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I also think the answer is Iran.
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Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost. -
“Iranian lawmakers believe that the former Iranian ambassador to Argentina, Hadi Soleimanpur, has fallen victim to a plot (masterminded) by the triangle of evil (that is) Israel, the United States and Britain”, the English-language Tehran Times said Sunday.
So is this "triangle of evil" Irans response to being in the Axis of Evil?
Try http://wordforge.net/index.php for discussion and debate.Comment
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Somehow Axis of Evil sounds more . . . evil.Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost.Comment
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What about Iran?No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.Comment
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Of course, that was a great bit of propaghandaOriginally posted by Mr. President
Somehow Axis of Evil sounds more . . . evil.Jon Miller: MikeH speaks the truth
Jon Miller: MikeH is a shockingly revolting dolt and a masturbatory urine-reeking sideshow freak whose word is as valuable as an aging cow paddy.
We've got both kindsComment
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The Immigration and Refugee Board identified them as Jahan Zaib Sawhney, Yousaf Rasheed, Aqeel Ahmed, Muhammad Asif Aziz, Kashif Siddique, Mohammed Asif, Muhammad Waliu Siddiqui
That sure is a lot of Siddiquis. I say attack the Siddiquis at once !
"I have been reading up on the universe and have come to the conclusion that the universe is a good thing." -- Dissident
"I never had the need to have a boner." -- Dissident
"I have never cut off my penis when I was upset over a girl." -- DisComment
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The Ghost in Your Machine
Computers may soon monitor your work, notice when fatigue sets in, and fix mistakes. Scary? No more than a good secretary, says researcher Chris Forsythe
The world of smart computers -- machines that would be familiar with your habits and know when you're stressed or fatigued -- could be only a few years away. The computers would note your mental logic for saving information and follow the same logic in saving files. They would accurately infer your intent, remember past experiences (for instance, that you tend to make errors in multiplication), and alert you to mistakes.
These so-called cognitive machines -- essentially, smart software that can be part of any computer environment -- are already here in prototype, having been developed over the past five years by a team of computer scientists and cognitive psychologists at the Energy Dept.'s Sandia National Laboratories. The software monitors everything you do and creates a mathematical model of your behavior, such as your patterns in saving information or doing your work. Think of it as an advanced cousin of today's software which, after you've typed in a few letters of someone's address in an e-mail, suggests the rest.
At their most benign, smart computers seem like executive secretaries for those of us who can't afford one -- offering tremendous advances in productivity. Yet some fear that the concept suggests an ominous encroachment out of a sci-fi movie. Cognitive psychologist Chris Forsythe, who leads the Sandia team, insists that the machines are designed to augment -- not replace -- human activity. "We don't want to take the human out of the loop," he says. The simplest versions of these cognitive machines could hit production in as little as one to two years.
Forsythe talked to BusinessWeek Online Reporter Olga Kharif on Aug. 19 about how cognitive machines will change our world. Edited excerpts of the interview follow.
Q: How would you characterize the current state of human-machine interaction?
A: The biggest problem is that if you're the user, for the most part the technology doesn't know anything about you. The onus is on the user to learn and understand how the technology works. What we would like to do is reverse that equation so that it becomes the responsibility of the computer to learn about the user.
The computer would have to learn what the user knows, what the user doesn't know, how the user performs everyday, common functions. It would also recognize when the user makes a mistake or doesn't understand something.
Q: Could you give me an example of a prototype of a system that you've already built?
A: One of the systems that we built last year has a function called discrepancy detection. We give the machine a cognitive model of an air-traffic controller. You have an operator watching events going on in the world around him, and the computer is sitting there "watching" all the same things the operator sees and is attempting to interpret, using the operator's cognitive model -- essentially, a mathematical model of the user's behavior -- what's going on.
Thanks to our software, when you stop the simulation and ask the computer and the operator, "What do you think is going on right now?" about 90% of the time you get the same answer from both. Such a computer could alert the operator to a problem the operator hasn't picked up on yet.
Q: What kinds of other applications do you expect to see?
A: One application is an intelligence agent, looking at data coming from many databases. Another application is where you'd have a robot that would record its experiences, so that at some point it could say, "Oh, I saw something like this before and this is what I did, and this is what happened."
Our software could also be part of the basic desktop environment -- we have that prototype close to completion. The program monitors your e-mail traffic, who you interact with, the nature of these interactions. So you could later ask the system, "Do I know this person?" And it would remind you that you worked on a project together a year ago.
B♭3Comment
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this is fun, this unrelated stories bidness.B♭3Comment
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US ends military operations in Saudi Arabia
28.08.2003 2.23 pm
WASHINGTON - The United States has ended more than a decade of military operations in Saudi Arabia, shutting down the last remaining Air Force unit at Prince Sultan Air Base amid resentment in the kingdom over the American military presence, officials said on Wednesday.
US defence officials said a skeleton crew of American personnel would stay to make final preparations to depart the remote desert facility, while dozens of US military advisers remained in Saudi Arabia to assist the kingdom's military in training.
Air Force Maj Gen Robert Elder presided over a de-activation ceremony for the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing on Tuesday at Prince Sultan Air Base, transferring back to Saudi officials control over an enclave within the huge facility that had been used by the US military.
In a statement released by the Air Force, Elder said the move "ends more than a decade of military operations in this strategic Middle East nation. The end of the Iraq war and Saddam Hussein's government mean the American military mission here is over."
US warplanes had flown missions from the base, which boasts an immense 4572-metre runway, to monitor a "no-fly" zone over southern Iraq. The United States also had maintained a high-tech air operations centre, which controlled air strikes during the Iraq war. Its functions have been moved to Qatar.
The Air Force said the US and Saudi militaries will continue a training relationship and conduct joint exercises.
The presence of US troops had generated resentment within Saudi Arabia and in the Arab world because of their proximity to Islam's holiest sites. It was a major grievance cited by Saudi-born Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Saudi Defence Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz announced on April 29 that the United States would end military operations in the oil-rich kingdom and remove virtually all its forces. Saudi Arabia denied media reports that it demanded that the United States withdraw.
At the height of the Iraq war, US military personnel at Prince Sultan Air Base numbered more than 5000, with about 200 warplanes flying missions from the facility, according to the Air Force.
Amid serious strains in US-Saudi relations, the Saudi ambassador to Washington met former President George Bush on Wednesday and will meet Vice President **** Cheney on Thursday, US officials said.
The meetings coincide with efforts by Saudi Arabia, long a close US ally and major oil supplier, to halt a slide in relations amid American concerns about links between some Saudis and attacks on the United States.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan had lunch with Bush -- father and close confidant of the current president -- in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the family has long had a vacation home.
Bush spokeswoman Jean Becker confirmed the meeting but said it was private, declining to provide further details. The former president has had a long relationship with Bandar, the veteran envoy in Washington, and worked closely with Saudi Arabia when he presided over the US-led 1991 Gulf War.
Cheney's spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise said Bandar would meet the vice president on Thursday in Wyoming. She gave no further details.
Relations between the United States and the desert kingdom have been battered since the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon that killed 3000 people.
Most of the hijackers of the planes that were used in the attacks were Saudi born as was Osama bin Laden, head of the al Qaeda Islamic militant group that was blamed for that and other anti-US operations.
Recently, lawmakers from both US political parties have voiced concerns the Bush administration may be seeking to shield the United States' No 1 crude oil supplier from sanctions, despite accusations the Saudi Arabian government has turned a blind eye to Saudi wealth underwriting al Qaeda and other militant organisations around the world.
The US Treasury has refused to give the US Congress details about Saudi organisations and individuals that have been investigated as possible terrorism financiers.
Last week, US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in a television interview some of the people attacking US forces now occupying Iraq were slipping across the border from Saudi Arabia.
US soldiers have faced daily guerrilla ambushes since the end of the war that ousted Saddam Hussein in April.
US officials have long suspected some militants have come through Iran and Syria and has warned both against interference in Iraq but have not previously singled out Saudi Arabia. However, Riyadh's co-operation on fighting terrorism after the Sept 11 attacks on the United States has left some US officials disappointed.
A State Department official said on Wednesday that Armitage's comment about Saudi Arabia was "overplayed" and that the deputy secretary "wasn't trying to lump Saudi Arabia in the same category as Iran."
In an effort to try and assuage some of the damage done to the relationship, the United States and Saudi Arabia this week launched a joint task force in Riyadh to tackle the funding of terrorism.
The US military presence in Saudi Arabia began during the 1991 Gulf War in which American-led forces expelled Iraqi troops from neighbouring Kuwait, the Air Force said.
Air Force Col James Moschgat, commander of the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing, noted the "difficult circumstances" under which Prince Sultan Air Base became the centre of the American military presence in Saudi Arabia. A truck bomb in June 1996 ripped through apartment buildings that housed US troops near the Saudi city of Dhahran, killing killed 19 airmen.
The Pentagon then relocated US air assets and personnel from Dhahran and Riyadh to remote Prince Sultan Air Base, about 80km south of the Saudi capital.
Lt Gary Arasin, a spokesman at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, said fewer than 200 US troops were present during the ceremony at the facility, primarily security personnel and civil engineers.
The Pentagon already had removed most troops from the base, and all the American aircraft departed in June.
- REUTERS
No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.Comment
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The only connection I can make between all of these articles is that Mad Monk is bored.
Try http://wordforge.net/index.php for discussion and debate.Comment
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You get a cookie.Originally posted by Oerdin
The only connection I can make between all of these articles is that Mad Monk is bored.
A lot of Republicans are not racist, but a lot of racists are Republican.Comment
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Back during the "major conflict" portion of the Iraq war, we had a series of topped threads where people could put linked stories, without commentary. The idea was that if anyone cared enough about a given story, they could start their own thread on it.
I suggested that it might be nice to have such a thread available for "normal" times, where people could put news articles that had piqued their interest, but not enough to "waste a thread"; others could start their own threads on it, if they found it interesting enough. Nobody took me up on my suggestion.
Perhaps I've decided to try it out on my own.
Maybe I'm just bored.
No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.Comment
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Originally posted by The Mad Monk
Maybe I'm just bored.
A lot of Republicans are not racist, but a lot of racists are Republican.Comment
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Kingdom Denies US Pressure
Agence France Presse
RIYADH, 5 September 2003 — Saudi Arabia denied yesterday it was under US pressure to withdraw fighters deployed in a base near the southern Israeli city of Eilat. “Washington did not put pressure on us, and we would not tolerate pressure from anyone when it comes to sovereignty matters,” Assistant Defense Minister Prince Khaled ibn Sultan told AFP.
Israeli military radio said on Wednesday that Israel had asked the United States to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to withdraw F-16 fighters deployed in a base near Eilat.
“We do not have F-16s, but rather F-15s, stationed in Tabuk, and we will keep them there because they are deployed inside our territory,” Prince Khaled said.
No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.Comment
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Geez, what are the chances of THAT happening? It's gotta be like a zillion to none.-30-Comment
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