I wouldn't say that his comments above are either disprovable or false, though they are certainly vague. All he's saying is that he produced some forward-looking legislation and has a vision for America. or whatever, including taking the initiative to create the Internet, which I and many others interpret to mean 'the Internet as we know it today', through his actions as a Senator. That last statement actually *is* provably true. He drove important legislation, and by all reasonable accounts he was the first Senator to do so; see the cites in my previous posting.
The reason this quote is trotted out as a defense is that the people claim he said he 'invented the Internet', the implication being that he somehow claimed it was his idea, or otherwise told a stretcher. This is a distortion intended to be turned into a misleading sound bite embarrassing the candidate, a common political tactic employed with particular effectiveness by Karl Rove's Bush 2000 campaign team. This distortion is still being repeated today, and was being repeated in the post that started this thread. Since you're clearly interested in truth, what do you think of the use of distortion as a political tactic?
It's interesting that you should mention that Gore was having his words 'parsed'... the Bush campaign was putting every word of Al Gore's public record into a very large text database and systematically cross-searched for vagueness or inconsistencies (a new tactic at the time), which would then be presented as 'lies' to the media. This is why they were always on the defensive to the media, and is probably why you and a number of other people developed that perception. There is no one in public life on the planet today who is 100% consistent in their statements, and the inconsistencies discovered were in any event distorted when presented to the press. If you're so interested in veracity, I'm wondering what your position is on this tactic, as well? Would W look any better under this kind of scrutiny?
The above questions are, of course, rhetorical. I've reviewed your past posts and concluded that you aren't really interested in anybody's veracity when it conflicts with your political precepts.
Here's the original quote from a CNN interview during the 2000 campaign:
BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now.
Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?
GORE: Well, I will be offering -- I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be.
But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
OK, this isn't the greatest phraseology, but the gist is that he supported the development of the Internet through legislative initiatives. If you doubt this, there's a nice summary at Seth Finkelstein's website.
Y'know, I saw this interview when it happened, and I certainly didn't come away with the impression that Al was grandstanding. (This said as an early Bradley supporter... I certainly don't agree with his implication that Bradley *didn't* produce important legislation.) I mean, it's not like he put on a flight suit and strutted around while US soldiers were getting blown to sh*t or anything.
Sophos has intercepted a new trojan called Troj/Stawin-A that installs a keystroke logger, captures data related to financial institutions, and sends it back to a Russian e-mail address.
When I was a young physics guy we used to say to each other before parting "See you in the future!"
(The yuk being, of course, that to a physicist, this is weird, because the progress of time from past to future, and not also future to past, is a symmetry break.)
An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are sent into a room and told they can only come out when they can answer the question, "What is the sum of two and two?"
The engineer comes out immediately and says, "It's 4 +/- 0.0003".
The physicist comes out a few minutes later and says, "It's 4."
The mathematician staggers out disheveled eight hours laters and announces breathlessly, "There is a solution!!"
The CISSPrequires a minimum of three years professional security experience. The SSCP (Systems Security Certified Professional), sort of an entry-level CISSP, requires only one. The CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor, IMHO the most respected security cert) requires four. IIRC, at least one of these may also require you to be 18, so be careful about age requirements. You might also look at the GIAC (Global Information Assurance Certification) family of certifications, which doesn't appear to have any experience requirements.
I'd be really interested to know how Mr. Clarke et al are going to come up with believable cost figures for this unhackable network, particularly as what makes a network hackable is NOT so much the routers, bandwidth, etc. as the due diligence done by the managers, which is an ongoing expense. (The exception might be for a physically secure signalling infrastructure... anyone know how to keep a physical network from being blown up or jammed?) But I just don't see how this would hold up in the long run... bad security inevitably drives out good if human operators (and usability drivers) have anything to do with its maintenance.
Perhaps the money would indeed be better spent deploying IPv6 on a large scale, which is probably the only way we will see it replace IPv4. Since this network ultimately subsume the existing Internet or be subsumed by it, it seems best to keep this end in mind.
I don't see, in either document, any discussion of the earlier proposals to re-implement key escrow or otherwise backdoor commercial encryption products. Did this die quietly or what? Anyone know?
Looking at the Cyberangels Web site, it looks as though they need people to train law enforcement and help WTC-bereaved families sort crap from gold on the Net when search for missing loved ones, etc. (They also help search out child pornographers, which I imagine is spectacularly un-fun...) Not really a call to arms. Anybody actually _seen_ the PSA?
In the wake of 9-11-2001, how, specifically, would you make the case that strong, unregulated encryption is a net gain for society? For example, is it possible to balance deaths caused by PGP-using terrorists, against, for example, millions of investors performing financial transactions without fear of governmental snooping? My sense is that lots of Americans favor privacy as an ideal, but see it as just that- an ideal that can and should be given up if it hinders addressing the new reality of terrorist threats. I'm not saying I buy this argument, but how do we make the case in concrete terms (e.g. lived saved, cost to consumers and taxpayers) to our legislators, employers, and ultimately ourselves that strong encryption is a net societal good? What we you say to people that ask whether more deaths are worth it?
Why would hacking a news site so that an individual post his or her opinion freely be less trustworthy than someone paid by a vested interested to write and post opinions daily?
Becuase we tend to adjust for this based on previous experiences, personal bias, etc., and unexpected content from some interloper can exploit reader expectations. Everyone trusts somebody to tell us the "truth", and will be unlikely to question that entity even when fed disinformation. Imagine how Yahoo's readership could have been confounded by a fake story on the morning of September 11 about any of the following topics:
Threats of a new airborne attack in another city, or of lots of unaccounted-for planes in the air
Release of biological agents in the water supply
False reports of the demise of public figures
Widespread shortages of food, water, etc.
Would the bulk of Yahoo's readers question these statements? Would those who did be questioned themselves?
Remember, terrorists want to sow FUD. This sort of hole provides an ideal opportunity to do so; planting a critical fake fact in a widely read story won't necessarily create a lasting big lie, but it will create a certain amount of confusion and doubt. (Bear in mind that this effect is exacerbated by the tendency of news giants to report each other's stories, sometimes without checking every fact first...)
The analogy to future industrial applications of biology is clear: When molecular biologists figure out the kernel of biology, innovation by humans will consist of tweaking the parts to provide new services. Because of the sheer amount of information, it is unlikely that a single corporate entity could maintain a monopoly on the kernel.
I think it's the law, not the amount of information, that prevents centralized control of intellectual property. Or not. In any event, it's what you're allowed to do with it that counts.
Then again, given the hazards of releasing new, untested "services" into the ecosphere, perhaps a little control over the kernel might be a good thing?
Most of this was said much more cogently (if you can get past the '60s Marxist blather in which its ideas are framed) in The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. The gist is that the combination of capitalism and mass media fosters an all-encompassing agglomeration of spectacles; autonomous, self-perpetuating images that replace real perceptions. (Think of how Disney images of folklore and faraway places tend to replace real ones, at least for those of us exposed to Disney images from an early age.) According to Debord, contemplation of spectacular culture keeps us from living real lives, which serves the forces of evil quite nicely, and the spectacles keep getting bigger and bigger...
Debord's handle on the same issues Rusty raises is depressingly thorough; I agree with the earlier posting to the effect that forming hip little communities, as Rusty suggests, won't save you. Well worth a read if you're interested in where these ideas come from.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't say that his comments above are either disprovable or false, though they are certainly vague. All he's saying is that he produced some forward-looking legislation and has a vision for America. or whatever, including taking the initiative to create the Internet, which I and many others interpret to mean 'the Internet as we know it today', through his actions as a Senator. That last statement actually *is* provably true. He drove important legislation, and by all reasonable accounts he was the first Senator to do so; see the cites in my previous posting.
The reason this quote is trotted out as a defense is that the people claim he said he 'invented the Internet', the implication being that he somehow claimed it was his idea, or otherwise told a stretcher. This is a distortion intended to be turned into a misleading sound bite embarrassing the candidate, a common political tactic employed with particular effectiveness by Karl Rove's Bush 2000 campaign team. This distortion is still being repeated today, and was being repeated in the post that started this thread. Since you're clearly interested in truth, what do you think of the use of distortion as a political tactic?
It's interesting that you should mention that Gore was having his words 'parsed'... the Bush campaign was putting every word of Al Gore's public record into a very large text database and systematically cross-searched for vagueness or inconsistencies (a new tactic at the time), which would then be presented as 'lies' to the media. This is why they were always on the defensive to the media, and is probably why you and a number of other people developed that perception. There is no one in public life on the planet today who is 100% consistent in their statements, and the inconsistencies discovered were in any event distorted when presented to the press. If you're so interested in veracity, I'm wondering what your position is on this tactic, as well? Would W look any better under this kind of scrutiny?
The above questions are, of course, rhetorical. I've reviewed your past posts and concluded that you aren't really interested in anybody's veracity when it conflicts with your political precepts.
See ya.
Here's the original quote from a CNN interview during the 2000 campaign:
BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now.
Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?
GORE: Well, I will be offering -- I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be.
But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
OK, this isn't the greatest phraseology, but the gist is that he supported the development of the Internet through legislative initiatives. If you doubt this, there's a nice summary at Seth Finkelstein's website.
Y'know, I saw this interview when it happened, and I certainly didn't come away with the impression that Al was grandstanding. (This said as an early Bradley supporter... I certainly don't agree with his implication that Bradley *didn't* produce important legislation.) I mean, it's not like he put on a flight suit and strutted around while US soldiers were getting blown to sh*t or anything.
McAfee has a writeup, too. Sorry about the Sophos typo.
Sophos has intercepted a new trojan called Troj/Stawin-A that installs a keystroke logger, captures data related to financial institutions, and sends it back to a Russian e-mail address.
When I was a young physics guy we used to say to each other before parting "See you in the future!"
(The yuk being, of course, that to a physicist, this is weird, because the progress of time from past to future, and not also future to past, is a symmetry break.)
An engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician are sent into a room and told they can only come out when they can answer the question, "What is the sum of two and two?" The engineer comes out immediately and says, "It's 4 +/- 0.0003". The physicist comes out a few minutes later and says, "It's 4." The mathematician staggers out disheveled eight hours laters and announces breathlessly, "There is a solution!!"
The CISSP requires a minimum of three years professional security experience. The SSCP (Systems Security Certified Professional), sort of an entry-level CISSP, requires only one. The CISA (Certified Information Systems Auditor, IMHO the most respected security cert) requires four. IIRC, at least one of these may also require you to be 18, so be careful about age requirements. You might also look at the GIAC (Global Information Assurance Certification) family of certifications, which doesn't appear to have any experience requirements.
The is the first press release I've ever seen from a publicly traded comapny that consisted entirely of bullet points...
I'd be really interested to know how Mr. Clarke et al are going to come up with believable cost figures for this unhackable network, particularly as what makes a network hackable is NOT so much the routers, bandwidth, etc. as the due diligence done by the managers, which is an ongoing expense. (The exception might be for a physically secure signalling infrastructure... anyone know how to keep a physical network from being blown up or jammed?) But I just don't see how this would hold up in the long run... bad security inevitably drives out good if human operators (and usability drivers) have anything to do with its maintenance. Perhaps the money would indeed be better spent deploying IPv6 on a large scale, which is probably the only way we will see it replace IPv4. Since this network ultimately subsume the existing Internet or be subsumed by it, it seems best to keep this end in mind.
I don't see, in either document, any discussion of the earlier proposals to re-implement key escrow or otherwise backdoor commercial encryption products. Did this die quietly or what? Anyone know?
Looking at the Cyberangels Web site, it looks as though they need people to train law enforcement and help WTC-bereaved families sort crap from gold on the Net when search for missing loved ones, etc. (They also help search out child pornographers, which I imagine is spectacularly un-fun...) Not really a call to arms. Anybody actually _seen_ the PSA?
In the wake of 9-11-2001, how, specifically, would you make the case that strong, unregulated encryption is a net gain for society? For example, is it possible to balance deaths caused by PGP-using terrorists, against, for example, millions of investors performing financial transactions without fear of governmental snooping? My sense is that lots of Americans favor privacy as an ideal, but see it as just that- an ideal that can and should be given up if it hinders addressing the new reality of terrorist threats. I'm not saying I buy this argument, but how do we make the case in concrete terms (e.g. lived saved, cost to consumers and taxpayers) to our legislators, employers, and ultimately ourselves that strong encryption is a net societal good? What we you say to people that ask whether more deaths are worth it?
Becuase we tend to adjust for this based on previous experiences, personal bias, etc., and unexpected content from some interloper can exploit reader expectations. Everyone trusts somebody to tell us the "truth", and will be unlikely to question that entity even when fed disinformation. Imagine how Yahoo's readership could have been confounded by a fake story on the morning of September 11 about any of the following topics:
- Threats of a new airborne attack in another city, or of lots of unaccounted-for planes in the air
- Release of biological agents in the water supply
- False reports of the demise of public figures
- Widespread shortages of food, water, etc.
Would the bulk of Yahoo's readers question these statements? Would those who did be questioned themselves? Remember, terrorists want to sow FUD. This sort of hole provides an ideal opportunity to do so; planting a critical fake fact in a widely read story won't necessarily create a lasting big lie, but it will create a certain amount of confusion and doubt. (Bear in mind that this effect is exacerbated by the tendency of news giants to report each other's stories, sometimes without checking every fact first...)I think it's the law, not the amount of information, that prevents centralized control of intellectual property. Or not. In any event, it's what you're allowed to do with it that counts.
Then again, given the hazards of releasing new, untested "services" into the ecosphere, perhaps a little control over the kernel might be a good thing?
Debord's handle on the same issues Rusty raises is depressingly thorough; I agree with the earlier posting to the effect that forming hip little communities, as Rusty suggests, won't save you. Well worth a read if you're interested in where these ideas come from.