Wired

Wired.  Unmanned Aircraft to be used in Afghanistan.  These are great recon weapons.  Unfortunately, the US is way behind what can be done with UAVs in a combat role.  A low cost, UAV for ground troops could be a way to significantly enhance the capabilities of our ground forces.  UAVs equiped with night vision, a… Continue reading Wired

How to create flexible sites quickly using standards like CSS and XHTML

developerWorks: How to create flexible sites quickly using standards like CSS and XHTML: “What do you do when you need to have a Web site done “yesterday”? This article answers that question, showing you how to create sites quickly and flexibly using Web standards like cascading style sheets (CSS), structural HTML, and server-side includes. It… Continue reading How to create flexible sites quickly using standards like CSS and XHTML

Innovation in Classification

Innovation in Classification. In this post, two threads are at work. The first addresses an issue often raised in user-centered design, which is that its discipline and process don't encourage innovation… [xBlog: Visual thinking linking | XPLANE]

Expert: Net Is Vulnerable

Interactive Week: Expert: Net Is Vulnerable. Part of the problem is that the Internet was basically built by people who liked each other, he said. “Now there are people out there who are adverse to us, who don't like us. And they have access to the Internet's technology, too. So there is a vulnerability, and… Continue reading Expert: Net Is Vulnerable

Travelers Warm Up to Videoconferencing

NY Times: Travelers Warm Up to Videoconferencing. But even as fears of flying began to recede and airline schedules returned to near normal, there were signs that the moment of crisis might be prompting a nation of road warriors to consider supplementing travel with teletechnology as a general practice. [Tomalak's Realm]

Gartner: Time to Drop IIS

Gartner: Time to Drop IIS. Gartner recommends that businesses hit by both Code Red and Nimda immediately investigate alternatives to IIS, including moving Web applications to Web server software from other vendors such as iPlanet and Apache. Although those Web servers have required some security patches, they have much better security records than IIS and… Continue reading Gartner: Time to Drop IIS

PHP Interface for HierMenus 4

PHP Interface for HierMenus 4. Among its other features, you can use PHP to retrieve, format, and pass dynamic data to Web pages as JavaScript structures. Guest author J. “JC” Chakrabarty introduces this capability by discussing his PHP/MySQL interface to HierMenus 4. 0924 [WebReference News]

Don't Press the Panic Button

National Review by Dave Kopel – Don't Press the Panic Button. The antiterrorism legislation before Congress is dangerous. Congress is being asked to rush to pass emergency antiterrorist legislation written by the Department of Justice. House Committee hearings are scheduled for Friday, Senate hearings for Tuesday, and the DOJ is demanding the bill be enacted… Continue reading Don't Press the Panic Button

Is knowledge inherently dangerous?  A decade ago I read a book by Frank Herbert called the White Plague.  It changed me. Bill Joy read it too and it lead him to write, “The Future Doesn't Need Us.”  The concept is simple.  A single biotechnologist has his family blown up in a IRA attack.  He decides to make war on the world.  So, for less than $200,000 he builds a basement biotechnology lab (I researched it and it can be done) and designs a airborned virus that targets females.  He wants the world to feel as he does, bereft.  He succeeds.

The question for Joy and myself became after reading this:  is specific knowledge or will specific knowledge become too dangerous for society to let an individual know unsupervised?  Will we need to control all people that know too much?  I had an advanced physics instructor once (I almost became a physicist because it was easy and fun), that built designer nukes (BTW, you can do a lot with nukes.  You can vary the radiation output, you can make it blast only without much radiation, you can shape the charge to have it blow in a single direction, and you can select the form the energy to yield).  He was a controlled person.  Why?  Because he knew too much.  Will that be the same with nanotech, biotech, and AI tech?  My gut tells me yes. [John Robb's Radio Weblog

Is knowledge inherently dangerous?  A decade ago I read a book by Frank Herbert called the White Plague.  It changed me. Bill Joy read it too and it lead him to write, “The Future Doesn't Need Us.”  The concept is simple.  A single biotechnologist has his family blown up in a IRA attack.  He decides… Continue reading Is knowledge inherently dangerous?  A decade ago I read a book by Frank Herbert called the White Plague.  It changed me. Bill Joy read it too and it lead him to write, “The Future Doesn't Need Us.”  The concept is simple.  A single biotechnologist has his family blown up in a IRA attack.  He decides to make war on the world.  So, for less than $200,000 he builds a basement biotechnology lab (I researched it and it can be done) and designs a airborned virus that targets females.  He wants the world to feel as he does, bereft.  He succeeds.

The question for Joy and myself became after reading this:  is specific knowledge or will specific knowledge become too dangerous for society to let an individual know unsupervised?  Will we need to control all people that know too much?  I had an advanced physics instructor once (I almost became a physicist because it was easy and fun), that built designer nukes (BTW, you can do a lot with nukes.  You can vary the radiation output, you can make it blast only without much radiation, you can shape the charge to have it blow in a single direction, and you can select the form the energy to yield).  He was a controlled person.  Why?  Because he knew too much.  Will that be the same with nanotech, biotech, and AI tech?  My gut tells me yes. [John Robb's Radio Weblog