Imagine what would happen if "all rights" could actually be "reserved" on something like this:
Rowley letter to FBI director
http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/3738192.h tm l
http://truthout.org/docs_03/030803A.shtml
"We should be deluding neither ourselves nor the American people that there is any way the FBI, despite the various improvements you are implementing, will be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq."
Minneapolis, MN 55401
February 26, 2003
FBI Director Robert Mueller FBI Headquarters Washington D.C.
Dear Director Mueller:
In June, 2002, on the eve of my testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, you told me that you appreciate constructive criticism and that FBI agents should feel free to voice serious concerns they may have about senior-level FBI actions. Since then I have availed myself twice of your stated openness.
At this critical point in our country's history I have decided to try once again, on an issue of even more consequence for the internal security posture of our country. That posture has been weakened by the diversion of attention from al-Qaeda to our government's plan to invade Iraq, a step that will, in all likelihood, bring an exponential increase in the terrorist threat to the U.S., both at home and abroad.
In your recent testimony to the Senate, you noted that "the al-Qaeda network will remain for the foreseeable future the most immediate and serious threat facing this country," adding that "the prevention of another terrorist attack remains the FBI's top priority." You then noted that a "U.S.-Iraq war could prompt Baghdad to more directly engage al-Qaeda and perhaps provide it with weapons of mass destruction." But you did not connect these very important dots.
Your recent briefings of field management staff have thrown light on the immense pressures you face as you try to keep the FBI intact and functioning amid persistent calls for drastic restructuring. You have made it clear that the FBI is perilously close to being divided up and is depending almost solely upon the good graces of Attorney General Ashcroft and President Bush for its continued existence. Clearly, this tense environment poses a special challenge to those like you who are responsible for providing unbiased, objective intelligence and national security advice to the country's leaders. But I would implore you to step out of this pressure-cooker for a few minutes and consider the following:
1) The FBI is apparently the source for the public statement that there are 5,000 al-Qaeda terrorists already in the U.S. I would ask you to inquire as to whether this figure is based on any hard data. If it is, rather, an estimate based largely on speculation, this can only feed the suspicion, inside the organization and out, that it is largely the product of a desire to gain favor with the administration, to gain support for FBI initiatives and possibly even to gain support for the administration's initiatives.
2) What is the FBI's evidence with respect to a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq? Polls show that Americans are completely confused about who was responsible for the suicidal attacks on 9-11 with many blaming Iraq. And it is clear that this impression has been fostered by many in the Administration. As far as the FBI is concerned, is the evidence of such a link "bulletproof," as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld claims, or "scant," as General Brent Scowcroft, Chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board has said? The answer to this is of key importance in determining whether war against Iraq makes any sense from the FBI's internal security point of view. If the FBI does have independent data verifying such a connection, it would seem such information should be shared, at least internally within the FBI.
3) If, as you have said, "the prevention of another terrorist attack remains the FBI's top priority," why is it that we have not attempted to interview Zacarias Moussaoui, the only suspect in U.S. custody charged with having a direct hand in the horror of 9-11? Although al-Qaeda has taken pains to compartmentalize its operations to avoid compromise by any one operative, information obtained from some al-Qaeda operatives has nonetheless proved invaluable. Moussaoui almost certainly would know of other al-Qaeda contacts, possibly in the U.S., and would also be able to alert us to the motive behind his and Mohammed Atta's interest in crop dusting.
Similarly, there is the question as to why little or no apparent effort has been made to interview convicted terrorist Richard Reid, who obviously depended upon other al-Qaeda operatives in fashioning his shoe explosive. Nor have possible links between Moussaoui and Reid been fully investigated. It therefore appears that the government may have sacrificed the possibility of acquiring information pertinent to future attacks, in order to conduct criminal prosecution of these two individuals. Although prosecution serves worthy purposes, including deterrence, standard practice in "Organized Crime/Terrorism 101" dictates imaginative, concerted attempts to make inroads into well-organized, cohesive groups. And sometimes that requires "dealing with the devil."
In short, it is a matter of priorities. And lack of follow-through with regard to Moussaoui and Reid gives a hollow ring to our "top priority;" i. e., preventing another terrorist attack.
4) It is not clear that you have been adequately apprized of the potential damage to our liaison relationships with European intelligence agencies that is likely to flow from the growing tension over Iraq between senior U.S. officials and their counterparts in key West European countries. There are far more al-Qaeda operatives in Europe than in the U.S., and European intelligence services, including the French, are on the frontlines in investigating and pursuing them. Indeed, the Europeans have successfully uncovered and dismantled a number of active cells in their countries.
In the past, FBI liaison agents stationed in Europe benefitted from the expertise and cooperation of European law enforcement and intelligence officers. Information was shared freely, and was of substantial help to us in our investigations in the U.S. You will recall that prior to 9-11, it was the French who passed us word of Moussaoui's link to terrorism.
5) I know the FBI is no longer (or will shortly be no longer) in charge of regulating the color codes, but I expect we will still have input. I realize that decisions to change color codes are made at the most senior level, but perhaps you can caution senior officials about the downside to alarming the public unless there is adequate reason to do so. Increased vigilance must be encouraged when needed, but the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces can easily get bogged down in attempting to pursue all the leads engendered by panicky citizens. This, in turn, draws resources away from more important, well predicated and already established investigations.
Unintended consequences like the recent stampede in the Chicago dance club (which initial news accounts reported to be the case) can also occur when the public is put on these heightened alerts. The terrorists win in such circumstances even without attacking.
6) The vast majority of the one thousand plus persons "detained" in the wake of 9-11 did not turn out to be terrorists. They were mostly illegal aliens. We have every right, of course, to deport those identified as illegal aliens during the course of any investigation. But after 9-11, Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seem to be essentially PR purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for statements on our progress in fighting terrorism. The balance between individuals' civil liberties and the need for effective investigation is hard to maintain even during so-called normal times, let alone times of increased terrorist threat or war. It is, admittedly, a difficult balancing act. But from what I have observed, particular vigilance may be required to head off undue pressure (including subtle encouragement) to detain or "round up" suspects--particularly those of Arabic origin.
7) As I believe you know, I have a reputation for being quite "conservative" on legal and policy issues regarding law enforcement. I have complained loudly on occasions when some of our laws and procedures have-unnecessarily, in my view, hindered our ability to move boldly against crime. At the same time, I know from experience that the FBI's policy on permissible use of deadly force has served the FBI and the country well. It should be noted, however, that the Administration's new policy of "preemptive strikes" abroad is not consistent with the Department of Justice's (DOJ's) "deadly force policy" for law enforcement officers. DOJ policy restricts federal agents to using deadly force only when presented with an imminent threat of death or serious injury (essentially in self-defense or defense of an innocent third party). I believe it would be prudent to be on guard against the possibility that the looser "preemptive strike" rationale being applied to situations abroad could migrate back home, fostering a more permissive attitude towards shootings by law enforcement officers in this country.
8) I believe the FBI, by drawing on the perspective gained from its recent history, can make a unique contribution to the discussion on Iraq. The misadventure in Waco took place well before your time as Director, but you will probably recall that David Koresh exerted the same kind of oppressive control over members of his Branch Davidian followers, as Saddam Hussein does over the Iraqis. The parallel does not stop there.
Law enforcement authorities were certain Koresh had accumulated a formidable arsenal of weapons and ammunition at his compound and may have been planning on using them someday. The FBI also had evidence that he was sexually abusing young girls in the cult. After the first law enforcement assault failed, after losing the element of surprise, the Branch Davidian compound was contained and steadily increasing pressure was applied for weeks. But then the FBI decided it could wait no longer and mounted the second assault--with disastrous consequences. The children we sought to liberate all died when Koresh and his followers set fires leading to their mass death and destruction.
The FBI, of course, cannot be blamed for what Koresh set in motion. Nevertheless, we learned some lessons from this unfortunate episode and quickly explored better ways to deal with such challenges. As a direct result of that exploration, many subsequent criminal/terrorist "standoffs" in which the FBI has been involved have been resolved peacefully and effectively. I would suggest that present circumstances vis-a-vis Iraq are very analagous, and that you consider sharing with senior administration officials the important lessons learned by the FBI at Waco.
You are only too well aware that fighting the war on terrorism and crime is an unbelievably difficult mission that will only become more difficult in the years to come, adversely affecting future generations of Americans. The extraneous pressures currently being brought to bear by politicians of both parties upon the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies, however, only worsen the present situation.
I know that my comments appear so presumptuous for a person of my rank in the organization and I'm very sorry for that impression. A word of explanation is therefore probably in order as to why I feel moved to write you directly about these issues. A good part of the reason lies in a promise I made to myself after I realized the enormity of what resulted when FBI Headquarters Supervisory personnel dismissed the warnings of Minneapolis agents pre-September 11, 2001. I was well aware of the forceful but frustrated efforts being made by Minneapolis case agents and their supervisor in their efforts to get Headquarters to move. But since my own role was peripheral, I did not think I could be of much additional help. Since that fateful day of September 11, 2001, however, I have not ceased to regret that perhaps I did not do all that I might have done.
I promised myself that in the future I would always try.
I appreciate that you alone do not determine policy on the terrorist threat from inside or outside the country--that, indeed, you may have little influence in the crafting of broad domestic or foreign policy. And it seems clear to me now that the decision to attack Iraq was taken some time ago and you, even as FBI Director, may be little more than a helpless bystander.
Such an attack, though, may have grave consequences for your ability to discharge your responsibility to protect Americans, and it is altogether likely that you will find yourself a helpless bystander to a rash of 9-11s. The bottom line is this: We should be deluding neither ourselves nor the American people that there is any way the FBI, despite the various improvements you are implementing, will be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq. What troubles me most is that I have no assurance that you have made that clear to the president.
If you believe my concerns have merit, I would ask you to share them with the president and attorney general. We no doubt can agree that our Government has a gargantuan task facing it of melding American foreign policy to make the world, and primarily United States soil, a safer place. I pray for our American and allied world leaders' success in achieving this most important objective.
Thank you so much for allowing me to express these thoughts. They are personal in nature and should not be construed as representing the view of any FBI unit or other agents.
Yours truly,
Coleen Rowley
Special Agent, Minneapolis
Published 6 March 2003 in the Minneapolis Star Tribune
someday: microphone instead of keyboard--but when?
on
Barebones Notebook
·
· Score: 1
If they replaced the keyboard with an extra PS/2 socket, or an extra USB port I suppose, and if the microphone input was shielded well enough and sufficiently audio-capable (I've seen sound cards without 16,000/s sampling rates, and the first SoundBlasters were 8-bit), then I would be more interested.
Someday, many agree, as speech input matures, the microphone will become more important than the keyboard.
So, my question is: What year do you think the microphone will surpass the keyboard in importance?
For solving lots of really small problems, c/c++ can be way faster due to pipelining/loop-unrolling that can't happen in interpreted matlab code.
The new version of Matlab is a just-in-time compiler, so this is no longer entirely true.
For solving really large problems, matlab's memory management is too inefficient; you have to carefully control memory usage for large problems, so you need to write c/c++/fortran code for that.
That is true, but what was a big problem a few years ago is now medium-sized, as Moore's law marches on.
Yes, indeed, the latest version (from less than half a year ago) was the first to include a just-in-time transparent compiler by default. Inner loops are so much faster than the old interpreted versions it's not funny.
However, a Matlab clone called MIDEVA had the same thing three years ago. Mathworks bought them out and incorporated their tech.
a large wind farm can very likely put out as much noise energy as a single engine
You must have vistited the Altamont Pass windfarm at some point. Those turbines are practically the only electrical windmills in the past 50 years which produce more than 75 decibels each.
First, that's nowhere near a jet engine. You can't hear them in a running car, even if parked with the windows down.
Second, modern turbines are whisper-quiet. If you don't believe me, and you're (I'm assuming) in California, drive down past any of the Riverside County wind farms and let me know if you hear anything.
Tcl was OK, but it frankly shocked me that it was still being developed actively.
TCLs claim to fame is its small memory use. TCL can be included as a command interpreter in other programs easily and without much bloat. There are more embedded TCL applications than any one person knows about; both in hardware and software. TCL was also first with UTF-8 support in strings, around 1998 or before, way before Perl, so there are probably more TCL CGI scripts overseas than most English users think.
As for benchmarks, TCL is getting faster, with a huge jump from v7 to v8 and about a 25% improvement from 8.0 to 8.4a3 (scroll down to bottom of linked page.)
Electrolysis is good to play with in the physics labs at school, but when it comes to produce very large quantities of Hydrogen for mass consumption it's worth practically zero.
Nonsense. Electrolysis is already in commercial use. As catylitic electrolysis (fuel-cell-in-reverse) methods are discovered, the process will become even less expensive. At least, we won't know until we try, and electrochemistry is a vastly under-explored field. Fluidized bed electrodes of various organic catylists are numerous, but only a fraction have yet been tried. I need to check the patent literature on the latest electrolysis efficiencies. They have gotten much better than "physics labs at school."
I guess Lincoln Reckoner was like EMACS is: you hit undo, and look to see what you got. I don't know what the granularity for undo of inserts was -- probably character-by-character or all-at-once.
was there a documented implementation of Undo on a computer before the original Mac?
Yes, MIT's Lincoln Reckoner had multiple-level undo/redo in 1968. That used a screen editor, so it would be the kind of undo you are talking about, however it was probably inspired by IBM's APL line-based workspace editor.
APL programmers had multiple-level undo/redo on their selectric typewriters around 1965. Each interaction was numbered, and you could select the number of the last interaction you wanted to keep. This would reset the entire workspace so that all variables, your program image, and options would be restored. This worked by saving the workspace each time a command completed, and was also useful for restoring sessions after interrupted connections.
Single-level undo appeared much earlier -- the first IBM teletype line editors in the late 1950s had single-level undo.
it has already been proven that without trusted hardware (which is not going to come along until consumers start trusting the companies) that NO DRM solution is secure....
Even with trusted hardware, or a VGA dongle, or whatever, the media still has to get to the display on some wires, from whence it can be re-recorded to unencrypted files. Palladium is a very expensive joke.
Doh! I had used the preview button in my previous reply and then put in that LINCOS/Freudenthal link very poorly; sorry. Let me try again:
9)... We've even deliberately (and foolishly) transmitted high power radio signals directly into space, in various attempts to announce our presence to interstellar listeners.... [C]onsider how you'd react to an anthill suddenly springing up in your living room.
Perhaps ants would die, but not all of them, and probably not all of them from the living room colony. If however, I saw the ants were capable of discourse, then I would give them an ultimatum first, and if they were rational and believed my claims about my vaccum cleaner, then they would leave and none would die.
What I'm saying is that I don't agree with the characterization of intentional transmissions as foolish at all, especially in the context of all the commercial television out there already.
Think about it, would you like to be judged on the basis of incidental radio and television broadcasts alone, or wouldn't you rather have Sagan, Drake, Dyson, et al. putting in a word in for your species' inherent worth every so often?
9)... We've even deliberately (and foolishly) transmitted high power radio signals directly into space, in various attempts to announce our presence to interstellar listeners.... [C]onsider how you'd react to an anthill suddenly springing up in your living room.
What I'm saying is that I don't agree with the characterization of intentional transmissions as foolish at all, especially in the context of all the commercial television out there already.
Think about it, would you like to be judged on the basis of incidental radio and television broadcasts alone, or wouldn't you rather have Sagan, Drake, Dyson, et al. putting in a word in for your inherent worth every so often?
The key point is that Terrestrial Planet Finder and similar projects aren't looking just for signs of life, but rather for other places that we (i.e. humans) can live.
[The] attitude of the lab to the bunker-buster program was that it was quite positive because it was such a large project that fits into the mission of the lab. The lab wanted the project.
former Congresswoman Elisabeth Furse (D-OR) sponsored legislation banning development of nuclear weapons with an explosive yield of less than 5 kilotons in 1993....
Stephen Younger, a senior staffer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been arguing publicly that a more flexible, usable nuclear arsenal will be needed to meet threats including terrorism with weapons of mass destruction in the coming century.
The Bush Administration (Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham) is willing to go to great lengths to get the Regents of the University of California out of the business of running nuke factories.
The kinds of abuses described in the allegations happen all the time, especially in the military, but you don't see any Joint Chiefs of Staff "mutually agreeing" on their resignations for it.
The real problem, from the Bush point of view, is the overwhelming propensity of Californian voters to insist on following the law instead of developing new "bunker buster" mini-nukes. Bush wants these new weapons, now more than ever, and to get them he needs a National Labs administration willing to look the other way.
First of all, the largest sole source of CAPTCHA funding is the National Science Foundation, so if you are a U.S. taxpayer, you are paying for this work.
Having said that, the rights to and interests in NSF-sponsored work are very much up in the air, nowhere moreso than the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. The Dean is said to have a somewhat different view than the Provost, who is probably not in agreement with the President, and the Board of Trustees are clearly all over the map on the issue, too. CMU is a study in contrasts when it comes to intellectual property opinions. CMU switched intellectual property policies exactly three days after I entered (yeay for freshman camp -- I knew it was worth the extra few bucks!) and the new (1985) one is draconian yet astoundingly vague. So, the authors might not even know the actual rights under which they are allowed to distribute their software. Noboday may know -- often an ajudication committee is required to make an arbitrary decision on a case-by-case basis.
However, principles of academic freedom have repeatedly trumped the Intellectual property policy, and that means that the researchers have the right to publish their code as sceintific research results, without restriction which is what they have apparently done. The scientific method requires absolutly no restrictions on such results (so as to allow for unimpeded replication), which means that the code is in the public domain. Even if it is released under copyright or GPL later, it is still in the public domain.
I am not a lawer, but years ago I paid a lawyer to answer a related question and I am faithfully repeating his answer above.
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Imagine what would happen if "all rights" could actually be "reserved" on something like this:
h tm l
Rowley letter to FBI director
http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/3738192.
http://truthout.org/docs_03/030803A.shtml
"We should be deluding neither ourselves nor the American people that there is any way the FBI, despite the various improvements you are implementing, will be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq."
Minneapolis, MN 55401
February 26, 2003
FBI Director Robert Mueller
FBI Headquarters
Washington D.C.
Dear Director Mueller:
In June, 2002, on the eve of my testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, you told me that you appreciate constructive criticism and that FBI agents should feel free to voice serious concerns they may have about senior-level FBI actions. Since then I have availed myself twice of your stated openness.
At this critical point in our country's history I have decided to try once again, on an issue of even more consequence for the internal security posture of our country. That posture has been weakened by the diversion of attention from al-Qaeda to our government's plan to invade Iraq, a step that will, in all likelihood, bring an exponential increase in the terrorist threat to the U.S., both at home and abroad.
In your recent testimony to the Senate, you noted that "the al-Qaeda network will remain for the foreseeable future the most immediate and serious threat facing this country," adding that "the prevention of another terrorist attack remains the FBI's top priority." You then noted that a "U.S.-Iraq war could prompt Baghdad to more directly engage al-Qaeda and perhaps provide it with weapons of mass destruction." But you did not connect these very important dots.
Your recent briefings of field management staff have thrown light on the immense pressures you face as you try to keep the FBI intact and functioning amid persistent calls for drastic restructuring. You have made it clear that the FBI is perilously close to being divided up and is depending almost solely upon the good graces of Attorney General Ashcroft and President Bush for its continued existence. Clearly, this tense environment poses a special challenge to those like you who are responsible for providing unbiased, objective intelligence and national security advice to the country's leaders. But I would implore you to step out of this pressure-cooker for a few minutes and consider the following:
1) The FBI is apparently the source for the public statement that there are 5,000 al-Qaeda terrorists already in the U.S. I would ask you to inquire as to whether this figure is based on any hard data. If it is, rather, an estimate based largely on speculation, this can only feed the suspicion, inside the organization and out, that it is largely the product of a desire to gain favor with the administration, to gain support for FBI initiatives and possibly even to gain support for the administration's initiatives.
2) What is the FBI's evidence with respect to a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq? Polls show that Americans are completely confused about who was responsible for the suicidal attacks on 9-11 with many blaming Iraq. And it is clear that this impression has been fostered by many in the Administration. As far as the FBI is concerned, is the evidence of such a link "bulletproof," as Defense Secretary Rumsfeld claims, or "scant," as General Brent Scowcroft, Chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board has said? The answer to this is of key importance in determining whether war against Iraq makes any sense from the FBI's internal security point of view. If the FBI does have independent data verifying such a connection, it would seem such information should be shared, at least internally within the FBI.
3) If, as you have said, "the prevention of another terrorist attack remains the FBI's top priority," why is it that we have not attempted to interview Zacarias Moussaoui, the only suspect in U.S. custody charged with having a direct hand in the horror of 9-11? Although al-Qaeda has taken pains to compartmentalize its operations to avoid compromise by any one operative, information obtained from some al-Qaeda operatives has nonetheless proved invaluable. Moussaoui almost certainly would know of other al-Qaeda contacts, possibly in the U.S., and would also be able to alert us to the motive behind his and Mohammed Atta's interest in crop dusting.
Similarly, there is the question as to why little or no apparent effort has been made to interview convicted terrorist Richard Reid, who obviously depended upon other al-Qaeda operatives in fashioning his shoe explosive. Nor have possible links between Moussaoui and Reid been fully investigated. It therefore appears that the government may have sacrificed the possibility of acquiring information pertinent to future attacks, in order to conduct criminal prosecution of these two individuals. Although prosecution serves worthy purposes, including deterrence, standard practice in "Organized Crime/Terrorism 101" dictates imaginative, concerted attempts to make inroads into well-organized, cohesive groups. And sometimes that requires "dealing with the devil."
In short, it is a matter of priorities. And lack of follow-through with regard to Moussaoui and Reid gives a hollow ring to our "top priority;" i. e., preventing another terrorist attack.
4) It is not clear that you have been adequately apprized of the potential damage to our liaison relationships with European intelligence agencies that is likely to flow from the growing tension over Iraq between senior U.S. officials and their counterparts in key West European countries. There are far more al-Qaeda operatives in Europe than in the U.S., and European intelligence services, including the French, are on the frontlines in investigating and pursuing them. Indeed, the Europeans have successfully uncovered and dismantled a number of active cells in their countries.
In the past, FBI liaison agents stationed in Europe benefitted from the expertise and cooperation of European law enforcement and intelligence officers. Information was shared freely, and was of substantial help to us in our investigations in the U.S. You will recall that prior to 9-11, it was the French who passed us word of Moussaoui's link to terrorism.
5) I know the FBI is no longer (or will shortly be no longer) in charge of regulating the color codes, but I expect we will still have input. I realize that decisions to change color codes are made at the most senior level, but perhaps you can caution senior officials about the downside to alarming the public unless there is adequate reason to do so. Increased vigilance must be encouraged when needed, but the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces can easily get bogged down in attempting to pursue all the leads engendered by panicky citizens. This, in turn, draws resources away from more important, well predicated and already established investigations.
Unintended consequences like the recent stampede in the Chicago dance club (which initial news accounts reported to be the case) can also occur when the public is put on these heightened alerts. The terrorists win in such circumstances even without attacking.
6) The vast majority of the one thousand plus persons "detained" in the wake of 9-11 did not turn out to be terrorists. They were mostly illegal aliens. We have every right, of course, to deport those identified as illegal aliens during the course of any investigation. But after 9-11, Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seem to be essentially PR purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for statements on our progress in fighting terrorism. The balance between individuals' civil liberties and the need for effective investigation is hard to maintain even during so-called normal times, let alone times of increased terrorist threat or war. It is, admittedly, a difficult balancing act. But from what I have observed, particular vigilance may be required to head off undue pressure (including subtle encouragement) to detain or "round up" suspects--particularly those of Arabic origin.
7) As I believe you know, I have a reputation for being quite "conservative" on legal and policy issues regarding law enforcement. I have complained loudly on occasions when some of our laws and procedures have-unnecessarily, in my view, hindered our ability to move boldly against crime. At the same time, I know from experience that the FBI's policy on permissible use of deadly force has served the FBI and the country well. It should be noted, however, that the Administration's new policy of "preemptive strikes" abroad is not consistent with the Department of Justice's (DOJ's) "deadly force policy" for law enforcement officers. DOJ policy restricts federal agents to using deadly force only when presented with an imminent threat of death or serious injury (essentially in self-defense or defense of an innocent third party). I believe it would be prudent to be on guard against the possibility that the looser "preemptive strike" rationale being applied to situations abroad could migrate back home, fostering a more permissive attitude towards shootings by law enforcement officers in this country.
8) I believe the FBI, by drawing on the perspective gained from its recent history, can make a unique contribution to the discussion on Iraq. The misadventure in Waco took place well before your time as Director, but you will probably recall that David Koresh exerted the same kind of oppressive control over members of his Branch Davidian followers, as Saddam Hussein does over the Iraqis. The parallel does not stop there.
Law enforcement authorities were certain Koresh had accumulated a formidable arsenal of weapons and ammunition at his compound and may have been planning on using them someday. The FBI also had evidence that he was sexually abusing young girls in the cult. After the first law enforcement assault failed, after losing the element of surprise, the Branch Davidian compound was contained and steadily increasing pressure was applied for weeks. But then the FBI decided it could wait no longer and mounted the second assault--with disastrous consequences. The children we sought to liberate all died when Koresh and his followers set fires leading to their mass death and destruction.
The FBI, of course, cannot be blamed for what Koresh set in motion. Nevertheless, we learned some lessons from this unfortunate episode and quickly explored better ways to deal with such challenges. As a direct result of that exploration, many subsequent criminal/terrorist "standoffs" in which the FBI has been involved have been resolved peacefully and effectively. I would suggest that present circumstances vis-a-vis Iraq are very analagous, and that you consider sharing with senior administration officials the important lessons learned by the FBI at Waco.
You are only too well aware that fighting the war on terrorism and crime is an unbelievably difficult mission that will only become more difficult in the years to come, adversely affecting future generations of Americans. The extraneous pressures currently being brought to bear by politicians of both parties upon the FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies, however, only worsen the present situation.
I know that my comments appear so presumptuous for a person of my rank in the organization and I'm very sorry for that impression. A word of explanation is therefore probably in order as to why I feel moved to write you directly about these issues. A good part of the reason lies in a promise I made to myself after I realized the enormity of what resulted when FBI Headquarters Supervisory personnel dismissed the warnings of Minneapolis agents pre-September 11, 2001. I was well aware of the forceful but frustrated efforts being made by Minneapolis case agents and their supervisor in their efforts to get Headquarters to move. But since my own role was peripheral, I did not think I could be of much additional help. Since that fateful day of September 11, 2001, however, I have not ceased to regret that perhaps I did not do all that I might have done.
I promised myself that in the future I would always try.
I appreciate that you alone do not determine policy on the terrorist threat from inside or outside the country--that, indeed, you may have little influence in the crafting of broad domestic or foreign policy. And it seems clear to me now that the decision to attack Iraq was taken some time ago and you, even as FBI Director, may be little more than a helpless bystander.
Such an attack, though, may have grave consequences for your ability to discharge your responsibility to protect Americans, and it is altogether likely that you will find yourself a helpless bystander to a rash of 9-11s. The bottom line is this: We should be deluding neither ourselves nor the American people that there is any way the FBI, despite the various improvements you are implementing, will be able to stem the flood of terrorism that will likely head our way in the wake of an attack on Iraq. What troubles me most is that I have no assurance that you have made that clear to the president.
If you believe my concerns have merit, I would ask you to share them with the president and attorney general. We no doubt can agree that our Government has a gargantuan task facing it of melding American foreign policy to make the world, and primarily United States soil, a safer place. I pray for our American and allied world leaders' success in achieving this most important objective.
Thank you so much for allowing me to express these thoughts. They are personal in nature and should not be construed as representing the view of any FBI unit or other agents.
Yours truly,
Coleen Rowley
Special Agent, Minneapolis
Published 6 March 2003 in the Minneapolis Star Tribune
Someday, many agree, as speech input matures, the microphone will become more important than the keyboard.
So, my question is: What year do you think the microphone will surpass the keyboard in importance?
The new version of Matlab is a just-in-time compiler, so this is no longer entirely true.
That is true, but what was a big problem a few years ago is now medium-sized, as Moore's law marches on.
Yes, indeed, the latest version (from less than half a year ago) was the first to include a just-in-time transparent compiler by default. Inner loops are so much faster than the old interpreted versions it's not funny.
However, a Matlab clone called MIDEVA had the same thing three years ago. Mathworks bought them out and incorporated their tech.
You must have vistited the Altamont Pass windfarm at some point. Those turbines are practically the only electrical windmills in the past 50 years which produce more than 75 decibels each.
First, that's nowhere near a jet engine. You can't hear them in a running car, even if parked with the windows down.
Second, modern turbines are whisper-quiet. If you don't believe me, and you're (I'm assuming) in California, drive down past any of the Riverside County wind farms and let me know if you hear anything.
Maybe those 2000 posters are the ones with software using Linux-ABI.
TCLs claim to fame is its small memory use. TCL can be included as a command interpreter in other programs easily and without much bloat. There are more embedded TCL applications than any one person knows about; both in hardware and software. TCL was also first with UTF-8 support in strings, around 1998 or before, way before Perl, so there are probably more TCL CGI scripts overseas than most English users think.
As for benchmarks, TCL is getting faster, with a huge jump from v7 to v8 and about a 25% improvement from 8.0 to 8.4a3 (scroll down to bottom of linked page.)
Wrong!
GRAPH: the atmospheric concentration of CO2 fits a logistic sigmoid curve. Logistic sigmoid curves are typical for most nonrenewable resource consumption.
GRAPH: They don't just have trouble with what kind of fuel it is, but the headline writer has a wierd idea of "friendly" too.
GRAPH: Insistance is futile. CO2 is not being net assimilated.
GRAPH: It's not like we don't have enough CO2 already.
Nonsense. Electrolysis is already in commercial use. As catylitic electrolysis (fuel-cell-in-reverse) methods are discovered, the process will become even less expensive. At least, we won't know until we try, and electrochemistry is a vastly under-explored field. Fluidized bed electrodes of various organic catylists are numerous, but only a fraction have yet been tried. I need to check the patent literature on the latest electrolysis efficiencies. They have gotten much better than "physics labs at school."
Plus, H-gen equipment can be used to store energy in case of power outage, as many hospitals and some cities do. This means that wind power will quickly become dominant, one way or another.
I guess Lincoln Reckoner was like EMACS is: you hit undo, and look to see what you got. I don't know what the granularity for undo of inserts was -- probably character-by-character or all-at-once.
Yes, MIT's Lincoln Reckoner had multiple-level undo/redo in 1968. That used a screen editor, so it would be the kind of undo you are talking about, however it was probably inspired by IBM's APL line-based workspace editor.
APL programmers had multiple-level undo/redo on their selectric typewriters around 1965. Each interaction was numbered, and you could select the number of the last interaction you wanted to keep. This would reset the entire workspace so that all variables, your program image, and options would be restored. This worked by saving the workspace each time a command completed, and was also useful for restoring sessions after interrupted connections.
Single-level undo appeared much earlier -- the first IBM teletype line editors in the late 1950s had single-level undo.
Even with trusted hardware, or a VGA dongle, or whatever, the media still has to get to the display on some wires, from whence it can be re-recorded to unencrypted files. Palladium is a very expensive joke.
Perhaps ants would die, but not all of them, and probably not all of them from the living room colony. If however, I saw the ants were capable of discourse, then I would give them an ultimatum first, and if they were rational and believed my claims about my vaccum cleaner, then they would leave and none would die.
What I'm saying is that I don't agree with the characterization of intentional transmissions as foolish at all, especially in the context of all the commercial television out there already.
Think about it, would you like to be judged on the basis of incidental radio and television broadcasts alone, or wouldn't you rather have Sagan, Drake, Dyson, et al. putting in a word in for your species' inherent worth every so often?
Perhaps ants would die, but not all of them, and probably not all of them from the living room colony. If however, I saw the ants were , then I would give them an ultimatum first, and if they were rational and believed my claims about my vaccum cleaner, then they would leave and none would die.
What I'm saying is that I don't agree with the characterization of intentional transmissions as foolish at all, especially in the context of all the commercial television out there already.
Think about it, would you like to be judged on the basis of incidental radio and television broadcasts alone, or wouldn't you rather have Sagan, Drake, Dyson, et al. putting in a word in for your inherent worth every so often?
Yes; a lot more. Please see here and here for more information.
The key point is that Terrestrial Planet Finder and similar projects aren't looking just for signs of life, but rather for other places that we (i.e. humans) can live.
We aren't looking for life, IMHO, so much as for places we could live.
No argument there; from the Physicians for Social Responsibility Activist Update:
See, the problem is, mini-nukes are illegal. The Regents of the University of California tend to appoint people to their labs who are accountable to the law. Since Spencer Abraham couldn't get Browne and Salgado to look the other way and go ahead on the project under wraps, he called them to the carpet on $141,000 worth of barbeque grills. That 's nothing! "As of March 31, 2002, approximately 8,000 Air Force cardholders had over $5 million in delinquent debt" on the travel cards, the GAO said.
Click here to send a letter to your Senators and congressional Representative about this issue.
The kinds of abuses described in the allegations happen all the time, especially in the military, but you don't see any Joint Chiefs of Staff "mutually agreeing" on their resignations for it.
The real problem, from the Bush point of view, is the overwhelming propensity of Californian voters to insist on following the law instead of developing new "bunker buster" mini-nukes. Bush wants these new weapons, now more than ever, and to get them he needs a National Labs administration willing to look the other way.
Isn't this going to complicate communications with air traffic control?
First of all, the largest sole source of CAPTCHA funding is the National Science Foundation, so if you are a U.S. taxpayer, you are paying for this work.
Having said that, the rights to and interests in NSF-sponsored work are very much up in the air, nowhere moreso than the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science. The Dean is said to have a somewhat different view than the Provost, who is probably not in agreement with the President, and the Board of Trustees are clearly all over the map on the issue, too. CMU is a study in contrasts when it comes to intellectual property opinions. CMU switched intellectual property policies exactly three days after I entered (yeay for freshman camp -- I knew it was worth the extra few bucks!) and the new (1985) one is draconian yet astoundingly vague. So, the authors might not even know the actual rights under which they are allowed to distribute their software. Noboday may know -- often an ajudication committee is required to make an arbitrary decision on a case-by-case basis.
However, principles of academic freedom have repeatedly trumped the Intellectual property policy, and that means that the researchers have the right to publish their code as sceintific research results, without restriction which is what they have apparently done. The scientific method requires absolutly no restrictions on such results (so as to allow for unimpeded replication), which means that the code is in the public domain. Even if it is released under copyright or GPL later, it is still in the public domain.
I am not a lawer, but years ago I paid a lawyer to answer a related question and I am faithfully repeating his answer above.
I have to disagree, the topic is, as they say, on.