often the most lethal pathogens are better suited, one might say, to another species, where over time the species immune reponse has evolved to the degree of protecting the carrier, but perhaps not killing the pathogen. The common cold, herpes virus, etc. The most highly specialized pathogens generally do not kill their main host species; said species having evolved defenses over time.
It is human's lack of exposure to a given pathogen that often makes them highly lethal. For example, smallpox and early european colonization of the Americas, avian bird flu, the ebola virus, etc.
And yet, by every important metric, the Canadian system trounces the American one.
Did you know why drugs are so cheap in Canada? It's not because we make knockoffs, we dont, we respect WIPO. However, the government negotiates - as provincial entities - with the pharmaceutical conglomerates producing bulk, discounted rates for drugs.
In the US, each little HMO buys their own, in little shipments. That's not exactly clever.
"something that is 98% corn syrup with only a trace of lead is just as bad. "
Define trace please, in ppm. Lead is harmful to children in minute qualities. There is no 'safe' level of exposure. Your statement doesn't make much sense, other than that you find it easy to equivocate.
"I don't know if they configured it to perform as you state, but they could have."
If the box wasn't configured in such a way, why would the chairman need to tiptoe through the tulips? As deployed at Comcast, apparently, Sandvine isn't aware of congestion, instead filtering certain protocols. Not having enough information to know what methods Sandvine uses to determine congestion, relying on snmp alerts or whatnot, one comes to the conclusion that Comcast either wanted widespread filtering or was too lazy to configure Sandvine to trigger based on congested nodes.
From TFA: ""It does not appear that this technique was used only to occasionally delay traffic at particular nodes suffering from network congestion at that time," Martin told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. "Based on testimony we've received thus far, this equipment was typically deployed over a wider geographic area or system, and is not even capable of knowing when an individual... segment of the network is congested."
Notice he does not mention Sandbox by name, rather referring to 'equipment'. Sandvine has nothing to correct, the chairman only generally referred to equipment at the Comcast implementation.
"An IP is no more an identity than a phone number is. Though phone numbers aren't identities, people get arrested all the time for calling bomb threats to schools and airports. Sometimes the guilty are caught, sometimes they get away."
If only I had not already replied in this thread..mod this reply up.
Advocating some kind of secure, global authentication scheme might be completely insane, wildly expensive, difficult to maintain and always capable of being circumvented, but if that is what you feel is best, go ahead and make a case for it. Your first post does not exactly lay a strong foundation. Internet criminals, intruders into private networks are still caught - particularly if the intrusion caused actual, you know, damages. Luckily, however, certain forms of petty crime, such as the IP infringement the RIAA feels the need to impose draconican measures to combat, are too expensive to investigate versus any possible gain.
I hate to be a pessimist, what with me being a believer in the power of technology and all, but seriously: we have made no credible progress in technologies needed to push space exploration, minus a few notable exceptions. If we do not spread our eggs to many baskets, so to speak, and instead simply squat on Earth for the next 1,000+ years, it is highly probable (based on my own assumptions and observations only), given human nature, that we will wipe ourselves out or return to some kind of post-futurist stone age.
So this technology has one of two possible final uses: humans attempting to re-learn what was lost, or the equivalent of hieroglyphics for alien archaeologists investigating 'that funny little race of air-breathing bipeds on the third planet of the Sol system'.
On a more relevant note, I have trouble understanding how, even if we do reverse course and realize a future where humans have populated the cosmos, this technology will be useful in even a hundred years, let alone 1000. With the rate of technological gains in certain areas, this is almost doomed to be obsolete before it is ever used.
"A much bigger concern is the lesser build quality and the lack of vendor support."
Not really. What is more of a threat is a hardware implementation of some kind of backdoor.
You assume that any compromised router will be deployed inside the internal routing framework - how do you know this to be the case? Your comment does not consider the threat if the 'hacked' router is sitting on the edge of a network. Granted, important DoD or DoE systems are generally completely within their own walled garden without any access points to the general internet, however for industrial espionage of your typical corporate network, this is a perfect and nigh-impossible to detect vector for attack.
Something to keep corporate admins thinking about their hardware sourcing - after all, as I am sure is elsewhere in these comments, no one ever got fired for buying (insert giant vendor here) and few corporate IT groups have the expertise / money / time to spare on deploying custom built Linux boxen on every access point.
You should have read it as 'cutthroat competition leads to unaffordable HIV treatments'. The substances themselves are cheap, but because of the profit motive these treatments are only available to the rich. Witness Magic Johnson vs. much of Africa. A humane nation would, instead of trying to squeeze money from a rock, remove the patent protection and allow the market to really decide.
"I must be thinking of some other X-Prize. The X Prize I observed, delivered a working vehicle and some interesting competitors. "
We most definetly were not looking at the same X-Prize. What I saw were clumsy, amateurish rocketplanes with no overaching design philosophy and certainly no use beyond 5-minute space 'tourism'.
Last year, Google announced the Google Lunar X Prize. The search leader is putting up $30 million in prize money for teams that successfully land a robot on the moon.
I don't know about you but I don't see a paltry 30 million doing much to stimulate commercial space ventures. In essence, collaboration is key - and competition, with the profit motive removes all incentive to collaborate, instead replacing it with secrecy.
I really have trouble with free market capitalists - they generally have no grasp of economics and instead a fuzzy sense of ideals. That, and a well-worn copy of the Fountainhead.
Well, I don't think anyone is advocating a 'Department of teh Intertubes'. What we are saying, is that ISP's should not be performing deep packet inspection (which opens up a pandora's box of possible malfeasance, too tempting for your typical scumbag telco) on traffic routed across their lines.
We are asking the regulator - whose job is to, you know, regulate - to step in and make a ruling - is this kind of packet inspection and interference desirable in the backbone? If they rule it is legal at least then there is something to challenge. Legislators will likely create a good-sounding 'Net Neutrality Bill' which contains a provision that would of course do the opposite of what it purports to, so the regulator seems the best answer.
You are lowballing the figure somewhat, but are more or less correct. VOIP is not bandwidth-intensive. It is, however, extremely vulnerably to latency and jitter.
Considering the telcos will use arguments such as this patently absurd one to, presumably, slow down other vendors implementations of VOIP and provide facsimile arguments for deep stateful packet-inspection, VOIP is a concern as it is an area the traditional telcos will branch into and promptly begin to shoot each other, and the consumer, in the foot.
Uh, the acronym is typically Research and Development. Loathe as I am to admit it, corporations do research too - just very focused on profit - there is no research for research's sake, no pure knowledge motive. It's all about profit.
Increasingly this is how universities operate as well, as they become beholden to corporate interests to secure funding.
"Ridiculous statement. The Sony VAIO Picturebook (PCG series) precedes both the OLPC and the EEE by a full decade."
And several thousand US dollars, or the equivalent of an entire villages income over a period of years. They are not comparable, except in form factor, the most trivial of elements.
"the OLPC is --- despite its noble aspirations--- merely a glorified toy, and is performing as such."
I strongly disagree - this 'glorified toy' will serve its purpose admirably and I will shed no tears for traditional equipment manufacturers who boo-hoo that they are shut out of the market. Since these are primarily being donated, I am glad we are not beholden to some conglomerates lackluster support.
Yes, as a westerner making western wages, an OLPC is not for you. However, for a child who walks to school and lives in a hut, it is space age technology - bringing the revolutionary technology you and I take for granted into places that, if we had 'let the market decide', it would never go.
Space research is pure science, for the most part, with little in the way of spin-offs or direct benefit. The reason most of such work is performed in academia is because companies wishing to leverage R&D have far more lucrative areas they could be working in.
Having seen the results of the X-Prize, I would suggest to Ayn Randistas that perhaps the free market isn't the best - or only - solution to every problem. If anything, it leads to a duplication of work, lack of collaboration, myopia and cutthroat profiteering on anything marketable..case in point: AZT or other HIV retrovirals which, while not costing terribly much to synthesize, cost insane amounts so that can provide big P/E ratios to it's shareholders.
"The only users who are really inconvenienced by traffic shaping are the system abusers. All others use a paltry amount of bandwidth which is not throttled."
Huh? You've got to be joking. People streaming endless YouToob garbage take up a 'paltry' amount of bandwidth? Large scale data transfers to co-located servers? VOIP applications like Skype? Just about any streaming application takes a significant amount of bandwidth and I suspect that you are aware of this.
The ONLY - your words - users who are inconvenienced are 'system abusers' (your own perjorative)? Here you have adopted the dishonest language of the money-hungry state-supported ISP's.
First off, I fail to understand how a customer who is using their service as advertised (X amount of throughput) can 'abuse' the system. Do they send endless amounts of SYN packet requests? Beat their modems and forget to send them birthday cards? What is your definition of abuse?
I certainly don't call it abuse if I pay 2$ to cross a toll road at a max rate of speed of 55 mph. Nor would I call it abuse if the toll road company offers to allow me 'unlimited' access to the road for 20$ a month, even were I to drive tour buses packed with people down the road, 24/7. If the toll road operator complained about the excessive traffic my bus was generating, they have two options: widen the road or amend the contract. They cannot simply shoot the tires as I pass by in my bus (and everyone else driving a bus), then tell everyone they have improved road service.
For all those who are so quick to criticize this man actually taking action, however small, where is your resume, quick - I want to make grasping, weak attempts to demonize you while ignoring the real issue - Virgin (and other telco's that want to slip this in the backdoor) are scumbags. I mean, if you want to talk about a real blowhard, how about Richard Branson, the CEO-richboy-adventurer coincidentally of Virgin?
For those eager to point out he has no degree, in particular, it has been my experience over the last few decades that many, many people hold degrees as though they were a stamp proving they are not stupid. Unfortunately for them and those that have to work with them, it's not true. Universities are degree mills in most majors - you have to be practically illiterate to fail out. The big challenge with universities these days for many people is affording it...I don't even read boing boing, just wondering what kind of 'fame' you expect to glean on Slashdot.
"Then there are Coders - who do the real work and have more than 3 brain cells."
The real work? Guzzling Jolt whilst downloading torrents of tentacle porn? There, I used my own generalization.
People wonder why programmers have a stigma attached to them as being difficult to work with and general primadonnas. A certain subculture exists that posits that somehow, the man churning out code is an 'individual', while the man supporting the infrastructure - and enforcing it's requirements and policies - is somehow a 'mindless drone'.
Personally, I cannot imagine a developer being offended at falling under the broad category of IT. If he/she were, I would question their maturity.
I maintain and plan the network - the logical network, routing tables, VLAN's, BGP, filtering - on behalf of the company I work for. Sorry if that isn't 'real' enough work for you. Whom am I kidding - any programmer worth their salt would not talk so disdainfully of those whom they work so closely with.
You've clearly rediscovered the Flux Capacitor. The future is Back(tm).
I tried to post this hours ago but Sorry! You last posted a comment 69 minutes ago. I agree with the above AC, if you cannot recognize a Flux Capacitor, you should bow your heads in shame.
I find it hard to look at the concept as menacing.
"We're going to provide Linux free of charge to anyone! MUHAHAHAHA!"
"Beware my open source laser! Powered by the distilled tears of Microsoft execs, it will cut you out of vendor lock-in!"
Or better, Stark teams up with Microsoft to combat the 'threat', then, during a battle as Iron Man powers up his blaster, the HUD flashes..
WinIRON.sys
The driver is attempting to access memory beyond the end of the
allocation.
Stop: 0x000000D6
(0x89781000, 0x00000000, 0xBF82683F, 0x00000000)
WinIRON.sys address BF82683F base at BF80000
"Besides - do you think that if people from our country were going to disrupt anything like that, that we'd be out there in a boat that says "LOL USA!!"? Just because the boats were owned by companies and piloted by the proper people doesn't necessarily prove someone else wasn't behind what happened."
Indeed. I guess/. has not heard of false-flag operations.
"Is taking a picture through the your window with visible light coming through really that much different from taking a multi-spectral image of the thermal IR pouring through your houses walls?"
Uhm, yes? With thermal imaging you can see people *inside* the houses, from a very great distance, night or day, without exposing any individual to either the neccessity of taking money for doing such work or the possibility of being noticed.
Having military-grade surveillance satellites pointed in your general direction should concern you - or in 20 years you will wish you had listened to us 'cranks'.
I think disallowing a few wealthy shareholders from profiteering from the enormous governmental support the company has received is a small price to pay for retaining cutting-edge technology in our national portfolio without giving a veto on how we might use said technology to other nations.
Slashdot Mirror
Errr...
often the most lethal pathogens are better suited, one might say, to another species, where over time the species immune reponse has evolved to the degree of protecting the carrier, but perhaps not killing the pathogen. The common cold, herpes virus, etc. The most highly specialized pathogens generally do not kill their main host species; said species having evolved defenses over time.
It is human's lack of exposure to a given pathogen that often makes them highly lethal. For example, smallpox and early european colonization of the Americas, avian bird flu, the ebola virus, etc.
And yet, by every important metric, the Canadian system trounces the American one.
Did you know why drugs are so cheap in Canada? It's not because we make knockoffs, we dont, we respect WIPO. However, the government negotiates - as provincial entities - with the pharmaceutical conglomerates producing bulk, discounted rates for drugs.
In the US, each little HMO buys their own, in little shipments. That's not exactly clever.
"something that is 98% corn syrup with only a trace of lead is just as bad. "
Define trace please, in ppm. Lead is harmful to children in minute qualities. There is no 'safe' level of exposure. Your statement doesn't make much sense, other than that you find it easy to equivocate.
There is no evidence of souls, hence why would we assume something we have no evidence for?
You cannot disprove something that has no proofs to refute.
Who cares? If I wanted to read pseudoinsane rants about desert cults, theres plenty of that garbage on the web.
GTFO, banhammer, imo. With spam ad in sig, to boot.
"I don't know if they configured it to perform as you state, but they could have."
... segment of the network is congested."
If the box wasn't configured in such a way, why would the chairman need to tiptoe through the tulips? As deployed at Comcast, apparently, Sandvine isn't aware of congestion, instead filtering certain protocols. Not having enough information to know what methods Sandvine uses to determine congestion, relying on snmp alerts or whatnot, one comes to the conclusion that Comcast either wanted widespread filtering or was too lazy to configure Sandvine to trigger based on congested nodes.
From TFA:
""It does not appear that this technique was used only to occasionally delay traffic at particular nodes suffering from network congestion at that time," Martin told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. "Based on testimony we've received thus far, this equipment was typically deployed over a wider geographic area or system, and is not even capable of knowing when an individual
Notice he does not mention Sandbox by name, rather referring to 'equipment'. Sandvine has nothing to correct, the chairman only generally referred to equipment at the Comcast implementation.
"An IP is no more an identity than a phone number is. Though phone numbers aren't identities, people get arrested all the time for calling bomb threats to schools and airports. Sometimes the guilty are caught, sometimes they get away."
If only I had not already replied in this thread..mod this reply up.
Advocating some kind of secure, global authentication scheme might be completely insane, wildly expensive, difficult to maintain and always capable of being circumvented, but if that is what you feel is best, go ahead and make a case for it. Your first post does not exactly lay a strong foundation. Internet criminals, intruders into private networks are still caught - particularly if the intrusion caused actual, you know, damages. Luckily, however, certain forms of petty crime, such as the IP infringement the RIAA feels the need to impose draconican measures to combat, are too expensive to investigate versus any possible gain.
Now - sit down and exhale, deeply.
I'd take a quebecois over an anonymous coward, anyday. We'll skip the history lesson, clearly not worth the effort.
Besides, french-canadian women are hot and poutine is tasty. Maple syrup and french-canadian woman are both.
I like my Canada with Quebec in it.
I hate to be a pessimist, what with me being a believer in the power of technology and all, but seriously: we have made no credible progress in technologies needed to push space exploration, minus a few notable exceptions. If we do not spread our eggs to many baskets, so to speak, and instead simply squat on Earth for the next 1,000+ years, it is highly probable (based on my own assumptions and observations only), given human nature, that we will wipe ourselves out or return to some kind of post-futurist stone age.
So this technology has one of two possible final uses: humans attempting to re-learn what was lost, or the equivalent of hieroglyphics for alien archaeologists investigating 'that funny little race of air-breathing bipeds on the third planet of the Sol system'.
On a more relevant note, I have trouble understanding how, even if we do reverse course and realize a future where humans have populated the cosmos, this technology will be useful in even a hundred years, let alone 1000. With the rate of technological gains in certain areas, this is almost doomed to be obsolete before it is ever used.
"A much bigger concern is the lesser build quality and the lack of vendor support."
Not really. What is more of a threat is a hardware implementation of some kind of backdoor.
You assume that any compromised router will be deployed inside the internal routing framework - how do you know this to be the case? Your comment does not consider the threat if the 'hacked' router is sitting on the edge of a network. Granted, important DoD or DoE systems are generally completely within their own walled garden without any access points to the general internet, however for industrial espionage of your typical corporate network, this is a perfect and nigh-impossible to detect vector for attack.
Something to keep corporate admins thinking about their hardware sourcing - after all, as I am sure is elsewhere in these comments, no one ever got fired for buying (insert giant vendor here) and few corporate IT groups have the expertise / money / time to spare on deploying custom built Linux boxen on every access point.
You should have read it as 'cutthroat competition leads to unaffordable HIV treatments'. The substances themselves are cheap, but because of the profit motive these treatments are only available to the rich. Witness Magic Johnson vs. much of Africa. A humane nation would, instead of trying to squeeze money from a rock, remove the patent protection and allow the market to really decide.
"I must be thinking of some other X-Prize. The X Prize I observed, delivered a working vehicle and some interesting competitors. "
We most definetly were not looking at the same X-Prize. What I saw were clumsy, amateurish rocketplanes with no overaching design philosophy and certainly no use beyond 5-minute space 'tourism'.
Last year, Google announced the Google Lunar X Prize. The search leader is putting up $30 million in prize money for teams that successfully land a robot on the moon.
I don't know about you but I don't see a paltry 30 million doing much to stimulate commercial space ventures. In essence, collaboration is key - and competition, with the profit motive removes all incentive to collaborate, instead replacing it with secrecy.
I really have trouble with free market capitalists - they generally have no grasp of economics and instead a fuzzy sense of ideals. That, and a well-worn copy of the Fountainhead.
Well, I don't think anyone is advocating a 'Department of teh Intertubes'. What we are saying, is that ISP's should not be performing deep packet inspection (which opens up a pandora's box of possible malfeasance, too tempting for your typical scumbag telco) on traffic routed across their lines.
We are asking the regulator - whose job is to, you know, regulate - to step in and make a ruling - is this kind of packet inspection and interference desirable in the backbone? If they rule it is legal at least then there is something to challenge. Legislators will likely create a good-sounding 'Net Neutrality Bill' which contains a provision that would of course do the opposite of what it purports to, so the regulator seems the best answer.
You are lowballing the figure somewhat, but are more or less correct. VOIP is not bandwidth-intensive. It is, however, extremely vulnerably to latency and jitter. Considering the telcos will use arguments such as this patently absurd one to, presumably, slow down other vendors implementations of VOIP and provide facsimile arguments for deep stateful packet-inspection, VOIP is a concern as it is an area the traditional telcos will branch into and promptly begin to shoot each other, and the consumer, in the foot.
Uh, the acronym is typically Research and Development. Loathe as I am to admit it, corporations do research too - just very focused on profit - there is no research for research's sake, no pure knowledge motive. It's all about profit.
Increasingly this is how universities operate as well, as they become beholden to corporate interests to secure funding.
"Ridiculous statement. The Sony VAIO Picturebook (PCG series) precedes both the OLPC and the EEE by a full decade."
And several thousand US dollars, or the equivalent of an entire villages income over a period of years. They are not comparable, except in form factor, the most trivial of elements.
"the OLPC is --- despite its noble aspirations--- merely a glorified toy, and is performing as such."
I strongly disagree - this 'glorified toy' will serve its purpose admirably and I will shed no tears for traditional equipment manufacturers who boo-hoo that they are shut out of the market. Since these are primarily being donated, I am glad we are not beholden to some conglomerates lackluster support.
Yes, as a westerner making western wages, an OLPC is not for you. However, for a child who walks to school and lives in a hut, it is space age technology - bringing the revolutionary technology you and I take for granted into places that, if we had 'let the market decide', it would never go.
Space research is pure science, for the most part, with little in the way of spin-offs or direct benefit. The reason most of such work is performed in academia is because companies wishing to leverage R&D have far more lucrative areas they could be working in.
Having seen the results of the X-Prize, I would suggest to Ayn Randistas that perhaps the free market isn't the best - or only - solution to every problem. If anything, it leads to a duplication of work, lack of collaboration, myopia and cutthroat profiteering on anything marketable..case in point: AZT or other HIV retrovirals which, while not costing terribly much to synthesize, cost insane amounts so that can provide big P/E ratios to it's shareholders.
Lovely system, capitalism.
There are plenty of courses whose only requirement is 'show up' and 'bullshit convincingly'.
"The only users who are really inconvenienced by traffic shaping are the system abusers. All others use a paltry amount of bandwidth which is not throttled."
Huh? You've got to be joking. People streaming endless YouToob garbage take up a 'paltry' amount of bandwidth? Large scale data transfers to co-located servers? VOIP applications like Skype? Just about any streaming application takes a significant amount of bandwidth and I suspect that you are aware of this.
The ONLY - your words - users who are inconvenienced are 'system abusers' (your own perjorative)? Here you have adopted the dishonest language of the money-hungry state-supported ISP's.
First off, I fail to understand how a customer who is using their service as advertised (X amount of throughput) can 'abuse' the system. Do they send endless amounts of SYN packet requests? Beat their modems and forget to send them birthday cards? What is your definition of abuse?
I certainly don't call it abuse if I pay 2$ to cross a toll road at a max rate of speed of 55 mph. Nor would I call it abuse if the toll road company offers to allow me 'unlimited' access to the road for 20$ a month, even were I to drive tour buses packed with people down the road, 24/7. If the toll road operator complained about the excessive traffic my bus was generating, they have two options: widen the road or amend the contract. They cannot simply shoot the tires as I pass by in my bus (and everyone else driving a bus), then tell everyone they have improved road service.
What a bunch of head-nodding sycophants.
..I don't even read boing boing, just wondering what kind of 'fame' you expect to glean on Slashdot.
For all those who are so quick to criticize this man actually taking action, however small, where is your resume, quick - I want to make grasping, weak attempts to demonize you while ignoring the real issue - Virgin (and other telco's that want to slip this in the backdoor) are scumbags. I mean, if you want to talk about a real blowhard, how about Richard Branson, the CEO-richboy-adventurer coincidentally of Virgin?
For those eager to point out he has no degree, in particular, it has been my experience over the last few decades that many, many people hold degrees as though they were a stamp proving they are not stupid. Unfortunately for them and those that have to work with them, it's not true. Universities are degree mills in most majors - you have to be practically illiterate to fail out. The big challenge with universities these days for many people is affording it.
"Then there are Coders - who do the real work and have more than 3 brain cells."
The real work? Guzzling Jolt whilst downloading torrents of tentacle porn? There, I used my own generalization.
People wonder why programmers have a stigma attached to them as being difficult to work with and general primadonnas. A certain subculture exists that posits that somehow, the man churning out code is an 'individual', while the man supporting the infrastructure - and enforcing it's requirements and policies - is somehow a 'mindless drone'.
Personally, I cannot imagine a developer being offended at falling under the broad category of IT. If he/she were, I would question their maturity.
I maintain and plan the network - the logical network, routing tables, VLAN's, BGP, filtering - on behalf of the company I work for. Sorry if that isn't 'real' enough work for you. Whom am I kidding - any programmer worth their salt would not talk so disdainfully of those whom they work so closely with.
You've clearly rediscovered the Flux Capacitor. The future is Back(tm).
I tried to post this hours ago but Sorry! You last posted a comment 69 minutes ago.
I agree with the above AC, if you cannot recognize a Flux Capacitor, you should bow your heads in shame.
I find it hard to look at the concept as menacing.
"We're going to provide Linux free of charge to anyone! MUHAHAHAHA!"
"Beware my open source laser! Powered by the distilled tears of Microsoft execs, it will cut you out of vendor lock-in!"
Or better, Stark teams up with Microsoft to combat the 'threat', then, during a battle as Iron Man powers up his blaster, the HUD flashes..
WinIRON.sys
The driver is attempting to access memory beyond the end of the
allocation.
Stop: 0x000000D6
(0x89781000, 0x00000000, 0xBF82683F, 0x00000000)
WinIRON.sys address BF82683F base at BF80000
"Besides - do you think that if people from our country were going to disrupt anything like that, that we'd be out there in a boat that says "LOL USA!!"? Just because the boats were owned by companies and piloted by the proper people doesn't necessarily prove someone else wasn't behind what happened."
/. has not heard of false-flag operations.
Indeed. I guess
"Is taking a picture through the your window with visible light coming through really that much different from taking a multi-spectral image of the thermal IR pouring through your houses walls?"
Uhm, yes? With thermal imaging you can see people *inside* the houses, from a very great distance, night or day, without exposing any individual to either the neccessity of taking money for doing such work or the possibility of being noticed.
Having military-grade surveillance satellites pointed in your general direction should concern you - or in 20 years you will wish you had listened to us 'cranks'.
462 million dollars is to 'grant money' as a PTC III crane is to a Tonka mighty crane.
I think disallowing a few wealthy shareholders from profiteering from the enormous governmental support the company has received is a small price to pay for retaining cutting-edge technology in our national portfolio without giving a veto on how we might use said technology to other nations.