"Actually nothing you've said indicates that China is an "enemy" of the US."
While I am as much in favor of reining-in the USA's military-industrial complex, for whom business is only good when we have yet another enemy lined up, as the next tinfoil hat wearer, sometimes the paranoid do actually have someone after them. And those that insist upon sticking their heads in the proverbial sand always have another part of their anatomy sticking up as a nice target.
North Korea is a proxy state for the PRC. 80% of all military and financial aid that North Korea gets comes from the "generosity" of the PRC. Through the nuclear WMD build-up in North Korea, the PRC can effectively blackmail South Korea and Japan while maintaining an aura of "plausible deniability". And when the first North Korean nuke arrives in the USA in container cargo (or is sold to Islamic militants), the PRC can deny any knowledge of its use.
The PRC, through their recently re-integrated territory of Hong Kong, attempted to buy the Port of Long Beach, CA lock-stock-and-barrel in 2001. When that purchase was denied due to national security and sovereignty issues, A PRC general who is part of the ruling Politburo threatened to nuke LA in retaliation. The PRC has bought exclusive rights to two huge port facilities at the Panama Canal, one on the East and one on the West Coast. Effectively, the PRC can sieze control of the Panama Canal at any time from their two "naval bases" there. And when the US Congress sought to block the sale of Unocal to a PRC government owned oil company, another PRC general on the Politburo threatened to "nuke the USA". The PRC has also warned the USA against any further impediment against actions the PRC may take to reclaim Taiwan, again on threat of a nuclear holocast.
The PRC is barely a reliable or responsible trading partner, having used their position in the WTO to agressively fight any and all restrictions or tariffs on their dumping goods onto the EU or USA markets -- a/k/a economic warfare. Their hostility regarding challenges to their territorial expansion fall just short of open warfare.
As far as blaming this hostility on the PRC government, rather than upon the Chinese people, that is a strawman argument -- the government there has no plans to engage democratic reform there. They are the government firmly entrenched in power, and they have a 10, 20, and 50 year plan for total Asian hegenomy.
"When software developers sell multi-platform licenses for each title, then we can switch."
For sure, that could be a valid argument for staying with Microsoft. But that is not what happens in the real world. In the real world, changes in the OS that foster "upgrade fever" also happen with the COTS applications. When the COTS developers force you to upgrade for those "gotta have" features is the time to switch the license to the better OS platform (, if only you could).
Unfortunately, the convicted monopolist Microsoft has been a "busy, busy little bee" when it comes to buying other COTS software like Maya. By controlling which OS platforms these other applications run on, they are also reinforcing your dependency upon the Microsoft monolith. Anyone not willing to try alternative apps will also not be willing to try alternative OSes. And so exists yet another MSFT sheep waiting to be shorn, blissfully ignorant of the "tall clover" in some other field.
Having the source code to your commercial/geopolitical/military opponents' computer OSes would certainly be useful for determining otherwise obscure vulnerabilities, notwithstanding the often successful efforts of the worldwide hacker community.
One might wonder if upon accessment of Microsoft's Shared Source, the PRC government decided to "roll their own" Dragon Linux for internal use. We already know what the PRC government thinks of WiFi security, since they decided to create their own security stack.
Anyway, who says that the Cold War is actually over, beyond pronouncements from Western politicians? The Communist Chinese have always preferred to use lawful overt means to collect the majority of their intelligence, as opposed to the Soviet Union's sometimes brute force tactics. Considering the recent joint military exercises between these two Cold War allies, as well as their recent joint political manuvering against US interests in West Asia, perhaps these two countries have "kissed and made up" in combining efforts against the West in general, and the USA in particular.
No computer is ever any more secure than the environment it is placed in. Having a secure computer located in an area that is physically accessable to any/all workers, let alone the contracted night cleaning crew, is not secure. Period.
Physical security could be as simple as using a locked room, but who has the keys (and who took a night course in locksmithing)? Keycard access in conjunction with an electronic combination lock is a step up in security. Adding some form of biometric identification (iris scan, thumbprint or voiceprint) is better still.
What is the secured room constructed of? Chain-link, steel reinforced glass, or bullet-proof lexan walls allows retricted access to an otherwise public area. Steel rebar reinforced concrete walls, or even walls constructed of steel plate can make the room more safe-like. Radio frequency emmissions may also need to be shielded, so a fine mesh brass or copper might be required. 24 hour video recording entry and exit, along with the date & time stamp, may be a requirement.
All of the above does not even begin to address the design of the computer itself. Are there requirements for "tempest" hardening? The computer chassis should be fitted with tamper-proof fasteners, as well as foil security tape across chassis sections. Media control requirements may mean using a removable hard drive (to go into a real safe) -- floppy drive, CDROM, DVD, or especially available USB ports might be prohibited. Any network connection might also be eliminated, or else restricted to a fiber optic subnet that is isolated, or heavily firewalled.
Access control at the console may be restricted by the use of a keycard, password, and biometric scanner. The choice of operating systems should be limited to those that provide separate filesystem and user account security, including complete access and executable audit logging. (Somehow, I think this will eliminate the copy of Windows 98 that you had tucked away.) Given the limited physical or network access, Win2Kpro or WinXPpro, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux (with SElinux patches), or Solaris10 might be candidate OSes. That choice should be driven by the applications required (COTS, GOTS, proprietary in-house, or F/OSS).
While this bit may give you a head start, you should rely upon established DoD security publications for guidance.
"...they try everything, and chalk wasted dollars up to "research", since they learned what is feasable and what is not."
I would like to point out that such tactics are good (great, really) for the USA's defense contractors, but not necessarily so good for either "homeland security" or the taxpayers. The DHS still does not have enough "boots on the ground" to secure our national borders, or to protect our seaports. An apparently concious decision was made to limit the growth of the Federal workforce in favor of whatever cockamamy "high tech" ideas the defense contractors come up with. So the DHS has pissed away $500 Million USD on a "seaport nuclear bomb detector" that is good only at detecting diatomaceous clay-based kitty litter, and little else. For that same money, the USA could have built an Israeli-style border wall and hired the additional US Border Patrol to guard it.
The entire issue about American "competitiveness" in the new global economy is not about high technology or IP transfers or balance of trade. It is all about forcing American wages down to that "greatest common denominator" that is the third world economy.
The steel industry, textile industry, the shoe industry, the auto industry, the consumer goods industry, and now the "white collar" industry (architects, doctors, engineers, IT workers, etcetera) have all been forced offshore to avoid (1) USA trade unions, (2) USA business regulations, and (3) USA envirnmental laws. But some jobs are hard to shift offshore, which is why there has been a huge upsurge in L1-A and H1-B visas, as well as an invasion of illegal aliens into this country.
Several cases in point:
(A) In 2003 the IT sector in Connecticut saw the layoffs of 78,000 IT workers. That same year the state of Connecticut, acting on behalf of the IT employers in that state, requested and got 68,000 more H1-B visa slots for IT workers in Connecticut. The result is more unemployment but rising corporate profits from employers in Connecticut.
(B) More than half (32 states so far) of the states have switched to offshore outsourcing their welfare benefits and unemployment compensation management as of 2004. Only one state, New Jersey, has worked on legislation to roll back that outsourcing after considerable public pressure.
(C) President George W. Bush's amnesty program for illegal aliens still has not found enabling legislation, but failure to secure national borders has dovetailed neatly with failure to enforce criminal laws against employers knowingly hiring illegal aliens. In 2000, the Clinton DoJ prosecuted 334 employers for hiring illegal aliens, while the GW Bush DoJ had only prosecuted 13 employers for this in 2003. "Undocumented workers" have been found in virtually every service industry in the USA, including contractor work at US military bases and nuclear facilities, so the old saw about illegal aliens only working in "migrant worker (farming/ranching) jobs" is patently false.
One of the questions I keep asking (and never getting a reply to) is: "In what way was the Vietnam conflict so different from the Iraqi War?"
At a previous job, one of my co-workers was an expatriate from South Vietnam, an RVN officer who managed to escape after the fall of the South. He told me that the primary interest of the USA in Vietnam was oil -- specifically oil discovered off an island claimed by both China and Vietnam.
The USA entered the Vietnam Conflict in full force based upon the utterly false claim that two North Vietnamese patrol boats "attacked" the US 6th Fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and war commenced. That conflict was marked by US military tactics that did not secure territory or borders, and an enemy that melted into a supportive population. The withdrawl of US forces from Vietnam was based upon a hand-over to the "capable US trained and equipped" Vietnamese Army.
The Iraqi War is deja vu, all over again. Once again the USA is embroiled in a conflict involving much needed natural resources, based upon yet more false pretexts of WMD and "direct links" between that government and acts of domestic terrorism. Insufficient numbers of US troops have been deployed in Iraq to secure territory or borders. We are fighting an enemy virtually indistinguishable from the general population, who appear to support them. And yet again, the USA's exit strategy is to turn the much more intense war over to another "US trained and equipped" national army.
In both these conflicts, the USA was afflicted with poor planning, and increasingly disenchanted American public, and loss of respect and stature in the international community. The only groups that benefitted from the Vietnam Conflict are, yet again, the only groups that are benefitting from the Iraqi War -- the defense department's civilian contractors. The loss of American blood and treasure in foreign conflicts was presaged by the warning from President Dwight Eisenhower regarding the USA's "military-industrial complex".
If you think that gasoline prices in the USA hovoring at $3.00 per gallon is painful, just wait until OPEC switches to the Euro from the dollar.
The Dubya regime has been anything but frugal or conservative when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Their tax reform^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcorporate welfare program (I include the Iraqi war under this heading) has been largely funded by Federal Reserve bonds purchased by foreign governments. When these same governments stop buying and start selling their US Treasury bonds, a new "Great Depression" will settle upon the American landscape. The nexus of very high interest rates, high unemployment, $10 dollar per gallon gasoline, and the continued push of the neo-Con(artists) to strip away the social welfare net will result in (1) a "fire sale" of US companies, resources and land to our foreign creditors, and (2) a social revolution.
I, for one, do NOT welcome our new Euro-rich Chinese/Indian/OPEC overlords...
Well, thank goodness that bamboo is so plentiful, and cheap, in Vietnam. That makes 98% of the endoscope probe disposable, not unlike wooden tongue depressors. The other 2% can be disassembled and autoclaved.
"How can this be 'joint' and 'independent' at the same time? Specially when MS is one of the parties?"
Exactly so!
If this were 150 years ago, those two would have been meeting on a "field of honor", with their seconds checking the firearms. Given the unrepentant monopolistic nature of Microsoft, they would show up with a US Navy 1857 revolver against a muzzleloading flintlock with wet powder.
Microsoft has never renounced their policy of "embrace, extend, extinguish", nor are they ever likely to do so in the future. It has been a successful business model for them, particularly in conjunction with their army of lawyers. We have all seen what MSFT has done with Stacker, Dr.DOS, Sun's Java, etcetera, not to mention tieing the DoJ up in knots until a change of regime^H^H^H^H^Hvenue occurred.
What is the point of any change in relations with MSFT, especially when it means dropping your guard?
Open source is about freedom. DRM is about control over data, not freedom. That digital control is generally most desired by the monopolistic sources that already control it now.
The only area that I could see any use for an "Open DRM" is for the protection and security of personal information. And there already are plenty of solutions for that problem.
"I'm not touching MS Office in part because I can't pay for it..."
You are welcome to my copy of Office 2000, which I removed after I discovered that it needed to "phone home" in order to function after a week or so of use. Fsck Microsoft and fsck MS License 6.
The MSFT validation software doesn't work on my legitimate copy of Windows 2000 Pro, either. (Of course, I don't run as administrator, back-leveled IE and disabled it, disabled ActiveX, and also disabled MS Java before SP4 removed it.) As soon as I figure out how to get all my essential apps and data migrated over to linux, I'll kick Win2K to the curb, also. I will definitely look forward to more free time not dealing with spyware, viruses, worms, and the repeated & constant monthly BS with MSFT's OS vulnerabilities.
"...without actually resolving the fundamental problem of our lack of human intelligence."
Amen!
In spite of all efforts to thwart the creation of the 9-11 Commission, and then to stonewall on making available government files regarding "who knew what, and when" to the Commission, the truth slowly but surely does surface eventually. Not only did the FBI have information on some of the 9-11 highjackers taking commercial aviation flight instruction pre-9-11, but it also turns out that DoD intelligence had pinpointed a part of the Al-Queda terrorist cell more than a year ahead of time.
It would appear that most of our alphabet soup of government intel and investigative agencies are not only bureaucratic but also oxymoronic in nature. Considering the DHS focus on toenail clippers and boxcutters, instead of seaport and border security, it would seem that far too little has changed, with the exception of the US Patriot Act torpedoing the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
"... willing to ignore huge white collar crimes in the way of frauds that are being perpetrated via stock market and other swindles...".
"Willing to ignore" is the incorrect term, since what the politicians and bureaucrats actually do is encourage such behaviour. The very best source of political campaign funds is from corporate allies who are beholden to you through the tax breaks, tax loopholes, fraudulent government contracts, and outright corporate welfare. The next best source of money, the mother's milk of politics, is from companies breaking the law through nefarious means including raiding pension plans or even importing/dealing drugs. Government political leadership controls the investigation and prosecution of criminal conspiracies, and unequal treatment under the law is their perogative.
The USA's NSA has had the Echelon Project for spying on British and Canadian citizens (not illegal here in the States), while the British have a similar program to spy on USA and Australian citizens (not illegal in the UK). Of course they all share information -- that is the name of the game. But new economic forces, such as OPEC oil prices, the Iraqi war, the rise of Chinese and Indian high technology sectors have all altered the focus somewhat to also include much more industrial espionage.
Just how far would Enron, Haliburton or Unical have gotten in their negotiations with the Taliban ruling Afghanistan regarding natural gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea without covert assistance from the US government's intelligence services?
Damn little traction!
Of course, 9-11-2001 changed the rules of the game at that point, and there is a hell of a lot more money to be made^H^H^H^Hstolen from the US Treasury with a hot war going on than a mere natural gas pipeline. The USA "lost" $9 Billion USD in Iraq in the first 6 months of the war, and if anyone does know where that money went, they aren't talking. Pretty bloody careless, yes?
But money is fungible, and funds diverted from the Afghanistan conflict were shifted by the Dubya regime to the ramp-up of the war in Iraq. The only major event effecting the USA besides the Iraqi war that might have encouraged such a brazen theft of funds was the 2004 national elections. The FBI and the Washington Post reporters covering the Nixon Watergate breaking and cover-up all had a basic tenant that blew the cover off of Watergate -- "Follow the money...".
"I'd think private industry probably has a better system of checks&balances than most government agencies these days."
Oh, really?
Let's take a look at the methodology used by the FAA AND the aircraft industry to weigh the need for new safety systems.
A commercial aircraft crashes. The FAA and the aircraft manufacturer determine that a new safety device will be required that costs $100 Million USD in R&D, $5 Million USD per commercial aircraft installed, and $1 Million USD per aircraft for lifecycle maintenence -- for a total cost of (WAG) $2,000 Million USD. But the statisticians determine that the odds of the very same accident occuring again are 1 in 1x10^6, while the industry-wide accepted liability is figured at $2.5 Million USD per life lost. The break-even point for justifying the expense of the new safety device requires odds of 5 in 1x10^6, so the device never gets installed.
The commercial interests have weighed the cost (better safety) versus benefit (reduced liability exposure) and determined that this particular new safety device, which would save lives, really is not needed after all. Manned travel into space is a risky business, as it essentially puts the human body into a completely hostile environment with safety reliant upon 5 million components from 10,000 vendors who won their contracts by being the lowest bidders. That being said - I would still rather risk a flight on the STS (shuttle) to the ISS than on a commercial aircraft cross-country.
Real broadband internet access (in the 10 - 100 Mbps range) would permit many office workers/IT workers to work from home, instead of 1 - 4 hour commute each day. If you haven't seen where gasoline prices have gone recently, you must be living under a rock (or in you mother's basement.)
The current revolution of industrial growth, especially including IT, in China and India began with USA 401k pension plans investing in USA telcos with major fiber optic projects there. Those telcos went broke (Global Crossing, PSINet, WorldCom) but that infrastructure is still in place and being used. The USA's IT workforce has been screwed over twice -- once by their 401k pensions going bust, and once by the offshore outsourcing enabled by the new fiber networks their pensions helped build.
WTF? I want some of what you've been smoking (not for myself, mind you, but for evidence when I rat you out to the DEA).
I do not live in a rural area. I live in a bedroom community 16 miles from the White House. The only broadband service provider "way out here" is Verizon. (The cable company has "broadband" that requires Windoze 98, an open ISA slot, and a phone line for the uplink.) I live 18,000 feet from Verizon's closest Central Office, and due to the crappy underground POTS wiring had to use an ADSL modem instead of DSL. The line quality, as well as the amount of multiplexed "traffic" provided me with little better than 85kbps DOWN and 65kbps UP -- all for $39.95 per month. What a really great deal... NOT! Just recently, one of the dial-up ISPs (regional/national) began offering 3x accelerated dial-up speed (compressed cache proxy servers) for only $15 per month. What is the better deal, huh?
Verizon, our regional rape-and-pillage pigopolist, is now trying to "buy out" Cox Cable one county over -- apparently to eliminate the competition they cannot compete with. The few "islands" of DSL broadband in this county is due to new housing construction where the builder wired the homes for FTTP (Fiber To The Premesis) and made their own deal with Verizon (, a service which the HOAs gladly adopted).
The regional telcos did not build out most of their POTS infrastructure -- it is a remnant of the national AT&T monopoly that was bought and paid for long ago by taxpayers and "Ma Bell's" customers. The difference today is that it is not the Federal government (excepting the corporate whoring FCC) that determines rates versus service for the telco customers -- it is the individual states' corporation commissions, and they are a LOT cheaper for the telcos to buy off than the Feds ever were.
IMHO, the states, counties, and/or municipalities should sieze the existing POTS infrastructure under emminent domain and force the telcos to compete with newer service providers. The telcos have been having it all "their way" -- restricted competition, fixed profit margins, and minimal governmental oversight is still a monopoly (by my definition). If the counties were allowed to treat telephone service the way cable service is treated, the government controls the (cable) infrastructure and contracts to one competitor or another for their limited monopoly rights to provide service. In many areas, government takeover of the POTS infrastructure and using taxpayer funds to build out a modern FTTP infrastructure will come a lot closer to bringing inexpensive universal broadband internet to their citizens.
But only in an alternate universe, because (most of) the governments are corporate whores to the monopolists/pigopolists currently in charge of our telephone service -- both landline and cellular. I will leave my rants about fractious incompatible cellular service in the USA for another time.
"To triangulate a broadcast location, don't you need at least 3 reciever stations in the immediate area?"
For WiFi, acctually, only two receiver stations are needed in order to plot an X-Y location. The Gestapo during WW-II needed only one mobile receiver in order to triangulate a transmission source. The use of additional receiver stations should speed up the acquisition of the transmission coordinates as buildings or other structures could obscure/block the WiFi signals.
OTOH, GPS does require at least 3 satellite-based signals, since GPS resolves X-Y-Z coordinates. Cooperation of the telco and/or VoIP provider for WiFi tracking vectors is enhanced by requiring the use of GPS, since the building a "person of interest" is in can be resolved to which floor he is on.
Like I first stated, this looks far more like "target acquisition" rather than "exact location" for emergency 9-11 calls.
This requirement sounds much less like validating a 9-11 call location, and a whole lot more like "target acquisition" for a Hellfire-equipped UAV.
Could it be possible that the Dubya regime is finally planning to "bring the war home, all the way home"?
Dubya's goals changed from "...no place to hide, we'll smoke Osama bin Laden out..." to "...Osama's just one person, and not significant anymore...".
It also changed from "...we'll liberate Iraqi's and their WMD, while imprisoning Saddam bin Laden..." to (what now?) "...we'll leave the Iraqis with a complex, unworkable constitution and a fighting force (on paper) capable of maintaining a balance of (civilian) terror with the jihadists...".
One of Dubya's most scary invectives was "If you are not with me, then you are with the terrorists". The term "terrorist" has evolved from one being associated with Saddam bin Laden to a much broader definition, including DMCA violator, **AA thief, and liberal democrat, or labor union organizer, or racist anti-illegal immigration vigilante.
The RIAA got their data from the very same place that the MPAA got theirs, and the Dubya regime got their WMD data, and the government statisticians got their CPI (Consumer Price Index) data -- they ALL pulled it from the very same dark, stinky place that they never see because that's also where their (collectively speaking) heads are!
Diesel/hybrid, or better yet, bio-diesel/hybrid is IMHO the way to go. Current generation turbo-diesel engines, like the VW TDI, can attain better than 50 MPG on the highway. There is no reason why a TDI/hybrid engine couldn't get 60 or 70 MPG combined driving. Many states (especially CA) require low sulpher diesel fuel in order to meet emmissions standards -- a bio-diesel blend (B-80) would meet those standards (I believe).
One of the features of diesel engines in general is that their maximum power band is at far lower RPMs than gasoline engines. The power, efficiency, and emmissions can be tuned for a very narrow RPM range. In fact, diesel engines are preferred when it comes to such applications as stationary emergency generators. Syncronous AC generators (USA) prefer 1800 RPMs (or 3600 RPMs) for 3 cycle 60 Hertz power output. It would be possible to have a vehicle that not only used a diesel engine to charge onboard batteries, but also to provide emergency/remote AC power for natural disasters or for camping, etc.
TDI/hybrid vehicles using bio-diesel (B-80 or B-100) would also drastically reduce dependence upon petroleum imported from politically unstable regions of the world, as well as improve the income of farmers/agribusiness. The recent USA focus on H2 (hydrogen) technology relies upon stripping H2 from coal or petroleum currently, since electrolysis of H2O (water) is too expensive until many more nuclear power plants go on-line. More nuclear power plants, due to long term storage of high-level radioactive waste, isn't environmentally (or long term economically) sound. No proponent of nuclear energy, or the politicians they own, will ever directly address the long term (50,000 year plus) cost of maintaining nuclear waste -- rather than even attempt to calculate those costs, they ignore them - which makes nuclear energy "cheap".
Unfortunately, the USA is more likely to see a corporation like General Electric offer a TDI/hybrid automobile (scaled down from their diesel locomotives) than General Motors or Ford.
Zimmerman has a good idea, but I would like to see an open source H/W & S/W project to make public key streaming encryption an availanle option for ALL PHONES.
That being said, I hope that Zimmerman does not wind up being classified as a Dubya regime "person of interest", (or worse).
Short Answer: Central or North-Central USA (tropical desert) or Central or North-Central Canada (temperate)
Long Answer: If the neo-Con(artist) faction aligned with the Dubya regime continue to have their way with corporate welfare and political pseudoscience, the very best governmental response will be rapid build-up of nuclear power plants and a major shift to an H2 economy. Since such major technological shifts that are detrimental to economic development will not be adopted by the fastest growing world economies, the effects of global warming will be slowed but not reversed.
With the exception of nuclear power plants on the Eastern Seaboard that will be protected by levees and pumps, the East Coast population will have to migrate to central and north-central USA or Canada. Considering that the same rising sea levels will extend the Sea of Cortez (MX) into the deserts of the Southwestern USA, solar power facilities located there will be flooded, as will the salt mines targeted for use as the national radioactive waste depository.
The West Coast of the USA will also be flooded, which will increase the number and severity of earthquakes there. Tsunamis will not only become more commonplace, they will also become more severe. Populated seacoasts of today, however, will not be effected since rising sea levels will have already forced those populations to inland highlands. Hurricanes will commonly be striking the coastal seaports of Shreveport (LA), Knoxville (TN), Huntsville (AL), and Pittsburg (PA).
I fully expect major wars will be fought -- not only over natural resources like oil and food and fresh water, but also over habitable territory and disputes over trade.
"... Bush and his pro-nuclear power plant stance. He isn't *all* about big oil."
Right. Not just big "oil", but big "energy". Especially since it was big energy companies like Enron that were Bush's largest campaign contributors. Most of the neo-Con(artists) in general, and the Dubya regime in particular, are so enamoured of nuclear power and so quick to dismiss its greatest downside -- highly radioactive waste that has the potential to poison the environment for more than 50,000 years. No doubt it is their "rape-and-pillage" attitude, tempered with the belief that the 2nd Coming of Christ will ameliorate this problem.
Long term, the use of solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and wave power are far better energy choices. Carbon-based ethanol and biodiesel are good shorter term replacements for coal and nuclear power. The Dubya regime's infatuation with hydrogren power is reliant upon petroleum or coal (stripping hydrogen from hydrocarbons), or nuclear plants (electrolysis of water) -- none of which is good for the environment.
High level nuclear waste cannot continue to be stored onsite at the nuclear power plants, as is done today. The very long term (50 - 100 thousand years) physical security of containment casks, nor of the stability of the geological (salt mine) formations in Nevada proposed for storage cannot be known, or guaranteed.
Perhaps each any every proponent of fission nuclear power, including government officials and energy company shareholders, should be required to a blood oath to task their families subsequent generations to be "keepers of the casks" for the next 50 thousand years.
The Mohawk Indians (NE USA native people) had a saying that no tribal decision should ever be made without the consideration of the next 7 generations. It is a saying I wish our corporate and government leaders would adopt wholeheartedly.
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"Actually nothing you've said indicates that China is an "enemy" of the US."
While I am as much in favor of reining-in the USA's military-industrial complex, for whom business is only good when we have yet another enemy lined up, as the next tinfoil hat wearer, sometimes the paranoid do actually have someone after them. And those that insist upon sticking their heads in the proverbial sand always have another part of their anatomy sticking up as a nice target.
North Korea is a proxy state for the PRC. 80% of all military and financial aid that North Korea gets comes from the "generosity" of the PRC. Through the nuclear WMD build-up in North Korea, the PRC can effectively blackmail South Korea and Japan while maintaining an aura of "plausible deniability". And when the first North Korean nuke arrives in the USA in container cargo (or is sold to Islamic militants), the PRC can deny any knowledge of its use.
The PRC, through their recently re-integrated territory of Hong Kong, attempted to buy the Port of Long Beach, CA lock-stock-and-barrel in 2001. When that purchase was denied due to national security and sovereignty issues, A PRC general who is part of the ruling Politburo threatened to nuke LA in retaliation. The PRC has bought exclusive rights to two huge port facilities at the Panama Canal, one on the East and one on the West Coast. Effectively, the PRC can sieze control of the Panama Canal at any time from their two "naval bases" there. And when the US Congress sought to block the sale of Unocal to a PRC government owned oil company, another PRC general on the Politburo threatened to "nuke the USA". The PRC has also warned the USA against any further impediment against actions the PRC may take to reclaim Taiwan, again on threat of a nuclear holocast.
The PRC is barely a reliable or responsible trading partner, having used their position in the WTO to agressively fight any and all restrictions or tariffs on their dumping goods onto the EU or USA markets -- a/k/a economic warfare. Their hostility regarding challenges to their territorial expansion fall just short of open warfare.
As far as blaming this hostility on the PRC government, rather than upon the Chinese people, that is a strawman argument -- the government there has no plans to engage democratic reform there. They are the government firmly entrenched in power, and they have a 10, 20, and 50 year plan for total Asian hegenomy.
"When software developers sell multi-platform licenses for each title, then we can switch."
For sure, that could be a valid argument for staying with Microsoft. But that is not what happens in the real world. In the real world, changes in the OS that foster "upgrade fever" also happen with the COTS applications. When the COTS developers force you to upgrade for those "gotta have" features is the time to switch the license to the better OS platform (, if only you could).
Unfortunately, the convicted monopolist Microsoft has been a "busy, busy little bee" when it comes to buying other COTS software like Maya. By controlling which OS platforms these other applications run on, they are also reinforcing your dependency upon the Microsoft monolith. Anyone not willing to try alternative apps will also not be willing to try alternative OSes. And so exists yet another MSFT sheep waiting to be shorn, blissfully ignorant of the "tall clover" in some other field.
Having the source code to your commercial/geopolitical/military opponents' computer OSes would certainly be useful for determining otherwise obscure vulnerabilities, notwithstanding the often successful efforts of the worldwide hacker community.
One might wonder if upon accessment of Microsoft's Shared Source, the PRC government decided to "roll their own" Dragon Linux for internal use. We already know what the PRC government thinks of WiFi security, since they decided to create their own security stack.
Anyway, who says that the Cold War is actually over, beyond pronouncements from Western politicians? The Communist Chinese have always preferred to use lawful overt means to collect the majority of their intelligence, as opposed to the Soviet Union's sometimes brute force tactics. Considering the recent joint military exercises between these two Cold War allies, as well as their recent joint political manuvering against US interests in West Asia, perhaps these two countries have "kissed and made up" in combining efforts against the West in general, and the USA in particular.
WTF! Why aren't you referencing DoD guidelines?
No computer is ever any more secure than the environment it is placed in. Having a secure computer located in an area that is physically accessable to any/all workers, let alone the contracted night cleaning crew, is not secure. Period.
Physical security could be as simple as using a locked room, but who has the keys (and who took a night course in locksmithing)? Keycard access in conjunction with an electronic combination lock is a step up in security. Adding some form of biometric identification (iris scan, thumbprint or voiceprint) is better still.
What is the secured room constructed of? Chain-link, steel reinforced glass, or bullet-proof lexan walls allows retricted access to an otherwise public area. Steel rebar reinforced concrete walls, or even walls constructed of steel plate can make the room more safe-like. Radio frequency emmissions may also need to be shielded, so a fine mesh brass or copper might be required. 24 hour video recording entry and exit, along with the date & time stamp, may be a requirement.
All of the above does not even begin to address the design of the computer itself. Are there requirements for "tempest" hardening? The computer chassis should be fitted with tamper-proof fasteners, as well as foil security tape across chassis sections. Media control requirements may mean using a removable hard drive (to go into a real safe) -- floppy drive, CDROM, DVD, or especially available USB ports might be prohibited. Any network connection might also be eliminated, or else restricted to a fiber optic subnet that is isolated, or heavily firewalled.
Access control at the console may be restricted by the use of a keycard, password, and biometric scanner. The choice of operating systems should be limited to those that provide separate filesystem and user account security, including complete access and executable audit logging.
(Somehow, I think this will eliminate the copy of Windows 98 that you had tucked away.) Given the limited physical or network access, Win2Kpro or WinXPpro, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux (with SElinux patches), or Solaris10 might be candidate OSes. That choice should be driven by the applications required (COTS, GOTS, proprietary in-house, or F/OSS).
While this bit may give you a head start, you should rely upon established DoD security publications for guidance.
"...they try everything, and chalk wasted dollars up to "research", since they learned what is feasable and what is not."
I would like to point out that such tactics are good (great, really) for the USA's defense contractors, but not necessarily so good for either "homeland security" or the taxpayers. The DHS still does not have enough "boots on the ground" to secure our national borders, or to protect our seaports. An apparently concious decision was made to limit the growth of the Federal workforce in favor of whatever cockamamy "high tech" ideas the defense contractors come up with. So the DHS has pissed away $500 Million USD on a "seaport nuclear bomb detector" that is good only at detecting diatomaceous clay-based kitty litter, and little else. For that same money, the USA could have built an Israeli-style border wall and hired the additional US Border Patrol to guard it.
The entire issue about American "competitiveness" in the new global economy is not about high technology or IP transfers or balance of trade. It is all about forcing American wages down to that "greatest common denominator" that is the third world economy.
The steel industry, textile industry, the shoe industry, the auto industry, the consumer goods industry, and now the "white collar" industry (architects, doctors, engineers, IT workers, etcetera) have all been forced offshore to avoid (1) USA trade unions, (2) USA business regulations, and (3) USA envirnmental laws. But some jobs are hard to shift offshore, which is why there has been a huge upsurge in L1-A and H1-B visas, as well as an invasion of illegal aliens into this country.
Several cases in point:
(A) In 2003 the IT sector in Connecticut saw the layoffs of 78,000 IT workers. That same year the state of Connecticut, acting on behalf of the IT employers in that state, requested and got 68,000 more H1-B visa slots for IT workers in Connecticut. The result is more unemployment but rising corporate profits from employers in Connecticut.
(B) More than half (32 states so far) of the states have switched to offshore outsourcing their
welfare benefits and unemployment compensation management as of 2004. Only one state, New Jersey, has worked on legislation to roll back that outsourcing after considerable public pressure.
(C) President George W. Bush's amnesty program for illegal aliens still has not found enabling legislation, but failure to secure national borders has dovetailed neatly with failure to enforce criminal laws against employers knowingly hiring illegal aliens. In 2000, the Clinton DoJ prosecuted 334 employers for hiring illegal aliens, while the GW Bush DoJ had only prosecuted 13 employers for this in 2003. "Undocumented workers" have been found in virtually every service industry in the USA, including contractor work at US military bases and nuclear facilities, so the old saw about illegal aliens only working in "migrant worker (farming/ranching) jobs" is patently false.
One of the questions I keep asking (and never getting a reply to) is: "In what way was the Vietnam conflict so different from the Iraqi War?"
At a previous job, one of my co-workers was an expatriate from South Vietnam, an RVN officer who managed to escape after the fall of the South. He told me that the primary interest of the USA in Vietnam was oil -- specifically oil discovered off an island claimed by both China and Vietnam.
The USA entered the Vietnam Conflict in full force based upon the utterly false claim that two North Vietnamese patrol boats "attacked" the US 6th Fleet in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and war commenced. That conflict was marked by US military tactics that did not secure territory or borders, and an enemy that melted into a supportive population. The withdrawl of US forces from Vietnam was based upon a hand-over to the "capable US trained and equipped" Vietnamese Army.
The Iraqi War is deja vu, all over again. Once again the USA is embroiled in a conflict involving much needed natural resources, based upon yet more false pretexts of WMD and "direct links" between that government and acts of domestic terrorism. Insufficient numbers of US troops have been deployed in Iraq to secure territory or borders. We are fighting an enemy virtually indistinguishable from the general population, who appear to support them. And yet again, the USA's exit strategy is to turn the much more intense war over to another "US trained and equipped" national army.
In both these conflicts, the USA was afflicted with poor planning, and increasingly disenchanted American public, and loss of respect and stature in the international community. The only groups that benefitted from the Vietnam Conflict are, yet again, the only groups that are benefitting from the Iraqi War -- the defense department's civilian contractors. The loss of American blood and treasure in foreign conflicts was presaged by the warning from President Dwight Eisenhower regarding the USA's "military-industrial complex".
If you think that gasoline prices in the USA hovoring at $3.00 per gallon is painful, just wait until OPEC switches to the Euro from the dollar.
...
The Dubya regime has been anything but frugal or conservative when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Their tax reform^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcorporate welfare program (I include the Iraqi war under this heading) has been largely funded by Federal Reserve bonds purchased by foreign governments. When these same governments stop buying and start selling their US Treasury bonds, a new "Great Depression" will settle upon the American landscape. The nexus of very high interest rates, high unemployment, $10 dollar per gallon gasoline, and the continued push of the neo-Con(artists) to strip away the social welfare net will result in (1) a "fire sale" of US companies, resources and land to our foreign creditors, and (2) a social revolution.
I, for one, do NOT welcome our new Euro-rich Chinese/Indian/OPEC overlords
Well, thank goodness that bamboo is so plentiful, and cheap, in Vietnam. That makes 98% of the endoscope probe disposable, not unlike wooden tongue depressors. The other 2% can be disassembled and autoclaved.
"How can this be 'joint' and 'independent' at the same time? Specially when MS is one of the parties?"
Exactly so!
If this were 150 years ago, those two would have been meeting on a "field of honor", with their seconds checking the firearms. Given the unrepentant monopolistic nature of Microsoft, they would show up with a US Navy 1857 revolver against a muzzleloading flintlock with wet powder.
Microsoft has never renounced their policy of "embrace, extend, extinguish", nor are they ever likely to do so in the future. It has been a successful business model for them, particularly in conjunction with their army of lawyers. We have all seen what MSFT has done with Stacker, Dr.DOS, Sun's Java, etcetera, not to mention tieing the DoJ up in knots until a change of regime^H^H^H^H^Hvenue occurred.
What is the point of any change in relations with MSFT, especially when it means dropping your guard?
Open source is about freedom. DRM is about control over data, not freedom. That digital control is generally most desired by the monopolistic sources that already control it now.
The only area that I could see any use for an "Open DRM" is for the protection and security of
personal information. And there already are plenty of solutions for that problem.
"I'm not touching MS Office in part because I can't pay for it..."
You are welcome to my copy of Office 2000, which I removed after I discovered that it needed to "phone home" in order to function after a week or so of use. Fsck Microsoft and fsck MS License 6.
The MSFT validation software doesn't work on my legitimate copy of Windows 2000 Pro, either. (Of course, I don't run as administrator, back-leveled IE and disabled it, disabled ActiveX, and also disabled MS Java before SP4 removed it.)
As soon as I figure out how to get all my essential apps and data migrated over to linux, I'll kick Win2K to the curb, also. I will definitely look forward to more free time not dealing with spyware, viruses, worms, and the repeated & constant monthly BS with MSFT's OS vulnerabilities.
"...without actually resolving the fundamental problem of our lack of human intelligence."
Amen!
In spite of all efforts to thwart the creation of the 9-11 Commission, and then to stonewall on making available government files regarding "who knew what, and when" to the Commission, the truth slowly but surely does surface eventually. Not only did the FBI have information on some of the 9-11 highjackers taking commercial aviation flight instruction pre-9-11, but it also turns out that DoD intelligence had pinpointed a part of the Al-Queda terrorist cell more than a year ahead of time.
It would appear that most of our alphabet soup of government intel and investigative agencies are not only bureaucratic but also oxymoronic in nature. Considering the DHS focus on toenail clippers and boxcutters, instead of seaport and border security, it would seem that far too little has changed, with the exception of the US Patriot Act torpedoing the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I would have to say that it will be Microsoft Longhorn^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HVista Embedded, AKA "Vista Cruiser(TM)".
Microsoft's Trusted Computing Platform asks "Where do you want to BSOD and crash today?"
"... willing to ignore huge white collar crimes in the way of frauds that are being perpetrated via stock market and other swindles ...".
"Willing to ignore" is the incorrect term, since what the politicians and bureaucrats actually do is encourage such behaviour. The very best source of political campaign funds is from corporate allies who are beholden to you through the tax breaks, tax loopholes, fraudulent government contracts, and outright corporate welfare. The next best source of money, the mother's milk of politics, is from companies breaking the law through nefarious means including raiding pension plans or even importing/dealing drugs. Government political leadership controls the investigation and prosecution of criminal conspiracies, and unequal treatment under the law is their perogative.
The USA's NSA has had the Echelon Project for spying on British and Canadian citizens (not illegal here in the States), while the British have a similar program to spy on USA and Australian citizens (not illegal in the UK). Of course they all share information -- that is the name of the game. But new economic forces, such as OPEC oil prices, the Iraqi war, the rise of Chinese and Indian high technology sectors have all altered the focus somewhat to also include much more industrial espionage.
Just how far would Enron, Haliburton or Unical have gotten in their negotiations with the Taliban ruling Afghanistan regarding natural gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea without covert assistance from the US government's intelligence services?
Damn little traction!
Of course, 9-11-2001 changed the rules of the game at that point, and there is a hell of a lot more money to be made^H^H^H^Hstolen from the US Treasury with a hot war going on than a mere natural gas pipeline. The USA "lost" $9 Billion USD in Iraq in the first 6 months of the war, and if anyone does know where that money went, they aren't talking. Pretty bloody careless, yes?
But money is fungible, and funds diverted from the Afghanistan conflict were shifted by the Dubya regime to the ramp-up of the war in Iraq. The only major event effecting the USA besides the Iraqi war that might have encouraged such a brazen theft of funds was the 2004 national elections. The FBI and the Washington Post reporters covering the Nixon Watergate breaking and cover-up all had a basic tenant that blew the cover off of Watergate -- "Follow the money...".
"I'd think private industry probably has a better system of checks&balances than most government agencies these days."
Oh, really?
Let's take a look at the methodology used by the FAA AND the aircraft industry to weigh the need for new safety systems.
A commercial aircraft crashes. The FAA and the aircraft manufacturer determine that a new safety device will be required that costs $100 Million USD in R&D, $5 Million USD per commercial aircraft installed, and $1 Million USD per aircraft for lifecycle maintenence -- for a total cost of (WAG) $2,000 Million USD. But the statisticians determine that the odds of the very same accident occuring again are 1 in 1x10^6, while the industry-wide accepted liability is figured at $2.5 Million USD per life lost. The break-even point for justifying the expense of the new safety device requires odds of 5 in 1x10^6, so the device never gets installed.
The commercial interests have weighed the cost (better safety) versus benefit (reduced liability exposure) and determined that this particular new safety device, which would save lives, really is not needed after all. Manned travel into space is a risky business, as it essentially puts the human body into a completely hostile environment with safety reliant upon 5 million components from 10,000 vendors who won their contracts by being the lowest bidders. That being said - I would still rather risk a flight on the STS (shuttle) to the ISS than on a commercial aircraft cross-country.
You're a real natural at that role.
Real broadband internet access (in the 10 - 100 Mbps range) would permit many office workers/IT workers to work from home, instead of 1 - 4 hour commute each day. If you haven't seen where gasoline prices have gone recently, you must be living under a rock (or in you mother's basement.)
The current revolution of industrial growth, especially including IT, in China and India began with USA 401k pension plans investing in USA telcos with major fiber optic projects there. Those telcos went broke (Global Crossing, PSINet, WorldCom) but that infrastructure is still in place and being used. The USA's IT workforce has been screwed over twice -- once by their 401k pensions going bust, and once by the offshore outsourcing enabled by the new fiber networks their pensions helped build.
WTF? I want some of what you've been smoking (not for myself, mind you, but for evidence when I rat you out to the DEA).
... NOT! Just recently, one of the dial-up ISPs (regional/national) began offering 3x accelerated dial-up speed (compressed cache proxy servers) for only $15 per month. What is the better deal, huh?
I do not live in a rural area. I live in a bedroom community 16 miles from the White House. The only broadband service provider "way out here" is Verizon. (The cable company has "broadband" that requires Windoze 98, an open ISA slot, and a phone line for the uplink.) I live 18,000 feet from Verizon's closest Central Office, and due to the crappy underground POTS wiring had to use an ADSL modem instead of DSL. The line quality, as well as the amount of multiplexed "traffic" provided me with little better than 85kbps DOWN and 65kbps UP -- all for $39.95 per month. What a really great deal
Verizon, our regional rape-and-pillage pigopolist, is now trying to "buy out" Cox Cable one county over -- apparently to eliminate the competition they cannot compete with. The few "islands" of DSL broadband in this county is due to new housing construction where the builder wired the homes for FTTP (Fiber To The Premesis) and made their own deal with Verizon (, a service which the HOAs gladly adopted).
The regional telcos did not build out most of their POTS infrastructure -- it is a remnant of the national AT&T monopoly that was bought and paid for long ago by taxpayers and "Ma Bell's" customers. The difference today is that it is not the Federal government (excepting the corporate whoring FCC) that determines rates versus service for the telco customers -- it is the individual states' corporation commissions, and they are a LOT cheaper for the telcos to buy off than the Feds ever were.
IMHO, the states, counties, and/or municipalities should sieze the existing POTS infrastructure under emminent domain and force the telcos to compete with newer service providers. The telcos have been having it all "their way" -- restricted competition, fixed profit margins, and minimal governmental oversight is still a monopoly (by my definition). If the counties were allowed to treat telephone service the way cable service is treated, the government controls the (cable) infrastructure and contracts to one competitor or another for their limited monopoly rights to provide service. In many areas, government takeover of the POTS infrastructure and using taxpayer funds to build out a modern FTTP infrastructure will come a lot closer to bringing inexpensive universal broadband internet to their citizens.
But only in an alternate universe, because (most of) the governments are corporate whores to the monopolists/pigopolists currently in charge of our telephone service -- both landline and cellular. I will leave my rants about fractious incompatible cellular service in the USA for another time.
"To triangulate a broadcast location, don't you need at least 3 reciever stations in the immediate area?"
For WiFi, acctually, only two receiver stations are needed in order to plot an X-Y location. The Gestapo during WW-II needed only one mobile receiver in order to triangulate a transmission source. The use of additional receiver stations should speed up the acquisition of the transmission coordinates as buildings or other structures could obscure/block the WiFi signals.
OTOH, GPS does require at least 3 satellite-based signals, since GPS resolves X-Y-Z coordinates. Cooperation of the telco and/or VoIP provider for WiFi tracking vectors is enhanced by requiring the use of GPS, since the building a "person of interest" is in can be resolved to which floor he is on.
Like I first stated, this looks far more like "target acquisition" rather than "exact location" for emergency 9-11 calls.
This requirement sounds much less like validating a 9-11 call location, and a whole lot more like "target acquisition" for a Hellfire-equipped UAV.
Could it be possible that the Dubya regime is finally planning to "bring the war home, all the way home"?
Dubya's goals changed from "...no place to hide, we'll smoke Osama bin Laden out..." to "...Osama's just one person, and not significant anymore...".
It also changed from "...we'll liberate Iraqi's and their WMD, while imprisoning Saddam bin Laden..." to (what now?) "...we'll leave the Iraqis with a complex, unworkable constitution and a fighting force (on paper) capable of maintaining a balance of (civilian) terror with the jihadists...".
One of Dubya's most scary invectives was "If you are not with me, then you are with the terrorists". The term "terrorist" has evolved from one being associated with Saddam bin Laden to a much broader definition, including DMCA violator, **AA thief, and liberal democrat, or labor union organizer, or racist anti-illegal immigration vigilante.
Whoa! That is an EZ-Answer(TM).
The RIAA got their data from the very same place
that the MPAA got theirs, and the Dubya regime got
their WMD data, and the government statisticians
got their CPI (Consumer Price Index) data -- they
ALL pulled it from the very same dark, stinky
place that they never see because that's also
where their (collectively speaking) heads are!
Next question?
Diesel/hybrid, or better yet, bio-diesel/hybrid is IMHO the way to go. Current generation turbo-diesel engines, like the VW TDI, can attain better than 50 MPG on the highway. There is no reason why a TDI/hybrid engine couldn't get 60 or 70 MPG combined driving. Many states (especially CA) require low sulpher diesel fuel in order to meet emmissions standards -- a bio-diesel blend (B-80) would meet those standards (I believe).
One of the features of diesel engines in general is that their maximum power band is at far lower RPMs than gasoline engines. The power, efficiency, and emmissions can be tuned for a very narrow RPM range. In fact, diesel engines are preferred when it comes to such applications as stationary emergency generators. Syncronous AC generators (USA) prefer 1800 RPMs (or 3600 RPMs) for 3 cycle 60 Hertz power output. It would be possible to have a vehicle that not only used a diesel engine to charge onboard batteries, but also to provide emergency/remote AC power for natural disasters or for camping, etc.
TDI/hybrid vehicles using bio-diesel (B-80 or B-100) would also drastically reduce dependence upon petroleum imported from politically unstable regions of the world, as well as improve the income of farmers/agribusiness. The recent USA focus on H2 (hydrogen) technology relies upon stripping H2 from coal or petroleum currently, since electrolysis of H2O (water) is too expensive until many more nuclear power plants go on-line. More nuclear power plants, due to long term storage of high-level radioactive waste, isn't environmentally (or long term economically) sound. No proponent of nuclear energy, or the politicians they own, will ever directly address the long term (50,000 year plus) cost of maintaining nuclear waste -- rather than even attempt to calculate those costs, they ignore them - which makes nuclear energy "cheap".
Unfortunately, the USA is more likely to see a corporation like General Electric offer a TDI/hybrid automobile (scaled down from their diesel locomotives) than General Motors or Ford.
Zimmerman has a good idea, but I would like to see an open source H/W & S/W project to make public key streaming encryption an availanle option for ALL PHONES.
That being said, I hope that Zimmerman does not wind up being classified as a Dubya regime "person of interest", (or worse).
"So, where will your grandchildren live?"
Is this a trick question?
Short Answer: Central or North-Central USA (tropical desert) or Central or North-Central Canada (temperate)
Long Answer: If the neo-Con(artist) faction aligned with the Dubya regime continue to have their way with corporate welfare and political pseudoscience, the very best governmental response will be rapid build-up of nuclear power plants and a major shift to an H2 economy. Since such major technological shifts that are detrimental to economic development will not be adopted by the fastest growing world economies, the effects of global warming will be slowed but not reversed.
With the exception of nuclear power plants on the Eastern Seaboard that will be protected by levees and pumps, the East Coast population will have to migrate to central and north-central USA or Canada. Considering that the same rising sea levels will extend the Sea of Cortez (MX) into the deserts of the Southwestern USA, solar power facilities located there will be flooded, as will the salt mines targeted for use as the national radioactive waste depository.
The West Coast of the USA will also be flooded, which will increase the number and severity of earthquakes there. Tsunamis will not only become more commonplace, they will also become more severe. Populated seacoasts of today, however, will not be effected since rising sea levels will have already forced those populations to inland highlands. Hurricanes will commonly be striking the coastal seaports of Shreveport (LA), Knoxville (TN), Huntsville (AL), and Pittsburg (PA).
I fully expect major wars will be fought -- not only over natural resources like oil and food and fresh water, but also over habitable territory and disputes over trade.
"... Bush and his pro-nuclear power plant stance. He isn't *all* about big oil."
Right. Not just big "oil", but big "energy". Especially since it was big energy companies like Enron that were Bush's largest campaign contributors. Most of the neo-Con(artists) in general, and the Dubya regime in particular, are so enamoured of nuclear power and so quick to dismiss its greatest downside -- highly radioactive waste that has the potential to poison the environment for more than 50,000 years. No doubt it is their "rape-and-pillage" attitude, tempered with the belief that the 2nd Coming of Christ will ameliorate this problem.
Long term, the use of solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, and wave power are far better energy choices. Carbon-based ethanol and biodiesel are good shorter term replacements for coal and nuclear power. The Dubya regime's infatuation with hydrogren power is reliant upon petroleum or coal (stripping hydrogen from hydrocarbons), or nuclear plants (electrolysis of water) -- none of which is good for the environment.
High level nuclear waste cannot continue to be stored onsite at the nuclear power plants, as is done today. The very long term (50 - 100 thousand years) physical security of containment casks, nor of the stability of the geological (salt mine) formations in Nevada proposed for storage cannot be known, or guaranteed.
Perhaps each any every proponent of fission nuclear power, including government officials and energy company shareholders, should be required to a blood oath to task their families subsequent generations to be "keepers of the casks" for the next 50 thousand years.
The Mohawk Indians (NE USA native people) had a saying that no tribal decision should ever be made without the consideration of the next 7 generations. It is a saying I wish our corporate and government leaders would adopt wholeheartedly.