Some people are religious Christians, some people are religious drunks, and, if you don't believe that science can be a religion, you have not tried to discuss facts with someone who has a pet theory. Atheism may be a religion for some people: it depends on whether they are atheists because they don't see the need for anything else or because they are against religion. Many people, perhaps most, are religious about the core things in their life because they accept them on faith and believe them dogmatically, whatever their philosophical underpinnings.
Science does require faith for the same reason that accepting the Bible as describing spiritual events requires faith: people do not, for the most part, directly experience the things they read about or are told. Sure, in theory, you could reproduce the Michelson-Morley experiment, but have you? Did you witness the Gettysburg address? Or do you just accept that someone has? Even if you are very skeptical, you cannot ever verify ever bit of scientific knowledge you depend on. People depend on a structure of reasoning and a framework to put those bits of knowledge into so that they *could* be tested, but practically, we trust each other (most of the time). Yes, they *are* different, but there are fundaments that are the same, and, even with religion, one should not blindly trust everything one is handed. That is why it is important to study and explore, to figure out what has meaning to you.
I am not saying that scientific reasoning and religious reasoning are the same. They are not. But in the end, meaning is where it is at; the rest fills time.
Again, it largely comes down to semantics. Both "sides" frame straw men of the others' beliefs and then label them as irrational. Very few Christians really believe that species do not change through some natural process. (Though there are *certainly* some.) Very few evolutionary scientists (including Darwin) are or were really wedded to abiogenesis in any strong, pedagogical sense (though, again, there are always nuts). The terms have been stretched to the breaking point, even by scientists. If people would actually work on separating the two concepts in the way they actually belong, the argument would get much more rational.
The guy's a practicing doctor (and a competent one) for heaven's sake! You think he hasn't studied biology?
Technically, even the literal interpretation extremists have to believe in speciation because the number of "kinds" saved on the ark would have had to diverge to the number of distinct species we have today (in a few thousand years). E.g.: cats->lions and tigers and barn cats. Good luck getting them to admit it though.
Rachael Carson was once admonished by her grandmother for asking too many questions: "You know, Rachael, *God* made the Universe." "I know, Granny, but I want to find out *how* he did it." We can be on the same "side."
There are a number of anomalies across the board. Given my candidate choice, I pay attention to particular ones, but unfair votes concern me, period.
Two I am immediately familiar with:
* A precinct where there were almost 700 registered local active Ron Paul volunteers but less than 400 votes counted. Huh?
* A (small) precinct that counted zero votes for Dr. Paul where a family of three (all of whom voted for him) submitted a challenge. It turns out that the hand ballots recorded 31 votes, but "0" was "accidentally" copied to the tally sheet when it was submitted to the party HQ. "3", "1", "13", "30", I could all understand, but how do you mis-copy "31" as "0". A problem here is that actual counts are usually observed, but the filing of the summary sheets is not.
I am not running around screaming "my candidate should have won". I think he did better, possibly quite a bit better than represented, but I expect that a recount would uncover (and correct) abuse against other candidates as well. People's votes, even if they vote for Attila the Hun, should count. There are people I would probably leave the country for if elected, but I still think the elections should be fair.
I am not even going to get started on the Iowa Caucus. It is so badly handled there is no fixing it and no way a recount would even correct anything. It seems pretty certain at least Giuliani, Romney, and Dr. Paul got under-counted, but who knows by how much or what else was going on. At least the vote is not meant to be binding and the delegates are elected separately (as I understand it).
Given how partisan and divisive elections are getting and how bad the question (and answer) of fraud is growing, it is a bad combination. I really begin to wonder what will happen when a large portion of the population "loses" an election and just plain refuses to accept that the election was fair (perhaps with valid cause). With many of the election systems and processes currently in place, you simply cannot *prove* that an election was anywhere in the ballpark of fair -to either side-. I see bad things from this. Replacing the voting system with something that requires a majority win, encourages moderate candidates or opens things to more parties can defuse the situation somewhat (e.g. Instant Run-off voting, or, better, ranked voting). Those systems tend to be a little less sensitive to manipulation and produce larger/clearer margins of victory.
This is one thing I've never understood about American politics (in particular, the platform of a lot of Republican candidates). Why do so many people believe that government on a state level is inherently better than government on a federal level? Surely a standardised system nationwide makes life a lot simpler for everyone. For the same reason many (e.g.) British think that being governed at the national level is better than at the European level: better representation. The needs, beliefs, and traditions of people in the mid-west are different from the northeast for example, but population (number of voters) in the northeast is high. Keeping much of the government local ensures to some extent that your needs will not be sacrificed in favor of lobbyists across the continent. There is a definite trend in places for urban areas with many voters and high expenses to suck rural areas with farms and manufacturing but few voters dry. In theory at least, we have more direct control over local governments.
Some things indeed are better to be standardized across the whole and the Constitution spells many of these out, but many things should not be. Remember, that the US is *big* compared to many nations. The individual states are the size of many individual countries and are sovereign in their own right.
I think the problem is that getting elected is still about campaigning -- and Ron's campaign is not being run as skillfully as others. Living in MA, I was waiting for the call to volunteer. I signed up to make phone calls, hold signs, do anything. I was never contacted or asked to do anything. Dr. Paul's campaign is primarily a grassroots effort. It is largely run *by the volunteers*. I apologize you got lost in the shuffle, but go to http://ronpaul.meetup.com/ , find a local chapter and sign up. The campaign has a few hundred people and $20 million. The meetup group has over 100,000 people and spends a separate pool of funds. There are also a number of other volunteer groups operating, often with little overlap in membership (e.g. Truckers4RonPaul, VeteransForPaul, JewsForRonPaul, StudentsForPaul, BasketWeaversofDanishDescentForRonPaul...). The support is there. It's taken time to learn how to build the infrastructure.
The good and bad thing about this campaign is that no one has run one like this before. That has let us do some absolutely unprecedented things, like herding an enormous number of cats for short-notice rallies and nationwide events. On the other hand, it is also a learning experience. As an example, we are working in Missouri on capitalizing on the successes in Iowa precincts where Dr. Paul go >30% support. We did different things in different places and are learning from the results. Running a campaign against a nearly *complete* mainstream media blackout is not an easy task. The fact that we are doing it at all speaks volumes for the dedication of the people that are literally freezing their butts off to get that message out. Not many people care for what is going on in this country enough to even *vote*. The fight itself is a victory.
The only major candidate who wants to immediately withdraw from Iraq... This alone proves he's a fucking moron and shouldn't win. It helps to understand that "immediate" in this context is *approximately two years*. That's how long it takes to move that amount of troops and equipment if we start today and work steadily. That's *plenty* of time to engineer a hand off. Think before you accuse.
On the other hand, if we don't even start until after the next war monger gets out of office after they have moved more troops and equipment in, we take seven years to get out of there. Add up our current burn rate, add a bit for troop and equipment increases, and tell me how we finance that on top of approaching $10 trillion in debt.
Ron Paul backs creationism, and that makes him a bible thumper in my book. I suggest you google it if you don't believe me. [snip] I have googled before and just did again. I see no conflict. People say that he "denounced" evolution as a theory. That's like "denouncing" Relativity as a theory. They *are* theories. That's not "denouncing" anything. As far as I can read and as far as I know, Dr. Paul's stand is simply against the common and popular confusion of Evolution and Abiogensis: the idea that species change over time and question of where it came from in the first place. Most people (and, even, unfortunately, many, many scientists) lump the concepts together. Taken separately, there is no conflict between the Theory of Evolution and Creationism (or the idea that early life came from a comet for that matter). Certainly, the theory taken as a whole that life spontaneously from random molecules on earth and evolved via natural selection from there is just that: a *theory*. The basic tenets of Natural Selection alone are things we observe on a daily basis these days. Now, I doubt, whether or not his use of terms is that pedantic, but either way, raising his hand and being given 10 seconds to explain was no time for a deep lesson on semantics.
That would be because they fell into the compassion trap. they now do a thing called compassionate conservatism which is more or less toned down liberalism.
for some reasons, they think that the hard lines hand up not a hand out way of thinking doesn't work with the moder skulls full of mush. The funny thing is, this "compassionate conservatism" movement was started by Horace Greeley (a "Social Universalist") in the mid 1800s. He essentially became the father of Communist thought in America. Given the Cold War, people these days want to bury that connection as far under the rug as possible, but the ideals came from the same place and are not very different. Of the three "main" American social philosophies that came out of the 1800s, Social Darwinism, Social Calvinism, and Social Universalism: Social Darwinism led to US Nazi sympathizers, Social Universalism to the US Communist movement (toned down a bit in what we is now called "compassionate conservatism", and Social Calvanism was marginalized. The other fact that is ignored is that the Social Calvinists were far from "hard hearted". They were extremely active in charity and built compassionate organizations all over the place. What is "wrong" with them is that they mostly gave time/effort and sometimes goods, very seldom money. Because they rarely gave *money*, modern socialists discount them as "charity." Somehow, I think leaving a comfortable home and volunteering to walk into a slum and sit down with the poor, sick, and disadvantaged, bothering to find out what they really need and help them is rather more compassionate than voting to send someone else's money through taxes.
So you believe that the individual should be protected against the mob? Then do you support the We the People Act, which would prohibit the Supreme Court from overturning laws discriminating against people of a certain sexual orientation or laws discriminating against people of a certain religion, as well as having the government spend money to enforce its decisions? Think about what'll happen to gay people, non-Christians, etc., especially in deep-South states such as Texas. No, actually I don't. I don't support any politician or cause blindly. I do think there are arguments for the bill Constitutionally and other mitigating factors, but I do not agree with the interpretation of the law underlying it (regarding the Privileges and Immunities Clause, for instance) or the approach. On the other hand, the other candidates are pro-illegal wiretaps, neutering the FISA court, military tribunals, suspending habeas corpus, suspension of posse comitatus (in a previous appropriations bill), retroactive immunity for illegal wiretaps, preemptive war and many other extremely problematic measures, so you have to balance the issues you disagree with. At least with the "We the People Act," it is backed by the fact that all 50 states have freedom of religion provisions in their Constitutions (at least I have read that and have spot checked a number of them), but I still think it is the wrong way to go.
I would like a choice of small government, pro-states rights candidates so that debates on this exact issues could happen, but the system has not given us that. Given how far we have swung to the big government, federalism, colossal debt direction, I doubt that a pro-small government president can swing us too far back to the other side in only one or two terms and he will likely do much good. At this point, though, another big government president might push us to or over the brink. What are the alternatives?
In other news, New Zealand equips all tractors with laser guided missiles to protect against terrorist sheep; and in Barbados the government combats terrorism by issuing tape recorders designed to look like coconuts to all citizens.
The truly insane keep doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different result...
When I was in the Pentagon, there was a simulation developed in another group where they were trying to model the effects of kangaroos scattering when frightened by helicopters. The scattering behavior can warn enemy units of the helicopter approach, so pilots needed to be trained to avoid them. The industrious contractors worked day and night to add kangaroos to the flight simulator. When finished, the first pilots tested the new simulator.
The helicopter cleared a hill and startled a group of kangaroos. The animals scattered just as the were supposed to. The problem is that some of them took cover and started shooting back with shoulder mounted Stinger missiles. It turns out that the contractors started developing the kangaroos from a basic infantry class, changed the graphics and modified the behavior, but there were still links to the old code. Old defensive behavior occasionally got triggered in the new models.
The upside was that the helicopter pilots learned to avoid the kangaroos.
"I'd think it would be slightly cheaper to try and avoid a situation where someone wants to fire missiles at you in the first place"
No, the best way of ridding the world of terrorism is just to kill everybody. Side bonus is that you also end 100% of crime, divorce, child abuse, and the global warming debate.
[snip]
It's called Thanatotherapy (a "one-session approach to brief psychotherapy"). I read a good study in the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity. Highly effective and no recurrence rates; insurance usual covers the treatment.
Answering even half of those comments would take pages, and it seems that quite a few represent fairly extreme positions on his supposedly extreme positions. However, a couple of quick ones:
The article explains very clearly why the college exists and why it would be a disaster if it were taken apart, particularly without putting something in its place to accomplish the same goals:
This argument is hostile to the Constitution, however, which expressly established the United States as a constitutionally limited republic and not a direct democracy. The Founding Fathers sought to protect certain fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of speech, against the changing whims of popular opinion. Similarly, they created the Electoral College to guard against majority tyranny in federal elections. The president was to be elected by the 50 states rather than the American people directly, to ensure that less populated states had a voice in national elections. This is why they blended Electoral College votes between U.S. House seats, which are based on population, and U.S. Senate seats, which are accorded equally to each state. The goal was to balance the inherent tension between majority will and majority tyranny. Those who wish to abolish the Electoral College because it's not purely democratic should also argue that less populated states like Rhode Island or Wyoming don't deserve two senators.
The point of a Republic is both to protect the populace from the individual and to protect the individual from the mob. Abuses from swinging too far in either direction are quite common. I live in the Mid-West. My needs are different from LA and New York city. I want my vote to count, too. Allowing different voices to be heard is an essential part of the process.
As for avoiding entangling alliances being so 1800's, read about World War I? The point of non-interventionism is to negotiate from a strong position and only intervene when necessary. This does not mean no treaties, no trade, no defense. It means just the opposite, but treaties should always be structured to protect sovereignty, not force you into precipitous action decided by foreign powers; that is one way wars start. And, obviously, unnecessary wars start easily when you are in the habit of starting them yourself.
Both of these principles go hand in hand and are a big part of what is supposed to make us different.
Is Dr. Paul perfect? Hell no. When I see someone perfect in power, I don't expect to have to worry about politics after that. He is a good bit better than many other choices, and is essentially honest, which is frightening for a politician. But, even if he did not exist, the basic principles make sense and are something worth striving for.
People seem to think that principles are passé and cynicism is the only true path. I don't know if that represents you or not, but it seems to be very common. Hogwash. I took an oath to defend the Constitution. I take it seriously.
Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by a cruise missile from a US warship, this system is made to protect against cheap shoulder fired missiles/rockets. I don't know if it would be effective against the kind of missile that our warship used but I really doubt it.
Partly right. As another poster pointed out, it was not a cruise missile, as they are used for attacking land targets. The Surface to Air Missile used was an Standard Missile 2, specifically the SM2-MR. This SAM is a Semi-Active Radar Homing (SARH) missile, similar to the Sparrow widely carried by fighter aircraft. SARH weapons work by following a radar signal from the launcher which "paints" the target. The missile sees the radar return from the aircraft and follows it in. The missiles are fairly effective but have the downside that they can only see their target as long as the launcher retains contact and the missile's seeker catches the reflection. Maneuverable targets can use break-away maneuvers which sometimes cause the launcher to lose contact.
The bit that is particularly relevant here is that SARH guidance systems do not seek heat at all and would not be confused by a laser heating their seeker, nor a flare for that matter. On the other hand, radar-guided missiles are larger than the simpler infrared systems and would be unlikely to be shoulder-launched.
It looks like Wikipedia has an entry on the Standard Missile. As always with Wikipedia, take it with a grain of salt.
If a company were to walk up to each of the code owners and receive the same terms in the form of a signed contract then nothing would have changed,
And that's the key - they didn't obtain a signed contract did they?
Guess, what - that's new, and untested. And swimming in very murky legal waters.
If they don't agree to the license, they have no defense to copyright violation. The only defense they have is to accept (and comply with) the license; otherwise, standard copyright penalties apply. The GPL is never tested in court because the court cases end up being about copyright violation, not the GPL. Someone trying to challenge the GPL as "invalid" shoots themselves because they take away their only legal right to use the software. If they say, "I didn't sign it!" Fine. They get hit for copyright violation. No problem. The only thing they could do is try to shoot down some clause of the GPL as "unconscionable" and claim that they complied with the remainder of the license, but I think that would be a rather large stretch. [IANAL]
Which is why I used the word "may" rather than "will". The fact that the FSF, or some other copyright holder, has not asked for that remedy does not mean they are unable to do so in the future. If you have a software product, or a hardware device with easily reprogrammable firmware, then it is less likely. Assuming of course the copyright holder is not a GPL zealot, which is of course quite possible. However if the device is not easily reprogrammable, or recallable, it becomes more likely.
I think you misunderstand that the GPL is a license, not a contract. When you are accused of copyright violation of a work under the GPL, you may choose to bring up the GPL as a defense by saying, "Gee, Your Honor, I am not violating copyright because I have this license here and I have complied with it." The copyright holder cannot sue you to force you releasing your code because the GPL is not a contract for which performance can be forced. If you do not claim the GPL as a defense or choose to offer compliance as a remedy, the GPL never enters into the case at all and you have the standard choices that any copyright violator has, including ceasing distribution, removing the GPLed code, and paying damages (or settling) for the past violations.
Once you remove the GPLed code from your own, you are free to do whatever you like with it. There are no "GPL-cooties" that infect the ones and zeros as long as you refrain from distributing the infringing parts in the future. The reason the GPL has "never been tested" in court as so many are fond of saying is that by time a case gets there, the violator would be an idiot to bring the GPL into the picture if they were not in compliance. They settle or pay damages and cure the breach (by either complying or removing the infringing code).
IANAL, but I like to dress up like a judge... with a wig and play with the little hammer thingy and... uh... oh... never mind...
I agree with the parent post. El Al, the Israeli airline, has been using this as part of their security arsenal for almost as long as they've been around. Made some excellent collars also, some of terrorists, occasionally a terrorist that was planning on blowing up the flight they were trying to board.
My only concern with this is who is doing the behavioural profiling. A highly experienced security person that has undergone a comprehensive training program for behavioural profiling will be very effective. A typical US airport $10/hour "rent-a-cop" that sat through a boring badly designed half hour seminar with 200 others will be worse than useless. A big problem is that it is quite hard to do correctly and is apparently not being done so in this case. In the article, they say there are 600-700 arrests out of 70,000 identifications of a threat. That means they are wrong 99% of the time and finding someone getting on a plane with an outstanding warrant (when many of them from what I have read can be for very minor infractions like unpaid parking tickets) hardly eliminates a threat to security. They might be able to pick people at random and do better, depending on how many people have warrants for unpaid parking tickets.
My point exactly, I have no idea why I've even been modded Funny! Same applies to mass shootings by the way, if say one out of ten persons would carry a handgun at all times I don't see how a mass shooting could go very far.
You mean that if the US looked more like Iraq the number of shootings would go down?
Rawlpindi is a garisson city. No shortage of arms there. Yet the suicide bomber still managed to kill rather more than any US spree shooter.
That is certainly true, but one wonders if any measures would make a difference in a situation with that much conflict and unrest. A society has to have respect for rule of law and general civility. In that case, some number of citizens carrying arms allows people to help each other given that it is physically impossible for police to be everywhere or prevent everything. That did not arrive at my school until well after the shooting was over.
In the Wild West, it was not the presence of guns which cause problems, but the lack of law, including the fact that criminals were not (consistently) punished after the fact and the law itself was as likely to be the criminal.
Of course, another game that keeps going back and forth between the military and commercial markets is Harpoon, which I played for years before and after I worked in the DoD. It is a fleet-level modern naval tactical warfare simulation (real time) that is a real experience to play if you have the patience and mental energy. It has been used in one form or another at the Naval Academy at Annapolis for a long time (customized data set). It has an easily customizable scenario format and platform database. People are constantly researching and designing scenarios based on current events and tactical problems or historical situations.
Want to see what would happen between China and Taiwan when the US is distracted elsewhere and has limited resources on-hand? How about a sudden Cold-War era eruption of WWIII where NATO is racing to set up an ASW picket in the GIUK gap and protect a convoy corridor? A conflict in the Gulf where you have to sort out small hostile missile boats from neutral and friendly fishing/merchant fleets in crowded waters? It is also often used by military theorists to test the probable effects of new military developments, like when the Joint Strike Fighter was in development, or recently with the potential development of a Chinese successor to the Russian Udaloy class destroyer. Anyway, if you want to get an appreciation of the difficulty of some naval combat situations, especially if you turn on all of the logistics tracking options, this is the way to do it.
In an interesting reversal, we actually used the commercial, non-classified Harpoon dataset in the Pentagon for off-site test/development of software. The data the software acted on was typically highly classified, but we worked to have the source code inspected and declassified, so we needed clean data to populate it off-site to run tests before deploying new builds to the Pentagon. There are just not that many off-the-shelf unclassified military intelligence databases:-)
They don't teach you how to "murder" people. What they teach you is team cohesiveness. I.E. working together for a common goal.
Which you won't be learning if you play by yourself. Exactly. I was involved in an early project with the Army Urban Warfare Center about that same time to modify the Quake engine for their use. It had nothing to do with combat training per se: you cannot learn how to fire a rifle from a game. What they wanted to do was to train fire teams in how to take enemy complexes in an efficient manner, play with scenarios and develop tactical doctrine that could then be played out in a live exercise.
One of the interesting aspects is that (former) Soviet block countries mostly used Soviet blueprints to design facilities. There were a very limited number of standard designs for say, barracks, headquarters buildings and so forth. A complex would be made up of some combination of these modular components. What they wanted to do was to be able to have the game be able to read in a design for a complex containing these standard building designs (OK, we have two of these, one of those, and five of these other things) and then (somewhat) dynamically throw together a computerized training sim that the fire teams could then work with. Besides developing some basic strategies (limited by the physics of the game), the soldiers were also absorbing the layouts of the facilities. Since the facilities layouts were standardized, these translated to valuable real world knowledge.
I basically acted as an adviser to the project for a bit alongside my regular work. I suggested they use the Quake engine and did a bit of research on how they could use a GIS (GRASS), an Oracle Database, some software to do the level generation, and the Quake engine to get where they wanted to go. It was a really interesting problem. I had a set of maps of the Pentagon at one point (just tourist stuff, not incredibly detailed) and wanted to do sections of it up as a Quake scenario (maybe giant transvestite hamsters take it over and have to be exterminated or something, who knows). Post 9/11, that might not go over well. People just aren't any fun these days.
At this time, we just don't know how effectively the resulting data could be searched for unusual behaviour. Nothing of this scale has been done yet. But it could work, at least in principle, because all of the technology issues involved have already been solved for other problems. The remaining issue is how well you can automatically distinguish between a terrorist and a regular person when all you know about each is everywhere they have been in the last few years. Being flagged with a false positive could prove rather inconvenient. This is the big problem. Terrorists are actually quite rare. There is therefore very little information to input on them and most of it is likely to be statistical anomaly. There was an AI test at one point getting a piece of software to recognize images with tanks in them. They had a relatively small training set but the software did really well with it. Hit it with some real data and it got essentially random results. Why? In the test data, the photos with tanks and without tanks were shot on separate days. The "with tanks" days were cloudy. The software therefore "learned" that tanks only appeared on cloudy days.
It's the same thing with these systems. All they will detect are operator prejudices and statistical anomalies. Unfortunately, we have a diverse culture (for the moment at least...) and people are anomalous. Look at all the stupid false alarms lately. This idea is just an expensive way to automate stupid overreactions. Go team.
By definition, a slippery slope is a series of incremental steps. Your argument that this step is incremental does not figure. The problem with this system is 1) the capability to add the tracking you say is not there is simple storage, something that is cheaper every day, is simple to add and is... incremental. 2) being programmable, it is capable of being used/abused for much more than its intended purpose with little control.
But the big thing you say is that security is only being added in "high-risk" areas. Government abuses are historically *more* common than terrorist attacks, without having to invoke Elvis or aliens. We just had someone here embezzle $1.3 million over several years in the court system right under the nose of the city auditors. A recently demanded city audit shows the system is rife with abuse. Recently, a state legislator was bribed to sneak language into a bill (seven minutes before a vote) to allow a local businessman to bypass county law for a development that was denied as illegal numerous times over the last decade. Even though it is acknowledged that the bill was fraudulent, it has been signed and cannot be removed until the next legislative session--- at which point it may be too late. The CIA is currently being investigated for destroying tapes at GITMO showing evidence of torture. Our governor has created a scandal for deleting emails related to abusing his authority for political purposes (in violation of a records law he signed). In Arkansas, people have been put on death row based on evidence from autopsies which were apparently *never performed*. Where we need cameras and threat tracking is apparently on the floor of the legislature, in our courthouses, and our prisons. We need to be tracking where our politicians are going and who they meet. Somehow, I don't hear the loud cry from our representatives and "leaders" for this. Why should I give up *my* privacy, but our governor (or president) refuse to turn over emails or submit to working on camera?
They are *public* servants, and according to you, "public" affords no privacy. People do not seem to get the idea that anyone is capable of being a criminal or terrorist, including people hired to protect us from them. In Springfiled, IL, a man was recently arraigned for sex tourism and child pornography that was a cop, baptist minister, scout leader, day care volunteer, and clown with a (previously) clean record. *If* you are going to be paranoid about terrorists (I'm not), it does not make any sense to be less cautious about government power in the hands of terrorists or criminals!
As for me, when traveling through areas like Manhattan, I would much rather have a surveillance system like the one the article describes in place than an armed national guard member on every corner. Given the choice, I would rather have the armed guard. First, they are visible and obvious; there is a gun behind the camera just the same. Second, they actually have a chance to *interact* with people and learn about where they are working. It has a chance of becoming less of an "us-vs-them" thing as I stare at this gal's tits from the safety of my video screen and wonder about all of these "perps" walking around, and more of a "how can we work together to make this safe" thing. In an area I lived outside of DC, they started putting cops on bicycles and getting them out in the neighborhood talking to people instead of cruising around in cars: crime dropped sharply.
Given the choice, I would much rather a human standing there. Personally, I do not see the need for *either* on every street corner. There simply are not that many terrorists, and, if there were, how would you keep them out of the police?
Actually, we do not understand many of the physical laws which govern the functioning of brains. As an example, exactly how signals are transmitted is not understood (and why certain anesthetics block them). Without understanding these mechanisms, we cannot understand the exact role of quantum mechanics in the functioning of the brain. It is quite possible that quantum mechanics causes effects which are not able to be modeled in a digital computer (allowing computation of some 'non-computable' elements for instance). This does not mean that we cannot simulate the mind in principle in some sort of computer, but it may mean that there is a qualitative difference between the brain and the computers of today. Until we know more, we cannot answer that question.
Greater than 100% turnout doesn't necessarily imply that the general voting age population is the denominator - registered voters can also be the denominator.
That's true. It doesn't necessarily imply anything. You could even go so far as to say that this proves, oh, NOTHING.
There sure are a lot of knee jerk conclusions though. You could even go so far as to say that this was propaganda. Are you saying that more people voting than there are registered voters is not fraudulent? That means that 1) people who are not registered are voting, 2) people who are registered vote more than once, or 3) votes are magically appearing. How is this not bad? Even 100% of registered voters voting is actually rare. Many people decide not to bother and many people who do bother don't make it to the polls (illness, things come up, die between registration and polling day, abducted by aliens, whatever).
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Some people are religious Christians, some people are religious drunks, and, if you don't believe that science can be a religion, you have not tried to discuss facts with someone who has a pet theory. Atheism may be a religion for some people: it depends on whether they are atheists because they don't see the need for anything else or because they are against religion. Many people, perhaps most, are religious about the core things in their life because they accept them on faith and believe them dogmatically, whatever their philosophical underpinnings.
Science does require faith for the same reason that accepting the Bible as describing spiritual events requires faith: people do not, for the most part, directly experience the things they read about or are told. Sure, in theory, you could reproduce the Michelson-Morley experiment, but have you? Did you witness the Gettysburg address? Or do you just accept that someone has? Even if you are very skeptical, you cannot ever verify ever bit of scientific knowledge you depend on. People depend on a structure of reasoning and a framework to put those bits of knowledge into so that they *could* be tested, but practically, we trust each other (most of the time). Yes, they *are* different, but there are fundaments that are the same, and, even with religion, one should not blindly trust everything one is handed. That is why it is important to study and explore, to figure out what has meaning to you.
I am not saying that scientific reasoning and religious reasoning are the same. They are not. But in the end, meaning is where it is at; the rest fills time.
Again, it largely comes down to semantics. Both "sides" frame straw men of the others' beliefs and then label them as irrational. Very few Christians really believe that species do not change through some natural process. (Though there are *certainly* some.) Very few evolutionary scientists (including Darwin) are or were really wedded to abiogenesis in any strong, pedagogical sense (though, again, there are always nuts). The terms have been stretched to the breaking point, even by scientists. If people would actually work on separating the two concepts in the way they actually belong, the argument would get much more rational.
The guy's a practicing doctor (and a competent one) for heaven's sake! You think he hasn't studied biology?
Technically, even the literal interpretation extremists have to believe in speciation because the number of "kinds" saved on the ark would have had to diverge to the number of distinct species we have today (in a few thousand years). E.g.: cats->lions and tigers and barn cats. Good luck getting them to admit it though.
Rachael Carson was once admonished by her grandmother for asking too many questions: "You know, Rachael, *God* made the Universe." "I know, Granny, but I want to find out *how* he did it." We can be on the same "side."
There are a number of anomalies across the board. Given my candidate choice, I pay attention to particular ones, but unfair votes concern me, period.
Two I am immediately familiar with:
* A precinct where there were almost 700 registered local active Ron Paul volunteers but less than 400 votes counted. Huh?
* A (small) precinct that counted zero votes for Dr. Paul where a family of three (all of whom voted for him) submitted a challenge. It turns out that the hand ballots recorded 31 votes, but "0" was "accidentally" copied to the tally sheet when it was submitted to the party HQ. "3", "1", "13", "30", I could all understand, but how do you mis-copy "31" as "0". A problem here is that actual counts are usually observed, but the filing of the summary sheets is not.
I am not running around screaming "my candidate should have won". I think he did better, possibly quite a bit better than represented, but I expect that a recount would uncover (and correct) abuse against other candidates as well. People's votes, even if they vote for Attila the Hun, should count. There are people I would probably leave the country for if elected, but I still think the elections should be fair.
I am not even going to get started on the Iowa Caucus. It is so badly handled there is no fixing it and no way a recount would even correct anything. It seems pretty certain at least Giuliani, Romney, and Dr. Paul got under-counted, but who knows by how much or what else was going on. At least the vote is not meant to be binding and the delegates are elected separately (as I understand it).
Given how partisan and divisive elections are getting and how bad the question (and answer) of fraud is growing, it is a bad combination. I really begin to wonder what will happen when a large portion of the population "loses" an election and just plain refuses to accept that the election was fair (perhaps with valid cause). With many of the election systems and processes currently in place, you simply cannot *prove* that an election was anywhere in the ballpark of fair -to either side-. I see bad things from this. Replacing the voting system with something that requires a majority win, encourages moderate candidates or opens things to more parties can defuse the situation somewhat (e.g. Instant Run-off voting, or, better, ranked voting). Those systems tend to be a little less sensitive to manipulation and produce larger/clearer margins of victory.
Some things indeed are better to be standardized across the whole and the Constitution spells many of these out, but many things should not be. Remember, that the US is *big* compared to many nations. The individual states are the size of many individual countries and are sovereign in their own right.
The good and bad thing about this campaign is that no one has run one like this before. That has let us do some absolutely unprecedented things, like herding an enormous number of cats for short-notice rallies and nationwide events. On the other hand, it is also a learning experience. As an example, we are working in Missouri on capitalizing on the successes in Iowa precincts where Dr. Paul go >30% support. We did different things in different places and are learning from the results. Running a campaign against a nearly *complete* mainstream media blackout is not an easy task. The fact that we are doing it at all speaks volumes for the dedication of the people that are literally freezing their butts off to get that message out. Not many people care for what is going on in this country enough to even *vote*. The fight itself is a victory.
On the other hand, if we don't even start until after the next war monger gets out of office after they have moved more troops and equipment in, we take seven years to get out of there. Add up our current burn rate, add a bit for troop and equipment increases, and tell me how we finance that on top of approaching $10 trillion in debt.
[snip] I have googled before and just did again. I see no conflict. People say that he "denounced" evolution as a theory. That's like "denouncing" Relativity as a theory. They *are* theories. That's not "denouncing" anything. As far as I can read and as far as I know, Dr. Paul's stand is simply against the common and popular confusion of Evolution and Abiogensis: the idea that species change over time and question of where it came from in the first place. Most people (and, even, unfortunately, many, many scientists) lump the concepts together. Taken separately, there is no conflict between the Theory of Evolution and Creationism (or the idea that early life came from a comet for that matter). Certainly, the theory taken as a whole that life spontaneously from random molecules on earth and evolved via natural selection from there is just that: a *theory*. The basic tenets of Natural Selection alone are things we observe on a daily basis these days. Now, I doubt, whether or not his use of terms is that pedantic, but either way, raising his hand and being given 10 seconds to explain was no time for a deep lesson on semantics.
So, what is the big deal again?
for some reasons, they think that the hard lines hand up not a hand out way of thinking doesn't work with the moder skulls full of mush. The funny thing is, this "compassionate conservatism" movement was started by Horace Greeley (a "Social Universalist") in the mid 1800s. He essentially became the father of Communist thought in America. Given the Cold War, people these days want to bury that connection as far under the rug as possible, but the ideals came from the same place and are not very different. Of the three "main" American social philosophies that came out of the 1800s, Social Darwinism, Social Calvinism, and Social Universalism: Social Darwinism led to US Nazi sympathizers, Social Universalism to the US Communist movement (toned down a bit in what we is now called "compassionate conservatism", and Social Calvanism was marginalized. The other fact that is ignored is that the Social Calvinists were far from "hard hearted". They were extremely active in charity and built compassionate organizations all over the place. What is "wrong" with them is that they mostly gave time/effort and sometimes goods, very seldom money. Because they rarely gave *money*, modern socialists discount them as "charity." Somehow, I think leaving a comfortable home and volunteering to walk into a slum and sit down with the poor, sick, and disadvantaged, bothering to find out what they really need and help them is rather more compassionate than voting to send someone else's money through taxes.
I would like a choice of small government, pro-states rights candidates so that debates on this exact issues could happen, but the system has not given us that. Given how far we have swung to the big government, federalism, colossal debt direction, I doubt that a pro-small government president can swing us too far back to the other side in only one or two terms and he will likely do much good. At this point, though, another big government president might push us to or over the brink. What are the alternatives?
In other news, New Zealand equips all tractors with laser guided missiles to protect against terrorist sheep; and in Barbados the government combats terrorism by issuing tape recorders designed to look like coconuts to all citizens.
The truly insane keep doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different result...
When I was in the Pentagon, there was a simulation developed in another group where they were trying to model the effects of kangaroos scattering when frightened by helicopters. The scattering behavior can warn enemy units of the helicopter approach, so pilots needed to be trained to avoid them. The industrious contractors worked day and night to add kangaroos to the flight simulator. When finished, the first pilots tested the new simulator.
The helicopter cleared a hill and startled a group of kangaroos. The animals scattered just as the were supposed to. The problem is that some of them took cover and started shooting back with shoulder mounted Stinger missiles. It turns out that the contractors started developing the kangaroos from a basic infantry class, changed the graphics and modified the behavior, but there were still links to the old code. Old defensive behavior occasionally got triggered in the new models.
The upside was that the helicopter pilots learned to avoid the kangaroos.
It's called Thanatotherapy (a "one-session approach to brief psychotherapy"). I read a good study in the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity. Highly effective and no recurrence rates; insurance usual covers the treatment.
Answering even half of those comments would take pages, and it seems that quite a few represent fairly extreme positions on his supposedly extreme positions. However, a couple of quick ones:
The article explains very clearly why the college exists and why it would be a disaster if it were taken apart, particularly without putting something in its place to accomplish the same goals:
This argument is hostile to the Constitution, however, which expressly established the United States as a constitutionally limited republic and not a direct democracy. The Founding Fathers sought to protect certain fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of speech, against the changing whims of popular opinion. Similarly, they created the Electoral College to guard against majority tyranny in federal elections. The president was to be elected by the 50 states rather than the American people directly, to ensure that less populated states had a voice in national elections. This is why they blended Electoral College votes between U.S. House seats, which are based on population, and U.S. Senate seats, which are accorded equally to each state. The goal was to balance the inherent tension between majority will and majority tyranny. Those who wish to abolish the Electoral College because it's not purely democratic should also argue that less populated states like Rhode Island or Wyoming don't deserve two senators.
The point of a Republic is both to protect the populace from the individual and to protect the individual from the mob. Abuses from swinging too far in either direction are quite common. I live in the Mid-West. My needs are different from LA and New York city. I want my vote to count, too. Allowing different voices to be heard is an essential part of the process.
As for avoiding entangling alliances being so 1800's, read about World War I? The point of non-interventionism is to negotiate from a strong position and only intervene when necessary. This does not mean no treaties, no trade, no defense. It means just the opposite, but treaties should always be structured to protect sovereignty, not force you into precipitous action decided by foreign powers; that is one way wars start. And, obviously, unnecessary wars start easily when you are in the habit of starting them yourself.
Both of these principles go hand in hand and are a big part of what is supposed to make us different.
Is Dr. Paul perfect? Hell no. When I see someone perfect in power, I don't expect to have to worry about politics after that. He is a good bit better than many other choices, and is essentially honest, which is frightening for a politician. But, even if he did not exist, the basic principles make sense and are something worth striving for.
People seem to think that principles are passé and cynicism is the only true path. I don't know if that represents you or not, but it seems to be very common. Hogwash. I took an oath to defend the Constitution. I take it seriously.
Partly right. As another poster pointed out, it was not a cruise missile, as they are used for attacking land targets. The Surface to Air Missile used was an Standard Missile 2, specifically the SM2-MR. This SAM is a Semi-Active Radar Homing (SARH) missile, similar to the Sparrow widely carried by fighter aircraft. SARH weapons work by following a radar signal from the launcher which "paints" the target. The missile sees the radar return from the aircraft and follows it in. The missiles are fairly effective but have the downside that they can only see their target as long as the launcher retains contact and the missile's seeker catches the reflection. Maneuverable targets can use break-away maneuvers which sometimes cause the launcher to lose contact.
The bit that is particularly relevant here is that SARH guidance systems do not seek heat at all and would not be confused by a laser heating their seeker, nor a flare for that matter. On the other hand, radar-guided missiles are larger than the simpler infrared systems and would be unlikely to be shoulder-launched.
It looks like Wikipedia has an entry on the Standard Missile. As always with Wikipedia, take it with a grain of salt.
If they don't agree to the license, they have no defense to copyright violation. The only defense they have is to accept (and comply with) the license; otherwise, standard copyright penalties apply. The GPL is never tested in court because the court cases end up being about copyright violation, not the GPL. Someone trying to challenge the GPL as "invalid" shoots themselves because they take away their only legal right to use the software. If they say, "I didn't sign it!" Fine. They get hit for copyright violation. No problem. The only thing they could do is try to shoot down some clause of the GPL as "unconscionable" and claim that they complied with the remainder of the license, but I think that would be a rather large stretch. [IANAL]
I think you misunderstand that the GPL is a license, not a contract. When you are accused of copyright violation of a work under the GPL, you may choose to bring up the GPL as a defense by saying, "Gee, Your Honor, I am not violating copyright because I have this license here and I have complied with it." The copyright holder cannot sue you to force you releasing your code because the GPL is not a contract for which performance can be forced. If you do not claim the GPL as a defense or choose to offer compliance as a remedy, the GPL never enters into the case at all and you have the standard choices that any copyright violator has, including ceasing distribution, removing the GPLed code, and paying damages (or settling) for the past violations.
Once you remove the GPLed code from your own, you are free to do whatever you like with it. There are no "GPL-cooties" that infect the ones and zeros as long as you refrain from distributing the infringing parts in the future. The reason the GPL has "never been tested" in court as so many are fond of saying is that by time a case gets there, the violator would be an idiot to bring the GPL into the picture if they were not in compliance. They settle or pay damages and cure the breach (by either complying or removing the infringing code).
IANAL, but I like to dress up like a judge... with a wig and play with the little hammer thingy and ... uh ... oh ... never mind...
My only concern with this is who is doing the behavioural profiling. A highly experienced security person that has undergone a comprehensive training program for behavioural profiling will be very effective. A typical US airport $10/hour "rent-a-cop" that sat through a boring badly designed half hour seminar with 200 others will be worse than useless. A big problem is that it is quite hard to do correctly and is apparently not being done so in this case. In the article, they say there are 600-700 arrests out of 70,000 identifications of a threat. That means they are wrong 99% of the time and finding someone getting on a plane with an outstanding warrant (when many of them from what I have read can be for very minor infractions like unpaid parking tickets) hardly eliminates a threat to security. They might be able to pick people at random and do better, depending on how many people have warrants for unpaid parking tickets.
You mean that if the US looked more like Iraq the number of shootings would go down?
Rawlpindi is a garisson city. No shortage of arms there. Yet the suicide bomber still managed to kill rather more than any US spree shooter.
That is certainly true, but one wonders if any measures would make a difference in a situation with that much conflict and unrest. A society has to have respect for rule of law and general civility. In that case, some number of citizens carrying arms allows people to help each other given that it is physically impossible for police to be everywhere or prevent everything. That did not arrive at my school until well after the shooting was over.
In the Wild West, it was not the presence of guns which cause problems, but the lack of law, including the fact that criminals were not (consistently) punished after the fact and the law itself was as likely to be the criminal.
Of course, another game that keeps going back and forth between the military and commercial markets is Harpoon, which I played for years before and after I worked in the DoD. It is a fleet-level modern naval tactical warfare simulation (real time) that is a real experience to play if you have the patience and mental energy. It has been used in one form or another at the Naval Academy at Annapolis for a long time (customized data set). It has an easily customizable scenario format and platform database. People are constantly researching and designing scenarios based on current events and tactical problems or historical situations.
Want to see what would happen between China and Taiwan when the US is distracted elsewhere and has limited resources on-hand? How about a sudden Cold-War era eruption of WWIII where NATO is racing to set up an ASW picket in the GIUK gap and protect a convoy corridor? A conflict in the Gulf where you have to sort out small hostile missile boats from neutral and friendly fishing/merchant fleets in crowded waters? It is also often used by military theorists to test the probable effects of new military developments, like when the Joint Strike Fighter was in development, or recently with the potential development of a Chinese successor to the Russian Udaloy class destroyer. Anyway, if you want to get an appreciation of the difficulty of some naval combat situations, especially if you turn on all of the logistics tracking options, this is the way to do it.
In an interesting reversal, we actually used the commercial, non-classified Harpoon dataset in the Pentagon for off-site test/development of software. The data the software acted on was typically highly classified, but we worked to have the source code inspected and declassified, so we needed clean data to populate it off-site to run tests before deploying new builds to the Pentagon. There are just not that many off-the-shelf unclassified military intelligence databases :-)
Which you won't be learning if you play by yourself. Exactly. I was involved in an early project with the Army Urban Warfare Center about that same time to modify the Quake engine for their use. It had nothing to do with combat training per se: you cannot learn how to fire a rifle from a game. What they wanted to do was to train fire teams in how to take enemy complexes in an efficient manner, play with scenarios and develop tactical doctrine that could then be played out in a live exercise.
One of the interesting aspects is that (former) Soviet block countries mostly used Soviet blueprints to design facilities. There were a very limited number of standard designs for say, barracks, headquarters buildings and so forth. A complex would be made up of some combination of these modular components. What they wanted to do was to be able to have the game be able to read in a design for a complex containing these standard building designs (OK, we have two of these, one of those, and five of these other things) and then (somewhat) dynamically throw together a computerized training sim that the fire teams could then work with. Besides developing some basic strategies (limited by the physics of the game), the soldiers were also absorbing the layouts of the facilities. Since the facilities layouts were standardized, these translated to valuable real world knowledge.
I basically acted as an adviser to the project for a bit alongside my regular work. I suggested they use the Quake engine and did a bit of research on how they could use a GIS (GRASS), an Oracle Database, some software to do the level generation, and the Quake engine to get where they wanted to go. It was a really interesting problem. I had a set of maps of the Pentagon at one point (just tourist stuff, not incredibly detailed) and wanted to do sections of it up as a Quake scenario (maybe giant transvestite hamsters take it over and have to be exterminated or something, who knows). Post 9/11, that might not go over well. People just aren't any fun these days.
It's the same thing with these systems. All they will detect are operator prejudices and statistical anomalies. Unfortunately, we have a diverse culture (for the moment at least...) and people are anomalous. Look at all the stupid false alarms lately. This idea is just an expensive way to automate stupid overreactions. Go team.
By definition, a slippery slope is a series of incremental steps. Your argument that this step is incremental does not figure. The problem with this system is 1) the capability to add the tracking you say is not there is simple storage, something that is cheaper every day, is simple to add and is... incremental. 2) being programmable, it is capable of being used/abused for much more than its intended purpose with little control.
But the big thing you say is that security is only being added in "high-risk" areas. Government abuses are historically *more* common than terrorist attacks, without having to invoke Elvis or aliens. We just had someone here embezzle $1.3 million over several years in the court system right under the nose of the city auditors. A recently demanded city audit shows the system is rife with abuse. Recently, a state legislator was bribed to sneak language into a bill (seven minutes before a vote) to allow a local businessman to bypass county law for a development that was denied as illegal numerous times over the last decade. Even though it is acknowledged that the bill was fraudulent, it has been signed and cannot be removed until the next legislative session--- at which point it may be too late. The CIA is currently being investigated for destroying tapes at GITMO showing evidence of torture. Our governor has created a scandal for deleting emails related to abusing his authority for political purposes (in violation of a records law he signed). In Arkansas, people have been put on death row based on evidence from autopsies which were apparently *never performed*. Where we need cameras and threat tracking is apparently on the floor of the legislature, in our courthouses, and our prisons. We need to be tracking where our politicians are going and who they meet. Somehow, I don't hear the loud cry from our representatives and "leaders" for this. Why should I give up *my* privacy, but our governor (or president) refuse to turn over emails or submit to working on camera?
They are *public* servants, and according to you, "public" affords no privacy. People do not seem to get the idea that anyone is capable of being a criminal or terrorist, including people hired to protect us from them. In Springfiled, IL, a man was recently arraigned for sex tourism and child pornography that was a cop, baptist minister, scout leader, day care volunteer, and clown with a (previously) clean record. *If* you are going to be paranoid about terrorists (I'm not), it does not make any sense to be less cautious about government power in the hands of terrorists or criminals!
Given the choice, I would much rather a human standing there. Personally, I do not see the need for *either* on every street corner. There simply are not that many terrorists, and, if there were, how would you keep them out of the police?
Actually, we do not understand many of the physical laws which govern the functioning of brains. As an example, exactly how signals are transmitted is not understood (and why certain anesthetics block them). Without understanding these mechanisms, we cannot understand the exact role of quantum mechanics in the functioning of the brain. It is quite possible that quantum mechanics causes effects which are not able to be modeled in a digital computer (allowing computation of some 'non-computable' elements for instance). This does not mean that we cannot simulate the mind in principle in some sort of computer, but it may mean that there is a qualitative difference between the brain and the computers of today. Until we know more, we cannot answer that question.
Something had to sterilize and pack them the first time, right?
That's true. It doesn't necessarily imply anything. You could even go so far as to say that this proves, oh, NOTHING.
There sure are a lot of knee jerk conclusions though. You could even go so far as to say that this was propaganda. Are you saying that more people voting than there are registered voters is not fraudulent? That means that 1) people who are not registered are voting, 2) people who are registered vote more than once, or 3) votes are magically appearing. How is this not bad? Even 100% of registered voters voting is actually rare. Many people decide not to bother and many people who do bother don't make it to the polls (illness, things come up, die between registration and polling day, abducted by aliens, whatever).