No you must not have. Considering I stated "For all the current problems with the right side of politics" and "Let me also add... that the right have a huge problem at the moment." Both sides have their elitist attitude. Don't think the left are above it. Both sides are always looking for a rise in power and will do anything to get it. Like I stated/. regularly discusses comments which are derogatory to the common man. That is an elitist attitude. How do you expect the masses to be educated when you call them morons? It's duplicitous. The fact that your response to me totally focuses on the right side of politics misses the point plus there are numerous other/.er's on this story denouncing the right while championing the left (but you'll probably be modded up anyway because it fits/. groupthink). What are we going to do about it? Complaining about them does nothing, but focusing on our own faults might change things.
Excellent post. However I do have a problem with one statement.
When push comes to shove, Side A may have 20 times as many rifles, pointy sticks, and fists, but my money's still on Side B.
I doubt it. This is a problem with the technological oriented proponents of war. Allow me to flow with your metaphor... It's a fairly liberalized view of war to bomb the crap out of a Side A from afar whilst shielding our own B-side troops from battle. The problem with that mode of warfare is that it does a heap of collateral damage to the population of Side A where unknown numbers may have been willing to side with you (or happy to coexist as you stated). You can win your war without smashing the crap out of side A (Height of excellence and all that).
Secondly, soon as your Side B would start to take KIA's to B-side troops in a possible preemptive strike or protracted Guerilla war by Side A (I'll get to this in my third point) you would probably pull out. Technologically and liberalized societies cannot morally or psychologically fathom casualties.
Thirdly, nuclear weapons or the threat of those weapons don't win wars. Good luck fighting Side A who already know they have a technological asymmetry and geographically disperse thus nullifying your precision strike missiles whilst attacking you with their "many rifles, pointy sticks, and fists."
Don't get me wrong, I too would side with B but you'd be silly to think that your technology trumps human will, strategy and whole heap of other crazy factors that make up the fog of battle.
However, there is a problem with educating the masses. For all the current problems with the right side of politics you also have a fundamental flaw in mindset on the left progressive side of politics. That flaw with the left is a growing elite attitude towards the masses. How many times have partisan leftists screamed about how dumb and ignorant the masses are? You'll see it here on/. time and time again and it always gets modded up. That's not the attitude to have to win the hearts, and most importantly, the minds of Americans. In past history it used to be the left who championed the common man. Nowdays, the left movement berates its opponents and its support base in the same sentence. It's pretty sad state of affairs.
Remember Orwell's animal farm? The people you have to target for education are the characters of Boxer and Clover (while some aspects of the current administration could represent Moses the Raven). Hard working individuals who really don't have time to come home from a hard days work and read Dawkins or Chomsky. They'd rather chill out in front of the TV, look after their kids or sleep. It's not a matter of them being stupid, it's that they really don't have the time or inclination to work towards knowledge. How will we change this? I don't have all the answers. To me one thing that might help is being truthful. An ethical underpinning in every facet is probably the most important thing in politics. Another thing that might work is encouraging truth and education in media. However, history would say otherwise (perhaps I have shades of Benjamin the Donkey here). Even though that sounds cynical we still cannot talk down to our fellow man. There is a reason why Bush gives off the illusion (read: propaganda) of the common man with cowboy hat and texas drawl - it's cause appearing like the masses works in political power. The progressive left have to take that into account. We too can become like that but by being truthful, less elitist and that starts with not talking down the common man.
Let me also add (before I get modded down, which unusually always happens with different views to the mainstream here on/.) that the right have a huge problem at the moment. As was attested in the story. I'm not arguing for or against either side, it's just there is more factors involved here than is talked about.
"Sun Tzu has been taught in Western military academies for a very long time, and is only part of the intellectual arsenal."
Granted that they have studied Sun Tzu but it is not culturally or historically embedded enough in the US military to be of much use. It has only been in the last fifty years that Sun Tzu (Or Clausewitz) has been studied seriously by the US military. John Boyd and his acolytes have talked extensively about this. If anything the US military is culturally influenced by the Jominian or "scientific" way of warfare. Jomini was widely read during the Civil war and influenced the Generals at that time and made it essential reading for future officers. That method of warfare sees its evolution into the Operations research and RAND game theorists of the cold war which were all based on a Jominian way of war.
"The Western military mindset is to take and hold territory. A retreat that keeps a force intact as a threat to maintaining control of territory is not a victory for the other side."
Like I said, the enemy thinks otherwise. You may think you are winning by your sets of standards and values, in this case holding territory but for an eastern fighter they really couldn't care that you are holding ground. The enemy has a different set of values, objectives and cultural influence to the western world.
Talk about self-defeating logic. You say it's not then lead into this next sentence:
"The mostly Arab fighters who inhabit the Iraqi battlefields use whatever Islamic mythology suits them at the moment, be it Mongol, Moorish, or Arab."
So which is it? They are culturally influenced or are they not? Secondly, what has this to do with
combative methods and strategic thought? You have failed to elaborate about this mythology makes the
bound from myth to combative action.
"Of the 50% of them who can read, I doubt they know who Sun Tzu is other than an infidel."
How does this refute my point? I said they were culturally influenced and they are. Look at the
history. Much of the chinese classicists writings on warfare spread throughout the silk road from as
far south as Indonesia and as far west as Turkey. Take a look at this map of the silk road. The methods of
Middle Eastern fighting stem from Eastern fighting methods that had its roots in a mix of the Steepes
people and ancient chinese strategists. For proof of this read up on Thomas X. Hammes, Van
Creveld, Keegan
, and most importantly Poole.
Oh, if you don't believe that middle eastern groups are not reading current strategy you are entirely
mislead. Here is an up-to-date news
article from a Kurdish website that analyzes Turkey's war against extremist groups and quotes the
American strategist John Boyd Boyd.
His material is based on a lot of Sun Tzu. It states that what Turkey is doing is what Boyd has
suggested all along, which suggests that the cultural influence of Chinese military thought holds true.
"Furthermore, if what you say is true, then the 'insurgents's support base would be much larger.
They would be winning after all."
How did you come to that conclusion? Do you know how large the insurgents support base is? There is
suggestions that is up to 184,800. And that is just the Sunni insurgency and support base. That doesn't count
the influence from the Iranians
.
"In reality encouraging snipers to run away is still going to be a win on the battlefield."
It depends on what you mean by "win." You see, for the case in Iraq at the moment their fighters are culturally influenced by Asian and Steppe fighting methods (the history of this stems from Sun Tzu and other cultural writings being moved along the Silk Road and also from Mongol invasions) which posits that running away is in fact winning in their mindset. The western mindset, which you so eloquently put in your example of winning, is about fighting the enemy in a decisive battle and if the enemy runs that is a "win" in our mindset. So at a tactical level our western mindset might see it as a win but for the enemy it is part of a longer term strategic culture that champions running away to fight again another day.
So China will eventually put the first man to the moon?
Yeah, in case you haven't noticed in movies like 'Crouching Tiger' the Chinese special effects can now show a man/woman floating without the little strings that were present when the Americans faked the first moon landing.
It is fitting that you should say that cause Bill Gates is quite an accomplished Go player. Anyone who wants to understand how Go is used as a strategy particularly how that strategy influences strategic thought should read
this paper.
Obviously Lessig is jealous he didn't get to download that Public Domain remix of the song out of Blade with vampire blood dancing. Which leads to something more nefarious..
Putting two and two together we/.'ers have obviously solved the root of the piracy problem where Lessig failed, that is... vampires have taken control of intellectual property. Yes, yes. I know, I know calm down. It's simple see... we just take the supposed lawyers (vampires) for a "walk" in a back alley. Accidents happen can sometimes happen in back alleys.
"and with the youth of our nations these days getting smarter and more aware of whats going on in the world around them...it's only natural for them to get very pissed off "
I disagree. I was recently reading a psychology journal that talked about the psychological profile of suicide bombers and how ideology spreads across social networks. While there is no overall fit for an extremist personality the journal did note that the most extreme fundamentalist views were often held by people between the early teens and young twenties.
It seems that young people are predisposed to pick up ideas based on their social networks (or memes if you will) and take an extreme, unquestioning point of view from that idea. Not suprising when you consider kids strive for identity through their peers and will assimilate whatever ideas their peer's social networks have.
"A country can't resist U.S. Imperialism if none of its citizens are ALIVE."
Excellent point my tin pot African warlord friend. I also think some of the specialized non-lethal weapons could be used for certain situations.
For instance I always have some loathsome loud protestors out the front of my palace screaming about grain supplies and water restrictions and I could just zap them with my mouth freezing ray. Then I'd address them with "Tell me, Zakawooni Tribe, what good is a protest when you are unable to speak, eat or drink?"
The newborn babies of the tribes would also be unable to eat their candy and thus making it all the more easier for my jackbooted thugs to steal from them. No crying either, which emboldens my withering black heart!
but if you read between the lines you see reason these servers are connected to the internet is they don't hold classified data. Every day the DoD produces an unthinkable amount of documentation, and only a small portion of it actually matters to anyone (including DoD).
I disagree if you think gathering innocuous near-open source information isn't important. In the article it stated "these hackers wanted all the files they could find." It's obvious now that the Chinese way of collecting information is to throw a massive net into various geographical realms (including cyberspace) and gain as much information as possible. Who knows what data these guys are getting. The data may seem innocuous to us but to the Chinese it may be pertinent competitive information. In a worst case scenario this information gathering could be a reconnaissance for future cyber covert action.
In the SIGINT world while breaking cryptography and traffic analysis are considered more important much more manpower goes at targeting weaker sources like plain voice traffic and technical parameters. This method of attacking a a FUOU network that doesn't haven't high level classification goes along with the Sun Tzu-based chinese way of war. In Sun Tzu's art of war he stated "To effect an unhampered advance, strike their vacuities." That is what these guys are doing-attacking weak unclass networks rather than go after harder to attack classified networks.
Part of the counter-intelligence (CI) game is to make sure the enemy doesn't know he's been caught.
While that is so, it's a pretty sophomoric view of CI. Usually CI runs through a couple of stages:
1. Ascertaining what needs protection in the first place and assigning priorities (time and money) to targets. In this case the US probably now realizes that these low level networks need as much protection as high level networks. So the priorities will probably change in the future.
2. Second stage is analysis needs to be done to ascertain the particular vulnerabilities of those secrets that were ID'ed in stage one. If the higher officials were worried about this cyberthreat there was obviously vulnerable information on those networks. Probably either put there due to incompetence or if the information is put into context with other disparate info.
3. Third stage is where CI assesses what areas foreign intel is targeting and assess its ability to reach those targets. Obviously these guys have the ability to target the low level networks.
The American CI have a pretty good idea about the Chinese hackers technical means, their operational means and what information the Chinese are exactly getting-hence why they are worried. So to publicly out this through the press really isn't a big deal because they know everything they need to know, they now need to assess their vulnerabilities and run through the CI cycle again.
Re:ATTN: Mods, this guy is a dimwit please mod dow
on
Building Secure Computers?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"this does not state his experience and knowledge (or lack of) in his field."
The post was in relation to the timeline. Thanks for the slippery slope argument however. The poster has just popped out of no where. He stated on a another post"I've spent a number of years now building/accrediting/auditing intelligence processing systems (READ: secure computers) and you silly little Slashdot geeks have NO idea what you're talking about when it comes to DoD red-tape."
So he's spent a number of years building these systems at the age of 19? Not only that but he would of got his first TS clearance in his mid-teens. Ridiculous. I personally think he's either:
1. A troll or;
2. An actual serving member who's getting a bit too big for his britches.
3. Some guy social engineering people.
That's my opinion, so feel free to believe whatever you like.
ATTN: Mods, this guy is a dimwit please mod down
on
Building Secure Computers?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Any of you/.'ers ever study art history? Here is a little lesson about fraud.
In the Art world when a piece of Art has a past where the time record has some glitches in it (Read: unaccountable) it is automatically considered a fraud. When things don't have a timeline, like this guys posting record here and the fact that his myspace profile says he is 19, you gotta know something is up.
Congratulations though/. mods. You just got social engineered.
"the overflow books available by request from the warehouse featured in "Raiders of the Lost Arc"."
Dude, you mean I can check out the Arc of the Covenant for a couple of weeks? The boys at Gamma Phi Kappa are gonna be spun when I show them this text over a bong hit.
Clearly this isn't some off topic first post troll. It is more likely an alien race trying to communicate to us via well known alphabet letters about the perils of space travel. Clearly on topic.
What better way to destroy a civilization than to attack its laws and virtues? The thing the public doesn't understand is that the terrorists are winning on the Legal front. For all the political ranting about how terrorists won't change us nothing could be further from the truth than in the legal realm. The more the laws change the more the terrorists win in the long run by destroying what we once were.
"but what about the rest which undoubtedly contain information authorities could be using to predict and prevent future attacks?"
Such information won't be on the internet. I've said why before here. All the tactical planning won't be done on the internet cause of security and secrecy. While strategic views, potential targets and ideology will be published over the net in full view the actual innovative ways to attack won't be. That'll be up to the terrorists on the ground.
You see, terrorism deeply follows the eastern way of warfare. As sun tzu said about the soldiers being ideologically glued (the tao) to their leaders then having the initiative to fight on their own. It's a form of commanders intent, or hive mind. The eastern way that the terrorists are fighting is a bottom up way of fighting and having faith in its soldiers. The western way of warfare, which is highly authoritarian, is top down. Although the marine corps have tried to implement soldier level initiative with such concepts as the strategic corporal and the commanders intent. Anyway I've ranted too much.
Parent is right. I liken Google to a big open source intelligence collector. It just sits there and gathers vast sums of information. That information when analysed by certain people then becomes actionable intelligence - that is when knowledge becomes power.
I believe Joseph S. Nye put down the 3 different types of information in the information age:
1. flows of data such as news or statistics
2. information used for advantage in competitive situations. That is analysed information or intelligence and;
3. strategic information - knowledge of the enemy's game plan.
The most important strategic information of all, where you know your targets intents and motivations, probably won't be found on the web and is beyond the scope of Google (unless they have a google mindsearch in 2100).
It is also worth noting that in wartime information is always intertwined with security and deception. Take that as a hint to whoever your target on google. They may be putting false information out on the web and the savvy people/groups won't put their pertinent info out there for us to peruse.
There was a book out recently called the cheating culture. I highly recommend it as it points out the cheating is a systemic problem in all levels, from school to business, and that it's pretty damaging to long term values. It also points out interestingly enough that in a lot of other countries such widespread cheating would lead to a revolt however in America the poor can cheat just as much as the rich. So everyone gets into a self perpetuating mindset of 'everyone else is cheating so why does it matter' thus continuing the vicious cycle.
The specialized niche blogs are excellent. I for instance read a lot of war and intelligence stuff. So Blogs like Global Guerillas, History of the Middle East & Religion, Counter-terrorist blog, Pentagons New Map blog, Terrorism Financing, Cryptome and Scheiner among a whole heap of others. The problem for me is I have to try keep away from Kos, Instapundit and LGF cause those type of blogs are partisan fuckwads that are more interested in bagging each other out and giving deceptive 'news' than giving realistic war analysis.
Slashdot Mirror
No you must not have. Considering I stated "For all the current problems with the right side of politics" and "Let me also add ... that the right have a huge problem at the moment." Both sides have their elitist attitude. Don't think the left are above it. Both sides are always looking for a rise in power and will do anything to get it. Like I stated /. regularly discusses comments which are derogatory to the common man. That is an elitist attitude. How do you expect the masses to be educated when you call them morons? It's duplicitous. The fact that your response to me totally focuses on the right side of politics misses the point plus there are numerous other /.er's on this story denouncing the right while championing the left (but you'll probably be modded up anyway because it fits /. groupthink). What are we going to do about it? Complaining about them does nothing, but focusing on our own faults might change things.
When push comes to shove, Side A may have 20 times as many rifles, pointy sticks, and fists, but my money's still on Side B.
I doubt it. This is a problem with the technological oriented proponents of war. Allow me to flow with your metaphor ... It's a fairly liberalized view of war to bomb the crap out of a Side A from afar whilst shielding our own B-side troops from battle. The problem with that mode of warfare is that it does a heap of collateral damage to the population of Side A where unknown numbers may have been willing to side with you (or happy to coexist as you stated). You can win your war without smashing the crap out of side A (Height of excellence and all that).
Secondly, soon as your Side B would start to take KIA's to B-side troops in a possible preemptive strike or protracted Guerilla war by Side A (I'll get to this in my third point) you would probably pull out. Technologically and liberalized societies cannot morally or psychologically fathom casualties.
Thirdly, nuclear weapons or the threat of those weapons don't win wars. Good luck fighting Side A who already know they have a technological asymmetry and geographically disperse thus nullifying your precision strike missiles whilst attacking you with their "many rifles, pointy sticks, and fists."
Don't get me wrong, I too would side with B but you'd be silly to think that your technology trumps human will, strategy and whole heap of other crazy factors that make up the fog of battle.
Remember Orwell's animal farm? The people you have to target for education are the characters of Boxer and Clover (while some aspects of the current administration could represent Moses the Raven). Hard working individuals who really don't have time to come home from a hard days work and read Dawkins or Chomsky. They'd rather chill out in front of the TV, look after their kids or sleep. It's not a matter of them being stupid, it's that they really don't have the time or inclination to work towards knowledge. How will we change this? I don't have all the answers. To me one thing that might help is being truthful. An ethical underpinning in every facet is probably the most important thing in politics. Another thing that might work is encouraging truth and education in media. However, history would say otherwise (perhaps I have shades of Benjamin the Donkey here). Even though that sounds cynical we still cannot talk down to our fellow man. There is a reason why Bush gives off the illusion (read: propaganda) of the common man with cowboy hat and texas drawl - it's cause appearing like the masses works in political power. The progressive left have to take that into account. We too can become like that but by being truthful, less elitist and that starts with not talking down the common man.
Let me also add (before I get modded down, which unusually always happens with different views to the mainstream here on /.) that the right have a huge problem at the moment. As was attested in the story. I'm not arguing for or against either side, it's just there is more factors involved here than is talked about.
Granted that they have studied Sun Tzu but it is not culturally or historically embedded enough in the US military to be of much use. It has only been in the last fifty years that Sun Tzu (Or Clausewitz) has been studied seriously by the US military. John Boyd and his acolytes have talked extensively about this. If anything the US military is culturally influenced by the Jominian or "scientific" way of warfare. Jomini was widely read during the Civil war and influenced the Generals at that time and made it essential reading for future officers. That method of warfare sees its evolution into the Operations research and RAND game theorists of the cold war which were all based on a Jominian way of war.
"The Western military mindset is to take and hold territory. A retreat that keeps a force intact as a threat to maintaining control of territory is not a victory for the other side."
Like I said, the enemy thinks otherwise. You may think you are winning by your sets of standards and values, in this case holding territory but for an eastern fighter they really couldn't care that you are holding ground. The enemy has a different set of values, objectives and cultural influence to the western world.
Talk about self-defeating logic. You say it's not then lead into this next sentence:
"The mostly Arab fighters who inhabit the Iraqi battlefields use whatever Islamic mythology suits them at the moment, be it Mongol, Moorish, or Arab."
So which is it? They are culturally influenced or are they not? Secondly, what has this to do with combative methods and strategic thought? You have failed to elaborate about this mythology makes the bound from myth to combative action.
"Of the 50% of them who can read, I doubt they know who Sun Tzu is other than an infidel."
How does this refute my point? I said they were culturally influenced and they are. Look at the history. Much of the chinese classicists writings on warfare spread throughout the silk road from as far south as Indonesia and as far west as Turkey. Take a look at this map of the silk road. The methods of Middle Eastern fighting stem from Eastern fighting methods that had its roots in a mix of the Steepes people and ancient chinese strategists. For proof of this read up on Thomas X. Hammes, Van Creveld, Keegan , and most importantly Poole.
Oh, if you don't believe that middle eastern groups are not reading current strategy you are entirely mislead. Here is an up-to-date news article from a Kurdish website that analyzes Turkey's war against extremist groups and quotes the American strategist John Boyd Boyd. His material is based on a lot of Sun Tzu. It states that what Turkey is doing is what Boyd has suggested all along, which suggests that the cultural influence of Chinese military thought holds true.
"Furthermore, if what you say is true, then the 'insurgents's support base would be much larger. They would be winning after all."
How did you come to that conclusion? Do you know how large the insurgents support base is? There is suggestions that is up to 184,800. And that is just the Sunni insurgency and support base. That doesn't count the influence from the Iranians .
It depends on what you mean by "win." You see, for the case in Iraq at the moment their fighters are culturally influenced by Asian and Steppe fighting methods (the history of this stems from Sun Tzu and other cultural writings being moved along the Silk Road and also from Mongol invasions) which posits that running away is in fact winning in their mindset. The western mindset, which you so eloquently put in your example of winning, is about fighting the enemy in a decisive battle and if the enemy runs that is a "win" in our mindset. So at a tactical level our western mindset might see it as a win but for the enemy it is part of a longer term strategic culture that champions running away to fight again another day.
Yeah, in case you haven't noticed in movies like 'Crouching Tiger' the Chinese special effects can now show a man/woman floating without the little strings that were present when the Americans faked the first moon landing.
It is fitting that you should say that cause Bill Gates is quite an accomplished Go player. Anyone who wants to understand how Go is used as a strategy particularly how that strategy influences strategic thought should read this paper.
No. It's spelled correctly. The /. editors forgot to add the sinister gregorian monk music and demon guide dogs and crows.
Obviously Lessig is jealous he didn't get to download that Public Domain remix of the song out of Blade with vampire blood dancing. Which leads to something more nefarious..
Putting two and two together we /.'ers have obviously solved the root of the piracy problem where Lessig failed, that is ... vampires have taken control of intellectual property. Yes, yes. I know, I know calm down. It's simple see ... we just take the supposed lawyers (vampires) for a "walk" in a back alley. Accidents happen can sometimes happen in back alleys.
I disagree. I was recently reading a psychology journal that talked about the psychological profile of suicide bombers and how ideology spreads across social networks. While there is no overall fit for an extremist personality the journal did note that the most extreme fundamentalist views were often held by people between the early teens and young twenties.
It seems that young people are predisposed to pick up ideas based on their social networks (or memes if you will) and take an extreme, unquestioning point of view from that idea. Not suprising when you consider kids strive for identity through their peers and will assimilate whatever ideas their peer's social networks have.
More aware? Maybe. Smarter? Probably not.
Excellent point my tin pot African warlord friend. I also think some of the specialized non-lethal weapons could be used for certain situations.
For instance I always have some loathsome loud protestors out the front of my palace screaming about grain supplies and water restrictions and I could just zap them with my mouth freezing ray. Then I'd address them with "Tell me, Zakawooni Tribe, what good is a protest when you are unable to speak, eat or drink?"
The newborn babies of the tribes would also be unable to eat their candy and thus making it all the more easier for my jackbooted thugs to steal from them. No crying either, which emboldens my withering black heart!
I disagree if you think gathering innocuous near-open source information isn't important. In the article it stated "these hackers wanted all the files they could find." It's obvious now that the Chinese way of collecting information is to throw a massive net into various geographical realms (including cyberspace) and gain as much information as possible. Who knows what data these guys are getting. The data may seem innocuous to us but to the Chinese it may be pertinent competitive information. In a worst case scenario this information gathering could be a reconnaissance for future cyber covert action.
In the SIGINT world while breaking cryptography and traffic analysis are considered more important much more manpower goes at targeting weaker sources like plain voice traffic and technical parameters. This method of attacking a a FUOU network that doesn't haven't high level classification goes along with the Sun Tzu-based chinese way of war. In Sun Tzu's art of war he stated "To effect an unhampered advance, strike their vacuities." That is what these guys are doing-attacking weak unclass networks rather than go after harder to attack classified networks.
Part of the counter-intelligence (CI) game is to make sure the enemy doesn't know he's been caught.
While that is so, it's a pretty sophomoric view of CI. Usually CI runs through a couple of stages:
1. Ascertaining what needs protection in the first place and assigning priorities (time and money) to targets. In this case the US probably now realizes that these low level networks need as much protection as high level networks. So the priorities will probably change in the future.
2. Second stage is analysis needs to be done to ascertain the particular vulnerabilities of those secrets that were ID'ed in stage one. If the higher officials were worried about this cyberthreat there was obviously vulnerable information on those networks. Probably either put there due to incompetence or if the information is put into context with other disparate info.
3. Third stage is where CI assesses what areas foreign intel is targeting and assess its ability to reach those targets. Obviously these guys have the ability to target the low level networks.
The American CI have a pretty good idea about the Chinese hackers technical means, their operational means and what information the Chinese are exactly getting-hence why they are worried. So to publicly out this through the press really isn't a big deal because they know everything they need to know, they now need to assess their vulnerabilities and run through the CI cycle again.
The post was in relation to the timeline. Thanks for the slippery slope argument however. The poster has just popped out of no where. He stated on a another post "I've spent a number of years now building/accrediting/auditing intelligence processing systems (READ: secure computers) and you silly little Slashdot geeks have NO idea what you're talking about when it comes to DoD red-tape."
So he's spent a number of years building these systems at the age of 19? Not only that but he would of got his first TS clearance in his mid-teens. Ridiculous. I personally think he's either:
1. A troll or;
2. An actual serving member who's getting a bit too big for his britches.
3. Some guy social engineering people.
That's my opinion, so feel free to believe whatever you like.
Any of you /.'ers ever study art history? Here is a little lesson about fraud.
/. mods. You just got social engineered.
In the Art world when a piece of Art has a past where the time record has some glitches in it (Read: unaccountable) it is automatically considered a fraud. When things don't have a timeline, like this guys posting record here and the fact that his myspace profile says he is 19, you gotta know something is up.
Congratulations though
Dude, you mean I can check out the Arc of the Covenant for a couple of weeks? The boys at Gamma Phi Kappa are gonna be spun when I show them this text over a bong hit.
Clearly this isn't some off topic first post troll. It is more likely an alien race trying to communicate to us via well known alphabet letters about the perils of space travel. Clearly on topic.
Jerk-o-meter is a synonym for moderator.
ooooohhh burn!
...and that's how you get Capone!
No mods!
Microsoft is good!
Linux is the debil!
Cats and Dogs living together!
MASS HYSTERIA!
What better way to destroy a civilization than to attack its laws and virtues? The thing the public doesn't understand is that the terrorists are winning on the Legal front. For all the political ranting about how terrorists won't change us nothing could be further from the truth than in the legal realm. The more the laws change the more the terrorists win in the long run by destroying what we once were.
Such information won't be on the internet. I've said why before here. All the tactical planning won't be done on the internet cause of security and secrecy. While strategic views, potential targets and ideology will be published over the net in full view the actual innovative ways to attack won't be. That'll be up to the terrorists on the ground.
You see, terrorism deeply follows the eastern way of warfare. As sun tzu said about the soldiers being ideologically glued (the tao) to their leaders then having the initiative to fight on their own. It's a form of commanders intent, or hive mind. The eastern way that the terrorists are fighting is a bottom up way of fighting and having faith in its soldiers. The western way of warfare, which is highly authoritarian, is top down. Although the marine corps have tried to implement soldier level initiative with such concepts as the strategic corporal and the commanders intent. Anyway I've ranted too much.
Parent is right. I liken Google to a big open source intelligence collector. It just sits there and gathers vast sums of information. That information when analysed by certain people then becomes actionable intelligence - that is when knowledge becomes power.
I believe Joseph S. Nye put down the 3 different types of information in the information age:
1. flows of data such as news or statistics
2. information used for advantage in competitive situations. That is analysed information or intelligence and;
3. strategic information - knowledge of the enemy's game plan.
The most important strategic information of all, where you know your targets intents and motivations, probably won't be found on the web and is beyond the scope of Google (unless they have a google mindsearch in 2100).
It is also worth noting that in wartime information is always intertwined with security and deception. Take that as a hint to whoever your target on google. They may be putting false information out on the web and the savvy people/groups won't put their pertinent info out there for us to peruse.
There was a book out recently called the cheating culture. I highly recommend it as it points out the cheating is a systemic problem in all levels, from school to business, and that it's pretty damaging to long term values. It also points out interestingly enough that in a lot of other countries such widespread cheating would lead to a revolt however in America the poor can cheat just as much as the rich. So everyone gets into a self perpetuating mindset of 'everyone else is cheating so why does it matter' thus continuing the vicious cycle.
The specialized niche blogs are excellent. I for instance read a lot of war and intelligence stuff. So Blogs like Global Guerillas, History of the Middle East & Religion, Counter-terrorist blog, Pentagons New Map blog, Terrorism Financing, Cryptome and Scheiner among a whole heap of others. The problem for me is I have to try keep away from Kos, Instapundit and LGF cause those type of blogs are partisan fuckwads that are more interested in bagging each other out and giving deceptive 'news' than giving realistic war analysis.