"However, this would be absolutely trivial to block."
This is an important point, remember I suggested this is a good app for the tin foil suit. You do have to wonder why the military would have spent 11 years and probably hundreds of millions developing this if it is trivial to block.
Protesters once they know its there will start bringing foil tents for example. Not sure I'd want to wear a full body wet suit with face mask in summer heat for a protest.
I'm assuming the military is assuming most people in the demonstration wont come prepared so it will work or there is something about the beam that lets it penetrate most protection you would normally wear. For example maybe the water in your body/skin do absorb it well while heavy clothes do not.
Will this weapon actually be effective or it is it another exercise in Pentagon stupidity and pork going to a contractor to no good effect.
Because its messy and it doesn't work well. Its hard to get it in the right place, protesters bring gas masks, they throw the grenades back, with gloves. You gas everyone in the area especially when the wind is blowing the wrong way. It makes for bad TV pictures because when the tear gas starts flowing it turns, in the eyes of TV commentators, from protest to riot and violent confrontation. It becomes breaking news and the protesters get the attention they want.
To make my point another way, what do you think the result will be if a set of these patrol outside every WTO meeting from now on. Anyone who shows up to protest, unless they figure out counter measures, will be practically strapping electrodes to their own genitals and asking to be tortured. Chances are good it will put an end to protests and some of the crap the WTO pulls deserves to be protested. Protesting is one of the things our First Amendment is all about and this could put an end to.
Why do you think this would only be used against an out of control violent protest. Its non lethal, right, no one will get permenently damaged, right? Why not use it on anybody who strays in to the cordon around a WTO meeting, or anyone who lies down in the street in a nonviolent protest. In fact they may well be planning on building a cordon out of these beams which will prevent protesters from getting anywhere near something that deserves to be protested, that is what the name "Active Denial" suggests, they are actively denying you entry to anyplace they don't want you to go, especially to protest.
Its just to clean, tidy and easy so its sure to be abused more than all the messy means for riot control supposedly civilized governments currently use.
But you fail to appreciate that the fact that this is non lethal makes it worse. It makes it so much easier to use much more often. If there is a big protest and an authority is forced to use ugly and potentially lethal weapons to break it up then they will either show restraint, contain it and let it go, or they will use violence and if they do they will probably further alienate their population and make things worse for themselves. The shootings at Kent State were a near fatal blow to the misguided Vietnam war because it turned the people against a bad government.
The authorities can use this weapon with abandon in suppressing all unauthorized protests, and what is the point of protest if its authorized and put in a cage far out of sight and out of mind.
I know you've had the word terrorist drilled in to your head the Bush administration and the media using it about a 1000 times a day but when someone is attacking occupying soldiers in a war zone they are not "terrorists", they are guerillas or insurgents. Guerilla is probably the word you are looking for:
WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn] guerilla
adj : used of independent armed resistance forces; "guerrilla warfare"; "partisan forces" [syn: guerrilla(a), guerilla(a), underground, irregular]
n : a member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassment [syn: guerrilla, irregular, insurgent]
In the early 20th century the fear word the government used to "terrorize" the populace was anarchist. In the 1950's it was communist. Today it is terrorist. In all three cases the words were whipped to death, misused and misapplied. They are the words the U.S. government uses to "terrorize" their population and to tag everyone that isn't on their side.
I would be inclined to say that the Bush administration are as much terrorists as the people they tag with this word, because they are governing by constantly stoking the fears of the American people, are using that fear to stay in power, and are governing by intimidation:
Terrorist \Ter"ror*ist\, n. [F. terroriste.]
One who governs by terrorism or intimidation; specifically, an agent or partisan of the revolutionary tribunal during the Reign of Terror in France. --Burke.
adj : characteristic of someone who employs terrorism (especially as a political weapon)
Here is a more interesting new weapon in development by the U.S., courtesy of Raytheon(an ironic name in this case). Its the U.S. military's Active Denial System scheduled to start trials this fall. Its a millimeter wave beam weapon designed for non lethal crowd "control". The beam penetrates just below the your skin and sets off every pain receptor. Volunteers at Raytheon subjected to it described it as "unbearably painful, saying they felt as though their bodies were on fire". It should put an end to any unauthorized demonstrations against the U.S. or any of its allies.
Its an execeptionally good riot control device since it leaves no physical evidence, especially if the antenna is somewhat concealed. No clouds of tear gas, no protesters eyes burning from mace, no batons swinging, no soldiers shooting rubber or lead bullets to stoke sympathy from TV viewers. The protester will just start screaming in pain and running away. Sure to be a big hit in Israel and Iraq.
I'm wondering if they are working on an indoor version since it is a perfect tool for torture, it leaves no marks. The victim wouldn't even know what was happening to them.
It appears I now have a good reason to wear a tin foil hat, or really a full body suit like everyone keeps telling me I should. Its not just a Bush Big Brother Weapon either. I believe it was started by Clinton and is roundly endorsed by John Kerry.
This weapon is perfect for a dictatorship wanting to keep its people in line.
The problem is that if you are filling in little bubbles your vote is probably being run through a computerized scanner to automatically count them. Unless properly done and checked they are about as vulnerable as Diebold's machines to error induced miscounts or rigging, the machines are just in a more central location. The central location might make it easier to protect them from tampering or it might make it easier to tamper with them all if proper safeguards aren't in place.
The one big plus with your system is you can do a manual recount or recount them using a different machine. How does Oregon do a recount? Just run the ballots through the same machines they ran them through the first time, which is a sham, or actually use humans to count the bubbles.
With Diebold the only mechanism for a recount is to reread the counts in the machine which proves absolutely nothing because you will get the same answer everytime and it may have no correlation to the vote that was actually cast.
"So why the *hell* not just use paper votes in the first place?"
Because in the U.S. we have a government that is on a fast track to dictatorship and global empire. The people in power very much want to be able to rig elections so they cane be sure they get the right answer. They also want to sucker the American people into thinking that they still live in a democracy, and that their vote counts for something (when it doesn't). They don't want the little people to get upset about living in this new form of smoke and mirrors dictatorship.
The good people in Canada have a nice little country with no aspirations to dominating the planet so fair elections are still in order, though they won't really count for much either since you live next door to the world's biggest bully.
This post isn't exactly insightful. The first part that the software is consistently being changed by Diebold is certainly bad and must be stopped. Its a near certainty they may have rigged crucial election in Georgia in 2002 and in Califronia in the last election by mysterious and unauthorized last minute changes in Diebold's machines.
But getting a verifiable receipt that shows how you voted, and when its put in an old fashioned ballot box its priceless. You can then go back and do a manual recount of the paper and establish if the machine count was accurate or not.
As long as there are truly random recounts of at least a percentage of all votes cast you will most probably catch rigging or machine errors. I don't care how careful you are in making sure the machines are certified and locked, a paper trail is the only way to make them reliable.
I read an interesting observation the other day. It does appear the Bush administration has a life or death reason to make sure they win the next election, both the White House and the Congress.
It appears the Bush administration has, at the highest level, violated the Geneva conventions and U.S. law against torture, perhaps not against Al Qaeda since they are in a legal gray area but most certainly they tortured people in Iraq who were under Geneva protections.
It is extremely important to the Bush administration that they win the election so they can white wash the investigation. If someone truly independent did the investigation and found them guilty and it appears there is a pretty big paper trail and a lot of people involved, both in recently unveiled memos in which the DOJ and the Pentagon were engaged in a failed attempt to give a legal basis for torture and in revelations about Copper Green which suggest this program of torture was approved at the highest levels by Bush, Rumsfeld and his deputy Cambone.
Today it was revealed that dog handlers who were used in Iraq to scare prisoners were in fact doing so under orders from military intelligence officers which debunks the Bush administration's BS that the torture was just a bunch of rogue army reservists. If the investigation isn't a sham its nearly certain the torture will be traced to the Pentagon and the White House. It simply was a war crime to authorize to the Bush administration has a life or death reason to make sure they win the next election at all cost.
If you want to see the latest thing in torture look here.ts Its the U.S. military's Active Denial System developed by Raytheon scheduled to start trials this fall. Its a millimeter wave beam weapon designed for non lethal crowd "control". Volunteers at Raytheon subjected to it described it as "unbearably painful, saying they felt as though their bodies were on fire". It should put an end to any unauthorized demonstrations against the U.S. or any of its allies. Its not entirely clear what happens to your eyes if you take the beam in the face at close range, or if it will cause cancer long term. I'm wondering if they are working on an indoor version since it is a perfect tool for torture, it leaves no marks. The victim wouldn't even know what was happening to them. It appears I now have a good reason to where a tin foil hat, or really a full body suit like everyone keeps telling me I should when I propose the possibility that the Bush administration is, in fact, on a fast track to dictatorship.
" much safer than rubber bullets - which are (happens often) fatal if used incorrectly."
But you see the problem is it will be much easier to justify its use because is considered "safe". It also leaves no tell tale evidence behind especially if they conceal it in a near by building. It will most probably be extremely effective and that is the rub. It could wipe out unauthorized protests against things like the WTO, the G8 or any other whacked out malevolence that needs to be protested against. If you don't have a permit for your protest you get blasted with this thing and you quickly lose the desire to protest. If you do have a permit you will probably be confined to a caged area far from the dignitaries, press or anyone else so its a waste of time to even try. There is also no evidence anything was ever done to the protesters. There will be no TV pictures of water cannons, clouds of tear gas or soldiers shooting guns with rubber or lead bullets so there will be a lot less outrage at the fact the government is suppressing free speech and dissent.
This is the perfect weapon for a dictatorial police state.
"If we don't, then some day they'll come along and simply overpower us"
And if we do someday they will overpower us. China in particular will most likely pass the U.S. economically in at most 20 years. You simply can't run a half trillion dollar trade deficit and a half trillion dollar budget deficit, and growing, indefinitely without eventually destroying your economy. The multinationals may not be destroyed since they are just moving to China, but everyone living in the U.S.and Western Europe, and not working for a multinational, is going to be in a world of hurt.
China is the most sinister threat because they are intentionally pegging their currency at an artificially low level which means they are not indulging in fair trade, its dramatically stacked in their favor, along with rages rates in the 21 to 35 cent range. Their cheap currency also makes it extremely attractive for multinationals to move all their capital investment there. Its good for those companies initially since China's a bargain but one day they may rue the day they moved the substance of their business to a country not particularly friendly to the West.
The problem here is that China, in particular, is devastating one industry after another in the rest of the world, steel production, machine tool manufacturing, manufacturing in general and there isn't much stopping them from doing the same to semiconductors and software, especially when U.S. companies are turning their IP over to them wholesale either through partnerships or by putting technology centers there so the Chinese will learn everything they need to know to form their own companies some day and bury their former U.S. masters.
Once the U.S. loses its manufacturing and industrial base it will be interesting to see if it also loses its ability to build the weapons it needs to defend itself. The only saving grace is most modern weapons are small in number so they don't require the huge manufacturing base they did in World War II. But, in another 10 years if China turns openly hostile, the U.S. may suddenly discover its totally dependent on China for EVERYTHING, it may not be able to sustain a prolonged war and then the U.S. will be overpowered.
I wager China deduced they couldn't win against the U.S. militarily so they opted to do it economically and appear poised to be successful. Its kind of ironic since, if you believe the revisionist history about Reagan saturating the air waves today, he beat the U.S.S.R economically by forcing them to destroy their economy with an arms race they couldn't win. Will the U.S. see the same fate, by pouring all its resources in to its military and letting the rest of its economy crater and move off shore.
Here is a cool antenna which wont fit on top of your tinfoil hat but you will want to be wearing a tin foil hat or actually a full body suit if you encounter one.
Its the U.S. military's latest Active Denial System developed by Raytheon scheduled to start trials this fall. Its a millimeter wave beam weapon designed for non lethal crowd "control". Volunteers at Raytheon subjected to it described it as "unbearably painful, saying they felt as though their bodies were on fire". It should put an end to any unauthorized demonstrations against the U.S. or any of its allies. Its not entirely clear what happens to your eyes if you take the beam in the face at close range, or if it will cause cancer long term.
In case you think this is just Bush administration big brotherism, John Kerry is a big fan too.
"I didn't see any pictures of Bush or Rummsfeld with the naked Iraqi prisonors."
All indications are those enlisted men were doing what they were told to do by military intelligence officers and civilian contractors. First you say those people have to do what their told and shut up and then when they do what they were ordered to you seem to be suggesting its their fault.
In case you haven't been following the news the DOJ, White House and Pentagon right after 9/11 were expending a major effort to justify and rationalize the use of torture, and to kid themselves that they weren't committing war crimes if they did. Torturing Al Qaeda is in a gray area but torturing, in several cases to death, Iraqi's most definitely was a war crime because they were under Geneva convention rules.
The Bush administration better hope they win the next election so they can white wash the investigation. They have a real strong incentive to use Diebold's machines to make sure they do. If the Democrats win the White House or Congress and the truth came out, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cambone, Ashcroft and who knows how many others could face war crime prosecutions. Of course the Democrats have a pretty strong disincentive to find the truth because it would be pretty embarassing to charge America's ex president with war crimes. Kind of ironic Clinton was nearly impeached over lying about sex and the Bush administration is apparently getting away with war crimes. Isn't it wonderful when one party controls the White House and Congress. They can get away with murder.
You might want to read about Copper Green, the top secret program spawned in the Pentagon by Rumsfeld, his deputy Cambone and almost certainly authorized by the President. If true there was in fact authorization at the highest levels to torture Al Qaeda prisoners. It appears the main thing that went wrong is they took it from very secret prisons with highly skilled and cleared interrogators and moved it in to a very public prison in Iraq and ordered reservists to do the softening up.
What exactly is the point from an agency that has, for the most part, lost the will and ability to put men in space.
Its like a lot of stuff NASA does, kind of cool, really expensive, pointless, because, at least as far as the manned space program goes, they aren't doing the most basic and essential things right first, like launch vehicles or a mission with a useful purpose.
Thats ridiculous. The ONLY power Americans have over their federal government is when they vote for their representatives. The problem is that is next to no power since the candidates, especially at the state and national level, are for the most part being chosen by a very small number of power players in the two major parties. Once in a while a wild card populist candidate bucks the system all the way through and gets elected but its rare. If the DNC, DLC and RNC don't want you elected you have a really tough road ahead especially when it takes millions of dollars to get elected at the national level. Howard Dean felt is a classic example of a populist candidate that almost won before the establishment woke up and stuck a knife in him, though I wouldn't call him exactly populist being a Yale grad and son of a Wall Stree stock broker that makes him nearly a carbon copy of Bush and Kerry, though I don't think Dean is in Skull and Bones.
The only place you are seeing anything resembling democracy are in places like California where ordinary people can put propositions on the ballot and change the way their state is governed. Unfortunately, it hasn't proven to work particularly well because people tend to:
A. Want a bunch of expensive entitlements to make their life better
B. Don't want to pay the taxes to pay for them
Another aspect of the populism there is the case of the recall of Davis. It showed how California's populist bent could be abused when one Republican fatcat, Darrell Isa, spent millions of dollars to pay people to collect signatures to overturn an election less than a year old. Of course he got his when the Republican establishment picked Arnold to win and forced him out of the race so he wasted millions and got shafted by his own party(though I imagine they promised him something juicy in return).
Here is an article that gives you a flavor for what we really have in the U.S. and are trying to foist on the rest of the world, in this case its Iraq but the principals of democracy for show apply about as well in the U.S:
http://www.counterpunch.org/tarbell06092004.html
"a top-down, controlled democracy in which the elites govern and the popular classes are only given token participation at election time. Meanwhile private economic power reigns supreme."
It will be a democracy with controlled elections, a repressive state security apparatus, and a "free market" economy that favors US interests and the Iraqi(substitute U.S.) economic elite.
The fact that a U.S. appointed governing council picked a prime minister for Iraq who's been on the CIA payroll for years, and the Bush administration trumpets it as a great victory for freedom and democracy shows how cynical America's ruling elite is. They even had him bad mouth the U.S. for a few months prior so they could say, see he is no puppet of the U.S., when in fact he is, totally and nothing but a puppet. It will be interesting to see how blatantly or subtly the CIA will manipulate the Iraqi elections when the time comes.
"You can't really blame the military. They are just obeying the politicians."
Sometimes. But politicians come and go. The military is a big, self perpetuating bureaucracy and it has ways to get what it wants over time. The military frequently applies significant pressure on politicians to sucker them in to doing misguided things. For example they inflate the power and danger of supposed enemies and they will insist the other guy is doing it so we have to which almost always works. The movie, "Dr. Stangelove or How I Came to Love the Bomb" is about the best parody of this ever, especially when the world is doomed and the generals start claiming there is going to be a "mine shaft" gap after the world is destroyed.
If you look at the history of the Cuban missile crisis you'll see Kennedy barely restrained the military from provoking World War III, they weren't happy with Kennedy's decision making, and he mysteriously gets killed soon after.
If you look to the 50's, MacArthur also nearly pushed the U.S. in to a nuclear conflict with China that would have also probably lead to World War III. Truman once again barely contained him against his powerful set of Republican friends and his huge popular support.
The once place you are right is Iraq where the civilians in the white house and pentagon, Cheney and Wolfowitz, fabricated an entire case for a war and apparently got away with it.
Because if they had you wouldn't be around to know it. Maybe on other planets organisms have mutated and found amenable circumstances and have turned planets in to gray goo. As another poster said the energy density isn't particularly amenable to turning inanimate objects in to gray goo, so bacteria and virii tend to focus on living organisms, and they have over time turned huge number of humans, animals and plants in to the equivalent of goo, the bubonic plague being a good example. Ebola pretty much turns people in to red goo and the only reason it hasn't decimated life on this planet yet is ebola tends to kill off its hosts so quickly they don't usually spread the virus very far and so far its only cropped up in fairly remote regions and not for example in a crowded airport.
The other key point is natural selection isn't particularly malevolent in its intent. It would be a stroke of bad luck if a mutation happened that had these catastrophic results.
But, when you mix man's intellect and malevolence in to the equation the danger of chemical, biological and nano weapons going terribly wrong increases dramatically because man has throughout history strove to make ever more deadly weapons and when he tries to make things that are horribly destructive he usually succeeds.
"I think also that it is better if 500,000 19 year olds get the "kill them" out of their systems by shooting virtual soldiers that respawn in 10 seconds than enlisting to go "kick some ass" overseas."
Your thought is more than a little flawed since the military, especially the U.S. military loves the fact that kids grow up playing video games since its developing many of the skills and reflexes necessary to drive modern weapons and to sit at a laptop in a modern command center controlling a war.
If you think playing video games is getting it out of kids systems I think you are dead wrong. It is, in many instances, training a new generation of electronic killers.
There is a one word response to your theory, the virus, and you kind of shot down your own theory when you pointed out living organisms are literaly bathed in energy so nanomachines could use them parasitically to get energy.
So maybe they won't turn the entire world to gray goo, but if they turn every living organism in to gray goo there wont be anything around to care that the buildings and rocks are still standing.
In a world as hyperparanoid as the current one is about weapons of mass destruction you have to wonder about technology that might enable a new class of WMD's when it falls in to malevolent hands, for example terrorists or the U.S. military.
Animation and modeling, the interactive 3D part and rendering.
Video editing.
Flash or animated SVG.
Virtual reality, either games or some kind of virtual presence. There is never going to be enough CPU or graphics power to accurately model reality or unreality. As the CPU, GPU and memory continue to grow so will the level of realism and complexity of the virtual world. Snow Crash and Diamond age laid down the gauntlet, its been slow in coming, but its inevitable people will start moving part of their life in to virtual worlds where they can assume alternate personas and interact with people around the world with out the constraints of physical space or the crappy meat bag they are stuck with.
Speech recognition.
AI.
HDTV DVD, OK so todays CPU's can handle this, then double the resolution.
A host of science and engineering applications like CFD, seismic, finite element analysis, PCB layout, chip simulations etc. though its a little way out where people might design and manufacture custom widgets in their homes.
"but I can't imagine why they'd care if a combat-bot moving through"
The interesting question is exactly what are they planning on using this technology for if it ever works. All I recall is Congress passed a bill, and made some money available for the military with a mandate to move some of its vehicles to autonomous robots. Is that a scout vehicle, a combat vehicle, a cargo carrier or some of each.
One of the Army's obvious bigger problems in Iraq is moving supplies without getting people in the convoy killed or taken hostage, and without restoring to aircraft to move everything.
If you are building a robotic vehicle to convoy supplies through populated areas obviously you would prefer it didn't run in to civilians or infrastructure. In fact I think you would prefer a scout or combat vehicle didn't run over your own troops or civilians.
Not saying you shouldn't blame it on bad management but that doesn't change the fact that the management is only going to get blamed if they don't do a death march and finish on schedule. As long as they do they are going to come out smelling like roses no matter how bad the death march was or who caused it.
I'm guessing the key point about the places where you worked were bad were developing serious software under a gun and probably trying to make quarters. So now you are sitting in a laid back university where making a quarter is a nonexistent concept so it probably doesn't matter a whole lot exactly when you deliver the software, right? Its not like your management there is probably any better or different its just it doesn't particularly matter when you finish so obviously you have no death marches.
Yea they are anonymous sources you can't trust it. What kind of idiot with a job working in the White House is going to say that stuff on the record with his name attached. The retaliation from the Bush administration would be swift and brutal. So you have a problem, no one really knows what is going on in the White House and if its bad and anyone says that on the record their life will be destroyed. In spite of that at least three former insiders O'Neill, Clark and Zinni have painted fairly distrubing portraits of the Bush administartion ON THE RECORD, O'Neill said he expected retaliation but he is rich so he doesn't need to work again and he was careful to not leak anything classified though the Bush administration accused him of doing just that until it became clear the White House itself cleared everything he used in the book.
I hate to break it to you but the link you point to with "admited to fabricating stories before" doesn't say any such thing. All it is a conservative trying to defend Bush saying he couldn't find a person named in a Capitol Hill Blues article. I hate to break it to you but if you work in the CIA and are going to attack the President you aren't likely to use your real name unless you want massive reprisals. There is absoultely zip in there about anyone admitting to fabrications and no proof anyone did.
Unless you can point to something that really says the guy isn't creditable your post is more bullshit than that article has been proven to be.
For the retard that modded this off topic please read this part about John Ashcroft who did something erratic and is the subject of this thread:
"God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administration's lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft "the Blues Brothers" because "they're on a mission from God."
"The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion," says one aide. "They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God."
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"However, this would be absolutely trivial to block."
This is an important point, remember I suggested this is a good app for the tin foil suit. You do have to wonder why the military would have spent 11 years and probably hundreds of millions developing this if it is trivial to block.
Protesters once they know its there will start bringing foil tents for example. Not sure I'd want to wear a full body wet suit with face mask in summer heat for a protest.
I'm assuming the military is assuming most people in the demonstration wont come prepared so it will work or there is something about the beam that lets it penetrate most protection you would normally wear. For example maybe the water in your body/skin do absorb it well while heavy clothes do not.
Will this weapon actually be effective or it is it another exercise in Pentagon stupidity and pork going to a contractor to no good effect.
Because its messy and it doesn't work well. Its hard to get it in the right place, protesters bring gas masks, they throw the grenades back, with gloves. You gas everyone in the area especially when the wind is blowing the wrong way. It makes for bad TV pictures because when the tear gas starts flowing it turns, in the eyes of TV commentators, from protest to riot and violent confrontation. It becomes breaking news and the protesters get the attention they want.
To make my point another way, what do you think the result will be if a set of these patrol outside every WTO meeting from now on. Anyone who shows up to protest, unless they figure out counter measures, will be practically strapping electrodes to their own genitals and asking to be tortured. Chances are good it will put an end to protests and some of the crap the WTO pulls deserves to be protested. Protesting is one of the things our First Amendment is all about and this could put an end to.
Why do you think this would only be used against an out of control violent protest. Its non lethal, right, no one will get permenently damaged, right? Why not use it on anybody who strays in to the cordon around a WTO meeting, or anyone who lies down in the street in a nonviolent protest. In fact they may well be planning on building a cordon out of these beams which will prevent protesters from getting anywhere near something that deserves to be protested, that is what the name "Active Denial" suggests, they are actively denying you entry to anyplace they don't want you to go, especially to protest.
Its just to clean, tidy and easy so its sure to be abused more than all the messy means for riot control supposedly civilized governments currently use.
But you fail to appreciate that the fact that this is non lethal makes it worse. It makes it so much easier to use much more often. If there is a big protest and an authority is forced to use ugly and potentially lethal weapons to break it up then they will either show restraint, contain it and let it go, or they will use violence and if they do they will probably further alienate their population and make things worse for themselves. The shootings at Kent State were a near fatal blow to the misguided Vietnam war because it turned the people against a bad government.
The authorities can use this weapon with abandon in suppressing all unauthorized protests, and what is the point of protest if its authorized and put in a cage far out of sight and out of mind.
I know you've had the word terrorist drilled in to your head the Bush administration and the media using it about a 1000 times a day but when someone is attacking occupying soldiers in a war zone they are not "terrorists", they are guerillas or insurgents. Guerilla is probably the word you are looking for:
WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]
guerilla
adj : used of independent armed resistance forces; "guerrilla warfare"; "partisan forces" [syn: guerrilla(a), guerilla(a), underground, irregular]
n : a member of an irregular armed force that fights a stronger force by sabotage and harassment [syn: guerrilla, irregular, insurgent]
In the early 20th century the fear word the government used to "terrorize" the populace was anarchist. In the 1950's it was communist. Today it is terrorist. In all three cases the words were whipped to death, misused and misapplied. They are the words the U.S. government uses to "terrorize" their population and to tag everyone that isn't on their side.
I would be inclined to say that the Bush administration are as much terrorists as the people they tag with this word, because they are governing by constantly stoking the fears of the American people, are using that fear to stay in power, and are governing by intimidation:
Terrorist \Ter"ror*ist\, n. [F. terroriste.]
One who governs by terrorism or intimidation; specifically, an agent or partisan of the revolutionary tribunal during the Reign of Terror in France. --Burke.
adj : characteristic of someone who employs terrorism (especially as a political weapon)
Its an execeptionally good riot control device since it leaves no physical evidence, especially if the antenna is somewhat concealed. No clouds of tear gas, no protesters eyes burning from mace, no batons swinging, no soldiers shooting rubber or lead bullets to stoke sympathy from TV viewers. The protester will just start screaming in pain and running away. Sure to be a big hit in Israel and Iraq.
I'm wondering if they are working on an indoor version since it is a perfect tool for torture, it leaves no marks. The victim wouldn't even know what was happening to them.
It appears I now have a good reason to wear a tin foil hat, or really a full body suit like everyone keeps telling me I should. Its not just a Bush Big Brother Weapon either. I believe it was started by Clinton and is roundly endorsed by John Kerry.
This weapon is perfect for a dictatorship wanting to keep its people in line.
The problem is that if you are filling in little bubbles your vote is probably being run through a computerized scanner to automatically count them. Unless properly done and checked they are about as vulnerable as Diebold's machines to error induced miscounts or rigging, the machines are just in a more central location. The central location might make it easier to protect them from tampering or it might make it easier to tamper with them all if proper safeguards aren't in place.
The one big plus with your system is you can do a manual recount or recount them using a different machine. How does Oregon do a recount? Just run the ballots through the same machines they ran them through the first time, which is a sham, or actually use humans to count the bubbles.
With Diebold the only mechanism for a recount is to reread the counts in the machine which proves absolutely nothing because you will get the same answer everytime and it may have no correlation to the vote that was actually cast.
"So why the *hell* not just use paper votes in the first place?"
Because in the U.S. we have a government that is on a fast track to dictatorship and global empire. The people in power very much want to be able to rig elections so they cane be sure they get the right answer. They also want to sucker the American people into thinking that they still live in a democracy, and that their vote counts for something (when it doesn't). They don't want the little people to get upset about living in this new form of smoke and mirrors dictatorship.
The good people in Canada have a nice little country with no aspirations to dominating the planet so fair elections are still in order, though they won't really count for much either since you live next door to the world's biggest bully.
But getting a verifiable receipt that shows how you voted, and when its put in an old fashioned ballot box its priceless. You can then go back and do a manual recount of the paper and establish if the machine count was accurate or not.
As long as there are truly random recounts of at least a percentage of all votes cast you will most probably catch rigging or machine errors. I don't care how careful you are in making sure the machines are certified and locked, a paper trail is the only way to make them reliable.
I read an interesting observation the other day. It does appear the Bush administration has a life or death reason to make sure they win the next election, both the White House and the Congress.
It appears the Bush administration has, at the highest level, violated the Geneva conventions and U.S. law against torture, perhaps not against Al Qaeda since they are in a legal gray area but most certainly they tortured people in Iraq who were under Geneva protections.
It is extremely important to the Bush administration that they win the election so they can white wash the investigation. If someone truly independent did the investigation and found them guilty and it appears there is a pretty big paper trail and a lot of people involved, both in recently unveiled memos in which the DOJ and the Pentagon were engaged in a failed attempt to give a legal basis for torture and in revelations about Copper Green which suggest this program of torture was approved at the highest levels by Bush, Rumsfeld and his deputy Cambone.
Today it was revealed that dog handlers who were used in Iraq to scare prisoners were in fact doing so under orders from military intelligence officers which debunks the Bush administration's BS that the torture was just a bunch of rogue army reservists. If the investigation isn't a sham its nearly certain the torture will be traced to the Pentagon and the White House. It simply was a war crime to authorize to the Bush administration has a life or death reason to make sure they win the next election at all cost.
If you want to see the latest thing in torture look here.ts Its the U.S. military's Active Denial System developed by Raytheon scheduled to start trials this fall. Its a millimeter wave beam weapon designed for non lethal crowd "control". Volunteers at Raytheon subjected to it described it as "unbearably painful, saying they felt as though their bodies were on fire". It should put an end to any unauthorized demonstrations against the U.S. or any of its allies. Its not entirely clear what happens to your eyes if you take the beam in the face at close range, or if it will cause cancer long term. I'm wondering if they are working on an indoor version since it is a perfect tool for torture, it leaves no marks. The victim wouldn't even know what was happening to them. It appears I now have a good reason to where a tin foil hat, or really a full body suit like everyone keeps telling me I should when I propose the possibility that the Bush administration is, in fact, on a fast track to dictatorship.
" much safer than rubber bullets - which are (happens often) fatal if used incorrectly."
But you see the problem is it will be much easier to justify its use because is considered "safe". It also leaves no tell tale evidence behind especially if they conceal it in a near by building. It will most probably be extremely effective and that is the rub. It could wipe out unauthorized protests against things like the WTO, the G8 or any other whacked out malevolence that needs to be protested against. If you don't have a permit for your protest you get blasted with this thing and you quickly lose the desire to protest. If you do have a permit you will probably be confined to a caged area far from the dignitaries, press or anyone else so its a waste of time to even try. There is also no evidence anything was ever done to the protesters. There will be no TV pictures of water cannons, clouds of tear gas or soldiers shooting guns with rubber or lead bullets so there will be a lot less outrage at the fact the government is suppressing free speech and dissent.
This is the perfect weapon for a dictatorial police state.
"If we don't, then some day they'll come along and simply overpower us"
And if we do someday they will overpower us. China in particular will most likely pass the U.S. economically in at most 20 years. You simply can't run a half trillion dollar trade deficit and a half trillion dollar budget deficit, and growing, indefinitely without eventually destroying your economy. The multinationals may not be destroyed since they are just moving to China, but everyone living in the U.S.and Western Europe, and not working for a multinational, is going to be in a world of hurt.
China is the most sinister threat because they are intentionally pegging their currency at an artificially low level which means they are not indulging in fair trade, its dramatically stacked in their favor, along with rages rates in the 21 to 35 cent range. Their cheap currency also makes it extremely attractive for multinationals to move all their capital investment there. Its good for those companies initially since China's a bargain but one day they may rue the day they moved the substance of their business to a country not particularly friendly to the West.
The problem here is that China, in particular, is devastating one industry after another in the rest of the world, steel production, machine tool manufacturing, manufacturing in general and there isn't much stopping them from doing the same to semiconductors and software, especially when U.S. companies are turning their IP over to them wholesale either through partnerships or by putting technology centers there so the Chinese will learn everything they need to know to form their own companies some day and bury their former U.S. masters.
Once the U.S. loses its manufacturing and industrial base it will be interesting to see if it also loses its ability to build the weapons it needs to defend itself. The only saving grace is most modern weapons are small in number so they don't require the huge manufacturing base they did in World War II. But, in another 10 years if China turns openly hostile, the U.S. may suddenly discover its totally dependent on China for EVERYTHING, it may not be able to sustain a prolonged war and then the U.S. will be overpowered.
I wager China deduced they couldn't win against the U.S. militarily so they opted to do it economically and appear poised to be successful. Its kind of ironic since, if you believe the revisionist history about Reagan saturating the air waves today, he beat the U.S.S.R economically by forcing them to destroy their economy with an arms race they couldn't win. Will the U.S. see the same fate, by pouring all its resources in to its military and letting the rest of its economy crater and move off shore.
Its the U.S. military's latest Active Denial System developed by Raytheon scheduled to start trials this fall. Its a millimeter wave beam weapon designed for non lethal crowd "control". Volunteers at Raytheon subjected to it described it as "unbearably painful, saying they felt as though their bodies were on fire". It should put an end to any unauthorized demonstrations against the U.S. or any of its allies. Its not entirely clear what happens to your eyes if you take the beam in the face at close range, or if it will cause cancer long term.
In case you think this is just Bush administration big brotherism, John Kerry is a big fan too.
All indications are those enlisted men were doing what they were told to do by military intelligence officers and civilian contractors. First you say those people have to do what their told and shut up and then when they do what they were ordered to you seem to be suggesting its their fault.
In case you haven't been following the news the DOJ, White House and Pentagon right after 9/11 were expending a major effort to justify and rationalize the use of torture, and to kid themselves that they weren't committing war crimes if they did. Torturing Al Qaeda is in a gray area but torturing, in several cases to death, Iraqi's most definitely was a war crime because they were under Geneva convention rules.
The Bush administration better hope they win the next election so they can white wash the investigation. They have a real strong incentive to use Diebold's machines to make sure they do. If the Democrats win the White House or Congress and the truth came out, Bush, Rumsfeld, Cambone, Ashcroft and who knows how many others could face war crime prosecutions. Of course the Democrats have a pretty strong disincentive to find the truth because it would be pretty embarassing to charge America's ex president with war crimes. Kind of ironic Clinton was nearly impeached over lying about sex and the Bush administration is apparently getting away with war crimes. Isn't it wonderful when one party controls the White House and Congress. They can get away with murder.
You might want to read about Copper Green, the top secret program spawned in the Pentagon by Rumsfeld, his deputy Cambone and almost certainly authorized by the President. If true there was in fact authorization at the highest levels to torture Al Qaeda prisoners. It appears the main thing that went wrong is they took it from very secret prisons with highly skilled and cleared interrogators and moved it in to a very public prison in Iraq and ordered reservists to do the softening up.
What exactly is the point from an agency that has, for the most part, lost the will and ability to put men in space.
Its like a lot of stuff NASA does, kind of cool, really expensive, pointless, because, at least as far as the manned space program goes, they aren't doing the most basic and essential things right first, like launch vehicles or a mission with a useful purpose.
Thats ridiculous. The ONLY power Americans have over their federal government is when they vote for their representatives. The problem is that is next to no power since the candidates, especially at the state and national level, are for the most part being chosen by a very small number of power players in the two major parties. Once in a while a wild card populist candidate bucks the system all the way through and gets elected but its rare. If the DNC, DLC and RNC don't want you elected you have a really tough road ahead especially when it takes millions of dollars to get elected at the national level. Howard Dean felt is a classic example of a populist candidate that almost won before the establishment woke up and stuck a knife in him, though I wouldn't call him exactly populist being a Yale grad and son of a Wall Stree stock broker that makes him nearly a carbon copy of Bush and Kerry, though I don't think Dean is in Skull and Bones.
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The only place you are seeing anything resembling democracy are in places like California where ordinary people can put propositions on the ballot and change the way their state is governed. Unfortunately, it hasn't proven to work particularly well because people tend to:
A. Want a bunch of expensive entitlements to make their life better
B. Don't want to pay the taxes to pay for them
Another aspect of the populism there is the case of the recall of Davis. It showed how California's populist bent could be abused when one Republican fatcat, Darrell Isa, spent millions of dollars to pay people to collect signatures to overturn an election less than a year old. Of course he got his when the Republican establishment picked Arnold to win and forced him out of the race so he wasted millions and got shafted by his own party(though I imagine they promised him something juicy in return).
Here is an article that gives you a flavor for what we really have in the U.S. and are trying to foist on the rest of the world, in this case its Iraq but the principals of democracy for show apply about as well in the U.S:
http://www.counterpunch.org/tarbell06092004.htm
"a top-down, controlled democracy in which the elites govern and the popular classes are only given token participation at election time. Meanwhile private economic power reigns supreme."
It will be a democracy with controlled elections, a repressive state security apparatus, and a "free market" economy that favors US interests and the Iraqi(substitute U.S.) economic elite.
The fact that a U.S. appointed governing council picked a prime minister for Iraq who's been on the CIA payroll for years, and the Bush administration trumpets it as a great victory for freedom and democracy shows how cynical America's ruling elite is. They even had him bad mouth the U.S. for a few months prior so they could say, see he is no puppet of the U.S., when in fact he is, totally and nothing but a puppet. It will be interesting to see how blatantly or subtly the CIA will manipulate the Iraqi elections when the time comes.
"You can't really blame the military. They are just obeying the politicians."
Sometimes. But politicians come and go. The military is a big, self perpetuating bureaucracy and it has ways to get what it wants over time. The military frequently applies significant pressure on politicians to sucker them in to doing misguided things. For example they inflate the power and danger of supposed enemies and they will insist the other guy is doing it so we have to which almost always works. The movie, "Dr. Stangelove or How I Came to Love the Bomb" is about the best parody of this ever, especially when the world is doomed and the generals start claiming there is going to be a "mine shaft" gap after the world is destroyed.
If you look at the history of the Cuban missile crisis you'll see Kennedy barely restrained the military from provoking World War III, they weren't happy with Kennedy's decision making, and he mysteriously gets killed soon after.
If you look to the 50's, MacArthur also nearly pushed the U.S. in to a nuclear conflict with China that would have also probably lead to World War III. Truman once again barely contained him against his powerful set of Republican friends and his huge popular support.
The once place you are right is Iraq where the civilians in the white house and pentagon, Cheney and Wolfowitz, fabricated an entire case for a war and apparently got away with it.
Because if they had you wouldn't be around to know it. Maybe on other planets organisms have mutated and found amenable circumstances and have turned planets in to gray goo. As another poster said the energy density isn't particularly amenable to turning inanimate objects in to gray goo, so bacteria and virii tend to focus on living organisms, and they have over time turned huge number of humans, animals and plants in to the equivalent of goo, the bubonic plague being a good example. Ebola pretty much turns people in to red goo and the only reason it hasn't decimated life on this planet yet is ebola tends to kill off its hosts so quickly they don't usually spread the virus very far and so far its only cropped up in fairly remote regions and not for example in a crowded airport.
The other key point is natural selection isn't particularly malevolent in its intent. It would be a stroke of bad luck if a mutation happened that had these catastrophic results.
But, when you mix man's intellect and malevolence in to the equation the danger of chemical, biological and nano weapons going terribly wrong increases dramatically because man has throughout history strove to make ever more deadly weapons and when he tries to make things that are horribly destructive he usually succeeds.
"I think also that it is better if 500,000 19 year olds get the "kill them" out of their systems by shooting virtual soldiers that respawn in 10 seconds than enlisting to go "kick some ass" overseas."
Your thought is more than a little flawed since the military, especially the U.S. military loves the fact that kids grow up playing video games since its developing many of the skills and reflexes necessary to drive modern weapons and to sit at a laptop in a modern command center controlling a war.
If you think playing video games is getting it out of kids systems I think you are dead wrong. It is, in many instances, training a new generation of electronic killers.
There is a one word response to your theory, the virus, and you kind of shot down your own theory when you pointed out living organisms are literaly bathed in energy so nanomachines could use them parasitically to get energy.
So maybe they won't turn the entire world to gray goo, but if they turn every living organism in to gray goo there wont be anything around to care that the buildings and rocks are still standing.
In a world as hyperparanoid as the current one is about weapons of mass destruction you have to wonder about technology that might enable a new class of WMD's when it falls in to malevolent hands, for example terrorists or the U.S. military.
Paint. Some effects can be fairly intensive.
CAD and architecture.
Animation and modeling, the interactive 3D part and rendering.
Video editing.
Flash or animated SVG.
Virtual reality, either games or some kind of virtual presence. There is never going to be enough CPU or graphics power to accurately model reality or unreality. As the CPU, GPU and memory continue to grow so will the level of realism and complexity of the virtual world. Snow Crash and Diamond age laid down the gauntlet, its been slow in coming, but its inevitable people will start moving part of their life in to virtual worlds where they can assume alternate personas and interact with people around the world with out the constraints of physical space or the crappy meat bag they are stuck with.
Speech recognition.
AI.
HDTV DVD, OK so todays CPU's can handle this, then double the resolution.
A host of science and engineering applications like CFD, seismic, finite element analysis, PCB layout, chip simulations etc. though its a little way out where people might design and manufacture custom widgets in their homes.
Cracking, breaking encryption and passwords.
"but I can't imagine why they'd care if a combat-bot moving through"
The interesting question is exactly what are they planning on using this technology for if it ever works. All I recall is Congress passed a bill, and made some money available for the military with a mandate to move some of its vehicles to autonomous robots. Is that a scout vehicle, a combat vehicle, a cargo carrier or some of each.
One of the Army's obvious bigger problems in Iraq is moving supplies without getting people in the convoy killed or taken hostage, and without restoring to aircraft to move everything.
If you are building a robotic vehicle to convoy supplies through populated areas obviously you would prefer it didn't run in to civilians or infrastructure. In fact I think you would prefer a scout or combat vehicle didn't run over your own troops or civilians.
Not saying you shouldn't blame it on bad management but that doesn't change the fact that the management is only going to get blamed if they don't do a death march and finish on schedule. As long as they do they are going to come out smelling like roses no matter how bad the death march was or who caused it.
I'm guessing the key point about the places where you worked were bad were developing serious software under a gun and probably trying to make quarters. So now you are sitting in a laid back university where making a quarter is a nonexistent concept so it probably doesn't matter a whole lot exactly when you deliver the software, right? Its not like your management there is probably any better or different its just it doesn't particularly matter when you finish so obviously you have no death marches.
Yea they are anonymous sources you can't trust it. What kind of idiot with a job working in the White House is going to say that stuff on the record with his name attached. The retaliation from the Bush administration would be swift and brutal. So you have a problem, no one really knows what is going on in the White House and if its bad and anyone says that on the record their life will be destroyed. In spite of that at least three former insiders O'Neill, Clark and
Zinni have painted fairly distrubing portraits of the Bush administartion ON THE RECORD, O'Neill said he expected retaliation but he is rich so he doesn't need to work again and he was careful to not leak anything classified though the Bush administration accused him of doing just that until it became clear the White House itself cleared everything he used in the book.
I hate to break it to you but the link you point to with "admited to fabricating stories before" doesn't say any such thing. All it is a conservative trying to defend Bush saying he couldn't find a person named in a Capitol Hill Blues article. I hate to break it to you but if you work in the CIA and are going to attack the President you aren't likely to use your real name unless you want massive reprisals. There is absoultely zip in there about anyone admitting to fabrications and no proof anyone did.
Unless you can point to something that really says the guy isn't creditable your post is more bullshit than that article has been proven to be.
Since John Ashcroft IS in the original submission, right or wrong IT IS ON TOPIC whether you all like it or not.
For the retard that modded this off topic please read this part about John Ashcroft who did something erratic and is the subject of this thread:
"God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administration's lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft "the Blues Brothers" because "they're on a mission from God."
"The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion," says one aide. "They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God."