CIA Cover Blown by Chicago Tribune (Not Valerie Plame’s)

This is really disturbing on a number of levels.

When the Tribune searched a commercial online data service, the result was a virtual directory of more than 2,600 CIA employees, 50 internal agency telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret CIA facilities around the United States.

Only recently has the CIA recognized that in the Internet age its traditional system of providing cover for clandestine employees working overseas is fraught with holes, a discovery that is said to have “horrified” CIA Director Porter Goss.

“Cover is a complex issue that is more complex in the Internet age,” said the CIA’s chief spokeswoman, Jennifer Dyck. “There are things that worked previously that no longer work. Director Goss is committed to modernizing the way the agency does cover in order to protect our officers who are doing dangerous work.”

Dyck declined to detail the remedies “since we don’t want the bad guys to know what we’re fixing.”

I think we all understand that undercover CIA work is not typically what you see in Alias and James Bond movies, but do we really need to make it easy for the bad guys?  If a newspaper can do this, so can terrorists or foreign intelligence services.

I wonder if we’ll see the same level of outrage over this disclosure as we saw with Valerie Plame?

Cubicle Inventor Decries Own Invention; Dilberts Everywhere Agree

 From Fortune:

Propst is the father of the cubicle. More than 30 years after he unleashed it on the world, we are still trying to get out of the box. The cubicle has been called many things in its long and terrible reign. But what it has lacked in beauty and amenity, it has made up for in crabgrass-like persistence. (snip)

But inventions seldom obey the creator’s intent. “The Action Office wasn’t conceived to cram a lot of people into little space,” says Joe Schwartz, Herman Miller’s former marketing chief, who helped launch the system in 1968. “It was driven that way by economics.”

Economics was the one thing Propst had failed to take into account. But it was also what triggered the cubicle’s runaway success. Around the time the Action Office was born, a growing breed of white-collar workers, whose job titles fell between secretary and boss, was swelling the workforce. Also, real estate prices were rising, as was the cost of reconfiguring office buildings, making the physical office a drag on the corporate budget. Cubicles, or “systems furniture,” as they are euphemistically called, offered a cheaper alternative for redoing the floorplan.

As a cubicle dweller, and manager of cubicle dwellers, I’ve seen bad ones and “less bad” ones.  I’ve never seen one that was particularly inviting.

 

Natural Causes too good for Milosevic

Slobodan Milocevic has died in his prison cell, after being on trial in the Hague for 4 years.  I have a feeling that, even though his trial seems to be proceeding as slowly as Milocevic’s, the Iraqis will make sure Saddam gets a firing squad before the sands of time take their toll on him.

Military Robo-dog in development

This is pretty cool.

Meet BigDog, a mechanical mutt that does more than snare Frisbees and irrigate fire hydrants. It totes hundreds of pounds of gear so soldiers won’t have to, and it will never spook under fire. Developed by Boston Dynamics with funding from the U.S. military, the BigDog prototype is arguably the world’s most ambitious legged robot. Its stability and awareness of its own orientation make it the first robot that can handle the unknown challenges of the battlefield. The Great Dane–size ’bot can trot more than three miles an hour, climb inclines of up to 45 degrees, and carry up to 120 pounds—even in rough terrain impenetrable to wheeled or tracked vehicles. But this one is just a puppy; Boston Dynamics expects the next iteration, ready this summer, to be at least twice as fast and carry more than twice as much.

Click the link in the article to see video of the robo-dog in action.  Maybe they can mount a chain gun on the front and have it root out terrorists in the caves of Afghanistan.  Let’s just hope that Skynet doesn’t get a hold of it.