We used to dream of smelting ore. No, when we had to add a new variables to our code, we had to pull the iron fillings out of mom's molars and magnetize them by standing out in lightning storms. And we liked it!
I'm guessing that you're only hearing these stories because people have actually experienced them (I know I have). Of course, these stick out because they are trouble, and the places that do it right are the ones you never hear about because there are no war stories involved (or PHBs).
Why, in my day, we used stone punch cards we had to mine ourselves from the limestone quarry! Planning ahead made a lot of sense back then. Tell that to kids today, and they don't believe you!
Seriously, I think the real problem is management addicted to immediate change in production systems. This started when it was web content, and now they expect back-office stuff to change just as quickly.
...slightly scary for the uninitiated or those without the right tools. And for some, $199 for a new lawnmower every three years actually feels cheaper than three visits to the small engine repair place, where it always seems to be $89 no matter what they do.
My point is, that's how a lot of people feel about their computers. Except, they don't store their kids' wedding pictures in their lawnmowers, so people are going to have to get used to actually doing something about their problems (or learning about backups, and not getting infected in the first place).
Is this why the "Geek Squad" ads are suddenly appearing to resonate enough to be run non-stop on network broadcasts? If the "Got Junk" people can run an entire business based on hauling that old rusty lawnmower (you know, the one you didn't want to lube yourself) out of your back yard, it seems that the "Got Spyware" people should be able to find the sweet spot, price-wise, in making house calls, solving the problem, and keeping users running. Maybe for the price of a pizza or two.
The ethanol may take a lot of energy to produce, but so does hydrogen and everyone wants hydrogen cars.
And the whole point of the article is that no matter how much you want a hydrogen car, or wish your vehicle would run off of ethanol, we're still needing to burn more regular petrolium than we otherwise would just to produce and distribute the ethanol. Large scale "clean" power sources don't play a role in this, in as much as we don't yet have electric tractors, etc. You can't run a huge turbo-diesel combine all day in the field on solar, wind, or anything else. The energy density in regular petroleum is still superiour. And that we have to burn that in order to then produce a gallon of less efficient ethanol, for a net loss in energy and a net increase in the use of mostly foreign oil... well, that's the point of the article.
The point is that we can use cheap energy that is available in large amounts from large, fixed installations to make the ethanol that can then be used to replace oil usage in cars.
Large, fixed installations that burn fuel oil? Same problem. Natural gas? Same problem. Coal? same problem. Nuclear? The eco-crazies do everything they can to stop that. Wind? Solar? Nowhere near enough horsepower, nor consistent enough.
The only solution on the plate is vastly increased numnber of large nukes, producing enough electricity (way, way more than our current capacity) to produce hydrogen. And the people that say they'll do anything to stop us from building nukes are the very ones saying we need to do something besides use oil. *sigh*
Who CARES what the produciton energy required is really, it's the result of the end product's USE that matters!
The point of the study is that they're using a gallon of regular petrolium fuel to produce, effectively, less than a gallon of ethanol.
I wonder, what would be cheaper/easier to produce: Growing corn or potatoes for alcohol production for Ethanol, or drilling thru MILES of rock to get to oil in crude form?
Hard to say - depends on where you're drilling, and on where you're farming. To grow plants, you need fresh water, abundant fertalizer, heavy equipment, rich soil, easy road and freight access, and perfect timing (or the crop is ruined, or the produce spoils on the way to processing, etc).
Drilling a well can involve an acre or two of land. Producing the same hydrocarbon type fuel through growing plants can involve thousands of acres.
These comparisons aren't as obvious as they might seem.
After the fact it becomes mere revenge, which is a waste of time
Unless it can be shown that he's in the habit of continuing to do it. Taking him out after an event is pre-emptive and self defense against the inevitable next event. It's the same reason that some women who kill their wife-beating husbands in their sleep are acquitted of murder.
It's better to have our tax dollars spent to pay farmers to grow corn in Idaho, than paid to rich sultans in the Middle East!
You're missing the central point of the article. In order to produce the ethanol, we're having to use even more imported fuel oil. The process of producing the ethanol (harvesting the crop, running the plants that produce the ethanol, distributing the output) all consume even more oil than the fuel that the ethanol represents. In other words, in order to have the ethanol, we have to buy even more oil from Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela, or other distasteful places. If it's a net loss and requires more fuel, we should simply take that money and use it to produce oil elsewhere or leverage the more friendly sources while we develop positive-balance sources (nuclear, what have you).
With Ethanol, we are spending our money to convert that sunlight into fuel, using corn as solar collectors.
And then we buy a bunch of oil so we can actually make the process work. Not useful!
Now, with this in mind, tell me why ethanol is needed?
Because it's a huge, politically correct opportunity to subsidize voters in agro states, and to buy off the eco-crazies with something that sounds emotionally warm and fuzzy. It's not about fuel, it's about throwing a bone, no matter how pointless, to the sustainablites while real research into actual solutions is conducted on other fronts (say, in France, believe it or not).
There's also a lot more artistic freedom being independent, which means a lot to some people
I completely recognize that. My point is that that's a whole lot easier for someone (like Jones) who already has some money in the bank. Celebrating the fact that he's giving away his material will fall on some ears with potentially the wrong message, that's all. It's the twits who will read one and a half sentences of the article and say, "See? Finally musicians are realizing that I should not have to pay for my entertainment!" that I'm thinking about. And you know they're out there.
surely their members have made some money over the years, but that is because they wrote and played excellent music... not because they were conceived in an age free of piracy.
Actually, I'm not even talking about piracy. I'm talking indirectly, of course, about piracy - the new band is giving stuff away as a sort of pre-emptive move and a political statement. All I'm saying is that the band's commerical success in the past is one of the reasons they can be free and easy with whether they do or don't make a living off of their work today. But people who don't think about that, and which share a certain odd world view, are more likely to draw the conclusion that, "Finally, here's a band that understands that I shouldn't have to pay for my entertainment."
the fact that you refer to mick jones simply as 'former member of the clash'
Um, I was quoting the original post. He used that exact phrase.
And, I'm not making any comment at all on the quality of their music, or place in history. My point is that if The Clash hadn't sold a lot of records, and had scads of airplay for the better part of the 1980's (and still today, depending on where you listen), he wouldn't have quite the clout or financial comfort to engage in music making just for the sake of it, without any concerns about whether people are paying him to play. That's fine if you have a day job, or are financially set... but people who try to make a living entirely as a musician rarely have the option of giving away their work.
...because eventually enough people not paying for their music will definately pay off their studio time. Oh, right... "former member of The Clash" probably finds it a lot easier than some semi-famous bands to not worry about whether anyone wants to buy the new material.
But taken to the logical destination, you can only look at this approach as making them a hobby band. Which is fine if you're not worried about the rent. If he's not worried about trying to eat off of music sales, I wonder to whom he donates his Clash residuals?
So you are saying that sometimes the right thing to do is to burn thousands of children alive.
What I'm saying is that in the 1940's, opposing a hostile attacker famous for irrationally fighting even in the face of obvious defeat in conventional conflict (such as the huge destruction and deaths through fire and explosions in the "conventional" attacks on other key cities there, or the overpowering of their forces on a series of islands), we didn't have the option. It was either kill lots of our people, and many, many more of theirs, or kill fewer while also impacting strategic factory and naval targets used by their military. The purpose was to save lives by ending the conflict, including the sparing of countless children from the grinding, fiery conflict that would have accompanied an invasion in the absence of the surrender. The right thing to do was to avoid the long, drawn out deaths of untold more people, and instead take out two key strategic pieces of the military's support system (factory capacity and port facilities) while showing them that places like Kobe or Tokyo would be next without their capitulation. They got it. The children you're worried about were, as a result, saved.
That's what made Hitler bad
But what he did was in a context. He was trying to exterminate a race as a side-bar project along with his larger effort to rule, at least, Europe. That's a plan. That's context. That was why we had to stop him from doing more of it, and in the 1940s there weren't very many ways of doing that. The only thing that did stop him was large-scale brutality that absolutely did kill some innocent people. But those deaths prevented many, many more.
Sorry if I'm putting it very bluntly and in a way you're not comfortable with,
The only thing I'm not comfortable with is your approach to dealing with the Hitlers or Hirohitos of the world. Throwing your hands up in the air and allowing them to slaughter people because you're afraid to do what you have to do is moral cowardice. Now we have vastly more precise weapons, and don't have to be as widely brutal as we used to in order to stop people like that - but applying today's combat standards to the situation facing the world in the 1940s is some pretty lame rhetoric, and makes one question your agenda.
I wish some people would be a little more critical and ask themselves were those projections come from, if their authors might have a strong bias toward a particular conclusion, how credible the theories about what the Japanese would have done are, and how good the moral defense of the mass murder of civilian families really is
Incredible. Do you have no sense of context? The Japanese were involved in a brutal (just Google Nanking) war of territorial aggression and oppression. We were a potential irritant, so they decided to take a poke at the US Navy, too. The deaths suffered by the Japanese as their own war was shut down around them are not matters of dogma - they happened in a context. It is the same when people died because of Hitler's, or Saddam's similar aggressions. Let's assume that the projections about which you're so critical are three times too high. Or five times. It doesn't matter. We saved lives, even if just our own, putting that war, which we did not start, to an end. Your moral relativism, or your own bias in seeking a way to make the US the bad guy no matter the context, is embarassingly transparent.
USA made the first weapon of mass destruction. Way to go USA!! You made the world a better place!!
Other than the fact that you're wrong about history (I'd say that burning down whole cities or poisoning water supplies with plague carcasses count as WMDs, and people in Europe were doing that for centuries), I'd say that yes, the US did make the world a safer and better place. The sort of large-scale, inconceivably miserable state that the world experienced in World Wars 1 and 2 (thanks, mostly to European attitudes and territorial snots) would never be seen again - too much at stake.
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was certainly a tragedy in human terms
Though nothing like the tragedy "in human terms" that would have happened if we had not done it. The Japanese had already shown a willingness to tolerate unspeakable destruction (firebombing in their large cities) and loss of life, even down the man on large islands. A boots-on-the-ground invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been far, far deadlier for everyone involved. The tragedy is that the Japanese started the war in the first place. That is the sole tragedy to consider. Everything else is consequence, and such consequences as we reduced by showing them, dramatically, how they would lose if they didn't give it all up.
Hmm. For living in a police state, you sure are able to talk all you want about the evilness of the police state.
As for the article in question: if a private company wants to use a hand-geometry scanner to help eliminate abuse of their passes, well, that's their business. Just take the kids to one of those Linux-powered Open Source Anarchyworld Amusement Parks I've been hearing so much about.
You're missing the point. He's spinning. She was not covert in the first place. As an analyst, she was scarcely covert. Her employer (and her role) were well known to her family, social circle, and most reporters that were covering her husband's truth-bending about her arranging for his Niger trip. Those same reporters, in talking to Rove about other matters, asked him if he'd heard about the difference between what Wilson said (he was sent by the CIA to Niger on behalf of Dick Cheney, to whom he reported) vs. what actually happened (Dick Cheney had no idea about it, never heard from him or read a report - because Wilson never wrote one, and he only went because his wife came up with the idea and pitched it to her bosses, referring to his numerous mining contacts, etc).
Point is, he's spinning now exactly like he has throughout this whole thing (including his NYT piece wherein he said there was no basis for Bush's yellowcake comment - even though the Brits, whom Bush was citing, became even more sure of their info later, and such asking around that Wilson did actually made the case even stronger, though he didn't put it all together or refused to acknowledge that when he wrote his political piece). His sense of place in this whole thing has more than a whiff of self aggrandizement, and his positioning of his wife as spook, despite the small army of journalists that knew better and talked casually about it, is just more evidence. That a journalist raised the issue of Wilson's CIA wife and her role in getting her husband on the Niger trip while talking to Rove (about which Rove was reported to have said, "yeah, I've heard that too") is hardly "blowing her identity." If Wilson's worried about when his wife lost her ability to be a covert player within the intelligence community he should think back to any number of neighborhood barbecues when she talked about her job in Langley (this is increasingly common at the agency - they are encouraging non-covert people to be more comfortable showing that the agency is an interesting and non-sinister place to work... they need a lot more recruits for their paper-pushing, analytical, IT, and other roles because of a lot of turnover to the private sector).
Of note, even her husband (the cause of all of this) says that she was not under cover or covert at the time her (rather well-known) identity was observed by reporters and mentioned to Rove. This whole thing is being squawked about (by political opponents) as if exactly the opposite of what really happened happened. And, of course, where were these people when someone like Clinton's former cabinet member and handyman Sandy Berger was stuffing classified documents in his socks while that team was trying to spin the discovery process under way as the 9/11 commission looked into why Al Qeada had such operational latitude in the years prior to the attacks. Point is, all of this "Rove should be fired" stuff is just silly, and so plainly partisan (they hate him - he's very good at his job) that it's rather embarassaing, actually.
And yes - you're right about the huge number of people that spend their days in northern Virginia and elsewhere, doing the most mundane things imaginable. Hell, they don't even get paid all that well.
but the purpose of the government is to meet the needs of said citizens.
But that's just not true! It's up to you, and to me, to meet our own needs. There are certain select things that are best met by using our taxes and working with an authority than can act on our behalf. National defense is probably the single most important and appropriate example of that. That our nation absolutely faces real threats - large and puny - from people taking advantage of our highly networked society means that it's totally appropriate for an agency like DHS to have a person in the role mentioned. There's no "mystique" involved, other than that which you manufacturer just by saying it exists (without mentioning what exactly about that person's role is contrary to our interests).
It is the fact that the government itself is corrupt to the point where they directly oppose the purpose of their own creation that puppets origate.
Do you mean that the form of government (a republic) is inherently corrupt? It's got plenty of rough spots, but it's less corrupt than any other form of government yet seen. And when we don't like the way it's run, or what it costs, or how it does or doesn't defend us, we just swap out the employees for another set. That's the exact and ongoing cure for corruption. Certainly you don't want people selling overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom for political contributions, or taking large sums of campaign money from Chinese interests through California monestaries, or mysteriously "finding" long-ago-suboeonaed law firm records on a table in the White House, or using the last hour or two of your administration to issue pardons to aggregious international money launderers with family members funding your personal library project, or not liking the way that an election turned out and picking just a few zip codes where you know you might find more votes and getting a state court to invent some new rules allowing you to pick and choose how you want them counted... you're right, corruption is definately an issue to watch for.
Securing the virtual border ?
I'm not sure about you, but that smells like they are planning to firewall USA ?
Whats next ? Content filtering ?
I think that's being used more as a metaphor. The point is that there networked systems that are vital to our internal security and daily economic interests. They (those things we operate and use) are "inside" the conceptual border, and are domestic - and hence in DHS's mandate. Besides, everything that counts within our domestically internetworked world had better ALREADY be firewalled. By the people that run them. And that's part of this guy's job: to preach on that very subject and people to shore things up. Just like DHS also tries to get companies to have plans for their other infrastructure.
Another puppet official to tell us we need the death penalty for hackers?
So, when a political party you like better happens to hold office, are the people they appoint to federal positions "puppets" too? Is anyone that's hired to do a particular job, including following the policy guidance of the people that hired them, a puppet?
Have you ever had a job? Or better: have you ever hired anyone? If you did hire someone, would you only respect them if they did something other than what you asked them to do? See, because then they wouldn't be a puppet, right?
I wonder how much of the money will go towards research to blow "terrorists" computers up
Actually, that's more DOD's job. If a hostile network or group of people started using our networks to cause more damage than is already being done, you can bet that we can and should at the very least trash the networks they're using. Just like they'd do to us. When you consider that strictly "private sector" Russian mobsters can extort untold thousands of dollars from companies by coordinating massive DDoS attacks, imagine what, say, the government of China might try if they got pissy over Taiwan. We absolutely need people focusing on how to unplug them as needed. At the very least.
Slashdot Mirror
smelt the ore
We used to dream of smelting ore. No, when we had to add a new variables to our code, we had to pull the iron fillings out of mom's molars and magnetize them by standing out in lightning storms. And we liked it!
I'm guessing that you're only hearing these stories because people have actually experienced them (I know I have). Of course, these stick out because they are trouble, and the places that do it right are the ones you never hear about because there are no war stories involved (or PHBs).
Why, in my day, we used stone punch cards we had to mine ourselves from the limestone quarry! Planning ahead made a lot of sense back then. Tell that to kids today, and they don't believe you!
Seriously, I think the real problem is management addicted to immediate change in production systems. This started when it was web content, and now they expect back-office stuff to change just as quickly.
...slightly scary for the uninitiated or those without the right tools. And for some, $199 for a new lawnmower every three years actually feels cheaper than three visits to the small engine repair place, where it always seems to be $89 no matter what they do.
My point is, that's how a lot of people feel about their computers. Except, they don't store their kids' wedding pictures in their lawnmowers, so people are going to have to get used to actually doing something about their problems (or learning about backups, and not getting infected in the first place).
Is this why the "Geek Squad" ads are suddenly appearing to resonate enough to be run non-stop on network broadcasts? If the "Got Junk" people can run an entire business based on hauling that old rusty lawnmower (you know, the one you didn't want to lube yourself) out of your back yard, it seems that the "Got Spyware" people should be able to find the sweet spot, price-wise, in making house calls, solving the problem, and keeping users running. Maybe for the price of a pizza or two.
The ethanol may take a lot of energy to produce, but so does hydrogen and everyone wants hydrogen cars.
And the whole point of the article is that no matter how much you want a hydrogen car, or wish your vehicle would run off of ethanol, we're still needing to burn more regular petrolium than we otherwise would just to produce and distribute the ethanol. Large scale "clean" power sources don't play a role in this, in as much as we don't yet have electric tractors, etc. You can't run a huge turbo-diesel combine all day in the field on solar, wind, or anything else. The energy density in regular petroleum is still superiour. And that we have to burn that in order to then produce a gallon of less efficient ethanol, for a net loss in energy and a net increase in the use of mostly foreign oil... well, that's the point of the article. The point is that we can use cheap energy that is available in large amounts from large, fixed installations to make the ethanol that can then be used to replace oil usage in cars.
Large, fixed installations that burn fuel oil? Same problem. Natural gas? Same problem. Coal? same problem. Nuclear? The eco-crazies do everything they can to stop that. Wind? Solar? Nowhere near enough horsepower, nor consistent enough.
The only solution on the plate is vastly increased numnber of large nukes, producing enough electricity (way, way more than our current capacity) to produce hydrogen. And the people that say they'll do anything to stop us from building nukes are the very ones saying we need to do something besides use oil. *sigh*
Who CARES what the produciton energy required is really, it's the result of the end product's USE that matters!
The point of the study is that they're using a gallon of regular petrolium fuel to produce, effectively, less than a gallon of ethanol.
I wonder, what would be cheaper/easier to produce: Growing corn or potatoes for alcohol production for Ethanol, or drilling thru MILES of rock to get to oil in crude form?
Hard to say - depends on where you're drilling, and on where you're farming. To grow plants, you need fresh water, abundant fertalizer, heavy equipment, rich soil, easy road and freight access, and perfect timing (or the crop is ruined, or the produce spoils on the way to processing, etc).
Drilling a well can involve an acre or two of land. Producing the same hydrocarbon type fuel through growing plants can involve thousands of acres.
These comparisons aren't as obvious as they might seem.
After the fact it becomes mere revenge, which is a waste of time
Unless it can be shown that he's in the habit of continuing to do it. Taking him out after an event is pre-emptive and self defense against the inevitable next event. It's the same reason that some women who kill their wife-beating husbands in their sleep are acquitted of murder.
It's better to have our tax dollars spent to pay farmers to grow corn in Idaho, than paid to rich sultans in the Middle East!
You're missing the central point of the article. In order to produce the ethanol, we're having to use even more imported fuel oil. The process of producing the ethanol (harvesting the crop, running the plants that produce the ethanol, distributing the output) all consume even more oil than the fuel that the ethanol represents. In other words, in order to have the ethanol, we have to buy even more oil from Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela, or other distasteful places. If it's a net loss and requires more fuel, we should simply take that money and use it to produce oil elsewhere or leverage the more friendly sources while we develop positive-balance sources (nuclear, what have you).
With Ethanol, we are spending our money to convert that sunlight into fuel, using corn as solar collectors.
And then we buy a bunch of oil so we can actually make the process work. Not useful!
Now, with this in mind, tell me why ethanol is needed?
Because it's a huge, politically correct opportunity to subsidize voters in agro states, and to buy off the eco-crazies with something that sounds emotionally warm and fuzzy. It's not about fuel, it's about throwing a bone, no matter how pointless, to the sustainablites while real research into actual solutions is conducted on other fronts (say, in France, believe it or not).
The real question is, how much energy production do you get back out of pork?
There's also a lot more artistic freedom being independent, which means a lot to some people
I completely recognize that. My point is that that's a whole lot easier for someone (like Jones) who already has some money in the bank. Celebrating the fact that he's giving away his material will fall on some ears with potentially the wrong message, that's all. It's the twits who will read one and a half sentences of the article and say, "See? Finally musicians are realizing that I should not have to pay for my entertainment!" that I'm thinking about. And you know they're out there.
surely their members have made some money over the years, but that is because they wrote and played excellent music ... not because they were conceived in an age free of piracy.
Actually, I'm not even talking about piracy. I'm talking indirectly, of course, about piracy - the new band is giving stuff away as a sort of pre-emptive move and a political statement. All I'm saying is that the band's commerical success in the past is one of the reasons they can be free and easy with whether they do or don't make a living off of their work today. But people who don't think about that, and which share a certain odd world view, are more likely to draw the conclusion that, "Finally, here's a band that understands that I shouldn't have to pay for my entertainment."
dude, you are really barking up the wrong tree
I think you're missing the point.
the fact that you refer to mick jones simply as 'former member of the clash'
Um, I was quoting the original post. He used that exact phrase.
And, I'm not making any comment at all on the quality of their music, or place in history. My point is that if The Clash hadn't sold a lot of records, and had scads of airplay for the better part of the 1980's (and still today, depending on where you listen), he wouldn't have quite the clout or financial comfort to engage in music making just for the sake of it, without any concerns about whether people are paying him to play. That's fine if you have a day job, or are financially set... but people who try to make a living entirely as a musician rarely have the option of giving away their work.
...because eventually enough people not paying for their music will definately pay off their studio time. Oh, right... "former member of The Clash" probably finds it a lot easier than some semi-famous bands to not worry about whether anyone wants to buy the new material.
But taken to the logical destination, you can only look at this approach as making them a hobby band. Which is fine if you're not worried about the rent. If he's not worried about trying to eat off of music sales, I wonder to whom he donates his Clash residuals?
So you are saying that sometimes the right thing to do is to burn thousands of children alive.
What I'm saying is that in the 1940's, opposing a hostile attacker famous for irrationally fighting even in the face of obvious defeat in conventional conflict (such as the huge destruction and deaths through fire and explosions in the "conventional" attacks on other key cities there, or the overpowering of their forces on a series of islands), we didn't have the option. It was either kill lots of our people, and many, many more of theirs, or kill fewer while also impacting strategic factory and naval targets used by their military. The purpose was to save lives by ending the conflict, including the sparing of countless children from the grinding, fiery conflict that would have accompanied an invasion in the absence of the surrender. The right thing to do was to avoid the long, drawn out deaths of untold more people, and instead take out two key strategic pieces of the military's support system (factory capacity and port facilities) while showing them that places like Kobe or Tokyo would be next without their capitulation. They got it. The children you're worried about were, as a result, saved.
That's what made Hitler bad
But what he did was in a context. He was trying to exterminate a race as a side-bar project along with his larger effort to rule, at least, Europe. That's a plan. That's context. That was why we had to stop him from doing more of it, and in the 1940s there weren't very many ways of doing that. The only thing that did stop him was large-scale brutality that absolutely did kill some innocent people. But those deaths prevented many, many more.
Sorry if I'm putting it very bluntly and in a way you're not comfortable with,
The only thing I'm not comfortable with is your approach to dealing with the Hitlers or Hirohitos of the world. Throwing your hands up in the air and allowing them to slaughter people because you're afraid to do what you have to do is moral cowardice. Now we have vastly more precise weapons, and don't have to be as widely brutal as we used to in order to stop people like that - but applying today's combat standards to the situation facing the world in the 1940s is some pretty lame rhetoric, and makes one question your agenda.
So you are saying that sometimes there is good reason to burn hundreds of thousands of civilians alive?
No, I'm saying that sometimes you have to act in order to stop that, only more of it, from happening.
To claim that context matters is the road toward moral relativism
You've got it exactly backwards. Claiming that all acts the same no matter what is moral relativism.
I wish some people would be a little more critical and ask themselves were those projections come from, if their authors might have a strong bias toward a particular conclusion, how credible the theories about what the Japanese would have done are, and how good the moral defense of the mass murder of civilian families really is
Incredible. Do you have no sense of context? The Japanese were involved in a brutal (just Google Nanking) war of territorial aggression and oppression. We were a potential irritant, so they decided to take a poke at the US Navy, too. The deaths suffered by the Japanese as their own war was shut down around them are not matters of dogma - they happened in a context. It is the same when people died because of Hitler's, or Saddam's similar aggressions. Let's assume that the projections about which you're so critical are three times too high. Or five times. It doesn't matter. We saved lives, even if just our own, putting that war, which we did not start, to an end. Your moral relativism, or your own bias in seeking a way to make the US the bad guy no matter the context, is embarassingly transparent.
USA made the first weapon of mass destruction. Way to go USA!! You made the world a better place!!
Other than the fact that you're wrong about history (I'd say that burning down whole cities or poisoning water supplies with plague carcasses count as WMDs, and people in Europe were doing that for centuries), I'd say that yes, the US did make the world a safer and better place. The sort of large-scale, inconceivably miserable state that the world experienced in World Wars 1 and 2 (thanks, mostly to European attitudes and territorial snots) would never be seen again - too much at stake.
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was certainly a tragedy in human terms
Though nothing like the tragedy "in human terms" that would have happened if we had not done it. The Japanese had already shown a willingness to tolerate unspeakable destruction (firebombing in their large cities) and loss of life, even down the man on large islands. A boots-on-the-ground invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been far, far deadlier for everyone involved. The tragedy is that the Japanese started the war in the first place. That is the sole tragedy to consider. Everything else is consequence, and such consequences as we reduced by showing them, dramatically, how they would lose if they didn't give it all up.
When will everyone admit this is a police state?
Hmm. For living in a police state, you sure are able to talk all you want about the evilness of the police state.
As for the article in question: if a private company wants to use a hand-geometry scanner to help eliminate abuse of their passes, well, that's their business. Just take the kids to one of those Linux-powered Open Source Anarchyworld Amusement Parks I've been hearing so much about.
You're missing the point. He's spinning. She was not covert in the first place. As an analyst, she was scarcely covert. Her employer (and her role) were well known to her family, social circle, and most reporters that were covering her husband's truth-bending about her arranging for his Niger trip. Those same reporters, in talking to Rove about other matters, asked him if he'd heard about the difference between what Wilson said (he was sent by the CIA to Niger on behalf of Dick Cheney, to whom he reported) vs. what actually happened (Dick Cheney had no idea about it, never heard from him or read a report - because Wilson never wrote one, and he only went because his wife came up with the idea and pitched it to her bosses, referring to his numerous mining contacts, etc).
Point is, he's spinning now exactly like he has throughout this whole thing (including his NYT piece wherein he said there was no basis for Bush's yellowcake comment - even though the Brits, whom Bush was citing, became even more sure of their info later, and such asking around that Wilson did actually made the case even stronger, though he didn't put it all together or refused to acknowledge that when he wrote his political piece). His sense of place in this whole thing has more than a whiff of self aggrandizement, and his positioning of his wife as spook, despite the small army of journalists that knew better and talked casually about it, is just more evidence. That a journalist raised the issue of Wilson's CIA wife and her role in getting her husband on the Niger trip while talking to Rove (about which Rove was reported to have said, "yeah, I've heard that too") is hardly "blowing her identity." If Wilson's worried about when his wife lost her ability to be a covert player within the intelligence community he should think back to any number of neighborhood barbecues when she talked about her job in Langley (this is increasingly common at the agency - they are encouraging non-covert people to be more comfortable showing that the agency is an interesting and non-sinister place to work... they need a lot more recruits for their paper-pushing, analytical, IT, and other roles because of a lot of turnover to the private sector).
Of note, even her husband (the cause of all of this) says that she was not under cover or covert at the time her (rather well-known) identity was observed by reporters and mentioned to Rove. This whole thing is being squawked about (by political opponents) as if exactly the opposite of what really happened happened. And, of course, where were these people when someone like Clinton's former cabinet member and handyman Sandy Berger was stuffing classified documents in his socks while that team was trying to spin the discovery process under way as the 9/11 commission looked into why Al Qeada had such operational latitude in the years prior to the attacks. Point is, all of this "Rove should be fired" stuff is just silly, and so plainly partisan (they hate him - he's very good at his job) that it's rather embarassaing, actually.
And yes - you're right about the huge number of people that spend their days in northern Virginia and elsewhere, doing the most mundane things imaginable. Hell, they don't even get paid all that well.
but the purpose of the government is to meet the needs of said citizens.
But that's just not true! It's up to you, and to me, to meet our own needs. There are certain select things that are best met by using our taxes and working with an authority than can act on our behalf. National defense is probably the single most important and appropriate example of that. That our nation absolutely faces real threats - large and puny - from people taking advantage of our highly networked society means that it's totally appropriate for an agency like DHS to have a person in the role mentioned. There's no "mystique" involved, other than that which you manufacturer just by saying it exists (without mentioning what exactly about that person's role is contrary to our interests).
It is the fact that the government itself is corrupt to the point where they directly oppose the purpose of their own creation that puppets origate.
Do you mean that the form of government (a republic) is inherently corrupt? It's got plenty of rough spots, but it's less corrupt than any other form of government yet seen. And when we don't like the way it's run, or what it costs, or how it does or doesn't defend us, we just swap out the employees for another set. That's the exact and ongoing cure for corruption. Certainly you don't want people selling overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom for political contributions, or taking large sums of campaign money from Chinese interests through California monestaries, or mysteriously "finding" long-ago-suboeonaed law firm records on a table in the White House, or using the last hour or two of your administration to issue pardons to aggregious international money launderers with family members funding your personal library project, or not liking the way that an election turned out and picking just a few zip codes where you know you might find more votes and getting a state court to invent some new rules allowing you to pick and choose how you want them counted... you're right, corruption is definately an issue to watch for.
Securing the virtual border ? I'm not sure about you, but that smells like they are planning to firewall USA ? Whats next ? Content filtering ?
I think that's being used more as a metaphor. The point is that there networked systems that are vital to our internal security and daily economic interests. They (those things we operate and use) are "inside" the conceptual border, and are domestic - and hence in DHS's mandate. Besides, everything that counts within our domestically internetworked world had better ALREADY be firewalled. By the people that run them. And that's part of this guy's job: to preach on that very subject and people to shore things up. Just like DHS also tries to get companies to have plans for their other infrastructure.
Another puppet official to tell us we need the death penalty for hackers?
So, when a political party you like better happens to hold office, are the people they appoint to federal positions "puppets" too? Is anyone that's hired to do a particular job, including following the policy guidance of the people that hired them, a puppet?
Have you ever had a job? Or better: have you ever hired anyone? If you did hire someone, would you only respect them if they did something other than what you asked them to do? See, because then they wouldn't be a puppet, right?
I wonder how much of the money will go towards research to blow "terrorists" computers up
Actually, that's more DOD's job. If a hostile network or group of people started using our networks to cause more damage than is already being done, you can bet that we can and should at the very least trash the networks they're using. Just like they'd do to us. When you consider that strictly "private sector" Russian mobsters can extort untold thousands of dollars from companies by coordinating massive DDoS attacks, imagine what, say, the government of China might try if they got pissy over Taiwan. We absolutely need people focusing on how to unplug them as needed. At the very least.