Re:I'm sure the point will be made a thousand time
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Blaming Encryption
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I wish a lot of things. I wish that people weren't so literal-minded that they can't comprehend the place of rhetoric. I wish that the smug bastards in every other country in the world would stop talking about "Americans" as if their summary of 300 million people in a single pithy phrase isn't just as much an example of blak-and-white thinking as anything they accuse us of. I wish that y'all would stop pretending ignorance to the fact that every developed country in the western world absolutely capitulates and cooperates with America at every level - multinationals are just that, you economies are completely intertwined with ours, your rich bastards get so investing in American companies, quite often investing in things that go contrary to your very proper civil, political and environmental stances you hypocritically hold in your own little patch of earth. I wish that there wasn't any debate about whether crashing fucking jet planes into buildings full of people constituted evil. And most of all I wish anonymous cowards without the balls to own up to their own opinions would just shut the fuck up.
I'm sure the point will be made a thousand times..
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Blaming Encryption
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But it is idiotic to even suggest that any type of legal sanction against crypto would prevent access to this technology by the forces of evil.
The principles allowing the creation of strong encryption are fundamental and simple enough that if it were not available freely it could be developed with minimal expense by anyone who wanted it. If it had been kept from the ordinary citizen the terrorist would still have it.
Now, the following is on a corporate website but if you dig into it you'll see that it is the result of an independent(defense-funded)study. The results are less than 1% failure rate. This is under fairly optimal conditions as well.
http://www.visionics.com/faceit/tech/techspecs.h tm l
On the other side there are systems being used in the real world with reported 80% accuracy which is pretty bad.
There's a few things wrong with your argument. Let's just say that by a large coincidence, one of your many doppelgangers turns out to be a terrorist, and they circulate a b&w flyer with his picture out, and unfortunate you, you go to the airport the same day. No computers or anything like that. What happens? You get arrested. Your are forced to "prove [your] innocence in order to be permitted to go about [your] ordinary, boring, perfectly legal life?" And there is nothing illegal about this. This is law enforcement. Your lawsuit would fail. Innocent people get picked up all the time because they look like someone.
More to the point, like a lot of people you are going off two false assumptions: first that biometric analysis identifies faces in more or less the same way the human brain does, second that it must be less accurate than human recognition. The relationship between various fixed measurements of the unalterable features of your face describe a pattern that is as unique as your fingerprint. That guy in college may have looked just like you, but unless he was your long-lost twin his head was not exactly the same size as yours and his features were certainly not arranged in exactly the same ratios as yours.
My point is, this is functionally and legally no different from having a cop sitting there scanning faces. People are simply objecting to it because it's technology. Well, here's a little something to chew on: while y'all argue about whether this should be used to identify terrorists in the airport, the technology is being sold to retail as a all-in-one method to increase security, detect theft, and perform consumer analysis. Unlike a properly administered criminal apprehension system, this unregulated use will soon be creating databases of unsuspecting consumers, monitoring and analyzing their consumer habits (and looking out for career shoplifters). As legal as any security camera. Now THAT'S scary.
"If you want to travel without ID, allow plenty of extra time to argue with the airline employees."
All things considered, at this point if you want to travel without ID, you might want to allow for just being fucked whether it's your right or not. Not saying that's right, mind you, just being realistic.
I agree completely. Nobody called ClearChannel stations' boring, repetetive, mainstream garbage marathon playlists censorship, even though there are literally millions of songs you would never have a snowballs chance of hearing because they are ethnic, or thoughtful, or somehow unique or striking in any way. Or because they aren't produced by a sufficiently huge media conglomerate to pay off the stations for the privilege of airtime.
Accusing ClearChannel of censorship is like accusing a colon of being full of shit.
One thing that is clear from this is that Mr. Stallman has no particular knowledge of this photo identification system. This system applies a multi-point comparative analysis of key facial features which are very difficult to alter/disguise (distance between eyes, etc). In combination they provide a very high degree of accuracy in positive identification based on a photograph. Mr. Stallman's comparison to individual surveillance by a human is meaningless because it is impossible for a human to do what this system could do - compare an individual to a database of known criminals.
Although careful oversight would clearly be needed, if properly administered this system, allowed only to check against existing wanted criminals and terrorists and not allowed to track the movements of those not in the database or to store long-term information on non-tagged individuals, could provide a very powerful tool to intercept people who should not be allowed on an airplane.
The idea that this is a loss of liberty is grabage. You need to present identification at an airport; you have no right to travel by air anonymously, airports are public places and noone has any right to expect not to be exposed to surveillance in this context. Mr. Stallman needs to learn to pick his battles, stick to what he knows, and choose his words more carefully. This tragedy is a little too recent to be using the phrase "thousands die" as a point of rhetoric. And though I am not at all a Bush supporter or fan, I agree with comments about Mr. Stallman's parting shot. Mr. Bush was elected: he was put into power by the Electoral College like every president that has served The United States of America.
Again, I was not addressing any person's views on abortion per se but their insistence on twisting an unrealted issue to serve their narrow agenda, and their unsupported assumption that the article was advocating prenatal testing-based abortion. Since you are clearly guilty of the same thing (trying to make this about abortion) I don't expect you to be able to let go of that aspect.
You ask, how I would react if I thought abortion was murder. How about this: let's say I thought that the death penalty was murder. If I read an article that discussed DNA testing, and talked about a couple of cases where some sort of computer error caused a false guilty verdict, and proceeded to go on endlessly about how the death penalty was murder - even though there was no mention or indication in the article that the suspects involved ever faced or received the death penalty - well, I guess my reaction would be to expect people to lambast me for not reading the article and making false assumptions based on my desire to fixate on my pet issue. And I would deserve it.
There are plenty of forums where the endless arguments of what point life is defined as starting. The point I made, which you fail to address at all, is that abortion was not the issue of this article.
Because I'm replying I'm unclear: I was originally talking about Slashdot's tone. But rereading Timothy's treatment, I realize it isn't really there. He just states the facts: Due to the Y2K bug 4 mothers were incorrectly told they were at low risk for Downs pregnancies who infact had Downs syndrome fetuses, 2 carried the pregnancies to term. If you read the article and the Slashdot review you realize that basically it is just the rabid, mostly pro-life sentiment trying to turn this into an abortion issue. There is absolutely no suggestion anywhere in the article or in Timothy's treatment suggesting this testing should or should not be used as a criteria for choosing whether to have an abortion.
I'm mystified as to where you are finding the message in this article that suggests in any way that the author's issue is with terminating pregnancies. The article explicitly states that the issue is the mothers not getting the best information for her range of options - termination not even being mentioned - of as you note, choosing to have amniocentesis at the safest time. There is a clear benefit to knowing in advance if your child is going to have a serious medical concern of any time - it allows proper prenatal care and both practical and emotional preparation. The point, as the article states, is that they should have known they were high risk but were misinformed they were low risk.
I can't get over how many people are either not reading or paying no attention to the article. There is NO reason to believe these mothers would have aborted these pregnancies. The point of these tests is to give the mothers the best understanding of their situation and to promote the use of more accurate and complete tests at the earliest stages. The problem, as clearly stated in the article, is that these mothers had an assurance that wasn't justified - and so were not prepared, as they could have been, to deal with the reality of their situations.
This story is providing a nice little showcase of how pro-lifers are so fixated on a single topic that they are incapable of grasping a reality with a broader context. Thanks, I've never been more confidently pro-choice.
Has anyone noted the article explicitely states that 2 pregnancies were terminated despite the false negatives?
"It seems that (according to the article) the two mothers would have aborted their babies had they known they were going to have downs syndrom."
Hey Dolt, try actually reading the article. I did twice and I can't find the slightest indication that there is any evidence these mothers would have terminated their pregnancies. In fact, two of the "false negatives" terminated their pregnancies anyway, according to the article, not that much can be inferred from that.
The "tragedy" (I'm afraid that word has a different scale attached for me now) here is that the women were given an assurance, missed the opportunity for the safest access to the most accurate testing, and ended up dealing with a situation they could have been better prepared for - I think we can all agree it would be best to know regardless.
The article carefully avoids the obsfucating mire of the abortion debate. Slashdot's innacurate treatment of it unfortunately drags it right back in - and people who need to spout off but can't be bothered to read the f'in article help.
Putting AC's shrill pro-life rhetoric to one side, I am strongly pro-choice but I strongly object to the tone of your write-up suggesting a causal link between the negative Downs tests and the pregnancies being carried to term. There is no suggestion of this in the article. The point the article makes is that an accurate test would have given the Mothers the knowledge they needed to deal with the reality of their situation. Instead they received an assurance that proved to be false. There is no evidence either way on whther these mothers would have even considered terminating these pregnancies.
None of us are experts, this is all speculation. I guess I'd rather see this kind of conversation than the "nuke 'em all" knee-jerk or the "can't we all just get along" pollyana bull.
What my thinking is is this: it is not that hard to get an edged weapon on a plane. Indeed, I've carried many the pocket knife on board with me, in flight bag or pocket. I've even dropped a small pen-knife in the change tray and picked it right up on the other side unmolested. This is to say nothing of plastic, glass, wood or ceramic knives. But sucessfully subduing four planes full of passengers, getting into the cockpit, and incapacitating the pilot is another thing. People will argue this back and forth, and who really knows how hard it is, but my gut instinct is that this takes well-trained individuals.
I find the argument that it doesn't take much to fly a plane fairly suspect. People assert this very freely. When I watch that video though it doesn't look like an amateur flying that plane. Now, that's no more an expert opinion than all those who are saying that it's not so hard to fly. But noone can argue that these planes, starting on different courses and trajectories, were were maneuvered in such a way as to strike both towers of the WTC in what proved to be catastrophic strikes, seemingly strategically placed, in very close sequence. The size of the planes, the full fuel loads, the placement of the strike brought those massive towers down in a way none of us will ever forget. Anyone who is trying to claim that that blowing up a couple of car bombs at the same time is anywhere on the same order of magnitude of difficulty is just being stupid.
Anyway, we can all play armchair NSA all day, but I think at the least, covert military sponsorship needs to be near the top of the list. Let's all just hope (and pray if you're so inclined) that our intelligence, security and police forces can give us a well established and unambiguous answer to some of these questions.
Media and others are jumping on the Osama Bin Laden theory a bit too eagerly for my comfort. I've had my eye on Iraq since yesterday night. People keep saying it wouldn't be that hard to do this - this is bull. While the armchair commandos and flight-simulator captains blow smoke about how anyone could do this, veteran pilots and intelligence and terrorism experts keep telling us it was a highly sophisticated and intricately planned attack. Noone can deny it is leaps and bounds above what Bin-Laden's organization has accomplished thus far.
Note Iraq's basically unique reaction at http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/09/12/mideast.reaction/ and judge for yourself. I can't help thinking about unfinished business, and the sins of the father... But please remember: NOONE except those responsible know for sure who the culprits are. Rash action will rightfully incite more hatred from people not responsible for the action. If we act cooly, rationally, carefully but implacably it will be better for everyone.
You're wrong. Your minimal flight experience doesn't stack up to the 30+ year veteran commercial pilots who are saying the hijacker pilots had to be highly trained. And although they were not small targets they were hit with amazing precision and resolve. No ordinary flake was responsible for this.
Non-experts like you talking out of their asses are just further confusing this issue. Note I'm not claiming to be any kid of expert - I'm just quoting the people who have some kind of relevant experience. Go to f-in CNN if you wan the details.
I wish to hell all you armchair commandos would stop blowing smoke about how easy this was. This was a very sophisticated military action and the sooner we abandon the isolated terrorist cell theory as the most viable option and start looking at the military reality (hint - only one nation has basically condemned the US and fully supported the action. Ends with a Q? anyone? Anyone?)
This has come up before, and roots into the whole question of whether this could be home-grown terrorism. I think both are a tremendous stretch. Proven left-wing violent action has to date not risen past the level of vandalism. The idea that those, even assuming they would be so inclined, could scale this level of logistics in a single action is suspect. I think the same can be said of any potentially terroristic domestic movement.
And while we're on the subject, the same argument applies to the theory, all but presented as fact by our sheep-like media, that Osama Bin Laden is responsible. From, basically, relatively crude vehicle bombings to a hugely sophisticated coordinated terrorism campaign, involving multiple hijackings by men who were obviously highly trained commandos (able to hijack a plane with knives and fly it with such precision) and targetted so sucessfully (in the case of the WTC) that the only possibilities are luck of an unimaginable scale or planning of incredible depth and intricacy. In one action? Occam's Razor tells me we're getting duped.
I'm not ruling out any possibility at this point, but a very creditable theory that I'm disturbed to have seen only the slightest hints of in the media is that this is a covert action by a hostile foreign government. Not some terrorist cell, not some rogue band. The lo-tech is TOO lo-tech, the high-concept is TOO high concept, and the attack was just too sucessful. And what better way to keep your covert war going than to leave a nice trail of bread crumbs to a handy, notorious terrorist?
You keep your nation, totally vulnerable to US military might, safe from retaliation. If you manage to provoke a knee-jerk US response, you create more anti-US hatred and potentially copy-cat or piggy-back acts of terrorism which further obsfucate the reality.
Well, it's all speculation at this point but one nation springs to mind which has a sincere hatred of the USA, a more or less personal vendetta against the family of our President, the military and logistic resources to manage terroism of this scale and (sick, evil) genius. That nation is Iraq.
And how did they develop these military resources? Hell, I'll give you that one at no extra charge: with the help of the USA.
"at every known, suspected or rumored terrorist hangout, EVERYWHERE in the world."
No. If we attack and kill innocent civilians (which is what a cruise missle assault is going to do, no question) on the basis of suspicions and rumors, then we are no better than the people who did this.
This was an act of war and as a nation we have an obligation to respond in kind. But not crazy, hot-headed and half cocked as you propose.
You Franklin quote is apt. We better consider carefully what we give up, and what we gain. The American you propose to defend may have very little liberty left in it if we allow unbridled passion to guide our response, and then the forces of Evil truly will prevail. Your DEA example is apt too, though not for the reason you seen to think. Sure, maybe the DEA cracked some heads (and if some of them were innocent people or mere junkies? ah well - nobody I know) and maybe agents are safer for it. But guess what: we're still solidly, roundly, wholeheartedly losing the war on drugs. Forests and Trees, friend. There is a line between liberty and caution, between compassion and retalliation. Let's try to at least be aware of when and why we start crossing it.
Write a letter. Send an e-mail. THEN sit back and feel helpless. Do you know how communism came to Russia? Because a handfull of intellectuals did a good song and dance at a time when power was in flux. Do you know why it failed in the USSR? Because it was discredited in a time of political and economic flux.
DON'T FEEL POWERLESS. Look at the hundreds here who care enough to say a word or two in protest here. Go to the link. Copy the address and sample letter. Spend fifteen minutes of your day, just fifteen minutes, adding your personal touch to the letter. Print it, stamp it, spend it. If you can't spare 20 minutes of your time saying this isn't right, then yes, our situation is hopeless. (I'm not assuming this is the case with you, Gnome, but so many let feelings of powerlessness stop them from taking action that could make a difference).
Copy the link. E-mail it to your friends. Keep the word going. If we don't draw a line in the sand no one will.
Yeah, they told you to do it before and you didn't and we got the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Told you to do it again and you didn't and we got the DMCA. Write a freaking letter or at LEAST send an e-mail. For those who read the comments but not the article:
Comments, to be received by the FTAA organization by August 20, should be submitted to:
Gloria Blue, Executive Secretary, Trade Policy Staff Committee
Attn: FTAA Draft Text Release
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
1724 F. St., NW, Fifth Floor
Washington DC 20508 USA
Non-US writers should also send a copy to their own country's intellectual property government officials; list available at:
http://www.sice.oas.org/int_prop/ip_dir.asp
Sample Letter:
This is just an example. It will be most effective if you send something similar but in your own words.
Dear Ms. Blue, Trade Policy Staff Committee, and Negotiating Group on Intellectual Property Rights:
I write to express my grave concern regarding the draft FTAA treaty's extreme intellectual property provisions.
These measures, based on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) give far too much power to publishers, at the expense of indivdiuals' rights. The DMCA itself is already under legal challenge in the US, has gravely chilled scientists' and computer security researchers' freedom of expression around the world for fear of being prosecuted in the US, and resulted in the arrest of a Russian programmer. The FTAA provisions, which serve no one but American corporate copyright interests, are even more over-reaching than those of the DMCA.
These provisions would require signatory nations to pass new DMCA-style laws that ban, with few or no exceptions, software and other tools that allow copy prevention technologies to be bypassed. This would violate the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech under the First Amendment, and similar guarantees in other national constitutions and laws and in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, since such tools are necessary to exercise lawful uses, including fair use, reverse engineering, computer security research and many others.
I urge you to remove these controversial and anti-freedom provisions from the FTAA treaty language. The DMCA is already an international debacle. Its flaws - and worse - should not be exported and forced on other countries.
Sincerely,
[Your full name]
[Your address]
Non-US writers should mention their own country's constitution and/or laws protecting freedom of expression, of coruse.
Copies may also be sent by e-mail to some key people in the FTAA process:
kalvarez@ustr.gov (Kira Alvarez - Intellectual Property)
walter_bastian@ita.doc.gov (Walter Bastian - E-Commerce)
Non-US contacts available at:
http://www.ftaa-alca.org/contacts/contpts.asp\
No excuses! If you've got time to sit around responding to slashdot posts all day you've got time to write a letter defending your freedom.
enough by gawd I've wasted the last minute of my life attempting to engage in "communication" in the stinking bowels of this digital psuedoverse.
Sorry to hang on to yer scintillating comments Strom; felt a strange need to make a public display of it and connecting to your post seemed to be the surest way to make sure this sad declaration is buried and forgotten, safe from the prying eyes of the average soul.
Yeah, I'm roight off this slashdot mate, it reminds me too much of shouted conversations in seedy bars where a horrible band is generating a howling dissonance and everyone is pretending to be alone at home, shouting through a wall.
Half a year of putting my 2 cents on the internet the conclusion I've come to is it just makes me sad. 99 out of a hundred people don't give a damn about truth or learning or anything except pumping their little egos up, pounding their special ideological pulpet, winning rhetorical points. enough.
the worst thing is I find myself getting sucked into responding to the jingo, the rhetoric, the baiting, the whole ignominous free for all of all thee disimpersoned egos duking it out. Lose my love and become another nasty ego monster, proving something. As if I didn't know who and what I am.
But I ain't no kid anymore, pushing thirty I better decide to be too big for all this folderol, this gardyloo. So goodbye, cruel slashdot, Strom, we'll always have Minsk, thanks for being a hook to hang on, and congratulations for being almost as big a pariah as your congressional counterpart.
I hope nobody sees this and if you do then do yourself a favor and ignore the hell of it, its just masturbation of the intellectual/textual variety. Maybe when I finifh my masterpiece I'll come in and be a karma whore to promote it, make nice nice with everyone, yes, open source, livertarianism, free beer, free speech, free love and free Mumia. What else? Reply if you like but I ain't talking.
As I said in my previous post, Twitter, I'm not trying to convince you of anything, as it's clear you are not interested in information beyond what you already believe. I bother with this last post, again, on the off chance someone with an open mind chooses to explore further.
This is just a short list of resources, all of which will contain better and worse, pro and con opinions on the medical efficacy of marijuana.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish a lot of things. I wish that people weren't so literal-minded that they can't comprehend the place of rhetoric. I wish that the smug bastards in every other country in the world would stop talking about "Americans" as if their summary of 300 million people in a single pithy phrase isn't just as much an example of blak-and-white thinking as anything they accuse us of. I wish that y'all would stop pretending ignorance to the fact that every developed country in the western world absolutely capitulates and cooperates with America at every level - multinationals are just that, you economies are completely intertwined with ours, your rich bastards get so investing in American companies, quite often investing in things that go contrary to your very proper civil, political and environmental stances you hypocritically hold in your own little patch of earth. I wish that there wasn't any debate about whether crashing fucking jet planes into buildings full of people constituted evil. And most of all I wish anonymous cowards without the balls to own up to their own opinions would just shut the fuck up.
The principles allowing the creation of strong encryption are fundamental and simple enough that if it were not available freely it could be developed with minimal expense by anyone who wanted it. If it had been kept from the ordinary citizen the terrorist would still have it.
http://www.visionics.com/faceit/tech/techspecs.
On the other side there are systems being used in the real world with reported 80% accuracy which is pretty bad.
Tons of citations on this page:
http://www.cs.rug.nl/~peterkr/FACE/olp.html
More to the point, like a lot of people you are going off two false assumptions: first that biometric analysis identifies faces in more or less the same way the human brain does, second that it must be less accurate than human recognition. The relationship between various fixed measurements of the unalterable features of your face describe a pattern that is as unique as your fingerprint. That guy in college may have looked just like you, but unless he was your long-lost twin his head was not exactly the same size as yours and his features were certainly not arranged in exactly the same ratios as yours.
My point is, this is functionally and legally no different from having a cop sitting there scanning faces. People are simply objecting to it because it's technology. Well, here's a little something to chew on: while y'all argue about whether this should be used to identify terrorists in the airport, the technology is being sold to retail as a all-in-one method to increase security, detect theft, and perform consumer analysis. Unlike a properly administered criminal apprehension system, this unregulated use will soon be creating databases of unsuspecting consumers, monitoring and analyzing their consumer habits (and looking out for career shoplifters). As legal as any security camera. Now THAT'S scary.
All things considered, at this point if you want to travel without ID, you might want to allow for just being fucked whether it's your right or not. Not saying that's right, mind you, just being realistic.
Accusing ClearChannel of censorship is like accusing a colon of being full of shit.
Although careful oversight would clearly be needed, if properly administered this system, allowed only to check against existing wanted criminals and terrorists and not allowed to track the movements of those not in the database or to store long-term information on non-tagged individuals, could provide a very powerful tool to intercept people who should not be allowed on an airplane.
The idea that this is a loss of liberty is grabage. You need to present identification at an airport; you have no right to travel by air anonymously, airports are public places and noone has any right to expect not to be exposed to surveillance in this context. Mr. Stallman needs to learn to pick his battles, stick to what he knows, and choose his words more carefully. This tragedy is a little too recent to be using the phrase "thousands die" as a point of rhetoric. And though I am not at all a Bush supporter or fan, I agree with comments about Mr. Stallman's parting shot. Mr. Bush was elected: he was put into power by the Electoral College like every president that has served The United States of America.
You ask, how I would react if I thought abortion was murder. How about this: let's say I thought that the death penalty was murder. If I read an article that discussed DNA testing, and talked about a couple of cases where some sort of computer error caused a false guilty verdict, and proceeded to go on endlessly about how the death penalty was murder - even though there was no mention or indication in the article that the suspects involved ever faced or received the death penalty - well, I guess my reaction would be to expect people to lambast me for not reading the article and making false assumptions based on my desire to fixate on my pet issue. And I would deserve it.
There are plenty of forums where the endless arguments of what point life is defined as starting. The point I made, which you fail to address at all, is that abortion was not the issue of this article.
I think I better report you to the FBI.
Because I'm replying I'm unclear: I was originally talking about Slashdot's tone. But rereading Timothy's treatment, I realize it isn't really there. He just states the facts: Due to the Y2K bug 4 mothers were incorrectly told they were at low risk for Downs pregnancies who infact had Downs syndrome fetuses, 2 carried the pregnancies to term. If you read the article and the Slashdot review you realize that basically it is just the rabid, mostly pro-life sentiment trying to turn this into an abortion issue. There is absolutely no suggestion anywhere in the article or in Timothy's treatment suggesting this testing should or should not be used as a criteria for choosing whether to have an abortion.
I'm mystified as to where you are finding the message in this article that suggests in any way that the author's issue is with terminating pregnancies. The article explicitly states that the issue is the mothers not getting the best information for her range of options - termination not even being mentioned - of as you note, choosing to have amniocentesis at the safest time. There is a clear benefit to knowing in advance if your child is going to have a serious medical concern of any time - it allows proper prenatal care and both practical and emotional preparation. The point, as the article states, is that they should have known they were high risk but were misinformed they were low risk.
This story is providing a nice little showcase of how pro-lifers are so fixated on a single topic that they are incapable of grasping a reality with a broader context. Thanks, I've never been more confidently pro-choice.
Has anyone noted the article explicitely states that 2 pregnancies were terminated despite the false negatives?
Hey Dolt, try actually reading the article. I did twice and I can't find the slightest indication that there is any evidence these mothers would have terminated their pregnancies. In fact, two of the "false negatives" terminated their pregnancies anyway, according to the article, not that much can be inferred from that.
The "tragedy" (I'm afraid that word has a different scale attached for me now) here is that the women were given an assurance, missed the opportunity for the safest access to the most accurate testing, and ended up dealing with a situation they could have been better prepared for - I think we can all agree it would be best to know regardless.
The article carefully avoids the obsfucating mire of the abortion debate. Slashdot's innacurate treatment of it unfortunately drags it right back in - and people who need to spout off but can't be bothered to read the f'in article help.
Putting AC's shrill pro-life rhetoric to one side, I am strongly pro-choice but I strongly object to the tone of your write-up suggesting a causal link between the negative Downs tests and the pregnancies being carried to term. There is no suggestion of this in the article. The point the article makes is that an accurate test would have given the Mothers the knowledge they needed to deal with the reality of their situation. Instead they received an assurance that proved to be false. There is no evidence either way on whther these mothers would have even considered terminating these pregnancies.
Another consideration is how much worse this could have been if the towers had gone OVER instead of straight down.
What my thinking is is this: it is not that hard to get an edged weapon on a plane. Indeed, I've carried many the pocket knife on board with me, in flight bag or pocket. I've even dropped a small pen-knife in the change tray and picked it right up on the other side unmolested. This is to say nothing of plastic, glass, wood or ceramic knives. But sucessfully subduing four planes full of passengers, getting into the cockpit, and incapacitating the pilot is another thing. People will argue this back and forth, and who really knows how hard it is, but my gut instinct is that this takes well-trained individuals.
I find the argument that it doesn't take much to fly a plane fairly suspect. People assert this very freely. When I watch that video though it doesn't look like an amateur flying that plane. Now, that's no more an expert opinion than all those who are saying that it's not so hard to fly. But noone can argue that these planes, starting on different courses and trajectories, were were maneuvered in such a way as to strike both towers of the WTC in what proved to be catastrophic strikes, seemingly strategically placed, in very close sequence. The size of the planes, the full fuel loads, the placement of the strike brought those massive towers down in a way none of us will ever forget. Anyone who is trying to claim that that blowing up a couple of car bombs at the same time is anywhere on the same order of magnitude of difficulty is just being stupid.
Anyway, we can all play armchair NSA all day, but I think at the least, covert military sponsorship needs to be near the top of the list. Let's all just hope (and pray if you're so inclined) that our intelligence, security and police forces can give us a well established and unambiguous answer to some of these questions.
Note Iraq's basically unique reaction at http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/09/12/mideas
Non-experts like you talking out of their asses are just further confusing this issue. Note I'm not claiming to be any kid of expert - I'm just quoting the people who have some kind of relevant experience. Go to f-in CNN if you wan the details.
I wish to hell all you armchair commandos would stop blowing smoke about how easy this was. This was a very sophisticated military action and the sooner we abandon the isolated terrorist cell theory as the most viable option and start looking at the military reality (hint - only one nation has basically condemned the US and fully supported the action. Ends with a Q? anyone? Anyone?)
And while we're on the subject, the same argument applies to the theory, all but presented as fact by our sheep-like media, that Osama Bin Laden is responsible. From, basically, relatively crude vehicle bombings to a hugely sophisticated coordinated terrorism campaign, involving multiple hijackings by men who were obviously highly trained commandos (able to hijack a plane with knives and fly it with such precision) and targetted so sucessfully (in the case of the WTC) that the only possibilities are luck of an unimaginable scale or planning of incredible depth and intricacy. In one action? Occam's Razor tells me we're getting duped.
I'm not ruling out any possibility at this point, but a very creditable theory that I'm disturbed to have seen only the slightest hints of in the media is that this is a covert action by a hostile foreign government. Not some terrorist cell, not some rogue band. The lo-tech is TOO lo-tech, the high-concept is TOO high concept, and the attack was just too sucessful. And what better way to keep your covert war going than to leave a nice trail of bread crumbs to a handy, notorious terrorist?
You keep your nation, totally vulnerable to US military might, safe from retaliation. If you manage to provoke a knee-jerk US response, you create more anti-US hatred and potentially copy-cat or piggy-back acts of terrorism which further obsfucate the reality.
Well, it's all speculation at this point but one nation springs to mind which has a sincere hatred of the USA, a more or less personal vendetta against the family of our President, the military and logistic resources to manage terroism of this scale and (sick, evil) genius. That nation is Iraq.
And how did they develop these military resources? Hell, I'll give you that one at no extra charge: with the help of the USA.
No. If we attack and kill innocent civilians (which is what a cruise missle assault is going to do, no question) on the basis of suspicions and rumors, then we are no better than the people who did this.
This was an act of war and as a nation we have an obligation to respond in kind. But not crazy, hot-headed and half cocked as you propose.
You Franklin quote is apt. We better consider carefully what we give up, and what we gain. The American you propose to defend may have very little liberty left in it if we allow unbridled passion to guide our response, and then the forces of Evil truly will prevail. Your DEA example is apt too, though not for the reason you seen to think. Sure, maybe the DEA cracked some heads (and if some of them were innocent people or mere junkies? ah well - nobody I know) and maybe agents are safer for it. But guess what: we're still solidly, roundly, wholeheartedly losing the war on drugs. Forests and Trees, friend. There is a line between liberty and caution, between compassion and retalliation. Let's try to at least be aware of when and why we start crossing it.
DON'T FEEL POWERLESS. Look at the hundreds here who care enough to say a word or two in protest here. Go to the link. Copy the address and sample letter. Spend fifteen minutes of your day, just fifteen minutes, adding your personal touch to the letter. Print it, stamp it, spend it. If you can't spare 20 minutes of your time saying this isn't right, then yes, our situation is hopeless. (I'm not assuming this is the case with you, Gnome, but so many let feelings of powerlessness stop them from taking action that could make a difference).
Copy the link. E-mail it to your friends. Keep the word going. If we don't draw a line in the sand no one will.
Comments, to be received by the FTAA organization by August 20, should be submitted to:
Gloria Blue, Executive Secretary, Trade Policy Staff Committee
Attn: FTAA Draft Text Release
Office of the U.S. Trade Representative
1724 F. St., NW, Fifth Floor
Washington DC 20508 USA
Non-US writers should also send a copy to their own country's intellectual property government officials; list available at:
http://www.sice.oas.org/int_prop/ip_dir.asp
Sample Letter:
This is just an example. It will be most effective if you send something similar but in your own words.
Dear Ms. Blue, Trade Policy Staff Committee, and Negotiating Group on Intellectual Property Rights:
I write to express my grave concern regarding the draft FTAA treaty's extreme intellectual property provisions.
These measures, based on the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) give far too much power to publishers, at the expense of indivdiuals' rights. The DMCA itself is already under legal challenge in the US, has gravely chilled scientists' and computer security researchers' freedom of expression around the world for fear of being prosecuted in the US, and resulted in the arrest of a Russian programmer. The FTAA provisions, which serve no one but American corporate copyright interests, are even more over-reaching than those of the DMCA.
These provisions would require signatory nations to pass new DMCA-style laws that ban, with few or no exceptions, software and other tools that allow copy prevention technologies to be bypassed. This would violate the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech under the First Amendment, and similar guarantees in other national constitutions and laws and in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, since such tools are necessary to exercise lawful uses, including fair use, reverse engineering, computer security research and many others.
I urge you to remove these controversial and anti-freedom provisions from the FTAA treaty language. The DMCA is already an international debacle. Its flaws - and worse - should not be exported and forced on other countries.
Sincerely,
[Your full name]
[Your address]
Non-US writers should mention their own country's constitution and/or laws protecting freedom of expression, of coruse.
Copies may also be sent by e-mail to some key people in the FTAA process:
kalvarez@ustr.gov (Kira Alvarez - Intellectual Property)
walter_bastian@ita.doc.gov (Walter Bastian - E-Commerce)
Non-US contacts available at:
http://www.ftaa-alca.org/contacts/contpts.asp\
No excuses! If you've got time to sit around responding to slashdot posts all day you've got time to write a letter defending your freedom.
Sorry to hang on to yer scintillating comments Strom; felt a strange need to make a public display of it and connecting to your post seemed to be the surest way to make sure this sad declaration is buried and forgotten, safe from the prying eyes of the average soul.
Yeah, I'm roight off this slashdot mate, it reminds me too much of shouted conversations in seedy bars where a horrible band is generating a howling dissonance and everyone is pretending to be alone at home, shouting through a wall.
Half a year of putting my 2 cents on the internet the conclusion I've come to is it just makes me sad. 99 out of a hundred people don't give a damn about truth or learning or anything except pumping their little egos up, pounding their special ideological pulpet, winning rhetorical points. enough.
the worst thing is I find myself getting sucked into responding to the jingo, the rhetoric, the baiting, the whole ignominous free for all of all thee disimpersoned egos duking it out. Lose my love and become another nasty ego monster, proving something. As if I didn't know who and what I am.
But I ain't no kid anymore, pushing thirty I better decide to be too big for all this folderol, this gardyloo. So goodbye, cruel slashdot, Strom, we'll always have Minsk, thanks for being a hook to hang on, and congratulations for being almost as big a pariah as your congressional counterpart.
I hope nobody sees this and if you do then do yourself a favor and ignore the hell of it, its just masturbation of the intellectual/textual variety. Maybe when I finifh my masterpiece I'll come in and be a karma whore to promote it, make nice nice with everyone, yes, open source, livertarianism, free beer, free speech, free love and free Mumia. What else? Reply if you like but I ain't talking.
further, desponent, sayeth not.
As I said in my previous post, Twitter, I'm not trying to convince you of anything, as it's clear you are not interested in information beyond what you already believe. I bother with this last post, again, on the off chance someone with an open mind chooses to explore further.
This is just a short list of resources, all of which will contain better and worse, pro and con opinions on the medical efficacy of marijuana.
General information, pro and con:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/medical_mj.htm
1972 Government report on history:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studie s/nc/nc1a.htm
Antiemetic uses in cancer patients
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/mariem1.h tm
Multiple Sclerosis
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/medical/m s_mj_ref.htm
DEA Administrative Law Judge Ruling, 1988
http://www.druglibrary.org/olsen/MEDICAL/YOUNG/you ng.html
Treatment of typical governmental blocking of legitimate research attempts
http://www.maps.org/mmj/nejm.html
General: About Medical Marijuana: http://www.drugwatch.org/mm.html
Cannabis Law: Medical Marijuana: http://www.cannabislaw.com/
Drug Library: http://www.druglibrary.org
Marijuana as Medicine: http://www.calyx.com/~olsen/MEDICAL/
Medical Marijuana: http://www.hyperreal.org/drugs/marijuana/medical
Partnership for a Drug-Free America: http://www.drugfreeamerica.org/
Drug Watch International: http://www.DrugWatch.org/dw1.html
Californians For Compassionate Use: http://www.marijuana.org/
Marijuana Policy Project: http://www.mpp.org/
CNN Interactive: Weed Wars: Marijuana as Medicine: http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9702/weed.wars/
Pro and Con: http://www.nonline.com/procon/main_aug7.htm
ARF: http://www.arf.org/isd/pim/cannabae.html
National Institutes of Health: http://www.health.org/pubs/qdocs/marij/medicalmari juana.htm
Miami Herald: http://www.herald.com/extra/archive/medpot/