What in the mother !$#^! hell is that? - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

The Godfather · #1 07-29-2003, 03:50 AM

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=6&u=/ap/20030729/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_market_10

You have GOT to be kidding me! This is the stupidest thing ever invented!

#2 07-29-2003, 04:13 AM

What's to prevent a terrorist from placing a "bet" , then fulfilling the prophecy and capitalizing from it?

Kestas · #3 07-29-2003, 09:05 AM

So the Pentagon is now taking odds. How is this different from betting on football in Las Vegas?... and how does this help with intelligence???

New2MBZ · #4 07-29-2003, 01:04 PM

*Amazed*

As quoted in that article, "Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American political figure, or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?"

Exactly. And hey, if the odds don't look so good, how when they just make it happen themselves??? That's just what this world needs... more motivation to kill, destroy, etc. NOT. sigh.

tjohn · #5 07-29-2003, 01:13 PM

I'm sure I've heard of our government trying dumber things... I just can't remember any of them just at the moment....

Anyway, it looks as if saner heads have prevailed.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=564&ncid=564&e=2&u=/nm/20030729/ts_nm/security_market_wolfowitz_dc_4

#6 07-29-2003, 02:19 PM

Totally out of the box, no check that, out of the universe thinking.
I can't imagine how they were going to gather inteligence with this thing. Maybe by the way hotskillet suggested, by checking out the bets made.
I'm glad we have some inventive minds. I just wish that someone with some common sence had redirected them before they spent $600,000 to develop this thing.

Kestas · #7 07-29-2003, 04:03 PM

It looks like the government wants investors to do what the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI should be doing (or aren't able to). The last thing we need is more empowerment to the financial community. Haven't they screwed up things enough?

Botnst · #8 07-30-2003, 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by DR ///AMG
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=6&u=/ap/20030729/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/terror_market_10

You have GOT to be kidding me! This is the stupidest thing ever invented!

The stupid thing was not realizing that citizens would find the idea totally obnoxious. However, in an academic sense, it has a bit of merit. Please don't mistake the following explanation as endorsement....

If I asked you what the value of beans will be in October, what would you guess and how would you arrive at your guess? Probably your first approximation would be to look at what a pound of dried beans sells for then figure a profit from that. But if you had a clue as to what bean production is right now, you could get a better idea than just looking at retail prices. The people who have the most knowledge generally perform the best. If you multiply that by the total number of people who are willing to risk money on a future market, then you have an idea how commodities futures work in Chicago. Usually commodities futures, excluding unusual circumstances, hover around fairly consistent prices.

So, you ask a bunch of DARPA eggheads to imagine every possible way of foretelling future terrorist threats and somebody on the team who plays commodities and asks, "What would you give for a December Arafat harvest compared to a January harvest?" And so a clever idea was born.

Its a good idea to have people on our team who think so wildly outside of the box. These are the same folks who invented the Internet (they called their initial invention "Arpanet" before Algore was a self-proclaimed visionary genius). It takes a good manager to allow them free-reign with ideas but keeps implementation within bounds of civil propriety.

Botnst

BoostnBenz · #9 07-30-2003, 09:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by hotskillet
What's to prevent a terrorist from placing a "bet" , then fulfilling the prophecy and capitalizing from it?

Well I believe this was the idea behind it, sort of. They figured if a terrorist was going to kill someone then maybe they would 'bet' on it then do it just to get some extra free money. Not do it just because they bet on it, though. Also the idea was that these people would have to register, and if someone kept 'winning' they would look into that person and see if he had anything to do with the crime, or any connections with someone who did. There was a little bit of thought that went into this, but not the most brilliant idea. Pretty much they were out to catch the stupidest of the terrorists.

Piotr · #10 07-30-2003, 10:42 PM

OK, for once, I'm against everybody.
The idea (scientifically) was brilliant. The politics is what makes it impossible. Did ANYONE of you see/read "Three (Six) Days of Condor"?? Do you remember what Redford character did? "Condor" read books (Fiction!) to find out any leaks from CIA real actions. He would feed the plot into computer and compare with actual covert ops for similarities.

This is something like it. If anyone of you would stop and THINK you would (maybe) remember, that Al Qaeda invested in market futures about 2 month before 9/11 betting on sudden drop in market. They made BILLIONS on NYSE alone! So the US intelligence decided to watch something similar happening. I don't remember my statistics, but lets say, that several key targets get an average of 10,000 hits a day . suddenly, one target gets 100,000 hits a day. it's a blip. now we commit resources to that target.

does it matter if terrorists know what we are doing? of course not. if they are trying to distract us and don't plan anything, they loose money. if they do plan something, we are already alerted. this is only an indicator, of course. just one more piece where humint is nonexistent thanx to clinton's ephasis on elint. rebuilding a network of informants colapsed by clinton takes longer than 2 years. so meanwhile we substitute hard data with temporary innovative solutions.

actually i'm surprised somebody had enough brains to come up with something so simple and original. after all it's the same bunch of morons who came up with the last harebrained idea. you know, that complete fiasko called INTERNET. I can see how anyone of us or even Dick Gephardt is smarter than them.

The Godfather · #11 07-30-2003, 10:59 PM

Ok from what I gathered today on the news, the system was basically meant to work like so:

Hypothetically:
Terrorists are gonna crash using UAL planes in Italy.

Terrorists wanna cash in on that American system that consists of "betting on things to happen," and they invest on that scenario heavily.

The Americans look at it and go "woah, that's very odd, these must be terrorists who wanna do that, and at the same time cash in on it! Let's prevent it!"

That's what I understood. All in all, that's one weak ass idea. lol

BoostnBenz · #12 07-30-2003, 11:07 PM

I didn't see that movie, but I would have to say that the outcome of the experiment would be only as good as the software of the computer then. Or better yet, the creativity of the programmer.

I wasn't aware that they made billions off of our market. Either they could only catch the stupid ones who never contemplated why the government was doing it, or it would come back on them at the cost of losing a certain amount of money and fail.

Yea that is the gist of the concept DR AMG, not incredibly deep is it? Then again loose lips can sink ships, so I guess we'll never know if it would of proved itself to be ANY good.

Piotr · #13 07-30-2003, 11:19 PM

OK, well now THAT is a very good question. WHY was this plan made public?? We (the public) get only scraps and carefully calculated bits and pieces of information. This kind of intel information does not simply gets released to mass media. so why?

Piotr · #14 07-30-2003, 11:32 PM

Dr//AMG- that is a VERY severe simplification of the idea. put that way, yes it is. However, the amount of variables involved would give us a statistically significant results. I do not know 99% of it, and if I did, I probably would not understand it. But the methods employed by the intelligence services around the world are so varied and complicated, that an ordinary like us probably couldn't comprehend it all.

Look at the brilliant piece of work French intelligence did on US. They supplied British with a slew of intel regarding Saddam trying to get WMD. They inserted one doctored piece of information into the batch. on surface it was legit, but if someone knew what to check, it would be easily confirmed as based on forgery. In one shot they discredited US, UK, made any piece of information coming from white house or Pentagon suspect, AND made any good, positive news about war and Iraq irrelevant. Now THT'S brilliant.

It's still going on. read CNN Us edition and compare it's tone to CNN International. Have you heard about Reuters completely changing an article bya an independent reporter about Jessica Lynch to make itcompletely negative and anti-american?
This disinformation war is still going on on so many levels, that, frankly, I gave up trying to decifer it all except for the obvious.

Botnst- sorry for repeating some of the stuff you wrote. I'll be more careful next time.

Piotr · #15 07-30-2003, 11:53 PM

A) French are our enemy in this war
B) French were friendly with Saddam
C) Chirac hates Bush AND Blair
D) French supplied UK with the intel

A-D are facts. Yes, by connecting these facts I speculated. However, my speculation logically explains what happened, takes into account all facts known to me, and presents a believable chain of events. It is purely my interpretation of facts and their consequences, and it presents a viable alternative to interpretations of facts by other people (like Howard Dean, for instance).
But, as you stated, it is merely my speculation.