Perhaps you should look into anoxic environments and hydrogen sulphide... that'll definitely get you an unambiguously acidic environment rather quickly. It gets locked up in swamp muds even under "normal" conditions - in my home town there have been fish kills after eroded runoff has turned sulphuric. During the Permian Extinction parts of the sea started becoming anoxic... probably at least partly to do with atmospheric carbon dioxide stressing phytoplankton. The theory is this caused a feedback loop where hydrogen sulphide got produced by anaerobic bacteria, which reacted with iron sulfides in the seawater. This is VERY VERY BAD. When these sulfides flow out to an oxygenated area they oxidise producing sulphuric acid which kills the phytoplankton in the new place and pulls more oxygen out of the water making a nice home for more anaerobic bacteria. It's theorised that for large portions of the earths history the oceans would have looked red from space for this reason. Fun fact : hydrogen sulphide is extremely poisonous, but it puts most animals into a hibernation death-like state where they hardly breathe - bears and other hibernating animals purposely trigger this very mechanism. It's theorised that this mechanism is an adaption evolved turing the Permian Extinction which helped in surviving hydrogen sulphide gas plumes. We also sense it as being extremely unpleasant (like rotten eggs) certainly helps to motivate escape.
This raises another important issue : powerful, well resourced adversaries - security professionals often don't seriously considered trying to guard against them, or even that it's worth trying... which is why we're so pathetic regarding the NSA threat.
There are many powerful adversaries out there - national intelligence agencies of all stripes, powerful private intelligence agencies (eg. the mercinary company Blackwater is getting into this), organised crime, media organisations, even coalitions/alliances of these etc... Ignoring well resourced threats as too hard is frankly defeatist and a mistake.
These actors are even facing the same threats from eachother, so could even be our allies on the defense side, and some already are eg. cooperating with the open source community on Tor for instance. Perhaps we on the defence side should think in terms of a cartoonish uber-resourced adversary eg. Chaos (from the old TV show "Get Smart") to de-politicise development of these tools ie. no stated real-world adversary (eg. China, the NSA etc...). We want all security experts to be able to cooperate developing these important tools without appearing to be working against their own organisations.
How can we even talk about islamists wanting to infiltrate the CIA. I remember in a happier time learning how the primitives of previous ages spoke of crusades and jihads... and at religious school too. This is soooo orthagonal to any real problem the US has.
The US warhawks and the bugeyed islamists seem to justify eachothers existence, like an arch - holding eachother up... allies in a strange and disturbing way. Terrorists are piddling pathetic creatures who in no real way threaten a nation state... they only hope to succeed by getting popular support. Radical islamists largely had lost support across the middle east by the 90's... hell... in Algeria the government actually infiltrated and HELPED them because the counterproductive violent action was starving them of what little popular support they had left. I have friends who, during the 90's, trekked through Afghanistan and other countries now largely off limits to westeners. Sept 11 was a last ditched strategy, and it backfired, yes BACKFIRED, at first. Sit and process that for a moment. They were looking for support from home, but the islamic world rose as one and sympathised with the USA on a gut level because the islamists had attacked islamic populations with the same violence for 10 years previously (to "wake them up" or other such nonsense). The USA not only missed a golden opportunity to become closer to the islamic world, but UTTERLY F*CKED EVERYTHING UP... soooo screwed the pooch that all of a sudden radical and violent islam is not at deaths door, but a real and vital force like it could NEVER have been without GW's support, and those of his successor.
This CIA fluff is a non-issue. The continuing utter lack of human understanding will waste more treasure, lives and effort, and this HR issue is the least of it. It has even reached the stage where large numbers of people worldwide, even inside the USA, are offside..
Dr Iain Stewart has done some fantastic BBC documentaries on geology, and I believe he has answered exactly this question. The movement takes millenia, but sometimes there are huge earthquakes in the middle of nowhere far from plate boundaries. This may be the relevant documentary.
It's better than that - one can have more or less trust depending on if the code has 10 users, or if it's audited periodically by hundreds of bad tempered security experts. Likewise with science - a scientific claim vs the strength of scrutiny in light of Occams Razor etc... The trust derives from the strength of the process.
Childhood cancers are almost universally aggressive... those young cells and healthy body work against you when things go wrong in certain ways. It's the same reason cancer is often ignored in the very elderly - it progresses slowly and something else will probably kill you first. Basically the point is it's hard to suffer observation bias when something kills you dead fairly quickly even if it's missed.
...just like how the WWII victory was hollow and worthless because of the alliance with the communists against the nazis. Ooops... I think I just Godwin'd the thread.:-/
It's certainly a huge expense... but on the positive side they're joining the Chinese, the Australians etc... to claw back a couple of percent of global carbon and finance the development of solar technology - the price of panels etc. has halved and halved again. There are also advantages to relying less on foreign energy or so I hear. The Germans can free-ride on the US waste on the military, and the US can free-ride on the German waste on solar/wind etc... development. Sounds fair to me.
Ack... and how could I forget the front and centre of computing life now ie. the browser. So many innovations flowed back from the OSS browsers to IE and it's STILL behind.
Catchup? Linux et. al. started at the front in the internet server space and stayed there. OSS has been the only choice for browsers for at least 10 years now, and other software such as vlc, thunderbird etc... are many peoples preferred applications, and I've been seeing more and more LibreOffice. I'm even seeing Ordinary People installing Linux (which worries me because of Gnome3 and other stupid things happening right now, but nevermind).
Do you know the same I.T as I do? Even in days of yore OSSland was the centre of many interesting developments eg. most of the embryonic internet technologies... and also more sexy/interesting stuff eg. network/internet gaming pioneered by netrek, mudds etc... social stuff (eg. IRCd etc...). More recently the whole idea of a software repo was knocked off by Apple, and now Microsoft. GUI innovation has really flowered in the OSS world for the last 10 years... although there have certainly been some stinkers too I'll admit. The guts of the internet... the machinery that makes everything tick... is almost pure OSS because that's where the interesting stuff is happening. Is there much else to todays computing world?
Have you checked out Diaspora* or any other free social networking platforms out there? (I should mention that I don't actually know if Diaspora* will do exactly what you want).
I wonder how many Russians would trade 3 or 4 September 11's to escape rule by the spymaster Putin and move to a genuine democracy. If Americans stand for this surveilance then they're in grave danger of the same... even more so given the NSA is probably screening out starry-eyed idealists as potential leakers. If I were a sociopath I know where I'd be looking for work right now... they're probably signing up in droves - the opportunities for the exercise of power are pretty clear. Perhaps the majority of Americans do want to hide in their own supermax to keep safe from the terr'ists... it will be sad to see another nation implement their own Standford Prison Experiment, especially since human nature is so predictable.
...free from an NSA backdoor too I'd imagine. In the current climate that may be a real selling point... something people would go out of their way to order online etc...
People generally live up to your expectations. That works for both positive and negative expectations... anyone who has had a teacher of either inclination knows this in their bones. Expectations are rarely disappointed, and this probably explains why people talk past eachother so often on this kind of thing.
Do you know how long it took before people started noticing the few people protesting the Vietnam war? The better part of a decade... THEN it became a mass movement. Until then it's a boring lonely hard slog.
1) Talk to family and friends about exactly why you think this is horrendous. Perhaps some humour like this or this might help make your message more palatable, and make them know that you're far from the only person with these concerns. Let them know that the tech world is FURIOUS about this because our community is very aware of what's at stake.
2) Protecting yourself online is not easy, and may be too complicated for non-IT people at the moment, but there are some simple solutions that can help security newbies create less of an information trail with just a few clicks to install eg. HTTPS everywhere, Adblock Plus, Jitsi. There are also privacy respecting search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Ixquick. Spread the word.
3) There are fresh new projects springing up all over the place to replace various insecure services eg. Diaspora* (replaces Facebook), Bitmessage (replaces email) etc... Learn, skill up, help these projects if you can... use the product, and get your friends to also... help try to start a network effect, spread the word among the tech-savvy about new tools you find - spreading the word in comments on Slashdot would be great too. Tell the authors of the products that you appreciate their efforts.
4) It has been said elsewhere, but become feirce about political involvement. Make every Slashdot comment suggesting apathy feed your anger-motivated actions.
It's hardly a secret that there are several important demographics in US politics who force US politicians to be especially supportive of Israel. Even a Martian would realise this from the media coverage alone - Haaretz would be howled down as anti-Israeli if it was released in the US under a different name. In addition Israel needs the USA, and therefore is a reliable US friend in a strategically important part of the world. Obama wears a sour look but sings a sweet song when meeting with Netanyahu (he obviously doesn't personally like the guy), and Obama is the man who has to make the humiliating back downs over eg. settlers in the west bank. Contrast this with how the USA regards almost everyone else... even close european allies are almost routinely disrespected. Why am I having to spell all this out? I'm no enemy of Israel. Beligerence is a sign of vulnerabilty, not strength... it's just a pity Israel can't find a way to relate to its region differently. Eventually it must.
The USA has two reasons it's particularly interested in Egyptian politics. The first is the Suez Canal and its importance to the oil trade, and global trade in general. The second is Israel, which adds an important qualification to the type of regime the USA would be happy with in Cairo. It's no secret the USA significantly funds the Egyptian militaries budget (ie 1.3 billion annually according to wikipedia), and the Egyptian military is "managing" this whole situation. I'm floored that ANYONE could think Israeli concerns couldn't possibly be a central factor steering how Egypt is ultimately governed.
*sigh* "Anti-semitism" is the new "anti-American" (or anti-nationality-of-choice). It's an attempted thought-stopper, or perhaps a place-holder for where an actual argument might go. It might even be applicable if most Egyptians weren't semites also. If I was jewish you'd instead use a similar non-argument... perhaps call me a jew hating jew. *eyeroll* Egypt is one of the countries in the front and centre of Israeli foreign policy. There are tunnels into the west bank from the desert for gods sake. Yes, Israel wants a friendly government, but given Israels standing in the muslim world that may NOT necessarily mean a legitimate government. Just pointing out what should be bleedingly obvious, and perhaps a too-pessimistic view. I hope it isn't.
Terrible TERRIBLE choices all 'round. Unfortunately (and sadly for everyone concerned) the USA and Israel probably want military dictatorship... corruption works best if rulers stay in power forever... democracy is too messy. People thought they were making a democratic choice, BUT if a choice is between or theocratic ruler it is really a choice between military dictatorship or theocracy for all time. People don't see it until the election is done and the theocracy exercises power. It worked this way in Algeria... the military must, MUST I TELL YOU *sigh* takes control, or a theocracy will take power for all time. It is for the good of the country *coughs*. I guess there is a chance things could work out well and the military will let go, but I'm not hopeful.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps you should look into anoxic environments and hydrogen sulphide... that'll definitely get you an unambiguously acidic environment rather quickly. It gets locked up in swamp muds even under "normal" conditions - in my home town there have been fish kills after eroded runoff has turned sulphuric. During the Permian Extinction parts of the sea started becoming anoxic... probably at least partly to do with atmospheric carbon dioxide stressing phytoplankton. The theory is this caused a feedback loop where hydrogen sulphide got produced by anaerobic bacteria, which reacted with iron sulfides in the seawater. This is VERY VERY BAD. When these sulfides flow out to an oxygenated area they oxidise producing sulphuric acid which kills the phytoplankton in the new place and pulls more oxygen out of the water making a nice home for more anaerobic bacteria. It's theorised that for large portions of the earths history the oceans would have looked red from space for this reason. Fun fact : hydrogen sulphide is extremely poisonous, but it puts most animals into a hibernation death-like state where they hardly breathe - bears and other hibernating animals purposely trigger this very mechanism. It's theorised that this mechanism is an adaption evolved turing the Permian Extinction which helped in surviving hydrogen sulphide gas plumes. We also sense it as being extremely unpleasant (like rotten eggs) certainly helps to motivate escape.
This raises another important issue : powerful, well resourced adversaries - security professionals often don't seriously considered trying to guard against them, or even that it's worth trying... which is why we're so pathetic regarding the NSA threat.
There are many powerful adversaries out there - national intelligence agencies of all stripes, powerful private intelligence agencies (eg. the mercinary company Blackwater is getting into this), organised crime, media organisations, even coalitions/alliances of these etc... Ignoring well resourced threats as too hard is frankly defeatist and a mistake.
These actors are even facing the same threats from eachother, so could even be our allies on the defense side, and some already are eg. cooperating with the open source community on Tor for instance. Perhaps we on the defence side should think in terms of a cartoonish uber-resourced adversary eg. Chaos (from the old TV show "Get Smart") to de-politicise development of these tools ie. no stated real-world adversary (eg. China, the NSA etc...). We want all security experts to be able to cooperate developing these important tools without appearing to be working against their own organisations.
How can we even talk about islamists wanting to infiltrate the CIA. I remember in a happier time learning how the primitives of previous ages spoke of crusades and jihads... and at religious school too. This is soooo orthagonal to any real problem the US has.
The US warhawks and the bugeyed islamists seem to justify eachothers existence, like an arch - holding eachother up... allies in a strange and disturbing way. Terrorists are piddling pathetic creatures who in no real way threaten a nation state... they only hope to succeed by getting popular support. Radical islamists largely had lost support across the middle east by the 90's... hell... in Algeria the government actually infiltrated and HELPED them because the counterproductive violent action was starving them of what little popular support they had left. I have friends who, during the 90's, trekked through Afghanistan and other countries now largely off limits to westeners. Sept 11 was a last ditched strategy, and it backfired, yes BACKFIRED, at first. Sit and process that for a moment. They were looking for support from home, but the islamic world rose as one and sympathised with the USA on a gut level because the islamists had attacked islamic populations with the same violence for 10 years previously (to "wake them up" or other such nonsense). The USA not only missed a golden opportunity to become closer to the islamic world, but UTTERLY F*CKED EVERYTHING UP... soooo screwed the pooch that all of a sudden radical and violent islam is not at deaths door, but a real and vital force like it could NEVER have been without GW's support, and those of his successor.
This CIA fluff is a non-issue. The continuing utter lack of human understanding will waste more treasure, lives and effort, and this HR issue is the least of it. It has even reached the stage where large numbers of people worldwide, even inside the USA, are offside..
Dr Iain Stewart has done some fantastic BBC documentaries on geology, and I believe he has answered exactly this question. The movement takes millenia, but sometimes there are huge earthquakes in the middle of nowhere far from plate boundaries. This may be the relevant documentary.
...but... how to you tell what's good advice and what's "a bit of silliness"?
It's better than that - one can have more or less trust depending on if the code has 10 users, or if it's audited periodically by hundreds of bad tempered security experts. Likewise with science - a scientific claim vs the strength of scrutiny in light of Occams Razor etc... The trust derives from the strength of the process.
Childhood cancers are almost universally aggressive... those young cells and healthy body work against you when things go wrong in certain ways. It's the same reason cancer is often ignored in the very elderly - it progresses slowly and something else will probably kill you first. Basically the point is it's hard to suffer observation bias when something kills you dead fairly quickly even if it's missed.
...the fact that a soldier with gender issues was the only one with the balls to report those coverups... nowTHAT'd threaten some fragile masculinity.
Where's my mod points when I need 'em
...just like how the WWII victory was hollow and worthless because of the alliance with the communists against the nazis. Ooops... I think I just Godwin'd the thread. :-/
It's certainly a huge expense... but on the positive side they're joining the Chinese, the Australians etc... to claw back a couple of percent of global carbon and finance the development of solar technology - the price of panels etc. has halved and halved again. There are also advantages to relying less on foreign energy or so I hear. The Germans can free-ride on the US waste on the military, and the US can free-ride on the German waste on solar/wind etc... development. Sounds fair to me.
Bitmessage?
Ack... and how could I forget the front and centre of computing life now ie. the browser. So many innovations flowed back from the OSS browsers to IE and it's STILL behind.
Catchup? Linux et. al. started at the front in the internet server space and stayed there. OSS has been the only choice for browsers for at least 10 years now, and other software such as vlc, thunderbird etc... are many peoples preferred applications, and I've been seeing more and more LibreOffice. I'm even seeing Ordinary People installing Linux (which worries me because of Gnome3 and other stupid things happening right now, but nevermind).
Do you know the same I.T as I do? Even in days of yore OSSland was the centre of many interesting developments eg. most of the embryonic internet technologies... and also more sexy/interesting stuff eg. network/internet gaming pioneered by netrek, mudds etc... social stuff (eg. IRCd etc...). More recently the whole idea of a software repo was knocked off by Apple, and now Microsoft. GUI innovation has really flowered in the OSS world for the last 10 years... although there have certainly been some stinkers too I'll admit. The guts of the internet... the machinery that makes everything tick... is almost pure OSS because that's where the interesting stuff is happening. Is there much else to todays computing world?
Have you checked out Diaspora* or any other free social networking platforms out there? (I should mention that I don't actually know if Diaspora* will do exactly what you want).
I wonder how many Russians would trade 3 or 4 September 11's to escape rule by the spymaster Putin and move to a genuine democracy. If Americans stand for this surveilance then they're in grave danger of the same... even more so given the NSA is probably screening out starry-eyed idealists as potential leakers. If I were a sociopath I know where I'd be looking for work right now... they're probably signing up in droves - the opportunities for the exercise of power are pretty clear. Perhaps the majority of Americans do want to hide in their own supermax to keep safe from the terr'ists... it will be sad to see another nation implement their own Standford Prison Experiment, especially since human nature is so predictable.
...free from an NSA backdoor too I'd imagine. In the current climate that may be a real selling point... something people would go out of their way to order online etc...
People generally live up to your expectations. That works for both positive and negative expectations... anyone who has had a teacher of either inclination knows this in their bones. Expectations are rarely disappointed, and this probably explains why people talk past eachother so often on this kind of thing.
Do you know how long it took before people started noticing the few people protesting the Vietnam war? The better part of a decade... THEN it became a mass movement. Until then it's a boring lonely hard slog.
My contribution to ideas:
1) Talk to family and friends about exactly why you think this is horrendous. Perhaps some humour like this or this might help make your message more palatable, and make them know that you're far from the only person with these concerns. Let them know that the tech world is FURIOUS about this because our community is very aware of what's at stake.
2) Protecting yourself online is not easy, and may be too complicated for non-IT people at the moment, but there are some simple solutions that can help security newbies create less of an information trail with just a few clicks to install eg. HTTPS everywhere, Adblock Plus, Jitsi. There are also privacy respecting search engines such as DuckDuckGo and Ixquick. Spread the word.
3) There are fresh new projects springing up all over the place to replace various insecure services eg. Diaspora* (replaces Facebook), Bitmessage (replaces email) etc... Learn, skill up, help these projects if you can... use the product, and get your friends to also... help try to start a network effect, spread the word among the tech-savvy about new tools you find - spreading the word in comments on Slashdot would be great too. Tell the authors of the products that you appreciate their efforts.
4) It has been said elsewhere, but become feirce about political involvement. Make every Slashdot comment suggesting apathy feed your anger-motivated actions.
It's hardly a secret that there are several important demographics in US politics who force US politicians to be especially supportive of Israel. Even a Martian would realise this from the media coverage alone - Haaretz would be howled down as anti-Israeli if it was released in the US under a different name. In addition Israel needs the USA, and therefore is a reliable US friend in a strategically important part of the world. Obama wears a sour look but sings a sweet song when meeting with Netanyahu (he obviously doesn't personally like the guy), and Obama is the man who has to make the humiliating back downs over eg. settlers in the west bank. Contrast this with how the USA regards almost everyone else... even close european allies are almost routinely disrespected. Why am I having to spell all this out? I'm no enemy of Israel. Beligerence is a sign of vulnerabilty, not strength... it's just a pity Israel can't find a way to relate to its region differently. Eventually it must.
The USA has two reasons it's particularly interested in Egyptian politics. The first is the Suez Canal and its importance to the oil trade, and global trade in general. The second is Israel, which adds an important qualification to the type of regime the USA would be happy with in Cairo. It's no secret the USA significantly funds the Egyptian militaries budget (ie 1.3 billion annually according to wikipedia), and the Egyptian military is "managing" this whole situation. I'm floored that ANYONE could think Israeli concerns couldn't possibly be a central factor steering how Egypt is ultimately governed.
*sigh* "Anti-semitism" is the new "anti-American" (or anti-nationality-of-choice). It's an attempted thought-stopper, or perhaps a place-holder for where an actual argument might go. It might even be applicable if most Egyptians weren't semites also. If I was jewish you'd instead use a similar non-argument... perhaps call me a jew hating jew. *eyeroll* Egypt is one of the countries in the front and centre of Israeli foreign policy. There are tunnels into the west bank from the desert for gods sake. Yes, Israel wants a friendly government, but given Israels standing in the muslim world that may NOT necessarily mean a legitimate government. Just pointing out what should be bleedingly obvious, and perhaps a too-pessimistic view. I hope it isn't.
Terrible TERRIBLE choices all 'round. Unfortunately (and sadly for everyone concerned) the USA and Israel probably want military dictatorship... corruption works best if rulers stay in power forever... democracy is too messy. People thought they were making a democratic choice, BUT if a choice is between or theocratic ruler it is really a choice between military dictatorship or theocracy for all time. People don't see it until the election is done and the theocracy exercises power. It worked this way in Algeria... the military must, MUST I TELL YOU *sigh* takes control, or a theocracy will take power for all time. It is for the good of the country *coughs*. I guess there is a chance things could work out well and the military will let go, but I'm not hopeful.