The argument that this will not make things harder for terrorists is silly. Do you really think that all of the ID's the government issues to its own employees for secure system access are totally useless? That everybody in the government security world is stupid or evil?
The current ID systems in the US are a mess, because there has been no security need in the past. We need more reliable ID. Heck, I want it just to protect from identity theft!
A more secure system will not be perfect. NO security system is. But that in itself is not an argument against implementing security.
The argument that the terrorists got away with it last time so they will get away with it this time is just plain silly. I won't even bother to refute it.
As far as security reducing your freedoms... well duh! So does being blown up or infected with smallpox. ALL government is a tradeoff between freedom and some kind of benefit.
Since the best argument for having government at all is to have it protect you from threats by others, the government enacting security measures for our protection is their duty.
There are really only two issues that reasonable people can dispute:
1) How much freedom is one willing to trade for how much added security.
2) Whether the security system is the most effective use of resources to solve the problem. It may be that other measures are better, and you can't do all of them. In other words, cost/benefit analysis makes sense here too.
I have been a software developer for 35 years, and have used a lot of systems. I was using Unix at home before I had Windows (1983), and I still like many things about Unix (and find it incomprehensible that Microsoft architects keep missing the simple concept of pipes, command line scripting, and links).
That being said, I use Windows2000 for almost everything I do. I have literally hundreds of applications that I use for work, for my hobbies, and to keep track of things (such as stock market tracker, weather alert, etc). Few run on Linux. ALL of these run on windows, are easy to get and easy to install. Even most open source software worth having has a windows port or build kit. Applications software is the main driver for the Windows monopoly, and this follows a historical precedent starting with the IBM-360 in the early '60s.
Windows is compatible with all PC hardware I want to buy (except a few things that I need Windows98 or WindowsXP for). It is usually a no-brainer to install new hardware. Hardware compatibility is another driver of the Windows Monopoly
I like the user interface of windows. Microsoft has a lot more money to spend in user interface engineering and experimentation. Almost anything I want to do is accessible with point-and-click. I probably RTFM for windows or windows software about once per year! Try that with Linux!
When I want Unix functionality, I can get it easily (and do) with Cygwin. I normally have 7 Cygwin windows open on my three-LCD desktop, and I use VI for my text editor (I still cannot figure out how anyone can do software editing faster with a mouse-oriented editor). I run postgresql on Windows2K and develop in Java, C and cross-assembly (for embedded machines). I user a commercial X-windows package on the rare occasions when I need to access my Linux system.
Yes, I have Linux. I use it as a file backup machine. Occasionally it is the right place to do development. The area where it shines is in low level development. In Windows development, if you don't spend all your time memorizing stuff or RTFM'ing, you either operate at a high level (and have little idea what the underlying leaky abstractions are doing), or you do trivial things. As a systems programmer, I find that frustrating.
I don't like Microsoft's monopolistic behavior. I really fear that they will gain monopolies in more applications areas and in services. However, I don't mind that much that they have a monopoly in desktops, because with the current state of software and hardware engineering, it is inevitable that some standard will be chosen by the market, and become a monopoly.
If I ran the world, Microsoft would be split up. The monopoly areas (Windows, MS Office) would become two separate companies. The rest would go into a third, which would be required to compete on a level field with the rest of the world. I resent monopoly rents being used to subsidize attacks on other markets.
1) Id doesn't take into account any electronic processing of resulting signals or using multiple images taken seconds apart to achieve higher resolution.
2) Optical spy satellites are likely to use multiple mirrors, both to use adaptive optics to adjust for atmospheric turbulence, and to avoid the problem of fit in the shuttle payload.
I believe it is the Keck telescope (which has adaptive optics) that has resolution sufficient to read a license plate from much higher orbits (all other caveats apply).
A little tidbit... the Multiple-Mirror Telescope (MMT) on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona used to be (and may still be) owned by the airport. When it was built, it was built with an azimuth/elevation mount, rather than the usual polar mount, and used a computer steering system that was accurate enough to account for minute flexing in the very rigid metal frame.
The mirrors were Air-Force surplus from the spy satellite program.
The Air-Force used to "borrow" the scope from time to time. The Az-El mount was probably chosen to allow tracking of earth orbiting objects - Russian satellites.
The spook folks work with very impressive technology. They are bound by the laws of physics, but they probably have engineering tricks that the public world has not heard of. Tricks in signal processing, adaptive optics in space, ultra-precision pointing, etc.
Actually, if you just solve the problem of taking current earth borne adaptive optics telescopes into orbit, you can pretty well achieve the resolution you want.
And then, of course, there is synthetic aperture radar. Synthetic aperture is a mathematical technique for creating a synthetic (virtual) antenna of very long length (very high resolution in one dimension) along the motion of the radar. Simple radar has, of course, much lower resolution than optics for the same size antenna, due to the much longer wavelength. But when you extend the antenna for hundreds or thousands of meters through synthetic aperture magic, that resolution gets very good.
And then, of course, we can speculate about Lidar. I have no idea what the spooks may do with that.
I think the problem of resolution is no longer of significance to the spook business. The bigger problems are areal coverage, data reduction and storage, and concealment.
The major factor causing our public school system to be so shoddy is the fact that it is public and without adequate competition (although that is starting to change). This has led to some of the highest per-pupil spending in the world, with educational results some of the worst in the world.
The current system didn't give us Lincoln or Edison. That was the past system, before the teachers unions became entrenched, the "Schools of Education" became the authority on how to teach, and the school districts too big to be responsive.
Oh, and the countries that were kicking our butt also have strong private school systems and provide government funding to private schools.
The universal publically funded education system really did result in our pathetic system. It took quite a while for it to degenerate to the level it did, but the near monopoly on education by publc systems led to the natural result of a government monopoly - disaster.
As to your supposition. I was educated in public schools and my mother was a public school teacher. When my daughter was born, my mother said that she only had one firm request of us - that her first grandchild not attend public school! The request was honored.
One of the more interesting examples of this sort of bigotry was the motive behind the creation of universal publicly funded education in the United States.
This happened as large numbers of Irish came to the country, and was a result of anti-Catholic bigotry. The purpose was to undercut the Catholic school system. The result was the pathetic school system we now have.
The threats are harmful because the represent potential violence. I suppose we could just wait until an armed robber actually kills someone before giving him a severe sentence. Likewise, if you pull a gun on somebody because you are mad at him, but you don't shoot him, you have committed a violent crime and should pay a significant punishment. And that's how the law works today. SURPRISE!
You are still looking at things in economic terms. The reason armed robbery should be treated as a serious crime is that it contains the threat of deadly violence, which is sometimes carried out. That threat is itself extremely harmful. It matters not whether they get $10 or $10000, if they kill you! This is why I put violent crime way ahead of economic crime. Violent crime threatens your most sacred possessions - your health and/or your life. And I think mugging with a sharp icicle should carry a large penalty, although not as large as that with a gun (simply because I would rather the criminal be armed with an icicle when I pull out my gun to defend myself!).
But notice, as with other crimes, it's the lowest-level "street dealers" who are arrested and convicted (particularly those in inner-city areas) and everyone else is relatively untouched (except perhaps meth makers). I know this from experience.
Of course. They are the easiest to catch. The drug enforcement people would MUCH prefer to catch a kingpin, but making a conviction is extremely difficult in such a case. Thus they have to triage their resources. Of course, as we agree, all of this resource is misused in this case anyway.
However I disagree about big corporate fraud being uncommon. I have been in the position to work either in or with accounting in most of the companies I've worked for and I can assure you that EVERY ONE was commiting some sort of fraud.
Fraud is a big charge. Did you report them to the police? If not, why not? Fraud is a criminal offense.
Thus I take these assertions with a bit of salt. Perhaps you meant that they were engaged in some shady, but legal accounting. There is a big difference.
It's become so common that nobody even bothers to think about it anymore and just assumes that all companies are a bit crooked. Isn't this a problem?
I don't assume that all companies are a bit crooked. I do assume that they operate out of a desire for profit, and that the individuals operate out of a desire for personal profit (see Laws of Bureaucracy). I also assume that some people in many companies will engage in unethical behavior. And I assume that many fewer people will engage in criminal behavior.
So I am curious what sort of "fraud" you are describing.
I've been in the business for 35 years. I worked my way up to CTO in a 2000 person company. Now I work as a designer and coder. The reason: personal preference. I work out of my house (you cannot do that effectively in management); I get to create things myself, which I enjoy. I don't have to wear a suit. I don't have to play in office politics, which get more intense the higher up you go.
OTOH, if it wasn't for the health insurance mess (TRY buying health insurance if you or members of your family have pre-existing conditions), I would not have to work - at least full time.
Sigh.
Re:Sixties are overrated
on
Redirecting NASA
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The better the space access, the more science that will happen. NASA would be better off if it focused on manned space exploration (for which it is more likely to get funding). The development required for this would provide plenty of opportunities for science.
Science, like all endeavors, has to compete for funds. To expect that nation to fund highly expensive systems (like the stupid International Space Station) for a few micro-g experiments nad some out-of-atmosphere astronomy is silly. If Americans knew how much the ISS cost, and how little it is doing to advance space travel, they would have cancelled it a long time ago.
The '60s were a golden time for space science. Why? Because systems and experience were developed in the moon race that otherwise would never have been done. These are necessary for science.
A visionary approach doesn't try to get NASA to do more "science" - it does something to capture the imagination of the taxpayers *and* the people who have to conceive and build the systems.
Finally, even though not a lot of "science" was done, a heck of a lot of good engineering was! And we are continually reaping the benefits of it (what geek *doesn't* have a large Velcro collection?)
I find it hard to believe that anyone would consider economic crime to be more serious than violent crime!
Keep in mind that lots of crime statistics come from *reported* crime. And reported crime depends on the biases of those who report it, not the police. It is far more likely that those in high crime inner city areas *underreport* crime, both because it is so common and because they are threatened with retaliation!
Street crimes are usually crimes of violence, and should be given the highest priority. IMHO the biggest wrong priority in law enforcement is the overemphasis on drug law enforcement.
I would much rather be defrauded than murdered, frankly. And the difference between "minor" violent crime and murder is often luck. Burglary turns into murder too often, even if that is not the intent (except here in Arizona where we are legally allowed to kill burglars without warning). And big corporate fraud is not very common, in spite of all the headlines. Big corporate greed has been way too much, but *it is not criminal,* and over time is self limiting (as we are seeing now).
As far as surveys, how would you design one? Go ask people if they are criminals? Ask people if they have been victimized? The latter are commonly done and are used to determine the crime rates I have referred to (along with reported crimes and apprehensions).
The FBI crime statistics which are most commonly cited are reported crimes, not apprehended criminals. They also have reports on arrests and convictions.
One crime in which selection bias is unlikely to cause higher numbers in black inner city communities is murder. In fact, the bias is likely to be the reverse.
As far as arrests and conviction go, last year, more blacks were *convicted* of murder than whites, even though blacks make up only about 12% of the population! In fact, of cases where the offender's race was known, blacks made up 50% of murder offenders. This is very hard to explain by selective policing! Blacks killed 475 whites, while whites killed 180 blacks. Blacks killed 2802 other blacks (again, hard to explain by selective statistics).
For reported statistics, blacks make up 46% of those murdered, which supports the observation that crime rates (in this case, violent crime, but similar stats apply to other crimes) are highest in black neighborhoods (and of course a closer scrutiny will put the focus on inner city black neighborhoods).
One issue that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is the spread of resistance in cultures where antibiotics are frequently used without prescriptions or medical advice.
In many third world countries, antibiotics are available by the pill. People take them until they feel better or can't afford any more.
Without significant education (and perhaps changes in incentives), this will lead to widespread resistance, without invoking first worlder's ignoring their doctors' adivce or agricultural use of antibiotics.
In addition, certain subcultures in the US have similar problems. One of the scariest bugs out there (far scarier than MRSA) is multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. TB is common among street people, due to their lifestyle. Unfortunately, the same psychopathologies that lead to them being homeless also lead to failure to follow proper antibiotic treatment regimes. For this reason, states are now starting to reinstate the process of forced treatment - in confinement if necessary.
If you have TB and you don't follow the treatment protocols, you can be confined to a treatment facility until the TB is cleared (which may be never if it is highly resistant).
Making this even worse is that many of the street people are also heroin addicts, and contract AIDS. Then we have a paradise for the TB - weakened immune system in a person who doesn't adhere to proper antibiotic use.
It is also spreading very rapidly in Russian prisons, btw, and is also a major killer in the third world.
The reason TB is so scary is that it is a very serious disease (often fatal) in a healthy person, and it is spread through the air. You can catch it on a bus or walking down the street. Most TB is resistant to some antibiotics, but curable by a (nasty) cocktail of other antibiotics.
Before the development of Streptomycin, TB was common in the United States. Many people spent the last months or years of their shortened lives in TB Sanitoria, often experiencing all sorts of ghastly treatment.
Bacteria aren't restricted to darwinian evolution. They sometimes just grab genes from things they eat and incorporate them into their strucure.
This is still Darwinian Evolution. After all, Darwin didn't know about genes at all - and certainly not DNA! How the genomic change occurs is not an issue with Darwinian Evolution. Darwin's insight (others had this too, btw) was how natural selection worked to produce variations and new species.
Genomes change for in all sorts of ways. Mutation is one. Extremely important is gene exchange - typically sexual reproduction. This is very powerful or the high costs of it (please, no bad jokes) wouldn't be tolerated by natural selection. There are other mechanisms... bacteria can simply pick up DNA that is floating around in their environment - especially plasmids. Viruses can cause germ line changes - introducing new genes or modifying existing ones.
In general, the increased resistance DOES have a selection cost. In the absence of antibiotics the resistance gene(s) often fade from the genome.
I don't know, however, if this cost is enough to keep the strains within the hospital, given the widespread use of antibiotics. It may be only a slight selection disadvantage in the absence of antibiotics.
Furthermore, the staph may pass on that resistance to other bugs (Strep?).
There is a good overview article on phage therapy in last week's Science magazine.
Phages therapy still faces the development of resistance. Natural selection is a very powerful process, and various forms of gene exchange among bacteria makes it happen quite quickly.
Phages also are likely to be attacked by the human immune system (they are, after all, foreign viruses). Thus a lot of phages that work well in vitro don't do well in vivo.
However, they are an additional weapon against bacteria, and there are now some western companies that are combining the long Soviet experience with them with western venture capital and well equipped laboratories.
At some point, on might suppose that bacteria would run out of resistance strategies. Most changes to cause resistance come at some cost - which is why resistance genes will often fade away without the presence of antibiotics. Add up enough of these changes and you may produce bacteria that are not very viable. OTOH you may produce bugzilla!
All social science (and I use the word "science" guardedly) is loaded with uncertainty. A well designed survey can be just as inaccurate or more so. In fact, the world is full of inaccurate surveys. Just ask the election guessers.
However, social "scientists" in general do accept the higher rates of criminality among:
1) poor people, especially inner city 2) people from fatherless or substitute father families 3) drug users 4) combination of the above
To assume that the criminal apprehension or conviction statistics are so biased as to not support these hypotheses is to presume an extremely strong and consistent bias in the justice system. It is to presume that people not in these groups are getting away with a whole lot of burglary and murder and armed robberies and assault. It is also to presume that a lot of the crimes against inner city black people are done by non-inner city black people who for some reason go to their neighborhoods to commit the crimes.
In other words, it is absurd.
One needs to be able to reason with far from perfect data in almost any field of analysis. But this is especially so in the social areas, as we simply do not have the means to get accurate data. Contrary to your assertion, surveys wouldn't do the trick (and I'd bet that if you dug into it, you WOULD find surveys where people have tried).
Living in East PA you are lucky to have had no problems. Of course, I don't know where in East PA you live or what your behavior is like, both of which affect your risk. But then, anecdotes do not make statistics.
As far as your deduction that "clearly there is not causation" is nonsense. It only proves that the majority of those in the risk categories you mentioned are not criminals (or more precisely, haven't been caught). It says nothing about the relative rates, which is a far more interesting case.
And, of course, your categories are too large anyway. What kinds of drugs? Crack and heroin are a lot more likely to result in crime than marijuana or ecstacy.
Oh, and suburban whites who use drugs are *more* likely to engage in other criminal activity (which should hardly be surprising, since at least on the margin the willingness to break stupid laws is also associated with the willingness to break un-stupid laws). And suburban whites in broken families are VASTLY more likely to engage in crime than those from unbroken families. Blacks on average, and inner city blacks in particular, have a much higher rate of fatherless families, which have the highest correlate with both criminality and other social pathologies.
Except if we use your logic, we can never make statements like these, since you deny any ability to use criminal apprehension statistics to make inferences about either actual criminality rates or causation. Which means, of course, that we can't even reason about the subject, which means, I guess, that we should just throw up our hands and give up.
There is no question that using apprehension statistics to infer actual rates of criminality is imprecise. But to totally ignore it - to claim no correlation - is wrong.
Actually, a "can" is not a circulator, but rather a high queue resonant cavity. They are very different things. A circulator is normally used for two purposes:
1) keep energy received by the antenna from getting into the final amplifier and generating spurious products (which is why they are *required* at most shared sites)
2) Protecting the transmitter from antenna failure, since the third terminal on the circulator is typically hooked to a dummy load.
Can's are used to create narrow band filters. On a typical FM repeater, they are used to duplex the transmitter and receiver to the same antenna (and hence they form a "duplexor"). Additional cans may be used to further reduce spurious emissions, and to protect the receiver from known strong out-of-band signals.
I assume by exciter you really mean local oscillator. And as I mentioned, the receive amp will in fact reduce the exciter output. The diode... well, why the heck would you put a diode in the circuit? It doesn't make any sense.
LO leakage is a well known problem with any superheterodyne receiver design. There are a number of methods to solve it (including appropriate mixers, pre-amps, trapping out the RF frequency, etc). I have *never* heard of anyone suggest using a diode for that purpose. It just does not compute.
The real problem with the approach of detecting the LO is that in any but the worst designed receiver, it will be way down in output power compared to the transmitter. Sniffing for LO's is thus inherently disadvantaged compared to sniffing for transmitters.
There are other ways to estimate crime rates. For example, there are a number of social pathologies that are closely associated with criminology, including drug use and family breakup.
Inner city blacks, which is where the vast disparity of crime rate occurs, also have those other disparities in large numbers.
Suburban blacks, OTOH, do not have a high crime rate (which blows your logic).
You can come up with as many theories as you want, but the real test is in practice. I can take you to the poor black portion of town here and let you out to walk the streets, or I can take you to the poor white portion. Take your pick. Your survival statistics should be a clue.
A diode preferrentially passes DC current in one direction. This is RF current.
Normally you will get some isolation from the receiver's RF amplifier (if it has any).
Beyond that, you can use a device called a circulator - a magical waveguide/magnet thingie that allows RF at the appropriate frequeny to only propagate one way through it.
These things are *not* cheap, BTW, but are commonly used in repeater systems.
However, I would truly be impressed if you also care about the rights of the woman who lives in poverty that would otherwise give birth to it.
I am not interested in her right to murder her child. Babies do not happen by accident. They are the result of behavior, and killing the unborn is simply evading the responsibility to that behavior by destroying life.
Or whether or not you will care to defend its rights after 20 years have passed and it has become a man who has murdered people and will be executed by the state
If it has murdered people and been adjudicated guilty, I support its rights to appeal. And when they are exhausted, I support the need of the state to kill that person, just as I support the needs of a nation to sometimes go to war.
Yes, it can be applied without the actual commission of violence. In other words, the crime is the advocacy of violence, and does not require actual violence.
The article is about Australia, which may have different rules.
Slashdot Mirror
The argument that this will not make things harder for terrorists is silly. Do you really think that all of the ID's the government issues to its own employees for secure system access are totally useless? That everybody in the government security world is stupid or evil?
The current ID systems in the US are a mess, because there has been no security need in the past. We need more reliable ID. Heck, I want it just to protect from identity theft!
A more secure system will not be perfect. NO security system is. But that in itself is not an argument against implementing security.
The argument that the terrorists got away with it last time so they will get away with it this time is just plain silly. I won't even bother to refute it.
As far as security reducing your freedoms... well duh! So does being blown up or infected with smallpox. ALL government is a tradeoff between freedom and some kind of benefit.
Since the best argument for having government at all is to have it protect you from threats by others, the government enacting security measures for our protection is their duty.
There are really only two issues that reasonable people can dispute:
1) How much freedom is one willing to trade for how much added security.
2) Whether the security system is the most effective use of resources to solve the problem. It may be that other measures are better, and you can't do all of them. In other words, cost/benefit analysis makes sense here too.
I have been a software developer for 35 years, and have used a lot of systems. I was using Unix at home before I had Windows (1983), and I still like many things about Unix (and find it incomprehensible that Microsoft architects keep missing the simple concept of pipes, command line scripting, and links).
That being said, I use Windows2000 for almost everything I do. I have literally hundreds of applications that I use for work, for my hobbies, and to keep track of things (such as stock market tracker, weather alert, etc). Few run on Linux. ALL of these run on windows, are easy to get and easy to install. Even most open source software worth having has a windows port or build kit. Applications software is the main driver for the Windows monopoly, and this follows a historical precedent starting with the IBM-360 in the early '60s.
Windows is compatible with all PC hardware I want to buy (except a few things that I need Windows98 or WindowsXP for). It is usually a no-brainer to install new hardware. Hardware compatibility is another driver of the Windows Monopoly
I like the user interface of windows. Microsoft has a lot more money to spend in user interface engineering and experimentation. Almost anything I want to do is accessible with point-and-click. I probably RTFM for windows or windows software about once per year! Try that with Linux!
When I want Unix functionality, I can get it easily (and do) with Cygwin. I normally have 7 Cygwin windows open on my three-LCD desktop, and I use VI for my text editor (I still cannot figure out how anyone can do software editing faster with a mouse-oriented editor). I run postgresql on Windows2K and develop in Java, C and cross-assembly (for embedded machines). I user a commercial X-windows package on the rare occasions when I need to access my Linux system.
Yes, I have Linux. I use it as a file backup machine. Occasionally it is the right place to do development. The area where it shines is in low level development. In Windows development, if you don't spend all your time memorizing stuff or RTFM'ing, you either operate at a high level (and have little idea what the underlying leaky abstractions are doing), or you do trivial things. As a systems programmer, I find that frustrating.
I don't like Microsoft's monopolistic behavior. I really fear that they will gain monopolies in more applications areas and in services. However, I don't mind that much that they have a monopoly in desktops, because with the current state of software and hardware engineering, it is inevitable that some standard will be chosen by the market, and become a monopoly.
If I ran the world, Microsoft would be split up. The monopoly areas (Windows, MS Office) would become two separate companies. The rest would go into a third, which would be required to compete on a level field with the rest of the world. I resent monopoly rents being used to subsidize attacks on other markets.
Sigh. This is what I get for posting before reviewing. The MMT was owned by the Air Force, not the airport!
Problems with this analysis:
1) Id doesn't take into account any electronic processing of resulting signals or using multiple images taken seconds apart to achieve higher resolution.
2) Optical spy satellites are likely to use multiple mirrors, both to use adaptive optics to adjust for atmospheric turbulence, and to avoid the problem of fit in the shuttle payload.
I believe it is the Keck telescope (which has adaptive optics) that has resolution sufficient to read a license plate from much higher orbits (all other caveats apply).
A little tidbit... the Multiple-Mirror Telescope (MMT) on Mt. Hopkins, Arizona used to be (and may still be) owned by the airport. When it was built, it was built with an azimuth/elevation mount, rather than the usual polar mount, and used a computer steering system that was accurate enough to account for minute flexing in the very rigid metal frame.
The mirrors were Air-Force surplus from the spy satellite program.
The Air-Force used to "borrow" the scope from time to time. The Az-El mount was probably chosen to allow tracking of earth orbiting objects - Russian satellites.
The spook folks work with very impressive technology. They are bound by the laws of physics, but they probably have engineering tricks that the public world has not heard of. Tricks in signal processing, adaptive optics in space, ultra-precision pointing, etc.
Actually, if you just solve the problem of taking current earth borne adaptive optics telescopes into orbit, you can pretty well achieve the resolution you want.
And then, of course, there is synthetic aperture radar. Synthetic aperture is a mathematical technique for creating a synthetic (virtual) antenna of very long length (very high resolution in one dimension) along the motion of the radar. Simple radar has, of course, much lower resolution than optics for the same size antenna, due to the much longer wavelength. But when you extend the antenna for hundreds or thousands of meters through synthetic aperture magic, that resolution gets very good.
And then, of course, we can speculate about Lidar. I have no idea what the spooks may do with that.
I think the problem of resolution is no longer of significance to the spook business. The bigger problems are areal coverage, data reduction and storage, and concealment.
The major factor causing our public school system to be so shoddy is the fact that it is public and without adequate competition (although that is starting to change). This has led to some of the highest per-pupil spending in the world, with educational results some of the worst in the world.
The current system didn't give us Lincoln or Edison. That was the past system, before the teachers unions became entrenched, the "Schools of Education" became the authority on how to teach, and the school districts too big to be responsive.
Oh, and the countries that were kicking our butt also have strong private school systems and provide government funding to private schools.
The universal publically funded education system really did result in our pathetic system. It took quite a while for it to degenerate to the level it did, but the near monopoly on education by publc systems led to the natural result of a government monopoly - disaster.
As to your supposition. I was educated in public schools and my mother was a public school teacher. When my daughter was born, my mother said that she only had one firm request of us - that her first grandchild not attend public school! The request was honored.
One of the more interesting examples of this sort of bigotry was the motive behind the creation of universal publicly funded education in the United States.
This happened as large numbers of Irish came to the country, and was a result of anti-Catholic bigotry. The purpose was to undercut the Catholic school system. The result was the pathetic school system we now have.
My blood pressure momentarily spiked.
The threats are harmful because the represent potential violence. I suppose we could just wait until an armed robber actually kills someone before giving him a severe sentence. Likewise, if you pull a gun on somebody because you are mad at him, but you don't shoot him, you have committed a violent crime and should pay a significant punishment. And that's how the law works today. SURPRISE!
You are still looking at things in economic terms. The reason armed robbery should be treated as a serious crime is that it contains the threat of deadly violence, which is sometimes carried out. That threat is itself extremely harmful. It matters not whether they get $10 or $10000, if they kill you! This is why I put violent crime way ahead of economic crime. Violent crime threatens your most sacred possessions - your health and/or your life. And I think mugging with a sharp icicle should carry a large penalty, although not as large as that with a gun (simply because I would rather the criminal be armed with an icicle when I pull out my gun to defend myself!).
But notice, as with other crimes, it's the lowest-level "street dealers" who are arrested and convicted (particularly those in inner-city areas) and everyone else is relatively untouched (except perhaps meth makers). I know this from experience.
Of course. They are the easiest to catch. The drug enforcement people would MUCH prefer to catch a kingpin, but making a conviction is extremely difficult in such a case. Thus they have to triage their resources. Of course, as we agree, all of this resource is misused in this case anyway.
However I disagree about big corporate fraud being uncommon. I have been in the position to work either in or with accounting in most of the companies I've worked for and I can assure you that EVERY ONE was commiting some sort of fraud.
Fraud is a big charge. Did you report them to the police? If not, why not? Fraud is a criminal offense.
Thus I take these assertions with a bit of salt. Perhaps you meant that they were engaged in some shady, but legal accounting. There is a big difference.
It's become so common that nobody even bothers to think about it anymore and just assumes that all companies are a bit crooked. Isn't this a problem?
I don't assume that all companies are a bit crooked. I do assume that they operate out of a desire for profit, and that the individuals operate out of a desire for personal profit (see Laws of Bureaucracy). I also assume that some people in many companies will engage in unethical behavior. And I assume that many fewer people will engage in criminal behavior.
So I am curious what sort of "fraud" you are describing.
I've been in the business for 35 years. I worked my way up to CTO in a 2000 person company. Now I work as a designer and coder. The reason: personal preference. I work out of my house (you cannot do that effectively in management); I get to create things myself, which I enjoy. I don't have to wear a suit. I don't have to play in office politics, which get more intense the higher up you go.
OTOH, if it wasn't for the health insurance mess (TRY buying health insurance if you or members of your family have pre-existing conditions), I would not have to work - at least full time.
Sigh.
The better the space access, the more science that will happen. NASA would be better off if it focused on manned space exploration (for which it is more likely to get funding). The development required for this would provide plenty of opportunities for science.
Science, like all endeavors, has to compete for funds. To expect that nation to fund highly expensive systems (like the stupid International Space Station) for a few micro-g experiments nad some out-of-atmosphere astronomy is silly. If Americans knew how much the ISS cost, and how little it is doing to advance space travel, they would have cancelled it a long time ago.
The '60s were a golden time for space science. Why? Because systems and experience were developed in the moon race that otherwise would never have been done. These are necessary for science.
A visionary approach doesn't try to get NASA to do more "science" - it does something to capture the imagination of the taxpayers *and* the people who have to conceive and build the systems.
Finally, even though not a lot of "science" was done, a heck of a lot of good engineering was! And we are continually reaping the benefits of it (what geek *doesn't* have a large Velcro collection?)
I find it hard to believe that anyone would consider economic crime to be more serious than violent crime!
Keep in mind that lots of crime statistics come from *reported* crime. And reported crime depends on the biases of those who report it, not the police. It is far more likely that those in high crime inner city areas *underreport* crime, both because it is so common and because they are threatened with retaliation!
Street crimes are usually crimes of violence, and should be given the highest priority. IMHO the biggest wrong priority in law enforcement is the overemphasis on drug law enforcement.
I would much rather be defrauded than murdered, frankly. And the difference between "minor" violent crime and murder is often luck. Burglary turns into murder too often, even if that is not the intent (except here in Arizona where we are legally allowed to kill burglars without warning). And big corporate fraud is not very common, in spite of all the headlines. Big corporate greed has been way too much, but *it is not criminal,* and over time is self limiting (as we are seeing now).
As far as surveys, how would you design one? Go ask people if they are criminals? Ask people if they have been victimized? The latter are commonly done and are used to determine the crime rates I have referred to (along with reported crimes and apprehensions).
The FBI crime statistics which are most commonly cited are reported crimes, not apprehended criminals. They also have reports on arrests and convictions.
One crime in which selection bias is unlikely to cause higher numbers in black inner city communities is murder. In fact, the bias is likely to be the reverse.
As far as arrests and conviction go, last year, more blacks were *convicted* of murder than whites, even though blacks make up only about 12% of the population! In fact, of cases where the offender's race was known, blacks made up 50% of murder offenders. This is very hard to explain by selective policing! Blacks killed 475 whites, while whites killed 180 blacks. Blacks killed 2802 other blacks (again, hard to explain by selective statistics).
For reported statistics, blacks make up 46% of those murdered, which supports the observation that crime rates (in this case, violent crime, but similar stats apply to other crimes) are highest in black neighborhoods (and of course a closer scrutiny will put the focus on inner city black neighborhoods).
A recent study showed that using isopropyl alcohol hand cleaners is far better than hand washing with antimicrobials.
One issue that I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is the spread of resistance in cultures where antibiotics are frequently used without prescriptions or medical advice.
In many third world countries, antibiotics are available by the pill. People take them until they feel better or can't afford any more.
Without significant education (and perhaps changes in incentives), this will lead to widespread resistance, without invoking first worlder's ignoring their doctors' adivce or agricultural use of antibiotics.
In addition, certain subcultures in the US have similar problems. One of the scariest bugs out there (far scarier than MRSA) is multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. TB is common among street people, due to their lifestyle. Unfortunately, the same psychopathologies that lead to them being homeless also lead to failure to follow proper antibiotic treatment regimes. For this reason, states are now starting to reinstate the process of forced treatment - in confinement if necessary.
If you have TB and you don't follow the treatment protocols, you can be confined to a treatment facility until the TB is cleared (which may be never if it is highly resistant).
Making this even worse is that many of the street people are also heroin addicts, and contract AIDS. Then we have a paradise for the TB - weakened immune system in a person who doesn't adhere to proper antibiotic use.
It is also spreading very rapidly in Russian prisons, btw, and is also a major killer in the third world.
The reason TB is so scary is that it is a very serious disease (often fatal) in a healthy person, and it is spread through the air. You can catch it on a bus or walking down the street. Most TB is resistant to some antibiotics, but curable by a (nasty) cocktail of other antibiotics.
Before the development of Streptomycin, TB was common in the United States. Many people spent the last months or years of their shortened lives in TB Sanitoria, often experiencing all sorts of ghastly treatment.
Bacteria aren't restricted to darwinian evolution. They sometimes just grab genes from things they eat and incorporate them into their strucure.
This is still Darwinian Evolution. After all, Darwin didn't know about genes at all - and certainly not DNA! How the genomic change occurs is not an issue with Darwinian Evolution. Darwin's insight (others had this too, btw) was how natural selection worked to produce variations and new species.
Genomes change for in all sorts of ways. Mutation is one. Extremely important is gene exchange - typically sexual reproduction. This is very powerful or the high costs of it (please, no bad jokes) wouldn't be tolerated by natural selection. There are other mechanisms... bacteria can simply pick up DNA that is floating around in their environment - especially plasmids. Viruses can cause germ line changes - introducing new genes or modifying existing ones.
Phages *are* nanotechnology. So are engineered antibiotics.
Or did you mean nanorobotics?
In general, the increased resistance DOES have a selection cost. In the absence of antibiotics the resistance gene(s) often fade from the genome.
I don't know, however, if this cost is enough to keep the strains within the hospital, given the widespread use of antibiotics. It may be only a slight selection disadvantage in the absence of antibiotics.
Furthermore, the staph may pass on that resistance to other bugs (Strep?).
There is a good overview article on phage therapy in last week's Science magazine.
Phages therapy still faces the development of resistance. Natural selection is a very powerful process, and various forms of gene exchange among bacteria makes it happen quite quickly.
Phages also are likely to be attacked by the human immune system (they are, after all, foreign viruses). Thus a lot of phages that work well in vitro don't do well in vivo.
However, they are an additional weapon against bacteria, and there are now some western companies that are combining the long Soviet experience with them with western venture capital and well equipped laboratories.
At some point, on might suppose that bacteria would run out of resistance strategies. Most changes to cause resistance come at some cost - which is why resistance genes will often fade away without the presence of antibiotics. Add up enough of these changes and you may produce bacteria that are not very viable. OTOH you may produce bugzilla!
All social science (and I use the word "science" guardedly) is loaded with uncertainty. A well designed survey can be just as inaccurate or more so. In fact, the world is full of inaccurate surveys. Just ask the election guessers.
However, social "scientists" in general do accept the higher rates of criminality among:
1) poor people, especially inner city
2) people from fatherless or substitute father families
3) drug users
4) combination of the above
To assume that the criminal apprehension or conviction statistics are so biased as to not support these hypotheses is to presume an extremely strong and consistent bias in the justice system. It is to presume that people not in these groups are getting away with a whole lot of burglary and murder and armed robberies and assault. It is also to presume that a lot of the crimes against inner city black people are done by non-inner city black people who for some reason go to their neighborhoods to commit the crimes.
In other words, it is absurd.
One needs to be able to reason with far from perfect data in almost any field of analysis. But this is especially so in the social areas, as we simply do not have the means to get accurate data. Contrary to your assertion, surveys wouldn't do the trick (and I'd bet that if you dug into it, you WOULD find surveys where people have tried).
Living in East PA you are lucky to have had no problems. Of course, I don't know where in East PA you live or what your behavior is like, both of which affect your risk. But then, anecdotes do not make statistics.
As far as your deduction that "clearly there is not causation" is nonsense. It only proves that the majority of those in the risk categories you mentioned are not criminals (or more precisely, haven't been caught). It says nothing about the relative rates, which is a far more interesting case.
And, of course, your categories are too large anyway. What kinds of drugs? Crack and heroin are a lot more likely to result in crime than marijuana or ecstacy.
Oh, and suburban whites who use drugs are *more* likely to engage in other criminal activity (which should hardly be surprising, since at least on the margin the willingness to break stupid laws is also associated with the willingness to break un-stupid laws). And suburban whites in broken families are VASTLY more likely to engage in crime than those from unbroken families. Blacks on average, and inner city blacks in particular, have a much higher rate of fatherless families, which have the highest correlate with both criminality and other social pathologies.
Except if we use your logic, we can never make statements like these, since you deny any ability to use criminal apprehension statistics to make inferences about either actual criminality rates or causation. Which means, of course, that we can't even reason about the subject, which means, I guess, that we should just throw up our hands and give up.
There is no question that using apprehension statistics to infer actual rates of criminality is imprecise. But to totally ignore it - to claim no correlation - is wrong.
Nope!
3) PATENT
4) Profit
Actually, a "can" is not a circulator, but rather a high queue resonant cavity. They are very different things. A circulator is normally used for two purposes:
1) keep energy received by the antenna from getting into the final amplifier and generating spurious products (which is why they are *required* at most shared sites)
2) Protecting the transmitter from antenna failure, since the third terminal on the circulator is typically hooked to a dummy load.
Can's are used to create narrow band filters. On a typical FM repeater, they are used to duplex the transmitter and receiver to the same antenna (and hence they form a "duplexor"). Additional cans may be used to further reduce spurious emissions, and to protect the receiver from known strong out-of-band signals.
I assume by exciter you really mean local oscillator. And as I mentioned, the receive amp will in fact reduce the exciter output. The diode... well, why the heck would you put a diode in the circuit? It doesn't make any sense.
LO leakage is a well known problem with any superheterodyne receiver design. There are a number of methods to solve it (including appropriate mixers, pre-amps, trapping out the RF frequency, etc). I have *never* heard of anyone suggest using a diode for that purpose. It just does not compute.
The real problem with the approach of detecting the LO is that in any but the worst designed receiver, it will be way down in output power compared to the transmitter. Sniffing for LO's is thus inherently disadvantaged compared to sniffing for transmitters.
There are other ways to estimate crime rates. For example, there are a number of social pathologies that are closely associated with criminology, including drug use and family breakup.
Inner city blacks, which is where the vast disparity of crime rate occurs, also have those other disparities in large numbers.
Suburban blacks, OTOH, do not have a high crime rate (which blows your logic).
You can come up with as many theories as you want, but the real test is in practice. I can take you to the poor black portion of town here and let you out to walk the streets, or I can take you to the poor white portion. Take your pick. Your survival statistics should be a clue.
Mu
Not hardly!
A diode preferrentially passes DC current in one direction. This is RF current.
Normally you will get some isolation from the receiver's RF amplifier (if it has any).
Beyond that, you can use a device called a circulator - a magical waveguide/magnet thingie that allows RF at the appropriate frequeny to only propagate one way through it.
These things are *not* cheap, BTW, but are commonly used in repeater systems.
However, I would truly be impressed if you also care about the rights of the woman who lives in poverty that would otherwise give birth to it.
I am not interested in her right to murder her child. Babies do not happen by accident. They are the result of behavior, and killing the unborn is simply evading the responsibility to that behavior by destroying life.
Or whether or not you will care to defend its rights after 20 years have passed and it has become a man who has murdered people and will be executed by the state
If it has murdered people and been adjudicated guilty, I support its rights to appeal. And when they are exhausted, I support the need of the state to kill that person, just as I support the needs of a nation to sometimes go to war.
Yes, it can be applied without the actual commission of violence. In other words, the crime is the advocacy of violence, and does not require actual violence.
The article is about Australia, which may have different rules.