Proudly."
That's called integrity.
It is, when everyone plays by the same rules. When they don't, integrity doesn't put food on the table. When making a decision I know could cause trouble in the future if it backfires, my manager gets to make the final call. That's why he makes the big bucks.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Help the NSA conserve power! Spying on you and analyzing your digital communications has become a major expense. Please send in all of your personal conversations and thoughts in a clearly printed and dated paper form to:
The National Security Administration
c/o: The Guys With the Funny Badges We Only See In The Cafeteria
The Windowless Building
Ft Meade, MD
Note, please put a red sticky tab on all unpatriotic items. Thank you.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
The answer depends on how much electricity the electric chair uses.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Does the super computer center need to be at Fort Mead?
Why not Tennessee or Oregon?
They could get their power from the TVA and use one of the many rivers for cooling.
Hack put it at Oak Ridge.
The facility at Oak Ridge was located where it is at because of cheap power and cooling.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Yes, it is true that it's pretty commonplace to have a high-level security clearance (especially for those who work in IT/acadamia), which is a large cross-section of slashdot.
Additionally, there are a large enough portion of such individuals that invariably some will brag about it, and they're right. They're aren't lying about having the clearance.
But that's not the same thing as having access/need-to-know.
Need-to-know is everything. The clearance just is the insurance that they don't have to investigate you at the time when they need to pull you into a project. But who an agency might put on a project is a highly selective thing.
These braggarts probably have little need-to-know; if they did they wouldn't be bragging because they'd not want people to target them for know what they know.
You've got to give some of us more credit...
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Seriously.
I don't know where you get those ideas. Those designations went away along with WWII and the cold war. DoD has a couple special classes of TS, and that's it.
But that means jack shit. Need to know is everything. Compartmentalization. If part of the DOD wants to keep something secret from the rest of the DoD, or another agency, or whatever, the persons in charge can just tell everyone to go stuff it. No Cosmic TS is going to let you go over your superior's head or give you LEVEL 5 ACCESS or some bullshit like that.
It'd take a superior officer or the White House or a congressional subcommittee TELLING YOU to give access to someone, you know? Real world stuff.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Try actually working for the agencies in question before commenting on which you know nothing about. I mean, Cosmic TS? Read Neal Stephenson much? hahaha...
Wikipedia is not the most reliable source of information. Nor is FAS.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
They have _titles_. They may be cleared as a requirement for being elected into an office, but then again, they may not be. Usually there are specific background investigations done on individuals as part of the due diligence done by the office they represent which have no real parity with a standard DoD clearance.
Your title (like being VP, a Joint Chiefs member, or being on the Congressional Security Subcommmittee) gives you a wide need-to-know that essentially trumps any kind of clearance.
OTH a person in such a position, as a requirement for taking office, has a sworn duty to protect classified information from disclosure or he/she risks losing office, facing jailtime, etc. just like any other person with privledged access.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
These guys are the ones who are the sources of designation of classification. It's not like classification designation is some sort of innate attribute of some information, you know? Which is why classification levels are kind of irrelevant once you start talking about elected offices and the upper portions of the DoD. Classification is something that originates in the chain of command and has legal weight, but it can be overridden by a person with a higher authority. Its real applicability is for when they bring in contractors (like us Joe Schmoes) so that we don't go spreading around what they don't want us to.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
affirmative action programs to ensure hiring of minorities and women (thus possibly causing more competent workers to get passed up in the name of equality).
Usually I find it's the middle-aged white protestant males who don't know what the fuck is going on half the time. Why can't we just hire a bunch of Indians, Eastern European Jews and Asian women? Then the NSA'd be running in tip top shape (just an example).
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
There isn't any level "above" TS.
The NSA tends to blanket-cover all their data with a TS-SIGINT or TS-COMSEC designation, and then compartmentalizes that with NTK (need to know).
JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER AGENCY. Whoop de friggin do.
God go put on your tin foil hat, slashdot.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I mean, the CIA is distributed -- they're not just all at Langley.
I bet the NSA has satellite offices too.
But Cheyenne mountain might get passed over though because NSA employs white-collar individuals who need good schools for their kids and Starbucks and AMC movie theatres. They aren't a military officer shop. So it's unlikely they'd try to relocate anyone into buttfuck Mountain Time.
It's easier to just lease a non-descript office building in Suburbia and replace some of the cooling towers with satellite dishes. Add a few US police out front in white sedans and you've got your Site B.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The facility at Oak Ridge was located where it is at because of cheap power and cooling.
That's one reason, yes. I was also told when I was studying nuclear engineering was that it was put there because one of the congresscritters in charge of the finance committee asked one of the Manhattan project people discussing the proposed labs, "So, where in Tennessee do you propose putting this project?" And that effectively settled that matter.
Anecdotal only... but I would suspect any new facility would probably need to be in Michigan or Iowa... pending the next election, of course.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Imagine the recruitment pitch and the Government Faire:
-- Hey smart CS guy! Wanna work for a 3 letter agency?
- Yeah, sure. Sounds exciting. Which agency?
-- NSA!
- Sweet now I can really use my minor in Pig Waxing!
-- You're probably going to have to move though. We'll pay to relocate you!
- Really, where to? Albequerque?
-- Alaska!
- Bye guys! I'm off to Google.
-- But but, we've got Sno Cones!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
At least it's not Norfolk. :|
And unless the installation had a whole criss-crossing of fiber from different internet backbones it'd kinda be at a disadvantage to the WDC area no matter how little or much renovation would be needed.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
I just got done reading Hominids, by Robert J. Sawyer, a rather interesting read that basically says, what if there were a parallel universe where Neanderthals won out over Homo Sapiens and ran the world? What kind of world would they have? Besides not going to the moon, they hadn't killed off all the Mamoths and respected nature a lot more. They had computer units in their wrists that followed them wherever they went, and recorded what they did in the event that one commited a crime (very rare). The comparison between our world was interestig. Anyway, it was an interesting read.
You've got a friend in Japan: http://www.jlist.com
I'd enjoy living in Brin's transparent society.
The answer to "Why can't I fuck up once in a while?" would probably be answered by a points system. Instead of getting 2 points off your license and a $100 fine for the crime of getting caught speeding (and when you go over 10 points, you lose your license), you'd get 2 points off your license for speeding, and when you go over 100 points a year, you start owing fines, and when you go over 1000 points a year, your car isn't worth driving (read: you accumulate $100 in fines just for backing out of your driveway) for a few months.
So what moral code do we decide on? What is or is not illegal to do with your own body?
One of my somewhat bigger secrets is I've had "sexual relations" with my (conservative) friend's 16 year old daughter. Actually, it was a couple weeks before her 16th birthday, so I'm pretty sure that counts as a felony in my state... let me stress, I didn't get her drunk; I didn't seduce her; I didn't even remove any of *my* clothing at all--I just made her very happy for one glorious night. She was (and still is) a very mature and intelligent person for her age--much moreso than at least half the adults my age I know. I asked her repeatedly if she wanted me to stop, and she said no over and over. We had an awesome night and four years later we're still close friends--I'm IMing her at this very moment, in fact. I don't regret that night, and neither does she.
But her father, if he found out, would've at the very least turned me in to the police and might've even killed me or at least given me a few bruises. The legal system would've likely been similarly unsympathetic. Frankly, her father and the lawmakers and all the rest of the uptight love-hating Christian world can suck my dick. I don't care what anyone fucking says, non-exploitive love and pleasure between two consenting souls is never an inherently bad thing.
So... that's my reason for wanting to keep my privacy, and I happen to think it's a damn good one. I don't think your "points" system works for larger violations of the law, and yes even the large violations can be morally debatable. If you DO think I deserve to be rotting in prison right now, then consider the civil right's movement--MLK Jr. and co. broke plenty of laws. If the police were instantly informed the moment they started planning an illegal demonstration, the civil rights movement would have been crushed before it ever got off the ground. If this technology had been around in the colonial days, the same would have happened to Ghandi in India...
When is being released for the XBox 360?
Orders of magnitude improvement in performance, performance per watt, etc etc etc. Would probably end up a lot cheaper as well.
How very Trevor Goodchild!