Re: New iSeries model ? -- MIDRANGE-NONTECH

Thanks jpcarr

for the William Safire snip.

You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Just wait till the Verichip starts getting popular.
Discounts for chipped folks. Wait till it becomes mandatory
for commerce (anti-laundering laws), and why would anybody
want to refuse it? It'll seem "natural" then. Only a
"terrorist" or a "hater" would refuse it by that time.

All h--- is going to break loose. It's going to happen.

--Alan


----- Original Message -----
From: <jpcarr@tredegar.com>
To: <midrange-nontech@midrange.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 19, 2002 7:32 AM
Subject: Re: New iSeries model ?


|
|
|
| >US to create 'computer brain'
| >The gap between man and machine narrows today with the
announcement that
| >scientists have begun work on the first supercomputer
with a processing
| >power equivalent to the human brain.
| >Spencer Abraham, the American secretary of state for
energy, will announce
| >a contract with IBM to build two supercomputers one and a
half times more
| >powerful than the combined might of the 25 largest
existing
| >supercomputers.
| >The machines, made up of 197 refrigerator-sized boxes
each weighing one
| >ton, can crunch half a quadrillion -
500,000,000,000,000 - calculations
| >every second, estimated to be the same magnitude of
'thinking capacity' as
| >the human brain.   Neil
|
|
|
| Now what "Process" needs that much computing power?   Hmm.
I wonder how
| many Tera's of DASD?
| Lets see,  280 million people 50-100 Different transaction
per day....
| On line by 2004( just 20 years late)   J. Edgar Hoover,
and Joe McCarthy
| would have LOVED to have that computer.
|
| Imagine what you can keep track of?
| I wonder if it has anything to do with this?
| John
| ------------------------------------------
| You Are a Suspect
| By WILLIAM SAFIRE
|
| WASHINGTON ? If the Homeland Security Act is not amended
before passage,
| here is what will happen to you:
| Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine
subscription you
| buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you
visit and e-mail
| you send or receive, every academic grade you receive,
every bank deposit
| you make, every trip you book and every event you attend ?
all these
| transactions and communications will go into what the
Defense Department
| describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database."
|
| To this computerized dossier on your private life from
commercial sources,
| add every piece of information that government has about
you ? passport
| application, driver's license and bridge toll records,
judicial and divorce
| records, complaints from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I.,
your lifetime paper
| trail plus the latest hidden camera surveillance ? and you
have the
| supersnoop's dream: a "Total Information Awareness" about
every U.S.
| citizen.
| This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is what
will happen to your
| personal freedom in the next few weeks if John Poindexter
gets the
| unprecedented power he seeks.
|
| Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his class at
the Naval
| Academy, later earned a doctorate in physics, rose to
national security
| adviser under President Ronald Reagan. He had this
brilliant idea of
| secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom for
hostages, and with the
| illicit proceeds to illegally support contras in
Nicaragua.
| A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony counts
of misleading
| Congress and making false statements, but an appeals court
overturned the
| verdict because Congress had given him immunity for his
testimony. He
| famously asserted, "The buck stops here," arguing that the
White House
| staff, and not the president, was responsible for fateful
decisions that
| might prove embarrassing.
|
| This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again with a
plan even more
| scandalous than Iran-contra. He heads the "Information
Awareness Office" in
| the otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research Projects
Agency, which
| spawned the Internet and stealth aircraft technology.
Poindexter is now
| realizing his 20-year dream: getting the "data-mining"
power to snoop on
| every public and private act of every American.
|
| Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which widened
the scope of the
| Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and weakened 15
privacy laws, raised
| requirements for the government to report secret
eavesdropping to Congress
| and the courts. But Poindexter's assault on individual
privacy rides
| roughshod over such oversight.
|
| He is determined to break down the wall between commercial
snooping and
| secret government intrusion. The disgraced admiral
dismisses such necessary
| differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And he has
been given a $200
| million budget to create computer dossiers on 300 million
Americans.
|
| When George W. Bush was running for president, he stood
foursquare in
| defense of each person's medical, financial and
communications privacy. But
| Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of oversight
drew the Reagan
| administration into its most serious blunder, is still
operating on the
| presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy
rights, the buck ends
| with him and not with the president.
|
| This time, however, he has been seizing power in the open.
In the past week
| John Markoff of The Times, followed by Robert O'Harrow of
The Washington
| Post, have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation,
but editorialists
| have not grasped its undermining of the Freedom of
Information Act.
|
| Political awareness can overcome "Total Information
Awareness," the
| combined force of commercial and government snooping. In a
similar
| overreach, Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism
Information and
| Prevention System (TIPS), but public outrage at the use of
gossips and
| postal workers as snoops caused the House to shoot it
down. The Senate
| should now do the same to this other exploitation of fear.
|
| The Latin motto over Poindexter"s new Pentagon office
reads "Scientia Est
| Potentia" ? "knowledge is power." Exactly: the
government's infinite
| knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're just as
concerned as the
| next person with protecting privacy," this brilliant mind
blandly assured
| The Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
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