I suppose you'd need a starter as in a regular piston engine, to get it moving. Or at the very least, a rachet system to make sure it only moves in one direction.
It does raise the interesting question about over what range of speeds the engine will work efficiently, and how easy it is to start and stop running. And although you may not need a transmission you will need a gearbox for reverse. And I suspect you'd need some pretty sophisticated fuel injection for this wacky looking thing...
You know, If I were US intelligence I'd be watching the Kabul Al Jazeera office, personel, and visitors with everything we've got. It seems to me the easiest way to find bin Laden is to wait for him to send a message and then follow the courier(s)/mail trail/evidence analysis straight back to him.
The thing no one seems to mention is that every system has strengths and weaknesses, including the shadowy al quaeda. They may go to great lengths to keep their actions secret, but by the same token their communications are slow, infrequent, physical in nature, and (most importantly) difficult to authenticate, and even more difficult to organize. An opening in the network, restrained tracking and mapping of the network, and a tightly coordinated disinformation campaign could tear it completely apart. And that's just for starters.
One thing I noticed from the bin Laden video - he's just like Saddam Hussein or any other would-be dictator, using war to expand and consolidate his influence with himself on top. He's doing a credible job, although I think the media is overly-surprised at his control of spin - this is a man whose main purpose is recruitment. But the bigger he gets, the harder he'll fall, and his inaccessibility will ultimately be his undoing because he'll have no way to defend himself. He can easily be trapped and caught and/or badly discredited, with no way to defend himself, and in the process all the followers he's developed can be humiliated and shamed.
The most distinctive feature of American-style warfare in the recent past was our extreme aversion to casualties, which developed during Viet Nam. Our development of high-tech warfare was motivated at least in part by this. In the wake of 9-11 that fear has become irrelevant, and we're going to be applying miltech in new and interesting ways.
Tactically (thanks to the elusive nature of the enemy), the war we're in now is all about intelligence gathering, which we have developed to a high degree technologically while leaving more conventional man-on-the-scene methods behind. The question is whether technology alone can compensate. I suspect that it can to a much higher degree than people might suspect, especially in the mountains of Afghanistan, but in order for it to be really effective (especially in populated areas), we'll need the new capability to put a bug/bot-on-the-scene.
Of course I don't really know how effective our tech will be in this war, but one thing is for sure - we'll soon find out.
When this happened to the adapter for my powerbook, I never even bothered to get it replaced. The chances of it actually catching on fire are remote, so long as you don't leave it sitting next to your box of oily rags...
Really all this means is that notebooks today use quite a bit of power, and in the push to miniturize AC-DC converters they've been sacrificing efficiency and heat distribution to size. All the more reason the companies should be focusing more on making notebooks more efficient rather than just more powerful.
The service provider knowing the network is partially crippled (loss of transmitters) and passing the message along to those nearby the damaged coverage area, who then rebroadcast the message to those in range, and so on, building up a routing table to phones out of range.
If the system is designed primarily for emergencies, there is another easy way around it. The P2P system could or would only be activated during an emergency. Either the user activates an "emergency mode" on their handset, and/or the service provider sends out a universal activation.
That would cut down on spam (and you could always autoreport spam to your provider afterwards). As for privacy in your text messaging, it's the least of your worries during an emergency. 99.9% of the messages are going to be of the "Are you still alive" variety. Only if you expect to be exchanging sensitive information do you need the end-to-end encryption. And since end-to-end encryption also requires you to exchange keys, it could stress the network further.
Network stress is my main concern. Gnutella has some well-documented limitations, particularly the exponential increase of requests as the network grows. In this case the phone is looking for the closest route to a base station though, so it won't be too bad. It just can't replace the main network completely. The other problem is (potentially) memory.
The trouble with biomass (especially biodiesel) is that it is relatively less efficient than wind or solar, requiring much more land than either for the same energy output (Although they also require substantial amounts of land relative to fossil or nuclear). It also requires water. The saving grace of all of these technologies is they can be integrated with other systems and favor distributed power generation. Wind systems have small footprints and work well with regular farms or ranchland. Biomass can be derived from waste products. And solar can be easily integrated into the urban environment (on roofs, on top of carports, and theoretically many other places) and works best in the sunny deserts which you can't develop much anyway.
Hydrogen may be low energy, but it's also light. That's why they use it on the space shuttle. However it is diffucult to build an engine with sufficient thrust, which is why they use SRBs for liftoff. But you don't need so much thrust for a plane.
The main problem is building the tanks for such high pressures/cold temperatures/small molecules. They've been working on it for quite some time, and with advanced materials they have been improving liquid hydrogen storage.
Naturally hydrogen is an intermediate storage form of energy, generated either directly through chemical photolysis or indirectly via electrolysis. The point is, both those sources are renewable - you don't need to dril for oil, although you can generate that way. Naturally 2nd law of thermodynamics says you'll lose energy in the process but this was inevitable. You can't run a jet on sunlight or windpower, and chemical fuels are much better at storing energy than electrical devices like batteries (and even batteries lose energy as heat when they're charged). Hence all the research into fuel cells.
If you're going to generate hydrogen via electrolysis (most flexible solution) you need electricity, which you can get from wind, solar, or hydro. And although they are to date more expensive than fossil fuels they've been coming down steadily in price, to the point where solar and wind are only about twice as expensive (Hydro varies depending on source). Mass production, a relatively minor improvment in cost or efficiency, or a rise in the price in fossil fuels could shave that to nothing. And that's before you figure in the cost of the grid. So yes, they are economically viable.
Well at the very least, hydrogen is a renewable intermediate energy source, unlike the oil used to formulate AvGas these days. And presumably it would be less polluting as well. Both excellent reasons for gradually making the switch, but I don't really see how it would make a plane less of a bomb. The synopsis claims it's safer in an auto crash (presumably because it disperses rapidly), but would that necessarily apply to an airplane? Sure, it wouldn't have burned in the WTC as long, and possibly not as hot, but H2 being a gas wouldn't it have been more explosive?
For the record I wasn't referring exclusively to high-energy physics. Some of the more risky biological and nuclear experimentation would be better if not conducted on earth, so that radiation/invasive species/deadly diseases wouldn't spread so easily.
As for high energy physics, it would best be pursued on a space station, maybe at a lagrangian point or farther, or on an asteroid.
As for the cost, I never said you had to ship all the components from earth. Naturally space-based manufacturing should be in place before hand. There is plenty of money and products to be made up there, if only you're willing to take the initial costs and risks.
Is it just me, or does this behavior sound suspiciously familiar to one Microsoft Outlook which has a tendency to automatically execute hidden scripts, allowing viruses to propagate with unprecedented ease?
I guess they didn't want the Mac users to feel left out on the fun.
You know, I'm a big fan of scientific experimentation, but when it comes to technologies that have even the slight possibility of being destructive - as in "goodbye planet earth and the human race" kind of destructive - perhaps it would be best to conduct this sort of research off-world. I think the technology is there to try permanent bases on the moon at least. Maybe on the moon, or on a space station, or an asteroid somewhere. Just not here.
On the surface, Voicestream's plan doesn't sound bad. In Japan, you pay 0.1 yen per 128 byte packet, or about $75 per 10mb. $40 for 10mb is only half that, at about 0.05 cents per packet. Cost-wise, it's fine - but you have to buy your packets ahead of time, and you have to buy your voice minutes separately! In Japan, you buy your (subsidized to be cheap) phone, pay a flat $3/mo fee for the activation and use, and then just pay as you go by packets you send or request, be it for voice or data. As a result, text messaging in Japan (and europe) has become hugely popular and people use their phones for practically everything.
When are the American companies going to learn that what is holding the cellular market back is not so much the technology as the bass-ackwards system of purchasing a calling plan for a whole year with a certain number a minutes a month and a preposterous number of restrictions while still having to pay for incoming calls. It's overly complex, intimidating, and autocratic. These idiotic games are precisely the reason I do not yet own a mobile phone. I don't mind paying more for the phone, but I won't pay for more minutes/data than I use, and I hate playing guessing games.
It irritates me to see US technology so far behind Europe and Japan for such a stupid, greedy reason. As far as I'm concerned, a mobile phone should work anywhere in the world that a network exists, and have consistent, per-use billing regardless of where you are. Until we have something approaching that in America, I'm not buying. Here's hoping Sprint or ATT figure it out.
Obviously, I think such a system, while not 100% effective, would be worth it, as I said above. And on a broader note, even though no device - not even an elevator - can ever be 100% effective, that doesn't mean we shouldn't use them. To use your example, elevators, even with the occasional breakdown, are incredibly useful and are far more enabling than stairs. I may not know how to build one, but somebody else can and I can make much use of them (particularly considering that I work on the 8th floor). Yes, poking holes and pointing out flaws in suggestions is valid and useful, but EVERYTHING has flaws and holes, because perfection is a lie. The point of pointing them out is to fix them or develop alternatives. If you can't be bothered to even suggest a wild idea in addition to your warnings, you're really not nearly as much help to the process as you think you are. Not a Wright Brother, but a Ralph Nader.
And perhaps you didn't notice, but we don't exactly have the luxury of sitting on our asses trying to find some sort of non-existent "perfect" solution. We're going to have to take risks, bear costs, and work out problems on the fly. Mistakes will be made, and problems will be encountered, but it beats letting some secret group of nihlistic assholes have their way with us while we're crititcizing suggestions we haven't even bothered to try.
Obviously you are right. The first problem in this case was the failure of existing systems to catch obvious dangers. The fractitious nature of the US military, police, and civil intelligence and security is one thing we're absolutely going to have to fix. Unfortunately, gross inefficiency, poor communication, and impenetrable beauracracy are a hallmark of far too many businesses and government agencies.
Well, there's yet another arguement for wide standards in protocol. Perhaps we'll learn much leaner and more effective methods from all this.
Putting aside the fact that there are numerous terrorists who aren't Arab (which may be appropriate in this select case), is it really that easy to pick out an Arab versus some other ethnic group if they dress and groom themselves in a westernized manner? I doubt it. There's such a huge variety of ethnicities in America that it can be nearly impossible to say with certainty where someone is from just by looking at them, even if you're trained to do so. If Mr. Atta were going by the name of Mr. Mancini or Peres or Rodriguez, I bet hardly anyone would have thought of him as Arab.
The problem I have with so many of these sorts of arguements, is that they generally fail to offer solutions. I've seen: many petitions and rallys for peace in the wake of the attacks; dire predictions of the end of civil liberties; Not one of them addressed the issue of "well if we don't do this than what should we do?". Which tells me that they don't know, don't have any better ideas, and don't want to draw attention the fact because it may thwart their political agenda. But ignoring the problem isn't going to make it go away.
So, facial recognition isn't perfect. As he said, if you cross-reference the system against an identity card or fingerprint or retina, which I believe is entirely acceptable for someplace as security-sensitive as an airport, you have a much stronger system. In which case, if someone was flagged by the biometric system you could discreetly stop them and verify their identity. And even if you didn't use a secondary means of identification, looking for one terrorist in a thousand is MUCH easier than looking for one in a million. It would at least be enough for the system to tell you to take a closer look at what you are doing.
Your personal rights end where other people's begin. This is why you have to have a license to drive, or fly, or shoot a gun in the first place - vehicles and weapons are extremely dangerous to others if used improperly or intentionally. If it were up to me, I'd be adding these systems to every car, truck, boat, and weapon rental or dealership as well. I doubt the terrorists will strike again by air anytime soon, but these other routes are wide open.
Well, if we really wanted to be accurate and straightforward (i.e. not having to ask whether someone is an American Indian or an East Indian when somebody says "Indian"), "American Aboriginals" or some short variation on that (amerabs?) would make the most sense. But I doubt that would ever catch on, since "Indian" is so firmly entrenched in our vocabulary. We'd sooner stop calling East Indians "Indians" than that.
Well, with a large enough battery you could buffer against anything... Or an oversized solar array to compensate for less light... or a replaceable backup power source for emergency use (like a zinc-air battery)... or a multipath network to take up the slack if one relay is shut down for some reason (not the case here)... or whatever. Point being, there are simple solutions around this problem. I think it IS here, but we're only now just starting to realize it and shake the technology down into a truly useful and inexpensive form.
See, now this is cool. Obviously the uses for this developing mode of technology go way beyond the Native American sphere. My favorite thing about it is that it doesn't rely on wires for power OR transmission. A handful of solar-powered relays looks a lot nicer, is a lot cheaper, is much less intrusive, and is much more easily scalable and robust than a bunch of wires strewn everywhere(and thankfully people are finally starting to appreciate that with solar and other distributed power generation).
He's guilty of foolish technological optimism
on
Blaming Encryption
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· Score: 2
Should Zimmerman feel guilty that his program was used for this? No, because he wasn't the one using it.
Should he feel guilty for making such a powerful tool available to anyone while naively assuming the use of this technology would be free expression, and ignoring the possiblity that it could be used by terrorists, criminals, and other unsavory people and organizations? You're damn right he should.
Technology, by its very nature, is amoral. It can be used for good or ill, depending on who uses it and how. Whether or not a technology is good is defined not by what it is, but by whom it is used and for what purpose.
PGP and similar programs enabled anyone to communicate electronically in perfect privacy, removing the balance of public scrutiny. And when you combine that with the facts that it is easier to kill and destroy than save and create, and that the world is full of people willing to do so for any number of reasons, it should have come as no surprise that those people would be significantly strengthened by this.
I suppose if Phil hadn't written PGP somebody else would have done it - but that doesn't change how naive he was to think that it would automatically make the world a better place. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I wish people would learn that lesson.
Some sort of intelligent system would have to be used, of course. The transmissions would have to be encoded, and remote control could not be used without the pilot hitting the panic button. If the transmission was blocked, the plane would revert to autopilot.
Loss of privacy is not necessarily loss of liberty
on
More WTC News
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Call it my contrarian nature, but amidst all the usual self-centered-libertarian-police-state-paranoia, I feel compelled to point out that loss of privacy is not necessarily loss of liberty. Nowhere is it guaranteed even in the US constitution; never has it been established that privacy actually produces a freer society; and in practice the idea that you can actually have privacy is a total myth. David Brin makes a good case in his for all of this and more in his controversial The Transparent Society (chapter one available here). His core arguement is for complete transparency - that all citizens should be allowed to observe the activities of individuals, government, and business - rather than the alternative of those having the power to do so using surveillance to their private advantage. While you'll almost certainly have objections, it's well worth consideration, and it's always worth it to look at things from an alternative perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose you'd need a starter as in a regular piston engine, to get it moving. Or at the very least, a rachet system to make sure it only moves in one direction.
It does raise the interesting question about over what range of speeds the engine will work efficiently, and how easy it is to start and stop running. And although you may not need a transmission you will need a gearbox for reverse. And I suspect you'd need some pretty sophisticated fuel injection for this wacky looking thing...
Forget planets, what we need are algorithms that can generate everyday objects like people.
That video wasn't faxed. And we can trace electronic communications - that's what we're good at.
You know, If I were US intelligence I'd be watching the Kabul Al Jazeera office, personel, and visitors with everything we've got. It seems to me the easiest way to find bin Laden is to wait for him to send a message and then follow the courier(s)/mail trail/evidence analysis straight back to him.
The thing no one seems to mention is that every system has strengths and weaknesses, including the shadowy al quaeda. They may go to great lengths to keep their actions secret, but by the same token their communications are slow, infrequent, physical in nature, and (most importantly) difficult to authenticate, and even more difficult to organize. An opening in the network, restrained tracking and mapping of the network, and a tightly coordinated disinformation campaign could tear it completely apart. And that's just for starters.
One thing I noticed from the bin Laden video - he's just like Saddam Hussein or any other would-be dictator, using war to expand and consolidate his influence with himself on top. He's doing a credible job, although I think the media is overly-surprised at his control of spin - this is a man whose main purpose is recruitment. But the bigger he gets, the harder he'll fall, and his inaccessibility will ultimately be his undoing because he'll have no way to defend himself. He can easily be trapped and caught and/or badly discredited, with no way to defend himself, and in the process all the followers he's developed can be humiliated and shamed.
The most distinctive feature of American-style warfare in the recent past was our extreme aversion to casualties, which developed during Viet Nam. Our development of high-tech warfare was motivated at least in part by this. In the wake of 9-11 that fear has become irrelevant, and we're going to be applying miltech in new and interesting ways.
Tactically (thanks to the elusive nature of the enemy), the war we're in now is all about intelligence gathering, which we have developed to a high degree technologically while leaving more conventional man-on-the-scene methods behind. The question is whether technology alone can compensate. I suspect that it can to a much higher degree than people might suspect, especially in the mountains of Afghanistan, but in order for it to be really effective (especially in populated areas), we'll need the new capability to put a bug/bot-on-the-scene.
Of course I don't really know how effective our tech will be in this war, but one thing is for sure - we'll soon find out.
When this happened to the adapter for my powerbook, I never even bothered to get it replaced. The chances of it actually catching on fire are remote, so long as you don't leave it sitting next to your box of oily rags...
Really all this means is that notebooks today use quite a bit of power, and in the push to miniturize AC-DC converters they've been sacrificing efficiency and heat distribution to size. All the more reason the companies should be focusing more on making notebooks more efficient rather than just more powerful.
The service provider knowing the network is partially crippled (loss of transmitters) and passing the message along to those nearby the damaged coverage area, who then rebroadcast the message to those in range, and so on, building up a routing table to phones out of range.
If the system is designed primarily for emergencies, there is another easy way around it. The P2P system could or would only be activated during an emergency. Either the user activates an "emergency mode" on their handset, and/or the service provider sends out a universal activation.
That would cut down on spam (and you could always autoreport spam to your provider afterwards). As for privacy in your text messaging, it's the least of your worries during an emergency. 99.9% of the messages are going to be of the "Are you still alive" variety. Only if you expect to be exchanging sensitive information do you need the end-to-end encryption. And since end-to-end encryption also requires you to exchange keys, it could stress the network further.
Network stress is my main concern. Gnutella has some well-documented limitations, particularly the exponential increase of requests as the network grows. In this case the phone is looking for the closest route to a base station though, so it won't be too bad. It just can't replace the main network completely. The other problem is (potentially) memory.
The trouble with biomass (especially biodiesel) is that it is relatively less efficient than wind or solar, requiring much more land than either for the same energy output (Although they also require substantial amounts of land relative to fossil or nuclear). It also requires water. The saving grace of all of these technologies is they can be integrated with other systems and favor distributed power generation. Wind systems have small footprints and work well with regular farms or ranchland. Biomass can be derived from waste products. And solar can be easily integrated into the urban environment (on roofs, on top of carports, and theoretically many other places) and works best in the sunny deserts which you can't develop much anyway.
Hydrogen may be low energy, but it's also light. That's why they use it on the space shuttle. However it is diffucult to build an engine with sufficient thrust, which is why they use SRBs for liftoff. But you don't need so much thrust for a plane.
The main problem is building the tanks for such high pressures/cold temperatures/small molecules. They've been working on it for quite some time, and with advanced materials they have been improving liquid hydrogen storage.
Naturally hydrogen is an intermediate storage form of energy, generated either directly through chemical photolysis or indirectly via electrolysis. The point is, both those sources are renewable - you don't need to dril for oil, although you can generate that way. Naturally 2nd law of thermodynamics says you'll lose energy in the process but this was inevitable. You can't run a jet on sunlight or windpower, and chemical fuels are much better at storing energy than electrical devices like batteries (and even batteries lose energy as heat when they're charged). Hence all the research into fuel cells.
If you're going to generate hydrogen via electrolysis (most flexible solution) you need electricity, which you can get from wind, solar, or hydro. And although they are to date more expensive than fossil fuels they've been coming down steadily in price, to the point where solar and wind are only about twice as expensive (Hydro varies depending on source). Mass production, a relatively minor improvment in cost or efficiency, or a rise in the price in fossil fuels could shave that to nothing. And that's before you figure in the cost of the grid. So yes, they are economically viable.
Well at the very least, hydrogen is a renewable intermediate energy source, unlike the oil used to formulate AvGas these days. And presumably it would be less polluting as well. Both excellent reasons for gradually making the switch, but I don't really see how it would make a plane less of a bomb. The synopsis claims it's safer in an auto crash (presumably because it disperses rapidly), but would that necessarily apply to an airplane? Sure, it wouldn't have burned in the WTC as long, and possibly not as hot, but H2 being a gas wouldn't it have been more explosive?
For the record I wasn't referring exclusively to high-energy physics. Some of the more risky biological and nuclear experimentation would be better if not conducted on earth, so that radiation/invasive species/deadly diseases wouldn't spread so easily.
As for high energy physics, it would best be pursued on a space station, maybe at a lagrangian point or farther, or on an asteroid.
As for the cost, I never said you had to ship all the components from earth. Naturally space-based manufacturing should be in place before hand. There is plenty of money and products to be made up there, if only you're willing to take the initial costs and risks.
Is it just me, or does this behavior sound suspiciously familiar to one Microsoft Outlook which has a tendency to automatically execute hidden scripts, allowing viruses to propagate with unprecedented ease?
I guess they didn't want the Mac users to feel left out on the fun.
You know, I'm a big fan of scientific experimentation, but when it comes to technologies that have even the slight possibility of being destructive - as in "goodbye planet earth and the human race" kind of destructive - perhaps it would be best to conduct this sort of research off-world. I think the technology is there to try permanent bases on the moon at least. Maybe on the moon, or on a space station, or an asteroid somewhere. Just not here.
On the surface, Voicestream's plan doesn't sound bad. In Japan, you pay 0.1 yen per 128 byte packet, or about $75 per 10mb. $40 for 10mb is only half that, at about 0.05 cents per packet. Cost-wise, it's fine - but you have to buy your packets ahead of time, and you have to buy your voice minutes separately! In Japan, you buy your (subsidized to be cheap) phone, pay a flat $3/mo fee for the activation and use, and then just pay as you go by packets you send or request, be it for voice or data. As a result, text messaging in Japan (and europe) has become hugely popular and people use their phones for practically everything.
When are the American companies going to learn that what is holding the cellular market back is not so much the technology as the bass-ackwards system of purchasing a calling plan for a whole year with a certain number a minutes a month and a preposterous number of restrictions while still having to pay for incoming calls. It's overly complex, intimidating, and autocratic. These idiotic games are precisely the reason I do not yet own a mobile phone. I don't mind paying more for the phone, but I won't pay for more minutes/data than I use, and I hate playing guessing games.
It irritates me to see US technology so far behind Europe and Japan for such a stupid, greedy reason. As far as I'm concerned, a mobile phone should work anywhere in the world that a network exists, and have consistent, per-use billing regardless of where you are. Until we have something approaching that in America, I'm not buying. Here's hoping Sprint or ATT figure it out.
Obviously, I think such a system, while not 100% effective, would be worth it, as I said above. And on a broader note, even though no device - not even an elevator - can ever be 100% effective, that doesn't mean we shouldn't use them. To use your example, elevators, even with the occasional breakdown, are incredibly useful and are far more enabling than stairs. I may not know how to build one, but somebody else can and I can make much use of them (particularly considering that I work on the 8th floor). Yes, poking holes and pointing out flaws in suggestions is valid and useful, but EVERYTHING has flaws and holes, because perfection is a lie. The point of pointing them out is to fix them or develop alternatives. If you can't be bothered to even suggest a wild idea in addition to your warnings, you're really not nearly as much help to the process as you think you are. Not a Wright Brother, but a Ralph Nader.
And perhaps you didn't notice, but we don't exactly have the luxury of sitting on our asses trying to find some sort of non-existent "perfect" solution. We're going to have to take risks, bear costs, and work out problems on the fly. Mistakes will be made, and problems will be encountered, but it beats letting some secret group of nihlistic assholes have their way with us while we're crititcizing suggestions we haven't even bothered to try.
Obviously you are right. The first problem in this case was the failure of existing systems to catch obvious dangers. The fractitious nature of the US military, police, and civil intelligence and security is one thing we're absolutely going to have to fix. Unfortunately, gross inefficiency, poor communication, and impenetrable beauracracy are a hallmark of far too many businesses and government agencies.
Well, there's yet another arguement for wide standards in protocol. Perhaps we'll learn much leaner and more effective methods from all this.
Putting aside the fact that there are numerous terrorists who aren't Arab (which may be appropriate in this select case), is it really that easy to pick out an Arab versus some other ethnic group if they dress and groom themselves in a westernized manner? I doubt it. There's such a huge variety of ethnicities in America that it can be nearly impossible to say with certainty where someone is from just by looking at them, even if you're trained to do so. If Mr. Atta were going by the name of Mr. Mancini or Peres or Rodriguez, I bet hardly anyone would have thought of him as Arab.
The problem I have with so many of these sorts of arguements, is that they generally fail to offer solutions. I've seen: many petitions and rallys for peace in the wake of the attacks; dire predictions of the end of civil liberties; Not one of them addressed the issue of "well if we don't do this than what should we do?". Which tells me that they don't know, don't have any better ideas, and don't want to draw attention the fact because it may thwart their political agenda. But ignoring the problem isn't going to make it go away.
So, facial recognition isn't perfect. As he said, if you cross-reference the system against an identity card or fingerprint or retina, which I believe is entirely acceptable for someplace as security-sensitive as an airport, you have a much stronger system. In which case, if someone was flagged by the biometric system you could discreetly stop them and verify their identity. And even if you didn't use a secondary means of identification, looking for one terrorist in a thousand is MUCH easier than looking for one in a million. It would at least be enough for the system to tell you to take a closer look at what you are doing.
Your personal rights end where other people's begin. This is why you have to have a license to drive, or fly, or shoot a gun in the first place - vehicles and weapons are extremely dangerous to others if used improperly or intentionally. If it were up to me, I'd be adding these systems to every car, truck, boat, and weapon rental or dealership as well. I doubt the terrorists will strike again by air anytime soon, but these other routes are wide open.
Well, if we really wanted to be accurate and straightforward (i.e. not having to ask whether someone is an American Indian or an East Indian when somebody says "Indian"), "American Aboriginals" or some short variation on that (amerabs?) would make the most sense. But I doubt that would ever catch on, since "Indian" is so firmly entrenched in our vocabulary. We'd sooner stop calling East Indians "Indians" than that.
Well, with a large enough battery you could buffer against anything... Or an oversized solar array to compensate for less light... or a replaceable backup power source for emergency use (like a zinc-air battery)... or a multipath network to take up the slack if one relay is shut down for some reason (not the case here)... or whatever. Point being, there are simple solutions around this problem. I think it IS here, but we're only now just starting to realize it and shake the technology down into a truly useful and inexpensive form.
See, now this is cool. Obviously the uses for this developing mode of technology go way beyond the Native American sphere. My favorite thing about it is that it doesn't rely on wires for power OR transmission. A handful of solar-powered relays looks a lot nicer, is a lot cheaper, is much less intrusive, and is much more easily scalable and robust than a bunch of wires strewn everywhere(and thankfully people are finally starting to appreciate that with solar and other distributed power generation).
Should Zimmerman feel guilty that his program was used for this? No, because he wasn't the one using it.
Should he feel guilty for making such a powerful tool available to anyone while naively assuming the use of this technology would be free expression, and ignoring the possiblity that it could be used by terrorists, criminals, and other unsavory people and organizations? You're damn right he should.
Technology, by its very nature, is amoral. It can be used for good or ill, depending on who uses it and how. Whether or not a technology is good is defined not by what it is, but by whom it is used and for what purpose.
PGP and similar programs enabled anyone to communicate electronically in perfect privacy, removing the balance of public scrutiny. And when you combine that with the facts that it is easier to kill and destroy than save and create, and that the world is full of people willing to do so for any number of reasons, it should have come as no surprise that those people would be significantly strengthened by this.
I suppose if Phil hadn't written PGP somebody else would have done it - but that doesn't change how naive he was to think that it would automatically make the world a better place. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I wish people would learn that lesson.
cryptochrome
Some sort of intelligent system would have to be used, of course. The transmissions would have to be encoded, and remote control could not be used without the pilot hitting the panic button. If the transmission was blocked, the plane would revert to autopilot.
Call it my contrarian nature, but amidst all the usual self-centered-libertarian-police-state-paranoia, I feel compelled to point out that loss of privacy is not necessarily loss of liberty. Nowhere is it guaranteed even in the US constitution; never has it been established that privacy actually produces a freer society; and in practice the idea that you can actually have privacy is a total myth. David Brin makes a good case in his for all of this and more in his controversial The Transparent Society (chapter one available here). His core arguement is for complete transparency - that all citizens should be allowed to observe the activities of individuals, government, and business - rather than the alternative of those having the power to do so using surveillance to their private advantage. While you'll almost certainly have objections, it's well worth consideration, and it's always worth it to look at things from an alternative perspective.