Cryptography rights are the Second Amendment issue of the Internet. If you're going to write your congresscritter, that's a good point to make...
Another point to make is that it simply will not work. You can argue about trading liberty for security, but in this case, you are trading liberty for insecurity.
Congress is talking about putting back doors into cryptography schemes. There is a good Second Amendment argument against this, but some congressmen just don't care about it. So show how it will fail.
First off, we must remember that we are dealing with truly elite terrorists here, not the 31337 ones we have been used to. The attack we just sustained was a work of twisted, despicable genius. Such people will break this law without a thought. If they can't get somebody to sell them crypto without a backdoor, they'll just get it off a.sig file from old USENET postings (strong crypto has been written in four lines of Perl). This won't stop them. It will stop law-abiding citizens.
If there is a back door, this means that the government has a key that would break a given encryption scheme. That's way too many eggs in one basket.
Do you know what that key would fetch on the black market? Do you know what people would do to get it?
Like people in any walk of life, there are law enforcement agents and police officers with crime in their hearts. And one dirty cop with access to a key could make millions selling it.
Even if not, remember a few years ago, distributed crypto key cracking. Someone would encrypt a message using a crypto scheme, and hold a contest to see who could crack it first (thus, this was a "white hat" exercise). So people came up with programs that everybody could run on their computers, so that they had thousands of computers trying bazillions of keys until they got something that worked.
If the Fed required back doors, and I was a cybercriminal that wanted to crack it (perhaps to steal credit card data from online transactions...), I would build a distributed cracker, and marry it to a virus or worm. Infect millions of machines and have them busily cracking the Master Key for me.
Let me suggest that we also brainstorm here for useful laws that Congress could pass. I think that when an event like this occurs, there is tremendous political pressure to do something. Passing laws that won't help the situation, may even hurt the situation, but look like they help will be popular with voters. And if a lone voice turns and says "I won't vote for this because it won't work," they're not likely to get re-elected.
Somehow, I doubt the Man you claim to follow would commit such acts of violence and take the lives of more innocent people. It's a sad, sad state of affairs when Christians rationalize this kind of behavoir.
More blood will be shed, no matter what we do. If we act, we may kill dozens. If we do not, others will kill thousands. Christians cannot stand by and watch evil occur. If the only way to stop a great harm is by causing a small harm, then harm we must.
Christianity has never been entirely pacifist. The last days of Christ appear that way, but that was because Jesus knew that he was the one who had to die. When a Roman soldier asked Christ what he needed to do to enter the kingdom of Heaven, Jesus said nothing about leaving the army. He told the soldier to be honest and fair in his dealings.
If it is Christian to abhor the use of military force, why does nobody speak out against good Christian nations holding military forces?
All this being said, we must be very careful in our use. If we strike back in vengeance, we are likely to get full of ourselves, kill a lot more than the target, and both defy the will of God and create more enemies to strike back.
If you know a way to stop this threat without the use of deadly force, please let us know. If you don't, ask yourself whether the Christian thing to do is to let them strike again.
As Christians, we must forgive our attackers. As Christians, out of love for our neighbors, we must make sure this does not happen again.
Terrorists are usually small cells of people, very small and pesky targets. They are usually not nations or governments in charge of large land masses.
A nuclear weapon is good for destroying large land masses, such as cities. Direct hits can also destroy hard targets such as bunkers, but will also "erase" the local area. This is a sure way to piss off all the locals. As far as I am concerned, a nuke is a terrorist attack, as it is anti-civilian rather than anti-military.
If you dropped a nuke on the terrorists, you would make the surrounding countries mad at you, both the governments themselves and the individual civilians. You would start an old-fashioned, military-to-military war, and you would create dozens of terrorist cells for every one you destroyed.
The weapons you need for this war are the surgical ones. This would be assassins, commandos, SEALs, that sort of thing. The biggest weapon I would imagine would be an F-119 with laser guided bombs.
Sure, you're going to piss off the locals by persuing our enemies on their soverignty. But not as much as if you kill 50,000 of their civilians. See what that did to us!
Put yourself in palenstinian shoes. Imagine your father being humilated in front of you (stripped and then walked on or something that stupid) and then shot with an American M16 with American Apache helicopters over head. What do these people begin to think? Imagine having to wait through a 2 hour check-point just to get to work, and then 2 hour line up on the way back; showing your id, randomally corralled and cavidy searched. Seriously. You would grow up completly numb. Completely without value. Irrational.
Sound like our terriorists, hunh? What happens if we actually *made* those terrorists with our own actions? What do we have to say for ourselves?
If the above happened, then we screwed up, big time. And we must learn from this.
I say now is not the time for comdemnation, but a time for reflection. Let us not judge those less we walk in their shoes and drink from their cup. Let us not restrict the freedoms of others less we loose our democracy. Let us follow the doctrine of the second testiment, the god of compassion.
I am a Catholic, and I believe in compassion. That is why I feel we need to destroy those responsible.
I do not ask for vengeance; that's not my call. I ask for whatever action is necessary to prevent this from happening again. Thus we show compassion for the next round of terrorism victims. If you can come up with a more effective way than rendering those responsible incapable of repeating their crimes, I ask you to speak up now.
It's like police. You can sit there, and explain how the Man has beaten you down, how the government has made you into the menace you are. The cop doesn't care, because he does care about the civilians he is protecting. And whatever you say, all he wants is for you to drop the gun. Now.
To some people, this is about vengeance and judgement. To me, this is about prevention. Protecting our civilians is what our military is for. To say that we shouldn't counter is to say that we should never have responded to Japan back in the forties, it is to say that we should let these people walk all over us.
People will die. Innocent people will die. I will gladly kill a hundred to save thousands. That is Christian calculus.
I oppose a missile shield because of the cost/benefit ratio, and because of the nigh-religious faith that high tech will solve all of our problems.
What have our latest attacks been? Terrorists hijacking passenger liners. Manure bombs in U-hauls. Letter bombs out of a portable shack.
All of these have been low tech attacks; the latest attacks required no cool technology, though it required heavy training. Ten years ago, our biggest threat was a slew of Soviet or Chinese missiles. Sure, missiles are a threat today, but the above represents a bigger threat.
Here in the US, we seem to think that there is a high tech solution to any national defense problem. We give our soldiers laser sighted weapons and PDAs, produce stealth fighters and atomic submarines, and have almost turned every one of our uniformed defense forces into some kind of a technician. But then look at what we face.
In Vietnam, we promised to bomb the VC back into the stone age. Meanwhile, they were killing us with dung-dipped punji sticks. We couldn't bomb them into the stone age, because they were already there. Our beautiful, missile-equipped fightercraft had to have guns retromounted on them once we found out that our high-tech IFF didn't work.
High tech beat Saddam Hussein, I'll give you that. High tech is good. But it doesn't solve all our problems.
The Missile Shield will give us less protection than if we spent the same amount of money on less "sexy" projects, such as Marine and infantry divisions. Worse, it will make us feel safe, while our enemies (who can't afford ICBMs) can walk right in.
I don't remember the song, but a line comes to mind: "Just when we're sheltered under paper/the rockets come at us sideways".
If those responsible are in the United States, we should hunt them down with the full force of our law enforcement power and prosecute them to the hilt. As a Christian and a Catholic, I abhor the death penalty. In this case, I would ask for the death penalty. Not because of vengeance; my faith gives me no right to ask for that. But because someone capable of plotting this is either capable of escape, or capable of planning more such attacks from his cell. Those responsible must be rendered harmless, even if it renders them dead.
If they are in a foriegn nation, the justice system and due process no longer apply. Once you leave your borders, the justice system gives way to diplomatic efforts--and diplomacy involves both diplomats and Green Berets.
Once we find those responsible, we should certainly ask the host country to capture them and extradite them. That being said, we should be ready to enter said country and capture or (more likely) destroy the assailants. Then we should apologize to said nation for the temporary intrusion, and leave.
This looks like a foriegn Arab attack per the latest news reports. If this is the case, remember that there are a lot of powerful Arab nations that don't like us, there are certain cells of Arab terrorists that absolutely hate us, and we as Americans appear ready to run anybody wearing a turban out on a rail.
I am no diplomat, but I figure that the proper response to this is a surgical strike that eliminates the terrorist cell, and possibly certain of its supporters and suppliers. The latter are not innocent civilians, anymore than you or I would be if we supplied software to the Mafia.
Producing less than a surgical strike would leave this cell free to commit more acts, and teach the rest of the world that there will be no response. Producing more than a surgical strike (such as an invasion, or a nuke, as some would have us do) will unnecessarily anger decent Arabs in decent Arab nations.
We must draw a very obvious line in the sand between those responsible and their countrymen. The statement that we must make is: "We are America, and we don't care what color your skin is or which god, if any, you worship. But if you kill Americans, you will be destroyed."
In summary, those responsible that live within our borders should be persued and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, with the full rights of any other defendant. Those responsible that live outside our borders should be extradited to us and persecuted as above. Failing that, those responsible that live outside our borders should become targets of the United States military forces and any other military and diplomatic powers we can bring to bear upon them.
As other posters have mentioned, the government is likely to respond to this attack by attempting to severly curtail personal freedoms in a "war on terrorism".
I am taking a pre-emptive strike against that, and I invite you all to join in. The fun part is, it's all completely non-violent and legal. All you kill are trees.
I am writing my congressman and senators. I ask other Slashdotters to do the same. You can find them and their mailing addresses at www.house.gov and www.senate.gov.
You will want to snailmail them on this one. Snailmail seems to have more impact on legislators than email.
Come up with your own wording, or use my words below as a template (or even literally--I don't mind).
This day has seen a tremendous tragedy. We must remember, however, to be deliberate in how we react to this horror.
There has been a lot of political pressure lately to get on a "tough on crime" bandwagon. This bandwagon believes that we must give up certain constitutional freedoms in order to better protect ourselves. Thus we have attempts to limit ownership of weapons, attempts to legislate the internet, attempts to criminalize the civilian use of cryptographic privacy, and so forth. There is a knee-jerk reaction, whenever the United States is attacked, to trade basic American freedoms for supposed security.
I am writing to plead with you to fight this bandwagon. Yes, we must be tough on crime. Yes, we absolutely must discover who did this to us and take whatever steps are necessary to neutralize the threat. But to attempt to do so by removing our freedoms is doomed to failure and destructive to America as a whole. To do that would be to cooperate with the terrorists who wish to destroy us.
Though you are likely thinking along the same lines, I must point out that this was a difficult, professional attack that took elite personnel--something entirely different from the regular street crime our police face every day. They successfully hijacked three or four aircraft in one day, without one failed attempt. They bypassed some of the toughest security civilians are subject to. The caliber of terrorist that must have done this will be unfettered by attempts to control gun ownership, internet usage, cryptography or dozens of other laws. The penalty of law is irrelevant when you are willing to die in your attack. If you can get a weapon past security (which I must assume these people did), getting your hands on one in the first place is easy, regardless of how many laws are in place.
If we, as a nation, react to this by instituting laws "for our own protection" that stomp all over the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States, we will do no harm to those who attack us, but tremendous harm to our own law-abiding citizens.
Terrorism is a form of warfare that does not attack our military assets, but the spirit of the civilians. Though it looks otherwise, the war is not fought in New York, not fought at the Pentagon, not fought at Oklahoma City. It is fought in the halls of Congress. I ask you to stand tall and fight for the values that make America great against your colleagues who think it is safest to stay in our foxholes and turn the United States into a police state. This will not be popular, but it is needed.
I thank you for your time, your attention, and your courage.
I'm getting a bit sick of this sort of sentiment. What appears to be a small cell of people wreak tremendous havoc on the United States, and we have people ready to destroy a nation? No wonder so many people hate Americans. I'm beginning to hate Americans,,and I am one.
Besides, we'd be horrified if we turned Afghanistan into a parking lot and then found out that it was the Elbonians all along.
I don't believe fighting back will work. History has proven that the big country can not fight guerilla warfare battles and succeed. One reason we won our fight against England 250 years ago is because WE were the terrorists.
We were not terrorists in the American Revolutionary War. We were guerillas.
Guerillas fight by performing sneak attacks on opposing military forces, by sniping and similar means. Guerillas are usually quite interested in saving their own hides, and avoid suicide attacks. By avoiding the standard massed musket tactics of the day and learning hide-and-shoot from the natives, we were able to inflict massive casualties on British military targets. The aim of guerilla warfare is the same as that of conventional warfare: to destroy your opponent's military assets until they are no longer able to make war with you, and must sue for peace.
Terrorists "fight" by performing secret operations to cause massive damage to civilian (and sometimes military) centers. The aim is not to damage military assets, but to produce political pressure by panicking the civilian base. Our representative government makes us a prime target for terrorism, since what affects the civilians affects our leadership. States where the government "hates" its own people (such as Iraq) are basically immune to terrorism; if you blow up a bunch of Iraqis, Hussein will just laugh. Passenger aircraft, shopping malls, sporting events, and large buildings are usual targets for terrorism.
The US has arguably engaged in terrorism. Our atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrorist in nature, but military rather than sneaky. IMHO, US economic sanctions are a "less violent" relative to a terrorist attack; see above for why we haven't overthrown Hussein by sanctioning Iraq, nor Castro by sanctioning Cuba.
Hijacking. How? How were they able to smuggle bombs or guns (most likely guns) aboard these planes? When every time I fly somewhere, I am photographed, poked, prodded, xrayed, and scanned?
Somebody was not doing their job.
I think that we had extremely competent terrorists, not incompetent security. Remember that they made four attempts, on the same day, and they succeeded every time. If it was incompetence, you wouldn't expect it across the board--we would have reports of unsuccessful attempts to smuggle weapons onto an airplane this morning.
I can think of three ways to get through this sort of security.
Compromise the security people themselves, by having your own people as security moles. They see their friends coming through, they don't mention what they see on the X-ray. I don't know enough about airport security to guess the difficulties involved.
A non-metal replica handgun, packed in the carry-on. If you aim something that looks like a Glock at me, I'll believe that it is a Glock and act accordingly. For best results, core out an actual Glock, since the exterior is plastic anyhow. Without the metal working parts, it should make it through carry-on.
A ceramic knife. Again, deadly and undetected. I can go to the mall and pick up one for slicing lettuce with. It's not that hard.
The above and a slew of other posts assume that this is some form of Islamic attack, likely under Bin Laden. I have heard no evidence to this effect. One terrorist group was supposed to have claimed responsibility; my understanding is that this was a false report.
It could be Muslims. It could be Christians. It could be Athiests, (White|Black|Yellow|Red|Purple) supremacists, anarchists, fascists, disgruntled pilots, almost anybody. I am not blaming any of the above groups; I am demonstrating that we just don't know.
Here's what we do know. This was a group of people (at least four, one for each aircraft) rather than one person. Those who carried out the plan (rather than any possible planners we don't see yet) were willing to die for this. They were trained for this mission (highjacking an aircraft is not an easy job today, and the fact that we have heard of no failed hijacking attempts today implies that all attempts were successful; we didn't have four successes in sixteen attempts or whatever). This implies premeditation and weeks of planning. Note that this also implies that the act was not a Columbine-type killing. The rash of Columbine events in the past few years show a lot of premeditation, but not the level of skill needed to hijack an aircraft.
Going from here to the conclusion that it must be some turban-wearing, gun-toting radical Islamic militants is a huge leap to a conclusion, and symptomatic of some deep seated hatred.
Let's not try to pin this on somebody until we get some more facts.
I got these in a search for NYC blood banks and centers via www.bigyellow.com. I cannot confirm that these are blood donor centers, nor can I contact the Red Cross 800 number (both the phone line and the Web page are slashdotted).
If you are in NYC and looking to donate blood, I would consider physically going to the site rather than using the phone. I am not in the city; those there should decide for themselves whether the transportation system or the phone lines are clogged up worse.
American Red Cross - Family Respite Center
4 East 28th Street, New York, NY 10016
(212) 213-0755
American Red Cross
150 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10023
(212) 580-2821
International Committee of the Red Cross
801 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10017
(212) 599-6021
International Federation of Red Cross
800 2nd Avenue, New York, NY 10017
(212) 338-0161
Also, if you are in the NYC area, consider seeing if these Red Cross chapters or anyone providing relief efforts to see if they need unskilled volunteers--setting up tents, manning the food lines, etc. See your local place of worship, regardless of your religious persuasions--many of them may be providing relief efforts.
I just called the Manchester, NH office (5 hr drive to NYC). They didn't make an exception in my case, but I am only 1 day underdue, and am eligible tomorrow.
Geekoid, please note that you have done your part, two weeks ago. If that pint isn't used in the rescue effort, it may have stood in place of a pint that will be.
Anyone who has not given blood since 7/17/01 is eligible to give blood today (9/11/01). The Red Cross says that they will need donations all through the week. I expect that NYC will go into "Spaghetti surgery" mode and stabilize everybody they can today, then spend the next few days performing more permanent medicine as supplies arrive. Thus, people eligible to donate within the next week are encouraged to do so.
Red Cross Internet: redcross.org (leads you to your local office, has news briefs, and is nearly slashdotted).
Red Cross Bellnet: 800-462-9400
Will someone post NYC donation data here, and someone else mod it up? That should save valuable phone lineage in NYC. I will post donation data if I can find it.
"Eye for an eye" is about punishment. I know people are calling for that, though I am not.
I would support military action as a method of threat elimination. If one group masterminded this, we should do everything reasonable to erase this group from the face of the earth.
This is not vengeance; I am Christian, and cannot condone vengeance. This is understanding the fact that corpses do not commit acts of terrorism.
Whether or not military action can eliminate this threat is another question, which nobody is qualified to answer until we get some results from an investigation.
(Moderators: this is a response to a Profeti post that got modded down as flamebait. I think he's naively incorrect, and give my argument below, but this doesn't sound like flamebait. Somebody mod him back up, please?)
Why not get together and put your money, talents and intellects where your collective mouths are?
I know a couple of people that are doing so, it's some weird OS product involving penguins...
Build a company that will kick Microsoft's ass in the marketplace. If each of you were to throw in say $1k and perhaps build on some existing projects, I'm sure you could come up with products that would be superior to the stuff MS puts out (not much of a challenge). Then all you need to do is to be really good at selling it (if you don't want to make a profit that is up to you but you need to make the masses want and need it). I'm absolutely serious here and don't intend to sound sarcastic.
The problem is the term "superior" and getting good at selling it.
There is technically superior and there is superior relative to the market. There are many products that are technically superior to Windows in many ways, though inferior in others. No product is superior in the market to Windows. By definition, if it was, it would have more market share.
As far as getting good at selling it, se have gotten beyond the point where marketing and selling will be enough to gain market share relative to Microsoft. With rare exceptions (possibly Palm), if you come up with the greatest thing since sliced bread, people figure that MS will either buy it or sabotage it. That's the chilling effect that Microsoft has on the marketplace. It creates a market singularity where the normal laws of economics no longer apply.
Now I know someone will say "M$ will destroy any company that tries to compete with them" but that doesn't fly, it's just an excuse, if your better at playing the game you win.
I'll be the one to say it. It's hard to be better at the game when your opponent pays the referees and has the money to buy the game board. Because that's what Microsoft does.
The software biz is all about intellectual property, which means that it lives and dies in court. Microsoft has a huge lobby in DC, and their sheer size all but guarantees that Washington state senators (and certain of their congresspeople) push the Microsoft agenda. The latest MS push to tell people how OSS is so un-American is a direct attempt to get the US government to stop funding OSS software and start funding MS software. It's amazing what you can do with the Law on your side, whether or not it's legal.
Then there's money. Microsoft can directly buy threats to its position (as it did with WebTV, and one other I will mention later), and can buy support to crush its competition (as it did with Netscape). Its position also allows it to force its customer base to crush the competiton for them (again, Netscape).
The only reason that Linux is surviving Microsoft's assaults is that it isn't a company. Linux survives because it is a brand new way of organizing people, and it transcends business.
Logic and history suggest that no entity, regardless of power or abuse there of, is unstoppable.
Somebody had better tell Christ, Muhammed, the Buddha...
For the record: I think that most MS products suck, bless there little hearts they just aren't very good at writing software, but they sure know how to sell the stuff. And I'm typing this from OS X.
Ah, yes. Windows for Mac. You know why MS bought so much Apple stock, oui non? It was to show that they had competition. It was also to shut up a new round of patent lawsuits from Apple. As I propmised above, another example of Microsoft buying off a threat to its position.
There is an entire Hoyle's series of computer games, based on non-tech standards. Hoyle's Word Games is a good vocabulary builder. Hoyle's Board Games and Hoyle's Card Games build math and general strategic skills.
You should consider your motivation here. Your real job should be to help your company make the decision that is best for the company.
If you think that Linux is close to being an alternative, then you really don't think it's an alternative. Don't waste your company's time and money. Trying to push Linux when you don't think it's a clear win will do nothing but reinforce the image of Linux users as commie zealots that let their playthings get in the way of real business.
If you do think that Linux is a better choice, figure out why and document it.
Often, the advantages may lie in places that your bosses may not look. For example, upgrade paths are smoother; you don't have to upgrade every two years. If the advantages you see are in a "blind spot", shine the light on that blind spot.
Actually, it would be nice if they sold the software. But they don't. They've been leasing it to us on day one. The only thing is that the lease is eternal.
If they actually sold the software to us, they'd have no recourse when we did whatever we damn well pleased with it.
There may be a court involved, but perjury is lying under oath. This stunt wouldn't be perjury.
It could certainly be seen as libel or a similar crime, possibly even a minor form of identity theft.
Even more fun, the LA Times article implied that this was regular snail mail. The USPS has its own laws, and they are particularly draconian against mail fraud.
Forget MS versus DoJ. Think MS versus USPS. Hotmail versus snail mail. No laws need be passed. But just imagine armed postal inspectors storming Redmond!
Actually, this is a good place for a patent. A lot of work went into this. We know that the steel existed, but didn't know how to make it.
Also note that they patented the technuque of making the steel, not the steel itself. You can make all the Damascus steel you want, but you'll have to figure out your own techniques.
For that matter, I defy you to show prior art. Is their technique the same as the ancient technique? Even if the product is the same, the process may be wildly different. If prior art was known to exist (that is, if somebody else knew how to make steel this way), they wouldn't have had to go through all of that.
The teacher just delegating the moral responsibility back to the experimenter is part of what they were testing--authority versus empathy. That wasn't an unintended variable, that was what they were looking for. The teacher knew about the perceived effects of the shocks (there were no actual shocks, thus no actual effects) because of the feedback from the "student". Voltage means nothing when you're hearing somebody screaming.
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Another point to make is that it simply will not work. You can argue about trading liberty for security, but in this case, you are trading liberty for insecurity.
Congress is talking about putting back doors into cryptography schemes. There is a good Second Amendment argument against this, but some congressmen just don't care about it. So show how it will fail.
First off, we must remember that we are dealing with truly elite terrorists here, not the 31337 ones we have been used to. The attack we just sustained was a work of twisted, despicable genius. Such people will break this law without a thought. If they can't get somebody to sell them crypto without a backdoor, they'll just get it off a
If there is a back door, this means that the government has a key that would break a given encryption scheme. That's way too many eggs in one basket.
Do you know what that key would fetch on the black market? Do you know what people would do to get it?
Like people in any walk of life, there are law enforcement agents and police officers with crime in their hearts. And one dirty cop with access to a key could make millions selling it.
Even if not, remember a few years ago, distributed crypto key cracking. Someone would encrypt a message using a crypto scheme, and hold a contest to see who could crack it first (thus, this was a "white hat" exercise). So people came up with programs that everybody could run on their computers, so that they had thousands of computers trying bazillions of keys until they got something that worked.
If the Fed required back doors, and I was a cybercriminal that wanted to crack it (perhaps to steal credit card data from online transactions...), I would build a distributed cracker, and marry it to a virus or worm. Infect millions of machines and have them busily cracking the Master Key for me.
Let me suggest that we also brainstorm here for useful laws that Congress could pass. I think that when an event like this occurs, there is tremendous political pressure to do something. Passing laws that won't help the situation, may even hurt the situation, but look like they help will be popular with voters. And if a lone voice turns and says "I won't vote for this because it won't work," they're not likely to get re-elected.
More blood will be shed, no matter what we do. If we act, we may kill dozens. If we do not, others will kill thousands. Christians cannot stand by and watch evil occur. If the only way to stop a great harm is by causing a small harm, then harm we must.
Christianity has never been entirely pacifist. The last days of Christ appear that way, but that was because Jesus knew that he was the one who had to die. When a Roman soldier asked Christ what he needed to do to enter the kingdom of Heaven, Jesus said nothing about leaving the army. He told the soldier to be honest and fair in his dealings.
If it is Christian to abhor the use of military force, why does nobody speak out against good Christian nations holding military forces?
All this being said, we must be very careful in our use. If we strike back in vengeance, we are likely to get full of ourselves, kill a lot more than the target, and both defy the will of God and create more enemies to strike back.
If you know a way to stop this threat without the use of deadly force, please let us know. If you don't, ask yourself whether the Christian thing to do is to let them strike again.
As Christians, we must forgive our attackers. As Christians, out of love for our neighbors, we must make sure this does not happen again.
Terrorists are usually small cells of people, very small and pesky targets. They are usually not nations or governments in charge of large land masses.
A nuclear weapon is good for destroying large land masses, such as cities. Direct hits can also destroy hard targets such as bunkers, but will also "erase" the local area. This is a sure way to piss off all the locals. As far as I am concerned, a nuke is a terrorist attack, as it is anti-civilian rather than anti-military.
If you dropped a nuke on the terrorists, you would make the surrounding countries mad at you, both the governments themselves and the individual civilians. You would start an old-fashioned, military-to-military war, and you would create dozens of terrorist cells for every one you destroyed.
The weapons you need for this war are the surgical ones. This would be assassins, commandos, SEALs, that sort of thing. The biggest weapon I would imagine would be an F-119 with laser guided bombs.
Sure, you're going to piss off the locals by persuing our enemies on their soverignty. But not as much as if you kill 50,000 of their civilians. See what that did to us!
Sound like our terriorists, hunh? What happens if we actually *made* those terrorists with our own actions? What do we have to say for ourselves?
If the above happened, then we screwed up, big time. And we must learn from this.
I say now is not the time for comdemnation, but a time for reflection. Let us not judge those less we walk in their shoes and drink from their cup. Let us not restrict the freedoms of others less we loose our democracy. Let us follow the doctrine of the second testiment, the god of compassion.
I am a Catholic, and I believe in compassion. That is why I feel we need to destroy those responsible.
I do not ask for vengeance; that's not my call. I ask for whatever action is necessary to prevent this from happening again. Thus we show compassion for the next round of terrorism victims. If you can come up with a more effective way than rendering those responsible incapable of repeating their crimes, I ask you to speak up now.
It's like police. You can sit there, and explain how the Man has beaten you down, how the government has made you into the menace you are. The cop doesn't care, because he does care about the civilians he is protecting. And whatever you say, all he wants is for you to drop the gun. Now.
To some people, this is about vengeance and judgement. To me, this is about prevention. Protecting our civilians is what our military is for. To say that we shouldn't counter is to say that we should never have responded to Japan back in the forties, it is to say that we should let these people walk all over us.
People will die. Innocent people will die. I will gladly kill a hundred to save thousands. That is Christian calculus.
Do you really think that you can discredit Terrorist Islam?
The Romans couldn't discredit Christianity, even when they used their followers as streetlamps and lion food.
We can't even discredit Scientology!
I don't think that this will work.
What have our latest attacks been? Terrorists hijacking passenger liners. Manure bombs in U-hauls. Letter bombs out of a portable shack.
All of these have been low tech attacks; the latest attacks required no cool technology, though it required heavy training. Ten years ago, our biggest threat was a slew of Soviet or Chinese missiles. Sure, missiles are a threat today, but the above represents a bigger threat.
Here in the US, we seem to think that there is a high tech solution to any national defense problem. We give our soldiers laser sighted weapons and PDAs, produce stealth fighters and atomic submarines, and have almost turned every one of our uniformed defense forces into some kind of a technician. But then look at what we face.
In Vietnam, we promised to bomb the VC back into the stone age. Meanwhile, they were killing us with dung-dipped punji sticks. We couldn't bomb them into the stone age, because they were already there. Our beautiful, missile-equipped fightercraft had to have guns retromounted on them once we found out that our high-tech IFF didn't work.
High tech beat Saddam Hussein, I'll give you that. High tech is good. But it doesn't solve all our problems.
The Missile Shield will give us less protection than if we spent the same amount of money on less "sexy" projects, such as Marine and infantry divisions. Worse, it will make us feel safe, while our enemies (who can't afford ICBMs) can walk right in.
I don't remember the song, but a line comes to mind: "Just when we're sheltered under paper/the rockets come at us sideways".
If they are in a foriegn nation, the justice system and due process no longer apply. Once you leave your borders, the justice system gives way to diplomatic efforts--and diplomacy involves both diplomats and Green Berets.
Once we find those responsible, we should certainly ask the host country to capture them and extradite them. That being said, we should be ready to enter said country and capture or (more likely) destroy the assailants. Then we should apologize to said nation for the temporary intrusion, and leave.
This looks like a foriegn Arab attack per the latest news reports. If this is the case, remember that there are a lot of powerful Arab nations that don't like us, there are certain cells of Arab terrorists that absolutely hate us, and we as Americans appear ready to run anybody wearing a turban out on a rail.
I am no diplomat, but I figure that the proper response to this is a surgical strike that eliminates the terrorist cell, and possibly certain of its supporters and suppliers. The latter are not innocent civilians, anymore than you or I would be if we supplied software to the Mafia.
Producing less than a surgical strike would leave this cell free to commit more acts, and teach the rest of the world that there will be no response. Producing more than a surgical strike (such as an invasion, or a nuke, as some would have us do) will unnecessarily anger decent Arabs in decent Arab nations.
We must draw a very obvious line in the sand between those responsible and their countrymen. The statement that we must make is: "We are America, and we don't care what color your skin is or which god, if any, you worship. But if you kill Americans, you will be destroyed."
In summary, those responsible that live within our borders should be persued and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, with the full rights of any other defendant. Those responsible that live outside our borders should be extradited to us and persecuted as above. Failing that, those responsible that live outside our borders should become targets of the United States military forces and any other military and diplomatic powers we can bring to bear upon them.
I am taking a pre-emptive strike against that, and I invite you all to join in. The fun part is, it's all completely non-violent and legal. All you kill are trees.
I am writing my congressman and senators. I ask other Slashdotters to do the same. You can find them and their mailing addresses at www.house.gov and www.senate.gov.
You will want to snailmail them on this one. Snailmail seems to have more impact on legislators than email.
Come up with your own wording, or use my words below as a template (or even literally--I don't mind).
Besides, we'd be horrified if we turned Afghanistan into a parking lot and then found out that it was the Elbonians all along.
For Red Cross centers in your area, see Big Yellow or your local phone book.
We were not terrorists in the American Revolutionary War. We were guerillas.
Guerillas fight by performing sneak attacks on opposing military forces, by sniping and similar means. Guerillas are usually quite interested in saving their own hides, and avoid suicide attacks. By avoiding the standard massed musket tactics of the day and learning hide-and-shoot from the natives, we were able to inflict massive casualties on British military targets. The aim of guerilla warfare is the same as that of conventional warfare: to destroy your opponent's military assets until they are no longer able to make war with you, and must sue for peace.
Terrorists "fight" by performing secret operations to cause massive damage to civilian (and sometimes military) centers. The aim is not to damage military assets, but to produce political pressure by panicking the civilian base. Our representative government makes us a prime target for terrorism, since what affects the civilians affects our leadership. States where the government "hates" its own people (such as Iraq) are basically immune to terrorism; if you blow up a bunch of Iraqis, Hussein will just laugh. Passenger aircraft, shopping malls, sporting events, and large buildings are usual targets for terrorism.
The US has arguably engaged in terrorism. Our atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrorist in nature, but military rather than sneaky. IMHO, US economic sanctions are a "less violent" relative to a terrorist attack; see above for why we haven't overthrown Hussein by sanctioning Iraq, nor Castro by sanctioning Cuba.
Somebody was not doing their job.
I think that we had extremely competent terrorists, not incompetent security. Remember that they made four attempts, on the same day, and they succeeded every time. If it was incompetence, you wouldn't expect it across the board--we would have reports of unsuccessful attempts to smuggle weapons onto an airplane this morning.
I can think of three ways to get through this sort of security.
A ceramic knife. Again, deadly and undetected. I can go to the mall and pick up one for slicing lettuce with. It's not that hard.
It could be Muslims. It could be Christians. It could be Athiests, (White|Black|Yellow|Red|Purple) supremacists, anarchists, fascists, disgruntled pilots, almost anybody. I am not blaming any of the above groups; I am demonstrating that we just don't know.
Here's what we do know. This was a group of people (at least four, one for each aircraft) rather than one person. Those who carried out the plan (rather than any possible planners we don't see yet) were willing to die for this. They were trained for this mission (highjacking an aircraft is not an easy job today, and the fact that we have heard of no failed hijacking attempts today implies that all attempts were successful; we didn't have four successes in sixteen attempts or whatever). This implies premeditation and weeks of planning. Note that this also implies that the act was not a Columbine-type killing. The rash of Columbine events in the past few years show a lot of premeditation, but not the level of skill needed to hijack an aircraft.
Going from here to the conclusion that it must be some turban-wearing, gun-toting radical Islamic militants is a huge leap to a conclusion, and symptomatic of some deep seated hatred.
Let's not try to pin this on somebody until we get some more facts.
If you are in NYC and looking to donate blood, I would consider physically going to the site rather than using the phone. I am not in the city; those there should decide for themselves whether the transportation system or the phone lines are clogged up worse.
Also, if you are in the NYC area, consider seeing if these Red Cross chapters or anyone providing relief efforts to see if they need unskilled volunteers--setting up tents, manning the food lines, etc. See your local place of worship, regardless of your religious persuasions--many of them may be providing relief efforts.
Geekoid, please note that you have done your part, two weeks ago. If that pint isn't used in the rescue effort, it may have stood in place of a pint that will be.
Anyone who has not given blood since 7/17/01 is eligible to give blood today (9/11/01). The Red Cross says that they will need donations all through the week. I expect that NYC will go into "Spaghetti surgery" mode and stabilize everybody they can today, then spend the next few days performing more permanent medicine as supplies arrive. Thus, people eligible to donate within the next week are encouraged to do so.
Red Cross Internet: redcross.org (leads you to your local office, has news briefs, and is nearly slashdotted).
Red Cross Bellnet: 800-462-9400
Will someone post NYC donation data here, and someone else mod it up? That should save valuable phone lineage in NYC. I will post donation data if I can find it.
I would support military action as a method of threat elimination. If one group masterminded this, we should do everything reasonable to erase this group from the face of the earth.
This is not vengeance; I am Christian, and cannot condone vengeance. This is understanding the fact that corpses do not commit acts of terrorism.
Whether or not military action can eliminate this threat is another question, which nobody is qualified to answer until we get some results from an investigation.
Why not get together and put your money, talents and intellects where your collective mouths are?
I know a couple of people that are doing so, it's some weird OS product involving penguins...
Build a company that will kick Microsoft's ass in the marketplace. If each of you were to throw in say $1k and perhaps build on some existing projects, I'm sure you could come up with products that would be superior to the stuff MS puts out (not much of a challenge). Then all you need to do is to be really good at selling it (if you don't want to make a profit that is up to you but you need to make the masses want and need it). I'm absolutely serious here and don't intend to sound sarcastic.
The problem is the term "superior" and getting good at selling it.
There is technically superior and there is superior relative to the market. There are many products that are technically superior to Windows in many ways, though inferior in others. No product is superior in the market to Windows. By definition, if it was, it would have more market share.
As far as getting good at selling it, se have gotten beyond the point where marketing and selling will be enough to gain market share relative to Microsoft. With rare exceptions (possibly Palm), if you come up with the greatest thing since sliced bread, people figure that MS will either buy it or sabotage it. That's the chilling effect that Microsoft has on the marketplace. It creates a market singularity where the normal laws of economics no longer apply.
Now I know someone will say "M$ will destroy any company that tries to compete with them" but that doesn't fly, it's just an excuse, if your better at playing the game you win.
I'll be the one to say it. It's hard to be better at the game when your opponent pays the referees and has the money to buy the game board. Because that's what Microsoft does.
The software biz is all about intellectual property, which means that it lives and dies in court. Microsoft has a huge lobby in DC, and their sheer size all but guarantees that Washington state senators (and certain of their congresspeople) push the Microsoft agenda. The latest MS push to tell people how OSS is so un-American is a direct attempt to get the US government to stop funding OSS software and start funding MS software. It's amazing what you can do with the Law on your side, whether or not it's legal.
Then there's money. Microsoft can directly buy threats to its position (as it did with WebTV, and one other I will mention later), and can buy support to crush its competition (as it did with Netscape). Its position also allows it to force its customer base to crush the competiton for them (again, Netscape).
The only reason that Linux is surviving Microsoft's assaults is that it isn't a company. Linux survives because it is a brand new way of organizing people, and it transcends business.
Logic and history suggest that no entity, regardless of power or abuse there of, is unstoppable.
Somebody had better tell Christ, Muhammed, the Buddha...
For the record: I think that most MS products suck, bless there little hearts they just aren't very good at writing software, but they sure know how to sell the stuff. And I'm typing this from OS X.
Ah, yes. Windows for Mac. You know why MS bought so much Apple stock, oui non? It was to show that they had competition. It was also to shut up a new round of patent lawsuits from Apple. As I propmised above, another example of Microsoft buying off a threat to its position.
You really think the DoJ is going to call off the dogs and let them off easy?
Yup.
The DoJ started investigating Microsoft when Clinton put Reno in the seat. Bush I didn't do any antitrust work.
Remember, the DoJ is controlled by the White House, and the Republicans think that antitrust is bad for business.
And no, I won't buy stock. That would imply my support beyond the bare minimum M$ tax I pay.
After all, you'll feel pretty silly with your cupped hands holding your beer...
There is an entire Hoyle's series of computer games, based on non-tech standards. Hoyle's Word Games is a good vocabulary builder. Hoyle's Board Games and Hoyle's Card Games build math and general strategic skills.
If you think that Linux is close to being an alternative, then you really don't think it's an alternative. Don't waste your company's time and money. Trying to push Linux when you don't think it's a clear win will do nothing but reinforce the image of Linux users as commie zealots that let their playthings get in the way of real business.
If you do think that Linux is a better choice, figure out why and document it.
Often, the advantages may lie in places that your bosses may not look. For example, upgrade paths are smoother; you don't have to upgrade every two years. If the advantages you see are in a "blind spot", shine the light on that blind spot.
If they actually sold the software to us, they'd have no recourse when we did whatever we damn well pleased with it.
It could certainly be seen as libel or a similar crime, possibly even a minor form of identity theft.
Even more fun, the LA Times article implied that this was regular snail mail. The USPS has its own laws, and they are particularly draconian against mail fraud.
Forget MS versus DoJ. Think MS versus USPS. Hotmail versus snail mail. No laws need be passed. But just imagine armed postal inspectors storming Redmond!
Also note that they patented the technuque of making the steel, not the steel itself. You can make all the Damascus steel you want, but you'll have to figure out your own techniques.
For that matter, I defy you to show prior art. Is their technique the same as the ancient technique? Even if the product is the same, the process may be wildly different. If prior art was known to exist (that is, if somebody else knew how to make steel this way), they wouldn't have had to go through all of that.
The teacher just delegating the moral responsibility back to the experimenter is part of what they were testing--authority versus empathy. That wasn't an unintended variable, that was what they were looking for. The teacher knew about the perceived effects of the shocks (there were no actual shocks, thus no actual effects) because of the feedback from the "student". Voltage means nothing when you're hearing somebody screaming.