I think you greatly underestimate the value of creating large pools of talent in a single location. It is true that an individual can succeed on his own, working virtually in support of a company or himself. However, when you live in a community of similar talent, there's a sharpening effect - people coming together, sharing ideas, supporting one another, and ultimately, creating new businesses together. It's not impossible for this to happen virtually, but it is much easier when people are close to one another, able to do this informally whether over coffee, dinner, drink or just hanging out - essentially living life together. Proximity allows for much more rapid and deeper networking so that when those new ideas emerge, it's much easier to find and recruit the talent you need. Finally, when you have concentrated pools like this, you begin to develop secondary infrastructure that makes doing business in that area all that much more attractive - venture capital all the way down to better coffee.
I get you on the whole driverless car and hyperloop thing, but people really are very localized, and unless you can make both so fast that the thought of going to another city for drinks is no different a time and energy commitment than going to the bar a couple blocks away, it's not going to really work.
Using lasers to blind individuals is a violation of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons signed by 105 countries including the United States and the United Kingdom. So I suppose from a legal philosophy perspective, calling the use of lasers to interfere with a person's vision an offensive weapon isn't that big of a stretch.
Spending $20,000,000,000,000 (and counting...) on pointless war in the Middle East instead of energy research is really working out well for the USA.
The fallacy of these kind of comments is the assumption that all, or even a part, of that money would have ever gone to energy R&D. It would have been given back as a tax break, used to build another bridge to nowhere, or maybe just not borrowed to begin with.
Also, why do these militia/patriot types think its their prerogative to use lethal force or violence to get what they want? WTF?!? That is what criminals do. Isn't this obvious enough?
Look, I completely disagree with these guys and think what they're doing is stupid and counterproductive, but to say that it's "obvious" isn't correct. There have been other cases of armed actions and occupations that through the lens of history have been celebrated. The violent sitdown strikes of the 1930s are a good example: workers basically occupying a factory, taking up arms and fortifying it, and then engaging in battles against law enforcement and the private owners who try to remove them. Or armed Black Panthers occupying the California state capitol building, marching into a session of the legislature fully armed, and to everyone's credit, there was no violence. Again, I don't agree with this practice, but it is something that does happen in the US every now and then, and we don't simply label them all with the terrorist paintbrush each time.
They got off easy because the last time these types of groups emerged, the Federal government went in with guns blazing and ended up with a bunch of dead women and children on CNN, leading to a continued escalation until one guy decided to truck bomb a Federal building. That's why they've tried a different approach, because they don't want a repeat of the 1990s. However, given the events of the last couple of days, I think we're going to end up with another Ruby Ridge.
They haven't crossed the (iii) line yet though for domestic terrorism nor the 930(c) for the Federal lands. I think that will probably change now that we have siege in place, but at this point, this isn't really that much different from a large number of people storming a government building and occupying and fortifying it in protest. There are no hostages, no direct threats to kill Federal officers or employees - the nuance they've made is they think the government will kill them. Until the arrests ans siege, this is less terrorism than some of the labor protests we've had in the last century where workers captured factories and attacked people with homemade weapons who tried to approach the building.
I was told though that this isn't the fault of the Patent Office per say but of Congress and the courts' interpretation of the law. I think the PTO itself recognizes this weakness, but it would require legislation to change.
Militia is a particularly unique form of domestic terrorism / unrest that regularly pops up in the United States. It's distinguished from terrorism because the tactics are a bit different - they almost never aim to directly create mass civilian casualties or property damage like your more typical terror group. However, they do encroach and illegally use Federally owned territory. The American Federal government tends to be very cautious with them because the last tit-for-tat escalation in the 1990s ended with the Federal government accidentally killing dozens of men, women and children in addition to most of the militia members (Waco, Ruby Ridge are the two most public examples) that eventually did lead to terrorism by a group of sympathizers - the Oklahoma City Federal bombing. Maybe the more apt term would be anti-government rebels, but as one person pointed out, the US tends to be sympathetic to the term rebels given our history, so critics of militia don't like using the term.
Admiral Rogers also made that point too - that 80% of the government's cybersecurity problems would be solved if he could get military personnel to treat "cyber hygiene" the same way that they manage rifles, artillery and other kinetic weapons.
This really won't make that much a difference. If you were to implement such a system, people will gravitate toward second party reviewers who likely favor their particular ideological bend (e.g. Fox News types will find Fox News type reviewers). Then, they will have access and vote up reporters who favor their ideological leanings. It doesn't really solve the problem.
The thing people always seem to forget is that with every technological revolution, you have this problem - millions of people who are left behind and aren't able to be reabsorbed into the new economy. Their children may be able to adapt and fill the factories, but those formerly working individuals aren't, leaving behind an angry and unemployed mass of people and creating social upheaval. Here's one good take on it:
But this process of replacing one occupation with another has always been slow. Society needs time to adjust to a change in required skill sets. In truth, few farmers really retrain as manufacturers and few manufacturers go on to become computer engineers. It is much more likely to be the next generation that trains into the new skill set modern society requires. The farmers’ children go on to be manufacturers and the manufacturers' children become computer scientists. But at some point, the rate of change may happen quicker than children take to grow up. At some point, the manufacturer has to retrain as a computer engineer or confront a life with no livelihood.
If the past is a predictor (anarchists, communists, fascists and other violent revolutionaries who have nothing to lose), then we're in for a rough time.
Phone numbers are the defacto, common and relatively stable identifier that most people possess today. Yes, it may be archaic, but most people are comfortable with it, a global, relatively neutral means of communication. It's neutrality is protected by a patchwork of government regulations worldwide, and until one single company, alliance of companies, or single open standard becomes globally adopted at the same level as the phone number, Facebook or anyone else isn't going to replace it. While I'm sure Facebook dreams of usurping that role, their penetration isn't nearly global enough to provide the scale to challenge it. Now, if they created alliances with the Tencents of the world for a unified standard, maybe, but we're a long, long way from that.
Silly hackers... don't they know that the DNI is considered a dead end job in Washington DC, particularly in the intelligence community? Their position is basically just a title with no real budget, assets or control over the actual intelligence agencies in the United States (a la CIA, NSA, DIA, etc.) who think that the DNI role is really theirs in practice. Heck, if anything, the DNI is probably happy to get some actual press.
There is also that small question of what happens when a five, ten or even twenty pound object hovering from even a few dozen feet comes crashing down into a crowded street. Probably not an ideal solution, liabilities and whatnot.
For those who are trying to hand wave the issue with a broader "well, we shouldn't do things that make people angry *tsk* *tsk*", while addressing the root drivers will help mitigate the numbers of potential incidents, in a world where people have differing opinions, you'll always have a few folks who disagree strongly enough that they may just try to do something like deliver a dangerous payload via unmanned platform. Very least, you're going to have criminal elements that are going to try and exploit this technology for recon or more direct support in committing crimes, maybe even violent support. Therefore, you're going to need this technology to some degree whether through jamming or even outright shooting it out of the sky.
It is time to stop believing that isolationism, military threats, embargoes, and sanctions can work on a country that has resisted for over 60 years. It is time for talk. Talking to them may go absolutely nowhere. I expect the first few talks will accomplish a whole lot of nothing. However, it is my opinion that so long as the US is spending billions propping up the South Korean military, making honest efforts to to end the conflict through discussions is the least we can do.
South Korea tried engagement, an effort known as the Sunshine Policy which ultimately failed. They poured billions in development dollars into North Korea and held two summits, but in the end, there was no impact to the quality of life for the North Korean people, no softening of their stance (in fact, they provoked a naval battle with the South, resulting in the deaths of six South Korean sailors), and continued nuclear weapons development. True, there have been flaws in the implementation, and difficulties with the Bush administration, but given the effort over a nearly eight year period, one would have expected some movement. Outside a few photo ops however, there was nothing, and thus, the South Koreans abandoned the effort.
Even before the Volkswagen scandal, it was always a tradeoff between diesel (fuel efficiency) and gasoline (air quality). Europe went with the former while the United States went with the latter. The hope of the former was that diesel would get cleaner, with companies like Volkswagen supposedly leading the way. Now sadly, we know better...
Queue angry Sanders supporters complaining about a broader conspiracy by Hillary/DNC/Mainstream Media/etc. to destroy his campaign in three... two... one...
The much vaunted #OpParis has not been a success as advertised. The level of false positives has been massive, with many of the so-called IS accounts and websites being pro-Kurdish, pro-Palestinian, or even simply targeted because they happen to be in Arabic. Think about it, does Anonymous really have the depth of knowledge on terror networks, or even enough competent Arabic speakers, to vet thousands of Twitter accounts and websites? Do they know enough about Arab cultures to understand the nuances of whether or not these Twitter accounts are really pro-IS or simply just requoting IS for news or even trolling IS in Arabic?
There was actually a very timely Planet Money podcast on how the hoverboards were developed. Apparently the concept was created by a Chinese inventor who quickly lost control of the idea to the Shenzhen wild west where dozens of firms began creating variants of the hoverboard. Given the nature of how the product was introduced, through numerous companies with no clear originating firm, it's no surprise why you have so many quality control issues without a single manufacturer that has a "brand" on these hoverboards they're trying to maintain.
Trade is an issue, but it was definitely focused on nuclear nonproliferation. Given the very direct link between rockets to deliver satellites into orbit and rockets to deliver nuclear warheads, there was interest among many nations, especially as the Cold War winded down, to ensure these sorts of arms races never developed. Japan, having been on the receiving end of a nuclear weapon, had strong reasons to promote nuclear nonproliferation. At that time as well, there were hopes that with Japan signing onto limiting rocket technology, it could also help prevent nations like North Korea from chasing down the nuclear tech tree. Sadly, history didn't play out that way, but you can understand where they were coming from.
Agreed, a lot of the groundwork for the Cold War was laid out toward the latter half of the Second World War. By 1944, when it looked like the Axis' fall was well on its way, they spent just as much time positioning themselves for the post-war era: the Soviets providing captured Japanese equipment to the Chinese Communists, the United States (in small part) nuking Japan to bring a quick end to the war and prevent a Soviet occupation of Japan, the rush to capture German territories by Allied powers.
The problem that we face, and my guess the reason for the anxiety among the public, is that we've built an entire Internet ecosystem that is built around the assumption of unlimited data. Video and application streaming, network storage / cloud, VoIP and FaceTime, digital software distribution, streaming advertising, and even things like "work from home"... the whole American Internet ecosystem was built around the assumption that monthly data consumption was not an issue, and it's been like this for decades. You have entire generations of people who have grown up, knowing nothing but unlimited data; numerous companies building software from AAPL to a startup without having to worry about data consumption. Suddenly, you have ISP's coming out of nowhere shattering assumption, and it's going to throw the whole system into chaos. Users never paid attention to how much data their lifestyles consumed, and now they have to quantify and track something they never had done before. Doesn't matter if the cap is set at a reasonable level, the unknown of it, the sudden change of the assumption, is going to make people uneasy, scared and angry. Companies who have people working from home because they assume that those employees have unlimited data - are they going to face bills from their employees for the data that was consumed? Advertisers who streamed unwanted videos - does it go from just an annoyance to a real cost pain point for users? Is FaceTiming grandma have a much more discreet cost? Even the idea of something in the past as simple as watching a YouTube video all of a sudden has a real, quantifiable cost attached to it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you greatly underestimate the value of creating large pools of talent in a single location. It is true that an individual can succeed on his own, working virtually in support of a company or himself. However, when you live in a community of similar talent, there's a sharpening effect - people coming together, sharing ideas, supporting one another, and ultimately, creating new businesses together. It's not impossible for this to happen virtually, but it is much easier when people are close to one another, able to do this informally whether over coffee, dinner, drink or just hanging out - essentially living life together. Proximity allows for much more rapid and deeper networking so that when those new ideas emerge, it's much easier to find and recruit the talent you need. Finally, when you have concentrated pools like this, you begin to develop secondary infrastructure that makes doing business in that area all that much more attractive - venture capital all the way down to better coffee.
I get you on the whole driverless car and hyperloop thing, but people really are very localized, and unless you can make both so fast that the thought of going to another city for drinks is no different a time and energy commitment than going to the bar a couple blocks away, it's not going to really work.
Using lasers to blind individuals is a violation of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons signed by 105 countries including the United States and the United Kingdom. So I suppose from a legal philosophy perspective, calling the use of lasers to interfere with a person's vision an offensive weapon isn't that big of a stretch.
Spending $20,000,000,000,000 (and counting...) on pointless war in the Middle East instead of energy research is really working out well for the USA.
The fallacy of these kind of comments is the assumption that all, or even a part, of that money would have ever gone to energy R&D. It would have been given back as a tax break, used to build another bridge to nowhere, or maybe just not borrowed to begin with.
Also, why do these militia/patriot types think its their prerogative to use lethal force or violence to get what they want? WTF?!? That is what criminals do. Isn't this obvious enough?
Look, I completely disagree with these guys and think what they're doing is stupid and counterproductive, but to say that it's "obvious" isn't correct. There have been other cases of armed actions and occupations that through the lens of history have been celebrated. The violent sitdown strikes of the 1930s are a good example: workers basically occupying a factory, taking up arms and fortifying it, and then engaging in battles against law enforcement and the private owners who try to remove them. Or armed Black Panthers occupying the California state capitol building, marching into a session of the legislature fully armed, and to everyone's credit, there was no violence. Again, I don't agree with this practice, but it is something that does happen in the US every now and then, and we don't simply label them all with the terrorist paintbrush each time.
They got off easy because the last time these types of groups emerged, the Federal government went in with guns blazing and ended up with a bunch of dead women and children on CNN, leading to a continued escalation until one guy decided to truck bomb a Federal building. That's why they've tried a different approach, because they don't want a repeat of the 1990s. However, given the events of the last couple of days, I think we're going to end up with another Ruby Ridge.
They haven't crossed the (iii) line yet though for domestic terrorism nor the 930(c) for the Federal lands. I think that will probably change now that we have siege in place, but at this point, this isn't really that much different from a large number of people storming a government building and occupying and fortifying it in protest. There are no hostages, no direct threats to kill Federal officers or employees - the nuance they've made is they think the government will kill them. Until the arrests ans siege, this is less terrorism than some of the labor protests we've had in the last century where workers captured factories and attacked people with homemade weapons who tried to approach the building.
I was told though that this isn't the fault of the Patent Office per say but of Congress and the courts' interpretation of the law. I think the PTO itself recognizes this weakness, but it would require legislation to change.
Militia is a particularly unique form of domestic terrorism / unrest that regularly pops up in the United States. It's distinguished from terrorism because the tactics are a bit different - they almost never aim to directly create mass civilian casualties or property damage like your more typical terror group. However, they do encroach and illegally use Federally owned territory. The American Federal government tends to be very cautious with them because the last tit-for-tat escalation in the 1990s ended with the Federal government accidentally killing dozens of men, women and children in addition to most of the militia members (Waco, Ruby Ridge are the two most public examples) that eventually did lead to terrorism by a group of sympathizers - the Oklahoma City Federal bombing. Maybe the more apt term would be anti-government rebels, but as one person pointed out, the US tends to be sympathetic to the term rebels given our history, so critics of militia don't like using the term.
For those interested, here is a link to the video for the full presentation which was made at the Atlantic Council on Thursday.
Admiral Rogers also made that point too - that 80% of the government's cybersecurity problems would be solved if he could get military personnel to treat "cyber hygiene" the same way that they manage rifles, artillery and other kinetic weapons.
Commentor: War... War never changes.
NPR: Be careful out there in the Wasteland.
This really won't make that much a difference. If you were to implement such a system, people will gravitate toward second party reviewers who likely favor their particular ideological bend (e.g. Fox News types will find Fox News type reviewers). Then, they will have access and vote up reporters who favor their ideological leanings. It doesn't really solve the problem.
But this process of replacing one occupation with another has always been slow. Society needs time to adjust to a change in required skill sets. In truth, few farmers really retrain as manufacturers and few manufacturers go on to become computer engineers. It is much more likely to be the next generation that trains into the new skill set modern society requires. The farmers’ children go on to be manufacturers and the manufacturers' children become computer scientists. But at some point, the rate of change may happen quicker than children take to grow up. At some point, the manufacturer has to retrain as a computer engineer or confront a life with no livelihood.
If the past is a predictor (anarchists, communists, fascists and other violent revolutionaries who have nothing to lose), then we're in for a rough time.
Phone numbers are the defacto, common and relatively stable identifier that most people possess today. Yes, it may be archaic, but most people are comfortable with it, a global, relatively neutral means of communication. It's neutrality is protected by a patchwork of government regulations worldwide, and until one single company, alliance of companies, or single open standard becomes globally adopted at the same level as the phone number, Facebook or anyone else isn't going to replace it. While I'm sure Facebook dreams of usurping that role, their penetration isn't nearly global enough to provide the scale to challenge it. Now, if they created alliances with the Tencents of the world for a unified standard, maybe, but we're a long, long way from that.
Silly hackers... don't they know that the DNI is considered a dead end job in Washington DC, particularly in the intelligence community? Their position is basically just a title with no real budget, assets or control over the actual intelligence agencies in the United States (a la CIA, NSA, DIA, etc.) who think that the DNI role is really theirs in practice. Heck, if anything, the DNI is probably happy to get some actual press.
There is also that small question of what happens when a five, ten or even twenty pound object hovering from even a few dozen feet comes crashing down into a crowded street. Probably not an ideal solution, liabilities and whatnot.
For those who are trying to hand wave the issue with a broader "well, we shouldn't do things that make people angry *tsk* *tsk*", while addressing the root drivers will help mitigate the numbers of potential incidents, in a world where people have differing opinions, you'll always have a few folks who disagree strongly enough that they may just try to do something like deliver a dangerous payload via unmanned platform. Very least, you're going to have criminal elements that are going to try and exploit this technology for recon or more direct support in committing crimes, maybe even violent support. Therefore, you're going to need this technology to some degree whether through jamming or even outright shooting it out of the sky.
It is time to stop believing that isolationism, military threats, embargoes, and sanctions can work on a country that has resisted for over 60 years. It is time for talk. Talking to them may go absolutely nowhere. I expect the first few talks will accomplish a whole lot of nothing. However, it is my opinion that so long as the US is spending billions propping up the South Korean military, making honest efforts to to end the conflict through discussions is the least we can do.
South Korea tried engagement, an effort known as the Sunshine Policy which ultimately failed. They poured billions in development dollars into North Korea and held two summits, but in the end, there was no impact to the quality of life for the North Korean people, no softening of their stance (in fact, they provoked a naval battle with the South, resulting in the deaths of six South Korean sailors), and continued nuclear weapons development. True, there have been flaws in the implementation, and difficulties with the Bush administration, but given the effort over a nearly eight year period, one would have expected some movement. Outside a few photo ops however, there was nothing, and thus, the South Koreans abandoned the effort.
Even before the Volkswagen scandal, it was always a tradeoff between diesel (fuel efficiency) and gasoline (air quality). Europe went with the former while the United States went with the latter. The hope of the former was that diesel would get cleaner, with companies like Volkswagen supposedly leading the way. Now sadly, we know better...
Queue angry Sanders supporters complaining about a broader conspiracy by Hillary/DNC/Mainstream Media/etc. to destroy his campaign in three... two... one...
The much vaunted #OpParis has not been a success as advertised. The level of false positives has been massive, with many of the so-called IS accounts and websites being pro-Kurdish, pro-Palestinian, or even simply targeted because they happen to be in Arabic. Think about it, does Anonymous really have the depth of knowledge on terror networks, or even enough competent Arabic speakers, to vet thousands of Twitter accounts and websites? Do they know enough about Arab cultures to understand the nuances of whether or not these Twitter accounts are really pro-IS or simply just requoting IS for news or even trolling IS in Arabic?
There was actually a very timely Planet Money podcast on how the hoverboards were developed. Apparently the concept was created by a Chinese inventor who quickly lost control of the idea to the Shenzhen wild west where dozens of firms began creating variants of the hoverboard. Given the nature of how the product was introduced, through numerous companies with no clear originating firm, it's no surprise why you have so many quality control issues without a single manufacturer that has a "brand" on these hoverboards they're trying to maintain.
Trade is an issue, but it was definitely focused on nuclear nonproliferation. Given the very direct link between rockets to deliver satellites into orbit and rockets to deliver nuclear warheads, there was interest among many nations, especially as the Cold War winded down, to ensure these sorts of arms races never developed. Japan, having been on the receiving end of a nuclear weapon, had strong reasons to promote nuclear nonproliferation. At that time as well, there were hopes that with Japan signing onto limiting rocket technology, it could also help prevent nations like North Korea from chasing down the nuclear tech tree. Sadly, history didn't play out that way, but you can understand where they were coming from.
Agreed, a lot of the groundwork for the Cold War was laid out toward the latter half of the Second World War. By 1944, when it looked like the Axis' fall was well on its way, they spent just as much time positioning themselves for the post-war era: the Soviets providing captured Japanese equipment to the Chinese Communists, the United States (in small part) nuking Japan to bring a quick end to the war and prevent a Soviet occupation of Japan, the rush to capture German territories by Allied powers.
The problem that we face, and my guess the reason for the anxiety among the public, is that we've built an entire Internet ecosystem that is built around the assumption of unlimited data. Video and application streaming, network storage / cloud, VoIP and FaceTime, digital software distribution, streaming advertising, and even things like "work from home"... the whole American Internet ecosystem was built around the assumption that monthly data consumption was not an issue, and it's been like this for decades. You have entire generations of people who have grown up, knowing nothing but unlimited data; numerous companies building software from AAPL to a startup without having to worry about data consumption. Suddenly, you have ISP's coming out of nowhere shattering assumption, and it's going to throw the whole system into chaos. Users never paid attention to how much data their lifestyles consumed, and now they have to quantify and track something they never had done before. Doesn't matter if the cap is set at a reasonable level, the unknown of it, the sudden change of the assumption, is going to make people uneasy, scared and angry. Companies who have people working from home because they assume that those employees have unlimited data - are they going to face bills from their employees for the data that was consumed? Advertisers who streamed unwanted videos - does it go from just an annoyance to a real cost pain point for users? Is FaceTiming grandma have a much more discreet cost? Even the idea of something in the past as simple as watching a YouTube video all of a sudden has a real, quantifiable cost attached to it.