Big Brother

“anyone else have a problem with this new Philosophy of Govt. and Industry?”

“What new Philosophy ?

Please explain”

“SHHHHHH! Be quiet, will you!!”

“"madam garbanzo"

run swiftly and tell not a soul!”

“~..~
-\/-”

“Do you mean Republicans going to bed with big Industries and destroying the environment?”

“You got it Reptiles

I was waiting for something intelligent.

What he said.”

“you were waiting for something intelligent? on THIS site???

you big dummy!”

“oh well....there is a light on in the adaic”

“real long wait..LOL”

“Now that is the worst spelled word I have ever seen here at TT!!! I kept looking at it, and looking.
Tea, you are off the hook.”

“As to quote the Talking Heads
"it's the same as it ever was"

I have my 2001 Greenpeace Calander up in my office at work. I take a bunch of crap for it every day. I guess most civil engineers and Greenpeace don't share the same ideals.”

“The only thing new is the parties in the bed. Demos and their special interest out, republicans and their special interests in. If you are displease it is because you identify better with the Demos special interest supporters more. I don?t identify much with people taking my freedom away so I am happy. BUT when they start to destroy the environment I will be looking to kick some politico backside. It has not happened yet and as with Reagan I don?t think it will. Don?t get you shorts in wad over something that has not happened. Of course I suspect your definition of ?destroying the environment? is different from mine. (Like the definition of ?is?.)”

“"Taking My freedom away"...???
You poor deer!
Are you corresponding from prison?”

“Mtn gal,
My shorts aren't in a wad, one because I'm not wearing any, and two, refer to the Talking Heads quote. I agree with you totally. The only way to prevent the humans from destroying the environmentis to get rid of the humans.”

“IT'S THE END TIIIIIIMES!
(As I scurry about lookin' busy).”

“Reptile, I thought we did get rid of humans back on Nov. 7 when everyone became either a sheep, snake, rat or jackass.

Hey, if we put a "dot" in front of those we can sell them as domain names.

BTW, I like my big brother; he was mostly nice to me growing up.”

“Don't worry. Bushie is already starting by postponing Clinton's no-roads initiative for two months while he trys to figure out a way to clear-cut all that wood for his logging buddies!”

“My big brother was MEAN! He hung me on a hook by my overall straps for over an hour once while babysitting. Talk about yer wedgies!”

“Everyone should listen to Rage Against the Machine! NOW!!!!”

“I told you I wouldn't win the spelling bee.....”

“You mean "Rage Against the Machine with Which We Have a Big Recording Contract"? Or a different one?

I bought my wife a Che Guevera t-shirt as her present from a SF-Bay area biz trip. She wore it here in Northern Wisconsin and some kid thought it was Jim Morrison.”

“My Mommy told me that Che was a bad man. She never said anything about Jim Morrison.”

“Gojo; Jesus is coming(everyone look busy).

I'm a Repubican Party Reptile myself. To paraphrase PJ O'Rourke, I believe in drugs, booze and military deterance.”

“Yes Ccrow but only for me, everyone else needs to be good little conservatives”

“

Machines will make criminal of every driver

By GARY O'SHEA
and NIC CECIL,
Political Editor The Sun

DRIVERS were reeling last night at Government plans to put a computerised spy in EVERY car.

The hi-tech gadgets will record each time a motorist DRIFTS over a speed limit, WANDERS into a bus lane or even STOPS on a yellow line.

And it means the Government will hit Britain’s hard-pressed motorists with even more fines — and bring extra millions flooding into the Treasury.

The proposed scheme is guaranteed to cause outrage among Britain’s 38million drivers.

Last night Tory Shadow Trade Secretary Tim Yeo said the implications of the plan were nightmarish — adding: “It risks turning every motorist, however safe a driver, into a criminal. It is far too draconian.”

The Big Brother-style system, called Electronic Vehicle Identification, is outlined in an 85-page dossier. It was drawn up by the Association of Chief Police Officers on the orders of Transport Secretary Alistair Darling.

The scheme would force car makers to fit the microchip in all new vehicles. Older cars would have them added during an MOT.

Sensors installed at the side of every road will then pick up signals from the chip, pinpointing the car’s exact position.

Each sensor would be programmed with the road’s speed, parking and general driving restrictions — and will record each car that breaks them.

The Government claims the microchip will allow them to make roads safer and cut crime.

Car registration and MOT details would be carried on every chip, making stolen or uninsured vehicles simpler to trace.

And police reckon terror suspects and criminals could also be targeted more effectively.

But the AA’s Bert Morris warned: “There could be a hidden agenda at work here.

“You can expect the Government to trumpet the benefits of this and downplay the downside.

“But law-abiding public could be hit with serious fines, while real criminals like car thieves find a way of avoiding detection.

“Everybody wants stolen and uninsured cars tracked, but this technology could also lead to an invasion of privacy.

“We have to ask ourselves if the gain is worth the pain.”

Civil rights organisations are also deeply concerned.

A spokesman for the group Liberty said: “This sets a very dangerous precedent.

“The entire driving population is going to be turned into criminal suspects.

“It’s disturbing to think the Government would be able to track people’s movements around the clock.”

The spokesman added: “This is going to be a back door method of raising cash for Government coffers through fines.”

If the plan is approved by the Government it could become law by 2007.

And even if they decide to drop the idea, talks are already under way in Brussels that could see a similar system imposed on us by the EU.

The Department of Transport said the technical, financial and civil liberty issues surrounding the scheme were being examined.

A spokeswoman added: “We are looking at the feasibility of this at the moment.”

The Government plan will be seen as the latest offensive in an all-out war on British motorists.

There are more than 4,500 speed cameras on our roads. They nail a million drivers annually, clocking up fines of more than £66million.

London’s hated congestion charge is expected to rake in a further £65million in its first 12 months. The charge is expected to be extended to other cities and towns in the near future.

The Government also plans to hit drivers with a £35 surcharge on speeding and parking fines.

The extra penalty has been proposed by Home Secretary David Blunkett to raise millions for victims of crime. The EVI chip feasibility study was written by Superintendent Jim Hammond, who is head of Sussex traffic police.

He admits in the document that the proposals will spark “Big Brother concerns.”

Previously, Supt Hammond has worked to develop trial drug tests for motorists. He also led a huge speeding crackdown in his patch.

Mr Yeo added: “This would be a spy harassing every driver. It’s time the Government laid off motorists.””

“US govt buys world's biggest RAM disk
2.5TB in solid state memory - but what's it for?

The US government has just bought the world's biggest ever solid state disk from Texas Memory Systems.


The 2.5TB system is "the largest SSD installation in the world by far, without question", the executive VP for TMS, Woody Hutsell, told Techworld. The previous biggest one was under 500GB, he told us. At 2.5TB, it is roughly 10,000 times the size of the RAM in your PC.


The list price of the system, which is made up from 40 RamSan 320 units, reviewed here, is $4.7million, although the US government received a discount. It was installed by TMS' OEM Dynamic Solutions International.


So where is it and what's it to be used for? Well, the installation site is in Washington DC and the application involves hosting metadata for large file systems, several databases including Oracle and the acceleration of other storage-based applications by holding, for example, journal files in the SSD.


What that means in simple English is that the US government has just bought the world's biggest RAM drive in order to speed up cross-checking across several vast databases. The way databases work, a query will tend to scan an entire table if it thinks that anything more than a small percentage of the table's contents are relevant.


However, when you are talking about vast databases, that process requires a huge amount of memory to store all the details. Unless you can store all that information temporarily (say in RAM), the query has to read from disks and that is a far, far slower process. The problem is compounded hugely when you are running a query across multiple databases. So, if you want to get at the information as fast as possible you need a monster RAM memory to temporarily store the details while it is sifting through.


We do know that several of the servers using the SSD storage are running Solaris and that altogether the site has about 100TB of storage, but the specific government department and applications involved have not been revealed.


However, not that many departments could possibly want to run such vast queries regularly. It would also be extremely difficult to justify a $4.7 million investment unless that work was seen as vital and speed was a main consideration in that work. It is also peculiar that such a large purchase could be approved at a time of tightening belts.


Now, we're not saying that the Department of Homeland Security is behind the purchase. Or that it is using the technology to search the various databases of people that it, the government, the NSA and the Pentagon possess. But all of them are based in Washington DC and there are of course some issues about Islamic terrorists already living in the States.


A RamSan 320 unit holds up to 64GB of RAM in a 3U rack unit. The US government order is housed in three full height rack units. There are over 320 2Gbit/s Fibre Channel ports and the aggregate I/O rate is 36Gbit/s. That is some serious hardware.


Hutsell tells us that "the customer has been happy so far". He expects there may be additional purchasing later this year.

www.techworld.com”

“The government could save a lot on the computer budget if they went back to the slide rule.”

“Great show. It's about the only Reality TV show I care anything about watching. I wonder what kind of freaks they will have this year.
It's almost the only thing about Summer worth looking foward to.”

“FBI adds to wiretap wish list

A far-reaching proposal from the FBI, made public Friday, would require all broadband Internet providers, including cable modem and DSL companies, to rewire their networks to support easy wiretapping by police.

The FBI's request to the Federal Communications Commission aims to give police ready access to any form of Internet-based communications. If approved as drafted, the proposal could dramatically expand the scope of the agency's wiretap powers, raise costs for cable broadband companies and complicate Internet product development.

Legal experts said the 85-page filing includes language that could be interpreted as forcing companies to build back doors into everything from instant messaging and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) programs to Microsoft's Xbox Live game service. The introduction of new services that did not support a back door for police would be outlawed, and companies would be given 15 months to make sure that existing services comply.

"The importance and the urgency of this task cannot be overstated," says the proposal, which is also backed by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration. "The ability of federal, state and local law enforcement to carry out critical electronic surveillance is being compromised today."

Because the eavesdropping scheme has the support of the Bush administration, the FCC is expected to take it very seriously. Last month, FCC Chairman Michael Powell stressed that "law enforcement access to IP-enabled communications is essential" and that police must have "access to communications infrastructure they need to protect our nation."

The request from federal police comes almost a year after representatives from the FBI's Electronic Surveillance Technology Section approached the FCC and asked that broadband providers be required to provide more efficient, standardized surveillance facilities. Such new rules were necessary, the FBI argued, because terrorists could otherwise frustrate legitimate wiretaps by placing phone calls over the Internet.

"It is a very big deal and will be very costly for the Internet and the deployment of new technologies," said Stewart Baker, who represents Internet providers as a partner at law firm Steptoe & Johnson. "Law enforcement is very serious about it. There is a lot of emotion behind this. They have stories that they're very convinced about in which they have not achieved access to communications and in which wiretaps have failed."

continued...”

“PROSSER, Washington (AP) -- Secret Service agents questioned a high school student about anti-war drawings he did for an art class, one of which depicted President Bush's head on a stick.

Another pencil-and-ink drawing portrayed Bush as a devil launching a missile, with a caption reading "End the war -- on terrorism."

The 15-year-old boy's art teacher at Prosser High School turned the drawings over to school administrators, who notified police, who called the Secret Service.

Secret Service agents interviewed the boy last Friday. The student, who was not arrested, has not been identified.

The artwork was apparently part of an assignment to keep a notebook of drawings, according to Kevin Cravens, a friend of the boy's family.

The drawing that drew the most notice showed a man in what appeared to be Middle Eastern-style clothing, holding a rifle. He was also holding a stick with an oversize head of the president on it.

The student said the head was enlarged because it was intended to be an effigy, Cravens said. The caption called for an end to the war in Iraq.

A message left by The Associated Press with an after-hours duty officer with the Secret Service in Washington, D.C., was not immediately returned on Monday.

"If this 15-year-old kid in Prosser is perceived as a threat to the president, then we are living in '1984'," Cravens said.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/West/04/27/artwork.investigated.ap/index.html”

“USA, please start new threads using the fuego category to free the board from clutter as a courtesy to others here who actually backpack. Thank you.”

“Far be it from me to defend some of USA's looney ideas, but at least he is using pre-existing threads, instead of starting new ones 2-3 times a day like some of the others around here do.”

“Artex, why don't you take a long hike,




and don't come back.”

“I understand that rationale. But I have a feeling the majority of us leave the fuego category unchecked. At least for me, it's annoying to see this political bullcrap still surfacing from old threads before the category existed. It's been happening more and more lately.”

“Uh oh. USA has a soggy diaper.”

“Artex, you're just natural whiner. Complain if I start a new thread, complain if don't. I will continue using old theads just to annoy the hell out of you, whiny boy.”

“Seems to me someone won't use the proper icon because they crave attention.”

“Let's see...who else has a pattern of dragging up old political threads to avoid using the new icon...
The USA troll sure is acting a lot like violin.”

“Uh oh! Somebody's diaper just went from soggy to saggy.”

“I though the use of the 'swelled head' was a nice touch, though... didn't you?

LOL”

“"Alaska, please start new threads using the Fuego topic so you don't clutter the board for people who backpack. Thank you."
Artex

USA, please start new threads using the fuego category to free the board from clutter as a courtesy to others here who actually backpack. Thank you."
Artex

Artex, you're just natural whiner. Complain if I start a new thread, complain if don't. I will continue using old theads just to annoy the hell out of you, whiny boy."
USA

Hey USA, I don't see where Artex is "whiny" here. He is asking, quite politely, I might add, for you to use the fuego category for this kind of posting.

I would second Artex's opinion that many here leave fuego unchecked, as we prefer to discuss backpacking and kayaking and skiing and rock klimbing and biking and all other kinds of fun outdoor pursuits here.

I have been known to join in polictical/religious type threads on occasion, and even will enjoy some of the banter, if the conversation is engaged. Often times, though, most will just flame at people, not verify what they are saying, and basically just be a PITA. I find little desire to even read such posts, but on the few times I do, I'll check the fuego and uncheck everything else for a short while. Actually have done it once, doubt I'll do it again. Thank-you for this feature, Matt.

Without sounding whiny, to USA, Alaska, et all: Please start new polictical/religious/rant threads using the Fuego topic so you don't clutter the board for people who backpack. Thank you."”

“what an anal bead.”

“Democrats' Data Mining Stirs an Intraparty Battle
With Private Effort on Voter Information, Ickes and Soros Challenge Dean and DNC

By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 8, 2006; A01



A group of well-connected Democrats led by a former top aide to Bill Clinton is raising millions of dollars to start a private firm that plans to compile huge amounts of data on Americans to identify Democratic voters and blunt what has been a clear Republican lead in using technology for political advantage.

The effort by Harold Ickes, a deputy chief of staff in the Clinton White House and an adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), is prompting intense behind-the-scenes debate in Democratic circles. Officials at the Democratic National Committee think that creating a modern database is their job, and they say that a competing for-profit entity could divert energy and money that should instead be invested with the national party.

Ickes and others involved in the effort acknowledge that their activities are in part a vote of no confidence that the DNC under Chairman Howard Dean is ready to compete with Republicans on the technological front. "The Republicans have developed a cadre of people who appreciate databases and know how to use them, and we are way behind the march," said Ickes, whose political technology venture is being backed by financier George Soros.

"It's unclear what the DNC is doing. Is it going to be kept up to date?" Ickes asked, adding that out-of-date voter information is "worse than having no database at all."

Ickes's effort is drawing particular notice among Washington operatives who know about it because of speculation that he is acting to build a campaign resource for a possible 2008 presidential run by Hillary Clinton. She has long been concerned, advisers say, that Democrats and liberals lack the political infrastructure of Republicans and their conservative allies. Ickes said his new venture, Data Warehouse, will at first seek to sell its targeting information to politically active unions and liberal interest groups, rather than campaigns.

As it stands now, the DNC and Data Warehouse, created by Ickes and Democratic operative Laura Quinn, will separately try to build vast and detailed voter lists -- each effort requiring sophisticated expertise and costing well over $10 million.

"From an institutional standpoint, this is one of the most important things the DNC can and should do. Building this voter file is part of our job," Communications Director Karen Finney said. "We believe this is something we have to do at the DNC. Our job is to build the infrastructure of the party."

In the 2003-2004 election cycle, the DNC began building a national voter file, and it proved highly effective in raising money. Because of many technical problems, however, it was not useful to state and local organizations trying to get out the vote.

The pressure on Democrats to begin more aggressive "data mining" in the hunt for votes began after the 2002 midterm elections and intensified after the 2004 presidential contest, when the GOP harnessed data technology to powerful effect.

In 2002, for the first time in recent memory, Republicans ran better get-out-the-vote programs than Democrats. When well done, such drives typically raise a candidate's Election Day performance by two to four percentage points. Democrats have become increasingly fearful that the GOP is capitalizing on high-speed computers and the growing volume of data available from government files and consumer marketing firms -- as well as the party's own surveys -- to better target potential supporters.

The Republican database has allowed the party and its candidates to tailor messages to individual voters and households, using information about the kind of magazines they receive, whether they own guns, the churches they attend, their incomes, their charitable contributions and their voting histories.

This makes it possible to specifically address the issues of voters who, in the case of many GOP supporters, may oppose abortion, support gun rights or be angry about government use of eminent domain to take private property. A personalized pitch can be made during door-knocking, through direct mail and e-mail, and via phone banks.

This approach is designed to complement the broad-brush approach of television and radio advertising, which by its nature must be addressed to large, and often diverse, audiences.

Traditional get-out-the-vote efforts operated crudely, such as by canvassing neighborhoods in which at least 65 percent of residents voted for a particular party. It was often deemed too inefficient to focus on neighborhoods where the partisan tilt was less decisive, and it ran the risk of doing more to turn out the opposition's vote.

The advantage of data-based targeting is that political field operatives can home in on precisely the voters they wish to reach -- the antiabortion parishioners of a traditionally Democratic African American church congregation, for instance.

Consultants working for the Republican National Committee developed strategies to design messages targeting individual voters' "anger points" in the belief that grievance is one of the strongest motivations to get people to turn out on Election Day.

Under the direction of Bush adviser Karl Rove, the RNC and state parties repeatedly tested the voter file and different ways to contact voters to determine which were most effective at boosting turnout.

"They were smart. They came into our neighborhoods. They came into Democratic areas with very specific targeted messages to take Democratic voters away from us," then-DNC Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe said after the 2004 contest. "They were much more sophisticated in their message delivery."

Ickes has quietly raised an estimated $7.5 million in start-up money for Data Warehouse. A prospectus said the company will need at least $11.5 million in initial capital.

In addition to Soros's support, Ickes has the financial backing of some of the wealthy participants in a new fundraising group called the Democracy Alliance. He and Quinn, who will be chief executive of Data Warehouse, have hired technology specialists from internet retailer Amazon.com and a Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer project.

Quinn had worked on the voter file program under McAuliffe, but Dean brought in his own people after he took over in early 2005.

These included former Dean presidential campaign workers who formed a company called Blue State Digital, now under contract with the DNC.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/07/AR2006030701860_pf.html”

“Lets see there was an administration that got burned for having like 700 FBI files on opposition party members....I remember their director of security was a blithering idiot and no one could remember hiring him....”

“a friend of mine walked into his boss's office to put something in her inbox - she had his email inbox open - she minimized it when she noticed him

you know it's happening - but must be freaky to witness it”

“The boss was reading the employee's e mail?”

“That's SOP, in most big biz, Nigal.”

“yes”

“The computers, network, and email are owned by the company. All is subject to monitoring. They tell you this.
last edited: 3/14/06 1:13:55 PM”