ha ha.. look he's written a CMS with, well, its probably best if I just let him say it..
"META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="eNetwizard Matrix Server v0.0.2"
containing..
"
Cutting Edge Technology
*
God is built right into the system. Also known as the $Core class. Never before has a content management system been designed around the concept of a universal point of contact for all requests. This server knows all, and delivers all.
*
The Universe is built right into the system. Also known as the matrix folder. Never before has a content management system been designed to render and manage the content of an unlimited number of domains and websites for an unlimited number of businesses and organizations. Expect nothing less from our server.
"
2006-12-15
2006-11-09
Known Unknowns
Rummy.. is taking on Bush (and Bush senior over the war).
He's saying. I'm sure that the people are behind me. I know they are absolutely behind us, we can "stay" the course for at least another year or three.
Bush (sorry, I mean Condi) is like "how can you honestly believe that? your self delusions are getting the better of you" and Rummys like.. "I'll prove it to you". You watch.. call off the whole voting thing for the mid-terms, you'll see..
and of course such a plan has a certain beautiful attraction to it... so, many in the Junta would've been willing to consider it.
Then.. they basically lose the election, and Bush is even genuinely suprised that they took "such a thumpin" - he really believed in Rummy.. and he also really wanted to keep believing in never doing the unthinkable and casting *anybody* out of the circle (Bush doesn't gotta do a lot, 'xcept believe in some few basic precepts).
But with this .. well you know the rest.
;-)
Ha ha> OK I'm insane I admit
He's saying. I'm sure that the people are behind me. I know they are absolutely behind us, we can "stay" the course for at least another year or three.
Bush (sorry, I mean Condi) is like "how can you honestly believe that? your self delusions are getting the better of you" and Rummys like.. "I'll prove it to you". You watch.. call off the whole voting thing for the mid-terms, you'll see..
and of course such a plan has a certain beautiful attraction to it... so, many in the Junta would've been willing to consider it.
Then.. they basically lose the election, and Bush is even genuinely suprised that they took "such a thumpin" - he really believed in Rummy.. and he also really wanted to keep believing in never doing the unthinkable and casting *anybody* out of the circle (Bush doesn't gotta do a lot, 'xcept believe in some few basic precepts).
But with this .. well you know the rest.
;-)
Ha ha> OK I'm insane I admit
2006-10-18
High tech or lo fi future?
A friend points to aadvarks recent commentary about the future of computing and asks "So any opinions on whether we will see new technology based computers soon, or not for quite some time?"
This set off the following scree. Bit incoherent but noone reads this blog anyway so whats the harm..
Really fascinating stuff. I'm sure its a good 10 years out before we even start to see this kind of thing and at first it won't be much, but over time this stuff could become really significant - given time.
Way I look at it, there is a bit of a race here between the high-tech and lo-fi solutions to our worlds problems. Within the time frame we're talking about here (decades) I'm pretty sure that people/corporations/governments will eventually start to focus money and resources on the kind of things we need to do to avoid the myriad of "uncomfortable truth" type problems (and many others) that this world is really facing. (That is, apart from all those descent-into-fascism problems we are bringing on ourselves)
**WOAH*** wild free-ranging-pointless-speculation alert. Looks like I'm getting a bit out of control here.. you may want to stop reading
Anyway, its always seemed to me with these 'new technology' things some of them (just one of them) are just so fabulous that maybe they really could provide true solutions to some of this worlds problems: fusion reactors for energy that helps the environment; Quantum computers to, I dunno, design or control fusion reactors that actually work; or to predict the weather or to design nano-bots that can make a new generation effectively immortal (like trees) thereby changing everybodies focus to a much more long term view etc etc.
It all seems like outrageous science fiction and of course on a shorter time frame it is, but on a lnoger time frame, well I think it *could*, potentially all become real. However, if the switch in focus comes too early - before these things have been fully developed - then it will seem, at first, like its "just not enough of a priority right now" and then, as the size of the overall pie shrinks and shrinks further, the high tech solution(s) recede further and further into the realm of the outraegeously expensive and impossible to contemplate. Kind of like how we once went to the moon...
So.. a bit of a race I guess.
My money is on Quantum computing being pretty significant in the next twenty years (at least) anyway. That is some seriously cool stuff.
The most exciting thing about it, for me, is the idea as put forth by Penrose (for example) in "The Emporer's New Mind" that digital computers are *fundamentally* incapable of being 'intelligent' in the conscious, dinner-party-conversation way that we really want. He believes that there must be some sort of mechanism to this effect (or maybe, I should say 'affect') that occurs in the wetware of our mind but not in digital computers or any kind of Turing computing device (ie something that can compute only the mathematically 'computable'). You see, within any 'computable' system of truth, there are always mathematical theorems - Godel theorems - that are 'provable' in the sense that an argument can be constructed that eventually makes it 'absolutely self evident' to an intelligent being that this "must be so" even though, at the same time, by any classic definition of 'computability' (ie any set of assumptions that build on each other to create theorem after theorem) they are possible to prove computably, ie by derivation from the assumptions. So, in this sense he shows that there are 'truths' out there that we are able to to perceive but that are not computable. (Or something like that). And, since the human mind, evidently is capable of perceiving these truths, it means that the human mind must not be a computer (or a computable device). And, therefore, by inference, true intelligence, can never be simulated on a computer, no matter how powerful.
So.. what does that mean to me you ask? Well, just maybe one of these new fangled technologies won't just be tremendously powerful and fast, it will be qualitatively different... and maybe, it will bridge this gap into the truly intelligent device. And, if that is so then I'm sure 'they' can help us (ie human civilization) extend our upward growth curve and continue to produce ever younger boy bands for a few more centuries (that is, until we all get enslaved by the AI "computers", which, by that time will seem only fair given all the terrible music we will've subjected them to in the meantime) ;)
This set off the following scree. Bit incoherent but noone reads this blog anyway so whats the harm..
Really fascinating stuff. I'm sure its a good 10 years out before we even start to see this kind of thing and at first it won't be much, but over time this stuff could become really significant - given time.
Way I look at it, there is a bit of a race here between the high-tech and lo-fi solutions to our worlds problems. Within the time frame we're talking about here (decades) I'm pretty sure that people/corporations/governments will eventually start to focus money and resources on the kind of things we need to do to avoid the myriad of "uncomfortable truth" type problems (and many others) that this world is really facing. (That is, apart from all those descent-into-fascism problems we are bringing on ourselves)
**WOAH*** wild free-ranging-pointless-speculation alert. Looks like I'm getting a bit out of control here.. you may want to stop reading
Anyway, its always seemed to me with these 'new technology' things some of them (just one of them) are just so fabulous that maybe they really could provide true solutions to some of this worlds problems: fusion reactors for energy that helps the environment; Quantum computers to, I dunno, design or control fusion reactors that actually work; or to predict the weather or to design nano-bots that can make a new generation effectively immortal (like trees) thereby changing everybodies focus to a much more long term view etc etc.
It all seems like outrageous science fiction and of course on a shorter time frame it is, but on a lnoger time frame, well I think it *could*, potentially all become real. However, if the switch in focus comes too early - before these things have been fully developed - then it will seem, at first, like its "just not enough of a priority right now" and then, as the size of the overall pie shrinks and shrinks further, the high tech solution(s) recede further and further into the realm of the outraegeously expensive and impossible to contemplate. Kind of like how we once went to the moon...
So.. a bit of a race I guess.
My money is on Quantum computing being pretty significant in the next twenty years (at least) anyway. That is some seriously cool stuff.
The most exciting thing about it, for me, is the idea as put forth by Penrose (for example) in "The Emporer's New Mind" that digital computers are *fundamentally* incapable of being 'intelligent' in the conscious, dinner-party-conversation way that we really want. He believes that there must be some sort of mechanism to this effect (or maybe, I should say 'affect') that occurs in the wetware of our mind but not in digital computers or any kind of Turing computing device (ie something that can compute only the mathematically 'computable'). You see, within any 'computable' system of truth, there are always mathematical theorems - Godel theorems - that are 'provable' in the sense that an argument can be constructed that eventually makes it 'absolutely self evident' to an intelligent being that this "must be so" even though, at the same time, by any classic definition of 'computability' (ie any set of assumptions that build on each other to create theorem after theorem) they are possible to prove computably, ie by derivation from the assumptions. So, in this sense he shows that there are 'truths' out there that we are able to to perceive but that are not computable. (Or something like that). And, since the human mind, evidently is capable of perceiving these truths, it means that the human mind must not be a computer (or a computable device). And, therefore, by inference, true intelligence, can never be simulated on a computer, no matter how powerful.
So.. what does that mean to me you ask? Well, just maybe one of these new fangled technologies won't just be tremendously powerful and fast, it will be qualitatively different... and maybe, it will bridge this gap into the truly intelligent device. And, if that is so then I'm sure 'they' can help us (ie human civilization) extend our upward growth curve and continue to produce ever younger boy bands for a few more centuries (that is, until we all get enslaved by the AI "computers", which, by that time will seem only fair given all the terrible music we will've subjected them to in the meantime) ;)
2006-10-03
Foley Gate - All I wanna know is who pulled the IM transcripts?
The timing for this is certainly suspicious. Just when the administration was starting to get into serious trouble over Habeus Corpus, Torture, and more and more 911 revelations.. Foley Gate comes along with all number of salacious and distracting details. Classic Rovian tactics.
All I wanna know is - where did the IM's come from? Who pulled them in the first place. Was it.
1. At the sending end (ie someone access to Foley's computer)
2. At the receiving end (ie someone access with access to the Page's computer)
3. In between.. (ie someone in a position to pull NSA/Echelon/Carnivore transcripts).
Call me paranoid but I'm picking option 3.. and I think it was likely someone working for someone in the Adminstration.
---
Update: Apparently the page forwarded that e-mail to a congressional staffer saying it was "sick sick sick sick sick." That doesn't answer where the IM's came from but it suggests it was option 2.
All I wanna know is - where did the IM's come from? Who pulled them in the first place. Was it.
1. At the sending end (ie someone access to Foley's computer)
2. At the receiving end (ie someone access with access to the Page's computer)
3. In between.. (ie someone in a position to pull NSA/Echelon/Carnivore transcripts).
Call me paranoid but I'm picking option 3.. and I think it was likely someone working for someone in the Adminstration.
---
Update: Apparently the page forwarded that e-mail to a congressional staffer saying it was "sick sick sick sick sick." That doesn't answer where the IM's came from but it suggests it was option 2.
2006-05-16
What in Sam Hill is he up to?
OK lets just start out by assuming that he's going to, probably, be lying. Now, now, I'll admit that doesn't sound very 'bi partisan' of me to say that - but at this point I think you'd have to be a fool not to be at least 'very' suspicious of the motives behind everything George W Bush and his crew do.
So.. lets just assume right off the bat that when he says that his new initiatives are focused on the issue of immigration, and on finding 'a rational middle ground' , then, they undoubtedly have very little to do with immigration and are bound to be both totally irrational and extreme.
With that in mind here's some of the things that 'jump out at me' about this - I'll put links and quotes in later.
1. Ending of something he calls "catch and release" - which I take to mean that he's planning on initiating a program of 'catch and keep indefinitely'.
2. The fact that he mentions that they have 'expanded their facilities' to allow them to end this terrible 'catch and release' thing.
3. The contracts which apparently were awarded by homeland security to KBR aka Halliburton to build huge new internship style camps . Basically big camps with barracks and huge fences and stuff. - To be honest this has been worrying me significantly for quite a while.
3. The fact that the visa waiver form I signed on the way into this country had a newish clause I didn't recognise - something about my waiving my right to appeal against the judgements of the Visa officer.. which lead at the time to a discussion of whether an immigrant had ever had right to a trial in such situations, but, obviously not anymore. I'm not worried about this for myself, especially. Its just an interesting fact to put with the others.
4. All this talk of high technology such unmanned aerial vehicles and biometric identification cards.
5. The fact that he is planning to do a call out of the National Guard, in order to somehow effect this new immigration program. What exactly are they going to be doing, again?
6. The fact that even his loyal Republican crew in the house and senate are balking at that last measure.
7. The idea that, with a 29% approval rating he decides that, now is the time to initiate major initiatives on a hotly contested subject.
Where is he going with this? Exactly.
So.. lets just assume right off the bat that when he says that his new initiatives are focused on the issue of immigration, and on finding 'a rational middle ground' , then, they undoubtedly have very little to do with immigration and are bound to be both totally irrational and extreme.
With that in mind here's some of the things that 'jump out at me' about this - I'll put links and quotes in later.
1. Ending of something he calls "catch and release" - which I take to mean that he's planning on initiating a program of 'catch and keep indefinitely'.
2. The fact that he mentions that they have 'expanded their facilities' to allow them to end this terrible 'catch and release' thing.
3. The contracts which apparently were awarded by homeland security to KBR aka Halliburton to build huge new internship style camps . Basically big camps with barracks and huge fences and stuff. - To be honest this has been worrying me significantly for quite a while.
3. The fact that the visa waiver form I signed on the way into this country had a newish clause I didn't recognise - something about my waiving my right to appeal against the judgements of the Visa officer.. which lead at the time to a discussion of whether an immigrant had ever had right to a trial in such situations, but, obviously not anymore. I'm not worried about this for myself, especially. Its just an interesting fact to put with the others.
4. All this talk of high technology such unmanned aerial vehicles and biometric identification cards.
5. The fact that he is planning to do a call out of the National Guard, in order to somehow effect this new immigration program. What exactly are they going to be doing, again?
6. The fact that even his loyal Republican crew in the house and senate are balking at that last measure.
7. The idea that, with a 29% approval rating he decides that, now is the time to initiate major initiatives on a hotly contested subject.
Where is he going with this? Exactly.
2006-04-09
Are we paranoid enough yet?
On 26 Jan 2006 I wrote:
Particularly scary is that the Patriot act gives the feds the right to basically march up to every ISP in the country and install special 'black boxes' [doing] God only knows what and the ISP's cannot even mention this fact publically let alone not comply...
---
Now we have confirmation from a whistleblower that this is exactly what they've been doing.
"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."
.. he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego."While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400...
"
And what can we find out about the Narus 6400? Well the google cache appeared busted on the subject but the preview gives us this one sentence..
Fully configured, the Model 6400 captures application-layer usage details via NARUS Semantic Traffic Analysis (STA) on up to six full-duplex 100 BaseT
(Update: Dailykos has since published an artice All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400 which fills out a lot of the details).
In my opinion the key words here are "Semantic Traffic Analysis".
As I wrote previously:
Many people think ECHELON simply targets 'keywords'. However, based on patents filed by various government agencies you can assume it is *much* more sophisticated than that, for instance rudimentary 'language recognition' patents as well as 'topic classification' patents.
The topic classification patent is especially interesting, because, if they are able to create a map of all the types of people / types of conversations that people have, then they can more easily filter out the 'Jana's having a baby!' conversations and zero in on the 'lets organize a march' conversation of radicals and other undesirables - oh, yeah, and [those] "terrorists" and "drug dealers" - the only problem here is that to find the largest number of these in the most cost effective way all they would need to do is walk down the hall start arresting people..
The words semantic analysis are used somewhat differently in the patents I mention than in the technical specs for the Naurus 6400, but forgive me for assuming that the NSA has technology that is more advanced (by a small margin and in the same direction) than what is available to the general public.
--
I guess this casts the Google action in preventing DOJ into their data centers in a quite different light. As I said previously, this isn't about reading the query log - this was always about the right to install a room of 'black servers' right in the middle of the google data center. Google's actions in standing up to that are all the more laudable.
--
Just to be crystal clear on this; at this time what we now have is clear evidence of (sophisticated) *monitoring and analysis* of internet and phone traffic - something we pretty much knew for a long time.
Thats very scary (and illegal, in my opinion), but its certainly better than actual direct government censorship of content on the internet ('chilling effects' on free speech aside).
On the pessimistic side, however, direct (but covert) censorship is probably the next obvious step once you have the right hardware installed in the key data centers.
It may be that if you want to actually directly censor and block information all you need to do is control the choke points - meaning ISP's like AT&T - and not the search engines - like Google. However, it could equally be argued that the more sophisticated (and probably more practical) form of censorship is to directly control the search engine resultss. Certainly the Chinese found that this was a more effective (and subtle) form of censorship than outright blocks on entire search engines or particular websites.
My suspicion (OK, its a total guess) is that, in the States at least, the NSA and other parts of the state/non-state military-technological apparatus are probably experimenting with the censorship of certain specifc pieces of information even right now. A good place for them to start would be, for instance, specific information about themselves, their methods and what they plan to do next. (This has the added advantage of being a much easier thing to argue for legally).
Its fairly clear that direct censorship or control of political discourse on the internet is something that organisations such as the NSA (or the techno-military-industrial complex generally) wouldn't consider themselves able to do at this time. Despite all their technology and hardware, the number of bits to flip and the sheer volume of content to mechanically 'understand' and filter makes that effectively impossible.
It could be argued that have achieved a good measure of success in the filtering of the message of the mass media - and if you ask someone who's actually lived in the states for a few years and I'm sure you'll see what I mean - but its still too hard for anyone to control or manipulate the discourse of 'blogosphere' at this stage. However, we should be vigilant on this - as soon as they believe they can do this I'm sure that they will. Furthermore, if 'they' are smart they won't telegraph their abilities in this respect - the first indications may become crystal clear just at the moment that it becomes effectively impossible to organise resistance to it.
"The internet" may be the last truly free bastion of political free speech in the States at ths time.. and if that were to be closed down via a more sophisticated version of 'the chinese firewall" .. well God help us all.
Particularly scary is that the Patriot act gives the feds the right to basically march up to every ISP in the country and install special 'black boxes' [doing] God only knows what and the ISP's cannot even mention this fact publically let alone not comply...
---
Now we have confirmation from a whistleblower that this is exactly what they've been doing.
"I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room," Klein wrote. "The regular technician work force was not allowed in the room."
.. he learned from a co-worker that similar cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego."While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet (AT&T's internet service) circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal," Klein wrote.The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network to or from other domestic and international providers, according to Klein's statement.The secret room also included data-mining equipment called a Narus STA 6400...
"
And what can we find out about the Narus 6400? Well the google cache appeared busted on the subject but the preview gives us this one sentence..
Fully configured, the Model 6400 captures application-layer usage details via NARUS Semantic Traffic Analysis (STA) on up to six full-duplex 100 BaseT
(Update: Dailykos has since published an artice All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400 which fills out a lot of the details).
In my opinion the key words here are "Semantic Traffic Analysis".
As I wrote previously:
Many people think ECHELON simply targets 'keywords'. However, based on patents filed by various government agencies you can assume it is *much* more sophisticated than that, for instance rudimentary 'language recognition' patents as well as 'topic classification' patents.
The topic classification patent is especially interesting, because, if they are able to create a map of all the types of people / types of conversations that people have, then they can more easily filter out the 'Jana's having a baby!' conversations and zero in on the 'lets organize a march' conversation of radicals and other undesirables - oh, yeah, and [those] "terrorists" and "drug dealers" - the only problem here is that to find the largest number of these in the most cost effective way all they would need to do is walk down the hall start arresting people..
The words semantic analysis are used somewhat differently in the patents I mention than in the technical specs for the Naurus 6400, but forgive me for assuming that the NSA has technology that is more advanced (by a small margin and in the same direction) than what is available to the general public.
--
I guess this casts the Google action in preventing DOJ into their data centers in a quite different light. As I said previously, this isn't about reading the query log - this was always about the right to install a room of 'black servers' right in the middle of the google data center. Google's actions in standing up to that are all the more laudable.
--
Just to be crystal clear on this; at this time what we now have is clear evidence of (sophisticated) *monitoring and analysis* of internet and phone traffic - something we pretty much knew for a long time.
Thats very scary (and illegal, in my opinion), but its certainly better than actual direct government censorship of content on the internet ('chilling effects' on free speech aside).
On the pessimistic side, however, direct (but covert) censorship is probably the next obvious step once you have the right hardware installed in the key data centers.
It may be that if you want to actually directly censor and block information all you need to do is control the choke points - meaning ISP's like AT&T - and not the search engines - like Google. However, it could equally be argued that the more sophisticated (and probably more practical) form of censorship is to directly control the search engine resultss. Certainly the Chinese found that this was a more effective (and subtle) form of censorship than outright blocks on entire search engines or particular websites.
My suspicion (OK, its a total guess) is that, in the States at least, the NSA and other parts of the state/non-state military-technological apparatus are probably experimenting with the censorship of certain specifc pieces of information even right now. A good place for them to start would be, for instance, specific information about themselves, their methods and what they plan to do next. (This has the added advantage of being a much easier thing to argue for legally).
Its fairly clear that direct censorship or control of political discourse on the internet is something that organisations such as the NSA (or the techno-military-industrial complex generally) wouldn't consider themselves able to do at this time. Despite all their technology and hardware, the number of bits to flip and the sheer volume of content to mechanically 'understand' and filter makes that effectively impossible.
It could be argued that have achieved a good measure of success in the filtering of the message of the mass media - and if you ask someone who's actually lived in the states for a few years and I'm sure you'll see what I mean - but its still too hard for anyone to control or manipulate the discourse of 'blogosphere' at this stage. However, we should be vigilant on this - as soon as they believe they can do this I'm sure that they will. Furthermore, if 'they' are smart they won't telegraph their abilities in this respect - the first indications may become crystal clear just at the moment that it becomes effectively impossible to organise resistance to it.
"The internet" may be the last truly free bastion of political free speech in the States at ths time.. and if that were to be closed down via a more sophisticated version of 'the chinese firewall" .. well God help us all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)