While building a set of defences that made the Nazis think twice about invading... like it or not the Swiss have been consistent in their policies over refugees too.
Also worth noting, for those who might mistake them for pacifists, they had an active nuclear weapons program in the early 1960s until the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty took hold. They are quite conservative, but very serious about their defence.
Look at the context, folks: they were asked to produce a report on what infrastructure would break, or need reinforcing, under climate change. Along with other more important issues (road surfaces, rail, water,...) they listed wifi, part of communications.
Now Wifi signals are degraded by more water vapour, something that is demonstrably increasing with climate change. Wifi will be affected, so they listed it. Not significantly, but there is an element of CYA in all such reports. They listed it, didn't draw undue attention to it, but its been singled out in media coverage of an otherwise straightforward report.
Interesting, but no big deal. The more important parts, how much it will cause to reinforce our road, rail, water infrastructures was completely bypassed by the media as "boring".
Or would they take control, give the supply source to Exxon and Mobile, who would be trusted to sell it to US citizens at a lower rate then they could sell it to Europe?
Yes, thats precisely how it would work.
What matters to the oil companies (Exxon, Mobile) is the profit they make, not the price they sell at. If the US govt cuts their costs by giving them Canadian oil free, then they would be willing to sell it cheaply to USanians as quid pro quo.
Notice how those companies already sell oil cheaper in the US than in Europe...
Almost all national weather services do this. As for medium to long-term predictions, this varies from region to region around the globe, for known reasons (its much better in the tropics than mid-latitudes, for example).
NWS's frequently _dont_ publish seasonal forecasts, because there are difficulties in interpetation). Eg the UKMO successfully predicted the cold December, and warned clients (eg govt) about it; but the media are very bad at handling probabilistic forecasts, which longer-range forecasts have to be. "60% chance of good summer" turns into "Barbecue summer coming!" headlines.
Yes, he makes a living doing this. But he does this despite not being better than others. People make a living as fortune tellers, too.
The danger to look out for is how regulations become gamed.
In this case, middle-level managers wanting to hide something will do so by outsourcing the work, rather than doing it 'in-house' in a public body. Then the details can be labelled "commercially sensitive", and hidden from Freedom of Information requests.
Similar issues were seen in anti-drug operations in Cuba: once US forces started being shot at, the work was farmed out to MNCs - Multinational Military Corporations, like Blackwater, typically staffed with ex- US special forces, operating from US bases. But the operations were commercial, and any deaths secret. Unpopular operations became secret again, hidden from FOI requests.
For a political party that wants to see as much as possible privatised, this forces more work into the private sector, even when it could be done easier and cheaper in the public sector. Beware of such tactics.
Easy: find values for the unknowns. (For an estimate, guess values for the numbers). The Drake equation is an example of a Fermi problem (See wikipedia for examples).
You've broken down a problem you don't know how to solve into 7 easier problems. We're making good progress on some of the variables : the number of stars with planets, for example.
Had you thought that this might be the point of naming it so ?
Breaking down taboos about talking about such matters is ones of their aims. My daughter is 7 and long past asking such questions: she knows google and the internet and will look it up herself, even with filters on the PC. While most of the nastier bits of life have not been covered yet, kids at that age need to know the basics; what sex is, why you don't post personal details to the net, etc.
The idea of keeping kids ignorant until their 18 simply isn't an option, and honest, healthy discussion of such topics, rather than treating _adults_ in an infantile manner to preserve false innocence is part of the Sex Partys platform.
1-2 billion is probably a closer number for "sustainably support"; it depends on what requirements you choose. Current Western energy consumption, etc.
Getting a few thousand people off this planet is not sustainable unless space elevator plans really pay off. Shipping them to Mars with the resources they need to become self-sustaining there is not an option over the next few decades. We solve the 'peak population' crisis before colonizing Mars, or die in the process.
Check out the numbers for what it would take to live on Mars again, and compare them with living in the Gobi desert. Then explain what you can do on Mars that you can't do in the Gobi, and why you're not colonizing there first.
ebook readers buy more paper books than other readers, and this is a suprise ?
Someone who is willing to spend 200-400 dollars on a e-reader is already a heavy reader, practically by definition. As much as I love my e-reader, there are a bunch of books its not good for - photo books, textbooks (no, A4 pdfs on a Sony e-reader are not a good option.) And for my favourite authors, i'll buy the hardback and get it signed by the author, and then lend to friends.
If you go look at the CRU mails and responses, the data wasn't "lost". They don't have a copy of it: the original data is still at other institutions.
The CRU work is based on collecting sets of measurements from around the world, and producing a gridded temperature dataset from this. They've been doing this for decades. When they started, disk space was very expensive, and once they had finished they deleted the copy they had (the originals still being available at national archives).
Secondly a lot of the data was given under Non-disclosure agreements. A number of National Met Services are under an obligation to minimise their costs (ie taxes) by acting commercially and selling "added services" beyond simple weather forecasts (e.g. see met.ie: data for the last 3 years is on the web, beyond that you pay). Frequently this data is available free of charge for academic use, but you're not allowed pass it on to third parties. They simply cannot put it up on the website.
This is basically a non-problem scientifically: you are able to get similar datasets elsewhere for free, and can measure and do experiments yourself... this is the preferred method scientifically, as it checks for systematic error in technique.
Simple statistical test: take a subset of the stations believed to have problems due to heat island effect. Remove them from the record and check again for statistical significance. These isn't any.
This test is routinely done.
You can go a lot further to measure the UHI bias, eg here; see also the good discussion here.
UHI is a real effect, but the planet is warming. Remember over 70% of the planet is water, and the easiest set of temperatures to measure from space are sea surface temperatures; non surface station temperatures will typically dominate.
There is no need to put a backdoor in the initial release of Windows, if you control automatic updates. You just put it in afterwards, after all the security checks have been done...
The solution to the NSA's (and FBI's,etc. ) conundrum of needing^Hwanting a backdoor but having to deny it to everyone else is to work on the bugfixes.
Solution: NSA/FBI / MS office has a list of open security bugs. They generate a rootkit "Nov2009" that breaks into Windows 7 and gives the hacker admin privs, etc. This rootkit uses a set of security bugs, not a single 'backdoor'. Next month, they produce a new rootkit "Dec2009" using a different set of bugs. MS issues an security update to close the bugs used in Nov2009. Then, if anyone leaks the rootkit to Piratebay, etc. it ceases to be useful next month, or sooner if need be.
And of course, if it ever looks like you're lacking security bugs for next month, you can always introduce them with automatic updates...
This only holds true in a free and fair market: where, given a free choice, people spend their money on Britney Spears, etc.
The reality is a music market where in practice a cartel of music companies limit choice to maximise the money made on certain artists. They prefer, instead of running 10,000 artists, to sell 10-100, advertising 10.
Companies like Sony-BMG, etc. ceased contracts with _profitable_bands_, as they maximize their profits when marketing costs are smaller, concentrated on a small number of "superstars". The chosen artist benefitted, but mostly the record companies benefitted; the consumer lost choice, and the bands they would have purchased from lost big-time.
For this reason, I consider the record companies anti-music, and am happy to see them go. Its only the advent of easy copying that makes them divert from this policy.
Similar arguments hold for professional sports, unfortunately.
Fairly straightforward, and not a problem. Look at the Guardian (guardian.co.uk) for example: one of a number of websites that do this. News sites typically have procedures for _not_ graphically manipulating photos. Exceptions have a small 'camera' icon in the corner. You can make it clickable and add the disclaimer at the bottom of the page.
Experience has been that anti-social crime drops for 2-6 weeks when cameras are installed, after which people forget about the cameras.
Real criminals take counter-measures, such as wearing hoodies, hats, etc. and the cameras drop in effectiveness.
The typical response to this has been (1) ban hoodies and hats (this is London, not LA, folks; it rains). (2) Assume things will get better when we get 100% coverage, and can track them back from the shop they robbed to their home. Then the criminals dress like businessmen and take a taxi...
In practice, the cameras are far less effective than spending the same money on having police walk the beat. I don't want cops to solve my murder, I want them to prevent it.
Water out of a kettle is around 190 F (sometimes lower: try it, most kettles turn off just as the water starts to boil, not when its mostly boiling), but cools rapidly in the first minute or so as you add coffee, sugar and milk.
McDonalds were deliberately making the coffee + water in the heater to avoid this, before placing the coffee in an insulated polystyrene cup: this is how it was hotter than other restaurants.
This was, it was claimed, so the coffee was still hot when the driver at the drive-in got home. But it meant if you spilt it in the car, you hadn't a hope of getting it away from your skin inside 2-7 seconds (think: older driver, wearing a seatbelt, jeans, taking a drink at the drive-in so they can't quickly open the door: the worst case scenario for keeping the hot liquid next to skin and causing burns).
There are problems with this idea. (1) Its justification after the fact. No credible proof has been provided that this was ever the plan: rather, the Soviet Union collapsed economically, in a way unexpected by the CIA and the intelligence community, then the SDI folks say "See ? that was our Sekrit plan all along". If it was the plan, it shouldn't have been a suprise. (2) SDI didn't change soviet spending. They did practically no SDI work (in comparison to the US), and Soviet military spending didn't change. Counter-measures to SDI are / were far cheaper than SDI itself: SDI meant spending billions on new tracking and laser developments to appear credible (even if no-one involved believed it would work); countering it meant a few dummy balloons and chaff. It risked bankrupting the US far before bankrupting the SU. (3) Not only did Soviet spending not change, the CIA knew that it didn't change, and yet SDI continued. A very expensive, failed, policy was continued in order to keep money flowing into certain companies. It was a pork barrel.
The soviet economic collapse was triggered by OPEC, not SDI. When Saudi Arabia et al opened stopcocks and flooded the world with cheap oil, the Soviet export economy collapsed.
I've never died before, but this isn't proof i'm immortal.
Of course mankinds never gone extinct before, but this is not proof that it won't. Large sections of mankind, Civilizations, have done so; frequently or typically due to climate change or resource overuse: because these are major events that take a lot of work to prevent or adjust to. A good book on this is Jared Diamond's "Collapse".
This is a regional climate result: the Tropical N. Atlantic has been warming faster than climate models have predicted due to CO2 alone. As the authors point out, CO2 can't warm the ocean that fast.
So the paper actually strengthens the model arguements, not weakens them.
I disagree that this is about political control of cybersecurity. Rather there are two goals: (1) cybersecurity vs the NSA, and (2) Dismantling the DHS as an institution over time.
I take the former Directors resignation at face value: the Center say very badly within the NSA. The NSA has / had conflicting roles here: (1) Find weaknesses in "enemy" firewalls, etc. Use them to gain intelligence. (2) Fix weaknesses in "our" tech.
When it was set up, the Enemy was the Soviet Union, the technology their ciphers. Today its a diverse set of 'enemies' mostly using "Our" technology: American firewalls, OS's etc. If they spot a hole in Microsoft XP / Vista, they wish to use it as a backdoor, not fix it. So, the NCSC got little help from its supposed parent the NSA. But America is far more vulnerable to cyberattacks, than say, Kandahar. So the hand of the NCSC needs to be strengthened vs the NSA.
At the same time the DHS behemoth needs to be dismantled, splitting it into competitive agencies. The proposals put forward help give the NCSC real teeth, but I don't see them threatening the freedom of the internet.
This is not about dismantling government power: its about the organization of that power. Don't confuse this with the usual republican/ democrat small government debate.
Its about the reins of executive power meeting at the president, and not below. The point is how dangerous the DHS is/was: traditionally the FBI reported through Justice to the President, CIA through DOD to the President, etc. Now they report through the DHS to the president. Whoever controls the DHS can feed the President bullshit and subvert him, without contradiction by another agency. This is whats to be dismantled.
The creation of the DHS was dangerous, and done for the political purpose of controlling agencies such as the FBI that would threaten Rove and Cheney. I would fully expect that whoever came to power, eg McCain, Clinton, etc. would also be splitting up the DHS.
Its only partially 'decentralist'. Note that the details in how it is done are important: he is not creating another agency that would be expected to rein in the president (eg a new FBI) but removing power from the head of DHS, a too-powerful role that threatens the presidency. The sum of the presidential powers remains the same, the power in the hand of the largest other players is reduced.
I'm not sure where the "gaping holes" come from: it's the other way round; there should be overlapping responsibilities, leading to turf wars (deliberately), with each agency looking for the flaws in the others.
As for the German use of the method, I'd say it was very successful: the turf wars were deliberate. Perhaps including the Secret Service in the first example was misleading: the S.S. is responsible not just for presidential security but also wire fraud, etc. As such it is a treasury agency (and one of several under the Dept of Treasury), not reporting to either DOD or Justice. Hence any coup involves at least three top cabinet posts...
In the Hitler case, the method was successful in protecting Hitler from a coup within the govt in any way: It meant that eg. Himmler or Goering could not take control behind the scenes (in the way Rove, Cheney effectively did until recently). Too many turf wars can mean agencies are then distracted from doing their job, but setting this balance is part of the statecraft of being a good leader.
Bad understanding of the purpose of creating the DHS.
To the classic question "who watches the watchers" (and avoid your govt being overthrown and controlled by the intelligence agencies, pace Putin), the traditional answer is "each other". Create mutually antagonistic agencies, preferably in triplicate, fighting over turf, and reporting as high as possible up the chain of command. Eg. CIA, reporting to Defense, FBI reporting to Justice, Secret Service reporting to Treasury. All with overlapping responsibilities. As well as looking out for mistakes made by each other, should anyone try to subvert you, they will be ripped by the others, and no one is indispensable, as a bad CIA can be punished by breaking it up / shrinking it, giving its turf to its competitors, and the prez can do so in the name of "efficiencies".
To see how this works, consider Nixon & Watergate: Nixons gang effectively subverting the rest of the government using cronies in the CIA. But they didn't have control over the FBI which (through the Washington Post, and others), cleaned out the white house crooks.
The same methods are used not just in the US, but in Europe (eg MI5 / MI6 / Special Branch in the UK, etc) to avoid subversion.
Now, in this light, consider a White House under Rove & many of the old Nixon gang, "merging" all the agencies under one roof, the DHS. Including the old nemesis, the FBI... Its a method of controlling the intelligence agencies under Bush, and avoiding the same fate as Nixon.
Now consider what happens under Obama. The DHS will be quietly dismantled; every excuse to split power back up into different agencies will be taken.
Don't jam; intercept. The theatre runs a micro-cell that intercepts the call. Incoming calls get diverted to "the person you are seeking is in a quiet zone; if this is an emergency press # to call an operator" and the call is diverted to a receptionist, etc.
Outgoing calls, ditto.
These days too many people depend on mobile phone coverage in emergencies. Thirty years ago our parents would give explicit directions of their planned location to the babysitter, and not deviate. Now we meet up with friends in "a pub" and not even arrange where we'll be until we get into town in an evening.
Slashdot Mirror
While building a set of defences that made the Nazis think twice about invading ... like it or not the Swiss have been consistent in their policies over refugees too.
Also worth noting, for those who might mistake them for pacifists, they had an active nuclear weapons program in the early 1960s until the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty took hold. They are quite conservative, but very serious about their defence.
Look at the context, folks: they were asked to produce a report on what infrastructure would break, or need reinforcing, under climate change. ...) they listed wifi, part of communications.
Along with other more important issues (road surfaces, rail, water,
Now Wifi signals are degraded by more water vapour, something that is demonstrably increasing with climate change.
Wifi will be affected, so they listed it. Not significantly, but there is an element of CYA in all such reports. They listed it,
didn't draw undue attention to it, but its been singled out in media coverage of an otherwise straightforward report.
Interesting, but no big deal. The more important parts, how much it will cause to reinforce our road, rail, water infrastructures was completely bypassed by the media as "boring".
How exactly would that work?
Or would they take control, give the supply source to Exxon and Mobile, who would be trusted to sell it to US citizens at a lower rate then they could sell it to Europe?
Yes, thats precisely how it would work.
What matters to the oil companies (Exxon, Mobile) is the profit they make, not the price they sell at.
If the US govt cuts their costs by giving them Canadian oil free, then they would be willing to sell it cheaply to USanians as quid pro quo.
Notice how those companies already sell oil cheaper in the US than in Europe...
Of couse, this is all hypothetical, isn't it?
Ok, point to his skill scores. Compare them to his competitors, eg. the European Centre for Medium-Range Forecasts:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010MWR3217.1
Almost all national weather services do this. As for medium to long-term predictions, this varies from region to region around the globe, for known reasons (its much better in the tropics than mid-latitudes, for example).
NWS's frequently _dont_ publish seasonal forecasts, because there are difficulties in interpetation). Eg the UKMO successfully predicted the cold December, and warned clients (eg govt) about it; but the media are very bad at handling probabilistic forecasts, which longer-range forecasts have to be. "60% chance of good summer" turns into "Barbecue summer coming!" headlines.
Yes, he makes a living doing this. But he does this despite not being better than others. People make a living as fortune tellers, too.
The danger to look out for is how regulations become gamed.
In this case, middle-level managers wanting to hide something will do so by outsourcing the work, rather than doing it 'in-house' in a public body.
Then the details can be labelled "commercially sensitive", and hidden from Freedom of Information requests.
Similar issues were seen in anti-drug operations in Cuba: once US forces started being shot at, the work was farmed out to MNCs - Multinational
Military Corporations, like Blackwater, typically staffed with ex- US special forces, operating from US bases. But the operations were commercial,
and any deaths secret. Unpopular operations became secret again, hidden from FOI requests.
For a political party that wants to see as much as possible privatised, this forces more work into the private sector, even when it could be done
easier and cheaper in the public sector. Beware of such tactics.
Easy: find values for the unknowns. (For an estimate, guess values for the numbers).
The Drake equation is an example of a Fermi problem (See wikipedia for examples).
You've broken down a problem you don't know how to solve into 7 easier problems.
We're making good progress on some of the variables : the number of stars with planets, for example.
Had you thought that this might be the point of naming it so ?
Breaking down taboos about talking about such matters is ones of their aims. My daughter is 7 and long past asking such questions: she knows google and the internet and will look it up herself, even with filters on the PC. While most of the nastier bits of life have not been covered yet, kids at that age need to know the basics; what sex is, why you don't post personal details to the net, etc.
The idea of keeping kids ignorant until their 18 simply isn't an option, and honest, healthy discussion of such topics, rather than treating _adults_ in an infantile manner to preserve false innocence is part of the Sex Partys platform.
1-2 billion is probably a closer number for "sustainably support"; it depends on what requirements you choose. Current Western energy consumption, etc.
Getting a few thousand people off this planet is not sustainable unless space elevator plans really pay off. Shipping them to Mars with the resources they need to become self-sustaining there is not an option over the next few decades. We solve the 'peak population' crisis before
colonizing Mars, or die in the process.
Check out the numbers for what it would take to live on Mars again, and compare them with living in the Gobi desert. Then explain what you can do on Mars that you can't do in the Gobi, and why you're not colonizing there first.
ebook readers buy more paper books than other readers, and this is a suprise ?
Someone who is willing to spend 200-400 dollars on a e-reader is already a heavy reader, practically by definition. As much as I love my e-reader, there are a bunch of books its not good for - photo books, textbooks (no, A4 pdfs on a Sony e-reader are not a good option.) And for my favourite authors, i'll buy the hardback and get it signed by the author, and then lend to friends.
If you go look at the CRU mails and responses, the data wasn't "lost". They don't have a copy of it: the original data is still at other institutions.
The CRU work is based on collecting sets of measurements from around the world, and producing a gridded temperature dataset from this. They've
been doing this for decades. When they started, disk space was very expensive, and once they had finished they deleted the copy they had (the originals still being available at national archives).
Secondly a lot of the data was given under Non-disclosure agreements. A number of National Met Services are under an obligation to minimise their costs (ie taxes) by acting commercially and selling "added services" beyond simple weather forecasts (e.g. see met.ie: data for the last 3 years is on the web, beyond that you pay). Frequently this data is available free of charge for academic use, but you're not allowed pass it on to third parties. They simply cannot put it up on the website.
This is basically a non-problem scientifically: you are able to get similar datasets elsewhere for free, and can measure and do experiments yourself ...
this is the preferred method scientifically, as it checks for systematic error in technique.
Simple statistical test: take a subset of the stations believed to have problems due to heat island effect. Remove them from the
record and check again for statistical significance. These isn't any.
This test is routinely done.
You can go a lot further to measure the UHI bias, eg here; see also the good discussion here.
UHI is a real effect, but the planet is warming. Remember over 70% of the planet is water, and the easiest set of temperatures to measure from space
are sea surface temperatures; non surface station temperatures will typically dominate.
There is no need to put a backdoor in the initial release of Windows, if you control automatic updates. You just put it in afterwards, after all the security checks have been done ...
The solution to the NSA's (and FBI's ,etc. ) conundrum of needing^Hwanting a backdoor but having to deny it to everyone else is to work on the
bugfixes.
Solution: /FBI / MS office has a list of open security bugs. They generate a rootkit "Nov2009" that breaks into Windows 7 and gives the hacker admin privs, etc.
NSA
This rootkit uses a set of security bugs, not a single 'backdoor'. Next month, they produce a new rootkit "Dec2009" using a different set of bugs.
MS issues an security update to close the bugs used in Nov2009. Then, if anyone leaks the rootkit to Piratebay, etc. it ceases to be useful next
month, or sooner if need be.
And of course, if it ever looks like you're lacking security bugs for next month, you can always introduce them with automatic updates ...
This only holds true in a free and fair market: where, given a free choice, people spend their money on Britney Spears, etc.
The reality is a music market where in practice a cartel of music companies limit choice to maximise the money made on certain artists. They prefer, instead of running 10,000 artists, to sell 10-100, advertising 10.
Companies like Sony-BMG, etc. ceased contracts with _profitable_bands_, as they maximize their profits when marketing costs are smaller, concentrated on a small number of "superstars". The chosen artist benefitted, but mostly the record companies benefitted; the consumer lost choice, and the bands they would have purchased from lost big-time.
For this reason, I consider the record companies anti-music, and am happy to see them go. Its only the advent of easy copying that makes them divert from this policy.
Similar arguments hold for professional sports, unfortunately.
Fairly straightforward, and not a problem. Look at the Guardian (guardian.co.uk) for example: one of a number of websites that
do this. News sites typically have procedures for _not_ graphically manipulating photos. Exceptions have a small 'camera'
icon in the corner. You can make it clickable and add the disclaimer at the bottom of the page.
Experience has been that anti-social crime drops for 2-6 weeks when cameras are installed, after which people forget about the cameras.
Real criminals take counter-measures, such as wearing hoodies, hats, etc. and the cameras drop in effectiveness.
The typical response to this has been (1) ban hoodies and hats (this is London, not LA, folks; it rains). (2) Assume things will get better when we get 100% coverage, and can track them back from the shop they robbed to their home. Then the criminals dress like businessmen and take a taxi ...
In practice, the cameras are far less effective than spending the same money on having police walk the beat. I don't want cops to solve my murder, I want them to prevent it.
Water out of a kettle is around 190 F (sometimes lower: try it, most kettles turn off just as the water starts to boil, not when its mostly
boiling), but cools rapidly in the first minute or so as you add coffee, sugar and milk.
McDonalds were deliberately making the coffee + water in the heater to avoid this, before placing the coffee in an insulated
polystyrene cup: this is how it was hotter than other restaurants.
This was, it was claimed, so the coffee was still hot when the driver at the drive-in got home. But it meant if you spilt it in the
car, you hadn't a hope of getting it away from your skin inside 2-7 seconds (think: older driver, wearing a seatbelt, jeans,
taking a drink at the drive-in so they can't quickly open the door: the worst case scenario for keeping the hot liquid next
to skin and causing burns).
There are problems with this idea.
(1) Its justification after the fact. No credible proof has been provided that this was ever the plan: rather, the Soviet Union collapsed economically,
in a way unexpected by the CIA and the intelligence community, then the SDI folks say "See ? that was our Sekrit plan all along". If it was the
plan, it shouldn't have been a suprise.
(2) SDI didn't change soviet spending. They did practically no SDI work (in comparison to the US), and Soviet military spending didn't change.
Counter-measures to SDI are / were far cheaper than SDI itself: SDI meant spending billions on new tracking and laser developments to appear
credible (even if no-one involved believed it would work); countering it meant a few dummy balloons and chaff. It risked bankrupting the US
far before bankrupting the SU.
(3) Not only did Soviet spending not change, the CIA knew that it didn't change, and yet SDI continued. A very expensive, failed, policy was continued
in order to keep money flowing into certain companies. It was a pork barrel.
The soviet economic collapse was triggered by OPEC, not SDI. When Saudi Arabia et al opened stopcocks and flooded the world with cheap oil,
the Soviet export economy collapsed.
Ternary computers also exist. I've seen circuits and algorithms that benefitted from using balanced ternary rather than binary.
I've never died before, but this isn't proof i'm immortal.
Of course mankinds never gone extinct before, but this is not proof that it won't. Large sections of mankind, Civilizations, have done so;
frequently or typically due to climate change or resource overuse: because these are major events that take a lot of work to prevent or adjust
to. A good book on this is Jared Diamond's "Collapse".
This is a regional climate result: the Tropical N. Atlantic has been warming faster than climate models have predicted due to CO2 alone.
As the authors point out, CO2 can't warm the ocean that fast.
So the paper actually strengthens the model arguements, not weakens them.
I disagree that this is about political control of cybersecurity. Rather there are two goals: (1) cybersecurity vs the NSA, and (2) Dismantling the DHS as an institution over time.
I take the former Directors resignation at face value: the Center say very badly within the NSA. The NSA has / had conflicting roles here:
(1) Find weaknesses in "enemy" firewalls, etc. Use them to gain intelligence.
(2) Fix weaknesses in "our" tech.
When it was set up, the Enemy was the Soviet Union, the technology their ciphers. Today its a diverse set of 'enemies' mostly using "Our"
technology: American firewalls, OS's etc. If they spot a hole in Microsoft XP / Vista, they wish to use it as a backdoor, not fix it.
So, the NCSC got little help from its supposed parent the NSA. But America is far more vulnerable to cyberattacks, than say, Kandahar.
So the hand of the NCSC needs to be strengthened vs the NSA.
At the same time the DHS behemoth needs to be dismantled, splitting it into competitive agencies. The proposals put forward help give the NCSC real teeth, but I don't see them threatening the freedom of the internet.
This is not about dismantling government power: its about the organization of that power.
Don't confuse this with the usual republican/ democrat small government debate.
Its about the reins of executive power meeting at the president, and not below. The point is how dangerous the DHS is/was:
traditionally the FBI reported through Justice to the President, CIA through DOD to the President, etc. Now they report through
the DHS to the president. Whoever controls the DHS can feed the President bullshit and subvert him, without contradiction
by another agency. This is whats to be dismantled.
The creation of the DHS was dangerous, and done for the political purpose of controlling agencies such as the FBI that would
threaten Rove and Cheney. I would fully expect that whoever came to power, eg McCain, Clinton, etc. would also be splitting up
the DHS.
Its only partially 'decentralist'. Note that the details in how it is done are important: he is not creating another agency
that would be expected to rein in the president (eg a new FBI) but removing power from the head of DHS, a too-powerful role that
threatens the presidency. The sum of the presidential powers remains the same, the power in the hand of the largest other players is reduced.
I'm not sure where the "gaping holes" come from: it's the other way round; there should be overlapping responsibilities, leading to turf wars (deliberately), with each agency looking for the flaws in the others.
As for the German use of the method, I'd say it was very successful: the turf wars were deliberate. Perhaps including the Secret Service in the first example was misleading: the S.S. is responsible not just for presidential security but also wire fraud, etc. As such it is a treasury agency (and one of several under the Dept of Treasury), not reporting to either DOD or Justice. Hence any coup involves at least three top cabinet posts ...
In the Hitler case, the method was successful in protecting Hitler from a coup within the govt in any way: It meant that eg. Himmler or Goering could not take control behind the scenes (in the way Rove, Cheney effectively did until recently). Too many turf wars can mean agencies are then distracted from doing their job, but setting this balance is part of the statecraft of being a good leader.
Bad understanding of the purpose of creating the DHS.
To the classic question "who watches the watchers" (and avoid your govt being overthrown and controlled by the intelligence agencies, pace Putin), the traditional answer is "each other". Create mutually antagonistic agencies, preferably in triplicate, fighting over turf, and reporting as high as possible up the chain of command. Eg. CIA, reporting to Defense, FBI reporting to Justice, Secret Service reporting to Treasury. All with overlapping responsibilities. As well as looking out for mistakes made by each other, should anyone try to subvert you, they will be ripped by the others,
and no one is indispensable, as a bad CIA can be punished by breaking it up / shrinking it, giving its turf to its competitors, and the prez can do so in the name of "efficiencies".
To see how this works, consider Nixon & Watergate: Nixons gang effectively subverting the rest of the government using cronies in the CIA. But they didn't
have control over the FBI which (through the Washington Post, and others), cleaned out the white house crooks.
The same methods are used not just in the US, but in Europe (eg MI5 / MI6 / Special Branch in the UK, etc) to avoid subversion.
Now, in this light, consider a White House under Rove & many of the old Nixon gang, "merging" all the agencies under one roof, the DHS. Including the old nemesis, the FBI ... Its a method of controlling the intelligence agencies under Bush, and avoiding the same fate as Nixon.
Now consider what happens under Obama.
The DHS will be quietly dismantled; every excuse to split power back up into different agencies will be taken.
Don't jam; intercept. The theatre runs a micro-cell that intercepts the call. Incoming calls get diverted
to "the person you are seeking is in a quiet zone; if this is an emergency press # to call an operator" and the call is diverted to a receptionist, etc.
Outgoing calls, ditto.
These days too many people depend on mobile phone coverage in emergencies. Thirty years ago our parents would give explicit directions of
their planned location to the babysitter, and not deviate. Now we meet up with friends in "a pub" and not even arrange where we'll be
until we get into town in an evening.