There is very serious whistleblower protection in military law - if someone in the U.S. military reports wrongdoing, and then faces retribution by their chain-of-command, then it becomes a matter of the DoD Inspector General.
In this case, however, even if Manning had intended to blow the whistle on an act or a number of acts, that was an impossible case to make considering the volume of classified material he sneaked out of his work and released. He did not attempt to report anything through his superiors before spewing classified information all over the internet. In his own words, he wanted to spread "[a]narchy in CSV format", which means he will go to federal prison for the remainder of his days. He maliciously damaged the country he swore to defend, bragged, and got caught. He's done.
Dumping large databases of classified information onto the internet is not "whistleblowing". It's indiscriminate, anarchic, sabotage supported by espionage.
They are controversial because they are rather indiscriminate weapons; figures vary wildly but a midrange one would be that they kill about 10 civilians for each target killed. There's a tradeoff between killing terrorists and alienating the civilian population.
Really? 10 to 1 is a midrange? Indiscriminant? If you have a good information source, please share. I feel we both want the same thing - fewer dead civilians, but I suspect you are using very bad assumptions.
In the Human Rights Watch report "Troops in Contact" they go out of their way to say that planned strikes result in few civilian deaths, and that the bulk of civilian casualties come from coalition land forces coming under fire and calling in air strikes to take out insurgents who are using civilians as human shields. Unmanned drones, by their very nature, are slow and are not used for close air support of ground troops. A-10s, helicopters, fighters, and even B-2 and B-52 bombers have been used for close air support, some carrying heavy weapons.
Using your reasoning, there would be fewer precision strikes by unmanned drones (carrying missiles with 20 pound warheads) against evaluated targets, and more ground troops under fire screaming into their radios for close air support by aircraft carrying large bombs, resulting in more dead civilians. The whole reason for using precision laser guided missiles such as Hellfire II (used by Predator and other UAVs), is to limit civilian casualties.
I second the opinion that the $1.4B is for proof-of-concept. Reuters reported that the contract was for the System Design and Demonstration phase of the contract, with which the Army buys two orbits of two aerostats (likely engineering design models) for testing and evaluation.
Ditto on the summary. Looking at the bigger picture, it's a good thing that foreign students attend U.S. universities. They pay more for their education, they frequently get better educations than what they get in their home countries, and after a few years they go home with a decent understanding of the U.S. Making it attractive for them to get hired for a short period while on their student visa is not a bad thing either. Angry mobs screaming "the ferriners are taking our jobs!" is usually a very bad thing for all involved.
It's been a while since I've taken a CS class, but doesn't COBOL compile to a binary? For what the USPS needs, it was probably more economical to port their old COBOL code over to Linux, instead of rewriting ungodly numbers of processes in a snazzy new language that 1) they may not know as well 2) wouldn't necessarily run faster than the stuff written originally in COBOL.
Kind of a nasty spin you put on this story. The British don't deny Polish involvement, and TFA didn't mention the Polish because that's exactly not what this story is about. Also, using a little logic, if the British don't honor their own over concerns over secrecy, they sure won't honor Poles for similar effort. In any case, I'd leave it to the Polish government to honor their cryptologists, if they haven't done so already.
There are two large PDFs with qualitative and quantitative system requirements here. This system goes beyond "modified ham radio gear", and few ham operators carry their equipment into burning buildings, etc.
"how come the government is allowed to dump its old stuff in the sea and the rest of us have to pay for disposal?"
The U.S. government pays dearly for disposal, it's just that reefing old ships after many millions of dollars in preparation is more cost effective than scrapping under the current U.S. government environmental rules. Read this if you want to know more: http://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB391/
One flaw in your logic - the rich can afford prophylactic anti-malarial medications and do not get infected if they are taking them. The poor generally do not have access to the same, and that's the point of Mr. Gates' presentation.
Also, the only Dengue Fever anyone will catch in Long Beach is the band. The type of mosquitoes that carry dengue don't live there.
Ring laser gyros were likely used for inertial navigation, though you bring up something interesting. SPAWAR System Center San Diego is the home to an active marine mammal program... orca with fricken laser beams, hmmm.
What's wrong with "head of the IT department" is that it doesn't accurately describe the scope of what a CIO is responsible for. Eg. in the US, the Department of the Navy has a CIO - he doesn't lead a department, he directs IT policy that affects an ungodly number of Marines, Sailors, government civilians and contractors, worldwide. A CIO isn't the head of a department, he's head of IT for all departments.
What drives me to use add-ons such as AdBlock and NoScript is not the content*, but the improved browsing experience of having a page load without waiting for a whole mess of third party servers to push their data.
* OK, those banner ads with the moving targets drive me up the f$%#ing wall.
Actually, I'm surprised how many people go ahead and have disfigured and crippled children even after pre-natal testing shows the fetuses aren't normal.
As the father of a child who wouldn't survive having you as a parent, I would ask that you volunteer to assist Special Olympics and get to know the kids, their personalities, their likes and dislikes... then create a list of who you would kill first, as emperor of your perfect little world.
Wow. Just. Wow.
First, if you're gonna share the road riding a bike of any flavor (bicycle, scooter, motorcycle), unfashionably bright colors might save your life.
Second, in response to your earlier post, driving is a privilege, and driving the posted speed limit is not a right, and certainly should not be pushed under all conditions.
Finally, I understand the frustration with bikes, especially when you have to overtake a wandering bicyclist on a narrow road - I worry more about wandering 2+ ton cars, but that's only physics.
Bicycles and cars should be separated - if they are sharing tight spaces, and it makes you really, really mad, then push your local government for more bike lanes, or, better yet, bike paths.
unless the Israelis start WWIII Is there some corollary to Godwin's law that I don't know about? "As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability that someone will randomly blame Jews for some imaginary travesty approaches one," or something like that? Search Google News with "ahmadinejad israel", and you might get a sense of what the gp's talking about... or not - there's not enough to go on. There should be a generalized rule about intellectual crutches (eg. comparison to Nazi Germany, blaming Israel, blaming Bush, blaming Liberals, etc) used in long discussions, but I'm too intellectually lazy to go figure it out.
Weapons are used in fighting and in intimidation (eg. "give me money or I shoot you"). Torture (I count waterboarding as such) is used to create discomfort, fear, disorientation, exhaustion and humiliation. To clarify the use of the LRAD, it is used to communicate long distances acoustically (e.g. "stay 500 yards away from my ship"), it can inflict aural pain and cause hearing damage on intruders that venture within a couple hundred yards when it's set to play a built-in tone at max power and, yes, there's an 1/8" jack to allow playing of pre-recorded sounds/messages/music, etc. It's a big stretch to call the LRAD a weapon and even bigger stretch to equate it with a torture technique. Abused, it is a weapon, but using that logic, so is a Buick.
...it looks like FOUR switches and FOUR buttons.... I don't see four buttons, I see a turn switch on the far left bottom of the panel with four positions (Disable, Enable 1, Enable 2, and Test), and four covered switches (Arm/Test/Safe/Destruct as noted before.) The rectangles above the covered switches are indicator lights straight out of the mid-20th century. It appears there's a four-step, at a minimum, process to terminate a shuttle in flight - enable, arm, safe, destruct.
Your source doesn't support your statement regarding the Democrats... or your sig for that matter. Please reread the report critically and try to use an original thought. The 90's are over, man, time to come up with a new screed.
Not sure where you get "languishing and dying" from. Cheap, easy long haul communications, albeit at low bauds, is something that will be around for a long while.
This article is about game theory. The professor behind the program is an AI expert, who should be up on game theory and risk analysis. In any case, there are instances where, in games, generating actions using random distributions can result in a better expected outcome than what may appear common sensical. If you do a risk analysis of a public place, such as an airport, you get events that are rare and extremely damaging (eg 9/11 attacks) and things that are more common but less lethal (eg. pipe bombs). You have fixed resources to protect against any of a number of high level threats... pick those with the most risk and make it hard for the bad guy to find a clear opening to cause harm. From the article, it sounds like the software helps ensure security forces truly act in a random manner and avoid routine.
Slashdot Mirror
There is very serious whistleblower protection in military law - if someone in the U.S. military reports wrongdoing, and then faces retribution by their chain-of-command, then it becomes a matter of the DoD Inspector General.
In this case, however, even if Manning had intended to blow the whistle on an act or a number of acts, that was an impossible case to make considering the volume of classified material he sneaked out of his work and released. He did not attempt to report anything through his superiors before spewing classified information all over the internet. In his own words, he wanted to spread "[a]narchy in CSV format", which means he will go to federal prison for the remainder of his days. He maliciously damaged the country he swore to defend, bragged, and got caught. He's done.
Dumping large databases of classified information onto the internet is not "whistleblowing". It's indiscriminate, anarchic, sabotage supported by espionage.
That's the problem with Democrats, they go into a gunfight with those cheap plastic bar darts!
They are controversial because they are rather indiscriminate weapons; figures vary wildly but a midrange one would be that they kill about 10 civilians for each target killed. There's a tradeoff between killing terrorists and alienating the civilian population.
Really? 10 to 1 is a midrange? Indiscriminant? If you have a good information source, please share. I feel we both want the same thing - fewer dead civilians, but I suspect you are using very bad assumptions.
In the Human Rights Watch report "Troops in Contact" they go out of their way to say that planned strikes result in few civilian deaths, and that the bulk of civilian casualties come from coalition land forces coming under fire and calling in air strikes to take out insurgents who are using civilians as human shields. Unmanned drones, by their very nature, are slow and are not used for close air support of ground troops. A-10s, helicopters, fighters, and even B-2 and B-52 bombers have been used for close air support, some carrying heavy weapons.
Using your reasoning, there would be fewer precision strikes by unmanned drones (carrying missiles with 20 pound warheads) against evaluated targets, and more ground troops under fire screaming into their radios for close air support by aircraft carrying large bombs, resulting in more dead civilians. The whole reason for using precision laser guided missiles such as Hellfire II (used by Predator and other UAVs), is to limit civilian casualties.
I second the opinion that the $1.4B is for proof-of-concept. Reuters reported that the contract was for the System Design and Demonstration phase of the contract, with which the Army buys two orbits of two aerostats (likely engineering design models) for testing and evaluation.
Regarding the aerostats floating over Iraq and Afghanistan now, these are likely the Persistent Threat Detection System.
Ditto on the summary. Looking at the bigger picture, it's a good thing that foreign students attend U.S. universities. They pay more for their education, they frequently get better educations than what they get in their home countries, and after a few years they go home with a decent understanding of the U.S. Making it attractive for them to get hired for a short period while on their student visa is not a bad thing either. Angry mobs screaming "the ferriners are taking our jobs!" is usually a very bad thing for all involved.
Except it's GNU/Linux running COBOL code.
It's been a while since I've taken a CS class, but doesn't COBOL compile to a binary? For what the USPS needs, it was probably more economical to port their old COBOL code over to Linux, instead of rewriting ungodly numbers of processes in a snazzy new language that 1) they may not know as well 2) wouldn't necessarily run faster than the stuff written originally in COBOL.
Kind of a nasty spin you put on this story. The British don't deny Polish involvement, and TFA didn't mention the Polish because that's exactly not what this story is about. Also, using a little logic, if the British don't honor their own over concerns over secrecy, they sure won't honor Poles for similar effort. In any case, I'd leave it to the Polish government to honor their cryptologists, if they haven't done so already.
There are two large PDFs with qualitative and quantitative system requirements here. This system goes beyond "modified ham radio gear", and few ham operators carry their equipment into burning buildings, etc.
"how come the government is allowed to dump its old stuff in the sea and the rest of us have to pay for disposal?"
The U.S. government pays dearly for disposal, it's just that reefing old ships after many millions of dollars in preparation is more cost effective than scrapping under the current U.S. government environmental rules. Read this if you want to know more: http://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB391/
One flaw in your logic - the rich can afford prophylactic anti-malarial medications and do not get infected if they are taking them. The poor generally do not have access to the same, and that's the point of Mr. Gates' presentation.
Also, the only Dengue Fever anyone will catch in Long Beach is the band. The type of mosquitoes that carry dengue don't live there.
... the revolting parents...
You said it! They stink on ice!
Ring laser gyros were likely used for inertial navigation, though you bring up something interesting. SPAWAR System Center San Diego is the home to an active marine mammal program... orca with fricken laser beams, hmmm.
From the lhcdefense.org site - "61% of over 250,000 participants in an AOL survey say that operating the LHC is not worth the risk"
Yes, we must end all science until at least 51% of all AOL users agree that it is safe.
What's wrong with "head of the IT department" is that it doesn't accurately describe the scope of what a CIO is responsible for. Eg. in the US, the Department of the Navy has a CIO - he doesn't lead a department, he directs IT policy that affects an ungodly number of Marines, Sailors, government civilians and contractors, worldwide. A CIO isn't the head of a department, he's head of IT for all departments.
What drives me to use add-ons such as AdBlock and NoScript is not the content*, but the improved browsing experience of having a page load without waiting for a whole mess of third party servers to push their data.
* OK, those banner ads with the moving targets drive me up the f$%#ing wall.
So the terrorists will target ISS before GPS? Thanks, that makes me feel better.
Are you suggesting the terrorists should blow up the ISS?
Would you miss it? [Looks around the table] Would you miss it?
Actually, I'm surprised how many people go ahead and have disfigured and crippled children even after pre-natal testing shows the fetuses aren't normal.
As the father of a child who wouldn't survive having you as a parent, I would ask that you volunteer to assist Special Olympics and get to know the kids, their personalities, their likes and dislikes... then create a list of who you would kill first, as emperor of your perfect little world.
Wow. Just. Wow.
First, if you're gonna share the road riding a bike of any flavor (bicycle, scooter, motorcycle), unfashionably bright colors might save your life.
Second, in response to your earlier post, driving is a privilege, and driving the posted speed limit is not a right, and certainly should not be pushed under all conditions.
Finally, I understand the frustration with bikes, especially when you have to overtake a wandering bicyclist on a narrow road - I worry more about wandering 2+ ton cars, but that's only physics.
Bicycles and cars should be separated - if they are sharing tight spaces, and it makes you really, really mad, then push your local government for more bike lanes, or, better yet, bike paths.
Weapons are used in fighting and in intimidation (eg. "give me money or I shoot you"). Torture (I count waterboarding as such) is used to create discomfort, fear, disorientation, exhaustion and humiliation. To clarify the use of the LRAD, it is used to communicate long distances acoustically (e.g. "stay 500 yards away from my ship"), it can inflict aural pain and cause hearing damage on intruders that venture within a couple hundred yards when it's set to play a built-in tone at max power and, yes, there's an 1/8" jack to allow playing of pre-recorded sounds/messages/music, etc. It's a big stretch to call the LRAD a weapon and even bigger stretch to equate it with a torture technique. Abused, it is a weapon, but using that logic, so is a Buick.
...it looks like FOUR switches and FOUR buttons.... I don't see four buttons, I see a turn switch on the far left bottom of the panel with four positions (Disable, Enable 1, Enable 2, and Test), and four covered switches (Arm/Test/Safe/Destruct as noted before.) The rectangles above the covered switches are indicator lights straight out of the mid-20th century. It appears there's a four-step, at a minimum, process to terminate a shuttle in flight - enable, arm, safe, destruct.Your source doesn't support your statement regarding the Democrats... or your sig for that matter. Please reread the report critically and try to use an original thought. The 90's are over, man, time to come up with a new screed.
Not sure where you get "languishing and dying" from. Cheap, easy long haul communications, albeit at low bauds, is something that will be around for a long while.
This article is about game theory. The professor behind the program is an AI expert, who should be up on game theory and risk analysis. In any case, there are instances where, in games, generating actions using random distributions can result in a better expected outcome than what may appear common sensical. If you do a risk analysis of a public place, such as an airport, you get events that are rare and extremely damaging (eg 9/11 attacks) and things that are more common but less lethal (eg. pipe bombs). You have fixed resources to protect against any of a number of high level threats... pick those with the most risk and make it hard for the bad guy to find a clear opening to cause harm. From the article, it sounds like the software helps ensure security forces truly act in a random manner and avoid routine.