The joys of VLC media player and a video-out socket.
I'm also very fond of whoever authored my Buffy CDs, since they seemed to have somehow locked the "next scene" function on the piracy warnings, but not the "skip to scene". Much appreciated.
Then they're outta luck. It sucks, but it's what happens in every other sector if you make a poor buying decision. If the service/product is bad enough, complain to whatever equivelant of the Fair Trading Commission your country has.
I can setup mail merge documents with it, decide to ditch it for a competitors version, import it somewhere else, whatever. When the data is off-site I don't have those options.
Then you are not the best customer for these types of systems. These services are marketed towards the company that doesn't have a tech as part of their permanent staff. They're not going to be able to export data from a MySQL database and perform a mail-merge, and are definately not going to want to swap databases for if the current one is working properly (and if it's not, they should complain to their vendor).
Despite analogies that have been drawn, domain-space isn't the same as real estate. Domain names were originally created as a system of nomenclature and categorization - that's why they have.com,.org,.net, etc.
And, incidentally, there are similar controls on real estate. They're known as zonings.
Australian domain name managers have the right idea..coms go to commercials..orgs go to non-profits. If you go to a.org.au site, then you know that site is a registered charity or non-profit organisation. If you go to a.com site, you know that site is managed by a registered business. The way it's currently run in the US, you might as well just drop the TLDs and just sell stuff directly from the root. The only reason someone gets a.org or a.net is because the names already taken on.com. TLDs have lost any meaning in the US administrated system, and are completely useless.
You do realise that the period character exists for a reason other than as a separator in domain names? Although, credit where credit's due, you did use a comma. In the wrong place.
While I'm not sure about the relative polution created by burning natural gas to create hydrogen vs burning it for energy directly, there is an advantage to relocation the pollution to a single point. It's much more feasible to implement high-tech and expensive filters and control mechanisms in one or two hydrogen production plants than it is in a couple of million cars across a country. Then too, when a better method of production is discovered, all you need to do is upgrade the production plants, rather than wait for everyone to be a new, cleaner car.
That this hasn't yet taken over the male gamers' representations is the surprise for me. I'm sure that will be coming.
It's just a question of audience. The male audience for "e-sports" is much bigger than the female. So the female gamers have to be sexy to appeal to the audience, but the audience doesn't care about how males look, so their aesthetic appeal is ignored.
If the female (or homosexual, I spose) component of the "e-sport" audience gets larger, then expect to see the same pressure on male pro-gamers' aesthetics.
The article talks about the number of designers who are working on Embedded Linux projects. It says nothing at all about Embedded Linux's market penetration.
If, for example, you have 1000 projects using an embedded OS of some kind. Let's say 900 of these are going to be either small-run, specialised devices, or flops. The remaining 100 are consumer items, mass-produced and sold around the world. If Linux's 17% happens to account for a large proportion of the top 100 projects, their market penetration is huge. If it's 17% accounts only for small-run projects, then it's not doing that great.
A better heuristic, IMO, would be how many units are being produced with embedded Linux, rather than how many designers are using Linux.
Err, where did he say he wanted software control on his wheels? It's no more likely for your wheels to suddenly and unexpectedly turn 90 degress than it is for them to suddenly turn 30 degrees in your current car. Either one would screw you up on a highway.
I dunno about the beer, but my grandma could really use a robot that brings in her groceries for her. Both my grandparents are doing well for their age, but they're both approaching 80 and aren't up for as much physical exertion as they used to be. And some of those groceries, especially the fruit and veg, can be pretty hefty.
Of course, beer is a good promo point because it brings humour to the situation, but I'm betting they're not going to be stupid enough to restrict it only to beer-fetching. If it can be programmed to perform a relatively complex task like getting beer, which involves object recognition, pathing and obstacle avoidance, it could very easily be adapted to more productive uses.
The level of risk of harming children is extremely high, and the level of justification is extremely low.
I'm not sure that assertion is valid. Freenet enables child porn to be distributed, but it has no impact on its production. With or without Freenet, there are going to be sickos abusing children. I sincerely doubt Freenet has caused a single child to be abused.
What Freenet does is allow perverts to get their hands on child porn. While obviously not good, I don't think the distribution of material is as bad as the act of making the material. I think allowing one child to be abused for the sake of allowing the oppressed to speak would be a bad bargain. But allowing distribution of images of child abuse in exchange for allowing the oppressed to speak...that's a much closer call.
However, that being said, I do resent the remark that we go to war on little more than a whim.
It is simple, and cynical, but I don't know if it's too far off-base. I think the war in Iraq was motivated more by politics than by national security. That may or may not be true, but I don't think I'm alone in holding that opinion.
I do see your point that we shouldn't be a father to the rest of the world. In fact, I agree. However, a father figure so to speak is needed these days. No matter what boundaries we draw, the world is getting smaller each and every day. The way we separated countries for thousands of years isn't working and fails at bigger levels as the world gets smaller. Simply drawing borders isn't going to prevent the issues of sovereign nations from bleeding over to the rest of the world. I would honestly prefer the UN to be restructured and become more effective. We need it to take the father figure role and hopefully, some day it will. Until then, would we really prefer to have nobody "steering the ship"? Should we all just shut our eyes and tell ourselves that we can all live on our own little islands and ignore what is going on in the rest of the world? Isn't that how World Wars get so large in scope?
The world is getting smaller, and globalisation is inevitable. I prefer the direction EU is going compared to the USA, however. You're not going to unite the world by tying them together through threat of force. That will last just as long as the force remains viable. Then it will fall apart. The EU's governing body is large, cumbersome and overly bureaucratic. But each of it's member states are there because they feel they need to be there, and they each have at least some say in how the EU is governed.
Most of the world's powers in recent times have been distinct entities uniting: USSR, USA, EU, and most recently, the UAE. Three types of unity are represented there:
Force. The USSR were united by force, and fell apart when the force vanished.
Threat. The states of America united against a foreign threat.
Growth. The EU was established because the only way they could see of remaining relevant in the modern world was to unite.
I'm not sure whether the UAE falls into 2 or 3 - perceived threat from the West, or unity as they realise the power they are beginning to wield on the world stage. But my point is, unless some horrible aliens attack and we have an external threat to unite us, the only way the world is going to be united is discovering that standing on one's own leads to irrelevance as others unite. Being coerced into unity by a glowering father-figure, with his hand on the strap only lasts while the child is still cowed by the strap.
We are the only remaining superpower. We have a huge responsibility to set an example for the rest of the world and to help mature all of our societies. We have to try and steer the whole damn world into globalism at a pace that isn't threatening and is respectful to all of our cultures.
Why? Where's your authority to act as the world's authoritarian father-figure? Because you have the largest, most well-equipped army? This is the sort of attitude that gets planes flown into tall American buildings - "We know best; when we bomb you, it's for your own good".
It's not America's responsibility to "steer the whole damn world"; it's America's responsibility to steer America. That's what makes sovereign nations sovereign - they steer themselves. The reason many people react against the war in Iraq is because it shows how much America respects the sovereignty of other nations; it doesn't. It wages a war that much of it's populace is against, that was not sanctioned by most other nations, and that, after the fact, has little evidence supporting the original justification for it.
People are are against America because they're afraid of America. You are the last superpower. And you go to war on little more than a whim.
Ultimately, it's up to them.
So if they decide, democratically, to institute a fundamentalist religious government, you're not going to blow the crap out of them again? If it was ultimately "up to them", then you should have left their country alone, and let them sort it out themselves. You're not some school teacher intervening in a fight between school-kids. You are one adult telling all the others how they should behave at the point of a gun.
It depends on how you raise them. A decent-sized herd of cows can get most of their food intake by grazing in their pasture. The same land they live in grows food to support them. That's not to mention that animals also eat the low-grade foodstuffs that are unfit or undesirable for human consumption. If you didn't utilize that stuff to feed animals, what would you do with it? Throw it away? Force people to eat it?
Now granted, as I understand a lot of modern animal farming, you simply box the animal in and import all its food. I've no idea what sort of efficiency that gives in terms of land used. But the fact remains that animal farming does not have to cause these huge environmental problems; it's only when you start trying to cram as many as possible in to as small a space as possible that you start hitting that sort of problem. And if you farmed fruits and vegetables in the same way, you'd deplete the soil and screw everything up too. The problem isn't meat vs vegetables, it's responsible farming.
Meh, my conscience is perfectly clear, at least on the charges of eating meat. I've never butchered a chook or a lamb, but I've gutted and cleaned fish I've caught before eating them. Close enough, without the cute appeal.
And the whole supermarket thing is only recent; at least here in Australia. My grandparents can still remember their parents butchering chickens at home. We're the first generation in a while who've had qualms about consuming meat in any serious numbers - and we're the ones most removed from the actual source of the food. Talk to the ones who do do the killing - the farmers and the butchers. They don't have any qualms about it. The people who do are the squeamish suburbian types who've never seen a lamb except at the petting zoo (or the cold storage) and romantacize and anthropomorphize all the cute, cuddly animals getting killed.
And I hope you feel the pain of every soy-bean whose life you brutally extinguish. The worst thing is when vegetarians justify this by saying plants don't have nervous systems and are killed painlessly. FFS - you are killing it!
You certainly don't need to worry about eating the wrong fats, as I can't think of one plant that we eat that is bad for you.
Define bad. Where do you think sugar comes from? I'll give you a hint, it's not from pigs. Avocado's are also fairly fatty. Many fruits eaten to excess can cause diarrhea. Vegetarians, especially women, need to be very careful of what they eat to ensure they get needed vitamins and trace elements commonly found in meat - like iron.
We would certainly be able to feed more people with plant farms, than animal farms.
Meat has far more energy, weight for weight, than fruit and vegetables. Depending on how you farm the animals, you can provide more energy per hectare off animals than off most crops.
Another plus is that we wouldn't ruin our environment with plants farms as we would with pig farms.
No, you'd ruin them with other farms. Growing plants puts a strain on the soil. That's why you have crop rotations - you need to give the soil a chance to regain it's nutrients before you stick some more crops in it to start sucking them out again. If you increased the fruit and veg farming industry to the point where society could function totally without meat, you'd most definately have an impact on the environment. It'd just be a different one.
Gee, sorry for using military terminology. Would my point be more valid if I said "terrorist buddies" instead of "units"? Oh, and the "deploy" was in reference to defensive forces. I'm pretty sure American soldiers are still "deployed". Way to go addressing the argument instead of the language.
I must have missed it, when did congress declare war? And on who?
That was a general example of when open meetings would be bad, not necessarily a description of the current situation.
What you might have meant is that when terrorist get hold of "stuff" it is a bad thing. Well terrorists are criminals, and we have plenty of laws to lock up criminals.
Unfortunately, it's hard to arrest them as criminals until after they've blown something up. It is preferrable to stop them blowing stuff up in the first place.
This would not work for a terrorist who wants data? Here US data worker, here is a pile of cash ( choose the amount) give us the plans or we will kill you and your family. They would not do this because we are......white western nice people? Hah!
Closed meetings are a crock. They will be misused. Governments hate accountability. They are always looking for ways to use FEAR as a tool to dinimish how accountable they are.
Oh, so because terrorists might be able to get the information through bribery and extortion, we should just stop trying to protect the information at all and just throw it at their feet?
The government already has closed meetings; this is just over-riding the 15-day notice they have to give before closing them. The meetings are still open by default. I have no problems with having closed meetings as long as the minutes of the meetings are opened once the situation has been dealt with.
I distrust the government as much as the next person, but it is necessary for them to keep information secret sometimes, especially when they are under threat. Now, the threat of terrorism may be exaggerated, and I think it is, but it still is a threat.
Usually we call this "security through obscurity".
In the real (ie: non-digital) world, security by obscurity is often the most effective sort. If you don't want your troops bombed, don't let the enemy know where they are. If you don't want your weaknesses exploited, don't let anyone know about them until they are no longer weaknesses.
If a particular power plant is currently unguarded and unprotected, then FIX IT! If there's a security problem, then having it out in the open will get something done about it.
You cannot fix something instantly. Lets say these meetings were open. You discuss at the meeting that a power plant is weakly defended and vulnerable. Because the meeting is open, enemies know this information almost as soon as you do. It then becomes a race to see who gets their units to the power plant first. It would be better to discuss the weakness in a closed meeting, deploy the troops to secure it, and then announce that the plant was vulnerable, and has now been secured. That way you don't announce your weaknesses to your enemy.
If it was better defended in the first place, we wouldn't need to hold closed meetings.
Yeah, if everything was perfect, nothing would need fixing.
Tell that to Bush and his domestic wiretapping program.
What does domestic wiretapping have to do with declassifying information?
Everything the government does should be held to public scrutiny.
True. But it doesn't have to be real-time, and it shouldn't be. Publishing all a nation's defence strategies is a bad idea in a time of war. Publishing, say, the patrol roster for border patrols would not be a good idea. Informing everyone that a particular power plant is currently unguarded and unprotected is not a good idea.
Groups such as this should be able to hold closed meetings. Otherwise the whole point of the group - to determine what critical infrastructure is vulnerable and to better defend it - is undermined. The proceedings of the meeting should be made available in, say, two years time - if a vulnerable piece of critical infrastructure is still vulnerable after two years, this group isn't doing it's job.
I don't know the law in this case, but I would be surprised if that is not already the way it works. Even top secret information is declassified eventually.
Slashdot Mirror
The joys of VLC media player and a video-out socket.
I'm also very fond of whoever authored my Buffy CDs, since they seemed to have somehow locked the "next scene" function on the piracy warnings, but not the "skip to scene". Much appreciated.
Then they're outta luck. It sucks, but it's what happens in every other sector if you make a poor buying decision. If the service/product is bad enough, complain to whatever equivelant of the Fair Trading Commission your country has.
I can setup mail merge documents with it, decide to ditch it for a competitors version, import it somewhere else, whatever. When the data is off-site I don't have those options.
Then you are not the best customer for these types of systems. These services are marketed towards the company that doesn't have a tech as part of their permanent staff. They're not going to be able to export data from a MySQL database and perform a mail-merge, and are definately not going to want to swap databases for if the current one is working properly (and if it's not, they should complain to their vendor).
Despite analogies that have been drawn, domain-space isn't the same as real estate. Domain names were originally created as a system of nomenclature and categorization - that's why they have .com, .org, .net, etc.
.coms go to commercials. .orgs go to non-profits. If you go to a .org.au site, then you know that site is a registered charity or non-profit organisation. If you go to a .com site, you know that site is managed by a registered business. The way it's currently run in the US, you might as well just drop the TLDs and just sell stuff directly from the root. The only reason someone gets a .org or a .net is because the names already taken on .com. TLDs have lost any meaning in the US administrated system, and are completely useless.
And, incidentally, there are similar controls on real estate. They're known as zonings.
Australian domain name managers have the right idea.
You do realise that the period character exists for a reason other than as a separator in domain names? Although, credit where credit's due, you did use a comma. In the wrong place.
While I'm not sure about the relative polution created by burning natural gas to create hydrogen vs burning it for energy directly, there is an advantage to relocation the pollution to a single point. It's much more feasible to implement high-tech and expensive filters and control mechanisms in one or two hydrogen production plants than it is in a couple of million cars across a country. Then too, when a better method of production is discovered, all you need to do is upgrade the production plants, rather than wait for everyone to be a new, cleaner car.
That this hasn't yet taken over the male gamers' representations is the surprise for me. I'm sure that will be coming.
It's just a question of audience. The male audience for "e-sports" is much bigger than the female. So the female gamers have to be sexy to appeal to the audience, but the audience doesn't care about how males look, so their aesthetic appeal is ignored.
If the female (or homosexual, I spose) component of the "e-sport" audience gets larger, then expect to see the same pressure on male pro-gamers' aesthetics.
The article talks about the number of designers who are working on Embedded Linux projects. It says nothing at all about Embedded Linux's market penetration.
If, for example, you have 1000 projects using an embedded OS of some kind. Let's say 900 of these are going to be either small-run, specialised devices, or flops. The remaining 100 are consumer items, mass-produced and sold around the world. If Linux's 17% happens to account for a large proportion of the top 100 projects, their market penetration is huge. If it's 17% accounts only for small-run projects, then it's not doing that great.
A better heuristic, IMO, would be how many units are being produced with embedded Linux, rather than how many designers are using Linux.
Err, where did he say he wanted software control on his wheels? It's no more likely for your wheels to suddenly and unexpectedly turn 90 degress than it is for them to suddenly turn 30 degrees in your current car. Either one would screw you up on a highway.
I dunno about the beer, but my grandma could really use a robot that brings in her groceries for her. Both my grandparents are doing well for their age, but they're both approaching 80 and aren't up for as much physical exertion as they used to be. And some of those groceries, especially the fruit and veg, can be pretty hefty.
Of course, beer is a good promo point because it brings humour to the situation, but I'm betting they're not going to be stupid enough to restrict it only to beer-fetching. If it can be programmed to perform a relatively complex task like getting beer, which involves object recognition, pathing and obstacle avoidance, it could very easily be adapted to more productive uses.
The level of risk of harming children is extremely high, and the level of justification is extremely low.
I'm not sure that assertion is valid. Freenet enables child porn to be distributed, but it has no impact on its production. With or without Freenet, there are going to be sickos abusing children. I sincerely doubt Freenet has caused a single child to be abused.
What Freenet does is allow perverts to get their hands on child porn. While obviously not good, I don't think the distribution of material is as bad as the act of making the material. I think allowing one child to be abused for the sake of allowing the oppressed to speak would be a bad bargain. But allowing distribution of images of child abuse in exchange for allowing the oppressed to speak...that's a much closer call.
It is simple, and cynical, but I don't know if it's too far off-base. I think the war in Iraq was motivated more by politics than by national security. That may or may not be true, but I don't think I'm alone in holding that opinion.
I do see your point that we shouldn't be a father to the rest of the world. In fact, I agree. However, a father figure so to speak is needed these days. No matter what boundaries we draw, the world is getting smaller each and every day. The way we separated countries for thousands of years isn't working and fails at bigger levels as the world gets smaller. Simply drawing borders isn't going to prevent the issues of sovereign nations from bleeding over to the rest of the world. I would honestly prefer the UN to be restructured and become more effective. We need it to take the father figure role and hopefully, some day it will. Until then, would we really prefer to have nobody "steering the ship"? Should we all just shut our eyes and tell ourselves that we can all live on our own little islands and ignore what is going on in the rest of the world? Isn't that how World Wars get so large in scope?
The world is getting smaller, and globalisation is inevitable. I prefer the direction EU is going compared to the USA, however. You're not going to unite the world by tying them together through threat of force. That will last just as long as the force remains viable. Then it will fall apart. The EU's governing body is large, cumbersome and overly bureaucratic. But each of it's member states are there because they feel they need to be there, and they each have at least some say in how the EU is governed.
Most of the world's powers in recent times have been distinct entities uniting: USSR, USA, EU, and most recently, the UAE. Three types of unity are represented there:
- Force. The USSR were united by force, and fell apart when the force vanished.
- Threat. The states of America united against a foreign threat.
- Growth. The EU was established because the only way they could see of remaining relevant in the modern world was to unite.
I'm not sure whether the UAE falls into 2 or 3 - perceived threat from the West, or unity as they realise the power they are beginning to wield on the world stage. But my point is, unless some horrible aliens attack and we have an external threat to unite us, the only way the world is going to be united is discovering that standing on one's own leads to irrelevance as others unite. Being coerced into unity by a glowering father-figure, with his hand on the strap only lasts while the child is still cowed by the strap.We are the only remaining superpower. We have a huge responsibility to set an example for the rest of the world and to help mature all of our societies. We have to try and steer the whole damn world into globalism at a pace that isn't threatening and is respectful to all of our cultures.
Why? Where's your authority to act as the world's authoritarian father-figure? Because you have the largest, most well-equipped army? This is the sort of attitude that gets planes flown into tall American buildings - "We know best; when we bomb you, it's for your own good".
It's not America's responsibility to "steer the whole damn world"; it's America's responsibility to steer America. That's what makes sovereign nations sovereign - they steer themselves. The reason many people react against the war in Iraq is because it shows how much America respects the sovereignty of other nations; it doesn't. It wages a war that much of it's populace is against, that was not sanctioned by most other nations, and that, after the fact, has little evidence supporting the original justification for it.
People are are against America because they're afraid of America. You are the last superpower. And you go to war on little more than a whim.
Ultimately, it's up to them.
So if they decide, democratically, to institute a fundamentalist religious government, you're not going to blow the crap out of them again? If it was ultimately "up to them", then you should have left their country alone, and let them sort it out themselves. You're not some school teacher intervening in a fight between school-kids. You are one adult telling all the others how they should behave at the point of a gun.
Ok, Britannica beats Wikipedia on accuracy 3-4. Now give us your corrections and see who beats who in publishing the most accurate new edition.
What the world needs is maybe a participatory TV show, that people can consume and maybe even play a part in creating
You mean like Funniest Home Videos?
is your friend
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It depends on how you raise them. A decent-sized herd of cows can get most of their food intake by grazing in their pasture. The same land they live in grows food to support them. That's not to mention that animals also eat the low-grade foodstuffs that are unfit or undesirable for human consumption. If you didn't utilize that stuff to feed animals, what would you do with it? Throw it away? Force people to eat it?
Now granted, as I understand a lot of modern animal farming, you simply box the animal in and import all its food. I've no idea what sort of efficiency that gives in terms of land used. But the fact remains that animal farming does not have to cause these huge environmental problems; it's only when you start trying to cram as many as possible in to as small a space as possible that you start hitting that sort of problem. And if you farmed fruits and vegetables in the same way, you'd deplete the soil and screw everything up too. The problem isn't meat vs vegetables, it's responsible farming.
Meh, my conscience is perfectly clear, at least on the charges of eating meat. I've never butchered a chook or a lamb, but I've gutted and cleaned fish I've caught before eating them. Close enough, without the cute appeal.
And the whole supermarket thing is only recent; at least here in Australia. My grandparents can still remember their parents butchering chickens at home. We're the first generation in a while who've had qualms about consuming meat in any serious numbers - and we're the ones most removed from the actual source of the food. Talk to the ones who do do the killing - the farmers and the butchers. They don't have any qualms about it. The people who do are the squeamish suburbian types who've never seen a lamb except at the petting zoo (or the cold storage) and romantacize and anthropomorphize all the cute, cuddly animals getting killed.
And I hope you feel the pain of every soy-bean whose life you brutally extinguish. The worst thing is when vegetarians justify this by saying plants don't have nervous systems and are killed painlessly. FFS - you are killing it!
You certainly don't need to worry about eating the wrong fats, as I can't think of one plant that we eat that is bad for you.
Define bad. Where do you think sugar comes from? I'll give you a hint, it's not from pigs. Avocado's are also fairly fatty. Many fruits eaten to excess can cause diarrhea. Vegetarians, especially women, need to be very careful of what they eat to ensure they get needed vitamins and trace elements commonly found in meat - like iron.
We would certainly be able to feed more people with plant farms, than animal farms.
Meat has far more energy, weight for weight, than fruit and vegetables. Depending on how you farm the animals, you can provide more energy per hectare off animals than off most crops.
Another plus is that we wouldn't ruin our environment with plants farms as we would with pig farms.
No, you'd ruin them with other farms. Growing plants puts a strain on the soil. That's why you have crop rotations - you need to give the soil a chance to regain it's nutrients before you stick some more crops in it to start sucking them out again. If you increased the fruit and veg farming industry to the point where society could function totally without meat, you'd most definately have an impact on the environment. It'd just be a different one.
Gee, sorry for using military terminology. Would my point be more valid if I said "terrorist buddies" instead of "units"? Oh, and the "deploy" was in reference to defensive forces. I'm pretty sure American soldiers are still "deployed". Way to go addressing the argument instead of the language.
I must have missed it, when did congress declare war? And on who?
That was a general example of when open meetings would be bad, not necessarily a description of the current situation.
What you might have meant is that when terrorist get hold of "stuff" it is a bad thing. Well terrorists are criminals, and we have plenty of laws to lock up criminals.
Unfortunately, it's hard to arrest them as criminals until after they've blown something up. It is preferrable to stop them blowing stuff up in the first place.
This would not work for a terrorist who wants data? Here US data worker, here is a pile of cash ( choose the amount) give us the plans or we will kill you and your family. They would not do this because we are......white western nice people? Hah!
Closed meetings are a crock. They will be misused. Governments hate accountability. They are always looking for ways to use FEAR as a tool to dinimish how accountable they are.
Oh, so because terrorists might be able to get the information through bribery and extortion, we should just stop trying to protect the information at all and just throw it at their feet?
The government already has closed meetings; this is just over-riding the 15-day notice they have to give before closing them. The meetings are still open by default. I have no problems with having closed meetings as long as the minutes of the meetings are opened once the situation has been dealt with.
I distrust the government as much as the next person, but it is necessary for them to keep information secret sometimes, especially when they are under threat. Now, the threat of terrorism may be exaggerated, and I think it is, but it still is a threat.
Usually we call this "security through obscurity".
In the real (ie: non-digital) world, security by obscurity is often the most effective sort. If you don't want your troops bombed, don't let the enemy know where they are. If you don't want your weaknesses exploited, don't let anyone know about them until they are no longer weaknesses.
If a particular power plant is currently unguarded and unprotected, then FIX IT! If there's a security problem, then having it out in the open will get something done about it.
You cannot fix something instantly. Lets say these meetings were open. You discuss at the meeting that a power plant is weakly defended and vulnerable. Because the meeting is open, enemies know this information almost as soon as you do. It then becomes a race to see who gets their units to the power plant first. It would be better to discuss the weakness in a closed meeting, deploy the troops to secure it, and then announce that the plant was vulnerable, and has now been secured. That way you don't announce your weaknesses to your enemy.
If it was better defended in the first place, we wouldn't need to hold closed meetings.
Yeah, if everything was perfect, nothing would need fixing.
Tell that to Bush and his domestic wiretapping program.
What does domestic wiretapping have to do with declassifying information?
Widdling
Whittling
While your statement may be true, I don't think it comes out the way you intended it. And if you did intend it that way, you're a sick little puppy.
Everything the government does should be held to public scrutiny.
True. But it doesn't have to be real-time, and it shouldn't be. Publishing all a nation's defence strategies is a bad idea in a time of war. Publishing, say, the patrol roster for border patrols would not be a good idea. Informing everyone that a particular power plant is currently unguarded and unprotected is not a good idea.
Groups such as this should be able to hold closed meetings. Otherwise the whole point of the group - to determine what critical infrastructure is vulnerable and to better defend it - is undermined. The proceedings of the meeting should be made available in, say, two years time - if a vulnerable piece of critical infrastructure is still vulnerable after two years, this group isn't doing it's job.
I don't know the law in this case, but I would be surprised if that is not already the way it works. Even top secret information is declassified eventually.
Actually, thatd be a peasant. Peons say "Zug zug"