This is a conjecture talk, I can see why they rejected it. Bill, if you happen to read this comment, I think your talk was refused because it uses a lot of "could" and "might" to build a global picture of corruption, landed back in the banking system and corrupt government, failed to point out any non-obvious outcomes or opportunities, and didn't suggest any ways an attendee could constructively effect or participate in the problem. Generally you can expect DEFCON talks to be based on hard facts, with bonus points when it teaches you something or shows you a technique or process you can apply later.
The book plug at the end also seems like a split purpose for making the talk.
If you do not hit something at the end of your flight, you have either been abducted by aliens or achieved orbit. Neither are good.
It's how controlled that strike is that concerns people.
I know the copper lines can be used for very high speed dsl; are they trying to get the lines abandoned and then purchase them on the cheap for services?
When you take into account cost of his titanium armor, ammo for his special sidearm, computer support systems... really that's not a bad price per year.
Wait, we are talking about Robocop, right? I mean, come on, it's Google. He wouldn't be the first computer driving a car around there or anything...
The CIA are the Black Hats. The NSA collects and analyzes by charter. There are no White Hats in the government, really... maybe, maybe DHS if they ever got off their butts.
... not like the future "beings" of this planet are going to be able to figure out how to read the damn thing - we've all see planet of the apes and how inferior those beings were.. good use to document everything if it is just a hologram on a piece of rock..
They'll probably just use the damn things to encode their own histories and over-write ours!
Tell them broad strokes, not enough to figure it out. Remember that they're called Angel Investors because they can swoop in, take your idea, and do it themselves with their own money. Otherwise, most advice here is solid. They want to see how you develop it, what the exits are, and how much they can reasonably make.
"I travel about twice a month and have been a regular traveler most of my life, and because of this, the deployment of this technology has had a major impact on my life.
This technology is not wanted by air travelers, and was put in place with less testing than the shampoo I am no longer allowed to carry through security. Experts have found that shadowing can cause items to slip through this screening, and these devices cannot detect anything inside the body. They have also created long, bunched up lines of people at airports, outside of the "secure" cordon, which would allow a terrorist to kill many more people than would be on a single airplane... and these deaths could ironically be attributed directly to the delays caused by these devices, which regularly slow the lines and require pat-downs when they don't read properly (my experience when waiting).
Security at airports has become a reactive reflex which always fights the last threat. I am confident I am not the only tax payer who feels their money was completely wasted on these devices, whose only value, I feel, was to make some contractor rich, and get some person re-elected by convincing the under-informed that they were "safe."
I have experience in another industry with the same scenario; I provide the operational expertise and oversight, and have marketing side opposite me. This was a very tough issue for me, as I know marketing is crucial for me from an operational standpoint, but I don't have the time or the drive to smile all day and shake hands.
I initially partnered with some marketing folks, where we were going to go halves on the costs, they were the marketing side, and I was the operational side. Their funding backed out after I had a lot of sunk costs (naturally), so I used whatever support they could still give me based on the good-will of our intended relationship, while I worked with people familiar to the market.
The most important advice I can give you is to work with people that already know the customers in your strongest base. As you appear to have experience in the area you're working in, the people who market for you should optimally know many of the same customers you do, know more about them, and know many more people you don't.
The second most important advice I can give you, is incentives for your salespeople. My initial partners had a strong incentive (if we did poorly, they lost money too). My new folks are rewarded for the increased business, and I feel that marketing folks you employ should make very low salaries in set income, with the ability to make more than you make in bonuses if they are wildly successful. Structures on this vary, but always do a reality check when you negotiate them; a smart salesperson is one that makes a small fortune making you a bigger one. A smart con artist makes themselves a small fortunes while you make about the same you would have without them.
Pass a failed law: Go to Jail. Politicians need to have fear of jail. Obamacare would have never ever passed.
What is missed is that "when you are to big to fail", you got that way by hiring ex-politicians, using lobbyists and donating huge sums to politicians in return for writing favorable laws.
In return politicians want "a return", so they put rules on things like the banks in order to satisfy their political party or favorite group.
The Community Reinvestment Act was obviously at the root of the MMM (mortgage meltdown mess), but we don't see any laws making politicians go to jail for having voted for that law and then failing to eliminate or restructure it when it was known it was going out of control.
We are all part of the same compost heap. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. Like the first monkey shot into space... without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.
We'll start with a well that is drilled, cased (casing is a solid-steel pipe all or some of the depth of the well, used to keep "stuff from coming in, or stuff from coming out"), and perforated (holes shot through the casing with explosives).
Where? That's the question that's been screaming at me all through this.
Ottawa, Canada's basically on the sheild. In Manitoba, you're lucky to see 300 milliseconds of stratigraphy. Saskatchewan, 500 ms. On the East side of the Rockies, up to 5 seconds of data.
Consequently, if you're drilling a deep play in Alberta, you're very unlikely to be affecting the water table in any significant way by fracking. In Eastern Ontario, you'll be lucky to find stratigraphic geology.
Good point on geology; most of the controversy is in the US Midwest, the South (Oklahoma and N Texas), and parts of the Northeast. I have no experience in the US NE, but we're looking at pretty tame stratification in these other regions (this isn't the Gulf of Mexico with those amazing domes of salt squeezing through and fracturing everything to hell). There will be some reasonable seismic data available in most of these areas, but (is this typical in Canada too?) you'll see a few horizontal/vertical lines of seismic, and the rest is artistic interpretation and Monte Carlo statistical simulation. Well configurations are also rather dynamic, where some holes will be full-cased and others only partial casing, and the cement jobs "always hold," etc, etc. A lot of guessing occurs, more than cheerful to admit. (You've probably seen a seismic picture tuned just a little off, with a distinctly different picture?)
As for being against fracking... I guess I'd say I'm for it if the risks are on the table. But as I explained in my initial post, I see a number of reasons why there's a muddled understanding.
I've been out of the industry for many (many) years, but here's a bit on how problems can creep in with well fracing. Background: I was in well testing, and have been to many a fracked well during/before/after the frac was performed.
We'll start with a well that is drilled, cased (casing is a solid-steel pipe all or some of the depth of the well, used to keep "stuff from coming in, or stuff from coming out"), and perforated (holes shot through the casing with explosives). Typically all of this work is done by contractors. The oil company leases the ground being drilled on. Everything else... the oil rig, the drill pipe, the workers... all of it belongs to other subcontractors. One "company man" from the actual oil company sits in a trailer on site to monitor the work. This involves a lot of waiting for someone to ask a question, and playing solitaire.
The oil company now has an outside contractor come in to frac the well. Literally, this is the next morning after the perf job if possible, because a rig costs tens of thousands of dollars a day to sit there and wait. Over a dozen big trucks come in at the crack of dawn, and link up so that over over the day, viscous, proprietary-formula fluids can be pumpted into the well to induce cracks in the formation from the overpressure of the pumping. Then a proprietary "breaker" fluid is injected to make the original goop less viscous, and to make it drop the sand embedded in it to hold these cracks open. The former goop, now runny (fingers crossed), will flow out as the well produces. The trucks are out of there the second they're done; *they* cost money sitting around too, and they're probably off to another job the next day.
-inc soapbox
My personal, biased opinion of the disconnect with fracking, the industry, and its effects, is that there is a science problem, and an accountability problem.
Scientifically, there are a number of wonderful calculations that tell us how we're effecting events inside the well. These models tend to assume an understanding of the various strata and depositions drilled through, and can easily confuse the ability to make a model match an event, with the ability to understand the mechanics of an event. This leads to an environment where current perceptions of the industry and the confidence/ego of the simulation's creator are the deciding factors. Since much of this science has migrated out of the oil companies and into the contractors over the years (or to contractor-supported academics), the operators now base their knowledge on what the contractors say is correct (this is an oversimplification, but overall I feel it is correct).
On accountability: trade secret formulas mean we have no idea what is pumped in the well. The "in and out" nature of the fracking process means that crews who perform the work have little exposure to the site, and no connection to followup on the effects of their work. Oil companies serve as the face of the project to the land owner, but have outsourced all the science to the contractors, and are defending work they understand based on the explanation of a salesperson to a client.
-rem soapbox
The above problems do not at all prove that fracking is bad, or good. They do, however, create a disconnect, making it hard to develop a cohesive picture of what is going on, good or bad.
To put it into (hopefully?) a useful tech metaphor, the contractors make the computers, and the oil company sells them to people. People complain to the oil companies that some of these computers are terrible. The oil company naturally says "oh no, we only sell good computers," and runs to the contractor. The contractor tells the oil company, "No, they're great, look at these schematics. Those people are outliers due to blah blah blah." So the oil company gives those people their money back, and makes them promise not to bad mouth the computers they're selling. Repeat as needed, until the evidence of problems with the computers is so great that the oil company cannot ignore the truth any longer, and starts selling someone else's computers at great cost and effort. Because... those computers will have *great* schematics.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a conjecture talk, I can see why they rejected it. Bill, if you happen to read this comment, I think your talk was refused because it uses a lot of "could" and "might" to build a global picture of corruption, landed back in the banking system and corrupt government, failed to point out any non-obvious outcomes or opportunities, and didn't suggest any ways an attendee could constructively effect or participate in the problem. Generally you can expect DEFCON talks to be based on hard facts, with bonus points when it teaches you something or shows you a technique or process you can apply later.
The book plug at the end also seems like a split purpose for making the talk.
If you do not hit something at the end of your flight, you have either been abducted by aliens or achieved orbit. Neither are good. It's how controlled that strike is that concerns people.
I know the copper lines can be used for very high speed dsl; are they trying to get the lines abandoned and then purchase them on the cheap for services?
When you take into account cost of his titanium armor, ammo for his special sidearm, computer support systems... really that's not a bad price per year.
Wait, we are talking about Robocop, right? I mean, come on, it's Google. He wouldn't be the first computer driving a car around there or anything...
It is only a matter of time until they wok on the moon.
It comes with software that automatically reverts your edits and insults you.
Citation Needed.
Well I'm now a firetruck, so get your diplomatic vehicle out of the way.
I have to invade Iran because my boss is making me. But our fleet really wants to occupy North Korea this summer.
Thanks to TET, we saved enough money we were able to plan both invasions, and ended up with a slight surplus. Thanks TET!
The CIA are the Black Hats. The NSA collects and analyzes by charter. There are no White Hats in the government, really... maybe, maybe DHS if they ever got off their butts.
All the White Hats seem to work for Universities.
... not like the future "beings" of this planet are going to be able to figure out how to read the damn thing - we've all see planet of the apes and how inferior those beings were.. good use to document everything if it is just a hologram on a piece of rock..
They'll probably just use the damn things to encode their own histories and over-write ours!
...
Hang on a second...
Is appears the article is wrong about telegram services ending over all, and they actually won't Stop
....but the Fish and crayfish didn't survive then!
There's no information given about the chordates and arthropoda in question.
That information might be classified.
Tell them broad strokes, not enough to figure it out. Remember that they're called Angel Investors because they can swoop in, take your idea, and do it themselves with their own money. Otherwise, most advice here is solid. They want to see how you develop it, what the exits are, and how much they can reasonably make.
They probably take Air Miles.
Yeah, but it's Virgin. The fuel surcharges will cost more than $200,000 to orbit and back if you use miles.
My Comment to Them:
"I travel about twice a month and have been a regular traveler most of my life, and because of this, the deployment of this technology has had a major impact on my life.
This technology is not wanted by air travelers, and was put in place with less testing than the shampoo I am no longer allowed to carry through security. Experts have found that shadowing can cause items to slip through this screening, and these devices cannot detect anything inside the body. They have also created long, bunched up lines of people at airports, outside of the "secure" cordon, which would allow a terrorist to kill many more people than would be on a single airplane... and these deaths could ironically be attributed directly to the delays caused by these devices, which regularly slow the lines and require pat-downs when they don't read properly (my experience when waiting).
Security at airports has become a reactive reflex which always fights the last threat. I am confident I am not the only tax payer who feels their money was completely wasted on these devices, whose only value, I feel, was to make some contractor rich, and get some person re-elected by convincing the under-informed that they were "safe."
And when we finally meet the aliens from Tostitos III, how do we explain that to them?
Over nachos?
Giving to EFF is a good step.
I have experience in another industry with the same scenario; I provide the operational expertise and oversight, and have marketing side opposite me. This was a very tough issue for me, as I know marketing is crucial for me from an operational standpoint, but I don't have the time or the drive to smile all day and shake hands.
I initially partnered with some marketing folks, where we were going to go halves on the costs, they were the marketing side, and I was the operational side. Their funding backed out after I had a lot of sunk costs (naturally), so I used whatever support they could still give me based on the good-will of our intended relationship, while I worked with people familiar to the market.
The most important advice I can give you is to work with people that already know the customers in your strongest base. As you appear to have experience in the area you're working in, the people who market for you should optimally know many of the same customers you do, know more about them, and know many more people you don't.
The second most important advice I can give you, is incentives for your salespeople. My initial partners had a strong incentive (if we did poorly, they lost money too). My new folks are rewarded for the increased business, and I feel that marketing folks you employ should make very low salaries in set income, with the ability to make more than you make in bonuses if they are wildly successful. Structures on this vary, but always do a reality check when you negotiate them; a smart salesperson is one that makes a small fortune making you a bigger one. A smart con artist makes themselves a small fortunes while you make about the same you would have without them.
How about this... we democrats will say Obama is as bad as Bush on civil liberties, if you republicans say Bush is as bad as Obama.
I think we can all meet in that middle ground.
Deal?
Pass a failed law: Go to Jail. Politicians need to have fear of jail. Obamacare would have never ever passed.
What is missed is that "when you are to big to fail", you got that way by hiring ex-politicians, using lobbyists and donating huge sums to politicians in return for writing favorable laws.
In return politicians want "a return", so they put rules on things like the banks in order to satisfy their political party or favorite group.
The Community Reinvestment Act was obviously at the root of the MMM (mortgage meltdown mess), but we don't see any laws making politicians go to jail for having voted for that law and then failing to eliminate or restructure it when it was known it was going out of control.
We are all part of the same compost heap. We are the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. Like the first monkey shot into space... without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing.
Spacemonkey!
International Shell Station?
Imagine Beowulf armed with a cluster of these!
When you lose one laptop worth of patient data, don't tell anybody.
We'll start with a well that is drilled, cased (casing is a solid-steel pipe all or some of the depth of the well, used to keep "stuff from coming in, or stuff from coming out"), and perforated (holes shot through the casing with explosives).
Where? That's the question that's been screaming at me all through this.
Ottawa, Canada's basically on the sheild. In Manitoba, you're lucky to see 300 milliseconds of stratigraphy. Saskatchewan, 500 ms. On the East side of the Rockies, up to 5 seconds of data.
Consequently, if you're drilling a deep play in Alberta, you're very unlikely to be affecting the water table in any significant way by fracking. In Eastern Ontario, you'll be lucky to find stratigraphic geology.
Good point on geology; most of the controversy is in the US Midwest, the South (Oklahoma and N Texas), and parts of the Northeast. I have no experience in the US NE, but we're looking at pretty tame stratification in these other regions (this isn't the Gulf of Mexico with those amazing domes of salt squeezing through and fracturing everything to hell). There will be some reasonable seismic data available in most of these areas, but (is this typical in Canada too?) you'll see a few horizontal/vertical lines of seismic, and the rest is artistic interpretation and Monte Carlo statistical simulation. Well configurations are also rather dynamic, where some holes will be full-cased and others only partial casing, and the cement jobs "always hold," etc, etc. A lot of guessing occurs, more than cheerful to admit. (You've probably seen a seismic picture tuned just a little off, with a distinctly different picture?)
As for being against fracking... I guess I'd say I'm for it if the risks are on the table. But as I explained in my initial post, I see a number of reasons why there's a muddled understanding.
I've been out of the industry for many (many) years, but here's a bit on how problems can creep in with well fracing. Background: I was in well testing, and have been to many a fracked well during/before/after the frac was performed.
We'll start with a well that is drilled, cased (casing is a solid-steel pipe all or some of the depth of the well, used to keep "stuff from coming in, or stuff from coming out"), and perforated (holes shot through the casing with explosives). Typically all of this work is done by contractors. The oil company leases the ground being drilled on. Everything else... the oil rig, the drill pipe, the workers... all of it belongs to other subcontractors. One "company man" from the actual oil company sits in a trailer on site to monitor the work. This involves a lot of waiting for someone to ask a question, and playing solitaire.
The oil company now has an outside contractor come in to frac the well. Literally, this is the next morning after the perf job if possible, because a rig costs tens of thousands of dollars a day to sit there and wait. Over a dozen big trucks come in at the crack of dawn, and link up so that over over the day, viscous, proprietary-formula fluids can be pumpted into the well to induce cracks in the formation from the overpressure of the pumping. Then a proprietary "breaker" fluid is injected to make the original goop less viscous, and to make it drop the sand embedded in it to hold these cracks open. The former goop, now runny (fingers crossed), will flow out as the well produces. The trucks are out of there the second they're done; *they* cost money sitting around too, and they're probably off to another job the next day.
-inc soapbox
My personal, biased opinion of the disconnect with fracking, the industry, and its effects, is that there is a science problem, and an accountability problem.
Scientifically, there are a number of wonderful calculations that tell us how we're effecting events inside the well. These models tend to assume an understanding of the various strata and depositions drilled through, and can easily confuse the ability to make a model match an event, with the ability to understand the mechanics of an event. This leads to an environment where current perceptions of the industry and the confidence/ego of the simulation's creator are the deciding factors. Since much of this science has migrated out of the oil companies and into the contractors over the years (or to contractor-supported academics), the operators now base their knowledge on what the contractors say is correct (this is an oversimplification, but overall I feel it is correct).
On accountability: trade secret formulas mean we have no idea what is pumped in the well. The "in and out" nature of the fracking process means that crews who perform the work have little exposure to the site, and no connection to followup on the effects of their work. Oil companies serve as the face of the project to the land owner, but have outsourced all the science to the contractors, and are defending work they understand based on the explanation of a salesperson to a client.
-rem soapbox
The above problems do not at all prove that fracking is bad, or good. They do, however, create a disconnect, making it hard to develop a cohesive picture of what is going on, good or bad.
To put it into (hopefully?) a useful tech metaphor, the contractors make the computers, and the oil company sells them to people. People complain to the oil companies that some of these computers are terrible. The oil company naturally says "oh no, we only sell good computers," and runs to the contractor. The contractor tells the oil company, "No, they're great, look at these schematics. Those people are outliers due to blah blah blah." So the oil company gives those people their money back, and makes them promise not to bad mouth the computers they're selling. Repeat as needed, until the evidence of problems with the computers is so great that the oil company cannot ignore the truth any longer, and starts selling someone else's computers at great cost and effort. Because... those computers will have *great* schematics.