Comment Re:Perhaps building a civilization would help... (Score 2) 651
That's because you're calling the White House switchboard. Try the Country Club next time and you'll probably catch him.
Comment Re:Like SAS etc (Score 3, Interesting) 240
A lot of these vendors are locked into their own technologies.
I had interviewed at Epic once (didn't feel like moving to Wisconsin... sorry) and realized that they used M for most of what they did... not much interconnectivity there.
Comment Re:Anarchy is all fun and games... (Score 1) 651
Syria is most recent historical example
The Civil War there has been ongoing for a little over three years. The American Revolutionary War took eight years to fully resolve itself. The Syrian Government only controls about 20% of the country if this map is any indication, so that would seem to dispel your notion that you can't effectively fight the police state.
The Syrian Government is doomed in the long term; it's basically a battle of attrition at this point and the cold mathematical reality is that al-Assad's followers have less males of military age than his opponents. Barring decisive intervention from the outside he is doomed; I leave it to the reader to decide if this is a good thing or not...
Comment Re:This device is not new or interesting (Score 3, Insightful) 651
This would be great for organized crime and drug cartels. People with a need for untraceable guns, that use them regularly, and that have money to make it happen
Such people generally use stolen firearms or (more rarely) legally purchased firearms via straw buyers (i.e., Here's $1,500, buy this $1,000 firearm for me and pocket the change)
Criminals don't need to build their own firearms when there are sufficient numbers of stolen ones in circulation.
Comment Re:the solution: (Score 4, Informative) 651
The Constitution allowed slavery, for instance, and no vote for women.
It did no such thing, it simply reserved such matters to the States, per the 10th Amendment. The 14th and 19th Amendments changed that of course. The 14th was actually intended by its drafters to be interpreted more broadly than it has been, in theory it should have immediately applied the Bill of Rights against the States (including the 2nd Amendment) but SCOTUS neutered it and it has instead taken the better part of a century and a half to get most of the Bill of Rights applied against the States.
Incidentally, the established process of amending the Constitution (Article V) is available for gun control proponents to take advantage of if they think they can actually win a debate on the merits of the issue. All you need to do is convince 2/3rd's of Congress and 3/4ths of the State Legislatures to sign off on a repeal or amendment of the 2nd Amendment. Best of luck with that.
Back To Faxes: Doctors Can't Exchange Digital Medical Records 240
nbauman writes: Doctors with one medical records system can't exchange information with systems made by other vendors, including those at their own hospitals, according to the New York Times. One ophthalmologist spent half a million dollars on a system, but still needs to send faxes to get the information where it needs to go. The largest vendor is Epic Systems, Madison, WI, which holds almost half the medical records in the U.S. A report from RAND described Epic as a "closed" platform that made it "challenging and costly" for hospitals to interconnect.
The situation is bad for patients and costly for medical works: if doctors can't exchange records, they'll face a 1% Medicare penalty, and UC Davis alone has a staff of 22 dedicated to communication. On top of that, Epic charges a fee to send data to some non-Epic systems. Congress has held hearings on the matter, and Epic has hired a lobbyist. Epic's founder, billionaire computer science major Judith Faulkner, said that Epic was one of the first to establish code and standards for secure interchange, which included user authentication provisions and a legally binding contract. She said the federal government, which gave $24 billion in incentive payments to doctors for computerization, should have done that. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology said that it was a "top priority" and just recently wrote a 10-year vision statement and agenda for it.
The situation is bad for patients and costly for medical works: if doctors can't exchange records, they'll face a 1% Medicare penalty, and UC Davis alone has a staff of 22 dedicated to communication. On top of that, Epic charges a fee to send data to some non-Epic systems. Congress has held hearings on the matter, and Epic has hired a lobbyist. Epic's founder, billionaire computer science major Judith Faulkner, said that Epic was one of the first to establish code and standards for secure interchange, which included user authentication provisions and a legally binding contract. She said the federal government, which gave $24 billion in incentive payments to doctors for computerization, should have done that. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology said that it was a "top priority" and just recently wrote a 10-year vision statement and agenda for it.
Submission + - Obama Administration argues for backdoors in personal electronics (washingtonpost.com)
mi writes:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on Tuesday that new forms of encryption capable of locking law enforcement officials out of popular electronic devices imperil investigations of kidnappers and sexual predators, putting children at increased risk.
Seriously. Would somebody, please, think of the children?!
Submission + - DARPA technology uncovers counterfeit microchips (networkworld.com)
coondoggie writes: The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said this week one of its contractors, working on one of the agency’s anti-counterfeit projects has developed and deployed what it calls an Advanced Scanning Optical Microscope that can scan integrated circuits by using an extremely narrow infrared laser beam, to probe microelectronic circuits at nanometer levels, revealing information about chip construction as well as the function of circuits at the transistor level.
Comment Re:Who drives $2,500 used sports cars? Teen boys (Score 1) 261
Good luck needed? My Toyota Celica was around $2000 and being that bit sportier, it looks better than 99% of cars out there.
Feed Techdirt: CIA Can't Let You Know How Much It Paid For A Single Amiga Computer In 1987 (google.com)
Steven Aftergood at the FAS (Federation of American Scientists) Secrecy Blog came across this interesting redaction of mundane information while perusing the "Studies in Intelligence" journals recently released by the CIA. In an article [pdf link] touting the purchase of a product that would forever change the world of the CIA's in-house video production department, the actual purchase price has been redacted.
If you can't read/see the picture, it says:
We bought our first Commodore Amiga in 1987, for less than [REDACTED] including software.Twenty-seven years later, this dollar amount still can only be speculated on. (Aftergood prices it out with Wikipedia's help.) It couldn't have been much, though. The preceding paragraph states:
We did not have a big budget, so we were tempted to buy the system with petty cash.Does the CIA actually believe some sort of irreparable rift in the National Security Complex might occur if this dollar amount from three decades ago (unadjusted for inflation) was made public? Probably not. Aftergood theorizes that it's a blanket exemption used to redact more sensitive dollar amounts and this innocent cost just became collateral damage during the rush to declassify several dozen documents in response to an FOIA lawsuit court order.
CIA seems to have adopted a declassification rule dictating that all of its expenditures, no matter how trivial, shall be withheld from disclosure, except in extraordinary cases (or the occasional mistake). The Agency might go on to argue that such a rule actually facilitates disclosure by expediting the declassification review process. Thats because instead of needing to pause to consider the potential ramifications of any individual spending disclosure, the Agency can proceed more quickly by simply withholding all such figures.So, there's the excuse for over-redaction, even if it isn't much of one. Aftergood points out that efforts have been made to scale back overbroad classification and redactions since 1997, but little if anything has come of those attempts -- part of the reason why so many FOIA requests end in lawsuits.
Also of note: the author's adoration of the new technology leads to the innocent Amiga being used for evil.
We are experimenting with photo enhancement and colorization of black-and-white photography. Future Executive Summaries will include "Turnerized" ground photos.While this CIA doc is good for a few laughs at the agency's overprotective tendencies, it must be noted that these documents stem from former CIA agent Jeffrey Scudder's FOIA request -- a request that ended his career and saw his house raided by the FBI, which seized every electronic device it came across. The CIA destroyed the life of a 19-year employee who had served the agency in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq in order to withhold things like a three-decade-old computer purchase.
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Hundreds of Police Agencies Distributing Spyware and Keylogger 72
realized sends this news from the EFF:
For years, local law enforcement agencies around the country have told parents that installing ComputerCOP software is the "first step" in protecting their children online. ... As official as it looks,ComputerCOP is actually just spyware, generally bought in bulk from a New York company that appears to do nothing but market this software to local government agencies. The way ComputerCOP works is neither safe nor secure. It isn't particularly effective either, except for generating positive PR for the law enforcement agencies distributing it.
As security software goes, we observed a product with a keystroke-capturing function, also called a "keylogger," that could place a family's personal information at extreme risk by transmitting what a user types over the Internet to third-party servers without encryption. EFF conducted a security review of ComputerCOP while also following the paper trail of public records to see how widely the software has spread. Based on ComputerCOP's own marketing information, we identified approximately 245 agencies in more than 35 states, plus the U.S. Marshals, that have used public funds (often the proceeds from property seized during criminal investigations) to purchase and distribute ComputerCOP. One sheriff's department even bought a copy for every family in its county.
As security software goes, we observed a product with a keystroke-capturing function, also called a "keylogger," that could place a family's personal information at extreme risk by transmitting what a user types over the Internet to third-party servers without encryption. EFF conducted a security review of ComputerCOP while also following the paper trail of public records to see how widely the software has spread. Based on ComputerCOP's own marketing information, we identified approximately 245 agencies in more than 35 states, plus the U.S. Marshals, that have used public funds (often the proceeds from property seized during criminal investigations) to purchase and distribute ComputerCOP. One sheriff's department even bought a copy for every family in its county.
Submission + - Boeing Told to Replace Cockpit Screens Affected by Wi-Fi
Rambo Tribble writes: The Federal Aviation Administration has ordered Boeing to replace Honeywell-built cockpit screens that could be affected by wi-fi transmissions. Additionally, the FAA has expressed concerns that other frequencies, such as used by air surveillance and weather radar, could disrupt the displays. The systems involved report airspeed, altitude, heading and pitch and roll to the crew, and the agency stated that a failure could cause a crash.
Meanwhile, the order is said to affect over 1,300 aircraft, and some airlines are baulking, since the problem has never been seen in operation, that the order presents "a high, and unnecessary, financial burden on operators".
Meanwhile, the order is said to affect over 1,300 aircraft, and some airlines are baulking, since the problem has never been seen in operation, that the order presents "a high, and unnecessary, financial burden on operators".
The $1,200 DIY Gunsmithing Machine 651
An anonymous reader writes: You may recall Cody Wilson as the man behind the world's first 3D-printed gun. He built a company behind the ideals of DIY gun-making, and now he's come back with another device: the "Ghost Gunner," a CNC mill designed to create the lower receiver of an AR-15 rifle. "That simple chunk of metal has become the epicenter of a gun control firestorm. A lower receiver is the body of the gun that connects its stock, barrel, magazine and other parts. As such, it's also the rifle's most regulated element. Mill your own lower receiver at home, however, and you can order the rest of the parts from online gun shops, creating a semi-automatic weapon with no serial number, obtained with no background check, no waiting period or other regulatory hurdles. Some gun control advocates call it a "ghost gun." Selling that untraceable gun body is illegal, but no law prevents you from making one." Wilson's goal is still to render government gun regulation useless, even as debate rages on banning this kind of manufacturing.
The $1,200 DIY Gunsmithing Machine 651
An anonymous reader writes: You may recall Cody Wilson as the man behind the world's first 3D-printed gun. He built a company behind the ideals of DIY gun-making, and now he's come back with another device: the "Ghost Gunner," a CNC mill designed to create the lower receiver of an AR-15 rifle. "That simple chunk of metal has become the epicenter of a gun control firestorm. A lower receiver is the body of the gun that connects its stock, barrel, magazine and other parts. As such, it's also the rifle's most regulated element. Mill your own lower receiver at home, however, and you can order the rest of the parts from online gun shops, creating a semi-automatic weapon with no serial number, obtained with no background check, no waiting period or other regulatory hurdles. Some gun control advocates call it a "ghost gun." Selling that untraceable gun body is illegal, but no law prevents you from making one." Wilson's goal is still to render government gun regulation useless, even as debate rages on banning this kind of manufacturing.
Submission + - Back to faxes: Doctors can't exchange digital medical records (nytimes.com) 1
nbauman writes: Doctors with one medical records system can't exchange information with systems made by other vendors, including those at their own hospitals, according to the New York Times. An ophthalmologist spent half a million dollars on a system and still keeps sending faxes. If doctors can't exchange records, they'll face a 1% Medicare penalty. The largest vendor is Epic Systems, Madison, WI, which holds almost half the medical records in the U.S. A RAND report described Epic as a “closed” platform that made it “challenging and costly” for hospitals to interconnect. UC Davis has a staff of 22 to keep everything communicating. Epic charges a fee to send data to some non-Epic systems. Congress held hearings. Epic hired a lobbyist. Epic's founder, billionaire computer science major Judith Faulkner, said that Epic was one of the first to establish code and standards for secure interchange, which included user authentication provisions and a legally binding contract. She said the federal government, which gave $24 billion incentive payments to doctors for computerization, should have done that. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology said that it was a "top priority" and they just wrote a 10-year vision statement and agenda for it.
