A little more frequently than "now and then," but a little short of daily. And as for whether it's work, I guess I'd quote Frost (from memory, so I'll probably screw it up):
But yield those who will to their separation My goal in living is to unite my avocation and my vocation As my to eyes make one in sight. Only when love and need are one And the work is play for mortal stakes Only then is the job really done For heaven and the future's sakes.
By the way, I didn't really see the story as advocacy. But I did want readers to understand WHY people are so damned excited about this operating system, and the broader movement.
Of course, I now realize there's already a discusion of the Post article back in the Hump Day topic, so apologies for bringing us back to something already discussed.
It's me, the guy from the Washington Post again. I did quote the post in the Post, as I have done for more than 10 years of reporting on online communities.
Fair use applies, definitely. But even though I've got the law on my side, I always try to contact the original poster to discuss the post and to see if he minds my republishing it in a different medium. Often I get better stuff from the follow-up than there was in the original post. And I don't post by name without permission.
Hi--I'm the guy from the Post who wrote the ms-/. story in today's paper, and if my seekrit corporate masters at Microsoft hadn't told to avoid getting into fights with people, I'd give you what for.:-)
I realize that a biased person rarely sees his own bias, but I've got to say that I was trying to write a straight story. Most of the people who emailed me about it today seemed to think that I had done that. Sorry you disagree.
The Post also ran a story of mine about slashdot the day before this one ran. Here's the URL:
Stephenson's speech was a lot more subtle and textured than the discussion of it here would lead you to believe. In fact, he said that he greatly admired people like Phil who have brought encryption to the world, and believes in fighting oppression in all its forms. The underscored point, however, was the "in all its forms" part. He referred back to our hominid ancestors and showed a pie chart of what their threat model might have been. It was about 98 percent HYENAS and about 2 percent OTHER. Once early man developed some good spears, he said, the hyena problem was less pressing--but early man didn't move on to try to conquer threats like intestinal parisites. His point, then, was that we need to update our threat models more often, and more subtly, than humans usually do. He then showed another pie chart. 98 percent was BIG BROTHER. 2 percent was OTHER. It got a big laugh from the crowd, because a lot of people recognized themselves. Stephenson again said that it was important ot expose and fight the bad things that "domination systems" to, but said that we should open the pie chart up to include and focus on other threats as well. In fact, he conceded, his pie chart of the threat model with lots of slices still could have the largest slice devoted to worrying about Big Brother. I hope that this gives a more full description of what Stephenson said in his talk. I wrote the story for the Washington Post, and tried to get as much of that flavor into it as I could.
Re:Mother Jones - Front Page Last Month
on
Living Terrors
·
· Score: 1
I'm not asking you to buy the damned book. I'm just encouraging you to read it.
Especially you, since in the book Mike and I take on the overspending on defenses against "weapons of mass destruction" in general and describe many of the wrongheaded programs that pour money into military/police solutions that cannot work. We also compare that spending to the comparatively small amount of money being used to address the public health side of the equation, and try to explain why the public health spending will pay dividends in a generally healthier nation.
Re:To: jswatz, Re: I happen to have...
on
Living Terrors
·
· Score: 1
Well, as soon as you develop a plan to change the global attitudes of the United States, I'll be ready to hear them. Voting "against imperialist Washington, DC" sounds good if you say it fast, but where's the plan of action?
Building the public health infrastructure is something we can do now, and if done right can PREVENT casualties with quick vaccinations and treatment as soon as a disease outbreak is identified.
Let's draw a parallel to computer system defense. Those who maintain big systems know that they will be targets simply because they are big. They do what they can to defend themselves, but they also invest heavily in quick response so that if a problem gets past those initial defenses (which can happen to anybody, no matter how well prepared) the recovery is quick and the damage is minimized.
You can argue that if Bill Gates changed the entire business plan of Microsoft, he would not be such a target for attacks like the recent intrusion into the Msft networks, but let's face it: 1) What kind of changes to you reasonably expect?; 2) What kind of changes would satisfy those who already hate msft? 3) What makes anyone think that those who hate msft are a cohesive group with an easily defined set of conditions that, once met, would elicit an end to crack attempts?
I might have stretched the analogy to the breaking point there, but I feel pretty strongly that in this world, you do what you CAN do, and you do what can produce RESULTS. Maybe it's my background--I grew up in Texas, a very conservative state, and those of us who believed in opportunities for the disadvantaged, for civil liberties, for sound environmental policy and the like learned that half a loaf is better than none. The issues at stake were too important for any less practical approach.
Re:Biotech and Biowarfare Equipment
on
Living Terrors
·
· Score: 1
I would be willing to bet that the good lecture in Minneapolis was delivered by Michael T. Osterholm, who was chief epidemiologist for the state health department and, um, coauthor of a book about bioterrorism entitled Living Terrors.
The book, by the way, includes a scenario with an attack inside a major shopping mall.
Cobweb is an outstanding novel. The agent isn't anthrax, however, but botulism toxin. But it's incredibly suspenseful--really first-rate.
Re:America invented bio-terrorism.
on
Living Terrors
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· Score: 2
Impregnating the Indians' blankets with smallpox was a vicious and unthinkable act, but I believe the incident you're talking about was caused by the British: in 1763, smallpox-laden blankets were used by the English at Fort Pitt and given to the Indians loyal to the French.
As horrible an act as that was, it wasn't the first use of biological warfare. Hannibal ordered earthen pots to be filled with "serpents of every kind" and then hurled onto the decks of Pergamum ships, and in 1346 the Tartar army attacked Caffa by catapulting the corpses of plague victims over the city walls, starting an epidemic of plague.
--j
Re:Why single out Russia?
on
Living Terrors
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· Score: 1
The United States signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972.
Re:but we need that money...
on
Living Terrors
·
· Score: 1
The book does not try to quantify the likelihood of attack; I think anybody who said he could do that would either be lying or nuts. Bill Clinton has called an attack "highly likely"--but of course, he's a politician, not an expert. D.A. Henderson, one of the world's best-respected experts on biological terrorism and smallpox (he led the World Health Organization campaign that eradicated the disease) says that biological terrorism "is more likely than ever before and more threatening than either explosives or chemicals."
In the introduction to the book, Mike says, "I do not believe it is a question of/whether/ a lone terrorist or terrorist group will use infectious disease agents to kill unsuspecting citizen; I'm convinced it's really just a question of when and where."
The probablilities play out this way: The likelihood that an attack will occur today, in your town, are extremely low. The probability that it will happpen SOMEWHERE is much higher, with the risk to people around the country tied to such factors as whether or not the agent used is highly contagious.
That's why our recommendations aren't about buying space suits for every American, or creating enormous military/police bureaucracies and local squads. Instead, our recommendations go to beefing up the infrastructure of public health and medical care so that wherever it happens, the disaster can be mitigated. That would be money well spent, even if we never get hit with a bad bug. (We do call for ONE initiative that is more narrow, though: rebuilding our stockpile of smallpox vaccine so that we can roll it out quickly if it's needed.)
j
I happen to have Marshall McLuhan right here...
on
Living Terrors
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· Score: 5
I co-wrote Living Terrors, and want to thank Hemos for this stunningly positive review. It's great to see the work on the book rewarded!
lemme respond to a few of the comments:
* "you'd have to be crazy to deploy bioweapons."
That's true for state-sponsored terrorism, and for terrorists of the old IRA school, who felt a strong tie to their people and didn't want to lose support through gruesome acts. But with the rise of a new kind of terrorist like the "lone wolf" who seeks to destabilize socieities no matter the cost, the risk of somebody releasing an agent as virulent as smallpox has grown.
* "The also are generally used by BIG govt. to take away your freedom."
It's true that the prospect of bioterrorism has been used by some people to call for restrictions on academic freedom and civil liberties. If you read Living Terrors, however, you'll find that we focus instead on the kind of recommendations that preserve civil liberties while actually making a difference--chiefly, upgrading the public health system to be able to respond quickly to a bioterrorist attack. That kind of spending is needed anyway for responding to foodborne disease outbreaks and run-of-the-mill epidemics, so it's just sound public policy.
* "If Anthrax is so deadly, how come there weren't Bubonic type plagues of it when it was prevalent? It may be deadly, but it's not so easy to get. The odds of a person inhaling enough spores to get infected are pretty slim. "
Anthrax is deadly, but not contagious. Inhaling very few spores can begin the process of infection, but it stops there. An anthrax attack would be very different from a smallpox attack, clearly. Even so, the Office of Technology Assessment estimated that an airborne release of about 100 kg of anthrax spores over Washington, D.C. could kill between one and three million people. I guess you could say that they were scaremongering, too, but I wouldn't agree with you.
But terrorists don't need to kill EVERYBODY; they are happy to kill, say, thousands, and bring about a massive panic in the process. As Lord Kano wrote in this discussion, "even a moronic terrorist is going to be able to do a lot of damage to the general population with minimal effort." The chemical attack in the Tokyo subways was a very sloppy job: the Sarin was poorly made, and the deliver method (putting the chemical in plastic bags and breaking them open with umbrella tips) was laughably inefficient. But people died, thousands were affected, and a national panic ensued. You don't have to be especially good at this stuff to have an effect.
As for Ebola, you're partly right--it's not a very good bioterror agent. Though it's moderately contagious, it has proved difficult to cultivate and "weaponize" (at least that's what Soviet scientists found), and it can be pretty well controlled with Western sanitation methods.
* "To date no one has launched a bio warfare attack on the US, (At least that worked)."
It's true that no government has launched a bio warfare attack against the US, but biological terrorism has been attempted by groups not affiliated with the government. Members of the Rajneeshee cult infected a salad bar with salmonella in 1984, for example, attempting to affect the outcome of a local election.
I'm a reporter for the Washington Post, and the legal rules behind fair use are pretty simple: chunks of what people put out there are usable. Online postings are even harder to protect: published to a potential audience of millions, many journalists consider them fair game. I've never been comfortable with the "rip and run" strategy, though, so I always email people whose stuff I want to use, and invite them to contact me about using a line or two from a post.I don't give up my legal right to quote from the post, but I do ask if they want to be anonymously quoted or have their real names used, and also invite them to call and talk about the posts. I often get better stuff from that interview than from the original post. If it's more like a conversation than exploitation, you tend to get better stories. At least, in my experience.
Mass scribbles raise an interesting question about whether the poster has an obligation to the community to preserve his part of the ongoing discussion. In fact, that topic has already arisen--as soon as Rutt's scribbles became known, people started asking the question. I don't have an answer, but I was sorry to see him--or anyone--scribble.
Hi--it's John Schwartz, the Washington Post reporter who wrote the story, delurking. Just wanted to say that some of the people commenting on the story don't seem to have read it. "Rabid?" Me? My story? Please take a look: this isn't "gotcha!" journalism. Instead, it's an attempt to show somebody who is afraid that the gotcha squad may come after him some day, and taking action. The story raises a lot of the questions that are being discussed here at slashdot--should people post anonymously? Shouldn't they understand that posting in online discussions is more like publication than conversation? Most important, if society could become more accustomed to the notion that people say strong things in unguarded moments, could that somehow lead to a little more honesty and a little less hypocricy? I can't speak for Jim Rutt, but I can tell you that he participated in the story because he thought the issues are important, and because he'd been thinking about them himself. With some reservations, since the stuff I was going to quote could get him into trouble, he talked to me. The story is better because of it.
Slashdot Mirror
>They hardly post any comments, but I would guess
>that they do visit the site now and then.
A little more frequently than "now and then," but a little short of daily. And as for whether it's work, I guess I'd quote Frost (from memory, so I'll probably screw it up):
But yield those who will to their separation
My goal in living is to unite my avocation and my vocation
As my to eyes make one in sight.
Only when love and need are one
And the work is play for mortal stakes
Only then is the job really done
For heaven and the future's sakes.
By the way, I didn't really see the story as advocacy. But I did want readers to understand WHY people are so damned excited about this operating system, and the broader movement.
John
Of course, I now realize there's already a discusion of the Post article back in the Hump Day topic, so apologies for bringing us back to something already discussed.
It's me, the guy from the Washington Post again. I did quote the post in the Post, as I have done for more than 10 years of reporting on online communities.
Fair use applies, definitely. But even though I've got the law on my side, I always try to contact the original poster to discuss the post and to see if he minds my republishing it in a different medium. Often I get better stuff from the follow-up than there was in the original post. And I don't post by name without permission.
I realize that a biased person rarely sees his own bias, but I've got to say that I was trying to write a straight story. Most of the people who emailed me about it today seemed to think that I had done that. Sorry you disagree.
The Post also ran a story of mine about slashdot the day before this one ran. Here's the URL:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37
----John Schwartz/one of those "horrible" writers in the business section
Stephenson's speech was a lot more subtle and textured than the discussion of it here would lead you to believe. In fact, he said that he greatly admired people like Phil who have brought encryption to the world, and believes in fighting oppression in all its forms. The underscored point, however, was the "in all its forms" part. He referred back to our hominid ancestors and showed a pie chart of what their threat model might have been. It was about 98 percent HYENAS and about 2 percent OTHER. Once early man developed some good spears, he said, the hyena problem was less pressing--but early man didn't move on to try to conquer threats like intestinal parisites. His point, then, was that we need to update our threat models more often, and more subtly, than humans usually do. He then showed another pie chart. 98 percent was BIG BROTHER. 2 percent was OTHER. It got a big laugh from the crowd, because a lot of people recognized themselves. Stephenson again said that it was important ot expose and fight the bad things that "domination systems" to, but said that we should open the pie chart up to include and focus on other threats as well. In fact, he conceded, his pie chart of the threat model with lots of slices still could have the largest slice devoted to worrying about Big Brother. I hope that this gives a more full description of what Stephenson said in his talk. I wrote the story for the Washington Post, and tried to get as much of that flavor into it as I could.
I'm not asking you to buy the damned book. I'm just encouraging you to read it.
Especially you, since in the book Mike and I take on the overspending on defenses against "weapons of mass destruction" in general and describe many of the wrongheaded programs that pour money into military/police solutions that cannot work. We also compare that spending to the comparatively small amount of money being used to address the public health side of the equation, and try to explain why the public health spending will pay dividends in a generally healthier nation.
Well, as soon as you develop a plan to change the global attitudes of the United States, I'll be ready to hear them. Voting "against imperialist Washington, DC" sounds good if you say it fast, but where's the plan of action?
Building the public health infrastructure is something we can do now, and if done right can PREVENT casualties with quick vaccinations and treatment as soon as a disease outbreak is identified.
Let's draw a parallel to computer system defense. Those who maintain big systems know that they will be targets simply because they are big. They do what they can to defend themselves, but they also invest heavily in quick response so that if a problem gets past those initial defenses (which can happen to anybody, no matter how well prepared) the recovery is quick and the damage is minimized.
You can argue that if Bill Gates changed the entire business plan of Microsoft, he would not be such a target for attacks like the recent intrusion into the Msft networks, but let's face it: 1) What kind of changes to you reasonably expect?; 2) What kind of changes would satisfy those who already hate msft? 3) What makes anyone think that those who hate msft are a cohesive group with an easily defined set of conditions that, once met, would elicit an end to crack attempts?
I might have stretched the analogy to the breaking point there, but I feel pretty strongly that in this world, you do what you CAN do, and you do what can produce RESULTS. Maybe it's my background--I grew up in Texas, a very conservative state, and those of us who believed in opportunities for the disadvantaged, for civil liberties, for sound environmental policy and the like learned that half a loaf is better than none. The issues at stake were too important for any less practical approach.
I would be willing to bet that the good lecture in Minneapolis was delivered by Michael T. Osterholm, who was chief epidemiologist for the state health department and, um, coauthor of a book about bioterrorism entitled Living Terrors.
The book, by the way, includes a scenario with an attack inside a major shopping mall.
Cobweb is an outstanding novel. The agent isn't anthrax, however, but botulism toxin. But it's incredibly suspenseful--really first-rate.
Impregnating the Indians' blankets with smallpox was a vicious and unthinkable act, but I believe the incident you're talking about was caused by the British: in 1763, smallpox-laden blankets were used by the English at Fort Pitt and given to the Indians loyal to the French.
As horrible an act as that was, it wasn't the first use of biological warfare. Hannibal ordered earthen pots to be filled with "serpents of every kind" and then hurled onto the decks of Pergamum ships, and in 1346 the Tartar army attacked Caffa by catapulting the corpses of plague victims over the city walls, starting an epidemic of plague.
--j
The United States signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972.
The book does not try to quantify the likelihood of attack; I think anybody who said he could do that would either be lying or nuts. Bill Clinton has called an attack "highly likely"--but of course, he's a politician, not an expert. D.A. Henderson, one of the world's best-respected experts on biological terrorism and smallpox (he led the World Health Organization campaign that eradicated the disease) says that biological terrorism "is more likely than ever before and more threatening than either explosives or chemicals."
/whether/ a lone terrorist or terrorist group will use infectious disease agents to kill unsuspecting citizen; I'm convinced it's really just a question of when and where."
In the introduction to the book, Mike says, "I do not believe it is a question of
The probablilities play out this way: The likelihood that an attack will occur today, in your town, are extremely low. The probability that it will happpen SOMEWHERE is much higher, with the risk to people around the country tied to such factors as whether or not the agent used is highly contagious.
That's why our recommendations aren't about buying space suits for every American, or creating enormous military/police bureaucracies and local squads. Instead, our recommendations go to beefing up the infrastructure of public health and medical care so that wherever it happens, the disaster can be mitigated. That would be money well spent, even if we never get hit with a bad bug. (We do call for ONE initiative that is more narrow, though: rebuilding our stockpile of smallpox vaccine so that we can roll it out quickly if it's needed.)
j
I co-wrote Living Terrors, and want to thank Hemos for this stunningly positive review. It's great to see the work on the book rewarded!
lemme respond to a few of the comments:
* "you'd have to be crazy to deploy bioweapons."
That's true for state-sponsored terrorism, and for terrorists of the old IRA school, who felt a strong tie to their people and didn't want to lose support through gruesome acts. But with the rise of a new kind of terrorist like the "lone wolf" who seeks to destabilize socieities no matter the cost, the risk of somebody releasing an agent as virulent as smallpox has grown.
* "The also are generally used by BIG govt. to take away your freedom."
It's true that the prospect of bioterrorism has been used by some people to call for restrictions on academic freedom and civil liberties. If you read Living Terrors, however, you'll find that we focus instead on the kind of recommendations that preserve civil liberties while actually making a difference--chiefly, upgrading the public health system to be able to respond quickly to a bioterrorist attack. That kind of spending is needed anyway for responding to foodborne disease outbreaks and run-of-the-mill epidemics, so it's just sound public policy.
* "If Anthrax is so deadly, how come there weren't Bubonic type plagues of it when it was prevalent? It may be deadly, but it's not so easy to get. The odds of a person inhaling enough spores to get infected are pretty slim. "
Anthrax is deadly, but not contagious. Inhaling very few spores can begin the process of infection, but it stops there. An anthrax attack would be very different from a smallpox attack, clearly. Even so, the Office of Technology Assessment estimated that an airborne release of about 100 kg of anthrax spores over Washington, D.C. could kill between one and three million people. I guess you could say that they were scaremongering, too, but I wouldn't agree with you.
But terrorists don't need to kill EVERYBODY; they are happy to kill, say, thousands, and bring about a massive panic in the process. As Lord Kano wrote in this discussion, "even a moronic terrorist is going to be able to do a lot of damage to the general population with minimal effort." The chemical attack in the Tokyo subways was a very sloppy job: the Sarin was poorly made, and the deliver method (putting the chemical in plastic bags and breaking them open with umbrella tips) was laughably inefficient. But people died, thousands were affected, and a national panic ensued. You don't have to be especially good at this stuff to have an effect.
As for Ebola, you're partly right--it's not a very good bioterror agent. Though it's moderately contagious, it has proved difficult to cultivate and "weaponize" (at least that's what Soviet scientists found), and it can be pretty well controlled with Western sanitation methods.
* "To date no one has launched a bio warfare attack on the US, (At least that worked)."
It's true that no government has launched a bio warfare attack against the US, but biological terrorism has been attempted by groups not affiliated with the government. Members of the Rajneeshee cult infected a salad bar with salmonella in 1984, for example, attempting to affect the outcome of a local election.
--John
I'm a reporter for the Washington Post, and the legal rules behind fair use are pretty simple: chunks of what people put out there are usable. Online postings are even harder to protect: published to a potential audience of millions, many journalists consider them fair game. I've never been comfortable with the "rip and run" strategy, though, so I always email people whose stuff I want to use, and invite them to contact me about using a line or two from a post.I don't give up my legal right to quote from the post, but I do ask if they want to be anonymously quoted or have their real names used, and also invite them to call and talk about the posts. I often get better stuff from that interview than from the original post. If it's more like a conversation than exploitation, you tend to get better stories. At least, in my experience.
Mass scribbles raise an interesting question about whether the poster has an obligation to the community to preserve his part of the ongoing discussion. In fact, that topic has already arisen--as soon as Rutt's scribbles became known, people started asking the question. I don't have an answer, but I was sorry to see him--or anyone--scribble.
Hi--it's John Schwartz, the Washington Post reporter who wrote the story, delurking. Just wanted to say that some of the people commenting on the story don't seem to have read it. "Rabid?" Me? My story? Please take a look: this isn't "gotcha!" journalism. Instead, it's an attempt to show somebody who is afraid that the gotcha squad may come after him some day, and taking action. The story raises a lot of the questions that are being discussed here at slashdot--should people post anonymously? Shouldn't they understand that posting in online discussions is more like publication than conversation? Most important, if society could become more accustomed to the notion that people say strong things in unguarded moments, could that somehow lead to a little more honesty and a little less hypocricy? I can't speak for Jim Rutt, but I can tell you that he participated in the story because he thought the issues are important, and because he'd been thinking about them himself. With some reservations, since the stuff I was going to quote could get him into trouble, he talked to me. The story is better because of it.