If he's putting corporate email on an iPad, then he shouldn't be using the four digit password mechanism - it's a bad feature and should be removed in my view. If he used a real password, this exploit doesn't work. Furthermore, this only worked because he left his email open. Close the email before locking the device, no access.
Notice how the apple haters are often ACs - and often feel the need to swear at people using Apple products. It's just a company. if you don't like their products just don't buy them. No need to swear at the people who aren't haters - it doesn't make anyone more likely to agree with you.
This has nothing to do with the USA (assuming that's what you meant by "we"). The threat is that they will publish a list of police officers, politicians journalists, etc. aligned with the Zetas. The competing cartels then kill them in the hope of weakening the Zetas - I don't think they are strong on needing proof.
Anonymous is threatening the Zetas with exposure to get their member released, they aren't threatening all the cartels.
Except the iPad bypass bug is a minor issue. I tried it on my iPad 2. Yes, the bug does allow someone to bypass the login screen without the password, but the interloper can't run any applications. All he can do is browse to see which apps are installed on the device and change the volume - touching an icon to run an application has no effect.
Furthermore, if you password protect your iPad with a normal password, rather than use the short four digit password mechanism, this exploit doesn't appear to work at all. It's not an issue that's going to keep me awake at nights.
Hey, I have an iPhone 3G and it's just fine on iOS 4.2.1. I use it every day, run apps as needed including games, and I haven't noticed anything being particularly slow or unuseable.
Except that it appears they don't have the BoA data anymore. Remember when when Daniel Domscheit-Berg and others left Wikileaks to form Openleaks? According to several news services and some tweets from DDB, he claimed that he took the BoA data and some 3,000 other submissions and he later destroyed them.
It seems Domscheit-Berg was so pissed with Wikileaks that he was happy to steal the data and destroy it, thus forsaking all the whistleblowers who had risked a great deal to send the data to Wikileaks in the first place. Doesn't look like Openleaks is going anywhere anyway - not surprising really - who would trust a guy who would do that.
It was an open secret that Wikileaks had a large amount of data on Bank of America and were close to publishing it. However, Daniel Domscheit-Berg and others left Wikileaks last year and took the Bank of America data with them. According to Reuters News Service, DDB later admitted this and claimed to have destroyed the BoA data and 3,000 other submissions to Wikileaks.
There's a great deal more about this subject in various places, and there's a tremendously useful service that can help you find it - it's called Google. I daresay Bing and Yahoo would do nicely also. In the time you took to write your comment you could have easily found the extensive basis for the remarks that you claim are totally false and a silly conspiracy.
I assume you are referring to the App Store and the walled garden approach? Non-computer people place very little value on having an open ecosystem. If you are not a programmer you won't be writing your own apps so having an open system is worth very little.
Given some of the drawbacks of the Android Market, it not clear see why "the general population" would consider that the walled garden approach is "against their better interests" or that an open system would offer any significant benefits.
All four of the people I know to have Android phones have installed malware at some point. I have to wonder if any of them have spyware sitting their phones right now. I'm not saying that nobody can sneak malware into the Apple store but AFAIK it hasn't happened yet. The general population probably cares much more about that than the restrictions of a walled garden.
What percentage of HTC phone owners actually know how to root their phones and consider it worth the time and effort? I'd take a bet it's way less than 5%, not "most people" as you suggest.
Didn't you get the memo? It's very cool to dislike Apple, but it's totally not cool to beat up on Android (and by extension, Android vendors). In fact it's so very un-cool that we need to ignore Android related problems - not that there are (or ever will be) any.
You're chance of being killed by a terrorist is low, but the chance of a US citizen being killed is over 300 million times higher. Or are you saying that elected officials should only be concerned about you and not all citizens?
I'm strongly against the death penalty. I think it's barbaric and has at least one overwhelming reason not to do it - you can't reverse mistakes. However, in the case of people who are spending their entire lives working out ways to kill their fellow citizens in wholesale quantities using military grade weapons if available or airplanes if not, I'm willing to make an exception.
I would argue that this cleric would have been more than happy to renounce his citizenship, except he knew full well that visiting an embassy to sign the required paperwork would not end well for him.
That article is over 10 years old. It says that the CIA are thinking of using anonymity software "to protect the anonymity of its employees as they go about their jobs." The article doesn't even specifically mention Anonymizer.
You wouldn't happen to work for a competitor, would you?
It only matters whether they had a search warrant. If so, it was legal. Search warrants do not have to be served by the police force having jurisdiction over the property being searched. For search warrants, it's the jurisdiction of the judge signing it that matters, so a California state judge can't issue a warrant for a property in New Jersey, for example. And if the guy didn't ask to see the search warrant, he made a big mistake.
It doesn't matter whether they were SFPD. They could have been a nearby police force such as South San Francisco (a separate city), or any number of other nearby city police forces, or county sheriff's deputies, or they could have been one of the task forces set up to combat computer crime in the Bay Area, or they could have been a federal agency.
My best guess (and only a guess) was that it was the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team that operates out of offices in Campbell, CA. They have state-wide jurisdiction.
Clueless article, repeated by clueless Slashdot editor.
Trust you? Why? Do you have special knowledge of this case? I didn't notice anyone say it was a "next to new $800 laptop" in TFA.
I've got a couple of systems in the backroom that I'd happily sell you for $60 as I'm about to give them away because we need the space. They aren't new but they do work, if rather slowly and with somewhat small hard drives.
Why exactly do you think think that buying a non-functional laptop for $60 suggests it was stolen? And then she paid more money to have it repaired. I would have thought that a person knowingly buying a stolen computer would not expect to have to pay more money for repairs.
Did you read TFA? I know it's against all the principles of Slashdot, but that will sometimes give insights that will stop you looking entirely foolish when posting.
I'm an engineer. I don't care about science, per se. I don't care about scientist's reputations. Scientists can argue all they want about provable and unprovable theories. I only care about how to use science to produce stuff. Theories doesn't have to be perfect, I just need solid empirical evidence that I can use theories with reasonable certitude that I will get the results that I expect. Bottom line, science without some form of engineering (chemical, mechanical, electrical, whatever) rarely helps people.
Your comments about "Science is always one result away from a revolution." has little relevance in the context of whether there is global warming or not. There's more than enough evidence around to show that the earth is warming significantly enough to effect mankind - it doesn't need a scientist to see that, people who can measure temperatures worldwide are sufficient.
The issue is how to deal with global warming - just ask the people in Texas experiencing extreme drought with a record number of days with temperatures over 100 degrees if they care about scientific theories on why it's happening. Just ask the polar bears who are losing their habitats. Just ask the people of Africa who are seeing their lakes dry up. Just ask the people of Pakistan experiencing record floods. Just ask the people of the southern USA who have seen record numbers and severity of tornadoes and storms in the last few years. There are many more examples from all over the world. Contrary to your apparent belief, politicians didn't cause any of these disasters.
You seem to be suggesting that until we until we have a consensus about the cause we can't address the issue at all. Or maybe you're saying that it's all trumped up by politicians. Frankly, both suggestions are plain stupid. We need to get a handle on this issue and find ways to combat the problem. We need results that we can use to develop solutions, and we aren't getting them. I don't care how many scientists go round in tighter and tighter circles until they finally disappear up they own arses. I do care that scientists are bickering while the world burns, or at least gets closer to burning.
Let's do something that might help. There are credible, well developed theories about greenhouse gases. Let's go with that and see if there are positive results. If you have a better idea, tell us. The longer we wait, the worse the problem becomes and the harder it is to solve.
So, how the hell can you talk about European History without talking about religion? Almost everything before the 19th. century had religion at the base. Churches were by far the most powerful entities in Europe for many centuries. Popes, archbishops, bishops and priests dictated to princes, kings, despots and common folk what they could and could not do. Almost everything the clergy did was to increase the power of their church.
If you don't know this after taking a European History class it seems you were a poor student or had a teacher who ignored the facts. And I don't think he was the sort of teacher who ignored facts from TFA and your description.
The Catholic church in particular has a long history of nasty behavior. Talking about that behavior and pointing out just how vicious the church was might be taken as bashing the church. It isn't.
Porn movies tend to be highly biased towards the visual sense, notwithstanding your two counter examples. Are you seriously suggesting that a blind person would (illegally) download a porn movie in the expectation that the sound track would be that exciting?
If all he wants to hear is moaning there are many legal ways to do that, and I doubt that moaning differs in any significant aspect between the vast majority of porn movies. Or maybe he was downloading it for the plot?
Rating agencies, eh? I'm sure the drug companies won't try to bribe them, or get their employees into those agencies, or just plain buy the agencies (as they will be commercial entities). You really think this is better than the FDA?
How do I prove a doctor isn't a quack? Give him a medical test? Rely on the reports of others? That won't work - nobody starting out would have any reports so nobody would go to them so they won't get any reports.
And you expect me to know what treatment I'm taking. How? You have no idea at all of the complexity of treating a serious cancer. The decisions that have to be made, the drugs available, the combinations of surgery, radiation, medications and chemotherapy that might work and the complexities of dealing with the side-effects. Your solution? Understand them all, and only then start a course of treatment. The penalty for failure or for taking too long? Death.
I was tempted to start an ad hominem attack on you, but that would be pointless. And it certainly wouldn't change your naivety:)
You want your drugs and doctors to be low cost. How about your treatment quality? Want that to be low also?
Want to go back to the 19th century where only the rich could afford good treatment? Doctors figured out a long time ago that people will pay lots of money for good medical treatment. So most good doctors treated the rich and became rich themselves.
That's what happens without government involvement. If you doubt my words, go to a country where the government isn't involved in health-care, and see what kind of treatment you get for your minimal cost.
First of all, without the FDA, he doesn't have to say it's his urine. He'll claim it's "insert some scientific description", Without the FDA he might be charging $16,000 per treatment - which is what just one of my cancer drugs cost. When MY life is on the line, and I'm not in a position to tell what's going to help and what's snake-oil, I WANT THE FDA TO OVERLOOK HIS RESEARCH. I'm a software guy, I can't be an expert on drugs, especially cancer drugs.
That doesn't guarantee that my cancer won't kill me, it doesn't even mean his product won't kill me. But it does mean that people have been able to check his research and I'll have good idea of the risks involved in taking it and potential benefits.
You call me stupid to rely on a doctor. All medicine is empirical. We are a long way from understanding the physiology of the human body. Deal with it. Doctors make mistakes, so get yourself a doctor you trust, one who oozes competence, who enjoys his job, who is willing to give you the time to discuss all the issues involved. But be aware he is relying on medical research also, and without the FDA he wouldn't have any real data about the drugs he's about to pump into you.
When YOU have a life threatening disease, then you can decide whether you want factual data behind the drugs you are taking, or whether you want to go with whatever the drug maker claims. As for me, I'm damn glad there is an FDA.
I suppose the summary quotes 18 levels because that's approximately the number of ranks in each branch of the military. But it's not really 18 levels of management. Remember the old saying "Privates are for doing things, sergeants are for making certain things get done, officers are for thinking." And even junior officers don't get involved in purchasing decisions. The actual level of management when it comes to purchasing is more like 5 or 6, but even that is a big number.
What really screws things up is that the military purchasing machine is designed for 100k+ of each item with fairly exacting requirements about being easy to operate, able to work in severely adverse conditions, and to be "fair" to everyone wanting to sell to the military. Which means a very complete description (sometimes thousands of pages), open bids, preference to certain categories of bidders, and much else. Oh, and they need to appear accountable for spending all the money that an army sized purchase entails.
So the guys who actually need relatively small amounts of highly specialized equipment are fighting an entrenched bureaucracy who wants to preserve the status quo. Think $500 hammers. I believe it's getting better though, at least in some areas, and the process is getting reduced from decades to months. Even so, they are rarely have the ability to on-line order stuff from commercial vendors and pay with a credit card, although that does happen sometimes.
The guy speaking at the lecture is right - large militaries can't move as fast as small fast moving enemy groups. But when they do move they can usually outspend him by at least 100,000:1. Which probably doesn't help.
The key is to organize like the bad guys - small groups each with their own budget and freedom to use it without having to go up the chain of command.
Well, not quite. Apple hired Larry Tesler from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and he hired some of of his buddies from there. They were all unhappy because PARC had invented all this great stuff and Xerox wasn't doing anything meaningful with it.
So, it was no surprise when Larry and company produced many of the things they had pioneered at PARC, except better because they now had some experience of what worked and what didn't.
If you want to assign blame, then most of it should fall on Xerox for not using the stuff they had, and allowing their engineers to get unhappy enough that they left for a company that paid less but would use their talents.
It's disheartening to see the way that we (the USA) have withdrawn from science over the last 40 years.
We have allowed the shuttle to reach End Of Life without any suitable replacement. We have discontinued manned (and unmanned) flights to the moon. We have withdrawn funding from stem cell research over religious issues. We have reduced Darwin to a theory on par with creationism in some textbooks and in schools in some states. We have a large body of people believing that global warming doesn't exist because Al Gore produced books and movies about it, so it's a liberal conspiracy. We have made science a dirty word because it conflicts with some people's beliefs. and on, and on.
In China, 8 of the 9 members of the top politburo are engineers. In the USA, lawyers are the most represented profession in Congress. Which country is more likely to consider science and technology important?
Right now, it's hard to see how the USA can stop the slow downward shuffle.
Slashdot Mirror
If he's putting corporate email on an iPad, then he shouldn't be using the four digit password mechanism - it's a bad feature and should be removed in my view. If he used a real password, this exploit doesn't work. Furthermore, this only worked because he left his email open. Close the email before locking the device, no access.
Notice how the apple haters are often ACs - and often feel the need to swear at people using Apple products. It's just a company. if you don't like their products just don't buy them. No need to swear at the people who aren't haters - it doesn't make anyone more likely to agree with you.
This has nothing to do with the USA (assuming that's what you meant by "we"). The threat is that they will publish a list of police officers, politicians journalists, etc. aligned with the Zetas. The competing cartels then kill them in the hope of weakening the Zetas - I don't think they are strong on needing proof.
Anonymous is threatening the Zetas with exposure to get their member released, they aren't threatening all the cartels.
Why do you want to set morality and ethics aside? Are they outdated concepts? I must have missed the memo.
Citation? Or is this FUD?
The Apple store didn't approve the Android version of Dolphin. And only the latest Android version has this problem.
I'm sorry... I know it must hurt when your FUD is exposed as such,
Except the iPad bypass bug is a minor issue. I tried it on my iPad 2. Yes, the bug does allow someone to bypass the login screen without the password, but the interloper can't run any applications. All he can do is browse to see which apps are installed on the device and change the volume - touching an icon to run an application has no effect.
Furthermore, if you password protect your iPad with a normal password, rather than use the short four digit password mechanism, this exploit doesn't appear to work at all. It's not an issue that's going to keep me awake at nights.
Hey, I have an iPhone 3G and it's just fine on iOS 4.2.1. I use it every day, run apps as needed including games, and I haven't noticed anything being particularly slow or unuseable.
Examples please?
Except that it appears they don't have the BoA data anymore. Remember when when Daniel Domscheit-Berg and others left Wikileaks to form Openleaks? According to several news services and some tweets from DDB, he claimed that he took the BoA data and some 3,000 other submissions and he later destroyed them.
It seems Domscheit-Berg was so pissed with Wikileaks that he was happy to steal the data and destroy it, thus forsaking all the whistleblowers who had risked a great deal to send the data to Wikileaks in the first place. Doesn't look like Openleaks is going anywhere anyway - not surprising really - who would trust a guy who would do that.
It was an open secret that Wikileaks had a large amount of data on Bank of America and were close to publishing it. However, Daniel Domscheit-Berg and others left Wikileaks last year and took the Bank of America data with them. According to Reuters News Service, DDB later admitted this and claimed to have destroyed the BoA data and 3,000 other submissions to Wikileaks.
There's a great deal more about this subject in various places, and there's a tremendously useful service that can help you find it - it's called Google. I daresay Bing and Yahoo would do nicely also. In the time you took to write your comment you could have easily found the extensive basis for the remarks that you claim are totally false and a silly conspiracy.
I assume you are referring to the App Store and the walled garden approach? Non-computer people place very little value on having an open ecosystem. If you are not a programmer you won't be writing your own apps so having an open system is worth very little.
Given some of the drawbacks of the Android Market, it not clear see why "the general population" would consider that the walled garden approach is "against their better interests" or that an open system would offer any significant benefits.
All four of the people I know to have Android phones have installed malware at some point. I have to wonder if any of them have spyware sitting their phones right now. I'm not saying that nobody can sneak malware into the Apple store but AFAIK it hasn't happened yet. The general population probably cares much more about that than the restrictions of a walled garden.
What percentage of HTC phone owners actually know how to root their phones and consider it worth the time and effort? I'd take a bet it's way less than 5%, not "most people" as you suggest.
Didn't you get the memo? It's very cool to dislike Apple, but it's totally not cool to beat up on Android (and by extension, Android vendors). In fact it's so very un-cool that we need to ignore Android related problems - not that there are (or ever will be) any.
You're chance of being killed by a terrorist is low, but the chance of a US citizen being killed is over 300 million times higher. Or are you saying that elected officials should only be concerned about you and not all citizens?
I'm strongly against the death penalty. I think it's barbaric and has at least one overwhelming reason not to do it - you can't reverse mistakes. However, in the case of people who are spending their entire lives working out ways to kill their fellow citizens in wholesale quantities using military grade weapons if available or airplanes if not, I'm willing to make an exception.
I would argue that this cleric would have been more than happy to renounce his citizenship, except he knew full well that visiting an embassy to sign the required paperwork would not end well for him.
That article is over 10 years old. It says that the CIA are thinking of using anonymity software "to protect the anonymity of its employees as they go about their jobs." The article doesn't even specifically mention Anonymizer.
You wouldn't happen to work for a competitor, would you?
It only matters whether they had a search warrant. If so, it was legal. Search warrants do not have to be served by the police force having jurisdiction over the property being searched. For search warrants, it's the jurisdiction of the judge signing it that matters, so a California state judge can't issue a warrant for a property in New Jersey, for example. And if the guy didn't ask to see the search warrant, he made a big mistake.
It doesn't matter whether they were SFPD. They could have been a nearby police force such as South San Francisco (a separate city), or any number of other nearby city police forces, or county sheriff's deputies, or they could have been one of the task forces set up to combat computer crime in the Bay Area, or they could have been a federal agency.
My best guess (and only a guess) was that it was the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team that operates out of offices in Campbell, CA. They have state-wide jurisdiction.
Clueless article, repeated by clueless Slashdot editor.
Trust you? Why? Do you have special knowledge of this case? I didn't notice anyone say it was a "next to new $800 laptop" in TFA.
I've got a couple of systems in the backroom that I'd happily sell you for $60 as I'm about to give them away because we need the space. They aren't new but they do work, if rather slowly and with somewhat small hard drives.
Why exactly do you think think that buying a non-functional laptop for $60 suggests it was stolen? And then she paid more money to have it repaired. I would have thought that a person knowingly buying a stolen computer would not expect to have to pay more money for repairs.
Did you read TFA? I know it's against all the principles of Slashdot, but that will sometimes give insights that will stop you looking entirely foolish when posting.
I'm an engineer. I don't care about science, per se. I don't care about scientist's reputations. Scientists can argue all they want about provable and unprovable theories. I only care about how to use science to produce stuff. Theories doesn't have to be perfect, I just need solid empirical evidence that I can use theories with reasonable certitude that I will get the results that I expect. Bottom line, science without some form of engineering (chemical, mechanical, electrical, whatever) rarely helps people.
Your comments about "Science is always one result away from a revolution." has little relevance in the context of whether there is global warming or not. There's more than enough evidence around to show that the earth is warming significantly enough to effect mankind - it doesn't need a scientist to see that, people who can measure temperatures worldwide are sufficient.
The issue is how to deal with global warming - just ask the people in Texas experiencing extreme drought with a record number of days with temperatures over 100 degrees if they care about scientific theories on why it's happening. Just ask the polar bears who are losing their habitats. Just ask the people of Africa who are seeing their lakes dry up. Just ask the people of Pakistan experiencing record floods. Just ask the people of the southern USA who have seen record numbers and severity of tornadoes and storms in the last few years. There are many more examples from all over the world. Contrary to your apparent belief, politicians didn't cause any of these disasters.
You seem to be suggesting that until we until we have a consensus about the cause we can't address the issue at all. Or maybe you're saying that it's all trumped up by politicians. Frankly, both suggestions are plain stupid. We need to get a handle on this issue and find ways to combat the problem. We need results that we can use to develop solutions, and we aren't getting them. I don't care how many scientists go round in tighter and tighter circles until they finally disappear up they own arses. I do care that scientists are bickering while the world burns, or at least gets closer to burning.
Let's do something that might help. There are credible, well developed theories about greenhouse gases. Let's go with that and see if there are positive results. If you have a better idea, tell us. The longer we wait, the worse the problem becomes and the harder it is to solve.
So, how the hell can you talk about European History without talking about religion? Almost everything before the 19th. century had religion at the base. Churches were by far the most powerful entities in Europe for many centuries. Popes, archbishops, bishops and priests dictated to princes, kings, despots and common folk what they could and could not do. Almost everything the clergy did was to increase the power of their church.
If you don't know this after taking a European History class it seems you were a poor student or had a teacher who ignored the facts. And I don't think he was the sort of teacher who ignored facts from TFA and your description.
The Catholic church in particular has a long history of nasty behavior. Talking about that behavior and pointing out just how vicious the church was might be taken as bashing the church. It isn't.
Porn movies tend to be highly biased towards the visual sense, notwithstanding your two counter examples. Are you seriously suggesting that a blind person would (illegally) download a porn movie in the expectation that the sound track would be that exciting?
If all he wants to hear is moaning there are many legal ways to do that, and I doubt that moaning differs in any significant aspect between the vast majority of porn movies. Or maybe he was downloading it for the plot?
Rating agencies, eh? I'm sure the drug companies won't try to bribe them, or get their employees into those agencies, or just plain buy the agencies (as they will be commercial entities). You really think this is better than the FDA?
How do I prove a doctor isn't a quack? Give him a medical test? Rely on the reports of others? That won't work - nobody starting out would have any reports so nobody would go to them so they won't get any reports.
And you expect me to know what treatment I'm taking. How? You have no idea at all of the complexity of treating a serious cancer. The decisions that have to be made, the drugs available, the combinations of surgery, radiation, medications and chemotherapy that might work and the complexities of dealing with the side-effects. Your solution? Understand them all, and only then start a course of treatment. The penalty for failure or for taking too long? Death.
I was tempted to start an ad hominem attack on you, but that would be pointless. And it certainly wouldn't change your naivety :)
You want your drugs and doctors to be low cost. How about your treatment quality? Want that to be low also?
Want to go back to the 19th century where only the rich could afford good treatment? Doctors figured out a long time ago that people will pay lots of money for good medical treatment. So most good doctors treated the rich and became rich themselves.
That's what happens without government involvement. If you doubt my words, go to a country where the government isn't involved in health-care, and see what kind of treatment you get for your minimal cost.
First of all, without the FDA, he doesn't have to say it's his urine. He'll claim it's "insert some scientific description", Without the FDA he might be charging $16,000 per treatment - which is what just one of my cancer drugs cost. When MY life is on the line, and I'm not in a position to tell what's going to help and what's snake-oil, I WANT THE FDA TO OVERLOOK HIS RESEARCH. I'm a software guy, I can't be an expert on drugs, especially cancer drugs.
That doesn't guarantee that my cancer won't kill me, it doesn't even mean his product won't kill me. But it does mean that people have been able to check his research and I'll have good idea of the risks involved in taking it and potential benefits.
You call me stupid to rely on a doctor. All medicine is empirical. We are a long way from understanding the physiology of the human body. Deal with it. Doctors make mistakes, so get yourself a doctor you trust, one who oozes competence, who enjoys his job, who is willing to give you the time to discuss all the issues involved. But be aware he is relying on medical research also, and without the FDA he wouldn't have any real data about the drugs he's about to pump into you.
When YOU have a life threatening disease, then you can decide whether you want factual data behind the drugs you are taking, or whether you want to go with whatever the drug maker claims. As for me, I'm damn glad there is an FDA.
I suppose the summary quotes 18 levels because that's approximately the number of ranks in each branch of the military. But it's not really 18 levels of management. Remember the old saying "Privates are for doing things, sergeants are for making certain things get done, officers are for thinking." And even junior officers don't get involved in purchasing decisions. The actual level of management when it comes to purchasing is more like 5 or 6, but even that is a big number.
What really screws things up is that the military purchasing machine is designed for 100k+ of each item with fairly exacting requirements about being easy to operate, able to work in severely adverse conditions, and to be "fair" to everyone wanting to sell to the military. Which means a very complete description (sometimes thousands of pages), open bids, preference to certain categories of bidders, and much else. Oh, and they need to appear accountable for spending all the money that an army sized purchase entails.
So the guys who actually need relatively small amounts of highly specialized equipment are fighting an entrenched bureaucracy who wants to preserve the status quo. Think $500 hammers. I believe it's getting better though, at least in some areas, and the process is getting reduced from decades to months. Even so, they are rarely have the ability to on-line order stuff from commercial vendors and pay with a credit card, although that does happen sometimes.
The guy speaking at the lecture is right - large militaries can't move as fast as small fast moving enemy groups. But when they do move they can usually outspend him by at least 100,000:1. Which probably doesn't help.
The key is to organize like the bad guys - small groups each with their own budget and freedom to use it without having to go up the chain of command.
Well, not quite. Apple hired Larry Tesler from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and he hired some of of his buddies from there. They were all unhappy because PARC had invented all this great stuff and Xerox wasn't doing anything meaningful with it.
So, it was no surprise when Larry and company produced many of the things they had pioneered at PARC, except better because they now had some experience of what worked and what didn't.
If you want to assign blame, then most of it should fall on Xerox for not using the stuff they had, and allowing their engineers to get unhappy enough that they left for a company that paid less but would use their talents.
P.S. I was one of those guys....
It's disheartening to see the way that we (the USA) have withdrawn from science over the last 40 years.
We have allowed the shuttle to reach End Of Life without any suitable replacement.
We have discontinued manned (and unmanned) flights to the moon.
We have withdrawn funding from stem cell research over religious issues.
We have reduced Darwin to a theory on par with creationism in some textbooks and in schools in some states.
We have a large body of people believing that global warming doesn't exist because Al Gore produced books and movies about it, so it's a liberal conspiracy.
We have made science a dirty word because it conflicts with some people's beliefs.
and on, and on.
In China, 8 of the 9 members of the top politburo are engineers. In the USA, lawyers are the most represented profession in Congress. Which country is more likely to consider science and technology important?
Right now, it's hard to see how the USA can stop the slow downward shuffle.