---BREAKAWAY CIVILIZATION ---ALTERNATIVE HISTORY---NEW BUSINESS MODELS--- ROCK & ROLL 'S STRANGE BEGINNINGS---SERIAL KILLERS---YEA AND THAT BAD WORD "CONSPIRACY"--- AMERICANS DON'T EXPLORE ANYTHING ANYMORE.WE JUST CONSUME AND DIE.---
Our coverage of the Prenda Law saga is collected here.
You know, if I got my brother involved in an enterprise that
culminated in a furious federal judge demanding that he fly across the
country to show cause why he shouldn't be sanctioned, I think I'd step
up and represent my brother, or ask my attorney to represent my brother,
or hire a separate attorney for my brother.
But then, I'm an only child; there may be nuances to this sibling relationship thing I don't grasp.
You may recall that when United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II ordered Prenda Law participants to appear in his Court for the March 11, 2013 hearing, one of the people he ordered to appear is Peter Hansmeier,
brother of Paul Hansmeier. Judge Wright probably ordered Peter
Hansmeier to appear because the Doe defendants allege that he, through a
company called 6881 Forensics LLC, had been paid for "forensic" work
related to Prenda Law's litigation activities.
You may also recall that John
Steele, Paul Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy hired attorneys to appear for
them and their paralegal and to file a request to excuse them from
appearance on March 11. Those attorneys didn't appear for Peter Hansmeier. As far as we knew, nobody appeared for Peter Hansmeier.
Today we learn that back on March 8, 2013 — the Friday before the
March 11 hearing, and the same day that Paul Hansmeier, Paul Duffy, and
John Steele filed their unsuccessful ex parte application — Peter
Hansmeier attempted to file a pro se ex parte application to relieve him from showing up on March 11, 2013. The application is here, and his supporting declaration is here. The clerk of the court only filed it to PACER today.
Judge Wright rejected it back on March 12, 2013 because it didn't
include proof that Peter Hansmeier gave notice to the other parties that
he was making the application — a necessary element of an ex parte
application (that is, a motion to the court filed outside the normal
motion schedule required by local rules).
There are a few notable things about Peter Hansmeier's ex parte application.
First, Peter Hansmeier says he doesn't want to show up because he is
not a party, could only be a witness, and has "no dog in this fight."
Yet Hansmeier shrewdly captions his application as being from Peter Hansmeier of Livewire Holdings LLC
— one of the Prenda Law plaintiff entities, which has also been ordered
to appear, and which Judge Wright clearly suspects is connected to
fraud on the court.
Second, Peter Hansmeier says in his one-page declaration that he
lives and works in Minnesota and intends to continue to do so. Yet his
declaration, like his ex parte application, is captioned Peter
Hansmeier, pro se, of Livewire Holdings LLC at its Washington, D.C. address.
Peter Hansmeier's ex parte application has some law-talk in it; it's
been worked upon by someone who is either a lawyer or an informed
amateur. But making the "I have nothing to do with this mess and I live
in Minnesota" assertion on a pleading captioned with Livewire Holdings
LLC in Washington D.C. is a blunder of epic proportions. Moreover that
blunder probably could have resulted in the document not being filed at
all — someone appearing pro se can't appear for an entity in court, and
the caption makes it somewhat ambiguous whether Peter Hansmeier is
intending to appear pro se just for himself or also in some capacity for
the entity Livewire Holdings LLC.
Maybe if someone had referred Peter to a competent lawyer, or even
hired one for him, he might have avoided such a blunder. Instead, it
appears that the lawyers who got him into this mess — including his own
brother — let him appear pro se and effectively incriminate himself.
That's some cold shit, yo. Edited to add: Commenter Robert points out
something I missed — the "Peter Hansmeier" ex parte is just a
cut-and-paste of arguments from the ex parte application filed by John
Steele, Paul Hansmeier, and Paul Duffy. Yet someone still managed to
stick the "Livewire Holdings LLC" into the caption. Ooops.
Peter Hansmeier Denies Connection To Prenda Cases Via Document That Shows He's Connected To The Cases
from the no-one-said-you-had-to-be-smart dept
And the latest story in As The Prenda Turns... comes (once again) from Ken over at Popehat. As you may recall, Judge Otis Wright hosted a big hearing in which he ordered pretty much everyone associated with Prenda Law to appear. We had talked about how there was a filing from some of the key players
seeking to get out of the lawsuit. John Steele, Paul Duffy, Paul
Hansmeier and Angela van den Hemel had hired a lawyer, Heather Rosing,
who filed a notice on their behalf arguing that they shouldn't have to
appear. She also showed up in court when they did not.
Except, those four people, while closely linked together, were not
everyone that Wright had ordered to show up. Among the others were Paul
Hansmeier's brother, Peter Hansmeier and Mark Lutz. I was a bit
surprised that the judge didn't seem to comment on the fact that neither
seemed to file anything or to have a representative in court.
Well, it turns out that at least Peter Hansmeier tried to take things into his own hands
and tried (and failed) to file a similar document pro se (representing
himself) asking out of having to show up, arguing both that there was no
jurisdiction over him and that he had nothing to do with anything.
This document was filed back on March 8th, the same day as the Rosing
filing for the reset of Team Prenda, but was only just recently put into
PACER. There are a number of nutty things about this. First, the fact
that Peter is filing pro se, rather than teaming up with his brother
and his brother's partners. As Ken opines:
You know, if I got my brother involved in an enterprise that culminated
in a furious federal judge demanding that he fly across the country to
show cause why he shouldn't be sanctioned, I think I'd step up and
represent my brother, or ask my attorney to represent my brother, or
hire a separate attorney for my brother.
But, instead, Peter was apparently hung out to dry. And, because of
that he made some mistakes. Some small, some big, but together they're
pretty damning. The biggest is that he claims to have nothing to do
with any of this... but he claims that he's representing Livewire
Holdings LLC -- one of the key entities involved in this whole mess,
which Judge Wright has already made clear he believes is really a big
part of the likely Prenda fraud. Ken goes all quickmeme on the matter:
There's also the fact that he claims he's in Minnesota, while claiming
to be representing Livewire and giving its DC address. Oh, and the fact
that you can't pro se for a corporation, but only for yourself. And
then there's the other part which helped Judge Wright easily brush aside
this request since, procedurally, he was required to give notice to the
other parties in the case that he was making this motion, and he failed
to do so. All combined, Ken points out that connecting yourself to an
entity at the center of this while denying any connection is "a blunder
of epic proportions." If only Peter could have found an actual lawyer
to prevent him from making such mistakes...
Maybe if someone had referred Peter to a competent lawyer, or even hired
one for him, he might have avoided such a blunder. Instead, it appears
that the lawyers who got him into this mess — including his own brother —
let him appear pro se and effectively incriminate himself.
An artist rendering of the finished skyscrapers. (Photo: Courtesy of Boeri Studio)
In Milan,
a new kind of skyscraper is under construction. Once complete later
this year, the two-building project will be covered in greenery, an
effect that gives the buildings their name: Bosco Verticale, or Vertical
Forest.
A plan for one of the apartments. (Courtesy of Boeri Studio)Yahoo!
News spoke with Boeri Studio, the architectural firm behind the
buildings' design. Construction on the residential skyscrapers began in
2008 and is set to be complete sometime this year when people can move
in. But people aren't the only residents. Also moving in: a heckuva lot
of trees, plants, and shrubs.
The two buildings (26 stories and 18 stories) will be quite literally
covered in green: 480 big and medium-size trees, 250 small trees, and
roughly 11,000 groundcover plants, according to the firm. It's the
equivalent of a hectare (almost 2.5 acres) of forest on the sides of the
buildings, the firm says.
But the trees and bushes and plants aren't just for
show. The designers explain that they will also help to filter out air
pollution, a major problem in big cities like Milan. "Vertical Forest
helps to build a micro-climate and to filter dust particles which are
present in the urban environment," write the designers. "The diversity
of the plants helps to create humidity, and absorb CO2 and dust,
produces oxygen, protects people and houses from the sun’s rays and from
acoustic pollution."
One of the vertical forests under construction. (Photo: Carola Merello)
You can’t patent simple math, judge tells patent troll Uniloc
Troll claims violation in Linux kernel, gets defeated by Rackspace and Red Hat.
A patent troll that accused Rackspace of violating a patent merely
by selling Linux-based servers has seen its case thrown out. A judge
ruled the patent claim invalid because it describes a relatively simple
math operation.
The company in question is Uniloc, which has a long history of suing tech vendors. In 2009, a US District Court judge overturned a $388 million verdict Uniloc had won against Microsoft. That litigation was finally settled late last year for an undisclosed sum. Uniloc continues litigating however, with at least a dozen lawsuits filed just last week.
Uniloc sued Rackspace in June 2012 in US District Court in Eastern Texas (PDF),
claiming Rackspace violated its patent "by or through making, using,
offering for sale, selling and/or importing servers running Linux Kernel
(version 2.6 or higher), which is used to process floating point
operations carried out on Rackspace’s servers including those servers
used in conjunction with Rackspace’s hosting solutions/products."
Math operations aren't automatically unpatentable, but US District Court Judge Leonard Davis ruled yesterday (PDF)
that this one isn't novel enough to deserve patent protection. Why not?
Because the "invention" claimed was just a decision to round numbers
before, instead of after, an arithmetic computation. Seriously.
Loss comes in patent-friendly court
Uniloc's loss is remarkable for being so decisive—its complaint was
tossed before it even reached trial—and because it came in a court notorious for being friendly to patent holders. Davis (whose son is the lawyer for another patent troll with cases in East Texas, Lodsys) is the chief judge in the district and recently upheld a $368.2 million verdict against Apple in a case involving FaceTime. Uniloc's patent,
filed in 1995 and granted in 1999, covers a "Method and apparatus for
handling overflow and underflow in processing floating-point numbers."
Uniloc acquired this patent in January 2012 from inventor James Brakefield, who works as an expert witness.
This is not the primary patent Uniloc uses to sue vendors, so the rest
of its lawsuits will not be impeded by Davis's decision.
The patent asserted against Rackspace has 28 claims, with 20 of them
being connected to claim #1, the only one Uniloc asserted. The judge's
ruling knocks out most of the patent by striking down the first claim,
which reads:
A method for processing floating-point numbers, each
floating-point number having at least a sign portion, an exponent
portion and a mantissa portion, comprising the steps of: converting a
floating-point number memory register representation to a floating-point
register representation; rounding the converted floating-point number;
performing an arithmetic computation upon said rounded number resulting
in a new floating-point value; and converting the resulting new
floating-point register value to a floating-point memory register
representation.
A floating point number is a number with a decimal point and a certain number of significant figures.
Uniloc was seeking a jury trial, but Davis granted Rackspace's motion
to dismiss the complaint entirely "for failure to allege infringement
of a patentable claim."
Rackspace is a customer of Red Hat, maker of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Rackspace has said it would "love to get rid of software patents," and Red Hat routinely defends itself and its customers
against patent attacks. In this case, Red Hat said it "provided
Rackspace’s defense as part of Red Hat’s commitment to standing behind
customers through Red Hat’s Open Source Assurance program."
Rackspace argued that the claim is unpatentable and Davis agreed. For
one thing, the claim fails the "machine-or-transformation" test because
it does not involve a machine, and the "the transformation portion of
the test is not satisfied by the conversion of a number from one format
to another," the judge wrote.
Rackspace also argued that the patent claim violates a Supreme Court
"prohibition against patenting mathematical formulas and abstract
ideas."
In describing just how simple the patent claim is, Davis summarized
it as follows: “Claim 1 is, in essence, a formula to 'solve mathematical
problems of converting one form of numerical representation to
another.' Claim 1 recites a four-step method for processing
floating-point numbers: (1) convert the floating-point number from a
'memory register representation' to a 'register representation'; (2)
round the result; (3) 'perform an arithmetic computation' on the rounded
result to obtain a new floating-point number; and (4) convert the
result back to a 'memory register representation.'"
The "novelty" of the claim "is the rounding of the floating-point number before, rather than after, the arithmetic computation."
"Claim 1, then, is merely an improvement on a mathematical formula,"
Davis wrote. "Even when tied to computing, since floating-point numbers
are a computerized numeric format, the conversion of floating-point
numbers has applications across fields as diverse as science, math,
communications, security, graphics, and games. Thus, a patent on Claim 1
would cover vast end uses, impeding the onward march of science. Under Flook, the improvement over the standard is insufficient to validate Claim 1’s otherwise unpatentable subject matter."
"Flook" refers to Parker v. Flook,
a 1978 case in which "the Supreme Court found unpatentable claims
directed to an improved method for calculating, using a generalized
formulation for converting numbers," Davis wrote.
Not Uniloc's only patent—far from it
Unfortunately for the many companies sued by Uniloc, the patent in
the Rackspace case is just a small piece of its portfolio containing
more than 50 patents. Red Hat told Ars that it is not aware of any other
lawsuits based on this patent.
Uniloc's most important patent is #5,490,216,
covering a system for software registration designed to prevent
software piracy. The '216 patent has been used in dozens of lawsuits.
The company's website promises continued battles based on this
patent. "In 2003 Uniloc filed a patent infringement lawsuit against
Microsoft for the unauthorized use of a product activation anti-piracy
system on Microsoft’s Windows XP and Office XP products," the company states.
"In 2009 a Federal Court jury in Rhode Island found Microsoft guilty of
willful infringement and ordered Microsoft to pay Uniloc $388 Million
in damages. ... Later that year the judge in the case overturned the
jury’s verdict. Uniloc has appealed this decision to the US Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Nevertheless, the Court maintained that
Uniloc’s patent is valid, so Uniloc will continue to protect its patent
and defend its intellectual property." Microsoft and Uniloc settled last year.
Uniloc isn't kidding about pursuing new lawsuits. It filed 12 new
suits on March 21 in the Eastern District of Texas against Activision
Blizzard, Aspyr Media, Digital River, Electronic Arts, McAfee, Pervasive
Software, Sony, Symantec, Gear Software, Sage Software, SolarWinds, and
Wildpackets. Those suits are based on the '216 patent asserted against
Microsoft.
Uniloc Luxembourg filed 16 suits in the Eastern District in December
2012 and about a dozen in October 2012. Several of those cases have been
dismissed by Uniloc, probably due to settlements.
While Uniloc's litigation days aren't over, Red Hat and Rackspace
declared yesterday's ruling to be an important victory against companies
that file patent lawsuits despite not making any technology of their
own.
“NPE [non-practicing entity] patent lawsuits are a chronic and
serious problem for the technology industry," Red Hat Assistant General
Counsel Rob Tiller said
in an announcement. "Such lawsuits, which are frequently based on
patents that should never have been granted, typically cost millions of
dollars to defend... Courts can help address this problem by determining
the validity of patents early and with appropriate care. In this case,
Judge Davis did just that, and set a great example for future cases.”
“The early dismissal of this case delivers a clear message that
patent assertion entities can’t expect quick settlements on weak claims,
a tactic many patent assertion entities use to monetize questionable
patents,” Rackspace General Counsel Alan Schoenbaum said. “We salute Red
Hat for its outstanding defense and for standing firm with its
customers in defeating this patent troll. We hope that many more of
these spurious software patent lawsuits will be dismissed on similar
grounds."
We've asked Uniloc if it will appeal the case, but we haven't heard back yet. Listing image by ABCTeach.
This
weekend, many of the NBA’s sharpest minds will gather at the Sloan
Sports Analytics Conference, an increasingly splashy affair held each
year by MIT, and now sponsored by ESPN. They’ve come a long way. Just
over a decade ago, several of the most prominent among them first
gathered in a much humbler spot: a Yahoo Groups message board called
“APBR Analysis,” for the Association of Professional Basketball
Researchers.
In the very first post, on Feb. 10, 2001, at 10:32 p.m., a former Cal
Tech hoopster turned statistics Ph.D. named Dean Oliver laid out an
ambitious agenda of 12 issues. “To start off the group, I think that it
is most appropriate to identify some of the outstanding questions in
basketball,” he wrote. Some questions were practical. “Does Hack-a-Shaq
work?” “Why has Charlotte had such a good record without Derrick Coleman
in the lineup and a mediocre one with him in?” Others were more
theoretical. “What additional statistics could be taken to improve
individual defensive evaluation?”
Oliver and his cohorts on
the message board wrestled with these questions and countless others,
logging on at all hours to debate the relative merits of Allen Iverson
or how best to calculate a new metric called usage rate. Long before
Moneyball author Michael Lewis wrote a New York Times Magazine cover
story on the topic, the board wondered why Shane Battier had such a
positive impact on his teams despite not appearing to be all that good
at basketball. The message board was a veritable think tank. “You could
tell that this was a place where there was going to be a serious level
of discussion about NBA statistics,” says Kevin Pelton, who would become
one of the original writers for Basketball Prospectus. “It was
literally the only place in the world it was happening.”
The NBA
establishment quickly took notice. Oliver, who published the seminal
Basketball on Paper in 2003, seven months after Moneyball hit stores,
was hired full time by the Seattle Supersonics in 2004. Another
frequenter of the board, John Hollinger, was hired the following year by
ESPN-and recently became a vice president of basketball operations for
the Memphis Grizzlies. Hollinger’s ESPN gig was filled by Pelton, who,
after making his name at Basketball Prospectus did a consulting stint
with the Indiana Pacers’ front office. Roland Beech, who created the
popular website 82 games, was hired by the Dallas Mavericks in 2009 as
director of basketball analytics. (His boss, Mark Cuban, is regularly
one of the biggest names at the Sloan conference.)
As soon as each
statistician joined an NBA squad, sharing in public became
off-limits-and so, gradually, the think tank closed shop. What were the
teams paying for, after all, if their new stat gurus were just posting
their ideas online for the other 29 franchises to read? This has had a
paradoxical result: Because NBA teams embraced advanced stats so
quickly, progress on basketball analytics has actually slowed down. The
top minds are now all working in silos, not only unable to collaborate
but actually competing against each other.
Major League Baseball
teams were hidebound enough to ignore Bill James and sabermetrics for a
full quarter century-as a result, he and others hashed out ideas out in
open, public forums. By the time MLB executives finally embraced
advanced baseball statistics, the movement was fully formed.
But
advanced basketball stats were just getting started when NBA teams tuned
in. And though many of those teams are now collecting the kind of data
that outsiders can only dream of, they lack the manpower to fully
harness it. Certainly there have been advances: Teams’ internal stats
generally blow away what’s available publicly. But they haven’t come as
fast as they otherwise might have. And we, as fans, don’t understand the
game as well as we could.
Dean Oliver estimates that between 22
and 24 NBA teams currently employ some form of analytics, with about
one-half that number seriously incorporating their findings into the
team’s approach to the game. Most analytics departments are small, which
makes it hard to tell when your research is headed down the wrong path,
says Aaron Barzilai, a former MIT player who started the site
BasketballValue before joining the Philadelphia 76ers in November as
their Director of Basketball Analytics. “You often just don’t have a ton
of feedback on how you’re doing, especially if you’re one person on a
team by yourself,” he says. And asking for help isn’t an option.
Desperate for any competitive advantage, NBA teams guard their data-and
whatever conclusions they draw from it-with about the same paranoia as a
government official sitting on bomb codes. When asked how many analysts
he employs, Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey, the first
stats acolyte to be hired to run a franchise, replies, “It’s not
something we talk about.”
Fans have lost out in the bargain, too,
with the newest ideas mostly staying locked up inside team offices. Just
glancing at the homepages of leading advanced stat sites makes it clear
they’re not getting enough love-BasketballValue and 82games both look
like they were designed by a 14-year-old sometime in 1998. Barzilai
hasn’t updated the numbers on his site since the Sixers hired him, and
while the stats 82games remain current, Beech stopped posting articles
there when he joined the Mavericks. Hollinger’s analysis, too, has now
disappeared behind the league’s veil. NBA.com just launched a much
prettier stats portal, complete with advanced metrics-but what’s on the
site pales in comparison to what’s available behind closed doors.
Oliver,
now back out of the league and working for ESPN, says that he’s
particularly frustrated by the lack of headway that’s been made on one
of the first problems he posed on the Yahoo message board: What new
metrics could be created to quantify individual defensive performance?
The last decade has seen tremendous progress in understanding the
offensive side of the floor, but defense-where players must constantly
rotate and cover for each other-presents a much knottier problem. Oliver
believes that technology is providing the raw data to solve it, but all
those NBA stat gurus working in isolation against each other aren’t
close to cracking the code.
Where is that raw data coming from?
Cameras that weigh about a pound and can fit in the palm of your hand.
They’re provided by STATS, the global information behemoth, as part of
its SportVU program, and they currently hang in the rafters belonging to
15 different NBA franchises, six per arena. They record everything: How
far and how fast a player runs during the game, how many dribbles he
takes when he has the ball, where he shoots from, the arc of his shot,
whom he’s passing to, whom he’s not passing to, the spots where he get
his rebounds, the spots where others get his rebounds.
It’s
endless. For each second of game play, the SportVU cameras capture the
location on the court of the ball and each player 25 times, according to
Brian Kopp, a VP at STATS. “You have 1 million data records per game.”
STATS
acquired SportVU in 2008 from an Israeli company that had originally
designed it for soccer. This is the system’s third year in the NBA since
being recalibrated for basketball. STATS charges teams from $75,000 to
$100,000 per season for SportVU, and the program has grown in that time
from four initial teams to now half the league. The result is one of the
largest and richest data sets not just in sports, but in the world.
Kirk
Goldsberry, a visiting scholar at the Harvard Center for Geographic
Analysis who also uses spatial mapping to analyze the NBA for Grantland
and on his blog, Court Vision, is one of the few civilians who’s been
granted access to any of the SportVU data. He’s working with another
Harvard professor, statistician Luke Bornn, and four Harvard and MIT
Ph.D. students in a semester-long project to break some of it down. “We
look at that data and we say this isn’t just good data, this is the best
space-time data,” Goldsberry says. “It’s just an incredible amount of
information, regardless of whether it’s about NBA or anything else …
There’s very few people who have ever seen any data like this.”
If
six people from Harvard and MIT have their hands full with SportVU, you
can only imagine how teams in the NBA are dealing with it. STATS
provides standard reports to help teams understand the information, but
those only scratch at the surface of what’s possible. “I’d like to think
we’re ahead,” Morey says, “but it is a whole new overwhelming amount of
data. You need to take a different approach to it and I don’t think
anyone has the killer app there-the thing that comes out of that data
that gives someone a very significant edge.”
Many, including
Oliver, believe the killer app is hiding in there somewhere. The
challenge is that there’s so much information, it’s easy to get lost.
“It’s like saying you’re going to Wal-Mart or Ikea to get something,”
offers Tommy Sheppard, the Washington Wizards vice president of
basketball administration. “You better know what you want, or you’re
going to walk out with a ton of s***.” That each franchise is working
alone-and against each other-compounds the problem. Goldsberry describes
it as 30 “micro-CIAs,” all racing against each other to “procure
actionable intelligence out of these haystacks of vast data.”
In
theory, the Sloan conference is where all these analysts now gather to
learn from each other. But they’re no longer working together, as they
once did on that Yahoo message board. Daryl Morey admits that, from an
academic perspective, it would be fun to drop the iron curtain dividing
all of the franchises so that everybody could work in unison to hash out
what’s probably the greatest data challenge in the history of sports.
“Maybe someday when we all get fired we could get together, but right
now our jobs are to win for our teams, so we focus on that,” he says.
“Our businesses aren’t for the public domain. Knowledge in general will
slow down, but hopefully knowledge that gives us an edge will not.” Jason Schwartz is a senior editor at Boston magazine.
There's No IP In Team: How Protectionism Is Holding Back Sports Metrics (And Everything Else)
from the collaboration-is-key dept
If there is a single place where the sports and the geek worlds collide, it is undoubtedly in statistics.
It's long been said that baseball is a thinking man's game, in part
because of the chess game that is built into its very skeleton, but also
because of the role that math and numbers play in terms of making
decisions on each team based on individual situations. By this time,
only those that work really hard at staying away from baseball will fail
to recognize names like Bill James or Billy Beane.
The people now most responsible for constructing teams and their
strategies are people with advanced degrees in fields like economics and
statistics. What's interesting is how quickly advanced metrics, or
sabermetrics, have exploded in use and depth in the past ten years after
being almost universally derided by the major league clubs. Advanced
stats are everywhere in baseball now, from the early focus on
OPS (On-Base Plus Slugging) to WAR (Wins Above Replacement) to WRC+
(Weighted Runs Created) and so on. What's amazing is how far behind other sports
appear to be in developing their own advanced statistical systems. Take
basketball, for instance. It would be very easy to conclude that there
has been nothing resembling the development of baseball statistics in
professional basketball, otherwise we'd have heard about it and the
knowledge of it would have spread as wide as it has in baseball, right?
Well, no, actually, and the reason why is a lesson in how collaboration,
open development, and building off of the ideas of others provides the
most advanced outcome. Such is Jason Schwartz's conclusion in his lead up to the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference,
where at least some discussion of basketball metrics is occurring. That
conference, now an ESPN sponsored event, grew out of what was once a
simple Yahoo message board started in 2001 by basketball stats geeks.
Early on, as was the case with baseball metrics, the forum was open for
discussion, peer review, and the exchange of ideas. Unlike baseball,
however, the NBA knew all about Moneyball by 2003 and teams were
extremely interested in the potential of advanced metrics.
The NBA establishment quickly took notice. [Dean] Oliver, who
published the seminal Basketball on Paper in 2003, seven months after
Moneyball hit stores, was hired full time by the Seattle Supersonics in
2004. Another frequenter of the board, John Hollinger, was hired the
following year by ESPN - and recently became a vice president of
basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies. Hollinger's ESPN gig
was filled by Pelton, who, after making his name at Basketball
Prospectus, did a consulting stint with the Indiana Pacers' front
office. Roland Beech, who created the popular website 82 games, was
hired by the Dallas Mavericks in 2009 as director of basketball
analytics. (His boss, Mark Cuban, is regularly one of the biggest names
at the Sloan conference.)
So you're probably thinking, "Great! The teams took notice in the early
stages, unlike what happened in baseball, meaning that the knowledge was
embraced!", right? Well, that's true, but the result was the severe
retardation of growth in basketball statistics. Why? Well, if you know
anything about how patents and intellectual property often function
today, you've probably already guessed.
As soon as each statistician joined an NBA squad, sharing in public became off-limits-and so, gradually, the think tank closed shop.
What were the teams paying for, after all, if their new stat gurus were
just posting their ideas online for the other 29 franchises to read?
This has had a paradoxical result: Because NBA teams embraced advanced
stats so quickly, progress on basketball analytics has actually slowed
down. The top minds are now all working in silos, not only unable to collaborate but actually competing against each other.
This is, again, the exact opposite of what occurred in baseball.
For baseball statistics, because teams were not impressed by the idea of
advanced metrics, favoring instead old-timey scouts on the ground, the
best minds were free to collaborate with one another, forming what are
now some of the most prestigious sports stats think tanks in history,
like Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs.
Major League Baseball teams were hidebound enough to ignore Bill
James and sabermetrics for a full quarter century-as a result, he and
others hashed out ideas out in open, public forums. By the time MLB
executives finally embraced advanced baseball statistics, the movement
was fully formed.
If you want to draw the obvious analogy, baseball statistics were
developed on an open source model, while basketball has mostly been
proprietary. As Schwartz notes, it isn't necessarily a lack of knowledge
that is the resulting problem, but rather the issue is that this
knowledge is all segmented throughout individual teams and nobody has
the collective manpower to use it to its full potential.
Many, including Oliver, believe the killer app is hiding in there
somewhere. The challenge is that there's so much information, it's easy
to get lost. "It's like saying you're going to Wal-Mart or Ikea to get
something," offers Tommy Sheppard, the Washington Wizards vice president
of basketball administration. "You better know what you want, or you're
going to walk out with a ton of s***." That each franchise is working
alone - and against each other - compounds the problem. Goldsberry
describes it as 30 "micro-CIAs," all racing against each other to
"procure actionable intelligence out of these haystacks of vast data."
Sound familiar? Now, here's where it gets really fun for the purposes of
our analogy. The quality of team construction in baseball is leaps and
bounds ahead of where it was 20 years ago, in massively large part
because of the explosion of advanced statistics and the resulting
understanding of the game. Think about that for a moment. Even as these
teams compete with one another, because of this open source statistical
model for knowledge of the game, every team is better off for it.
The game has universally advanced. Basketball, however, under the
proprietary model, has not. While there have been rule changes that have
influenced how the game is played, player evaluation is still
essentially the same game it was 20 years, or even 40 years ago -- and
thus you still end up with teams that look good on paper based on the
old stats, but fail to perform well as a team. Why? Well, perhaps
because the best minds aren't collaborating to advance the game through
knowledge, and thus they're measuring the wrong things (and optimizing
for the wrong things as well).
Thinking of each league as a microcosm of society and industry, the
implications for intellectual property in general, and patents in
particular, are somewhat breathtaking.
Deal by emerging nations meeting in South Africa one of several moves to challenge Western-backed monetary institutions.
Last Modified: 27 Mar 2013 01:39
The BRICS grouping of emerging powers have reached a
deal to establish a development bank that would rival Western-backed
institutions.
"It's done," South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said after
meeting with his counterparts from Brazil, Russia, India and China.
BRICS FACTS
Economic data shows that the grouping of Brazil, China, India, Russia
and South Africa now account for 25 percent of global GDP and 40
percent of the world's population. China has become the informal leader of the group. With a GDP of $8.25 trillion in 2012, the IMF estimates
that the Chinese economy will climb by a whopping 8.2 percent in
2013.It remains the globe's most-populated country, with 1.34 billion
inhabitants. Brazil: With a GDP of $2.425 trillion in 2012,
Brazil is the world's seventh largest economy. It holds only a modest
place in world trade activity, however, and experienced sluggish growth
of one percent last year. Russia: Ranking ninth on the list of the world's
biggest economies, Russia accumulated a GDP of $1.953 trillion in 2012,
boosted mainly by its gas exports, making it the world's eighth largest
exporter. India: Despite its population of 1.24 billion, India
remains a smaller player among the world's economies, falling into a
10th place with a GDP worth 1.946 trillion. South Africa: Smallest of the BRICS economies is
South Africa. Placing 41st world exporters, the country has a GDP of
$390 billion and a population of 50.5 million.
"We made very good progress, the leaders will announce the details,"
he added, just hours before the opening of a BRICS summit in the South
African port city of Durban on Tuesday.
But Russian
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that the group's ministers were
unable to agree on some of the details of the project.
"A decision on the location of the bank and funding still needs to be made," he told reporters in Durban, adding that further steps would be required before the BRICS development bank could be created.
Together the BRICS account for 25 percent of global GDP and 40 percent of the world's population.
But members say institutions such as the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund and the UN Security Council are not changing
fast enough to reflect their new-found clout.
Disputes remain over what the new bank will do, with all sides trying
to mould the institution to their own foreign or domestic policy goals,
and with each looking for assurances of an equitable return on their
initial investment of about $10bn.
China and Brazil also signed an agreement at Tuesday's meeting to do
billions of dollars of trade in their local currencies, as the
BRICS nations work to lessen their dependence on the US dollar and euro.
Finance
ministers Lou Jiwei of China and Guido Mantega of Brazil signed the
deal, amid the continuing euro crisis and little signs of growth in the
West. 'Positive headway'
Xi Jinping, who has underscored the growing importance of the group
by making Durban his first summit as China's president, had earlier
expressed hopes for "positive headway" in establishing the bank.
South
African President Jacob Zuma has lauded the summit as a means of
addressing his country's chronic economic problems, including high
unemployment.
"BRICS provides an opportunity for South Africa to promote its competitiveness," Zuma said in a speech on the eve of the summit.
"It is an opportunity to move further in our drive to promote
economic growth and confront the challenge of poverty, inequality and
unemployment that afflicts our country."
In a keynote speech in Tanzania on Monday, Xi pledged Beijing's
"sincere friendship" with the continent, and a relationship that
respects Africa's "dignity and independence".
Updated, March 28:
A number of readers have requested to know exactly where in the HR 933
they might find the provision dubbed the “Monsanto Protection Act.” It
is Section 735 in the bill, the full text of which can be read here.
Original post:
Slipped into the Agricultural Appropriations Bill, which passed through
Congress last week, was a small provision that’s a big deal for
Monsanto and its opponents. The provision protects genetically modified
seeds from litigation in the face of health risks and has thus been
dubbed the “Monsanto Protection Act” by activists who oppose the biotech
giant. President Barack Obama signed the spending bill, including the
provision, into law on Tuesday
Since the act’s passing, more than 250,000 people
have signed a petition opposing the provision and a rally, consisting
largely of farmers organized by the Food Democracy Now network,
protested outside the White House Wednesday. Not only has anger been
directed at the Monsanto Protection Act’s content, but the way in which
the provision was passed through Congress without appropriate review by
the Agricultural or Judiciary Committees. The biotech rider instead was
introduced anonymously as the larger bill progressed — little wonder
food activists are accusing lobbyists and Congress members of backroom
dealings.
The
Food Democracy Now and the Center for Food are directing blame at the
Senate Appropriations Committee and its chairman, Sen. Barbara Mikulski,
D-Md. According to reports, many members of Congress were apparently
unaware that the “Monsanto Protection Act” even existed within the
spending bill, HR 933; they voted in order to avert a government
shutdown.
“It sets a terrible precedent,” noted
the International Business Times. “Though it will only remain in effect
for six months until the government finds another way to fund its
operations, the message it sends is that corporations can get around
consumer safety protections if they get Congress on their side.
Furthermore, it sets a precedent that suggests that court challenges are
a privilege, not a right.”
Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon,
covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow
her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com.
More Natasha Lennard.
Nobody has done more to expose the infinite ways in which the American
economy is rigged to benefit those at the top than Pulitzer
Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston. His rigorously researched
books –Perfectly Legal, Free Lunch and now his latest, The Fine Print, are
not recommended for people with egalitarian views and high blood
pressure – they’re every bit as maddening to contemplate as they are
informative.
Last week, AlterNet caught up with Johnston by phone. Below is a lightly edited transcript of our discussion. Joshua
Holland: David, for years you’ve reported how those who can afford the
right accountants game this labyrinthian and opaque tax-code of ours.
How surreal has it been for you to observe the amount of political
conflict we’ve faced over the past few years over returning the top
marginal rates to the same rate they were during the Clinton era —
taking them from 35 percent to 39 percent?
David Cay
Johnston: I am actually heartened, Josh. I think that we’re starting to
see the end of those Chicago School economic theories. (By the way, I
went to the Chicago School 40 years ago, but I did not drink the
Kool-Aid.) The reality is people are now, finally — and I can claim some
of the credit for this through my books and my reporting — people are
looking around and saying, “Wait a minute! Starting back in 1980, I was
promised that I was going to have a better life. We’d all prosper. Yet
all the gains are going to the top.”
Let me give you a stunning
number I reported the other day. From 1966 – when Lyndon Johnson was
president — to 2011, 45 years later, the bottom 90 percent of Americans’
average income, as reported on tax returns, went up by a stunning $59 —
almost no change at all. If you measure that $59 increase for the vast
majority of Americans as one inch, then on the same scale, the incomes
of those in the top 10 percent went up by 168 feet. The top one percent,
888 feet. The plutocrats — the Mitt Romney crowd, the top one percent
of the top one percent? Their incomes rose by almost five miles relative
to that one inch. JH: That is remarkable. We are talking about an economy that simply doesn’t work for 90% of working people in this country.
DCJ: My latest book, The Fine Print, looks at this in a different way. The first two books – Perfectly Legal is about taxes, Free Lunch is about all the subsidies we give to rich people. The Fine Print is
about all these laws the mainstream media has either not reported on,
or reported on in the most superficial and disconnected ways, that are
designed to destroy market competition and replace it with monopolies,
oligopolies, duopolies — with rules that allow the biggest companies to
raise prices and reduce services.
There are 6 million corporations
in America, but 2,600 of them, a tiny number out of 6 million, own 80
percent of the business assets in America. JH: One of the things that, I think, really will jump out to readers as they dig into The Fine Print is
the way that you looked into all these little nickel-and-dime charges
that corporations levy on us constantly, often thanks to deregulation.
We tend to take them for granted, because when you look at your phone
bill – and you talk a lot about telecoms in the book – 35 cents here and
a 60-cent charge there, they don’t seem so pressing, but they really
add up.What’s going on with that?
DCJ:
Let me give you a real killer number here. If you can get a law passed
to collect a penny a day from everybody in America — and I show how one
industry did this, the pipeline industry got themselves exempted from
the corporate income tax, but they still get to collect it in their
monopoly rates – if you can get a penny a day from everybody in America,
at the end of the year you’ll have over a billion dollars.
What
this is about is very simple. If you can get the rules rewritten in your
favor… that means you can raise prices, you can refuse service wherever
it’s not profitable. You could refuse services as long as you don’t
say, “I don’t want to serve you because you’re a lesbian,” or, “You
belong to the wrong religion,” you can refuse service.
You know,
Americans had be sold on this notion that we are number one in the
world. But by some measures, our healthcare system is behind Cuba. We
pay almost the highest prices in the world for our Internet. If you buy a
triple-play package from one of the American cable or telephone
companies – Internet, cable TV and telephone — on average, you pay $160 a
month with taxes. If you go to France, the same package is $40 to $70.
There are some variations, but the range is $40 to $70. By the way, here
you get one foreign country to call for free. There you get 70. Here
you get American television. There you get worldwide television. Here
you get an Internet that’s the equivalent of a two-lane Irish road,
where you have to stop and wait every now and then, because the sheep
are on the path. There you get an information superhighway.
We are now 29th in the world in the speed of our Internet. We are behind Bulgaria, of all places.
We
are falling behind left and right. We have a Congress that just cut
money for scientific research. We’ve got people who are idiots. I mean
that word very clearly, “idiots,” like Sarah Palin going around saying,
“Why are we paying for fruit fly research?” Anybody who understands
science knows that massive advancements in human knowledge – knowledge
that has saved lives — has come from studying fruit flies. If you’re an
idiot like Sarah Palin, if you’re Donald Trump, if you’re Senator Cruz
from Texas, then you don’t get it.
We really have to get a society
that’s based on science and knowledge, that has an economic system
that’s based on competitive markets with protections for consumers.
While the rest of the world’s going to run right by us, we’re falling
behind! JH: David, you detailed very, very well how we are
constantly being ripped off. It’s a death of 1,000 cuts. Why is that?
The story that we’ve gotten, for years and years and years, is that we
have less regulation in order to spur competition. Ultimately, that
competition was supposed to benefit consumers. What’s going wrong?
DCJ:
I want more competition. Here’s what really goes on, however. We put up
barriers to competition, and in fact, Wall Street has institutionalized
this concept. Morningstar, they’re a big financial advice firm. They
tell people that they should grade companies and decide whether to buy
their stock, based on something called a “moat index.” Moat, like around
a castle? A moat index asks, “What barriers has the government erected
to keep anybody else from competing against that company?” Indeed, as I
show in my book, you could get rich if you invest in those companies
that have regulatory moats — where under the name of deregulation, we
have insulated them from the rigors of the market.
By the way,
there is no such thing as deregulation. There is only new regulation.
Everything is regulated. I tell my students — I teach law and graduate
business students one day a week at Syracuse University — I tell them,
“Here’s how thoroughly regulated your life is. This university has a
rule regulating how many times you can ask somebody out on a date before
it’s harassment. Baseball regulates how many stitches are on the
baseball. Everything is regulated.”
Under the Chicago School
theories, we get new rules that encourage lying, cheating, stealing and
fraud. In fact, one of the leading professors from that school, Dean
Daniel Fischel, has written the bestselling textbook on securities law
in America. You know what that book tells law students? That there is no
need for a fraud statute in the securities markets. By the way, his
clients were Enron, Michael Milken and Charles Keating of the Keating
Five — three of the biggest fraudsters of our time. Yet, that’s the
number-one selling textbook for law students on securities law. And it
says there’s no need in the securities to have a fraud statute. Think
about all the trouble we’re in because of the frauds that went on in the
dot-con era — not “dot-com,” but dot-con era — in the late ’90s.
Think
about the selling of mortgages, not so much to the consumers, but to
investors — particularly public pension-funds — by Wall Street, where
they lied through their teeth, where they faked documents and faked
records. Massive fraud and not a single prosecution of any significant
person today. Whereas during the savings and loan crisis [of the 1980s],
Bill Black got us 1,000 high-level felony convictions and 3,000
convictions overall.
As a parodist on the Internet pointed out,
“Where did that get Bill Black? He’s a professor at an obscure college
in the Midwest.” Whereas the people who looked the other way, look how
well they’re doing. JH: (Laughs) Yes, they’re all in the White House, at this point.
DCJ:
They literally are. Barack Obama has surrounded himself with people
from Wall Street. Remember when Glenn Beck was telling everybody Obama’s
not comfortable around white people? I went and looked at the White
House table of organization. (Laughs) I got to tell you, he was
surrounded by white people from Wall Street. JH: A lot of
the things that you detail in the book come down to companies that are
not profiting only by providing goods and services — traditional
transactions of a capitalist society — they’re deriving rents. Can you
explain what rent-seeking is and how it differs from productive
capitalism?
DCJ: First of all, everybody is a
rent-seeker. Rent-seeking means you try to get paid more than you
deserve, more than you should be paid. We have lots of research on this.
For example, I know you’ll be shocked to hear that people who are
good-looking and taller tend to be better paid than people who are
unattractive and shorter. A shocking thought, but it’s a reality in the
world.
In the case of corporations, what they do is they get rules
passed that prevent competitors from coming into the markets, so they
can charge higher prices. As I said, all you need is a penny a day
extra, from every person in America, and you have an extra billion
dollars at the end of the year. This problem of rent-seeking is, then,
compounded by our campaign finance system. What big business — and
that’s those 2,600 companies which own 80 percent of the business assets
in America – what those 2,600 companies have figured out, and their
leaders have figured out, because people running these firms are very
smart people, is that it is easier to mine Congress and the state
legislatures for gold than to go out and earn it in the marketplace.
Sometimes all you need is to get one word put in to a regulation.
For
the lobbyists, they take a very long-term view of this. They get a
little change made this year and they say, “It’s no big thing!” A couple
of years later, they get another one, and another one, and another one.
After 40 years of doing this, you’ve had a very successful career.
You’re very wealthy. You can retire. You’ve also managed to totally
screw your fellow Americans. JH: I want to talk about one
of the practices you describe that I find to be… I don’t know, I’d say
shocking, but I’m pretty hard to shock these days. You wrote about this
in a Reuters column — how in 16 states, big corporations collect state
taxes from their employees and pocket them.
DCJ: It’s now
up to 21 states. In 21 states, they’ve passed a law that says that
taxes withheld from your paycheck, for the state, can be kept by the
company. Now, every employer doesn’t get this windfall — you have to
have to get a deal from the government to do it — 2,700 big companies,
every big company you’ve ever heard of, General Electric, Procter and
Gamble, Deutsche Bank, you name it, they’ve got these deals, where they
get to keep the taxes. Billions of dollars are diverted this way. You
know the best thing for the companies about this? JH: What’s that?
DCJ:
The workers don’t know, because once the taxes are withheld, the state
government treats you as having paid your taxes. You paid your taxes.
They just then give a credit to let the company keep the taxes. I’ve
called journalists. I’ve called union people who negotiate union
contracts. And they say, “What are you talking about?” I showed them the
work I’ve done. They go, “Oh my God!” They have no idea that this is
what’s happening, and the fact that it’s spread from the 16 states when I
first wrote about this and it’s now grown to 21 – eventually, all of
the 44 states with income taxes are going to allow this, if we don’t put
a stop to it.
I really, seriously hope people read The Fine Print. I wrote this so you’d know about these things. If you don’t read it, you’re not going to know.
It is time “We the People of the United States” hold our elected and appointed officials to this rigorous standard
Most Americans incorrectly believe Supreme Court Justices are
appointed for life and therefore somehow immune from public
accountability, but this understanding is contrary to the Constitution
and detrimental to our Republic.
Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution states, “The Judges,
both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices
during good Behaviour.” Accordingly, it is for a term of good behavior
our federal judges hold their office, not life, and they can be removed
from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or
other high crimes and misdemeanors.
Misdemeanors, as the founders defined them, includes attempts to
subvert the Constitution through misinterpretation or other methods.
George Mason explained that impeachment is for “attempts to subvert the
Constitution,” and Elbridge Jerry considered “mal-administration” as
grounds for impeachment. Justice Joseph Story listed, among other
reasons for impeachment, “unconstitutional opinions”
and “attempts to subvert the fundamental law and introduce arbitrary
power.” Alexander Hamilton and Justice Story defined “misdemeanor” as
“mal-conduct” and Justices James Wilson and Story described
“misdemeanors” as “non-statutory”, which means they are offenses for
which no legal code exists.
From all these definitions and descriptions, it is clear the
Constitutional framers intended misdemeanors to cover acts of political
misbehavior, because the framers wanted to ensure every elected and
appointed official at the national level is accountable to the people.
A
common legal maxim maintains all contracts are to be construed
according to the meaning of the parties at the time of making them. To
interpret any contract contrary to its originally understood meaning is
deceitful, subversive and criminal.
When the State ratifying committees and the private citizens of each
State debated ratifying the Constitution, they did so under a commonly
understood meaning to its words and clauses. Eventually, all thirteen
original States ratified the Constitution and joined in union not only
for their generation, but on behalf of all future generations.
Federal judges who interpret the Constitution in a manner that
distorts this original intended meaning are altering the Constitution by
circumventing the amendment
process in Article V, which is a breach of our national contract. Any
time the Constitution is changed, it is to the advantage of one group of
people and to the detriment of another, because any change would either
add another requirement to, or take away liberty from some group in
society. If this is done without three fourths of the States agreeing to
a change it is a despotic “encroachment and oppression” upon those it
disadvantages, which is an illegal act deserving of punishment.
This criminal behavior is not just limited to purposeful
misinterpretation of the Constitution, but extends, as pointed out by
Justice Story, to referencing a different source of law other than what
our founders used in establishing the Constitution and in defining
boundaries to rights that are contrary to the understanding of that law.
Common law, as defined by William Blackstone, was not only the foundation of the American legal system, it was the Rosetta stone
by which every American during the founding era understood law. As
such, every word and clause in the Constitution, unless otherwise stated
in the document, must be interpreted according to this pre-constitutional common law.
It is a non-statutory criminal act for those in public office, who swore
an oath to uphold the Constitution, to reference another source of law
or limit or extend rights based on other principles than
pre-constitutional common law. For example, when considering the subject
of torture, Justice Ginsburg referenced foreign law in her opinion and for this reason alone, she should no longer be on the bench.
To some, breaking “the supreme Law of the Land” may seem like an
irrelevant procedural offense, especially if one likes the change. The
danger in this is that it sets a bad precedent and when a change is made
that people do not like, they have very little to no legal recourse to
correct it.
If we, as a nation allow elected and appointed officials to violate
the Constitution through its misinterpretation then every law in our
nation will be viewed in the same way and law will be used against the
people instead of for them. This is why the President, Vice President
and all civil Officers of the United States, who have taken an oath to
uphold the Constitution, must be held to a rigorous standard of
Constitutional interpretation based on original intent. Accordingly, if
Supreme Court Justices and Federal judges cannot logically support their opinions
by connecting them to constitutional original intent or
pre-constitutional common law and refuse to change them, then they need
to be impeached and found guilty.
Implementing such a standard may not be easy, but it is not
impossible. It begins with American citizens understanding original
intent, voting for public officers based on this criterion, and
demanding Federal supreme and inferior court judges are impeached if they unrepentantly cross this line in their opinions.
Elected officials will usually do what the majority of their voting
constituents demand, therefore if voters from a simple majority of
congressional districts across the nation demand their Representative
impeach Federal judges, the Representatives will. Additionally, if
voters in enough States demand their Senators convict an impeached civil
officer, the Senators also will. This would send a very loud and clear
message to Federal judges to stop legislating from the bench and to uphold constitutional original intent.
It is time “We the People of the United States” hold our elected and
appointed officials to this rigorous standard. We must do this even when
we individually do not like the outcome an original intent
interpretation provides. Doing anything else will undermine our Republic
and either turn us into a democracy, in which we are subjected to the
tyranny of the majority, or it will allow the few to impose their will
upon the rest, by which we will be subjected to the tyranny of the
minority.
CDR Matthew W. Shipley, graduated from Navy
recruit training in January 1985, Electronics Technician “A” School in
October 1985, Naval Academy Preparatory School in 1987 and the United
States Naval Academy in 1991.
Shipley’s tours include Assistant Platoon Commander at SEAL Team EIGHT,
test article Officer-in-Charge of a Mark V Special Operations Craft
(SOC) at United States Special Operations Command, Operations Officer at
Special Boat Unit TWENTY, Mk V SOC Liaison Officer to Special
Operations Command European Command, Naval Special Warfare Task Unit
(NSWTU) Commander for a Mediterranean Amphibious Ready Group, and
Platoon Commander at SEAL Team EIGHT.
As a reservist, Shipley served as Executive Officer of Navy Reserve
Naval Special Warfare Group TWO Detachment 309, as Executive Officer of
SEAL Team THREE deployed to Fallujah, Iraq in 2006, as NSWTU Commander
Manda Bay, Kenya in Oct 2006 – Mar 2007, and as the Commanding Officer
of SEAL Unit EIGHTEEN in Little Creek, Virginia from Dec 2009 – Dec
2011. He retired from the US Navy in Jan 2013.
Shipley’s awards include: Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious Defense Service
Medal, Joint Service Commendation Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Navy
Achievement Medal and various unit, campaign and service awards.
Source: Etech
One of the world’s largest military contractors, Raytheon, has
developed a system that gives soldiers superhuman hearing. The system,
called 3-D Audio, essentially allows soldiers to hear exactly where
threats are coming from, and what kind of threat it is — a rocket, gunfire, a Molotov cocktail — just like Marvel Comics’ Daredevil’s radar sense.
If this sounds a bit like your home entertainment’s surround sound
system, or your fancy pair of 7.1 surround sound headphones, you’re not
wrong. In essence, Raytheon has built the mother of all directional
sound setups. As with most military gadgets, exact specifications are
hard to come by, but it sounds like 3-D Audio will feature a lot of
small, highly-directional speakers. ”Pilots for years have been
listening to three or four radios, and when two people would talk at the
same time, it would just come across garbled,” says Todd Lovell, a
Raytheon engineer. “With the 3-D Audio, we can put those radios in
different spatial locations relative to your head.” (See: Petman: The US Army’s latest lifelike robotic recruit.)
At the moment, a military plane or helicopter pilot receives warnings
and notifications through a visual display, either in the center of the
cockpit or on a head-up display (HUD). Processing this information
takes time and distracts the pilot from the task at hand: maneuvering
the aircraft. Throw in a bunch of radios, plus chatter from the
co-pilot, all coming through the same speakers, and you can begin to
imagine the difficulty of piloting a helicopter in a military setting.
With 3D-Audio,
all of these audio streams are split up into individual,
spatially-separated channels that the pilot can tune into — a bit like
picking out a single conversation in a crowded room. “You always hear
them from where they actually are,” says J.D. Hill, another Raytheon
engineer. “You don’t have to interpret anything. It’s all just about
reaction and what you hear.”
Raytheon doesn’t give us much info about how 3-D Audio handles
incoming threats, but the system apparently has enough resolution to
tell pilots exactly which direction the threat is coming from. In
essence, we’re talking about something that’s very similar to Dolby
Prologic IIz, which uses 10 speakers — including two over your head — to
provide very accurate surround sound for PC and console gamers. With
some clever software, and a few more speakers below, it should be
possible to produce a full, three-dimensional, high-resolution sound
field. It shouldn’t be necessary to have hundreds of speakers, much in
the same way that very directional sound can be produced by cleverly
altering the output from clusters of two or three speakers in a 7.1
setup. (See: US Army spent $2.7 billion on a battlefield computer that doesn’t work.)
The system also gives some kind of auditory clue as to the type of
threat, though again we don’t have any details. It might be as simple as
different threats generating different tones, or perhaps the system
actually recreates the sound of the incoming projectile. Furthermore,
3-D Audio will be used with Raytheon’s Advanced Distributed Aperture
System (see video below), which stitches together a bunch of external
video feeds on an internal display to give the pilot a much better view
of his surroundings. In short, it sounds like Raytheon is essentially
turning helicopters and airplanes into the world’s most accurate Call of Duty simulators. As long as the soldiers remember that they’re not actually playing a video game when they launch a Hellfire missile…
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