Slashdot Mirror
Critics Say US Antimissile Defense Flawed, Dangerous
Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times reports that President Obama's plans for reducing America's nuclear arsenal and defeating Iran's missiles rely heavily on a new generation of antimissile defenses which last year he called 'proven and effective.' Now a new analysis being published by two antimissile critics at MIT and Cornell casts doubt on the reliability of the SM-3 rocket-powered interceptor. The Pentagon asserts that the SM-3, or Standard Missile 3, had intercepted 84 percent of incoming targets in tests. But a re-examination of results from 10 of those apparently successful tests by Theodore A. Postol and George N. Lewis finds only one or two successful intercepts, for a success rate of 10 to 20 percent. Most of the approaching warheads, they say, would have been knocked off course but not destroyed, and while that might work against a conventionally armed missile, it suggests that a nuclear warhead might still detonate. 'The system is highly fragile and brittle and will intercept warheads only by accident, if ever,' says Dr. Postol, a former Pentagon science adviser who forcefully criticized the performance of the Patriot antimissile system in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. Dr. Postol says the SM-3 interceptor must shatter the warhead directly, and public statements of the Pentagon agency seem to suggest that it agrees. In combat, the scientists added, 'the warhead would have not been destroyed, but would have continued toward the target.'"
FP FP FP!
When it comes to aggregating important news and information, Google sucks. Unfortunately, Google News is dominating the scene. It's one of the worst news sites you'll ever see. First of all, it tends to group stories by some sort of ranking algorithm that appears to highlight a combination of popularity and growing popularity. Thus any story that involves a celebrity usually hits the front page.
Google robots can indeed organize content into a Webpage that looks credible and interesting, but the site is usually littered with tired stories that have been running for at least a week. That old news is combined with weird stories and celebrity junk news. Google News recently had this story: "Ronnie James Dio Remembered by Metallica's Lars Ulrich." Over 1,000 articles lamented the death of the 67-year-old former Black Sabbath singer. Seems like an excessive amount of redundant coverage, if you ask me. A simple obit would have done the trick. After all, the devil has Dio now.
And it gets worse. There's also the idiotic deluge of stories about Tiger Woods's 'hos. Poor things. Google News couldn't kill the story if it wanted to. Robots have no brains. Then comes this beauty listed as a "spotlight" news item: "She Won't give the $17,500 ring back, and the 'ho tells why." It's an item from an AOL blog. The post admits that the "news" is a week old, and to wit, "last week we told you about the 28-year-old woman who called off her wedding but refused to give back her ring. Soon after your comments were pouring in from all over about whether or not she should give back the bling..." Who the fuck cares?
Google News, that's who.
The best way to compare Google's robot news with human-edited news is to compare the tech news section on Google with the front page of any random human-edited news magazine. So this article doesn't looked rigged for Slashdot, which features reviews and opinions, easily out performing Google, let's take the news-oriented EETimes.
Top Headlines from Google Tech News:
"Today Anchors Share Their Favorite YouTube Clips"
"Facebook Fight Calls for Flight"
"Nintendo Partnering with American Heart Association"
"Palm App Store Suffers Weekend Outage"
"Infineon Isn't in Talks with Intel"
EETimes Headlines:
"Sidense Denies Kilopass Patent Infringement Allegations"
"NOR to Remain Undersupplied Until Q4, says Gartner"
"Europe Set to Fine Memory Chip Makers"
"Taiwan to Install LED Street Lighting, Says Report"
"Chaos Hits NOR Flash Supply Chain"
EETimes offers genuine tech news. With Google, on the other hand, we have the following: A banal who-gives-a-crap story plugging the Today Show, another carping Facebook story, a Nintendo story obviously seeded by a sharp PR agency, a Palm story that affects nobody, and a non-story. This stinks.
Yes, there is nothing immediately compelling about the EETimes stories, but at least they're actual news stories. Many are indeed important. But how does that compare with YouTube clips of a cat playing a piano?
What fascinates me about this exercise is the fact that Google bots reflect the mediocrity of the overall news offering on the Web. Since when did a Today Show anchor have the cred to recommend YouTube clips? This item was at the very top of Google's tech news when I did my last search.
That said, there are editors behind all of these stories. Someone chooses to publish them somewhere. So, does that make the robot the bad guy? The robot is a collective reflection of the crap we are fed from "news" sources everywhere. Live editors are the root of this mess. A robot didn't choose to publish the original story about the girl and the ring.
Okay, I'm wrong. Forget I even wrote this. Leave the robot alone. It's the best we'll ever do anyway. Sigh.
Whateve? Wats ya prob?
FAP FAP FAP!