Why will the rovers fail? Here's the likelyest causes. 1. The solar cells accumulate dust and their efficiency reduces. 2. Heating and cooling cycles cause micro-fracturing of the crystals in those solar cells. Their power production decreases for sure, AND the cracks increase how much dust clings to them, so if #1 isn't a problem, it possibly will become one. 3. Flexable materials will outgass some of their lubricants and plasticisers. Plastic parts are particularly vulnerable to multiple combinations of thermal cycling, low pressure and the daytime UV. Greases and oils will eventually break down for similar reasons, causing moving parts to stick. 4. Many electronic components are mounted on plasticized boards, not that different from the ones used in commercial designs, although the NASA ones are ruggidized quite a bit. The boards are still vulnerable to the thermal cycling and outgassing problems, although their mostly being buried deep inside the spacecraft helps with thermal cycling problems.
I'd expect to see the craft brought down eventuallly by a wheel lock-up, though either of them may be able to drag one wheel at reduced efficiency for a time.
Before the main control circuits in the craft's center fail, I'd guesstimate that we will hear of boards in the peripherals (like out in a camera arm), going out and taking down those functions.
A three minute lookaround time isn't much under most battlefield conditions, but maybe in a police hostage situation, or urban combat, i.e. just looking around the next corner. The thing is, three minutes total = less than 1 1/2 minuites useful time if the device is expensive enough you need to recover it and want a bit of a safety margin, so it's actually worse than it sounds.
Many organizations have a sense of honour, just not the same one as some of us. Even in organized crime, honour means something, it's just it is much more about not ratting out your fellows than in how you treat the general public.
Plenty of businesses work from the premise that using the law to restrict the free market is sneaky or low while manipulating public opinion is fair and above board where it really counts. (That is, in the eyes of other businessmen, and NOT John Q. Public).
It's a easy path to go from deciding that many people are socialist drones who will dislike your company just for being successful, to thinking that it is alright to control them and not be honest with them, in 'self defense' against the politicians who are also trying to manipulate them.
It's Carmack's dog, what did you expect - Not all red eye effects are just in photos. Every time he lests that mutt out, it's doom for my rododendrons. One more urinated pentagram on my lawn and I'm breaking out the BFG-13,000.... And yeah, his wife's cute.
The Antonov-225 was designed back in the Soviet era, and like many of the USSR's military concepts was expected to be useful in non-conventional warfare or "police action" programs. It took Afghanistan to teach the USSR that there would likely be anti-aircraft assets in the hands of local rebels and resistance movements.
One of their assumptions was that there would be need for a military controlled asset in areas without anti-aircraft weapons deployed. The US typically relies more on civilian assets for such functions as disaster relief. We would also normally pay (in both time and money) to pre-position really large industrial equipment by ship instead of plane. The USSR wanted to be able to fly in enough gear to resume oil production and refining on very, very short notice, for just one example. The time involved was much shorter than would be needed to restore an oil based economy post war, and more a matter of having fuel for Soviet armored divisions still in full active combat mode. It is left as an exercise to the reader to decide just where the USSR hoped to use this capability.
The article points out that 1. Large packages are already banned at the statue, & 2. Visitors have to empty their pockets and pass through a metal detector.
Given that, can any government official describe a specific scenario that those measures don't protect against, and a biometric locker system does?
The government has approved lots of spending, just so long as it's anti-terrorist. We're seeing just what we should expect, lots of spending, loosely justified by the nebulous claim that it's somehow against some possible terror attack.
1. If I work for Dibold, and have claimed to be an election official, that is a felony impersonation. Anyone who thinks I have made this claim falsely can notify the legal system and seek to have my real identity subpoenaed from slashdot and investigated, and this would result in my arrest if I haven't told the truth. Why don't you contact a district attourney's office right now and try it? If it's outside your local jurisdiction, they are supposed to relay to the federal government (or is this a problem of you not trusting your local elected/appointed officials - sorry, but I can't help you there).
To make it easier for you, you can contact my state directly, which I will now reveal to be Tennesseee to make it easier. State offices are in Nashville. I'm not going to specify which county I work for, as I'd like to keep at least that much privacy. If I recall correctly, the Federal govenment still has this state on the list to be monitored since 1964, so you can ask John Ashcroft's bunch to investigate me instead if you like. If you are reluctant to do either (which I can understand, particularly in JA's case), you can complain to your local branch of the democratic party and ask them to follow it up - I'm sure they would love to get more on Dibold right now. 2. I did not tell you how harshly I will deal with your questions. I told you how harshly the law will deal with you if you commit an act that prevents people from voting. It would not be either honest or professional of me to assure you of the honesty of all voting machines, as I don't know that for a fact, and in fact I doubt it severely in Dibold's case and somewhat in a couple of the others. Part of my job is watching for signs I can't trust the ones used locally either, and I personally hate the idea of blindly trusting the very things I am supposed by my job description to help keep honest.
As far as helping you find out the real facts goes, that is actually something I am supposed to do, but only if it doesn't get in the way of people voting. If you approached me or one of the machine operators or registrars during an election with questions about what the workers do, who makes the machines we use, do the machines have certain features and such, I am actually legally requred to try to help you even if I didn't want to.
UNLESS you are blocking lines, shouting those questions so they are being directed at the voters as rhetorical questions and not just me or my people as real ones, or otherwise disrupting the election process. If time permits, I would gladly let you look over the machines for RJ-232 ports like some of the Dibold machines apparently have, or look up addresses for contacting the state agency who certifies these machines, or other such things. If you want to register as a poll watcher, you can stand there literally all day watching, you can whip out a tape measure to check how accurately I placed the 100 foot line sign, and you can listen to me answer any questions from voters I get.
To clarify this last point, you have certain rights in re. state elections if you are a citizen of my state, and certain rights in federal elections if you are a citizen of ANY part of the USA. You don't have all those rights in other cases, so I suggest you ask the local election commission or a local party office for free advice if you want to actually try to audit some polling place personally. If you don't like the answers you get, you may want to consult a lawyer. In most places, a local party office will gladly accredit you as a poll watcher if you promise to report any violations that affect them, even if your primary purpose is the technically party neutral one of checking up on the machines. Many local newspapers will work with you to get you temporary press credentials, as an alternative approach.
While the law lets me ask you to leave the polling place immediately if you are not there to actually vote, I am not some bully like you seem to assume, and am not going to invoke it unless there is a problem that is big enou
"I'm not sure how frying a few voting machines to make a point is an act of insurrection or rebellion, even if it is criminal."
1. How many is a few? If it's widespread enough to affect the results of an election, it's not a few anymore. Better hope that there's not a lot of this happening in widespread places, or it will look like nothing less than a well organized conspiracy, and the government WILL assume no one would be stupid enough to take that conspiracy just that far and no farther. Better hope none of the other smashers are discovered to be forign nationals of Arabic ethnicity, while you are at it, or the first thing you may have to convince people of is that you're not Al-Quida.
2. Why on earth WOULDN'T the government take this seriously? I live in a state that still has local elections supervised by the federal government, because of the 1964 voting rights act, now 40 years old and still requiring a small army of federal employees to achieve its goals. Smash a few machines, and if just one minority person doesn't get to vote, you've also committed a federally recognized "Hate" crime, and those FBI agents you mention will be lumping you in with no less than the KKK and James Earl Ray. These are the kinds of laws that would become involved, not more trivial ones.
FYI your last question, Contingency plans are usually gradiated to prevent overreactions and encourage the authorities to use minimal amounts of power. Unfortunately, that is least likely to work in a panic situation. There's a lot of authority granted by orders such as these that you don't normally see invoked every time it becomes available.
I once had the authority to pull local police from patrol to go direct traffic on interstate approaches instead. For a 12 hour time period, I could have told the local mayor, "I don't care if these guys were investigating a murder, for now their job is to see that the on ramp to I-N stays clear until this vehicle falls in with the convoy it is joining - Oh, and it will be passing through town at 70 MPH, and throwing unneeded equipment off the tailgate. Deal with it.".
Did I actually need to even delay traffic or borrow even a single cop, or even order someone to speed or litter en route? No. I had plenty of time to avoid so much as inconveniencing a single civilian, and so I didn't. If I'd used more of that authority than I'd actually needed, my commander would probably have wanted to know why I was so ill prepared that it was needful, but that's about all that kept me in line, except consience. I could have ordered 3,000,000$ worth of electronics equipment thrown in the ditch from moving vehicles if I'd needed to, and simply signed the list of them "Expended in Mobilization", and that would have been legally O.K.. Other, higher level commanders could have frozen an entire statewide stretch of the interstate to ALl civilian traffic, ordered local police to patrol what were normally state highway patrol areas, or similar actions, but again, none of that was actually needed, so it didn't happen.
I know that my state's plans call for rather minimal use of force in this particular case - I helped outline some ways to reduce the risks of it escalating to lethal force myself. I strongly suspect the governor would far rather delay an election for two weeks and print up a lot of manual ballots in that time than give a shoot order. Already, my state has printed extra manual ballots simply to provide some for people who have misgivings about using a machine, but they haven't printed enough to go full manual. Again, how much stress is someone planning to apply to test this system, a few machines, or a lot (amd maybe a few fistfights with election personnel resulting)?
(Not that YOU would personally do something wherever where I've used the word you, but whomever).
The laws that say a person has a right to vote, AND SHALL NOT BE IMPEEDED, are the first ones you would be violating. Attempting to convince a voter that the machine is flawed and should not be used, once they have already entered the voting site, IS THE SAME AS attempting to get them to leave the site without excercising their rights.
Under law, they have formed the intent to exercise those rights and declared that fact when they entered, simply by enttering the polling place. You will be tring to disuade them from voting, based only on your opinion of either whether they are informed of facts you think are important, or if they are competent to make a decision that the state already has ruled they are competent to make, and doing that is illegal, pure and simple. At that point, the burden of proof will be on you that you were not picking a particular precinct known to favor one party or candidate, and therefore that you WERE trying to influence the election, and I really doubt you will be able to prove that to a jury.
And no, you don't have all those other rights either. Pass out your business card in normal conversation as you move through the line, i.e. if someone asks for it, but you can't position yourself so that people have to go past you and have you hold out those cards, or I will immediately have you arrested, and you WILL serve hard time. One complaint from one voter that they felt in the slightest bit delayed or intimidated, by you, and the state will do its best to incarcerate you.
Your post not only puts words in my mouth that I never wrote, but it ignores those facts. Sorry if that doesn't ally your fears. You can question the process from beyond the 100 foot line, or you can go to prison, where maybe you will find some other fears to focus on.
The Machine operator looks inside the machine after each voter, time allowing, to see if they have left any literature or stickers. You will get caught, with near 100% certanty. The proof will be that the sticker wasn't there before you entered, and its there after you left. That's grounds to ask you to wait until a police officer arrives, or to look up your name in the voter registration and report you if you flee. It is a felony in my state, and a felony under Federal law. You do NOT have a great position. If you start so much as raising your voice while accusing us of "bullying" or "threatening" you, you will be creating a situation that may intmidate other voters present, and the couts will be notified that you continued after being warned, and the election comission will seek multiple charges. If you raise a fist to denounce my 'bullies" you will be charged for intimidating an official as well. All the fun of behaving like a fool, WITH the nasty fear of serving 75 years before possibility of parole thing!
It is also definitely not civil disobedience. There is a line 100 feet in front of the building. Stand 101 feet out, right next to the marker, and you can hold up a big poster that asks "How do you know these machines are honest?", all you want. Pass out flyers too, but if you do, please tell people NOT to display them inside the polling place or leave them in the machines. If it's a hot day, I'll probably bring you and everyone else out there a lemonade apiece, but you'll have to stand there next to the rest of the spokesmen for and against various candidates and issues. Given that you have a right to do it that way, there's no need for doing it the wrong way.
IANALBIAAEO (I am not a lawyer, but I am an election official):
If you just take out a camera in the voting area, you will be asked to leave it on my desk and it will be handed back to you at the 100 foot line, beuond the outer door to the building, when you leave.
There ARE exceptions to this, if you are wanting to take photographs under controlled circumstances - specifically not photographing any voter without their express, preferrably written, consent, and not producing photographic proof of how anyone has set any switches or filled out any forms. You can arrange this, preferrably in advance, with the election comission. This is do-able in most states at least. So if you wanted to photograph your son voting for the first time, that can be arranged, so long as you are willing to settle for a picture of him standing in front of the machine. I can't let you photograph him actually pushing buttons, as the law prohibits you producing proof of how he votes, as that could be used in vote buying schemes.
In the same way, there are circumstances that allow a newspaper reporter or poll watcher photographing a machine or a ballot that was not filled out or in use, but I can't let them see or photograph a voter's personal information. You can photograph ME if you like, but I can't order the other poll workers to pose, that's up to them.
If there's a line too large for me to observe you, you will have to wait until we can reduce it. Voting comes first. If we are busy and you take up enough of my time argueing with me over these rules that any voter has to wait to vote, you will be asked to leave, and if you have exposed any film (or whatever)that I think may show a vote, you may even have to go down to the police station later to get your camera back. Sue me - I'm there to help everyone vote, not to get a photo op. If you violate those terms on recording votes or any voter even appears to feel intimidated, let alone actually complains to us, and particularly if those violations appear intentional, you risk arrest on a possible felony charge in my state (or a federal felony in any state during any election that includes federal offices).
I decided to reply to this post, rather than use copious mod points I had.
The original post is both highly overated and flamebate for one simple reason. An organized attempt to destroy the machines during the actual election would NOT be an act of civil disobedience. IT WOULD BE AN ACT OF INSURRECTION AND REBELLION AGAINST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. Your percieved goal would not be just to oppose machine assited voting, but to oppose the electoral process itself.
If enough such attacks were successful to make it impractical for people to vote in significant areas, the planned, already legally mandated response in such a case would be to declare either statewide or nationwide martial law as needed, issue 30 round clips to up to a couple of hundred thousdand active duty soldiers, reservists and national guardsmen, put military commanders in charge of state and local police, and give them all orders to guard the polling places and SHOOT TO KILL any person attempting to damage a machine, and then resume conducting the election.
That's a BEST case scenario, the WORST is all that happens, plus the current administration delays the election at least until things appear to have settled down, and probably until hell freezes over.
(Oh, and the FBI subpoenas the real names of all the moderators and posters to this thread and some of you get an all expenses paid vacation to Gitmo. Normally, I'd be fighting for your rights on that one, but I'll be busy trying to get elections restarted and hoping the government doesn't get so paranoid that even that puts me on the same lists you'll definitely be on).
I am one of the person who has helped update the local guidelines for the exercise of just such force, and know for a fact that such contingency plans are on file at various state and regional headquarters, military armories and bases.
If a group of people want to do this, the second half of the plan HAS to be to shoot the entire current government. If you are going to start a revolution, you had better be prepared to follow through ALL THE WAY - anything else isn't civil disobedience, it's suicide.
What amazes me is that there are so many people on Slashdot 'talkin bout a revolushun', 'moderatin bout a revolushun', and having no fucking clue that they are stepping over that line. Did none of your mommies ever tell you that people get killed doing this?
1. Radiation shielding on long term voyages seems to be a real bear of a problem for manned spaceflight to the planets. It might be feasable to put a bunch of shielding around a small compartment with a hybernaut where it wouldn't be feasable to shield all the working and sleeping areas for an awake astronaut.
2. By extension, a 2001-like approach becomes workable - Put part of the crew into hybernation, rotate them in and out as needed. In 2001, this was supposed to be because the planetside geologists and such had little to do until Discovery was close to Jupiter, and then the security/paranoia factor kicked in. In the real case, a ship might rotate crew to even out radiation exposure, or put a crewman who was loosing bone mass faster than others into hybernation to protect his health.
"Perhaps it's meant to reflect that we'll likely see a female President around the same time we see a third party President?"
Pretty much what I was aiming at. Also, I think there's a parellel with seeing a woman president, a black president, or plenty of other currently unlikely types (like the green party or Nader). Back in the 70's and 80's there were times when congress had substantially more black congressmen than there are now. Women in congress seem to have declined lately, although that's not as clear a trend, and you have to factor in a few cases where the woman wasn't elected but is serving out her deceased husband's term.
How likely does it seem we will soon get at least a couple of new supreme court justices, and that the apointees will be male and white and members of one of the big two parties?
Would you really want a Libertarian president if the both houses of congress were firmly in the hands of one of the big two parties? Without some Libertarian governors, congresscritters, and the like to back her, the poor woman would probably be the most ineffectual President we've ever had.
Wonder how many college athletes participate in the millitary?
Way back when I went through my officer basic course, there was a young woman who smoked everyone else on the track at our first physical fitness test, running the 2 miles in under 9 minutes. She came off the track swearing, and when someone asked her why, all she said, was "I was 30 seconds faster in Barcelona last year.". Within a few seconds, someone put two and two together and mentioned the Olympics. Yep! As it turned out, we had not just a former Olympian, but three other serious atheletes in a class of 31.
Funding sports has some very good consequences, although I don't think they are particualry focused on the military. However, we've cut funding for Gym classes, and the percentage of Americans who are couch potatos is increasing. We have some tremendously fit atheletes, but often they aren't inspireing the rest to get out and do, but to sit down and watch.
But the ratio of people who make real money at sports to the ones who don't get that far is hundreds to one, or thousands to one if we look as far back as start of high school. The ratio of people who get academic scholarships to people who graduate and find a decently paying career afterwards is probably about 1.2:1 or so.
Let's look at a fictitious non-sports example to see how this applies. Suppose one scholarship in ten (that's the same 9:1 ratio), went to cosmetology schools, and completing a degree in cosmetology cost as much as completing a typical college degree. Now, suppose those budding cosmetologists had the income after finishing school most of them really have today, and the drop out rate for potential cosmetologists was as high as it really is. Wouldn't the taxpayer be justified in claiming that money should go for doctors degrees instead?
If 10 percent of the investment is only producing less than 10% of the effect on the economy (through taxes paid by the successful graduates), or if there are other costs that take away part of that return (like finding jobs for the people who have a career ending injury in their first year or two, or keeping kids in high school who want to drop out as soon as they realize they can't be the next Michael Jordan, and don't want to be anything else), then it makes sense to cut that 10%.
As the very first paragraph of the article mentioned, one use is for supersonic business jets. Just because the researchers are using a heavily modifed F-15 as a test vehicle doesn't mean it's all for killing things. NASA still uses Titans for launching spaceprobes, even though they were originally designed for launching nuclear warheads. The planes that fly through hurricanes to gather wind speed data probably save lives every time a big one approaches land, but they are still modifed military aircraft.
Yes, this has military applications as well. Lots of things do. The medical resarch you mention has been perverted to war before, for just one example. If you would like to see this knowledge focused on peaceful persuits and shared for the benefit of all, more power to you. It is not going to be possible to share it with businesses across the country and still keep it a military secret. All you have to do to help mankind here is pressure the people talking about applying it to silencing commercial aircraft to keep that promise, and it will make things better for lots of people.
A sonic boom can also be detected at many miles distance by a wired or radio connected listening device, analyzed in a few seconds to get a fairly good idea of what sort of plane emitted it, and that information sent to the potential target, or interceptor forces, at the speed of light or close to it, long before the plane can cross the terrain to get to its target. The Soviet Union was deploying such systems in the early 1960s, and it's a fair bet that even some "third world" countries have their own variants on them today.
The first time I saw Alien, was at an SF convention. After leaving it at 2 AM (sleep is for the weak), I went to work - night shift as the only guy in the warehouse, half the lights off (this was the 80s, people still took the energy crisis seriously) with nothing much to do except a little paperwork unless third shift manufacturing finished up a few jobs early. Around 4:45, a modem in the warehouse inventory computer unexpectedly started dialing out. There are probably still ten small circular punchouts in the suspended ceiling over that office, just matching my fingers.
Actually, I have some real concerns about just how scary it looks. The trailers so far all make me think of those scenes in a horror film where either a cat is about to jump out at you, or something that isn't a cat is, and I don't think ID is going to play the "Whew! just a cat" card. I jumped a few times playing Quake 1 alone in a dark room at night (with headphones - I swear there's nothing like the noise of a zombie rising from the water 4 feet _behind_ you, that you thought you had already cleared...)
Doom 3 looks to be much 'worse' that Q1 or 2, and light years beyond the original Doom.
Now that's all right if you're entertained by it, but the solving time for Doom 3 is likely to be 100 hours of play or more for most gamers. Back when I still had an adolescent kid, I'd worry if the last 50 movies that kid had seen were all horror flicks, and he was watching 5 to 10 a day to get them into his system faster. If you figure that most horror flicks have substantial footage that is just setting up backgrounds and such, Doom 3 looks to have a much higher ratio than that 50 to 1.
More, it looks to resemble really good horror movies like the original Alien or at least Hellraiser, and not some crap with Chuckie.
So, if violent horror imagery does zero damage to an impressionable 14 year old, then even lebenty-leben times zero is still zero, and Doom 3 is ok for the minimum age group likely to buy it. But if there is even a trivial amount of damage done to "the children" (or some of them) by watching some horror film, then trivial multiplied by some really big number becomes not-so-trivial. It's the old adage, "Everything counts in large amounts."
I'll probably buy it despite the doubts. My youngest kid is 20, so it's not up to me to tell her she can or can't get it. But I won't be surprised if I end up typing R_Fullbright halfway through a play session, and I'm pretty sure this one doesn't get loaned out to the 15 year old nephew.
Re:What do corporations want from education?
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"If the mass illiteracy future happens, it ain't going to be because that's what companies want."
Why on earth not? A company (let's call it A) that makes disposeable diapers wants there to be lots of people who make enough money to afford to buy disposable diapers, but that doesn't mean those have to be the company's employees. Company A can even have a lousy maternity leave policy and take various steps to make becomeing a customer for disposable diapers among its own work force less likely than the average.
One of the 'dismissed','socialistic' arguements we have supposedly seen the last of with the fall of the Soviet Union is the idea that "The workers at the Ford plant should be able to afford Fords, and the workers at Caddilac should be able to afford Caddilacs.". Fine, but if company A wants to sell 100 Million units of X, there have to be 100 Million customers who both want X and can afford it. Company A won't sell its quota of X unless some other company B pays enough to create those 'consumers'.
In the same way, company A can 'want' there to be educated employees who can think for themselves, but the massively illiterate filled future can still happen while company A waits for someone else to foot the resulting bills.
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Why will the rovers fail?
Here's the likelyest causes.
1. The solar cells accumulate dust and their efficiency reduces.
2. Heating and cooling cycles cause micro-fracturing of the crystals in those solar cells. Their power production decreases for sure, AND the cracks increase how much dust clings to them, so if #1 isn't a problem, it possibly will become one.
3. Flexable materials will outgass some of their lubricants and plasticisers. Plastic parts are particularly vulnerable to multiple combinations of thermal cycling, low pressure and the daytime UV. Greases and oils will eventually break down for similar reasons, causing moving parts to stick.
4. Many electronic components are mounted on plasticized boards, not that different from the ones used in commercial designs, although the NASA ones are ruggidized quite a bit. The boards are still vulnerable to the thermal cycling and outgassing problems, although their mostly being buried deep inside the spacecraft helps with thermal cycling problems.
I'd expect to see the craft brought down eventuallly by a wheel lock-up, though either of them may be able to drag one wheel at reduced efficiency for a time.
Before the main control circuits in the craft's center fail, I'd guesstimate that we will hear of boards in the peripherals (like out in a camera arm), going out and taking down those functions.
A three minute lookaround time isn't much under most battlefield conditions, but maybe in a police hostage situation, or urban combat, i.e. just looking around the next corner. The thing is, three minutes total = less than 1 1/2 minuites useful time if the device is expensive enough you need to recover it and want a bit of a safety margin, so it's actually worse than it sounds.
Many organizations have a sense of honour, just not the same one as some of us. Even in organized crime, honour means something, it's just it is much more about not ratting out your fellows than in how you treat the general public.
Plenty of businesses work from the premise that using the law to restrict the free market is sneaky or low while manipulating public opinion is fair and above board where it really counts. (That is, in the eyes of other businessmen, and NOT John Q. Public).
It's a easy path to go from deciding that many people are socialist drones who will dislike your company just for being successful, to thinking that it is alright to control them and not be honest with them, in 'self defense' against the politicians who are also trying to manipulate them.
Sorry I dissed Trent's dog. I'm sure Daisy May is a good doggie. That's still one serious case of red-eye in that shot.
"If families are a hindrance to the system, perhaps it's the system that needs to go...not the other way around."
Your last sentence is one of the very few things that actually need to become sound bites, and get heard by a lot bigger group than slashdot.
It's Carmack's dog, what did you expect - Not all red eye effects are just in photos. Every time he lests that mutt out, it's doom for my rododendrons. One more urinated pentagram on my lawn and I'm breaking out the BFG-13,000. ... And yeah, his wife's cute.
The Antonov-225 was designed back in the Soviet era, and like many of the USSR's military concepts was expected to be useful in non-conventional warfare or "police action" programs. It took Afghanistan to teach the USSR that there would likely be anti-aircraft assets in the hands of local rebels and resistance movements.
One of their assumptions was that there would be need for a military controlled asset in areas without anti-aircraft weapons deployed. The US typically relies more on civilian assets for such functions as disaster relief. We would also normally pay (in both time and money) to pre-position really large industrial equipment by ship instead of plane. The USSR wanted to be able to fly in enough gear to resume oil production and refining on very, very short notice, for just one example. The time involved was much shorter than would be needed to restore an oil based economy post war, and more a matter of having fuel for Soviet armored divisions still in full active combat mode. It is left as an exercise to the reader to decide just where the USSR hoped to use this capability.
The article points out that 1. Large packages are already banned at the statue, & 2. Visitors have to empty their pockets and pass through a metal detector.
Given that, can any government official describe a specific scenario that those measures don't protect against, and a biometric locker system does?
The government has approved lots of spending, just so long as it's anti-terrorist. We're seeing just what we should expect, lots of spending, loosely justified by the nebulous claim that it's somehow against some possible terror attack.
I've got thugs? Wow, do they come with a raise?
1. If I work for Dibold, and have claimed to be an election official, that is a felony impersonation. Anyone who thinks I have made this claim falsely can notify the legal system and seek to have my real identity subpoenaed from slashdot and investigated, and this would result in my arrest if I haven't told the truth. Why don't you contact a district attourney's office right now and try it? If it's outside your local jurisdiction, they are supposed to relay to the federal government (or is this a problem of you not trusting your local elected/appointed officials - sorry, but I can't help you there).
To make it easier for you, you can contact my state directly, which I will now reveal to be Tennesseee to make it easier. State offices are in Nashville. I'm not going to specify which county I work for, as I'd like to keep at least that much privacy. If I recall correctly, the Federal govenment still has this state on the list to be monitored since 1964, so you can ask John Ashcroft's bunch to investigate me instead if you like. If you are reluctant to do either (which I can understand, particularly in JA's case), you can complain to your local branch of the democratic party and ask them to follow it up - I'm sure they would love to get more on Dibold right now.
2. I did not tell you how harshly I will deal with your questions. I told you how harshly the law will deal with you if you commit an act that prevents people from voting. It would not be either honest or professional of me to assure you of the honesty of all voting machines, as I don't know that for a fact, and in fact I doubt it severely in Dibold's case and somewhat in a couple of the others. Part of my job is watching for signs I can't trust the ones used locally either, and I personally hate the idea of blindly trusting the very things I am supposed by my job description to help keep honest.
As far as helping you find out the real facts goes, that is actually something I am supposed to do, but only if it doesn't get in the way of people voting. If you approached me or one of the machine operators or registrars during an election with questions about what the workers do, who makes the machines we use, do the machines have certain features and such, I am actually legally requred to try to help you even if I didn't want to.
UNLESS you are blocking lines, shouting those questions so they are being directed at the voters as rhetorical questions and not just me or my people as real ones, or otherwise disrupting the election process. If time permits, I would gladly let you look over the machines for RJ-232 ports like some of the Dibold machines apparently have, or look up addresses for contacting the state agency who certifies these machines, or other such things. If you want to register as a poll watcher, you can stand there literally all day watching, you can whip out a tape measure to check how accurately I placed the 100 foot line sign, and you can listen to me answer any questions from voters I get.
To clarify this last point, you have certain rights in re. state elections if you are a citizen of my state, and certain rights in federal elections if you are a citizen of ANY part of the USA. You don't have all those rights in other cases, so I suggest you ask the local election commission or a local party office for free advice if you want to actually try to audit some polling place personally. If you don't like the answers you get, you may want to consult a lawyer. In most places, a local party office will gladly accredit you as a poll watcher if you promise to report any violations that affect them, even if your primary purpose is the technically party neutral one of checking up on the machines. Many local newspapers will work with you to get you temporary press credentials, as an alternative approach.
While the law lets me ask you to leave the polling place immediately if you are not there to actually vote, I am not some bully like you seem to assume, and am not going to invoke it unless there is a problem that is big enou
"I'm not sure how frying a few voting machines to make a point is an act of insurrection or rebellion, even if it is criminal."
1. How many is a few? If it's widespread enough to affect the results of an election, it's not a few anymore. Better hope that there's not a lot of this happening in widespread places, or it will look like nothing less than a well organized conspiracy, and the government WILL assume no one would be stupid enough to take that conspiracy just that far and no farther. Better hope none of the other smashers are discovered to be forign nationals of Arabic ethnicity, while you are at it, or the first thing you may have to convince people of is that you're not Al-Quida.
2. Why on earth WOULDN'T the government take this seriously? I live in a state that still has local elections supervised by the federal government, because of the 1964 voting rights act, now 40 years old and still requiring a small army of federal employees to achieve its goals. Smash a few machines, and if just one minority person doesn't get to vote, you've also committed a federally recognized "Hate" crime, and those FBI agents you mention will be lumping you in with no less than the KKK and James Earl Ray. These are the kinds of laws that would become involved, not more trivial ones.
FYI your last question, Contingency plans are usually gradiated to prevent overreactions and encourage the authorities to use minimal amounts of power. Unfortunately, that is least likely to work in a panic situation. There's a lot of authority granted by orders such as these that you don't normally see invoked every time it becomes available.
I once had the authority to pull local police from patrol to go direct traffic on interstate approaches instead. For a 12 hour time period, I could have told the local mayor, "I don't care if these guys were investigating a murder, for now their job is to see that the on ramp to I-N stays clear until this vehicle falls in with the convoy it is joining - Oh, and it will be passing through town at 70 MPH, and throwing unneeded equipment off the tailgate. Deal with it.".
Did I actually need to even delay traffic or borrow even a single cop, or even order someone to speed or litter en route? No. I had plenty of time to avoid so much as inconveniencing a single civilian, and so I didn't. If I'd used more of that authority than I'd actually needed, my commander would probably have wanted to know why I was so ill prepared that it was needful, but that's about all that kept me in line, except consience. I could have ordered 3,000,000$ worth of electronics equipment thrown in the ditch from moving vehicles if I'd needed to, and simply signed the list of them "Expended in Mobilization", and that would have been legally O.K.. Other, higher level commanders could have frozen an entire statewide stretch of the interstate to ALl civilian traffic, ordered local police to patrol what were normally state highway patrol areas, or similar actions, but again, none of that was actually needed, so it didn't happen.
I know that my state's plans call for rather minimal use of force in this particular case - I helped outline some ways to reduce the risks of it escalating to lethal force myself. I strongly suspect the governor would far rather delay an election for two weeks and print up a lot of manual ballots in that time than give a shoot order. Already, my state has printed extra manual ballots simply to provide some for people who have misgivings about using a machine, but they haven't printed enough to go full manual. Again, how much stress is someone planning to apply to test this system, a few machines, or a lot (amd maybe a few fistfights with election personnel resulting)?
(Not that YOU would personally do something wherever where I've used the word you, but whomever).
The laws that say a person has a right to vote, AND SHALL NOT BE IMPEEDED, are the first ones you would be violating. Attempting to convince a voter that the machine is flawed and should not be used, once they have already entered the voting site, IS THE SAME AS attempting to get them to leave the site without excercising their rights.
Under law, they have formed the intent to exercise those rights and declared that fact when they entered, simply by enttering the polling place. You will be tring to disuade them from voting, based only on your opinion of either whether they are informed of facts you think are important, or if they are competent to make a decision that the state already has ruled they are competent to make, and doing that is illegal, pure and simple. At that point, the burden of proof will be on you that you were not picking a particular precinct known to favor one party or candidate, and therefore that you WERE trying to influence the election, and I really doubt you will be able to prove that to a jury.
And no, you don't have all those other rights either. Pass out your business card in normal conversation as you move through the line, i.e. if someone asks for it, but you can't position yourself so that people have to go past you and have you hold out those cards, or I will immediately have you arrested, and you WILL serve hard time. One complaint from one voter that they felt in the slightest bit delayed or intimidated, by you, and the state will do its best to incarcerate you.
Your post not only puts words in my mouth that I never wrote, but it ignores those facts. Sorry if that doesn't ally your fears. You can question the process from beyond the 100 foot line, or you can go to prison, where maybe you will find some other fears to focus on.
"If you are caught (unlikely)"
The Machine operator looks inside the machine after each voter, time allowing, to see if they have left any literature or stickers. You will get caught, with near 100% certanty. The proof will be that the sticker wasn't there before you entered, and its there after you left. That's grounds to ask you to wait until a police officer arrives, or to look up your name in the voter registration and report you if you flee. It is a felony in my state, and a felony under Federal law. You do NOT have a great position. If you start so much as raising your voice while accusing us of "bullying" or "threatening" you, you will be creating a situation that may intmidate other voters present, and the couts will be notified that you continued after being warned, and the election comission will seek multiple charges. If you raise a fist to denounce my 'bullies" you will be charged for intimidating an official as well. All the fun of behaving like a fool, WITH the nasty fear of serving 75 years before possibility of parole thing!
It is also definitely not civil disobedience. There is a line 100 feet in front of the building. Stand 101 feet out, right next to the marker, and you can hold up a big poster that asks "How do you know these machines are honest?", all you want. Pass out flyers too, but if you do, please tell people NOT to display them inside the polling place or leave them in the machines. If it's a hot day, I'll probably bring you and everyone else out there a lemonade apiece, but you'll have to stand there next to the rest of the spokesmen for and against various candidates and issues. Given that you have a right to do it that way, there's no need for doing it the wrong way.
IANALBIAAEO (I am not a lawyer, but I am an election official):
If you just take out a camera in the voting area, you will be asked to leave it on my desk and it will be handed back to you at the 100 foot line, beuond the outer door to the building, when you leave.
There ARE exceptions to this, if you are wanting to take photographs under controlled circumstances - specifically not photographing any voter without their express, preferrably written, consent, and not producing photographic proof of how anyone has set any switches or filled out any forms. You can arrange this, preferrably in advance, with the election comission. This is do-able in most states at least. So if you wanted to photograph your son voting for the first time, that can be arranged, so long as you are willing to settle for a picture of him standing in front of the machine. I can't let you photograph him actually pushing buttons, as the law prohibits you producing proof of how he votes, as that could be used in vote buying schemes.
In the same way, there are circumstances that allow a newspaper reporter or poll watcher photographing a machine or a ballot that was not filled out or in use, but I can't let them see or photograph a voter's personal information. You can photograph ME if you like, but I can't order the other poll workers to pose, that's up to them.
If there's a line too large for me to observe you, you will have to wait until we can reduce it. Voting comes first. If we are busy and you take up enough of my time argueing with me over these rules that any voter has to wait to vote, you will be asked to leave, and if you have exposed any film (or whatever)that I think may show a vote, you may even have to go down to the police station later to get your camera back. Sue me - I'm there to help everyone vote, not to get a photo op. If you violate those terms on recording votes or any voter even appears to feel intimidated, let alone actually complains to us, and particularly if those violations appear intentional, you risk arrest on a possible felony charge in my state (or a federal felony in any state during any election that includes federal offices).
I decided to reply to this post, rather than use copious mod points I had.
The original post is both highly overated and flamebate for one simple reason. An organized attempt to destroy the machines during the actual election would NOT be an act of civil disobedience. IT WOULD BE AN ACT OF INSURRECTION AND REBELLION AGAINST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT. Your percieved goal would not be just to oppose machine assited voting, but to oppose the electoral process itself.
If enough such attacks were successful to make it impractical for people to vote in significant areas, the planned, already legally mandated response in such a case would be to declare either statewide or nationwide martial law as needed, issue 30 round clips to up to a couple of hundred thousdand active duty soldiers, reservists and national guardsmen, put military commanders in charge of state and local police, and give them all orders to guard the polling places and SHOOT TO KILL any person attempting to damage a machine, and then resume conducting the election.
That's a BEST case scenario, the WORST is all that happens, plus the current administration delays the election at least until things appear to have settled down, and probably until hell freezes over.
(Oh, and the FBI subpoenas the real names of all the moderators and posters to this thread and some of you get an all expenses paid vacation to Gitmo. Normally, I'd be fighting for your rights on that one, but I'll be busy trying to get elections restarted and hoping the government doesn't get so paranoid that even that puts me on the same lists you'll definitely be on).
I am one of the person who has helped update the local guidelines for the exercise of just such force, and know for a fact that such contingency plans are on file at various state and regional headquarters, military armories and bases.
If a group of people want to do this, the second half of the plan HAS to be to shoot the entire current government. If you are going to start a revolution, you had better be prepared to follow through ALL THE WAY - anything else isn't civil disobedience, it's suicide.
What amazes me is that there are so many people on Slashdot 'talkin bout a revolushun', 'moderatin bout a revolushun', and having no fucking clue that they are stepping over that line. Did none of your mommies ever tell you that people get killed doing this?
1. Radiation shielding on long term voyages seems to be a real bear of a problem for manned spaceflight to the planets. It might be feasable to put a bunch of shielding around a small compartment with a hybernaut where it wouldn't be feasable to shield all the working and sleeping areas for an awake astronaut.
2. By extension, a 2001-like approach becomes workable - Put part of the crew into hybernation, rotate them in and out as needed. In 2001, this was supposed to be because the planetside geologists and such had little to do until Discovery was close to Jupiter, and then the security/paranoia factor kicked in. In the real case, a ship might rotate crew to even out radiation exposure, or put a crewman who was loosing bone mass faster than others into hybernation to protect his health.
"Perhaps it's meant to reflect that we'll likely see a female President around the same time we see a third party President?"
Pretty much what I was aiming at. Also, I think there's a parellel with seeing a woman president, a black president, or plenty of other currently unlikely types (like the green party or Nader). Back in the 70's and 80's there were times when congress had substantially more black congressmen than there are now. Women in congress seem to have declined lately, although that's not as clear a trend, and you have to factor in a few cases where the woman wasn't elected but is serving out her deceased husband's term.
How likely does it seem we will soon get at least a couple of new supreme court justices, and that the apointees will be male and white and members of one of the big two parties?
Would you really want a Libertarian president if the both houses of congress were firmly in the hands of one of the big two parties? Without some Libertarian governors, congresscritters, and the like to back her, the poor woman would probably be the most ineffectual President we've ever had.
Wonder how many college athletes participate in the millitary?
Way back when I went through my officer basic course, there was a young woman who smoked everyone else on the track at our first physical fitness test, running the 2 miles in under 9 minutes. She came off the track swearing, and when someone asked her why, all she said, was "I was 30 seconds faster in Barcelona last year.". Within a few seconds, someone put two and two together and mentioned the Olympics. Yep! As it turned out, we had not just a former Olympian, but three other serious atheletes in a class of 31.
Funding sports has some very good consequences, although I don't think they are particualry focused on the military. However, we've cut funding for Gym classes, and the percentage of Americans who are couch potatos is increasing. We have some tremendously fit atheletes, but often they aren't inspireing the rest to get out and do, but to sit down and watch.
But the ratio of people who make real money at sports to the ones who don't get that far is hundreds to one, or thousands to one if we look as far back as start of high school. The ratio of people who get academic scholarships to people who graduate and find a decently paying career afterwards is probably about 1.2:1 or so.
Let's look at a fictitious non-sports example to see how this applies. Suppose one scholarship in ten (that's the same 9:1 ratio), went to cosmetology schools, and completing a degree in cosmetology cost as much as completing a typical college degree. Now, suppose those budding cosmetologists had the income after finishing school most of them really have today, and the drop out rate for potential cosmetologists was as high as it really is. Wouldn't the taxpayer be justified in claiming that money should go for doctors degrees instead?
If 10 percent of the investment is only producing less than 10% of the effect on the economy (through taxes paid by the successful graduates), or if there are other costs that take away part of that return (like finding jobs for the people who have a career ending injury in their first year or two, or keeping kids in high school who want to drop out as soon as they realize they can't be the next Michael Jordan, and don't want to be anything else), then it makes sense to cut that 10%.
As the very first paragraph of the article mentioned, one use is for supersonic business jets. Just because the researchers are using a heavily modifed F-15 as a test vehicle doesn't mean it's all for killing things. NASA still uses Titans for launching spaceprobes, even though they were originally designed for launching nuclear warheads. The planes that fly through hurricanes to gather wind speed data probably save lives every time a big one approaches land, but they are still modifed military aircraft.
Yes, this has military applications as well. Lots of things do. The medical resarch you mention has been perverted to war before, for just one example. If you would like to see this knowledge focused on peaceful persuits and shared for the benefit of all, more power to you. It is not going to be possible to share it with businesses across the country and still keep it a military secret. All you have to do to help mankind here is pressure the people talking about applying it to silencing commercial aircraft to keep that promise, and it will make things better for lots of people.
A sonic boom can also be detected at many miles distance by a wired or radio connected listening device, analyzed in a few seconds to get a fairly good idea of what sort of plane emitted it, and that information sent to the potential target, or interceptor forces, at the speed of light or close to it, long before the plane can cross the terrain to get to its target. The Soviet Union was deploying such systems in the early 1960s, and it's a fair bet that even some "third world" countries have their own variants on them today.
The first time I saw Alien, was at an SF convention. After leaving it at 2 AM (sleep is for the weak), I went to work - night shift as the only guy in the warehouse, half the lights off (this was the 80s, people still took the energy crisis seriously) with nothing much to do except a little paperwork unless third shift manufacturing finished up a few jobs early. Around 4:45, a modem in the warehouse inventory computer unexpectedly started dialing out. There are probably still ten small circular punchouts in the suspended ceiling over that office, just matching my fingers.
Actually, I have some real concerns about just how scary it looks. The trailers so far all make me think of those scenes in a horror film where either a cat is about to jump out at you, or something that isn't a cat is, and I don't think ID is going to play the "Whew! just a cat" card. I jumped a few times playing Quake 1 alone in a dark room at night (with headphones - I swear there's nothing like the noise of a zombie rising from the water 4 feet _behind_ you, that you thought you had already cleared...)
Doom 3 looks to be much 'worse' that Q1 or 2, and light years beyond the original Doom.
Now that's all right if you're entertained by it, but the solving time for Doom 3 is likely to be 100 hours of play or more for most gamers. Back when I still had an adolescent kid, I'd worry if the last 50 movies that kid had seen were all horror flicks, and he was watching 5 to 10 a day to get them into his system faster. If you figure that most horror flicks have substantial footage that is just setting up backgrounds and such, Doom 3 looks to have a much higher ratio than that 50 to 1.
More, it looks to resemble really good horror movies like the original Alien or at least Hellraiser, and not some crap with Chuckie.
So, if violent horror imagery does zero damage to an impressionable 14 year old, then even lebenty-leben times zero is still zero, and Doom 3 is ok for the minimum age group likely to buy it. But if there is even a trivial amount of damage done to "the children" (or some of them) by watching some horror film, then trivial multiplied by some really big number becomes not-so-trivial. It's the old adage, "Everything counts in large amounts."
I'll probably buy it despite the doubts. My youngest kid is 20, so it's not up to me to tell her she can or can't get it. But I won't be surprised if I end up typing R_Fullbright halfway through a play session, and I'm pretty sure this one doesn't get loaned out to the 15 year old nephew.
"If the mass illiteracy future happens, it ain't going to be because that's what companies want."
Why on earth not? A company (let's call it A) that makes disposeable diapers wants there to be lots of people who make enough money to afford to buy disposable diapers, but that doesn't mean those have to be the company's employees. Company A can even have a lousy maternity leave policy and take various steps to make becomeing a customer for disposable diapers among its own work force less likely than the average.
One of the 'dismissed','socialistic' arguements we have supposedly seen the last of with the fall of the Soviet Union is the idea that "The workers at the Ford plant should be able to afford Fords, and the workers at Caddilac should be able to afford Caddilacs.". Fine, but if company A wants to sell 100 Million units of X, there have to be 100 Million customers who both want X and can afford it. Company A won't sell its quota of X unless some other company B pays enough to create those 'consumers'.
In the same way, company A can 'want' there to be educated employees who can think for themselves, but the massively illiterate filled future can still happen while company A waits for someone else to foot the resulting bills.