Google Terror Threat

Google Terror Threat


Re:Presidents that work for terrorists
(Score:5, Insightful)
by dattaway (3088) Alter Relationship on Sunday October 16, @08:21AM (#13802829)
(http://dattaway.org/)
Terrorism is good for business. The military has always been the largest government payroll and contracting business. If the fundraising activities for my party wasn't making my promised quota, I'd be saying everyone was a terrorist too. If things aren't working, start blaming people. This is a formula that has always worked for any leader.

==============

Re:In other news...
(Score:5, Interesting)
by 1u3hr (530656) Alter Relationship on Sunday October 16, @09:40AM (#13803174)
Paper maps proclaimed to be a threat to national security as they can be used to guide terrorists to important government buildings.

You were joking, but in many countries this is true. On a cycling holiday in Malaysia and Thailand I naturally wanted topographic maps to know where the hills were. I saw tour guides had such maps but they're not offically for sale. At a library in Penang I was treated with suspicion when I asked to see their non-existent map collection. Of course it's quite stupid to pretend that terrorists (of which there were and are active groups in these countries) would be fazed by such restrictions. You can source excellent topographic maps of just about anywhere overseas, and of course the local military maps are available for the right price. The only people inconvenienced are legitimate travellers. Simialrly in more paranoid places tourists who take snaps of bridges or just about any public building can lose their cameras and get in trouble. Again quite a futile exercise of power, any "spy" can easily take pictures undetected. In Bruce Schneier's phrase, "security theatre" and scapegoating.
===========


Of course
(Score:5, Insightful)
by Bogtha (906264) Alter Relationship on Sunday October 16, @08:33AM (#13802881)

Food helps terrorists. Air helps terrorists. Maps help terrorists.

You know what else helps terrorists? Constantly freaking out about how every little thing is either vulnerable to terrorists or helps terrorists.

Seriously, what is it with the people that can't think about anything but terrorists? Don't they realise they are part of the problem? Calm down, chill out, have a cup of tea, and don't be part of the problem.
===========


InfoWar
(Score:5, Informative)
by Doc Ruby (173196) Alter Relationship on Sunday October 16, @09:29AM (#13803109)
(http://slashdot.org/~Doc%20Ruby/journal | Last Journal: Thursday March 31, @01:48PM)
Terrorism is the spread of fear among people for political control. The fear can be ignited by sabotage or murder, like planebombing the World Trade Center or "ethnic cleansing". The scary act itself is not the terrorism per se - the spread of the fear, and its use for political control is the actual terrorism. President Kalam has harnessed Google's act of publishing easily used satellite photos of India to spread fear, to achieve political ends. Both simply passing laws to censor Google, and any other "extra" items that get packaged in those laws, and all the international political clout he accumulates along the way. His campaign is terrorism, and Kalam is a terrorist. Terrorism is InfoWar, fought in the media, in our minds, and by ourselves against each other.

President Kalam knows all about terrorism - he was a rocket scientist who developed missile technology that puts fear of India's nuclear force into everyone in Asia, and therefore everyone in the world. Nuclear "deterrence" is fear harnessed for geopolitical ends, and therefore terrorism. All militarism is terrorism when used for political control, as it always is.

Terrorism is awful, unacceptable. So is the barbaric destruction terrorists harness, nearly always directed at civilians, either in "total war" or even the orwellian "collateral damage". We're so swamped with terrorism and the rhetoric about it that makes it work that we have to grow up and learn what it really is. The only cure for fear is to dispel the ignorance that lets the fear spread so widely, that lets fear of one threat contribute to control over management of another unrelated one. We have to develop the reactions to people selling fear so we can drop it. That wisdom is the only deterrence to terrorism, which makes it less successful, therefore less likely to be used. As long as terrorists get high ratings, we're doing most of their work for them, and they'll keep pumping out new products, winning, and destroying us. The more we learn to recognize them, the more we'll win. That's how we win "the war on terrorism". It's an infowar that can only be won by winning in our own minds.

I give media execs I'd like to innoculate against terrorism copies of War and Peace in the Global Village [amazon.com]. Marshall McLuhan wrote this peppy little book about how every tech innovation in history was followed by a "new kind of warfare", including global telecommunications. Martin Fiore revised it for _Wired_ to republish, with marginal quotes from James Joyce, updating it for the Internet age. Learning its lessons is like taking a dose of terrorism vaccine. If only _Wired_ were more than tech marketing, they'd rerelease it as a Flash movie, and it would virus its way around the Net, spreading immunity as it went. When we're sophisticated enough to see that happen "spontaneously", we might show signs that we'll win the InfoWar against terrorism.
--

--
make install -not war
=================


No, no, a question.
(Score:5, Funny)
by Karma_fucker_sucker (898393) Alter Relationship on Sunday October 16, @08:23AM (#13802841)
What they should do is ask "Are you a terrorist?"

If they answer yes, then redirect them to www.disney.com. Otherwise, allow them access. It's works great for the pr0n industry. You know,the question they like to ask "Are you 18 years of age or older?" This is fine for the politicians regarding pr0n access, why not for Google maps?

Politicians, they are sooo paranoid, except when it comes for fiscal reponsibility.


http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/14/google_earth_competition_results/