Call me crazy, but it seems a lot better to adopt a child than go to all of this trouble.
Have you ever looked into the adoption process to see what's involved? From your comment above, I seriously doubt it.
Let's see... with IVF you're looking at $10-12k for a child (paid for by insurance in a small minority of US states) which has a genetic relation to you, where the odds are very high that pregnancy will result in birth, where you can breastfeed (which has significant advantages over formula, marketing to the contrary), where you get to bond and care for it from day 1. In the other corner, adoption costs $25-$35k and can take two or three years. There is a significant possiblity that that you can be all ready to adopt when the birth mother changes her mind - or that she can change her mind after you've taken the baby, in some states. Or, with foreign babies, you might have to adopt a 6-month old because its home country requires it stay in an orphanage for 6 months before being adopted, meaning that you miss the most important bonding period. And you may or may not know what drugs, alcohol, or smoke the baby was exposed to in utero. And, for all you know, the parents are dumb as a post and ugly as bricks.
In fact it seems downright selfish that one would rather spend tons of money rather than adopt a child that already exists. It seems so selfish that I might go so far as to argue that perhaps this desire that the child must be mine mine mine might go so far as to make people bad parents due to the fact that they are so slefish thinking of thier own needs and wants and are unable to love a child just becuse it doe snot have their DNA.
Based on this, I gather that NOT ONLY have you not been involved in one of these decisions, you don't know any parents of IVF children. I know many, and I have never ever met one who was as narcissistic as you describe; most of them quite the opposite.
Now before I'm modded as a troll.
You're not a troll, you're just making uninformed suppositions.
Why is the idea of adoption so repellant that one would rather go through such effort to create a child?
It isn't repellent. But it has a number of disadvantages relative to IVF, which makes IVF a rational choice for many people. There are a lot of selfish behaviors in the modern world - IVF is not one of them. It involves pain and sacrifice and courage that people who haven't done it can't imagine.
I think it is unwise to go through all sorts of unnatural steps to have your own child, ignoring what Mother Nature decreed. This is just the point of view of an environmentalist, applied to humans.
Excellent! You'll be stopping your health insurance, then? You won't need any of those unnatural steps to fix broken bones, fill cavities, or find out why red stuff comes up when you cough.
Mother Nature intended you to be scratching your bare ass in a cave while you waited for the tiger to go away so you could hunt rodents. I wouldn't rely too much on her decrees.
My guess is that people shouldn't be ignoring nature. If you were born without fallopian tubes or something else that prevents creating a baby naturally, maybe that's nature's way of saying you shouldn't be perpetuating your genes.
What does nature have to do with it?
Given that high infertility (such as 10% in the US) is generally associated with industrialized nations*, nature's already out of the business. No one knows, of course, but it's highly likely that chemical, environmental or lifestyle exposure all contribute to infertility.
*The exception being sub-saharan africa, where STDs and low-quality abortions lead to fertility problems.
The other problem with the "nature" argument is that it is specious. When you throw out your allergy pills, your dentistry, your triple-bypass surgery, your anti-depressants, or whatever crutch you take for granted, then you can talk about what "nature" intended. Man has always manipulated itself and its environment, and this is no different.
In case of an emergency onboard an aircraft I will literally bet my life on the instincts of a human being over the computational prowess of machine.
Some people have had to make that bet, and lost.
You may remember the July '02 collision between a DHL cargo plane and a Russian airliner that killed 71 people.
As described in RISKS Digest, in that crash the TCAS (Traffic alert and Collision Avoidance System) correctly ordered the pilot to ascend; the (relatively) uninformed ground controller told the pilot to descend. The pilot obeyed the ground controller, with catastrophic results.
Or you could flush it down the toilet after you tear 'em up.
DO NOT TRY THIS.
I tried to do this with a teacher's note when I was in 4th grade or so. The ripped up little pieces floated happily around and never flushed.
Maybe it will work with a powerful industrial-strength "sounds-like-an-airplane-taking-off" mechanism but, if you're working with a standard home toilet, you're unlikely to get the results you wanted.
Intrusion Tolerance is already being practiced, although another term for it is defense in depth.
Another poster has described how defense in depth and fault tolerance apply to firewalls, network infrastructure, etc. I'd like to mention host-based measures to slow an attacker down and limit the damage they can do.
One of the oldest host-based D-i-D measures is chroot jails. A 'chroot' in Unix means that an application is run with access to only a limited subset of the filesystem, one which does not contain interesting, useful, or leveragable files. This makes it harder for an attacker to leverage, say, user-level access via a buggy network daemon into root-level access, access to the system passwd/shadow file, or access to system binaries.
chroot isn't perfect; the process still shares access to the OS kernel and the network, and can leverage those.
LIDS is a Linux-specific solution. LIDS allows capabilities on a system to be locked down beyond the capability of even root to modify. For example, you can set/usr/bin/* to be read-only, and not even root can override that without first disabling LIDS. The ability to bind to network ports can be controlled; e.g. only/usr/sbin/sendmail can bind to port 25 (and/usr/sbin/sendmail can be made read-only). The ability to load modules into the kernel and access devices to do similar things (e.g./dev/kmem) can be blocked. In other words, the ability of an attacker who gains root access on the host to rootkit it is severely degraded. There are still openings, though, e.g. root can access user's files.
Security-Enhanced Linux is the next step. Rather than emasculating root as LIDS does, it "has no concept of a 'root' super-user, and does not share the well-known shortcomings of the traditional Linux security mechanisms...." Privileges can be carefully handed out to protect the system from the users and the users from each other.
Even Windows can benefit from some careful configuration. Consider how NIMDA used the Windows TFTP.EXE binary to bootstrap its access up - why is TFTP.EXE executable by anyone on the system? Set ACLs on system binaries. Make sure the IIS web root isn't on the OS drive to block directory traversal attacks. Remove things that aren't needed.
I can't remember the attribution, but someone summed Intrusion Tolerance up by saying, "If you can't prevent it, you sure as hell better be able to detect it." Keeping the bad guys off the server may be impossible, but every little roadblock you put in to slow them down will give you a better chance of detecting them and stopping them before they capture the flag and end the game.
I didn't know NASA had enough money to donate, with all the cutbacks and whatnot.
Look at it from the other direction. Do you find it odd that, in an environment where they're facing cutbacks, NASA would do something to put their name on perhaps the most publicly acknowledged (non-NASA) space-related project? Of course not!
Between Contact and SETI@Home, SETI has mindshare in the voting public with positive connotations. Just what NASA needs right now.
If you're dropping them on troop concentrations...
I never suggested dropping them on troop concentrations. I suggested dropping them as part of an offensive thrust. Anecdotal evidence suggests that during, for example, the thrust into Baghdad there were few if any Iraqi "troop concentrations," just scattered troops, equipment, and weapons caches. I'm sure a lot of the American troops would have liked some sort of visibility 1/2 mile outside the highway they were on through sensors.
Why are you dropping cameras on troop concentrations when you could be dropping bombs on troop concentrations.
Your argument is reductio ad absurdum. If you can get the troop concentrations to line up neatly behind a maggot line, then sure, fire away. In the real world, however, the opposition force is rarely going to make it "easy" to drop bombs. Thus the use of overhead imagery, air-to-ground radar, predator drones, forward air controllers, and other useful information sources.
Or are you one of those "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead" types? (Fact: they weren't torpedos, they were mines. Full speed ahead wasn't necessarily the appropriate course of action. Farragut could have used better sensors...)
So, this is about having cameras dropped or setup to monitor an area.
Unless the area is friendly, people will take out the cameras.
Again, reductio ad absurdum. If a MEF is pushing up the highway as the things are being dropped, people will probably have more important things - like running or fighting - to do.
(Also - this may be out there, but I'm guessing that DARPA wants these things to have a little more durability than a Sony minicam. Military people tend to expect stuff to get shot at.)
So, the only time people won't be shooting at the cameras will be when they are deployed to observe friendly populations.
I don't agree. You seem to reach your opinion by reducing to absolute black and white; the real world, especially in war, is more of a foggy gray.
Here, let me give you a better example. Suppose we deploy these in Palestinian controlled areas. How long do you think it will be before kids are breaking them with rocks?
Not long, which is why they won't work in a static police action. Hey, could that be why DARPA is looking at them and not the FBI? Let's take the tin foil off and see!
Massive RAIS (Redundant Array of Information Sources) is the future of the battlefield, and that's why DARPA is looking at it. If it makes it into service - like the predator did, like the AWACS did, like NVG did - then it will offer a tactical advantage on the battlefield.
On a related note, see this article. When Iraqi forces in Basra were mortaring within the city, "...British troops were using a system of radar tracking to pinpoint and then attack the mortar positions."
This is exactly the thing that has been needed; consider for example that the U.S. forces stationed in Somalia (...back when) were casually mortared by by the locals. Being able to accurately spot and strike back is exactly the sort of technological advantage needed in urban warfare.
Good. Better they shoot at sensors then at troops. And when a sensor goes offline, that provides information about where the opponent is.
Refer back where I said that the sensors will end up being 'essentially disposable.' They'll be numerous, and when one goes offline, the other 5 in the surrounding area will be well placed to identify the forces, track them, and lead to their detention or elimination.
What I find more disturbing than the possibility to use this system to spy on americans, is the implied opinion that it's OK to use such a system for killing people in other countries but not to spy on US citizens.
Wars happen. People die. If less people die because of technology, isn't that a good thing? Would you have preferred that, instead of using precision weapons in Baghdad, it had been bombed like Dresden, Tokyo, or Hiroshima?
So I guess the officials can also tell us why the hell overseas cities should provide the camera installation for US troops to fight there more easily?
Obviously they won't, which is why the article states 'In the second phase, at least 100 cameras would be installed in 12 hours to support "military operations in an urban terrain."'
To install the cameras you usually need to control the city and to control a city in a military operations requires some fighting before. Looks like a perfect Catch22 to me.
Um, no.
"Securing the perimeter" is the step that usually comes after reaching the objective. This is a perimeter security step. Nothing in the article indicates that this is seen as a way of entering the city, more as a way of controlling it once it is held.
Personally, I predict that the next step will be the moral equivalent of dog pod grids, where aerial surveillance vehicles (smaller than the predator, essentially disposable as necessary) will carry the cameras in with the troops and provide extended perimeter security, thus shrinking that 12-hour setup window. Imagine how much harder it would be today to sneak up on Bagram Air Base and drop a few mortars rounds in if there were a few predator drones constantly circling randomly around and detecting movement.
Why would somebody using an open source code be called a 'looter' ?
In short, its probably an Ayn Rand reference. See Atlas Shrugged for the long, long, long, long explanation.
For the medium explanation, Atlas Shrugged describe a world in which those who are 'capable' are leached upon, taxed, condemned, and harnessed by the less capable, often called 'looters.' Those who can, do. Those who can't, either petition the government to rewrite the laws in their favor, or work for the government.
The clear parallel is that SCO was manifestly unable to field enterprise-quality x86 Unix, but they're eminently capable of suing those who could and did.
As an aside, I don't recommend Atlas Shrugged as a good intro to Ayn Rand - you'll never come back. Try The Fountainhead for a more readable, entertaining book without 40-freaking-page-long speeches.
First, hijacking dns services is illegal regardless of damages, right?
Probably... if it had been done, which it wasn't (read the later posts) and if he had been the ISP calling, which he wasn't.
The analogy I want to draw is that somebody is pointing a gun at somebody else's head. Now, should law enforcement get involved, even if the potential victim doesn't have a large financial portfolio?
Nice analogy. The analogy I'd like to draw is someone drawing a pot of tea. Clearly there's no requirement for law enforcement there, and my analogy has as much likeness to the case at hand as yours does.
This is simple: he downloaded spyware, it screwed up his system, he misdiagnosed and ran around like chicken little telling his ISP the sky is falling. When that didn't work, he ran to the federal government, who rightly said that they'd prefer to hear from the people actually responsible for the machines allegedly compromised, thank you very much.
Had he realized it was spyware, and called the feds, they'd have ignored him then, too. And rightly so. They aren't tech support.
I really don't know what to say, except what I put in the subject line.
You're overreaching a bit.
The end-user isn't an official representative of the victim. Obviously, law enforcement isn't going to deal with him. Firstly, for (the feds) to get involved, they need at least $5000 damage, which he couldn't speak to. They're not going to waste their time unless there is a willingness to prosecute, which - guess what - also requires an offical representative to commit to. Finally, if they do get involved, their next step is to ask for logs and other evidence - which, at best, the end-user only has symptoms of. Again, they need to deal with the duly authorized representative of the ISP to get anywhere.
From the sound of it, they actually went out of their way to try and help him reach the minimums to be considered a valid case himself. That's actually pretty amazing by itself.
I don't know about your particular species, but humans did not evolve millions of years to eat the shit that JUST GROWS around us. Most of the shit we ate for the last millions of years is gone... what we eat is what we BREED AND CULTIVATE.
Right on. There's a section of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel which discusses how (IIRC) the almond, originally poisonous, was altered over the years as humans and animals preferred and reproduced the less dangerous variations over the more dangerous variations.
Heck, just wander into the supermarket near Thanksgiving. Do the anti-GE food people think 25-pound turkeys come with 15-pound breasts in the wild?
"...the transparency in the process also means that if dishonesty happens, you can go back and see what went on."
Right on. In other words, if SCO would release info on what was copied, then by going through the archives it will be possible to see who contributed it, and under what auspices. So we can see if IBM did it, if Caldera did it, if John Quackenschmoe did it, and if there is a violation hold the appropriate party responsible and stop the FUD.
Of course, the fact that SCO hasn't done this only shows that the pieces of paper they hold in their hands, probably don't have the names on it they say they do.
I still don't get this. Aren't the schools heated? Are they trying to keep kids from freezing or cars from crashing on the way to the schools?
The problems are the road (bus, car, whatever) and power outages, which get caused by 1) car accidents involving power lines and 2) tree limbs, weighted with snow, downing lines.
Aren't there plows and salters and whatnot that keep the roads passable so the kids can get to and from the school building(s)?
Yes, there are, but during a storm they're always playing catchup. In my town, tertiary roads don't even see a plow before the snow is something like 2 inches deep as a minimum, and during one storm last year there were 8 inches of snow on the road before the first plow got to us (and even then, he cut a single path and left most of the road unplowed).
Even main roads remain slippery during heavy snowfall with ongoing plowing. During very heavy storms, an emergency may be declared and any non-essential people are ordered to stay off the streets, with police cars driving around announcing it on the loudspeaker.
Think, also, kids standing on street corners in slippery, low-visibility conditions - bad. There are always a lot of accidents and wipe-outs on a snowy day.
This is not a troll, I'm completely serious. I don't understand why you wouldn't have to go to school on a day with heavy snow.
This is not an insult, but if you're from California, you probably associate snow with well-plowed roads on a sunny day driving up into the mountains. Actually being out during a storm is a different proposition.
I agree, but it cannot be ignored. I mentioned it mostly to stem the flood of nuts who would come out of the woodwork if my grossly broad summary ignored that aspect.
Personally, I think the most remarkable thing about the founding of modern Israel is the way that they were able to make the transition from terrorism (specifically, forcing out the British) to a reasonably normal modern state.
However, what hurts me more is your statement, which has been extensively documented as false, about Jews pushing Arabs out of their houses and lands. The truth is that it was the arab leaders that exorted people to leave their homes, under the counsel of egyptian, jordanian, syrian and iraqi military liaisons, as a temporary measure, while their mighty combined army pulverizes the jews.
I concur that some amount of the Palestinian exodus was related to the promises and exhortations of the surrounding Arab states. However, it is delusional to believe that there was no force or pressure applied. If the federal government exhorted Californians to leave their homes temporarily so that they could sweep in and evict the illegal immigrants, can you imagine that any appreciable number would leave?
I left out many parts; I highly recommend A History of the Modern Middle East as one of the best history texts for those interested in this area.
It was not the intent of my original post to make any value judgements about Zionism, Egypt, or anything else. If one wishes to be judgemental, there is enough malicious idiocy on all sides of the equation to provide ammunition.
If I have a judgement here, it is that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. One could argue that the failure of surrounding nations to integrate the Palestinian refugees is a sobering parallel of the failure of (the subset of) Jews (who tried to) to assimilate themselves in Europe.
Islamists call the people of Israel and all countries that support Israel (esp. the U.S.) 'Zionists', referring I'm sure to Mt. Zion...
To be precise, they are referring to Zionism, a racist ideology very popular in Israel.
Based on the rest of the comments throughout this entire topic, I can only conclude that the average/. reader slept through their history classes.
To wit: yes, the Egyptian censorship is about Zion (in the movie) and Zionism. The fact that most people missed this implies they don't know what Zionism is.
Put simply, Zionism was a movement based on the belief that as long as the Jews lived as ethnic minorities in other countries, they were going to be discriminated against ("discriminated" meaning "killed and robbed whenever public tension needed an outlet" - read up on the Pogroms sometime). The Dreyfus Affair convinced a reporter named Theodor Herzl that the only solution was for a Jewish homeland. He founded the Zionism movement, with the goal of creating a Jewish state. This movement slowly fought for progress over the next 50 years (see also the Balfour Declaration)
Fast-forward to 1948. After 6 million or so Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the survivors got serious about a homeland. With lots of leftover guns lying around from World War II, they founded Israel. In doing so, they resorted to terrorism, and displaced much of the non-Jewish palestinian population.
None of the neighboring countries wanted to absorb the Palestinians, and something like 6 wars have been fought since then. So, for the Egyptians, Zionism represents a massive local disruption which they've lost wars over.
So-called "Modern Zionism" is the "racist ideology" referred to above, which basically boils down to "Jewish Israel - love it or leave it." To focus on it and ignore over 100 years of history is short-sighted.
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Call me crazy, but it seems a lot better to adopt a child than go to all of this trouble.
Have you ever looked into the adoption process to see what's involved? From your comment above, I seriously doubt it.
Let's see... with IVF you're looking at $10-12k for a child (paid for by insurance in a small minority of US states) which has a genetic relation to you, where the odds are very high that pregnancy will result in birth, where you can breastfeed (which has significant advantages over formula, marketing to the contrary), where you get to bond and care for it from day 1. In the other corner, adoption costs $25-$35k and can take two or three years. There is a significant possiblity that that you can be all ready to adopt when the birth mother changes her mind - or that she can change her mind after you've taken the baby, in some states. Or, with foreign babies, you might have to adopt a 6-month old because its home country requires it stay in an orphanage for 6 months before being adopted, meaning that you miss the most important bonding period. And you may or may not know what drugs, alcohol, or smoke the baby was exposed to in utero. And, for all you know, the parents are dumb as a post and ugly as bricks.
In fact it seems downright selfish that one would rather spend tons of money rather than adopt a child that already exists. It seems so selfish that I might go so far as to argue that perhaps this desire that the child must be mine mine mine might go so far as to make people bad parents due to the fact that they are so slefish thinking of thier own needs and wants and are unable to love a child just becuse it doe snot have their DNA.
Based on this, I gather that NOT ONLY have you not been involved in one of these decisions, you don't know any parents of IVF children. I know many, and I have never ever met one who was as narcissistic as you describe; most of them quite the opposite.
Now before I'm modded as a troll.
You're not a troll, you're just making uninformed suppositions.
Why is the idea of adoption so repellant that one would rather go through such effort to create a child?
It isn't repellent. But it has a number of disadvantages relative to IVF, which makes IVF a rational choice for many people. There are a lot of selfish behaviors in the modern world - IVF is not one of them. It involves pain and sacrifice and courage that people who haven't done it can't imagine.
I think it is unwise to go through all sorts of unnatural steps to have your own child, ignoring what Mother Nature decreed. This is just the point of view of an environmentalist, applied to humans.
Excellent! You'll be stopping your health insurance, then? You won't need any of those unnatural steps to fix broken bones, fill cavities, or find out why red stuff comes up when you cough.
Mother Nature intended you to be scratching your bare ass in a cave while you waited for the tiger to go away so you could hunt rodents. I wouldn't rely too much on her decrees.
My guess is that people shouldn't be ignoring nature. If you were born without fallopian tubes or something else that prevents creating a baby naturally, maybe that's nature's way of saying you shouldn't be perpetuating your genes.
What does nature have to do with it?
Given that high infertility (such as 10% in the US) is generally associated with industrialized nations*, nature's already out of the business. No one knows, of course, but it's highly likely that chemical, environmental or lifestyle exposure all contribute to infertility.
*The exception being sub-saharan africa, where STDs and low-quality abortions lead to fertility problems.
The other problem with the "nature" argument is that it is specious. When you throw out your allergy pills, your dentistry, your triple-bypass surgery, your anti-depressants, or whatever crutch you take for granted, then you can talk about what "nature" intended. Man has always manipulated itself and its environment, and this is no different.
In case of an emergency onboard an aircraft I will literally bet my life on the instincts of a human being over the computational prowess of machine.
Some people have had to make that bet, and lost.
You may remember the July '02 collision between a DHL cargo plane and a Russian airliner that killed 71 people.
As described in RISKS Digest, in that crash the TCAS (Traffic alert and Collision Avoidance System) correctly ordered the pilot to ascend; the (relatively) uninformed ground controller told the pilot to descend. The pilot obeyed the ground controller, with catastrophic results.
Or you could flush it down the toilet after you tear 'em up.
DO NOT TRY THIS.
I tried to do this with a teacher's note when I was in 4th grade or so. The ripped up little pieces floated happily around and never flushed.
Maybe it will work with a powerful industrial-strength "sounds-like-an-airplane-taking-off" mechanism but, if you're working with a standard home toilet, you're unlikely to get the results you wanted.
Intrusion Tolerance is already being practiced, although another term for it is defense in depth.
Another poster has described how defense in depth and fault tolerance apply to firewalls, network infrastructure, etc. I'd like to mention host-based measures to slow an attacker down and limit the damage they can do.
One of the oldest host-based D-i-D measures is chroot jails. A 'chroot' in Unix means that an application is run with access to only a limited subset of the filesystem, one which does not contain interesting, useful, or leveragable files. This makes it harder for an attacker to leverage, say, user-level access via a buggy network daemon into root-level access, access to the system passwd/shadow file, or access to system binaries.
chroot isn't perfect; the process still shares access to the OS kernel and the network, and can leverage those.
LIDS is a Linux-specific solution. LIDS allows capabilities on a system to be locked down beyond the capability of even root to modify. For example, you can set /usr/bin/* to be read-only, and not even root can override that without first disabling LIDS. The ability to bind to network ports can be controlled; e.g. only /usr/sbin/sendmail can bind to port 25 (and /usr/sbin/sendmail can be made read-only). The ability to load modules into the kernel and access devices to do similar things (e.g. /dev/kmem) can be blocked. In other words, the ability of an attacker who gains root access on the host to rootkit it is severely degraded. There are still openings, though, e.g. root can access user's files.
Security-Enhanced Linux is the next step. Rather than emasculating root as LIDS does, it "has no concept of a 'root' super-user, and does not share the well-known shortcomings of the traditional Linux security mechanisms...." Privileges can be carefully handed out to protect the system from the users and the users from each other.
Even Windows can benefit from some careful configuration. Consider how NIMDA used the Windows TFTP.EXE binary to bootstrap its access up - why is TFTP.EXE executable by anyone on the system? Set ACLs on system binaries. Make sure the IIS web root isn't on the OS drive to block directory traversal attacks. Remove things that aren't needed.
I can't remember the attribution, but someone summed Intrusion Tolerance up by saying, "If you can't prevent it, you sure as hell better be able to detect it." Keeping the bad guys off the server may be impossible, but every little roadblock you put in to slow them down will give you a better chance of detecting them and stopping them before they capture the flag and end the game.
Books in a similar vein which tend to be better-respected by engineers are Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization and The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. He's also the founder, IIRC, of The Mars Society.
You guys should try the British naming scheme, we call our ships things like "Illustrious" and "Invincible". Sounds better, no?
Except for the inevitable irony involved.
at the battle of Jutland, HMS Invincible blew up and sank after a hit from Lutzow with the loss of 1,026 crew.
I didn't know NASA had enough money to donate, with all the cutbacks and whatnot.
Look at it from the other direction. Do you find it odd that, in an environment where they're facing cutbacks, NASA would do something to put their name on perhaps the most publicly acknowledged (non-NASA) space-related project? Of course not!
Between Contact and SETI@Home, SETI has mindshare in the voting public with positive connotations. Just what NASA needs right now.
If you're dropping them on troop concentrations...
I never suggested dropping them on troop concentrations. I suggested dropping them as part of an offensive thrust. Anecdotal evidence suggests that during, for example, the thrust into Baghdad there were few if any Iraqi "troop concentrations," just scattered troops, equipment, and weapons caches. I'm sure a lot of the American troops would have liked some sort of visibility 1/2 mile outside the highway they were on through sensors.
Why are you dropping cameras on troop concentrations when you could be dropping bombs on troop concentrations.
Your argument is reductio ad absurdum. If you can get the troop concentrations to line up neatly behind a maggot line, then sure, fire away. In the real world, however, the opposition force is rarely going to make it "easy" to drop bombs. Thus the use of overhead imagery, air-to-ground radar, predator drones, forward air controllers, and other useful information sources.
Or are you one of those "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead" types? (Fact: they weren't torpedos, they were mines. Full speed ahead wasn't necessarily the appropriate course of action. Farragut could have used better sensors...)
So, this is about having cameras dropped or setup to monitor an area.
Unless the area is friendly, people will take out the cameras.
Again, reductio ad absurdum. If a MEF is pushing up the highway as the things are being dropped, people will probably have more important things - like running or fighting - to do.
(Also - this may be out there, but I'm guessing that DARPA wants these things to have a little more durability than a Sony minicam. Military people tend to expect stuff to get shot at.)
So, the only time people won't be shooting at the cameras will be when they are deployed to observe friendly populations.
I don't agree. You seem to reach your opinion by reducing to absolute black and white; the real world, especially in war, is more of a foggy gray.
Here, let me give you a better example. Suppose we deploy these in Palestinian controlled areas. How long do you think it will be before kids are breaking them with rocks?
Not long, which is why they won't work in a static police action. Hey, could that be why DARPA is looking at them and not the FBI? Let's take the tin foil off and see!
Massive RAIS (Redundant Array of Information Sources) is the future of the battlefield, and that's why DARPA is looking at it. If it makes it into service - like the predator did, like the AWACS did, like NVG did - then it will offer a tactical advantage on the battlefield.
On a related note, see this article. When Iraqi forces in Basra were mortaring within the city, "...British troops were using a system of radar tracking to pinpoint and then attack the mortar positions."
This is exactly the thing that has been needed; consider for example that the U.S. forces stationed in Somalia (...back when) were casually mortared by by the locals. Being able to accurately spot and strike back is exactly the sort of technological advantage needed in urban warfare.
Good. Better they shoot at sensors then at troops. And when a sensor goes offline, that provides information about where the opponent is.
Refer back where I said that the sensors will end up being 'essentially disposable.' They'll be numerous, and when one goes offline, the other 5 in the surrounding area will be well placed to identify the forces, track them, and lead to their detention or elimination.
What I find more disturbing than the possibility to use this system to spy on americans, is the implied opinion that it's OK to use such a system for killing people in other countries but not to spy on US citizens.
When you consider that the historical alternatives include massive civilian casualties, it makes a bit more sense. Consider the battle for Stalingrad, which lasted more than 30 days and historians estimate that more than 1.5 million people died.
Wars happen. People die. If less people die because of technology, isn't that a good thing? Would you have preferred that, instead of using precision weapons in Baghdad, it had been bombed like Dresden, Tokyo, or Hiroshima?
So I guess the officials can also tell us why the hell overseas cities should provide the camera installation for US troops to fight there more easily?
Obviously they won't, which is why the article states 'In the second phase, at least 100 cameras would be installed in 12 hours to support "military operations in an urban terrain."'
To install the cameras you usually need to control the city and to control a city in a military operations requires some fighting before. Looks like a perfect Catch22 to me.
Um, no.
"Securing the perimeter" is the step that usually comes after reaching the objective. This is a perimeter security step. Nothing in the article indicates that this is seen as a way of entering the city, more as a way of controlling it once it is held.
Personally, I predict that the next step will be the moral equivalent of dog pod grids, where aerial surveillance vehicles (smaller than the predator, essentially disposable as necessary) will carry the cameras in with the troops and provide extended perimeter security, thus shrinking that 12-hour setup window. Imagine how much harder it would be today to sneak up on Bagram Air Base and drop a few mortars rounds in if there were a few predator drones constantly circling randomly around and detecting movement.
Why would somebody using an open source code be called a 'looter' ?
In short, its probably an Ayn Rand reference. See Atlas Shrugged for the long, long, long, long explanation.
For the medium explanation, Atlas Shrugged describe a world in which those who are 'capable' are leached upon, taxed, condemned, and harnessed by the less capable, often called 'looters.' Those who can, do. Those who can't, either petition the government to rewrite the laws in their favor, or work for the government.
The clear parallel is that SCO was manifestly unable to field enterprise-quality x86 Unix, but they're eminently capable of suing those who could and did.
As an aside, I don't recommend Atlas Shrugged as a good intro to Ayn Rand - you'll never come back. Try The Fountainhead for a more readable, entertaining book without 40-freaking-page-long speeches.
First, hijacking dns services is illegal regardless of damages, right?
Probably... if it had been done, which it wasn't (read the later posts) and if he had been the ISP calling, which he wasn't.
The analogy I want to draw is that somebody is pointing a gun at somebody else's head. Now, should law enforcement get involved, even if the potential victim doesn't have a large financial portfolio?
Nice analogy. The analogy I'd like to draw is someone drawing a pot of tea. Clearly there's no requirement for law enforcement there, and my analogy has as much likeness to the case at hand as yours does.
This is simple: he downloaded spyware, it screwed up his system, he misdiagnosed and ran around like chicken little telling his ISP the sky is falling. When that didn't work, he ran to the federal government, who rightly said that they'd prefer to hear from the people actually responsible for the machines allegedly compromised, thank you very much.
Had he realized it was spyware, and called the feds, they'd have ignored him then, too. And rightly so. They aren't tech support.
I really don't know what to say, except what I put in the subject line.
You're overreaching a bit.
The end-user isn't an official representative of the victim. Obviously, law enforcement isn't going to deal with him. Firstly, for (the feds) to get involved, they need at least $5000 damage, which he couldn't speak to. They're not going to waste their time unless there is a willingness to prosecute, which - guess what - also requires an offical representative to commit to. Finally, if they do get involved, their next step is to ask for logs and other evidence - which, at best, the end-user only has symptoms of. Again, they need to deal with the duly authorized representative of the ISP to get anywhere.
From the sound of it, they actually went out of their way to try and help him reach the minimums to be considered a valid case himself. That's actually pretty amazing by itself.
I don't know about your particular species, but humans did not evolve millions of years to eat the shit that JUST GROWS around us. Most of the shit we ate for the last millions of years is gone... what we eat is what we BREED AND CULTIVATE.
Right on. There's a section of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs & Steel which discusses how (IIRC) the almond, originally poisonous, was altered over the years as humans and animals preferred and reproduced the less dangerous variations over the more dangerous variations.
Heck, just wander into the supermarket near Thanksgiving. Do the anti-GE food people think 25-pound turkeys come with 15-pound breasts in the wild?
Linus wrote:
"...the transparency in the process also means that if dishonesty happens, you can go back and see what went on."
Right on. In other words, if SCO would release info on what was copied, then by going through the archives it will be possible to see who contributed it, and under what auspices. So we can see if IBM did it, if Caldera did it, if John Quackenschmoe did it, and if there is a violation hold the appropriate party responsible and stop the FUD.
Of course, the fact that SCO hasn't done this only shows that the pieces of paper they hold in their hands, probably don't have the names on it they say they do.
``The meter is now ticking with respect to AIX and will be ticking until we get conclusion to this,'' McBride said in an interview.
Um, that's not a meter, Mr. McBride. And could you sit a little closer to that package that came in the mail?
Is there a way I can easily use the old configuration? Any HOW-TO on this?
Copy the old arch/$(ARCH)/config.in file to the new tree and 'make oldconfig'
I still don't get this. Aren't the schools heated? Are they trying to keep kids from freezing or cars from crashing on the way to the schools?
The problems are the road (bus, car, whatever) and power outages, which get caused by 1) car accidents involving power lines and 2) tree limbs, weighted with snow, downing lines.
Aren't there plows and salters and whatnot that keep the roads passable so the kids can get to and from the school building(s)?
Yes, there are, but during a storm they're always playing catchup. In my town, tertiary roads don't even see a plow before the snow is something like 2 inches deep as a minimum, and during one storm last year there were 8 inches of snow on the road before the first plow got to us (and even then, he cut a single path and left most of the road unplowed).
Even main roads remain slippery during heavy snowfall with ongoing plowing. During very heavy storms, an emergency may be declared and any non-essential people are ordered to stay off the streets, with police cars driving around announcing it on the loudspeaker.
Think, also, kids standing on street corners in slippery, low-visibility conditions - bad. There are always a lot of accidents and wipe-outs on a snowy day.
This is not a troll, I'm completely serious. I don't understand why you wouldn't have to go to school on a day with heavy snow.
This is not an insult, but if you're from California, you probably associate snow with well-plowed roads on a sunny day driving up into the mountains. Actually being out during a storm is a different proposition.
Only a small minority resorted to terrorism.
I agree, but it cannot be ignored. I mentioned it mostly to stem the flood of nuts who would come out of the woodwork if my grossly broad summary ignored that aspect.
Personally, I think the most remarkable thing about the founding of modern Israel is the way that they were able to make the transition from terrorism (specifically, forcing out the British) to a reasonably normal modern state.
However, what hurts me more is your statement, which has been extensively documented as false, about Jews pushing Arabs out of their houses and lands. The truth is that it was the arab leaders that exorted people to leave their homes, under the counsel of egyptian, jordanian, syrian and iraqi military liaisons, as a temporary measure, while their mighty combined army pulverizes the jews.
I concur that some amount of the Palestinian exodus was related to the promises and exhortations of the surrounding Arab states. However, it is delusional to believe that there was no force or pressure applied. If the federal government exhorted Californians to leave their homes temporarily so that they could sweep in and evict the illegal immigrants, can you imagine that any appreciable number would leave?
I left out many parts; I highly recommend A History of the Modern Middle East as one of the best history texts for those interested in this area.
It was not the intent of my original post to make any value judgements about Zionism, Egypt, or anything else. If one wishes to be judgemental, there is enough malicious idiocy on all sides of the equation to provide ammunition.
If I have a judgement here, it is that those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. One could argue that the failure of surrounding nations to integrate the Palestinian refugees is a sobering parallel of the failure of (the subset of) Jews (who tried to) to assimilate themselves in Europe.
To be precise, they are referring to Zionism, a racist ideology very popular in Israel.
Based on the rest of the comments throughout this entire topic, I can only conclude that the average /. reader slept through their history classes.
To wit: yes, the Egyptian censorship is about Zion (in the movie) and Zionism. The fact that most people missed this implies they don't know what Zionism is.
Zionism refers to a Jewish movement that arose in the late 19th century in response to growing anti-Semitism and sought to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine.. To dismiss it as "a racist ideology very popular in Israel," as above, is to ignore the roots of the mideast conflict.
Put simply, Zionism was a movement based on the belief that as long as the Jews lived as ethnic minorities in other countries, they were going to be discriminated against ("discriminated" meaning "killed and robbed whenever public tension needed an outlet" - read up on the Pogroms sometime). The Dreyfus Affair convinced a reporter named Theodor Herzl that the only solution was for a Jewish homeland. He founded the Zionism movement, with the goal of creating a Jewish state. This movement slowly fought for progress over the next 50 years (see also the Balfour Declaration)
Fast-forward to 1948. After 6 million or so Jews were killed in the Holocaust, the survivors got serious about a homeland. With lots of leftover guns lying around from World War II, they founded Israel. In doing so, they resorted to terrorism, and displaced much of the non-Jewish palestinian population.
None of the neighboring countries wanted to absorb the Palestinians, and something like 6 wars have been fought since then. So, for the Egyptians, Zionism represents a massive local disruption which they've lost wars over.
So-called "Modern Zionism" is the "racist ideology" referred to above, which basically boils down to "Jewish Israel - love it or leave it." To focus on it and ignore over 100 years of history is short-sighted.