Free Republic

Resentment against the police, as representatives of the French state, still runs high.

The same state that provides their livelihood through welfare.

They can go back to scratch dirt in Algeria or Morocco and learn what living in a real police state is like...pansies.

John was a young man ... who was in the wrong place at the wrong time ...with and gun ... and grenades

This little bustard could have been shot on sight by the troops that found him for high treason.
I can't think of a more textbook case.. taking arms against the US, witnesses to the same
this dingleberry got off easy, and knows it. He should keep quiet, do his time, write a book or something.

This is well overdue. CIA is like most other federal agencies , in that its workforce is aging rapidly, and most workers cut their teeth during the Cold War when CIA was opposite a well-funded institutional intelligence apparatus.

Now that the game has changed, and we're trying to gain intelligence on many loosely organized groups, the CIA needs massive change.

Personally, I'd favor disbanding CIA and reconstituting it under military control like the NSA. But since that isn't politicaly feasible, what Goss is doing sounds like good medicine.

Well overdue. One can only imagine how WWII would have turned out if not for men of integrity like Ike (and Bradley, and Marshall, and Patton)

Be interesting to see how much trouble the lefties will stir up over this one (considering the free hand Ike gave the clandestine establishment, etc)

New Orleans is a true national treasure, and every effort should be made to reconstruct it.

The city is cultural hothouse, music, culinary arts, cinema just to name a few. And that culture has seeped into and become a part of American culture as well.

New Orleans' uniqueness is part of what makes America unique.

To be sure the city has problems, but it's my hope that this tragedy will be the catalyst to bring the city together and work to a better future. As a former resident , I can tell you there are few New Orleans who would disagree the city is worth saving.

Oliver Thomas, city councilman . One of Morial's old cronies, i beleive.

For FReepers who are following the traffic cams. Contraflow didn't go so well during Ivan, lets hope its better this time.

If the average joe with any type of clearance were to compromise classified info this way, they'd be run out on a rail no questions asked.

Who says we don't have a caste system in America?

"This is a common-sense step to protect passengers in the face of a proven threat," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, told The Associated Press last week

And this "common sense" restriction was so urgent that it took 3 years after the Richard Reid case to implement??

This is a just naked incrementalism. Wait until the TSA's Safe Flight program is implemented. You thought the checkpoints were intrusive now. Wait until you get interrogated at the airport and denied boarding because you paid a credit card bill late in 1995.

Meanwhile the fine folks at TSA are living large at our expense while they lay the brick of a fine police state.

Hash functions were thought to be impenetrable

Candidate for most ignorant statement of the day.

All cryptographic algorithms are considered breakable by default, its just a question of when.

It's just a bit irresponsible to publish an article like this in the mainstream press without discussing the actual impact.

Truth is most end-user applications put precious little value on hash functions.

All past tense. What made that creativity and dynamism possible was a full research pipeline. The first two stages of the pipeline are now nearly empty from years of lack of investment.

I suppose you and I have different frames of reference. I agree supercapacitors are important, but they are low on the totem pole considering the cutting edge info managment Google, Ebay and Amazon are doing. I don't mean to sound pompous but that's the stuff that's going to alter people's daily lives (with the possible help of supercapacitors of course!)

I suppose there's a tangential argument to be made that Google began from the research dept. at Stanford, but in my view the impetus behind their innovation was a couple of smart kids acting independently with a great idea (with help from Sand Hill Rd. of course). Ebay, Amazon and Yahoo don't have any connection with govt or corporate R&D that i know about.

I guess that was the point I was trying to make: don't assume all good ideas have to come from the R&D labs. Google and Yahoo are coming up with cutting-edge stuff everyday (not past tense) , and they do it by virtue of their own means.

All told...large American leading edge tech companies are increasingly migrating high tech design facilities to Ireland, Scotland, India, Israel...as well as the ubiquitous China.

And yet all the really cool stuff still seems to come from this country , doesn't it?

The Soviet Union produced many more highly skilled engineers, and PhDs per capita than America, yet not one significant techological advance came from them. Why?

America's strength is our creativity and dynamism. It's not about who manufactures the microchips anymore. It's about who makes those microchips do new and interesting things.

None of America's apparent competitors can even come close to us in the rate of new ideas. That's something that's difficult to quantify in things like the number of engineering students, etc.

Let the Chinas and Taiwans mass produce the small electronics; we don't need to. Their cultures are just not conducive to coming up with ideas like Google, Ebay, Dell, Microsoft, Walmart, Yahoo, etc.

As long as America has the lions share of new ideas, our economy will still be on top.

I would disagree about the "same vulnerabilities" part. Firefox doesn't have the hooks into the Win32 API that IE does. For example the exploits using the "Local Zone" vulnerability.

However, I do agree, that as Firefox acheives a greater market share, exploits will definitely be found.

But there's an argument to be made that the overall quantity of malware may be reduced if the blackhats have to double their coding effort to cover both browsers.

See if you feel the same way after your PC is compromised and your bank account is emptied out.

Using IE these days is just not safe.

Although I can't speak to the merits of the DDX program, I personally think that the overall Naval downsizing that seems to be occuring is sheer lunacy.

There's been talk of going below 12 CBGs, so scaling back DDX may be part of that. Big mistake!

While its true you can't effectively use a modern Navy directly against the likes of Al-Queda, CBGs and their attached personnel provide a highly needed asset: force projection.

The hostility towards US bases on foreign soil, and anti-americanism in general is not likely to abate during the War on Terrorism, no matter who's president.

In my view, force projection as a strategic deterrent will be critical to maintaining American influence in the next 20 years. CVs and DDs are core to that.

An extra billion. Considering Northern Virginia is the primary source of these funds, you'd think there would be at least one major transportation project in NOVA.

I think the environmentalists managed to get the Dulles metro expansion pushed back to 2018.

For a place filled with well-educated, affluent folks, they sure have screwed the pooch on transport.

Boot to safemode (F8) at startup, install and run Adaware or Spybot (search google) .

If you're able to to get the computer to boot from there, install Zonealarm, go to windowsupdate.com and install all necessary updates, the install Microsoft's antispyware tool. THis will give him a safeguard in the future.

However, if the computer is old or low quality, there could also be a hardware failure causing the poweroffs. (Most likely RAM or powersupply)

his American advisors who were too optimistic.

Obviously, no American advisors were involved with OIF. There's good discussion about Saddam's intel disconnect in the USA's lessons learned report.

For the Iran/Iraq war, my take is that US involvement wasquite limited, mostly overhead imagery from what I can tell. Primary sources here

Given Saddam's Pan Arab rhetoric at the time, I doubt whether Saddam would have taken US counsel , even if it had been offered.