Part of the COld War or the War on Terror or the War on Drugs is the over-use of Xtreme language. It creates an outrage immunity, and people are already stressed out over worrying about Fifth Columns, AL-whomever, or Meth Kids to care about the actual problems such as insecure voting or human rights. There was an Orwell editorial that talks about the overuse of cliche and how it serves the politically expedient, and does a big disservice to those being crushed under its boot (oops, I just used a cliche there...).
Also, there is a significant delay to the key=press time on the keyboard, so you really can't get over 25-30 words with this at its best. About the same speed as my thumb keyboard on my Treo 650...
What happened is this - those federal agencies have always been fighting with each other for influence, budgets, etc, including trying to get a favored ear in whatever current Presidental cabinet there was.
So, when they found good evidence of an upcoming attack, they said to themselves "let's sell this sucker so we can gain a little more prestige than the other agency".
The agencies have the reputation for doing this and a history of it, so whenever a cabinet memebr would read the reports, they also are applying their own filters to it saying "well, looks like FBI wants another budget allotment this year" instead of saying "well, looks like Bin Laden wants to blow stuff up this year."
This problem was not created by Clinton, Bush etc, but by the hidebound bureaucracies in place for so long. Clinton or Bush made the wrong decisions, but because of the culture in place they were unable to take off the blinders and act seriously. Maybe the middle managers and actual caseworkers realized that something very bad was going to happen very soon, but a many-tiered structure of a CIA or FBI prevents such stuff from being a priority.
That is something the 9-11 commission was very clear on that needed improvement and had little to do with Bush and Co. DOn't get me wrong, Bush was the worst possible guy for the job and the situation, and has consistently made the wrong decision that has driven up terrorist recruitment and turned nations against us, but at the same time, the Intel had far less weight b/c it came from the same knuckleheads who've been fighting each other for decades for more influence and cash.
And the fact that he created an EXTRA agency to collate the others is the single exact wrong thing to do. Why not reform the existing, broken agencies? Why the hell would you make ANOTHER one to screw things up - and remember why Katrina was so bad and FEMA failed? The dept of Homeland Security wasn't ready for primetime...
Who needs a conspiracy when good old fashioned incompetence is the Occam's Razor answer?
Thanks for the explanation! I was not sure of the trade-offs there. I guess the next questions would be re : transmission and storage losses for the plants and "gas" stations.
And the cost of keeping up your ultracap or battery - IIRC those materials are pretty darn toxic and have disposal issues too. Not as much as nuke waste of course, but another environmental impact to be aware of. Anybody hear about the toxic dump off the Ivory Coast? Those poor buggers are getting a real tough deal over there.
It certainly fits into the existing models we've built for transportation.
However, the question is this - is it more efficient to burn the gasoline/fuel to create the electricity to use the electricity to run the cars, or to just continue refining internal combustion engines. It might be the case that the current state of electrical engines are just not as powerful as the gasoline ones, and to get an equivalent amount of work from the electrical engine requires more gas to be burned at the plant level for generation, thus negating environmental or fuel supply benefits.
But - I am not a electrical engineer, so I am not sure. I sure do hear a lot about the problem of using juice from the plants vs making each car more efficient.
Remember kids, the warrantless spying and excessive amounts of data would not have helped prevent 9-11. We had the information the whole time, but the agencies don't cooperate between each other. That is it. We don't need any new tools; the old ones worked fine but the 'crats got caught up in paperwork and red tape and infighting. Imagine the data dump that will ensue from this new approval. What a travesty.
We wanted the internal groups to share info between them, CIA to FBI to NSA to the military. We also want our government to be transparent and accountable. The government still has not delivered on either of these things, but uses the vague information specifically to scare us. We aren't trying to have it both ways!
They lie to us and keep up the appearance that everything is being worked on, and the vague warnings are a way to placate us with sleight-of-hand. Don't be silly.
I want to hear about plots and arrests and suspects. I don't want to hear about "there might be something happening sometime next week" without any details. THAT is a scare tactic. That is the government saying "Watch your back or else" instead of saying "be on guard for suspicious people travelling from Boston to Detroit with Ipods that look modified." Schneier is again correct in identifying terrorism as law enforcement, while the warmongers just want the total war against Oceania, Eastasia, or Eurasia. It is not burying your head in the sand. Imagining terrorists where none hide is worse than burying your head in the sand. A paranoid world is a world with shaky fingers on monstrous triggers.
But I think the point is that they did not live longer b/c we are unable to control the cancers they might develop or the other factors that might contribute. If we are able to prevent more cancers and viruses from weakening our systems, the gene might be able to reproduce the cells indefinitely.
You could dumb down the AI, just like when I play games on my laptop with no video card and shared ram vs my gaming rig w/ pci-e - the graphics don't look as nice, but it still works. Why couldn't the AI chip do the same?
I'm a little upset that you didn't mention the other four methods to contact cousins and family members - paper letter, post card, clown-gram, and skylettering plane. Or blog post with the words Paris Hilton, Coulter, PS3, and Apple inserted.
Hmmmm....140 degrees in the Midwest belt....fundamental anti-science types in Kansas in the Midwest belt. I think we've found a solution to one of the two problems.:-)
Just kidding, I sincerely enjoy our Midwestern brethren, but the propensity and ease with which they are manipulated by politicial short-term speechery certaintly is not helping the warming issue.
Excellent point. The law is there to protect people to a certain extent, but it never answers the questions of society. The Civil Rights Movement in America is the perfect example, as were the Reconstruction laws passed in the South after our Civil War. Both forced people to "do the right thing" and act progressively.
We recognize that both situations required the laws to be enforced, as the status quo would never accept the terms. But, in both instances, the "winners" of the lawsuits - progressive minded white & black people and the Northern states - failed to draw the disaffected and losing groups back into society to continue their contributions to culture. Just as the wars on drugs and terror have two parts - the manufacturing/military side, and the side of society's opinion of the "problems"; the clashing of opposing groups is fought in courts and in culture.
One interesting flip side to this is how many people in our society take a laidback view of pot smoking vs what our current laws & enforcement would suggest.
The real question is how do we bring people to the table to figure out first an understanding of both sides, and then a compromise or resolution. I would argue that many of our problems in culture and society stem from the minority group feeling that they aren't able to discuss their concerns or be understood. We can draw parallels from diverse groups like home-grown militias, the Muslim world vs Western society, high school outcasts viz a vie the Columbine shooters, homosexuals, pedophiles, poverty-stricken gangs, etc.
While I agree that political stuff is mostly time-wasting and posturing and calling the other guy names - the outcomes of judicial rulings, lawsuits, military actions, and administration positions are things that matter.
They affect us every single day, and the lively (if sometimes one-sided) discussions about them help us all understand the issues of the day. And even if I only get to read one side of the trollbait debate, it still helps me to coalesce my own positions on matters.
Can I read about them on fark or digg? Yes. Do I enjoy their take on it vs the/. take? Not as much.
Many of the political stories have a direct effect on our technology and the movement of society around science. See : stem cells, wiretapping fiber optics, electronic voting machines, media manipulation of photographs & video - both pro & anti Western stance, global warming, fossil fuel efficiency, and the list goes on.
Flame wars, ignorance, and just plain shouting are a PITA no matter what site posts it, and this one is no exception.
They probably treat all surfaces as a single point of contact, with the same feeedback on a tentacle vs a golem. I don't know that these Zelda games have a whole lot of decapitation or limb removal or getting your sword stuck on some dude's spine. I imagine they will keep it Disney as they usually do.
I wasn't clear on the explanation - sorry bout that. I mean they are paying their employees to research this. They could be working on the next foul DRM scheme but instead M$ pays them to research OSS. Not so much in the hardware sense, although they are using computer / server capacity in the research, or that they are purchasing the software like a car, but more in the allocation of resources, however big or small it may be.
My point was that seeing how much is spend in terms of time & resources is the indicator as to how serious they take the opposition. You can also add in lobbyist / lawyer fees to keep OSS out of thier markets, like the Massachusetts openoffice fight.
The kinetic charge would be super useful, as even the chair jockeys have to get up every now and then to use the facilities. I like that or the solar cell idea. Either would be fantastic.
Companies always spend money on discerning the opposition's methods. GM/Ford buys the other guys' cars to determine what their new tech is for each model. Wired had a cool article on it. Just b/c they want to compete does not mean they don't spend money on understanding the competition.
You can tell this also from where the invite came from - head of their Open Source Software Lab. Whether or not they sink any money into it is the true test of their intent. Our Government is great at that - creating the mandate then quietly strip its funding down to a single dog and pony show.
The seller ratings are rigged too, of course. They do that thing where they mutually bid on a bunch of worthless auctions, then boost the seller score once the "auction" is won. It is def. getting a lot more spam than before. But isn't that the problem with everything on the net? Once a good thing becomes well-known, then spammers or scammers move in to flood the channels.
For those of you who think the sniper story is implausible - keep in mind that the scope's glass lens is probably the only thing that would reflect much light in the sniper & his gear. It would be a natural target for an opposing soldier to spot. The timing thing sure is creepy though...
Would this be in line with Microsoft producing their own protection software and trying to drive others out of their market share? Sure would be a convenient way to do it, forcing Symantec, et al, to resort to hacking or paying extortion fees for kernel hookins.
Well now you have the philosophical side of it. You can choose to be a solipsist, where nothing outside the self is "real" and the moon exists only as a perception in the sky.
You can try the same thing with the observed laws of physics, and drop hammers on your head or get in car accidents and so on.
How about we agree that there is enough of a possibility that we landed on the moon, that, say, if I were to sign you up for a trip tomorrow, you wouldn't forget to pack a pressure suit and oxygen supply before I lock the hatch and start the engine.
I think that is as close to absolutely sure as I can be. How else can anyone agree on any facts or events, even if they were right there when it happened? I bet the hundreds who witnessed the towers fall had similar perceptions, but none could be exactly the same, in the tedious philsophical sense. But we all agree the towers fell, don't we?
Slashdot Mirror
Part of the COld War or the War on Terror or the War on Drugs is the over-use of Xtreme language. It creates an outrage immunity, and people are already stressed out over worrying about Fifth Columns, AL-whomever, or Meth Kids to care about the actual problems such as insecure voting or human rights. There was an Orwell editorial that talks about the overuse of cliche and how it serves the politically expedient, and does a big disservice to those being crushed under its boot (oops, I just used a cliche there...).
Also, there is a significant delay to the key=press time on the keyboard, so you really can't get over 25-30 words with this at its best. About the same speed as my thumb keyboard on my Treo 650...
What happened is this - those federal agencies have always been fighting with each other for influence, budgets, etc, including trying to get a favored ear in whatever current Presidental cabinet there was.
So, when they found good evidence of an upcoming attack, they said to themselves "let's sell this sucker so we can gain a little more prestige than the other agency".
The agencies have the reputation for doing this and a history of it, so whenever a cabinet memebr would read the reports, they also are applying their own filters to it saying "well, looks like FBI wants another budget allotment this year" instead of saying "well, looks like Bin Laden wants to blow stuff up this year."
This problem was not created by Clinton, Bush etc, but by the hidebound bureaucracies in place for so long. Clinton or Bush made the wrong decisions, but because of the culture in place they were unable to take off the blinders and act seriously. Maybe the middle managers and actual caseworkers realized that something very bad was going to happen very soon, but a many-tiered structure of a CIA or FBI prevents such stuff from being a priority.
That is something the 9-11 commission was very clear on that needed improvement and had little to do with Bush and Co. DOn't get me wrong, Bush was the worst possible guy for the job and the situation, and has consistently made the wrong decision that has driven up terrorist recruitment and turned nations against us, but at the same time, the Intel had far less weight b/c it came from the same knuckleheads who've been fighting each other for decades for more influence and cash.
And the fact that he created an EXTRA agency to collate the others is the single exact wrong thing to do. Why not reform the existing, broken agencies? Why the hell would you make ANOTHER one to screw things up - and remember why Katrina was so bad and FEMA failed? The dept of Homeland Security wasn't ready for primetime...
Who needs a conspiracy when good old fashioned incompetence is the Occam's Razor answer?
Because you don't have a lucrative trade agreement with the US. Move along.
Thanks for the explanation! I was not sure of the trade-offs there. I guess the next questions would be re : transmission and storage losses for the plants and "gas" stations.
And the cost of keeping up your ultracap or battery - IIRC those materials are pretty darn toxic and have disposal issues too. Not as much as nuke waste of course, but another environmental impact to be aware of. Anybody hear about the toxic dump off the Ivory Coast? Those poor buggers are getting a real tough deal over there.
They built a concept car powered by nuclear fuel back in the 50's...
It certainly fits into the existing models we've built for transportation.
However, the question is this - is it more efficient to burn the gasoline/fuel to create the electricity to use the electricity to run the cars, or to just continue refining internal combustion engines. It might be the case that the current state of electrical engines are just not as powerful as the gasoline ones, and to get an equivalent amount of work from the electrical engine requires more gas to be burned at the plant level for generation, thus negating environmental or fuel supply benefits.
But - I am not a electrical engineer, so I am not sure. I sure do hear a lot about the problem of using juice from the plants vs making each car more efficient.
You can visit the Trek cons to get a glimpse of the hairy, sweaty future. :-P
Remember kids, the warrantless spying and excessive amounts of data would not have helped prevent 9-11. We had the information the whole time, but the agencies don't cooperate between each other. That is it. We don't need any new tools; the old ones worked fine but the 'crats got caught up in paperwork and red tape and infighting. Imagine the data dump that will ensue from this new approval. What a travesty.
We wanted the internal groups to share info between them, CIA to FBI to NSA to the military. We also want our government to be transparent and accountable. The government still has not delivered on either of these things, but uses the vague information specifically to scare us. We aren't trying to have it both ways!
They lie to us and keep up the appearance that everything is being worked on, and the vague warnings are a way to placate us with sleight-of-hand. Don't be silly.
I want to hear about plots and arrests and suspects. I don't want to hear about "there might be something happening sometime next week" without any details. THAT is a scare tactic. That is the government saying "Watch your back or else" instead of saying "be on guard for suspicious people travelling from Boston to Detroit with Ipods that look modified." Schneier is again correct in identifying terrorism as law enforcement, while the warmongers just want the total war against Oceania, Eastasia, or Eurasia. It is not burying your head in the sand. Imagining terrorists where none hide is worse than burying your head in the sand. A paranoid world is a world with shaky fingers on monstrous triggers.
But I think the point is that they did not live longer b/c we are unable to control the cancers they might develop or the other factors that might contribute. If we are able to prevent more cancers and viruses from weakening our systems, the gene might be able to reproduce the cells indefinitely.
You could dumb down the AI, just like when I play games on my laptop with no video card and shared ram vs my gaming rig w/ pci-e - the graphics don't look as nice, but it still works. Why couldn't the AI chip do the same?
I'm a little upset that you didn't mention the other four methods to contact cousins and family members - paper letter, post card, clown-gram, and skylettering plane. Or blog post with the words Paris Hilton, Coulter, PS3, and Apple inserted.
Hmmmm....140 degrees in the Midwest belt....fundamental anti-science types in Kansas in the Midwest belt. I think we've found a solution to one of the two problems. :-)
Just kidding, I sincerely enjoy our Midwestern brethren, but the propensity and ease with which they are manipulated by politicial short-term speechery certaintly is not helping the warming issue.
Excellent point. The law is there to protect people to a certain extent, but it never answers the questions of society. The Civil Rights Movement in America is the perfect example, as were the Reconstruction laws passed in the South after our Civil War. Both forced people to "do the right thing" and act progressively.
We recognize that both situations required the laws to be enforced, as the status quo would never accept the terms. But, in both instances, the "winners" of the lawsuits - progressive minded white & black people and the Northern states - failed to draw the disaffected and losing groups back into society to continue their contributions to culture. Just as the wars on drugs and terror have two parts - the manufacturing/military side, and the side of society's opinion of the "problems"; the clashing of opposing groups is fought in courts and in culture.
One interesting flip side to this is how many people in our society take a laidback view of pot smoking vs what our current laws & enforcement would suggest.
The real question is how do we bring people to the table to figure out first an understanding of both sides, and then a compromise or resolution. I would argue that many of our problems in culture and society stem from the minority group feeling that they aren't able to discuss their concerns or be understood. We can draw parallels from diverse groups like home-grown militias, the Muslim world vs Western society, high school outcasts viz a vie the Columbine shooters, homosexuals, pedophiles, poverty-stricken gangs, etc.
While I agree that political stuff is mostly time-wasting and posturing and calling the other guy names - the outcomes of judicial rulings, lawsuits, military actions, and administration positions are things that matter.
/. take? Not as much.
They affect us every single day, and the lively (if sometimes one-sided) discussions about them help us all understand the issues of the day. And even if I only get to read one side of the trollbait debate, it still helps me to coalesce my own positions on matters.
Can I read about them on fark or digg? Yes. Do I enjoy their take on it vs the
Many of the political stories have a direct effect on our technology and the movement of society around science. See : stem cells, wiretapping fiber optics, electronic voting machines, media manipulation of photographs & video - both pro & anti Western stance, global warming, fossil fuel efficiency, and the list goes on.
Flame wars, ignorance, and just plain shouting are a PITA no matter what site posts it, and this one is no exception.
They probably treat all surfaces as a single point of contact, with the same feeedback on a tentacle vs a golem. I don't know that these Zelda games have a whole lot of decapitation or limb removal or getting your sword stuck on some dude's spine. I imagine they will keep it Disney as they usually do.
I wasn't clear on the explanation - sorry bout that. I mean they are paying their employees to research this. They could be working on the next foul DRM scheme but instead M$ pays them to research OSS. Not so much in the hardware sense, although they are using computer / server capacity in the research, or that they are purchasing the software like a car, but more in the allocation of resources, however big or small it may be.
My point was that seeing how much is spend in terms of time & resources is the indicator as to how serious they take the opposition. You can also add in lobbyist / lawyer fees to keep OSS out of thier markets, like the Massachusetts openoffice fight.
The kinetic charge would be super useful, as even the chair jockeys have to get up every now and then to use the facilities. I like that or the solar cell idea. Either would be fantastic.
Companies always spend money on discerning the opposition's methods. GM/Ford buys the other guys' cars to determine what their new tech is for each model. Wired had a cool article on it. Just b/c they want to compete does not mean they don't spend money on understanding the competition.
You can tell this also from where the invite came from - head of their Open Source Software Lab. Whether or not they sink any money into it is the true test of their intent. Our Government is great at that - creating the mandate then quietly strip its funding down to a single dog and pony show.
The seller ratings are rigged too, of course. They do that thing where they mutually bid on a bunch of worthless auctions, then boost the seller score once the "auction" is won. It is def. getting a lot more spam than before. But isn't that the problem with everything on the net? Once a good thing becomes well-known, then spammers or scammers move in to flood the channels.
For those of you who think the sniper story is implausible - keep in mind that the scope's glass lens is probably the only thing that would reflect much light in the sniper & his gear. It would be a natural target for an opposing soldier to spot. The timing thing sure is creepy though...
Would this be in line with Microsoft producing their own protection software and trying to drive others out of their market share? Sure would be a convenient way to do it, forcing Symantec, et al, to resort to hacking or paying extortion fees for kernel hookins.
Well now you have the philosophical side of it. You can choose to be a solipsist, where nothing outside the self is "real" and the moon exists only as a perception in the sky.
You can try the same thing with the observed laws of physics, and drop hammers on your head or get in car accidents and so on.
How about we agree that there is enough of a possibility that we landed on the moon, that, say, if I were to sign you up for a trip tomorrow, you wouldn't forget to pack a pressure suit and oxygen supply before I lock the hatch and start the engine.
I think that is as close to absolutely sure as I can be. How else can anyone agree on any facts or events, even if they were right there when it happened? I bet the hundreds who witnessed the towers fall had similar perceptions, but none could be exactly the same, in the tedious philsophical sense. But we all agree the towers fell, don't we?