Remember that a lot of technologies start in military applications long before they move out to civilian use.
Why is this?
Firstly, because military problems attract money. Privates bitch to Sergeants, Sergeants bitch to Captains, Captains bitch to Colonels, Colonels bitch to Generals, Generals bitch to Congress, who has the people's money. If a private is too hot, too cold, too vulnerable, lacking ammo, too slow, too visible, etc, it becomes a problem that the Generals will address in order that the solution will be a military advantage.
Secondly, because the military will accept a sub-optimal solution if it addresses the primary problem really well, or if it addresses a previously unaddressed problem. Consider the WWII company radio. It was expensive, heavy, bulky, the range wasn't very good, the transmission quality was horrible and it was fairly fragile. There was probably a very high failure rate in the manyfacturing process. It required a dedicated soldier to bear and operate it, to the exclusion of food and ammo, which reduced his combat effectiveness and survivability. It was recognizable from a distance, which made him target number one for snipers.
All that being true, a company with a radio was part of an army. A company without a radio was a isolated group of men without support or supply that would surely only last a single firefight, if that. As technology developed, the radio got lighter, cheaper, more reliable, and encrypted. Soon it was affordable to equip a platoon with a radio, then individual squads. At a certain point along this progression, the technology really took off to the civilian market once it was cheap, reliable and small enough for, say, an important business person to have a brick-size device. With the new influx of money from a consumer market, the radios became smaller and cheaper until just about every one of us has a personal radio: the cell phone.
So, while you beat your breast and cry out to the cosmos, "Why does all the technology has to have military purposes first," remember that the military purposes will wring bugs out of the technology, establish an industrial base from which to launch into the civilian market, and provides a "reference" that business can rely on. If you try to jump straight into the civilian market with a buggy technology, no problems-solved stories and no industrial base, you'll be out of business like a dot-COM unless you have VERY deep pockets, or very stupid/very far-sighted (HA!) venture capitalists.
I propose that the crime of legislative malfeasance be codified into law.
Whereas:
The passage of laws, rules or regulations in direct contravention of the limitations of government codified in a written constitution violates the contract between the governed and the government;
The passage of laws, rules or regulations in excess of the granted authority of a government body is an offense against the liberty of every citizen;
The passage or implementation of offending laws, rules or regulations requires the complicity of numerous private citizens, independantly or in collusion, exercising governmental powers in excess of their granted authority;
The passage and/or implementation of offending laws, rules or regulations requires manhours, funds, materiel, etceteras, that would have better been lawfully employed in pursuit of the legitimate powers of government;
...and furthermore...
The government possesses no independant funds or means, but rather holds taxpayer money, and therefore cannot recompense the whole of the citizenry but by giving back their own money;
The government cannot provide compensation in the form of extra services to the whole of the citizenry because this would require taxpayer funding;
The cessation of offending activities on the part of the government in no way recompenses the citizenry for the offense committed against it;
...the crime of Legislative Malfeasance shall apply to
members of legislative bodies that vote for the offending laws, rules, or regulations in excess of the authority and powers enumerated in a constitution;
members of executive branches of government that have signatory or veto authority on the offending laws;
civil servants in managerial positions that were complicit in the implementation of the offending rules or regulations.
Any citizen that is subject to, must comply with, or is otherwise compelled by a unconsitutional law may bring suit in any superior court. The defendents (necessarily all complicit persons, no subsets) may appeal to higher superior courts. The remedies specified if the suit is upheld are as follows:
County superior court or federal court: The court costs of the plaintiff shall be borne equally by the defendants.
State superior court or federal appeals court: The court costs of the plaintiff shall be borne equally by the defendants, and the defendants governmental positions shall be openned for re-election at the next general election.
Supreme Court: The court costs of the plaintiff shall be borne equally by the defendants, and the defendants positions are immediately vacated and openned for special election.
There. That'll slow down the inexorable grind of government expansion.
Well, it turns out I had it backwards about the CO2, at least according to those figures. A hallmark of good science is to admit mistakes and re-adjust.
And no, I don't assume scientists have thought through all the obvious answers. I don't assume that a scientist doesn't have a political agenda, or that he isn't skewing his data to support the political agenda of the body that's funding him, or that he doesn't make fundamental errors in scientific methods. I don't assume that he's not making a big assumption from a very small sample. I don't assume that an expert in one field (say, geophysics) will have the expertise available to put another part of the puzzle together (say, oceanography). I also don't assume that I'm not smarter than them: I've met some pretty dumb people with PhDs and MDs. I wouldn't assert that my BS in Atmospheric Science entitles me to claim to be more educated in that subject than someone with a MS or PhD, though. Although it's funny how some PhDs seem to know less about their field than a MS because they specialize so tightly.
This doesn't invalidate the assertion about water vapor, though. If, as the parent poster suggested, we moved to hydrogen based energy economy, we exchange CO2 production for hot water vapor production. Different greenhouse gas, still more problems. We're only going to get away from the problem entirely by getting onto a energy system that doesn't require a chemical reaction.
So, new information has been brought on board, let's shut down some coal and gas fired power plants! Particularly the heavily polluting ones that were built on the cheap and poorly maintained. Where should I look for some of those?
1) There's loads of oxygen in the air, but not a lot of free-floating hydrogen. Free hydrogen tends to either react with something, or float up to the top of the atmosphere, get warmed up enough to have molecule velocity exceeding escape velocity and charge off into space. You can make the hydrogen a number of ways, such as electrolysis (also releasing oxygen), but it still requires energy. Where are you going to get that? Hydrogen as a "fuel source" is a misnomer; hydrogen in this context is a energy carrier. It'll be more efficient than power lines for long-haul energy transfer, but there is still energy lost in the transfer of (nuclear/wind/tidal/fossil fuel) power to (hydrogen) energy carry medium to (burn/fuel cell) use.
2) Hydrogen plus Oxygen produces Water Vapor, a green house gas. You want to see an immediate localized weather modification? Switch an entire region over to hydrogen fuel cells with the exhaust going into the air. The local humidity will shoot up, nice warm water vapor will feed into convective air currents, and places east of that location (in latitudes where the predominant upper air movement is easterly) will see more rainfall and thunderstorms. Go further east, and the rainfall in those locations will have decreased because the anomolous conventive activity wrung the moisture out of the air too early. Water vapor has a stronger effect as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Aside from these problems, I understand that the greenhouse gases released by the planet's volcanoes and other sources each year are an order of magnitude or two larger that the total output by humanity. It's been that way forever. Not that there isn't value in looking after air quality, but to assume that the changes in the gargantuan system that is the atmosphere is entirely due to human interference is the height of arrogance. It's quite possible that nothing we do and nothing we have done could effect the climate change pattern. But Los Angeles still has crappy local air quality.
I think your arguments hold together well for any government that does not derive its powers from consent of the governed. I am right up with you to apply these "rights citizens have to demand of their governments" if those citizens have no effective way to check the power of their government, such as a dictatorship, theocracy, or other unelected power caste. Those rights must be demanded because they have been usurped, even if the people tolerate it.
However, in an elected government, where the people have empowered their government with specific powers, the government may only exercise those powers in accordance with the mandate that defines the government, the written constitution. When assigned a power, the government will assess taxation to support its execution of that power, the people will pay their taxes, and the program is executed. In a federal system, where there are many layers of government, certain powers may be assigned to certain layers. For example, in the USA, elementary schooling is generally assigned to local school boards, common defense is allocated to the federal and state governments, welfare programs happen at all levels. The federal government is not empowered with the authority to provide medical care, nor are most state governments. Some city governments may do so, but this is not guaranteed. If you live in an area where health care is not provided, your "rights" are not being violated. You just live in an area where that power has not been assigned to a body, thus your taxes are lower, thus you have more resources with which to fend for yourself.
And it is true, as well, that these "rights" are the moral obligation of every individual. It is morally correct to feed the hungery, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, educate the ignorant, heal the sick, etc. The Hippocratic Oath would be binding on any doctor of good conscience that took it, although you may note that there are medical schools that do not require the Hippocratic Oath of their doctors. (I am married to a doctor, and my wife assures me that she took the Oath before she began clinical school, but her opinion is that it doesn't mean much if you're not religious or non-religiously faithful to your word.) I do not absolve a government of it "responsibilities" because it does not have any until it has been assigned them by the people. An individual has the moral obligation, and that individual may feel that empowering the government to resolve that moral obligation collectively will have a greater good than acting singly. That individual may also feel that acting collectively outside of government may be more effective.
As to my arguments being ad absurdum, I would submit that absurdity has arrived. In a few states in the USA, due to malpractice costs, it is too expensive for doctors to practice. There is a doctor shortage as the doctors move out of the area or simply close up shop. How is a government empowered with providing health care to provide that if they haven't the doctors available? If the regulations and rules for elementary teachers are so onerous that it is more worthwhile to flip burgers, thus producing a teacher shortage, are your rights being violated because the state can't provide the education? (I know a teacher that quit public education to teach privately because the rules, regulations, etc, effectively meant that she wasn't teaching even though she was presiding over a class.) If the state is dead set determined to execute a health or education agenda, but they haven't the qualified doctors or teachers to do it, they have only two options: A) use unqualified labor, thus likely not accomplishing the goal while expending the resources, or B) force the qualified labor to do it, or give them no option but to do it at government direction. Option A results in smoke with no fire, utter fatuousness. Option B is produces results, but as you can recall, everyone has the right to leave their country, even the skilled laborers.
It's not a bad document, really, until you get to Article 23 through 26. Then I started leading the forced labor subtexts:
Owners of companies are compelled, possibly against their will, to pay you while you enjoy yourself, otherwise they're violating your rights.
Someone is compelled to employ you, possibly against their will, otherwise they're violating your rights.
Someone with medical training is compelled, possibly against their will and without pay, to treat you, otherwise they're violating your rights.
If you can't or won't provide for your own housing, someone will be compelled to house you, possibly against their will and without pay, otherwise they're violating your rights.
If you can't or won't provide for your own sustainence, someone will be compelled to feed you, possibly against their will and without pay, otherwise they're violating your rights.
If you can't or won't provide for your own clothes, someone will be compelled to clothe you, possibly against their will and without pay, otherwise they're violating your rights.
Someone with knowledge is compelled, possibly against their will and without pay, to teach you, otherwise they're violating your rights.
Here's some rights that are missing:
Everyone is entitled to be reasonably compensated for their labors.
Everyone is entitled, as a collective body, to establish a government, assign it specified powers, to remove assigned powers, and to select those that will exercise those government powers. [You can even set up a king if you want, but you don't lose the right to take him down again.]
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. To continue with the subject at hand, I'd say that most high school kids and products of the US high school system don't know what any of the articles of the Bill of Rights actually say.
How many non-NRA members (of which catagory I fall into) understand that the 18th century phrase "well-regulated" translates into "subject to regulations of a higher authority" in 20th century American English? Or that the regulation of the militia applies to those actively engaged in militia duty?
Or that "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" is a present participle, rather than a clause? That means that the phrase is intended as a justification, not a limitation.
Or who the "militia" entails. In the words of the founding father George Mason: "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for few public officials." Under the US Code, Subtitle A, Part I, Chapter 13, 311, the militia is legally all males over 17 years of age, plus any females that are part of the National Guard. Anyone not in the National guard and not female is part of the unorganized militia.
Or what the intended purpose of the militia, being the whole of the people, is? In the words of Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts during the floor debate of the Bill of Rights: "What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." From which we can infer that even though we have a standing Army now, it is not necessarily a good thing, Posse Comitatus restrictions notwithstanding.
Consider these roughs drafts of the Second Amendment:
"That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and their own states or the United States, or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals." (by the Pennsylvania Legislature)
"The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, a well-armed and well-regulated militia being the best security of a free country; but no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person." (by James Madison)
"That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power." (from the Virginia Declaration of Rights, drafted by George Mason)
A more modern version of the Second Amendment might be written thus: "No law, rule or regulation infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall be passed, in order that the militia, being subject to regulation of conduct and civilian authority, may be effective in providing security to the nation." The Second Amendment is a limitation on the powers of the government, and a limitation on the powers of any majority bloc, as is all the other Amendments in the Bill of Rights. It is intended to be the final defense against subjugation of the American people, whether from an external power or by their own government.
Finally, in the words of Thomas Jefferson,
"On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when th
Probably because this is the term that the professional military has adopted to refer to themselves. The distinction is as follows:
WARRIOR: Someone who fights in battle and wins.
WARFIGHTER: Someone who fights in war and wins.
The connotation is that the "warrior" concept holds great personal skill at arms, but no greater vision. The "warfighter" concept includes personal skill at arms, but also tactical ability, strategic planning, logistical support... in general, someone who can fight and think. Inherent in that definition is that a warfighter must adhere to standards of conduct, be bound by legitimate laws of war, and be economical in the application of force. A warfighter fights and plans because the end goal is to end a war, prevent a war, or avoid a 'peace' worse than war.
For historical perspective: The kings of the middle ages could be seen as warriors. They fought battles, made alliances, broke alliances, fought again, gained some ground, lost some ground, and some or all of this was cause for the next round of wars. General MacArthur, on the other hand, was a warfighter. He fought the WW2 battle in the Pacific, skipping over Japanese military concentration on islands that had no strategic value (thereby saving lives on both sides), won decisely and then after the Japanese surrender, broke the cycle of war by rebuilding Japan and making them steadfast allies.
... and I firmly believe that "hacking tools" should be held in the same regard as hammers, saws, pliers, crowbars, etceteras: instruments that have a daily legal purpose that a unlawful minority might use for a unlawful act. The military has them, but that doesn't make them weapons in nature. The military has them because everyone has them.
While he makes the point that the Founding Fathers probably had in their minds flintlocks (and sabers, cannon, horse-cavalry) when they were thinking of the arms that the people might keep and bear, at the same time their view of the press was those with manual printing presses, paper and quill-pens, not radio, TV, high-speed automatic presses and the internet. (Remember that any successful argument limiting the scope of one article of the Bill of Rights can immediately be used in the same form against another... precedent can be a bitch.)
I would point out that the intention of the Founding Fathers was that the militia, both organized and unorganized, be equipped with such weapons as are customary for the time. (For those who won't RTFLink, the militia is every able bodied male from 17 to 45 that is a citizen or has declared their intention to become one, plus any female that have joined an organized militia, state or national. Religious conscientious objectors are excused from combat duty, and may be assigned noncombatant roles. Still on the books and in effect... if you're American and male, you're a militiaman.) In order to avoid having an standing army in peace-time, the militia would be relied upon to handle defence against an aggressor until an army could be raised. Furthermore, in order that the standing army not be used as an instrument of oppression after it is raised, the militia would be armed alike to the standing army. Indeed, a few years after the Constitution was established, the Militia Act of 1792 was established requiring all men that could afford it to procure a musket, bayonet, shot, powder and associated gear (i.e. the "assault weapons" of the time). Sunday mornings were spent in worship, exercising their hard earned rights; Sunday afternoon were spent at the local firing range, practicing in order to defend those rights.
I think it is clear that the intention of the Founding Fathers was very clear: if the military can have it, the people can have it. It does not, however, follow that the government shall provide it to any individual of the people. Domestic builders of tanks are under contract with clauses to provide them only to the government, so you'll have to build your own, and you can't import them. Want hacking tools? Well, the military doesn't have to give you theirs, but you can write your own.
So the question posed by arashiakari is interesting: if the government is to classify something as an "arm", then they may not infringe the right of the people to keep and "bear" it, even if it is a Perl script, but they don't have to make it easy to acquire. Which does not mean that you can export it, which is where I think the source of the question came from (i.e. the prohibition on the export of cryptographic devices under their classification as a "munition").
When one is unclear as to the intention of the Founding Fathers, the Internet can bring you some of their insight in the form of the Federalist Papers, thanks to Project Gutenberg.
If your preferred solution to home intrusion is to call 911, I offer a superior calling order:
1. Call for a pizza. Give your address in a loud voice, and ask that they get there as soon as possible. Say everything else quietly.
2. If the intruder isn't spooked off by you talking into the telephone, giving your address and requesting someone to arrive in a hurry, you're SOL. Now is time to call 911 and request, in this order, an ambulance and the police.
If the intruder left, calm down by enjoying your pizza.
If he didn't leave when you called for the pizza, he wouldn't have left when you called the cops, either. He probably understands better than you do that if Cop Number One shows up while the intruder is still in the house, Cop Number One is going to call for backup and sit tight until it gets there. Meanwhile, you get to enjoy whatever the intruder thinks is the appropriate way to handle a witness.
Chances are, the pizza arrived first. If you're exceptionally lucky, the intruder has finished with you, grabbed the DVD player and the PS2 and left. If you're not lucky, the intruder intended to injure you in the first place, and he's grabbed the PS2 just for spite. Now you've got someone who may perform first aid on you, or may break down and blubber. You've also a pizza, but you are lacking teeth. Or blood.
The ambulance will probably arrive next. The paramedics will enjoy the pizza while they work on you.
When the cops arrive, they'll either take a statement from you, or draw a chalk outline around you. They'll enjoy the pizza, too.
Now, all of the previous was fairly facetious, but here's the stunning fact for all of you: the police don't have to do anything about a crime in progress. They might or might not, their call. They do have to take a statement afterwards from any surviving witnesses, collect evidence, and all the other after-the-fact tasks. You, or your inheritors, have absolutely no recourse if the police are busy elsewhere, take their time in arriving, or just sit tight waiting for various amounts of back-up to arrive.
This is assuming that your 911 call got through in the first place. In some cities, such as Los Angeles, in normal circumstances, it can take 15 minutes for an operator to answer. (As I have read; I don't live in LA.) Then the request to passed to the dispatcher, who may have just sent all the cops in the area to the bank robbery on the other side of town. There are a number of reputable and scholarly (and some that are less so) publications about the folly of depending on 911 when you life is at stake. I refer you to this page from the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership for only one example. Searching Google for "call 911 die" will bring up many more.
Your 911 call is a request for aid, not a demand that must be satisfied. You still have to defend yourself; nobody else is going to. If you can't handle the responsiblity of gun ownership, or you haven't the physical ability and training to defend yourself unarmed, get some chemical defense foam with the strongest ju-ju available. If you haven't that, use some wasp-and-hornet insect killer right in his face... the nerve agent in the bug killer will slow him down a bit.
To sum up: you must be willing, able and properly equipped to defend yourself when trouble has come looking for you. YOU are your own responsibility.
In high school, my friends and I would play all sorts of things. I ran a Shadowrun campaign, another ran a Star Trek RPG, another ran a Rifts campaign, etc. We'd switch it up pretty regularly, keeping it all fresh.
One of the guys decided to do a one-off Paranoia game. Here's how it started:
COMPUTER: Troubleshooters! Report to briefing room B-X-37-Y for your mission briefing!
ME: Friend computer, where might one find riefing room B-X-37-Y?
COMPUTER: What is your clearance?
ME: Red, friend computer.
COMPUTER: You are not cleared for that information.
Analiese: [sarcastically, momentarily channeling her D&D character] Well, I cast a spell to locate the briefing room.
ME: Argh! Mutant powers! Shoot her shoot her shoot her!
[Much expendature of Red lasers into Analiese.]
Analiese Clone #2: [arriving] You guys all suck.
ME: Argh! Questioning the wisdom of Friend Computer! Commie traitor! Shoot her shoot her shoot her!
[Much expendature of Red lasers into Analiese's second clone.]
COMPUTER: Well done, citizen! You are now cleared for Orange access.
And things degenerated from there. I don't think we made it out of the briefing room.
Consider the following from the point of view of a nation:
1) Do you want the ability to go to dangerous places and make things right? (For certain values of "THINGS" and "RIGHT".) Remember that dangerous places may not be far away.
2) Of those people that you send, do you want a good proportion to come back?
3) While they are there, do you want them to hit as much of the enemy (for certain values of "enemy") as much as possible and leave the rest in one piece? I might remind you that is some cases, the enemy is a disease, or a famine, or an forest fire.
Item 1 is easy, but it is expensive. You're talking about people, training, some equipment and transportation. You have to buy this ahead of time, because it is too late to pay for it when you really want it.
Item 2 is HARD. Hard things are expensive. You're talking about preparations, intelligence, armor, medical support, more training, etc. You also have to buy this before you need it.
Item 3 is VERY HARD. Very hard things are very very expensive. You're talking about precision, very precise intelligence, on-the-spot communications and information, even more training, etc.
You do get fringe benefits, sometimes called the "peace dividend". Airplanes, computers, large scale networks, survival food, GPS navigation, and some areas of chemistry, physics, medicine... they probably would have come around sooner or later, but the need to satisfay one of those three national desires sped them up a lot. And while you have those capabilities, if you're not using them for their primary requirement, you can use them to provide relief in natural disaster areas, evacuations... a whole range of things that area possible when you're ready to go into Hell and come back that you couldn't do without that ability.
And all of these public services provide jobs at all levels of society, from the kid trying to get out of the slums to the research scientist to the inventer to the businessman.
You know what I'd like? I'd like a law that mandated that for every dollar spent on an entitlement program, one dollar would be spend on education. That'd be a two-birds-with-one-stone solution. We're also talking about more money.
I know the parent is being funny, but here's a little less funny but more real info from the inside of the process.
According to the Federal Acquisition Rules (FAR), the contract selection must go to those who provide "best value". "Least bid" is only appropriate when all other factors weight out equally. This assumes that the contracting office is following all the rules, or at least trying to.
Now, these factors we're talking about are all laid out in the publications soliciting industry input or proposals. Such things as previous contractor performance, technical approach, capabilities proposed vs requirements, the proposed contractor team composition, timelines, certifications like ISO 9000 are used as criteria, or a super- or sub-set of this list. Then the source selection team, which can be very small or very large, goes through each and every one of the proposals received and weighs them up according to criteria estabilished before hand. These criteria are weighed, such as TECHNICAL and TEAM SKILLS being twice as important as any of the rest. COST is one of the factors weighed, but it has been generally accepted that the only person who weights COST to be of equal or higher weight than the other factors combined is a complete idiot because history has show this to be the recipe for a complete catastrophe and waste of taxpayers' money.
Of course, requirements are the biggest thing in all proper acquisitions. If you don't match up to the requirements, or you can't get there in a series of upgrades or refinements, it doesn't matter how cheap you are. But the real catch is how the requirements are written. If, for example appropriate to this audience, they are written in such a way that only a particular operating system can match up, then only the proposals outlining a system built on that operating system can possibly make it past the first cut. This happens when the requirement writer can't separate his vision for HOW the thing should be built from WHAT it needs to DO. And let's face it: the requirement writer is almost certainly too close to the problem to be able to think of unique or elegant ways to solve the problem with the least resources required. He's more likely to be thinking, "I want a thing that does this, which should be like this thing I already have, only MORE SO." And if what you have is a Windows system, and that's all you know (or you're frightened by this Linux/*BSD/etc stuff), then you'll write the requirements to fit what you know.
This isn't to say that requirement writers are particularly bad or unqualified people. Some of them are truly excellent. Most just need some training in how to stay in their lanes.
No, the bad people are the ultraconservative, underinformed, technically no-longer-qualified information security people. They don't like anything that hasn't been previously approved by their organization. Anything new must jump through a hoops process that by the minimum timeline takes YEARS, and they'll change the process twice during your progress and require you to start over. They won't get involved in your acquisition process because they "haven't got time for that", but they have time to tell you to re-engineer the entire system after you spend four years building it because it doesn't fit in with some asinine security regulation that either didn't exist when you started, or is so outdated that it qualified for social security, and almost certainly isn't applicable to your system. You can't argue against them because that would be arguing against SECURITY, and you might as well be questioning the value of MOM and APPLE PIE in their eyes. Their simple word can cost a colonel his star, or a GS-15 his SES, so you've got to be backed up one that a) has a lot of balls; b) takes you seriously; and c) is convinced he should do the job right and the star will attend to itself; to have any chance.
And how did I come up with these wild revelations about contracting in the government? Well the first half is straight out of t
... And I, not being a British subject, would still be willing to pay a lesser "TV tax" subscription for the access to a near-TV quality, downloadable archive in a portable format.
Let's be fair: the cost of these fine productions (and let's not get into the nit-picks about cardboard sets and cheesy sci-fi aliens) has already been borne by the TV-tax paying British public. They got to see ad-free television produced by people who were willing to take artistic risks because the they weren't subject to the tyranny of the marketing department.
If this is your style, I suspect you'd like to support them in producing more of the like. I like the sci-fi and the some of the comedy the BBC produces. If I could have access to new productions, even if it was a year or so after the first run in England, I'd would be willing to pay for it.
I think this archive of older radio and TV is a fantastic idea, even if it's not in a portable format right now. Fair enough: if you getting it for free, you can't complain how you're getting it. If the BBC would like an extra revenue stream, earmarked to support risk-taking entertainment that might not be universally popular, but still take direct feedback from the public, rather than markerters, I'll find a way to convert a few US dollars to pounds sterling to support it.
So, a question for anyone who wants to take it on: What would be a good business model for the BBC to take, understanding that their mandate is to produce entertainment for the British public, to enable foreigners to have access, provide support and feedback without jeopardizing that mandate?
I'm willing to stipulate that combining a "handful" of antihydrogen atoms with a hand of any sort results in not having much of a hand left, nor arm, nor good part of the city you're standing in.
All those hard drive platters, ~50K drives per OC48, times all the OC48s (and fractions as appropriate to the lesser pipes) will add up to enormous amounts of spinning matter.
If properly mounted in line with the Earth's axis, maybe we could make a teensy-tiny little adjustment to the revolution speed when they spin 'em all up and get us a 25 hour day to match our 25 hour biological clock. I tell you, I could use an extra hour per day, and I really wouldn't mind having 15.2 less days per year.
A lot of big organizations, such as corporations, government agencies, etc, and those smaller agencies descended from them, tend to want tight control over the information going out.
Not knowing anything about this situation in particular, but from my experience I'd say the trouble came about because the answers weren't gone over by their Public Affairs and Legal weenies before he sent them out.
If they HAD been white-washed by Legal and PA, then something in the answers must have worried someone. Don't forget that anything that comes from someone associated with an organization is assumed "expert opinion" and "official policy" even if the first two statements in the matter directly refute those assumptions.
Alternatively, someone's boss may have an excessively high cover-my-arse quotient and decided to play it by the safest method: Don't tell 'em nothin', and they won't have anythin' on yeh. We don't have a grand conspiracy here, just ordinary every day middle-management pucker factor.
I've got a horrible feeling that the vast unwashed masses enthralled by the World Wrestling Federation and the Jerry Springer Show vastly outnumber the population that like "I, Claudius", "Shogun", Babylon 5, exports from the BBC, and the like.
Face it folks, the money is in bread and circuses. Real artistry doesn't pay the bills.
In all likelyhood, you aren't going to see anything substantial in the way of weather modification from these. Remember that the atmosphere is BIG, and comparatively the effects of any individual or small group of things is very very small. You'd need enormous numbers of these things to even show up against the background effects of commercial aviation, and that effect is very small compared with the aggregate effects of industry smokestacks and cooling towers.
If you're referring to "churning" as in turbulence, the effect of even enormous numbers of these things will absolutely nothing compared with the mountain wave turbulence produced by just one mountain range.
And, yes, I am a meteorologist.
Some of the tech was nice...
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H2K2 Wrapup
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· Score: 5, Interesting
... but the politics was waaaaaaay overdone.
The best neat-hack I saw was during the "Protection for the Masses" presentation.
PROBLEM: Protecting sensitive data on a computer from unauthorized person when they have managed to steal your laptop.
COMPLICATION: Implementing an encryption scheme within, say, Windows 2K/NT/XP/etc is exceptionaly difficult because Windows tends to leave plaintext all over the hard drive, such as in the swap space, the temp files, etc. Implementing such a thing in other operating systems is easier, but you've still got to have an un-encrypted part of the disk to boot from, which could be vulnerable. Furthermore, you haven't got the resources of a major government to have a contractor create you a hardware-based encrypted laptop.
SOLUTION: Enter Linux and VMware. My doing some clever hacking to pass encrypted file systems to WMware, which presents it to the OS inside the box, the OS (let's say Windows) doesn't have to do encryption... it thinks it's talking to a normal disk. The crypt keys are on a USB storabe device, such as the keychain-sized ones. When you boot up, you get prompted for a passcode to access the crypt keys, and then you end up in a GUI with four buttons: Boot the internal OS; Shut down; Backup functions; Options.
Without the crypt keys and the pass code and the hard drive it goes to, a nefarious person can't even tell what operating system is on the inside of the VMware, much less when interesting information is there. Encryption options range from Blowfish to ROT13 (pretty much anything you want). The implementation is clean enough to let your mother or CEO have it: Once s/he punches the "Boot OS" button, s/he might never know that s/he is using anything other than Windows. Or FreeBSD. Or another instantiation of Linux.
Currently, their web site, www.nah6.com, has nothing on it but a logo, but they mentioned that they'll be having some good stuff out within six months. Heck, I'm looking forward to it for more than just personal use.
I had a bit of trouble with the pump (thank goodness for ASUS's hardware based overheat protection). But the company backed me up all the way and sent me a new one.
A few lessons learned: 1) Smearing petroleum jelly on the barb connections for the tubes provides a low cost, water repellant and air-gap-proof sealant. Now you don't have to crank down on the clamps to the point of pinching plastic. 2) Get a window. You WANT to see if there is a leak forming. Considerations of "looking cool" are fringe benefits, if any. 3) Get some UV sensitive water dye and a black light. You don't need to mount the light in the case. You'll be able to see a trace of dye outside the pipes and fixtures, even if the water evaporated (such as on a hot water block). 4) You've got water near electricity and expensive components. Do a daily maintainence check. If you're going to leave the computer alone for very long periods, and you don't need it to be doing something vital, turn it off and unplug it. Distilled water won't do anything to unpowered components. Just set it up so it can't drip on your drives. 5) Be just a little bit paranoid. You paid a lot for your set-up, so you can afford to. 6) You are allowed to look smug when your CPU runs 10C cooler than your friend with the fifteen case fans and the hearing damage. Speak up when you taunt him.
Re:Yeah, we think highly of foreigners here.
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Greenbacks No More
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· Score: 2, Insightful
In other monetary systems (and I'm thinking idly of the Italian currency before the Euro totally took over), the various denominations were also slightly different in size. It was easy to tell the difference between a 5000 lira note and a 50000 lira note by touch. Color was also varied, of course.
Thinking outside of being nice to those from out-of-town, I have a blind friend who has to have a trusted acquantance sort out her money visually, then order the money neatly into groups of 1s, 5s, 10s, 20s, etc, and then remember exactly how many of each bill she has so she can finger-count through the list to find the right bill. Any change that she receives that includes bills get shoved into a corner of her purse until she can have someone she trusts sort it out again.
In terms of being nice to our own citizens, maybe we could just print the denomination in Braille right under the SecTreas's signature. Being nice to fully sighted foreigners seems a much weaker argument than doing something of minimal cost to help out the blind.
I remember an old story about the YF-117, back when it was still a black project in the 80s.
The reason it is built so blocky is that the computer program they used to simulate the radar cross-section of the proposed designs could only handle flat planes, and not that many of them, apparently. So when they finally got a design that fit the requirements, they built the mock-up exactly to the computer model. That was the least risky move to make at that stage. So they did the testing, found that the shape did as the computer model suggested, and then they showed it to the Air Force.
"We can round out those angles between the faces, you know," they told the generals, "They aren't exactly aerodynamic."
But the generals wouldn't hear anything of it. The plane was nearly invisile to radar, it looked blocky... therefore there must be something magical about blocky shapes! (Typical fighter pilot attitude, really.)
Naturally, when the entertainment industry got a glimpse of the F-117, we were subjected to a decade of movies where, if something was supposed to be high-tech and stealthy, it was 1) black and 2) blocky.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is this?
Firstly, because military problems attract money. Privates bitch to Sergeants, Sergeants bitch to Captains, Captains bitch to Colonels, Colonels bitch to Generals, Generals bitch to Congress, who has the people's money. If a private is too hot, too cold, too vulnerable, lacking ammo, too slow, too visible, etc, it becomes a problem that the Generals will address in order that the solution will be a military advantage.
Secondly, because the military will accept a sub-optimal solution if it addresses the primary problem really well, or if it addresses a previously unaddressed problem. Consider the WWII company radio. It was expensive, heavy, bulky, the range wasn't very good, the transmission quality was horrible and it was fairly fragile. There was probably a very high failure rate in the manyfacturing process. It required a dedicated soldier to bear and operate it, to the exclusion of food and ammo, which reduced his combat effectiveness and survivability. It was recognizable from a distance, which made him target number one for snipers.
All that being true, a company with a radio was part of an army. A company without a radio was a isolated group of men without support or supply that would surely only last a single firefight, if that. As technology developed, the radio got lighter, cheaper, more reliable, and encrypted. Soon it was affordable to equip a platoon with a radio, then individual squads. At a certain point along this progression, the technology really took off to the civilian market once it was cheap, reliable and small enough for, say, an important business person to have a brick-size device. With the new influx of money from a consumer market, the radios became smaller and cheaper until just about every one of us has a personal radio: the cell phone.
So, while you beat your breast and cry out to the cosmos, "Why does all the technology has to have military purposes first," remember that the military purposes will wring bugs out of the technology, establish an industrial base from which to launch into the civilian market, and provides a "reference" that business can rely on. If you try to jump straight into the civilian market with a buggy technology, no problems-solved stories and no industrial base, you'll be out of business like a dot-COM unless you have VERY deep pockets, or very stupid/very far-sighted (HA!) venture capitalists.
Whereas:
Any citizen that is subject to, must comply with, or is otherwise compelled by a unconsitutional law may bring suit in any superior court. The defendents (necessarily all complicit persons, no subsets) may appeal to higher superior courts. The remedies specified if the suit is upheld are as follows:
There. That'll slow down the inexorable grind of government expansion.
And no, I don't assume scientists have thought through all the obvious answers. I don't assume that a scientist doesn't have a political agenda, or that he isn't skewing his data to support the political agenda of the body that's funding him, or that he doesn't make fundamental errors in scientific methods. I don't assume that he's not making a big assumption from a very small sample. I don't assume that an expert in one field (say, geophysics) will have the expertise available to put another part of the puzzle together (say, oceanography). I also don't assume that I'm not smarter than them: I've met some pretty dumb people with PhDs and MDs. I wouldn't assert that my BS in Atmospheric Science entitles me to claim to be more educated in that subject than someone with a MS or PhD, though. Although it's funny how some PhDs seem to know less about their field than a MS because they specialize so tightly.
This doesn't invalidate the assertion about water vapor, though. If, as the parent poster suggested, we moved to hydrogen based energy economy, we exchange CO2 production for hot water vapor production. Different greenhouse gas, still more problems. We're only going to get away from the problem entirely by getting onto a energy system that doesn't require a chemical reaction.
So, new information has been brought on board, let's shut down some coal and gas fired power plants! Particularly the heavily polluting ones that were built on the cheap and poorly maintained. Where should I look for some of those?
1) There's loads of oxygen in the air, but not a lot of free-floating hydrogen. Free hydrogen tends to either react with something, or float up to the top of the atmosphere, get warmed up enough to have molecule velocity exceeding escape velocity and charge off into space. You can make the hydrogen a number of ways, such as electrolysis (also releasing oxygen), but it still requires energy. Where are you going to get that? Hydrogen as a "fuel source" is a misnomer; hydrogen in this context is a energy carrier. It'll be more efficient than power lines for long-haul energy transfer, but there is still energy lost in the transfer of (nuclear/wind/tidal/fossil fuel) power to (hydrogen) energy carry medium to (burn/fuel cell) use.
2) Hydrogen plus Oxygen produces Water Vapor, a green house gas. You want to see an immediate localized weather modification? Switch an entire region over to hydrogen fuel cells with the exhaust going into the air. The local humidity will shoot up, nice warm water vapor will feed into convective air currents, and places east of that location (in latitudes where the predominant upper air movement is easterly) will see more rainfall and thunderstorms. Go further east, and the rainfall in those locations will have decreased because the anomolous conventive activity wrung the moisture out of the air too early. Water vapor has a stronger effect as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Aside from these problems, I understand that the greenhouse gases released by the planet's volcanoes and other sources each year are an order of magnitude or two larger that the total output by humanity. It's been that way forever. Not that there isn't value in looking after air quality, but to assume that the changes in the gargantuan system that is the atmosphere is entirely due to human interference is the height of arrogance. It's quite possible that nothing we do and nothing we have done could effect the climate change pattern. But Los Angeles still has crappy local air quality.
She also voted in Washington state, as well.
However, in an elected government, where the people have empowered their government with specific powers, the government may only exercise those powers in accordance with the mandate that defines the government, the written constitution. When assigned a power, the government will assess taxation to support its execution of that power, the people will pay their taxes, and the program is executed. In a federal system, where there are many layers of government, certain powers may be assigned to certain layers. For example, in the USA, elementary schooling is generally assigned to local school boards, common defense is allocated to the federal and state governments, welfare programs happen at all levels. The federal government is not empowered with the authority to provide medical care, nor are most state governments. Some city governments may do so, but this is not guaranteed. If you live in an area where health care is not provided, your "rights" are not being violated. You just live in an area where that power has not been assigned to a body, thus your taxes are lower, thus you have more resources with which to fend for yourself.
And it is true, as well, that these "rights" are the moral obligation of every individual. It is morally correct to feed the hungery, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, educate the ignorant, heal the sick, etc. The Hippocratic Oath would be binding on any doctor of good conscience that took it, although you may note that there are medical schools that do not require the Hippocratic Oath of their doctors. (I am married to a doctor, and my wife assures me that she took the Oath before she began clinical school, but her opinion is that it doesn't mean much if you're not religious or non-religiously faithful to your word.) I do not absolve a government of it "responsibilities" because it does not have any until it has been assigned them by the people. An individual has the moral obligation, and that individual may feel that empowering the government to resolve that moral obligation collectively will have a greater good than acting singly. That individual may also feel that acting collectively outside of government may be more effective.
As to my arguments being ad absurdum, I would submit that absurdity has arrived. In a few states in the USA, due to malpractice costs, it is too expensive for doctors to practice. There is a doctor shortage as the doctors move out of the area or simply close up shop. How is a government empowered with providing health care to provide that if they haven't the doctors available? If the regulations and rules for elementary teachers are so onerous that it is more worthwhile to flip burgers, thus producing a teacher shortage, are your rights being violated because the state can't provide the education? (I know a teacher that quit public education to teach privately because the rules, regulations, etc, effectively meant that she wasn't teaching even though she was presiding over a class.) If the state is dead set determined to execute a health or education agenda, but they haven't the qualified doctors or teachers to do it, they have only two options: A) use unqualified labor, thus likely not accomplishing the goal while expending the resources, or B) force the qualified labor to do it, or give them no option but to do it at government direction. Option A results in smoke with no fire, utter fatuousness. Option B is produces results, but as you can recall, everyone has the right to leave their country, even the skilled laborers.
And, obviously, a governme
Here's some rights that are missing:
How many non-NRA members (of which catagory I fall into) understand that the 18th century phrase "well-regulated" translates into "subject to regulations of a higher authority" in 20th century American English? Or that the regulation of the militia applies to those actively engaged in militia duty?
Or that "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" is a present participle, rather than a clause? That means that the phrase is intended as a justification, not a limitation.
Or who the "militia" entails. In the words of the founding father George Mason: "I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people, except for few public officials." Under the US Code, Subtitle A, Part I, Chapter 13, 311, the militia is legally all males over 17 years of age, plus any females that are part of the National Guard. Anyone not in the National guard and not female is part of the unorganized militia.
Or what the intended purpose of the militia, being the whole of the people, is? In the words of Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts during the floor debate of the Bill of Rights: "What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." From which we can infer that even though we have a standing Army now, it is not necessarily a good thing, Posse Comitatus restrictions notwithstanding.
Consider these roughs drafts of the Second Amendment:
A more modern version of the Second Amendment might be written thus: "No law, rule or regulation infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall be passed, in order that the militia, being subject to regulation of conduct and civilian authority, may be effective in providing security to the nation." The Second Amendment is a limitation on the powers of the government, and a limitation on the powers of any majority bloc, as is all the other Amendments in the Bill of Rights. It is intended to be the final defense against subjugation of the American people, whether from an external power or by their own government.
Finally, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, "On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us carry ourselves back to the time when th
WARRIOR: Someone who fights in battle and wins.
WARFIGHTER: Someone who fights in war and wins.
The connotation is that the "warrior" concept holds great personal skill at arms, but no greater vision. The "warfighter" concept includes personal skill at arms, but also tactical ability, strategic planning, logistical support... in general, someone who can fight and think. Inherent in that definition is that a warfighter must adhere to standards of conduct, be bound by legitimate laws of war, and be economical in the application of force. A warfighter fights and plans because the end goal is to end a war, prevent a war, or avoid a 'peace' worse than war.
For historical perspective: The kings of the middle ages could be seen as warriors. They fought battles, made alliances, broke alliances, fought again, gained some ground, lost some ground, and some or all of this was cause for the next round of wars. General MacArthur, on the other hand, was a warfighter. He fought the WW2 battle in the Pacific, skipping over Japanese military concentration on islands that had no strategic value (thereby saving lives on both sides), won decisely and then after the Japanese surrender, broke the cycle of war by rebuilding Japan and making them steadfast allies.
While he makes the point that the Founding Fathers probably had in their minds flintlocks (and sabers, cannon, horse-cavalry) when they were thinking of the arms that the people might keep and bear, at the same time their view of the press was those with manual printing presses, paper and quill-pens, not radio, TV, high-speed automatic presses and the internet. (Remember that any successful argument limiting the scope of one article of the Bill of Rights can immediately be used in the same form against another... precedent can be a bitch.)
I would point out that the intention of the Founding Fathers was that the militia, both organized and unorganized, be equipped with such weapons as are customary for the time. (For those who won't RTFLink, the militia is every able bodied male from 17 to 45 that is a citizen or has declared their intention to become one, plus any female that have joined an organized militia, state or national. Religious conscientious objectors are excused from combat duty, and may be assigned noncombatant roles. Still on the books and in effect... if you're American and male, you're a militiaman.) In order to avoid having an standing army in peace-time, the militia would be relied upon to handle defence against an aggressor until an army could be raised. Furthermore, in order that the standing army not be used as an instrument of oppression after it is raised, the militia would be armed alike to the standing army. Indeed, a few years after the Constitution was established, the Militia Act of 1792 was established requiring all men that could afford it to procure a musket, bayonet, shot, powder and associated gear (i.e. the "assault weapons" of the time). Sunday mornings were spent in worship, exercising their hard earned rights; Sunday afternoon were spent at the local firing range, practicing in order to defend those rights.
I think it is clear that the intention of the Founding Fathers was very clear: if the military can have it, the people can have it. It does not, however, follow that the government shall provide it to any individual of the people. Domestic builders of tanks are under contract with clauses to provide them only to the government, so you'll have to build your own, and you can't import them. Want hacking tools? Well, the military doesn't have to give you theirs, but you can write your own.
So the question posed by arashiakari is interesting: if the government is to classify something as an "arm", then they may not infringe the right of the people to keep and "bear" it, even if it is a Perl script, but they don't have to make it easy to acquire. Which does not mean that you can export it, which is where I think the source of the question came from (i.e. the prohibition on the export of cryptographic devices under their classification as a "munition").
When one is unclear as to the intention of the Founding Fathers, the Internet can bring you some of their insight in the form of the Federalist Papers, thanks to Project Gutenberg.
1. Call for a pizza. Give your address in a loud voice, and ask that they get there as soon as possible. Say everything else quietly.
2. If the intruder isn't spooked off by you talking into the telephone, giving your address and requesting someone to arrive in a hurry, you're SOL. Now is time to call 911 and request, in this order, an ambulance and the police.
If the intruder left, calm down by enjoying your pizza.
If he didn't leave when you called for the pizza, he wouldn't have left when you called the cops, either. He probably understands better than you do that if Cop Number One shows up while the intruder is still in the house, Cop Number One is going to call for backup and sit tight until it gets there. Meanwhile, you get to enjoy whatever the intruder thinks is the appropriate way to handle a witness.
Chances are, the pizza arrived first. If you're exceptionally lucky, the intruder has finished with you, grabbed the DVD player and the PS2 and left. If you're not lucky, the intruder intended to injure you in the first place, and he's grabbed the PS2 just for spite. Now you've got someone who may perform first aid on you, or may break down and blubber. You've also a pizza, but you are lacking teeth. Or blood.
The ambulance will probably arrive next. The paramedics will enjoy the pizza while they work on you.
When the cops arrive, they'll either take a statement from you, or draw a chalk outline around you. They'll enjoy the pizza, too.
Now, all of the previous was fairly facetious, but here's the stunning fact for all of you: the police don't have to do anything about a crime in progress. They might or might not, their call. They do have to take a statement afterwards from any surviving witnesses, collect evidence, and all the other after-the-fact tasks. You, or your inheritors, have absolutely no recourse if the police are busy elsewhere, take their time in arriving, or just sit tight waiting for various amounts of back-up to arrive.
This is assuming that your 911 call got through in the first place. In some cities, such as Los Angeles, in normal circumstances, it can take 15 minutes for an operator to answer. (As I have read; I don't live in LA.) Then the request to passed to the dispatcher, who may have just sent all the cops in the area to the bank robbery on the other side of town. There are a number of reputable and scholarly (and some that are less so) publications about the folly of depending on 911 when you life is at stake. I refer you to this page from the Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership for only one example. Searching Google for "call 911 die" will bring up many more.
Your 911 call is a request for aid, not a demand that must be satisfied. You still have to defend yourself; nobody else is going to. If you can't handle the responsiblity of gun ownership, or you haven't the physical ability and training to defend yourself unarmed, get some chemical defense foam with the strongest ju-ju available. If you haven't that, use some wasp-and-hornet insect killer right in his face... the nerve agent in the bug killer will slow him down a bit.
To sum up: you must be willing, able and properly equipped to defend yourself when trouble has come looking for you. YOU are your own responsibility.
In high school, my friends and I would play all sorts of things. I ran a Shadowrun campaign, another ran a Star Trek RPG, another ran a Rifts campaign, etc. We'd switch it up pretty regularly, keeping it all fresh.
One of the guys decided to do a one-off Paranoia game. Here's how it started:
COMPUTER: Troubleshooters! Report to briefing room B-X-37-Y for your mission briefing!
ME: Friend computer, where might one find riefing room B-X-37-Y?
COMPUTER: What is your clearance?
ME: Red, friend computer.
COMPUTER: You are not cleared for that information.
Analiese: [sarcastically, momentarily channeling her D&D character] Well, I cast a spell to locate the briefing room.
ME: Argh! Mutant powers! Shoot her shoot her shoot her!
[Much expendature of Red lasers into Analiese.]
Analiese Clone #2: [arriving] You guys all suck.
ME: Argh! Questioning the wisdom of Friend Computer! Commie traitor! Shoot her shoot her shoot her!
[Much expendature of Red lasers into Analiese's second clone.]
COMPUTER: Well done, citizen! You are now cleared for Orange access.
And things degenerated from there. I don't think we made it out of the briefing room.
Consider the following from the point of view of a nation:
1) Do you want the ability to go to dangerous places and make things right? (For certain values of "THINGS" and "RIGHT".) Remember that dangerous places may not be far away.
2) Of those people that you send, do you want a good proportion to come back?
3) While they are there, do you want them to hit as much of the enemy (for certain values of "enemy") as much as possible and leave the rest in one piece? I might remind you that is some cases, the enemy is a disease, or a famine, or an forest fire.
Item 1 is easy, but it is expensive. You're talking about people, training, some equipment and transportation. You have to buy this ahead of time, because it is too late to pay for it when you really want it.
Item 2 is HARD. Hard things are expensive. You're talking about preparations, intelligence, armor, medical support, more training, etc. You also have to buy this before you need it.
Item 3 is VERY HARD. Very hard things are very very expensive. You're talking about precision, very precise intelligence, on-the-spot communications and information, even more training, etc.
You do get fringe benefits, sometimes called the "peace dividend". Airplanes, computers, large scale networks, survival food, GPS navigation, and some areas of chemistry, physics, medicine... they probably would have come around sooner or later, but the need to satisfay one of those three national desires sped them up a lot. And while you have those capabilities, if you're not using them for their primary requirement, you can use them to provide relief in natural disaster areas, evacuations... a whole range of things that area possible when you're ready to go into Hell and come back that you couldn't do without that ability.
And all of these public services provide jobs at all levels of society, from the kid trying to get out of the slums to the research scientist to the inventer to the businessman.
You know what I'd like? I'd like a law that mandated that for every dollar spent on an entitlement program, one dollar would be spend on education. That'd be a two-birds-with-one-stone solution. We're also talking about more money.
I know the parent is being funny, but here's a little less funny but more real info from the inside of the process.
According to the Federal Acquisition Rules (FAR), the contract selection must go to those who provide "best value". "Least bid" is only appropriate when all other factors weight out equally. This assumes that the contracting office is following all the rules, or at least trying to.
Now, these factors we're talking about are all laid out in the publications soliciting industry input or proposals. Such things as previous contractor performance, technical approach, capabilities proposed vs requirements, the proposed contractor team composition, timelines, certifications like ISO 9000 are used as criteria, or a super- or sub-set of this list. Then the source selection team, which can be very small or very large, goes through each and every one of the proposals received and weighs them up according to criteria estabilished before hand. These criteria are weighed, such as TECHNICAL and TEAM SKILLS being twice as important as any of the rest. COST is one of the factors weighed, but it has been generally accepted that the only person who weights COST to be of equal or higher weight than the other factors combined is a complete idiot because history has show this to be the recipe for a complete catastrophe and waste of taxpayers' money.
Of course, requirements are the biggest thing in all proper acquisitions. If you don't match up to the requirements, or you can't get there in a series of upgrades or refinements, it doesn't matter how cheap you are. But the real catch is how the requirements are written. If, for example appropriate to this audience, they are written in such a way that only a particular operating system can match up, then only the proposals outlining a system built on that operating system can possibly make it past the first cut. This happens when the requirement writer can't separate his vision for HOW the thing should be built from WHAT it needs to DO. And let's face it: the requirement writer is almost certainly too close to the problem to be able to think of unique or elegant ways to solve the problem with the least resources required. He's more likely to be thinking, "I want a thing that does this, which should be like this thing I already have, only MORE SO." And if what you have is a Windows system, and that's all you know (or you're frightened by this Linux/*BSD/etc stuff), then you'll write the requirements to fit what you know.
This isn't to say that requirement writers are particularly bad or unqualified people. Some of them are truly excellent. Most just need some training in how to stay in their lanes.
No, the bad people are the ultraconservative, underinformed, technically no-longer-qualified information security people. They don't like anything that hasn't been previously approved by their organization. Anything new must jump through a hoops process that by the minimum timeline takes YEARS, and they'll change the process twice during your progress and require you to start over. They won't get involved in your acquisition process because they "haven't got time for that", but they have time to tell you to re-engineer the entire system after you spend four years building it because it doesn't fit in with some asinine security regulation that either didn't exist when you started, or is so outdated that it qualified for social security, and almost certainly isn't applicable to your system. You can't argue against them because that would be arguing against SECURITY, and you might as well be questioning the value of MOM and APPLE PIE in their eyes. Their simple word can cost a colonel his star, or a GS-15 his SES, so you've got to be backed up one that a) has a lot of balls; b) takes you seriously; and c) is convinced he should do the job right and the star will attend to itself; to have any chance.
And how did I come up with these wild revelations about contracting in the government? Well the first half is straight out of t
... And I, not being a British subject, would still be willing to pay a lesser "TV tax" subscription for the access to a near-TV quality, downloadable archive in a portable format.
Let's be fair: the cost of these fine productions (and let's not get into the nit-picks about cardboard sets and cheesy sci-fi aliens) has already been borne by the TV-tax paying British public. They got to see ad-free television produced by people who were willing to take artistic risks because the they weren't subject to the tyranny of the marketing department.
If this is your style, I suspect you'd like to support them in producing more of the like. I like the sci-fi and the some of the comedy the BBC produces. If I could have access to new productions, even if it was a year or so after the first run in England, I'd would be willing to pay for it.
I think this archive of older radio and TV is a fantastic idea, even if it's not in a portable format right now. Fair enough: if you getting it for free, you can't complain how you're getting it. If the BBC would like an extra revenue stream, earmarked to support risk-taking entertainment that might not be universally popular, but still take direct feedback from the public, rather than markerters, I'll find a way to convert a few US dollars to pounds sterling to support it.
So, a question for anyone who wants to take it on: What would be a good business model for the BBC to take, understanding that their mandate is to produce entertainment for the British public, to enable foreigners to have access, provide support and feedback without jeopardizing that mandate?
Government (including military) organizations can't have honeypots. It's called "entrapment", according to my friendly neighborhood Comm officer.
.mil or .gov domain.
They will, however, quite happily use the data from a non-government honeypot. It just can't be in the
I'm willing to stipulate that combining a "handful" of antihydrogen atoms with a hand of any sort results in not having much of a hand left, nor arm, nor good part of the city you're standing in.
All those hard drive platters, ~50K drives per OC48, times all the OC48s (and fractions as appropriate to the lesser pipes) will add up to enormous amounts of spinning matter.
If properly mounted in line with the Earth's axis, maybe we could make a teensy-tiny little adjustment to the revolution speed when they spin 'em all up and get us a 25 hour day to match our 25 hour biological clock. I tell you, I could use an extra hour per day, and I really wouldn't mind having 15.2 less days per year.
A lot of big organizations, such as corporations, government agencies, etc, and those smaller agencies descended from them, tend to want tight control over the information going out.
Not knowing anything about this situation in particular, but from my experience I'd say the trouble came about because the answers weren't gone over by their Public Affairs and Legal weenies before he sent them out.
If they HAD been white-washed by Legal and PA, then something in the answers must have worried someone. Don't forget that anything that comes from someone associated with an organization is assumed "expert opinion" and "official policy" even if the first two statements in the matter directly refute those assumptions.
Alternatively, someone's boss may have an excessively high cover-my-arse quotient and decided to play it by the safest method: Don't tell 'em nothin', and they won't have anythin' on yeh. We don't have a grand conspiracy here, just ordinary every day middle-management pucker factor.
I've got a horrible feeling that the vast unwashed masses enthralled by the World Wrestling Federation and the Jerry Springer Show vastly outnumber the population that like "I, Claudius", "Shogun", Babylon 5, exports from the BBC, and the like.
Face it folks, the money is in bread and circuses. Real artistry doesn't pay the bills.
In all likelyhood, you aren't going to see anything substantial in the way of weather modification from these. Remember that the atmosphere is BIG, and comparatively the effects of any individual or small group of things is very very small. You'd need enormous numbers of these things to even show up against the background effects of commercial aviation, and that effect is very small compared with the aggregate effects of industry smokestacks and cooling towers.
If you're referring to "churning" as in turbulence, the effect of even enormous numbers of these things will absolutely nothing compared with the mountain wave turbulence produced by just one mountain range.
And, yes, I am a meteorologist.
... but the politics was waaaaaaay overdone.
The best neat-hack I saw was during the "Protection for the Masses" presentation.
PROBLEM: Protecting sensitive data on a computer from unauthorized person when they have managed to steal your laptop.
COMPLICATION: Implementing an encryption scheme within, say, Windows 2K/NT/XP/etc is exceptionaly difficult because Windows tends to leave plaintext all over the hard drive, such as in the swap space, the temp files, etc. Implementing such a thing in other operating systems is easier, but you've still got to have an un-encrypted part of the disk to boot from, which could be vulnerable. Furthermore, you haven't got the resources of a major government to have a contractor create you a hardware-based encrypted laptop.
SOLUTION: Enter Linux and VMware. My doing some clever hacking to pass encrypted file systems to WMware, which presents it to the OS inside the box, the OS (let's say Windows) doesn't have to do encryption... it thinks it's talking to a normal disk. The crypt keys are on a USB storabe device, such as the keychain-sized ones. When you boot up, you get prompted for a passcode to access the crypt keys, and then you end up in a GUI with four buttons: Boot the internal OS; Shut down; Backup functions; Options.
Without the crypt keys and the pass code and the hard drive it goes to, a nefarious person can't even tell what operating system is on the inside of the VMware, much less when interesting information is there. Encryption options range from Blowfish to ROT13 (pretty much anything you want). The implementation is clean enough to let your mother or CEO have it: Once s/he punches the "Boot OS" button, s/he might never know that s/he is using anything other than Windows. Or FreeBSD. Or another instantiation of Linux.
Currently, their web site, www.nah6.com, has nothing on it but a logo, but they mentioned that they'll be having some good stuff out within six months. Heck, I'm looking forward to it for more than just personal use.
I just got one of these.
I had a bit of trouble with the pump (thank goodness for ASUS's hardware based overheat protection). But the company backed me up all the way and sent me a new one.
A few lessons learned:
1) Smearing petroleum jelly on the barb connections for the tubes provides a low cost, water repellant and air-gap-proof sealant. Now you don't have to crank down on the clamps to the point of pinching plastic.
2) Get a window. You WANT to see if there is a leak forming. Considerations of "looking cool" are fringe benefits, if any.
3) Get some UV sensitive water dye and a black light. You don't need to mount the light in the case. You'll be able to see a trace of dye outside the pipes and fixtures, even if the water evaporated (such as on a hot water block).
4) You've got water near electricity and expensive components. Do a daily maintainence check. If you're going to leave the computer alone for very long periods, and you don't need it to be doing something vital, turn it off and unplug it. Distilled water won't do anything to unpowered components. Just set it up so it can't drip on your drives.
5) Be just a little bit paranoid. You paid a lot for your set-up, so you can afford to.
6) You are allowed to look smug when your CPU runs 10C cooler than your friend with the fifteen case fans and the hearing damage. Speak up when you taunt him.
In other monetary systems (and I'm thinking idly of the Italian currency before the Euro totally took over), the various denominations were also slightly different in size. It was easy to tell the difference between a 5000 lira note and a 50000 lira note by touch. Color was also varied, of course.
Thinking outside of being nice to those from out-of-town, I have a blind friend who has to have a trusted acquantance sort out her money visually, then order the money neatly into groups of 1s, 5s, 10s, 20s, etc, and then remember exactly how many of each bill she has so she can finger-count through the list to find the right bill. Any change that she receives that includes bills get shoved into a corner of her purse until she can have someone she trusts sort it out again.
In terms of being nice to our own citizens, maybe we could just print the denomination in Braille right under the SecTreas's signature. Being nice to fully sighted foreigners seems a much weaker argument than doing something of minimal cost to help out the blind.
The reason it is built so blocky is that the computer program they used to simulate the radar cross-section of the proposed designs could only handle flat planes, and not that many of them, apparently. So when they finally got a design that fit the requirements, they built the mock-up exactly to the computer model. That was the least risky move to make at that stage. So they did the testing, found that the shape did as the computer model suggested, and then they showed it to the Air Force.
"We can round out those angles between the faces, you know," they told the generals, "They aren't exactly aerodynamic."
But the generals wouldn't hear anything of it. The plane was nearly invisile to radar, it looked blocky... therefore there must be something magical about blocky shapes! (Typical fighter pilot attitude, really.)
Naturally, when the entertainment industry got a glimpse of the F-117, we were subjected to a decade of movies where, if something was supposed to be high-tech and stealthy, it was 1) black and 2) blocky.