I'd have to say that I disagree at least somewhat. He did make a genuine attempt to answer at least some of the questions. However, it's clear that this was primarily a recruitment effort.
To be fair, it's also true that some of the questions weren't germane to their mission. In answering the question from Isaac-Lew, he states that "Our first priority is to work with DoD to defend AF military resources". That means that they are (at least publicly) a defensive operation rather than offensive. The closest they'd come to offensive operations would be to trace back to the actual source of the attack while doing forensics work.
Perhaps a better way to ask some of those questions would be to ask for pointers to publicly available material on current military doctrine on cyber-war. Of course, that's assuming there are any. In that absense, I think a good guideline would be the willingness of the military to accept civilian casualties and damage to homes and infrastructure in Iraq while conducting actions against hostile people. Likewise, look at current administration actions including laws that they are demanding be passed.
The China question was a very good one. In fact, it's extremely relevant in another sense. With all the outsourcing we're doing, a great deal of COTS (commercial off the shelf) software is being maintained and developed by people in those countries. That includes software for a security focused company I used to work for.
It's primary focus was on collecting information about vulnerabilities found on the monitored computer systems. Oddly enough, the management found that outsourcing it to a firm in Shanghai was perfectly acceptable. I'd like to suggest that the military reconsider its "use COTS wherever possible" policy.
One final note. I found it interesting that, while answering the question about physical fitness, part of his reply was "we must... be able to establish and protect our cyber/communications structures and networks in remote, even austere conditions".
Combat Control is the AF equivalent of the Navy Seals. Their primary mission is to establish a safe air field for landing AF air craft. This means that they go into overtly hostile conditions to do reconnaissance, subdue and/or disrupt enemy forces in the selected area and protect those who do the initial prep-work for the air field. Adding the ability to disrupt command and control functions in the area would definitely be a huge help. For you 24 and Tom Clancy fans, that sounds an awful lot like some of the people he's looking for would actually be part of combat control units on at least a part time basis.
Actually, I can attest to that. A friend of mine was able to gain a top secret clearance in spite of the fact that he had a known history of cocaine use that he'd worked his way through. He was bright, capable and personable and clearly no longer a user. I was one of the people the background check folks talked to.
I don't have to argue the slippery slope argument because we're already at the bottom of it on voice communications and (probably) all internet traffic. Our executive branch is already illegally tapping communication networks with their full cooperation. How long before they intimidate Google and other commercial data aggregators to do the same?
That's even assuming they haven't already. Banks routinely report transactions well below the legally specified limit to avoid any appearance of wrongdoing. Lexus-Nexus can already tell whomever what your favorite foods are and what brand of TP you're wiping your butt with this week.
I think anyone trained to be objectively observant would tend to see in humans a strong wish to make sense of the randomness of life. It may even be an extension of how we're wired. We tend to see patterns in everything - an abstraction that can be related to things we already know.
Einstein, as a result of the Holocaust, probably had a tough time believing in the traditional Jewish portrayal of God. However, there are so many ridiculous coincidences in fundamental constants of the universe that had to occur for life to be viable. When you add intelligence that it's hard to not see some hand behind that.
Whether that means we're all running in a simulation space or that vastly more powerful intellects engineer universes. Neither is falsifiable experimentally (yet) so the details are up to individual preference. I tend to think that's what he meant. It would have been nice to ask him though.
Because it costs about the same amount of money for the court system to go through the mandatory appeals process for any death penalty case. Besides, I much prefer a mandatory true life sentence - you die in prison, period. Instead of a short stay and then he's beyond pain, he gets to be beaten up, bullied and generally abused for decades in an overcrowded, highly hostile group. Think of it as a version of hell that even atheists can believe in.
There is actually good reason for banning pure procedures. Doctors and medical school/companies have patented medical procedures. These patents do NOT include any novel physical device, just technique.
The patent situation there is rapidly causing medical progress to grind to a halt in exactly the same way. Doctors not only have to worry about medical malpractice suits, they also have to worry about patent violation suits.
I strongly agree that a patent must include not just a new idea but something physical as well that embodies that idea. Finally, the original arguments for making existing organisms and genes patentable are ridiculous. The cost of the technology for such developments has plummeted to the point where such occurrences are as common as electronics patents.
The only patentable item should be completely synthetic DNA or organisms that contain DNA that is artificially inserted. Even then, they shouldn't be able to sue if cross-fertilization of another farmer's crop occurs unless they can prove intent.
Regarding manufacturing processes, a simple fix would be to include treatments that are novel in their application of physical environment or chemical treatment in the production of a physical object. Where "novel" means what it used to in the patent system - not prior art and not an obvious reformulation of prior art.
There are so many things wrong with this post I'm floored you posted it. Let's start with the one point I agree on. Making illegal copies of artistic works is wrong - period.
So now let's get to what I disagree with starting with paragraph one. I've never downloaded an illegal copy of a song and never will - because it's wrong. I'm far form the minority in this. Yes there are some people who do this but the problem has been inflated way beyond reason by the RIAA simply because they need a reason to justify declining sales. In defense of that, I'll cite Radiohead, O'Reilly books, Del Rey books (no DRM since the start in their e-books) and the fact that most of the RIAA members are abandoning DRM.
On to the second paragraph. What you call "lip service" has been a cautious attempt to meet the RIAA demands without destroying their business model. Beyond that, precisely why is it the responsibility of those who build tools to ensure they aren't being used to do illegal things? The only reason Napster and some of the other sites were successfully brought down was that they were explicitly encouraging illegal copying.
Content sites like YouTube are even bending over backwards with the addition of content filters. As far as I (or you) know, the technology will be effective - even to the point of eliminating fair use.
Every item you mention is used in many positive ways that benefit the lives of individuals and society. In fact, these very tools are allowing artists who don't want to live with the draconian terms of the big publishers and distributors to bypass them entirely.
This is only possible because each of those technologies is as powerful and flexible as it is. You can't keep that flexibility and do a reasonably thorough job of protecting copyrighted content. See Microsoft Vista as a great example of this.
The third paragraph is covered in my first and second paragraphs. As near as I can tell, the big companies aren't even seriously considering new business models that are marketable. It's other companies that are - like Apple and the artists/companies I mentioned above.
The rest of your post is just rehashing of your prior points so commenting further would also be redundant.
From where I'm sitting, I see a cartel that managed to become one by controlling everything from production down to retail sales prices. Like all such institutions, they've grow complacent to the point of refusing all change. Moral issues aside, that's a fatal business plan in any business sector that relies on technology.
On a side note, I see it as indefensible to bemoan the immorality of the consumer side without also examining that of the music industry. The RIAA members are as corrupt as Rome was during it's own twilight. After all, that is what is required to become a cartel/empire and maintain it.
The point the parent post made is that the reason for cloning certain animals is to make their specific geneset available far more widely for breeding purposes. In other words, they are cloning sperm/ova factories.
As this practice takes off, it's entirely conceivable that certain trait clusters become widespread in the general population. Since viruses, fungi and bacteria are constantly mutating to find new niches to exploit, you significantly increase the likelihood that some pathogen with be able to not only exploit weaknesses in those traits but to become a worldwide problem extremely quickly.
While I greatly appreciate your work in helping reign in yet another greedy monopoly abusing their powers, I have to post a correction to the original post. They did NOT argue that someone ripping a copy of the CD to the computer was unauthorized - it was the placement of a copy in the share folder for Kazaa. There have been numerous follow ups to the original assertion, including Techdirt, Gizmodo and Slashdot (noting the Gizmodo retraction)
The RIAA has even clarified their position in a somewhat weasel worded quote. In essence, if you don't share, we (probably) don't care.
It appears that it's roughly six times less efficient to use a scramjet compared to the now current turbojet. Now, multiply in the ratio of the cost of a hydrogen fuel source with associated infrastructure for generation, transport and storage...
I see this as a reasonable space transport to low earth orbit (e.g. replacement for the shuttle) but hardly practical as a commercial aircraft anytime soon. There'd have to be a major investment in infrastructure that rivals oil and gas piplines of today.
I just read the whole PDF version of the brief and I don't see where they are claiming that the actual ripping to MP3s is the issue at all. Their language in that paragraph is sloppy but I believe they're concerned about the fact that copies of the MP3s are in their Kazaa share folder - not that they ripped the CD contents. After all, the filing drones on and on about Kazaa and their use of that particular folder.
That being said, I'm sure they're working hard at finding new ways of locking up the content in ways that take away fair use - just not here. In fact, I'd say that, if their assertions are true about MP3s being in their Kazaa share folder, they clearly have a case.
I'm not a fan of the RIAA and have boycotted their members for years. I also hope they end up going bankrupt - they deserve it. However, getting others to boycott the RIAA members is best served by accurate statements, not by mis-statements.
It was a small consulting firm and the CEO got really bent out of shape because a couple of people left in a way that cost them business. The problem then was that he decided not to trust us. The first agreement he came up with way more draconian than yours as "customers" meant basically anyone they'd ever contacted - and you wouldn't get the list till you left.
The "everything you think of is ours during our employ and six months after" crap was in there too but the really nasty thing was we would have to sign by the end of our hiring date anniversary or be fired.
Of course, a group of us got together and pooled money to get a lawyers opinion. When a copy of the strongly negative opinion was provided to the CEO, he blew up at those who brought it to him and said that it was a "draft" version. That part was news to all of us.
At any rate, some people found jobs quickly and left and the rest of us refused to sign. It finally ended up with the whole matter being formally recanted. However, by that time, enough of us had been looking that they eventually lost 1/3 of their employees and thus 1/3 of their revenue.
If your employer's revenue is in any direct way linked to employee output, you would be well advised to consider doing something similar. This generally only works with smaller companies though.
If it's a large company, I would send an EMAIL so you get a recorded response to your boss insisting that they tell you what occasioned this, what are the consequences of not signing and would they be amenable to striking the portions you are unhappy about. If you find yourself in a position of being forced to leave the company if you don't sign the current agreement, do as your conscience guides.
I would definitely insist that they fire you rather than quitting if it comes to that. The documentation trail will help greatly on unemployment access.
Regardless of how they respond, it's definitely time to find a new employer. Items C and D are not things I've ever run across with any reasonable employer. It's generally worded as "any invention related to current or currently planned business at time of termination".
Good Luck
What's good about the preservation of a monopoly? I appreciate that Verizon is trying to provide better speeds via fiber (assuming the feeder trunk equipment allows it), but why are they destroying existing functionality? It's obviously to eliminate the possibility of competition.
Please remember that this is the SAME company that requires a special firmware version for cell phones that disables any way for the phone to talk to your computer directly. They then get the advantage of your data transfers having to occur over their net.
I live too far from the central office to get DSL. My ONLY option right now is cable via Comcast. Since Qwest is the local carrier, fiber isn't even a near term option.
While I agree that capitalism drives efficiency (a good thing for us consumers), it has to have real competition for that to occur. Cutting the copper is one way of preventing it.
To those of you who say "other carriers can just build their own infrastructure", you're being totally unrealistic. The current infrastructure was enabled by a government sanctioned monopoly. It's also why most cities have only one cable operator. For the buildout cost to be justifiable, they had to have a guarantee of a longterm return on investment. So, they got that. In many cases, the government even subsidized the buildout directly or by mandating right of way access for the cabling.
No competitor is going to get that now that existing infrastructure is in place. The most we can do is mandate the sharing of the existing infrastructure at a near cost level. While that WAS the case, wonderful internet access providers like Speakeasy sprang up. I miss them a lot.
Read the wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber-bullying/ for some answers as to why this is a big deal. The "cyber" part is a tool that offers a great deal of leverage with the ability to automate bullying and propagate media that has far more emotional impact than words alone.
Spreading rumors with freely available picture editing software is especially pernicious. On top of that, there's the automation - making the spreading of the material so much more effective. Instead of just a handful of people personally contacted, an audience of hundreds on up end up seeing it. That also heavily increases the emotional impact.
Consider a similar scenario -collateral damage due to spamming. Some of you have seen your outgoing emails banned because of spammers falsely using your address or even simply using the same ISP. The same sort of knee-jerk reactions happen as a result of cyber-bullying.
Finally, there are a lot of ADULT idiots out there that act based solely on unconfirmed information. Lynchings in the US still happen - just more often in court and in job losses. The impact can be in the form of real losses, not just emotional hurt. Now imagine how kids can respond.
Actually, I don't think he's resistant to that at all. From what I read in TFA, he's arguing for two things. The first is actual data collection on the phenomena so that discussion can go from anecdotal/emotional to hard data based. The second is that our responses should be based on the conclusions FROM fact based discussions rather than hysteria.
One thing that I haven't seen discussed in other posts is the usefulness of hysteria about hackers to law enforcement. It's given them unprecedented access to and control over personal freedoms in our country. The little we DO know about makes me seriously consider moving to another country. I can only imagine what else is going on.
Regarding security responses, his point is that resources are always limited. Where you put them - even in security focused enterprises - should be solidly based on risk/benefit analysis. You can't do that analysis if you don't stop spending your time reacting and start collecting real data.
All too often emotionally driven politics drives decision making rather than real data. This benefits others - including the security industry. I know because I was part of the security industry. While it's true that small companies often do the equivalent of leaving the doors unlocked, the percentage that have been actually hit is small.
I'd like it to become standard that vulnerability reports include statistics on the rate of exploitation of each found vulnerability. That allows overworked and under budgeted IT departments a chance to prioritize.
The slight vacuum has to do with two things - getting the hand tissue to fill any air gaps between the heat exchanging glove so that you get maximum contact for heat transfer (better conduction). The second purpose is that blood vessels will also expand slightly thus increasing the rate of flow of blood through the tissue (convection). Both are important to heat transfer.
The problem that they found is that the temperature at which maximum effectiveness of heat transfer occurs varies by individual. If the hand gets too cold, blood vessels constrict and greatly reduce the effectiveness - as in the huskies feet.
That means that there needs to be some means of regulating the temperature of the water going into the glove and some means of measuring the temperature (and thus effective heat transfer) of the water coming out of the glove. Calibration means lowering the temperature slowly until you see a significant drop in water temperature change across the glove. A degree or so above that would max out heat transfer.
The description of using ice chips for a portable unit means one of two things - either the most effective water temp for heat transfer is close to freezing or it was the most efficient way to provide a heat sink was that rather than a heat pump or thermocouple. I suspect the latter given that you already have to have a water pump circulating the water.
The simplest arrangement I can think of requires throwing away portability. You'd need to have two buckets - one with mostly ice and some water in it and one with just water in it. The ice bucket sits at a somewhat higher level than the water bucket with a siphon tube leading down into the second bucket.
The second bucket is full of water and has a fully submersible aquarium heater in it that's pretty precise and fairly high powered - say 150 watts. It also has a submersible pump (power head) that has two outlets. The first just circulates water rapidly inside the bucket to maintain temperature uniformity. The other has a second tube attached that feeds back into the ice filled bucket.
Ideally, you want a second thermostat opening and closing a valve in this second tube. In reality, it's probably cheaper to use an adjustable clamp. This means the aquarium heater works harder when they are sitting there in the rest state and a lot slower when you're swishing your hands around in it.
Calibration in this case is a matter of lowering the thermostat on the aquarium heater bit by bit between sets until the recovery effect drops dramatically. Given that the environment is typically around 70 degrees, I'd say start at 65 degrees and go down from there.
It's painfully obvious if you step back and think a bit. They sell game software. Marketing, in it's usual tortured logic, sees an opportunity for tie-ins with racing gameware.
It's highly unlikely that Microsoft will actually source the parts - they'll just subcontract out the actual work and slap their name on it. It's no different than laser printers and many other tech in that sense.
I think we're all in agreement that the new pricing model envisioned by the industry isn't acceptable. However, it's a good idea to offer up at least one alternative when engaging in political negotiation. To do that, you have to understand what the real drivers for change are.
There's a huge shift underway in how we get media and other forms of data delievered to us. While we'll probably still want to buy personal copies of some movies, books and other works, a lot of that content will probably be stored centrally and delivered on demand.
That's already been happening on dedicated networks such as cable and satellite but this can only happen in highly regimented ways. For this to truly meet customer demand, we have to go through a massive build-out in network infrastructure. That's already started happening with some of the providers.
However, that buildout has it's risks. There's multiple players in backbone and endpoint delivery so it's likely that some will lose out. Their infrastructure buildout won't pay at an acceptable rate of return or, worse, they'll get stuck in a rate war like the long distance carriers have been. That's a very up-close and personal concern as most of the big players in the internet are the survivors of that war.
Their primary answers are differentiation of offerings and shifting of the costs of the buildout. I can certainly understand the pressure to reduce risk and am really in favor of the transition. However, I think a better model than service-specific pricing can be developed.
In fact, I think the carriers are chewing off their own foot in going this route. They'll actually be slowing down the public adoption of such services by spotlighting the cost to consumers. If I have to pay for the movie and for the privilege of downloading it, I'm much more inclined to just go rent or buy it at a physical store.
One alternative is to blur the line between service and content provider. By offering a single price, the customer resistance is lower. I see Google, Yahoo and a few others going that route.
One proposal floated by the industry is a backdoor attempt at doing this. By charging content providers a service premium, consumers don't see a separate cost - just a slightly higher cost per item downloaded. The advantage it has over the other model is it spreads the cost further and allows their own content offerings to compete more effectively.
I think the key problem is that everyone wants both utility-style and commercial style benefits, we just can't agree on what those should be. The service providers want the latitude to do some price fixing while still being able to compete in each other's markets. The cutomers want the competition but with controls over how services are offered.
It's time we started focusing on commonalities as a starting point in negotiations. The first of those is the desirability of the buildout. We all want that to happen in a reasonably controlled way. Some sort of framework for guaranteed return on investment does make sense. It would be nice if the framework did a decent job of mediating public interests as well as the industry's.
This law could potentially allow companies to circumvent and undermine state laws designed to protect consumers from identity theft.
Speaking as someone who works in the security field, this is one of the most ill conceived bills imaginable. Most network management organizations are stretched thin, constantly being beaten up over outages and in no mood to take on additional work. Companies have to have strong economic or criminal penalties to offset this situation or it will not change.
The ONLY reason companies are starting to take an interest in security issues now is because of the state laws forcing disclosure and acts such as Sarbannes-Oxley and Graham Leach Bliley that have real teeth in the form of criminal penalties for CEOs.
I'd support this sort if legislation is if disclosure was mandatory within a short enough period of time to allow for lawsuits. That is enough pressure to start forcing real attention to security needs. As it is, this looks more like a corporate lobbying effort to reverse the state trends than progress.
First, small screen size. Unless a reader can reproduce two full pages of the book faithfully, it's greatly inferior as a medium. Color is less of an issue but would be nice.
Second, the ability to rapidly find and flip between pages I've been to before. This is really only an issue for technical books but it becomes crucial there as I end up using them as references rather than just tutorials.
Third, technically based interruptions in usage. Readers that can only display for two to four hours at a time are a problem.
Fourth, visual representation. Books are just easier on the eyes and get in the way less when focusing on the material.
Fifth is the format and DRM constraints. Those would have driven me nuts if I'd ever really invested in ebooks.
Finally, being able to embed markup in the text is important in critiquing my own or others work. It's also important in embedding notes in a published work. Again, this is limited to technical works.
There are serious advantages, however. The one that is most pressing right now is reduction in required space.
A close second is being able to find the work easily when I want it. That goes hand in hand with the former observation. A very nice corrolary is moving is less painful.
A third advantage will require some special engineering but should be eminently doable. A reader can and should be water resistant and stain proof. By water resistant, I mean it should easily survive being dropped in the tub or having a drink spilled on it (even ones that are conductive like coke).
Having said all this, I'm very hopeful about the e-ink reader from Philips/Irex. It appears to address most of my concerns including the ability to do markup. We'll have to see how well it stacks up in reality.
I see bounties as providing one strong net positive assuming their popularity grows. It gives a good indicator of where true need exists for incremental change.
In most cases, these changes are going to be requested by those who feel they don't have the expertise to produce those changes themselves. When the bounty total approaches the true cost, you'll known people are pretty serious.
This doesn't harm open source in that visionaries and those wanting to do something just for fun can still do so. It can help existing open source evolve to be more useful.
For those of you concerned about open source not being free, don't forget that RedHat, SuSE and Nessus have done quite well in supporting open source. In all three cases, developers are being paid full time to work on them but the code remains freely available and modifiable.
Where I do see a real problem is when an IP originator refuses to make their software truly free. Sun with Java is a good example of this. You have to meet their criteria in order to continue calling what you produce "Java". Intentionally or not, that causes real problems with innovation when proposed changes don't meet Sun's business plan.
As a final point, bounties WILL run into trouble when there's disagreement on a requested set of functionality. If the conditions stated in the bounty aren't clear enough, this can even happen after the fact. I don't envy the site management company when those sorts of situations hit. Some will inevitably escalate into the court system.
I've been involved in a startup for several years now that is in just that (unenviable) position. If you have multiple VC funders, you can play them off one another to some degree. However, this in itself is work that's way off topic.
If you have just one, they become your overlords in all but name. If you are very, very lucky, they have some real experience in your chosen field and allow you some latitude when it comes to decision making that costs additional money.
We aren't so lucky. Our sole VC keeps insisting on keeping costs way down while insisting we develop a product mature enough to meet the needs of fortune 500 companies within a six month to one year timetable. It is truely a mess.
I wholeheartedly agree on not taking any outside funding ever if at all possible. If what you really need is business expertise, get it yourself or hire it - never let it buy you.
VCs are mostly into short term, high risk investing. Their decision making is based on quick returns that are N-times their investment. That means their timespan on decision making is always a max of 2-3 years out. In many cases, this is NOT healthy for the company itself in the longterm.
I wholeheartedly agree with the parent comment. This is primarily about control of promotion and distribution channels. If they can make DRM a universal requirement for playback and licensing costs for the encoding algorithms/hardware expensive enough, they lock out most potential competition. The prior article on SBC's proposal to give higher bandwidth to paying websites is also a disturbing add-in.
There've been a number of very well thought out editorials and articles in SF magazines of the last few years about the transition to purely digital distribution for copyrighted material. Their observations tend to cross over to music and film as well.
There's no doubt that digital distribution is trivial nowadays. However, there are functions provided by traditional publishing companies that actuall do hold value - oddly enough. First off, editors can make great mentors for promising but not quite there artists in two ways. They can help them improve their work and they can help them identify target markets and what helps works of their type get attention. Combining this with the word "artist" sounds crass, but anyone who devotes themselves wholeheartedly enough to become really good at what they do has to also be able to eat.
Secondly, editors provide a much needed filter mechanism. It's arguable that they don't necessarily do a great job (particularly in american film), but apparently there's at least as much material that doesn't get published as ends up on/.
Finally, publishing companies supply the ancillary expertise in promotional and distribution channels. They know how to market and have already identified good ways to get the artist's work to the public.
Interestingly enough, writers can find all but the last two items by alternate means. There's several excellent workshops out there as well as author guilds to provide mentoring. There are already a lot of blogs, accumulated purchaser lists, etc to help people find the better work.
This leaves promotion and distribution. The latter, as noted above, isn't that hard to set up on the web so it's already heavily commoditized.
Promotion is still the key. I like the already available "people who viewed this also viewed these..." and user lists. I'd also love bayesian filters where I own the data the filter is based on. What I'm really, really hoping for is that such things eventually kill off commercials. There's nothing that pisses me off more than having to sit through moronic sales pitches for things I couldn't care less about.
Unfortunately, I am not sure that this will ever be fully commoditized. There's apparently something real in the way of benefits to mass media coverage with the right approach. I don't know what the gross on advertising revenue is, but I suspect it's not far from the federal budget.
This whole issue is one that has concerned me for a long time - since RICO started getting abused by being used against organizations that have nothing to do with the mafia - the intended target. In this case, VERY unfortunately, the target is the american people as a whole in the hopes of catching actual suspects.
Our privacy has been in massive decline long before this period in time. Lexus-Nexus and other companies get feeds about even individual credit card purchases. Soon, Google will be able to tell most people what their most commonly mis-spelled words are. Even without direct government surveilance, massive amounts of profiling data is only a warrant away.
Regarding the "so what, I'm not doing anything wrong" argument, history has shown that power accumulated is power abused. This includes the US government. Think of the japanese-american internment camps in the US. Much of the property they owned was lost as a consequence and many suffered horribly in the camp conditions. This occurred at the same time we were publicly decrying the mistreatment of our POW's. How does this tie into information abuse? Most of the japanese americans were found using census data by neighborhood.
Some may also argue that the government has taken draconian measures regarding individual freedoms during other wars - particularly WW I and WW II. That's true, but the cost was incredibly high compared to the benefit post-war. With the automation we have in place, the cost of maintaining it versus building it is minimal. When you add in the fact that the definition of "terrorist" is still nowhere to be found on federal law books, how hard is it to keep justifying what they are building?
On the other side of the equation, terrorism wouldn't be possible without the increasing power of technology given to any small group or individual that holds it. Until our corporations get their collective heads out of their asses and start taking networked computing security seriously, we are able to lose millions of lives to attacks on key infrastructure elements.
I don't pretend to understand the difficulties of weaponization of chemical or biological hazards, but I suspect that some of the very useful techniques and materials being developed even now lend themselves well to horrific abuse. If you read Heinlein, even he recognized that some technology needs to be suppressed until society had the controls to cope with it.
I greatly fear that we are, by default, going to end up with a total loss of privacy simply due to the need to intervene early enough to prevent the loss of so many lives from one single potential act. The real problem then becomes how do we manage to keep freedoms while allowing the loss of privacy?
I think that the current administration's major failing is the demand of power with no checks. If there's anything that is foundational to the constitution, that is it. There HAS to be transparency of executive branch activities to both the judicial and legislative branches. Along with that, there needs to be the corresponding ability to put a halt to abuses.
Unfortunately, congress is (for the most part) refusing to live up to those basic principles. Those that are trying to force the addition of such measures are failing or having them watered down to the point of uselessness.
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I'd have to say that I disagree at least somewhat. He did make a genuine attempt to answer at least some of the questions. However, it's clear that this was primarily a recruitment effort.
... be able to establish and protect our cyber/communications structures and networks in remote, even austere conditions".
To be fair, it's also true that some of the questions weren't germane to their mission. In answering the question from Isaac-Lew, he states that "Our first priority is to work with DoD to defend AF military resources". That means that they are (at least publicly) a defensive operation rather than offensive. The closest they'd come to offensive operations would be to trace back to the actual source of the attack while doing forensics work.
Perhaps a better way to ask some of those questions would be to ask for pointers to publicly available material on current military doctrine on cyber-war. Of course, that's assuming there are any. In that absense, I think a good guideline would be the willingness of the military to accept civilian casualties and damage to homes and infrastructure in Iraq while conducting actions against hostile people. Likewise, look at current administration actions including laws that they are demanding be passed.
The China question was a very good one. In fact, it's extremely relevant in another sense. With all the outsourcing we're doing, a great deal of COTS (commercial off the shelf) software is being maintained and developed by people in those countries. That includes software for a security focused company I used to work for.
It's primary focus was on collecting information about vulnerabilities found on the monitored computer systems. Oddly enough, the management found that outsourcing it to a firm in Shanghai was perfectly acceptable. I'd like to suggest that the military reconsider its "use COTS wherever possible" policy.
One final note. I found it interesting that, while answering the question about physical fitness, part of his reply was "we must
Combat Control is the AF equivalent of the Navy Seals. Their primary mission is to establish a safe air field for landing AF air craft. This means that they go into overtly hostile conditions to do reconnaissance, subdue and/or disrupt enemy forces in the selected area and protect those who do the initial prep-work for the air field. Adding the ability to disrupt command and control functions in the area would definitely be a huge help. For you 24 and Tom Clancy fans, that sounds an awful lot like some of the people he's looking for would actually be part of combat control units on at least a part time basis.
Actually, I can attest to that. A friend of mine was able to gain a top secret clearance in spite of the fact that he had a known history of cocaine use that he'd worked his way through. He was bright, capable and personable and clearly no longer a user. I was one of the people the background check folks talked to.
I don't have to argue the slippery slope argument because we're already at the bottom of it on voice communications and (probably) all internet traffic. Our executive branch is already illegally tapping communication networks with their full cooperation. How long before they intimidate Google and other commercial data aggregators to do the same?
That's even assuming they haven't already. Banks routinely report transactions well below the legally specified limit to avoid any appearance of wrongdoing. Lexus-Nexus can already tell whomever what your favorite foods are and what brand of TP you're wiping your butt with this week.
I think anyone trained to be objectively observant would tend to see in humans a strong wish to make sense of the randomness of life. It may even be an extension of how we're wired. We tend to see patterns in everything - an abstraction that can be related to things we already know.
Einstein, as a result of the Holocaust, probably had a tough time believing in the traditional Jewish portrayal of God. However, there are so many ridiculous coincidences in fundamental constants of the universe that had to occur for life to be viable. When you add intelligence that it's hard to not see some hand behind that.
Whether that means we're all running in a simulation space or that vastly more powerful intellects engineer universes. Neither is falsifiable experimentally (yet) so the details are up to individual preference. I tend to think that's what he meant. It would have been nice to ask him though.
Because it costs about the same amount of money for the court system to go through the mandatory appeals process for any death penalty case. Besides, I much prefer a mandatory true life sentence - you die in prison, period. Instead of a short stay and then he's beyond pain, he gets to be beaten up, bullied and generally abused for decades in an overcrowded, highly hostile group. Think of it as a version of hell that even atheists can believe in.
There is actually good reason for banning pure procedures. Doctors and medical school/companies have patented medical procedures. These patents do NOT include any novel physical device, just technique.
The patent situation there is rapidly causing medical progress to grind to a halt in exactly the same way. Doctors not only have to worry about medical malpractice suits, they also have to worry about patent violation suits.
I strongly agree that a patent must include not just a new idea but something physical as well that embodies that idea. Finally, the original arguments for making existing organisms and genes patentable are ridiculous. The cost of the technology for such developments has plummeted to the point where such occurrences are as common as electronics patents.
The only patentable item should be completely synthetic DNA or organisms that contain DNA that is artificially inserted. Even then, they shouldn't be able to sue if cross-fertilization of another farmer's crop occurs unless they can prove intent.
Regarding manufacturing processes, a simple fix would be to include treatments that are novel in their application of physical environment or chemical treatment in the production of a physical object. Where "novel" means what it used to in the patent system - not prior art and not an obvious reformulation of prior art.
There are so many things wrong with this post I'm floored you posted it. Let's start with the one point I agree on. Making illegal copies of artistic works is wrong - period.
So now let's get to what I disagree with starting with paragraph one. I've never downloaded an illegal copy of a song and never will - because it's wrong. I'm far form the minority in this. Yes there are some people who do this but the problem has been inflated way beyond reason by the RIAA simply because they need a reason to justify declining sales. In defense of that, I'll cite Radiohead, O'Reilly books, Del Rey books (no DRM since the start in their e-books) and the fact that most of the RIAA members are abandoning DRM.
On to the second paragraph. What you call "lip service" has been a cautious attempt to meet the RIAA demands without destroying their business model. Beyond that, precisely why is it the responsibility of those who build tools to ensure they aren't being used to do illegal things? The only reason Napster and some of the other sites were successfully brought down was that they were explicitly encouraging illegal copying.
Content sites like YouTube are even bending over backwards with the addition of content filters. As far as I (or you) know, the technology will be effective - even to the point of eliminating fair use.
Every item you mention is used in many positive ways that benefit the lives of individuals and society. In fact, these very tools are allowing artists who don't want to live with the draconian terms of the big publishers and distributors to bypass them entirely.
This is only possible because each of those technologies is as powerful and flexible as it is. You can't keep that flexibility and do a reasonably thorough job of protecting copyrighted content. See Microsoft Vista as a great example of this.
The third paragraph is covered in my first and second paragraphs. As near as I can tell, the big companies aren't even seriously considering new business models that are marketable. It's other companies that are - like Apple and the artists/companies I mentioned above.
The rest of your post is just rehashing of your prior points so commenting further would also be redundant.
From where I'm sitting, I see a cartel that managed to become one by controlling everything from production down to retail sales prices. Like all such institutions, they've grow complacent to the point of refusing all change. Moral issues aside, that's a fatal business plan in any business sector that relies on technology.
On a side note, I see it as indefensible to bemoan the immorality of the consumer side without also examining that of the music industry. The RIAA members are as corrupt as Rome was during it's own twilight. After all, that is what is required to become a cartel/empire and maintain it.
The point the parent post made is that the reason for cloning certain animals is to make their specific geneset available far more widely for breeding purposes. In other words, they are cloning sperm/ova factories. As this practice takes off, it's entirely conceivable that certain trait clusters become widespread in the general population. Since viruses, fungi and bacteria are constantly mutating to find new niches to exploit, you significantly increase the likelihood that some pathogen with be able to not only exploit weaknesses in those traits but to become a worldwide problem extremely quickly.
While I greatly appreciate your work in helping reign in yet another greedy monopoly abusing their powers, I have to post a correction to the original post. They did NOT argue that someone ripping a copy of the CD to the computer was unauthorized - it was the placement of a copy in the share folder for Kazaa. There have been numerous follow ups to the original assertion, including Techdirt, Gizmodo and Slashdot (noting the Gizmodo retraction) The RIAA has even clarified their position in a somewhat weasel worded quote. In essence, if you don't share, we (probably) don't care.
It appears that it's roughly six times less efficient to use a scramjet compared to the now current turbojet. Now, multiply in the ratio of the cost of a hydrogen fuel source with associated infrastructure for generation, transport and storage ...
I see this as a reasonable space transport to low earth orbit (e.g. replacement for the shuttle) but hardly practical as a commercial aircraft anytime soon. There'd have to be a major investment in infrastructure that rivals oil and gas piplines of today.
I just read the whole PDF version of the brief and I don't see where they are claiming that the actual ripping to MP3s is the issue at all. Their language in that paragraph is sloppy but I believe they're concerned about the fact that copies of the MP3s are in their Kazaa share folder - not that they ripped the CD contents. After all, the filing drones on and on about Kazaa and their use of that particular folder.
That being said, I'm sure they're working hard at finding new ways of locking up the content in ways that take away fair use - just not here. In fact, I'd say that, if their assertions are true about MP3s being in their Kazaa share folder, they clearly have a case.
I'm not a fan of the RIAA and have boycotted their members for years. I also hope they end up going bankrupt - they deserve it. However, getting others to boycott the RIAA members is best served by accurate statements, not by mis-statements.
Chris
It was a small consulting firm and the CEO got really bent out of shape because a couple of people left in a way that cost them business. The problem then was that he decided not to trust us. The first agreement he came up with way more draconian than yours as "customers" meant basically anyone they'd ever contacted - and you wouldn't get the list till you left. The "everything you think of is ours during our employ and six months after" crap was in there too but the really nasty thing was we would have to sign by the end of our hiring date anniversary or be fired. Of course, a group of us got together and pooled money to get a lawyers opinion. When a copy of the strongly negative opinion was provided to the CEO, he blew up at those who brought it to him and said that it was a "draft" version. That part was news to all of us. At any rate, some people found jobs quickly and left and the rest of us refused to sign. It finally ended up with the whole matter being formally recanted. However, by that time, enough of us had been looking that they eventually lost 1/3 of their employees and thus 1/3 of their revenue. If your employer's revenue is in any direct way linked to employee output, you would be well advised to consider doing something similar. This generally only works with smaller companies though. If it's a large company, I would send an EMAIL so you get a recorded response to your boss insisting that they tell you what occasioned this, what are the consequences of not signing and would they be amenable to striking the portions you are unhappy about. If you find yourself in a position of being forced to leave the company if you don't sign the current agreement, do as your conscience guides. I would definitely insist that they fire you rather than quitting if it comes to that. The documentation trail will help greatly on unemployment access. Regardless of how they respond, it's definitely time to find a new employer. Items C and D are not things I've ever run across with any reasonable employer. It's generally worded as "any invention related to current or currently planned business at time of termination". Good Luck
What's good about the preservation of a monopoly? I appreciate that Verizon is trying to provide better speeds via fiber (assuming the feeder trunk equipment allows it), but why are they destroying existing functionality? It's obviously to eliminate the possibility of competition.
Please remember that this is the SAME company that requires a special firmware version for cell phones that disables any way for the phone to talk to your computer directly. They then get the advantage of your data transfers having to occur over their net.
I live too far from the central office to get DSL. My ONLY option right now is cable via Comcast. Since Qwest is the local carrier, fiber isn't even a near term option.
While I agree that capitalism drives efficiency (a good thing for us consumers), it has to have real competition for that to occur. Cutting the copper is one way of preventing it.
To those of you who say "other carriers can just build their own infrastructure", you're being totally unrealistic. The current infrastructure was enabled by a government sanctioned monopoly. It's also why most cities have only one cable operator. For the buildout cost to be justifiable, they had to have a guarantee of a longterm return on investment. So, they got that. In many cases, the government even subsidized the buildout directly or by mandating right of way access for the cabling.
No competitor is going to get that now that existing infrastructure is in place. The most we can do is mandate the sharing of the existing infrastructure at a near cost level. While that WAS the case, wonderful internet access providers like Speakeasy sprang up. I miss them a lot.
Consider the possibilities of DRM. The pirated copy could do anything from inciting impotence to exploding.
Spreading rumors with freely available picture editing software is especially pernicious. On top of that, there's the automation - making the spreading of the material so much more effective. Instead of just a handful of people personally contacted, an audience of hundreds on up end up seeing it. That also heavily increases the emotional impact.
Consider a similar scenario -collateral damage due to spamming. Some of you have seen your outgoing emails banned because of spammers falsely using your address or even simply using the same ISP. The same sort of knee-jerk reactions happen as a result of cyber-bullying.
Finally, there are a lot of ADULT idiots out there that act based solely on unconfirmed information. Lynchings in the US still happen - just more often in court and in job losses. The impact can be in the form of real losses, not just emotional hurt. Now imagine how kids can respond.
Actually, I don't think he's resistant to that at all. From what I read in TFA, he's arguing for two things. The first is actual data collection on the phenomena so that discussion can go from anecdotal/emotional to hard data based. The second is that our responses should be based on the conclusions FROM fact based discussions rather than hysteria.
One thing that I haven't seen discussed in other posts is the usefulness of hysteria about hackers to law enforcement. It's given them unprecedented access to and control over personal freedoms in our country. The little we DO know about makes me seriously consider moving to another country. I can only imagine what else is going on.
Regarding security responses, his point is that resources are always limited. Where you put them - even in security focused enterprises - should be solidly based on risk/benefit analysis. You can't do that analysis if you don't stop spending your time reacting and start collecting real data.
All too often emotionally driven politics drives decision making rather than real data. This benefits others - including the security industry. I know because I was part of the security industry. While it's true that small companies often do the equivalent of leaving the doors unlocked, the percentage that have been actually hit is small.
I'd like it to become standard that vulnerability reports include statistics on the rate of exploitation of each found vulnerability. That allows overworked and under budgeted IT departments a chance to prioritize.
The problem that they found is that the temperature at which maximum effectiveness of heat transfer occurs varies by individual. If the hand gets too cold, blood vessels constrict and greatly reduce the effectiveness - as in the huskies feet.
That means that there needs to be some means of regulating the temperature of the water going into the glove and some means of measuring the temperature (and thus effective heat transfer) of the water coming out of the glove. Calibration means lowering the temperature slowly until you see a significant drop in water temperature change across the glove. A degree or so above that would max out heat transfer.
The description of using ice chips for a portable unit means one of two things - either the most effective water temp for heat transfer is close to freezing or it was the most efficient way to provide a heat sink was that rather than a heat pump or thermocouple. I suspect the latter given that you already have to have a water pump circulating the water.
The simplest arrangement I can think of requires throwing away portability. You'd need to have two buckets - one with mostly ice and some water in it and one with just water in it. The ice bucket sits at a somewhat higher level than the water bucket with a siphon tube leading down into the second bucket.
The second bucket is full of water and has a fully submersible aquarium heater in it that's pretty precise and fairly high powered - say 150 watts. It also has a submersible pump (power head) that has two outlets. The first just circulates water rapidly inside the bucket to maintain temperature uniformity. The other has a second tube attached that feeds back into the ice filled bucket.
Ideally, you want a second thermostat opening and closing a valve in this second tube. In reality, it's probably cheaper to use an adjustable clamp. This means the aquarium heater works harder when they are sitting there in the rest state and a lot slower when you're swishing your hands around in it.
Calibration in this case is a matter of lowering the thermostat on the aquarium heater bit by bit between sets until the recovery effect drops dramatically. Given that the environment is typically around 70 degrees, I'd say start at 65 degrees and go down from there.
It's painfully obvious if you step back and think a bit. They sell game software. Marketing, in it's usual tortured logic, sees an opportunity for tie-ins with racing gameware.
It's highly unlikely that Microsoft will actually source the parts - they'll just subcontract out the actual work and slap their name on it. It's no different than laser printers and many other tech in that sense.
There's a huge shift underway in how we get media and other forms of data delievered to us. While we'll probably still want to buy personal copies of some movies, books and other works, a lot of that content will probably be stored centrally and delivered on demand.
That's already been happening on dedicated networks such as cable and satellite but this can only happen in highly regimented ways. For this to truly meet customer demand, we have to go through a massive build-out in network infrastructure. That's already started happening with some of the providers.
However, that buildout has it's risks. There's multiple players in backbone and endpoint delivery so it's likely that some will lose out. Their infrastructure buildout won't pay at an acceptable rate of return or, worse, they'll get stuck in a rate war like the long distance carriers have been. That's a very up-close and personal concern as most of the big players in the internet are the survivors of that war.
Their primary answers are differentiation of offerings and shifting of the costs of the buildout. I can certainly understand the pressure to reduce risk and am really in favor of the transition. However, I think a better model than service-specific pricing can be developed.
In fact, I think the carriers are chewing off their own foot in going this route. They'll actually be slowing down the public adoption of such services by spotlighting the cost to consumers. If I have to pay for the movie and for the privilege of downloading it, I'm much more inclined to just go rent or buy it at a physical store.
One alternative is to blur the line between service and content provider. By offering a single price, the customer resistance is lower. I see Google, Yahoo and a few others going that route.
One proposal floated by the industry is a backdoor attempt at doing this. By charging content providers a service premium, consumers don't see a separate cost - just a slightly higher cost per item downloaded. The advantage it has over the other model is it spreads the cost further and allows their own content offerings to compete more effectively.
I think the key problem is that everyone wants both utility-style and commercial style benefits, we just can't agree on what those should be. The service providers want the latitude to do some price fixing while still being able to compete in each other's markets. The cutomers want the competition but with controls over how services are offered.
It's time we started focusing on commonalities as a starting point in negotiations. The first of those is the desirability of the buildout. We all want that to happen in a reasonably controlled way. Some sort of framework for guaranteed return on investment does make sense. It would be nice if the framework did a decent job of mediating public interests as well as the industry's.
This law could potentially allow companies to circumvent and undermine state laws designed to protect consumers from identity theft. Speaking as someone who works in the security field, this is one of the most ill conceived bills imaginable. Most network management organizations are stretched thin, constantly being beaten up over outages and in no mood to take on additional work. Companies have to have strong economic or criminal penalties to offset this situation or it will not change. The ONLY reason companies are starting to take an interest in security issues now is because of the state laws forcing disclosure and acts such as Sarbannes-Oxley and Graham Leach Bliley that have real teeth in the form of criminal penalties for CEOs. I'd support this sort if legislation is if disclosure was mandatory within a short enough period of time to allow for lawsuits. That is enough pressure to start forcing real attention to security needs. As it is, this looks more like a corporate lobbying effort to reverse the state trends than progress.
First, small screen size. Unless a reader can reproduce two full pages of the book faithfully, it's greatly inferior as a medium. Color is less of an issue but would be nice.
Second, the ability to rapidly find and flip between pages I've been to before. This is really only an issue for technical books but it becomes crucial there as I end up using them as references rather than just tutorials.
Third, technically based interruptions in usage. Readers that can only display for two to four hours at a time are a problem.
Fourth, visual representation. Books are just easier on the eyes and get in the way less when focusing on the material.
Fifth is the format and DRM constraints. Those would have driven me nuts if I'd ever really invested in ebooks.
Finally, being able to embed markup in the text is important in critiquing my own or others work. It's also important in embedding notes in a published work. Again, this is limited to technical works.
There are serious advantages, however. The one that is most pressing right now is reduction in required space.
A close second is being able to find the work easily when I want it. That goes hand in hand with the former observation. A very nice corrolary is moving is less painful.
A third advantage will require some special engineering but should be eminently doable. A reader can and should be water resistant and stain proof. By water resistant, I mean it should easily survive being dropped in the tub or having a drink spilled on it (even ones that are conductive like coke).
Having said all this, I'm very hopeful about the e-ink reader from Philips/Irex. It appears to address most of my concerns including the ability to do markup. We'll have to see how well it stacks up in reality.
I see bounties as providing one strong net positive assuming their popularity grows. It gives a good indicator of where true need exists for incremental change.
In most cases, these changes are going to be requested by those who feel they don't have the expertise to produce those changes themselves. When the bounty total approaches the true cost, you'll known people are pretty serious.
This doesn't harm open source in that visionaries and those wanting to do something just for fun can still do so. It can help existing open source evolve to be more useful.
For those of you concerned about open source not being free, don't forget that RedHat, SuSE and Nessus have done quite well in supporting open source. In all three cases, developers are being paid full time to work on them but the code remains freely available and modifiable.
Where I do see a real problem is when an IP originator refuses to make their software truly free. Sun with Java is a good example of this. You have to meet their criteria in order to continue calling what you produce "Java". Intentionally or not, that causes real problems with innovation when proposed changes don't meet Sun's business plan.
As a final point, bounties WILL run into trouble when there's disagreement on a requested set of functionality. If the conditions stated in the bounty aren't clear enough, this can even happen after the fact. I don't envy the site management company when those sorts of situations hit. Some will inevitably escalate into the court system.
I've been involved in a startup for several years now that is in just that (unenviable) position. If you have multiple VC funders, you can play them off one another to some degree. However, this in itself is work that's way off topic.
If you have just one, they become your overlords in all but name. If you are very, very lucky, they have some real experience in your chosen field and allow you some latitude when it comes to decision making that costs additional money.
We aren't so lucky. Our sole VC keeps insisting on keeping costs way down while insisting we develop a product mature enough to meet the needs of fortune 500 companies within a six month to one year timetable. It is truely a mess.
I wholeheartedly agree on not taking any outside funding ever if at all possible. If what you really need is business expertise, get it yourself or hire it - never let it buy you.
VCs are mostly into short term, high risk investing. Their decision making is based on quick returns that are N-times their investment. That means their timespan on decision making is always a max of 2-3 years out. In many cases, this is NOT healthy for the company itself in the longterm.
There've been a number of very well thought out editorials and articles in SF magazines of the last few years about the transition to purely digital distribution for copyrighted material. Their observations tend to cross over to music and film as well.
There's no doubt that digital distribution is trivial nowadays. However, there are functions provided by traditional publishing companies that actuall do hold value - oddly enough. First off, editors can make great mentors for promising but not quite there artists in two ways. They can help them improve their work and they can help them identify target markets and what helps works of their type get attention. Combining this with the word "artist" sounds crass, but anyone who devotes themselves wholeheartedly enough to become really good at what they do has to also be able to eat.
Secondly, editors provide a much needed filter mechanism. It's arguable that they don't necessarily do a great job (particularly in american film), but apparently there's at least as much material that doesn't get published as ends up on /.
Finally, publishing companies supply the ancillary expertise in promotional and distribution channels. They know how to market and have already identified good ways to get the artist's work to the public.
Interestingly enough, writers can find all but the last two items by alternate means. There's several excellent workshops out there as well as author guilds to provide mentoring. There are already a lot of blogs, accumulated purchaser lists, etc to help people find the better work.
This leaves promotion and distribution. The latter, as noted above, isn't that hard to set up on the web so it's already heavily commoditized.
Promotion is still the key. I like the already available "people who viewed this also viewed these ..." and user lists. I'd also love bayesian filters where I own the data the filter is based on. What I'm really, really hoping for is that such things eventually kill off commercials. There's nothing that pisses me off more than having to sit through moronic sales pitches for things I couldn't care less about.
Unfortunately, I am not sure that this will ever be fully commoditized. There's apparently something real in the way of benefits to mass media coverage with the right approach. I don't know what the gross on advertising revenue is, but I suspect it's not far from the federal budget.
Our privacy has been in massive decline long before this period in time. Lexus-Nexus and other companies get feeds about even individual credit card purchases. Soon, Google will be able to tell most people what their most commonly mis-spelled words are. Even without direct government surveilance, massive amounts of profiling data is only a warrant away.
Regarding the "so what, I'm not doing anything wrong" argument, history has shown that power accumulated is power abused. This includes the US government. Think of the japanese-american internment camps in the US. Much of the property they owned was lost as a consequence and many suffered horribly in the camp conditions. This occurred at the same time we were publicly decrying the mistreatment of our POW's. How does this tie into information abuse? Most of the japanese americans were found using census data by neighborhood.
Some may also argue that the government has taken draconian measures regarding individual freedoms during other wars - particularly WW I and WW II. That's true, but the cost was incredibly high compared to the benefit post-war. With the automation we have in place, the cost of maintaining it versus building it is minimal. When you add in the fact that the definition of "terrorist" is still nowhere to be found on federal law books, how hard is it to keep justifying what they are building?
On the other side of the equation, terrorism wouldn't be possible without the increasing power of technology given to any small group or individual that holds it. Until our corporations get their collective heads out of their asses and start taking networked computing security seriously, we are able to lose millions of lives to attacks on key infrastructure elements.
I don't pretend to understand the difficulties of weaponization of chemical or biological hazards, but I suspect that some of the very useful techniques and materials being developed even now lend themselves well to horrific abuse. If you read Heinlein, even he recognized that some technology needs to be suppressed until society had the controls to cope with it.
I greatly fear that we are, by default, going to end up with a total loss of privacy simply due to the need to intervene early enough to prevent the loss of so many lives from one single potential act. The real problem then becomes how do we manage to keep freedoms while allowing the loss of privacy?
I think that the current administration's major failing is the demand of power with no checks. If there's anything that is foundational to the constitution, that is it. There HAS to be transparency of executive branch activities to both the judicial and legislative branches. Along with that, there needs to be the corresponding ability to put a halt to abuses.
Unfortunately, congress is (for the most part) refusing to live up to those basic principles. Those that are trying to force the addition of such measures are failing or having them watered down to the point of uselessness.