Infinite Freedom??? - the self-fulfilling prophecy of majority

[Bryan J Smith]

I'm going to shut-up after this.

The voice of the community has a tendency to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's based on majority thought, which is fine for freedom and other social constructs, but not in technical and legal application.
I.e., it quickly becomes a prophecy and religion based on the sheer majority over engineers and lawyers.
And that can quickly and grossly proliferated by the community, often by even quasi-professionals
(e.g., paralegals, not lawyers, including Groklaw most of the time, technicians, not technologists and engineers, etc...).

As an example ...
Unlike most people, who grew up on GNU/Linux in the mid-'90s doing web servers,
I grew up developing on GNU/Linux - coming from GNU/Solaris host, GNU/VxWorks targets
(in addition to Linux NIS, LDAP, Kerberos, Samba, NFS, AFS deployments before the "single-sign-on" buzzword came about).
Now what did I use those things for?

I worked on evolutionary defense systems that replaced and improved upon already existing systems."
These new systems - strategically referred to as TMD - were PAC-3
and THAAD, which use HTK, which neutralize targets an order of magnitude better than proximity-fuse. 
Some of you may not know what those acronyms stand for, and I purposely did that for a reason.
Because as long as I don't define those acronyms, and you don't know them, you don't have your 0-technical-based opinion.

But the second I define those acronyms into Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC-3), Theater High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) and Hit-to-Kill (HTK), I'll start getting opinions like ...
- I heard hit-to-kill doesn't work
- I heard Patriot never hit a single SCUD in the first Iraq war
And if I further define their collective, strategic name - even though they are just advanced Surface to Air Missile
(SAM) systems for shooting down aircraft., cruise missiles and other airborne targets,
They are also capable of "last resort" Theater Missile Defense (TMD), I get all sorts of non-sense like:
- The US wants to start a new cold war
- The US is threatening the Russians and upsetting the balance in Europe
- The US is violating the ABM treaty, etc...

Even before the general W. or US bashing begins.
I mean, I didn't even vote for W. and TMD was developed during, and the R&D funded by (including my paycheck), by the Clinton administration.
But because people heard "missile defense" - like they do firmware - the go bonkers with 0 technical knowledge,

Now I can't even begin to explain such technical things as ...
- How TMD is the natural evolution of air defense and just a more capable SAM system of equal size
- PAC-3/THAAD interceptors and their attributes don't even cross into the velocities of what the ABM treaty covers
- TMD systems are merely improved, mobile interceptor and sensory (radar) systems of what is already deployed by NATO in Europe
- And why we developed HTK, because Patriot did actually intercept, but it's proximity fuse would not neutralize

And that's before we get to the fact that I was one of the engineering schmucks on the target systems,
doing telemetry and other things I'm talking about, to verify PAC-3/THAAD intercept and effectiveness.
I'm the guy that had to go home at night and here the blatantly incorrect statements from the media.

I mean, ever wonder why NATO has or is deploying PAC-3 and THAAD (or Japan and Korea for that matter)?
Ever wonder why *NOT* one single US engineer has ever "whistle-blown" that HTK and TMD doesn't work?
Have you ever wondered what the *REAL*, technical details *ARE* of general air-space defense,
and why it's not so "unnatural" to be able to obliterate and shred anything that flies through it?

Same deal for "firmware"!!!

It's funny, NASA (of which I've worked on the USAF portions, which I can't talk about), calls "hit-to-kill" something different.

It's called "docking."

Sure, it looks nice and slow on TV - but you don't get to see the closure prior to that at Mach 24.
With TMD, we're talking sub-orbital and half to one-third that speed - we just do it in real-time today.

Ignorance goes quite far with the majority, let alone people call me "biased" on firmware because I worked on "missile defense."
Just like many non-developers complain I'm "biased" because I work for a client that selfishly sells, what appears to them to be an overpriced, $10,000 VoIP phone.
And, therefore, I should have no say, since these people are obvious "less biased" as myself, and I'm just being
"arrogant" when I say they have to be knowlegable and experienced in the filed to understand
(I don't really care whether they have an EE degree or not, but experienced, yes).

Now don't get me (or anyone in the IEEE for that matter), started on electric or fuel-cell (hydrogen) cars in the US.
I mean, I've literally had someone saying they can "chuck big oil, coal, fossil fuels,
etc..." and "save the planet"
once they buy a new Honda fuel-cell vehicle and the home, hydrogen electolysis unit.
Being the "dumber than them" electrical engineer I am, I can't help but ask them, "where do you get
that electricity to drive than unit, and how much and what energies do you think are used to generate it?"

Of course, that just gets me into another debate where I'm talking about real power systems and the need to renovate and really, feasinbly "clean" the US power grid (as you'll find 180,000 IEEE-USA members screaming for in every other Spectrum magazine),
all while the other person, who I've stupidly tried to educate, screams at me about the tangable "renewable energies" that we stupid engineers won't design and build.

Sorry for the tangent. It's just the story of those with the background and experience to deliver real solutions from those who "know better
than us" and think we're wrong, let alone arrogant, when we tell them we're working on a feasible solution, but they won't stop to remotely understand it.

--  
Bryan J Smith - mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org  
http://thebs413.blogspot.com  
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile  
    

-----Original Message-----
From: "Rodrigo Padula" <rodrigopadula at gmail.com>

Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:58:28 
To:"For discussions about marketing and expanding the Fedora user base" <fedora-marketing-list at redhat.com>
Subject: Re: Infinite Freedom???


Ok!!!!<br><br><div id="result_box" dir="ltr">Reading the answers i see how the VOICE of the community is heard and is "very important" in the project! </div><br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 6/20/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">
Christopher Aillon</b> <<a href="mailto:caillon at redhat.com">caillon at redhat.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Rodrigo Padula wrote:<br>> If the Free Software Foundation says that the use of non free firmwares<br>> affect our freedom, us must take this in consideration when including this<br>> in the distribution.<br><br>
We did.<br><br>> If the firmware isn't free or "modifiable", if we dont have this permission<br>> our freedom is not infinite, it is finite.<br><br>...says the person behind a <a href="http://gmail.com">
gmail.com</a> address.  Please go complain to<br>google, too.</blockquote><div><br>I had problens with my mail server <a href="http://projetofedora.org">projetofedora.org</a></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
> I think that firmwares would not have to be distributed in fedora Medias<br>> (CDS, DVDS).<br><br>Thanks for your opinion.  We disagree.</blockquote><div><br>The FSF disagree of you!<br><br>Ok!! Thanks!<br><br>Fedora FINITE FREEDOM!  "Voice of community"
<br><br>Rodrigo Padula de Oliveira<br><a href="http://www.projetofedora.org">http://www.projetofedora.org</a><br></div></div>

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