Slashdot Mirror

The problem is that you have to throw the rocks really, really hard. If you just lob them off the surface, you'll give the asteroid a minute nudge as the rock flies away, but there will still be a gravitational attraction between the asteroid and the piece of rock you threw. If they remain close together (and I'm speaking of close in astronomical terms), then they will just make up a two-body system with the center of mass precisely where it was before. Eventually, the asteroid and the cloud of rocks you threw will just attract each other back together right at the pre-existing center of mass, with no net change in orbit.

You need to fling the rocks far enough away so that some other body becomes more important to them, gravitationally speaking. Once the cloud of rocks get dragged away by the Earth, the Sun, Venus or some other convenient gravity well, they are far enough away from the asteroid to be really out of the picture in terms of influencing the asteroid's orbit.

If you start soon enough, you don't have to throw them so far, since the small rocks' orbits around the sun will decay sooner than the asteroid. However, you'll need a couple of dozen solar orbits to really make them fall inward much, taking them out of the asteroid's influence. Since each asteroid's orbit is almost two years, if you want to land a cannon and start flinging rocks, you need to be at T-60 years (30 orbits) for it to be effective. That means a working gas cannon/rail gun/etc., on the asteroid, flinging rocks, in 2040.

The Navy is thinking about a ship-mounted rail gun. This can fling a 15kg round at 2.5km/s, with a rate of fire of 6-12 rounds per minute. It would need a dedicated nuclear reactor, and a machined 5kg sabot for each round, and machined rounds, but nevermind. Assuming that this rail gun could fling 22kg rounds at 10 per minute at 1km/s, that's one metric ton every 10 minutes, or 6 metric tons an hour. If you can sustain that rate of fire for 12 hours out of every 24, day in, day out, that means you'd have flung your 1,000,000th metric ton 13,888 days after you start. That's 38 years of continuous operation. Land 10 rail guns, it's 3.8 years.

Keeping the gun(s) fed would be a challenge. Add in the operation and mainenance for the guns, the reactor, and the munitions manufacturing facility (where you turn rocks into rounds), the mining facility (where you dig up the rocks in the first place), not to mention the living quarters, and you've got all of the problems of a major space colony. Oh, and the cosmic rays would probably kill any astronaut who is on-site operating or repairing it.

As slashdotnickname said, that is at least part of it. But another part of it may mean (I fully admit I haven't RTFA, I just skimmed it), quiet may also mean that steps were taken to isolate the test chember from external noise sources (tunnel motor, lab equipment, students, etc) so that experimenters can be sure that the only noise is from the air flow, and not from something else.

As far as my background, I haven't stayed at a Holiday Inn for a while, but I did spend a year and a half working with MIT's subsonic anechoic wind tunnel before it was crated off to Wilmington to make room for the Pappalardo Labs.

Kind of interesting that the document starts with a rationale based on the Iraqis having tried to jam GPS during Gulf War II -- "adversaries will target space capabilities" -- and then quickly moves on to a "We've got to be ready to do that to our opponents" stance that's openly aggressive.

Lots of interesting details in there. A sidebar says over 80% of US military satellite communications during GW II used commercial satellites.

Page 49 of the 63 has a scant paragraph about legal considerations. Basically the M.O. is "check with a judge advocate to make sure it's okay."

Symantec copied the DOD definition of "force protection condition (formerly called THREATCON, now called FPCON) and hacked it into their ThreatCon definitions. It's not really relevant, but it sounds official and impressive.

Third, the "Security Debriefing Acknowledgement," which appears in the SF 189-A, but not the SF 189,is included in the SF 312. Its use is optional at the discretion of the implementing agency.

You were never in the service. I suspect that you play a little too much America's Army in your parents basement.

Third, the "Security Debriefing Acknowledgement," which appears in the SF 189-A, but not the SF 189,is included in the SF 312. Its use is optional at the discretion of the implementing agency.

You were never in the service. I suspect that you play a little too much America's Army in your parents basement.

It is ironic that you brought this up, because undoing the damage from a nuclear detonation in space is exactly one of the uses that are being studied for HAARP. See here, page 204, at the bottom.

Who would you have to talk to to get an SBIR solicitation out for more advanced spyware detection / removal methods?

Not sure I would be so quick to dismiss the DoD budgeting process or their fiscal responsibility. A few anectodal popular press examples of fiscal excess should not be taken as the rule. (It is actually debatable if the Gov't really did purchase $800 hammers etc, or "padded" the cost of these items to cover larger non-public expenses). So, the DoD method of Planning, Programming, and Budgeting is actually very robust and has a good deal of merit. The system is widely refered to as the PPBS. It has been around since the 1960's and was first introduced by then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. "The PPBS is a cyclic process containing three distinct but inter-related phases: planning, programming, and budgeting. The process provides for decisionmaking on future programs and permits prior decisions to be examined and analyzed from the viewpoint of the current environment (threat, political, economic, technological, and resources), and for the time period being addressed." There is both a 5-year and a 10-year horizon for this planning and budgeting. There is a connection between this process and the "big budget." And overruns, well that is another story. :) For the really curious, here is the process. http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/704 57.htm

Perhaps that may be true of civilian aircraft systems, but the DoD certainly has no objection to using Windows as a development environment for military aircraft. The Common Operating Environment may change that in the future, but MS Windows is definitely used at the moment.

The basic pay scale does not reflect the fact that both your housing (BAH) and subsistence (BAS, aka food) are provided for. If you live off the military base, this can take the form of tax-free money. Also, the amount of time served has a large effect on basic pay, especially after four years. Here are some numbers (BAH is based on location, these numbers are for San Diego 92055, and w/o dependents):

Rank..Yrs..Base.Pay...BAS......BAH.......Total
E1....<2...14320.80...3150.00..11088.00..28558.80
E4....2....19659.60...3150.00..11088.00..33897.60
E5....4....23893.20...3150.00..12204.00..39247.20
E6....6....27720.00...3150.00..12888.00..43758.00
E8....12...39675.60...3150.00..15276.00..58101.00

01....<2...27172.80...2102.76..12744.00..42019.56
03....4....48326.40...2102.76..16308.00..66737.16
04....8....57711.60...2102.76..18768.00..78582.36
o6....16...81687.60...2102.76..21240.00..105030.36

Now, what are those tax-free BAH dollars worth?

Tax A is the estimated Fed Tax for 2003 if base pay, BAS, and BAH were all taxed.
Tax B is the estimated Fed Tax for 2003 if only base pay and BAH are taxed.
Taxes calculated are based on single status with standard deduction.

Rank..Tax.A.....Tax.B.....Savings
E4....4104.00...2361.00...1743.00
E8....10154.00..6329.00...3825.00
03....12304.00..8229.00...4075.00
06....22824.40..18873.00..3951.40

Of course, you will never be paid for overtime, but there are other special pay items:
Family Separation Allowance $250 / month? (not sure about this one)
Hazardous Duty Pay $150 / month
Diving Pay $340 / month
Parachute, Flight Deck, Demolition, some Others $150 / month
if Qualified HALO, $225 / month
Submarine Pay (increases with cumulative years at sea): $75 - $595 / month
Sea Pay (increase with years at sea): $50 - $646 / month
Doctors and dentists get anywhere from 12,000 to 36,000 / year incentive pay.

All in all, I think it is a fair pay scale. Some may argue for more considering that lives are (sometimes) on the line. To each his own. There are other benefits... medical/dental, 401k equiv (TSP), education assistance, life insurance...

http://www.dtic.mil/jcs/j6/sponsor/pentroom.htm

Puppets or not, Morocco and Algeria were defended by French forces not German. You can google for Operation Torch or read a description on the DTIC site: Joint Power Projection: Operation Torch

The basic problem with the Osprey is the drivetrain. There are five gearboxes, three clutches, flexible shafts with multiple couplings, and in the Navy version, disconnect points where the wings fold. Most of this mechanical nightmare is part of the backup system through which one engine can power both rotors. The rotor/tilt wing system requires huge amounts of maintenance, enough that maintenance records have been falsified to make it look better. It's also a very expensive aircraft for its size.

Despite this, Osprey crashes occur mostly for other reasons.

• Software failure when recovering from a hydraulic failure.
• Rotor stall blamed on pilot error, but reflecting a hole in the flight envelope at low speed operation.

VTOL aircraft tend to crash even more then helicopters. The Harrier, the only VTOL produced in quantity, has many, many crashes on the record, especially with pilots in training. The flight envelope where transitions from and to vertical flight occurs is unforgiving. Helicopters are better behaved near transition.

Um, try the esteemed Thomas White.

And the "Energy Task Force" didn't get any input from Enron ?
(Well, Dick Cheney's not letting anyone know who they talked to, so we don't know).

And FERC's slow reaction to Enron gouging of democratic California was, um, co-incidental ?

Disclaimer: I pay US taxes but cannot vote, so corrupt government bugs me.

The TIA program apart from being appalling in and of itself intrigues me in conjunction with the U.S. Military's "Join Vision 2020" doctrine (parts 1 & 2). Especially interesting are the sections headed "Full Spectrum Dominance" and "Information Superiority".

The TIA program apart from being appalling in and of itself intrigues me in conjunction with the U.S. Military's "Join Vision 2020" doctrine (parts 1 & 2). Especially interesting are the sections headed "Full Spectrum Dominance" and "Information Superiority".

The TIA program apart from being appalling in and of itself intrigues me in conjunction with the U.S. Military's "Join Vision 2020" doctrine (parts 1 & 2). Especially interesting are the sections headed "Full Spectrum Dominance" and "Information Superiority".

A citizen's insurrection to correct the misdeeds of our government cannot stand up to our professional military.

I will note that this is much the same as the position of the ACLU on the Second Amendment. (Fair Disclosure: I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU, though I don't agree with their conclusion on this matter.)

As a student of military affairs, it is obvious to me that any attempt to fight a set-piece battle force-on-force with the U.S. military is pretty much doomed from the outset unless your men and equipment measure up to ours.

However, that does not mean that it is impossible to successfully engage and defeat our forces. Allow me to recommend The Battle for Hunger Hill by Daniel P. Bolger (ISBN 0891414533). This is the story of Colonel Bolger's experience at the Joint Readiness Training Center, Fort Polk, Louisiana. FYI, Ft. Polk is where the U.S. armed forces train for what they call "Low Intensity Conflict" and "Operations Other Than War".

As I understand Col. Bolger's account, the OPFOR at Ft. Polk regularly hands even elite units their ass with only a comparative handful of men. The typical "enemy" soldier at Ft. Polk is armed only with a rifle, a few grenades, and perhaps a sidearm. They work in teams of four men, which take on units of company size with ease. Astoundingly, the OPFOR teams use exactly three basic drills against an enemy unit: Break Contact, Box Ambush, and Baited Trap Ambush.

These teams do have some support in the form of mortar fires, but these must be of necessity sporadic and consist of only a few rounds when available. If memory serves me correctly, the mortar teams sometimes move the not-designed-to-be-man-portable-tubes by hand in order to avoid counter-battery fires.

Another book that, while fiction, might prove both educational and entertaining is The Prince, by Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Stirling (ISBN 0743435567). This is a compilation of the Falkenberg's Legion saga into a single volume. Much of the story concerns a ultra-modern military force fighting a well-funded and equipped guerrilla/terrorist uprising.

All of which is to say that small teams of highly motivated and dedicated individuals can and do defeat much larger units of our armed forces. Now, I'm not suggesting that every pick-up truck full of heavily-armed rednecks fits this description, but I think you'll allow that some of them might.

I would further point out that every member of the U.S. armed forces swears an oath to "[...] support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic;".

Imagine for a moment a hypothetical future in which the people have staged a general revolt against the federal government of the United States. For the sake of argument assume that this is a good-faith revolution with the stated goal of the restoration of constitutional government to the U.S. Furthermore, assume that the arguments for armed revolt are legitimate and beyond reproach, and a neutral outside observer would say that the President was an enemy of the Constitution. Now imagine the minds of the commanders. They have sworn oaths to both defend the Constitution and obey the President, each of which is now in direct opposition. I believe that at least some unit commanders would chose to join the rebellion. For further reading please see The Origins of the Military Coup of 2012 by Lt. Colonel Charles J. Dunlap, Jr.

You could say that the fact that the government troops would posses WMD might tip the balance in their favor, but I'm not sure even a cynical and corrupt U.S. regime would use WMD on their own soil. It is also unclear to me whether such WMD use would attract outside aid or intervention.

In conclusion, I think that the only time armed revolt b

Not that I support the patriot act...

You might want to read up a little on the success rate. Here it says in Desert Storm they had a 70% success in Saudi Arabia and 40% in Isreal.

Here the us army seems to think that the new version seems to work. They also seem to think it works well here too.

The patriot missile is not some pie in the sky dream. It does work. It may not necessarily be 100%, but 40-70% is better and 0%.

I don't know the tech that goes into something like this for sure, but I'd imagine that it could also be used for something like meteors.

Not that I support the patriot act...

You might want to read up a little on the success rate. Here it says in Desert Storm they had a 70% success in Saudi Arabia and 40% in Isreal.

Here the us army seems to think that the new version seems to work. They also seem to think it works well here too.

The patriot missile is not some pie in the sky dream. It does work. It may not necessarily be 100%, but 40-70% is better and 0%.

I don't know the tech that goes into something like this for sure, but I'd imagine that it could also be used for something like meteors.

Boop, wrong.

It doesn't stand for anything. Much like the S in Harry S Truman.

An explanation according to Joint Chiefs

D-day. The unnamed day on which a particular operation commences or is to commence

Digital beamforming != Software Defined Radio.
Electronically Steered Phased Array != discrimination between two frequency-adjacent or -overlapping signals.

Remember- for digital beamforming you're not looking at a single signal at whatever the CW frequency is, you're looking at (# elements) signals: one from each of the antenna elements in the array. That means that for a 64-element array 1 MHz AM array (neglecting the fact that it would be HUGE!) would have only 7 instructions per RF cycle (per antenna element). Is that a useful number? (I don't know; I've never done DSP programming.)

Nobody wants a ESPA at those low frequencies; it's been at microwave and millimeter wave frequencies that people have wanted them: Live TV for instance. Comm on the move(search for Harris) for another.

The ABL is nothing compared to the ATL, the airborne tactical laser that can be equipped to a V-22 Osprey, or an AC-130 "son of Specter" AC-X gunship. Read more about it here and here (search for ATL)

The Lincoln Labs LINEAR scope came on line in 1998, and immediately overwhelmed the Minor Planet Center with asteroid reports. There's a lot of rock out there to track. But between the USAF, the astronomical community, and the people who watch for near-earth asteroids, the near sky is getting more attention than ever before.

Note: billion == 1E12

Yes, the United States will spend approximately $320 billion on defense next year. Note, however, that about $200 billion or so is personnel and operations and stuff: there's about $63 billion for procurement and another $41 billion or so in Research and Development. From this source, the GDP of the U.S. is projected as $10.481 trillion dollars next year, which gives us defense spending as a percentage of GDP at 3%.

Whoopdy-fucking-do.

• Social Security: $443 billion
• Medicare and Medicaid: $362 billion
• Means-tested entitlements: $119 billion
• Other (I *love* this): $121 billion

Remember, we have a volunteer military, and no one will sign up unless they get paid decently and have reasonable benefits, so those costs will always be higher than nations with compulsary service.

Note, too, that the United States makes every damn weapon everyone everywhere uses, and we like it that way. This of course means that the United States bears the brunt of these RD costs, but it also means we can limit who gets what equipment elsewhere, and with what degree of smarts.

Hi there. I never checked back last week to see if my post was responded to, and tonight I see that it was. You wrote a very well reasoned reply, and I am sorry I didn't notice it sooner.

Since the national government was more of a loose federation of states at that point, I would lean away from Point #1 (as their original intent). And since the Constitution and Bill of Rights were meant to be more explicit rather than flowery language (barring a few places), I would lean away from the third interpretation.

• The rest of the Bill of Rights outline rights that the populace as a whole, have. What evidence supports the theory that the framers broke that pattern and intended the 2nd Amendment to only apply to the subset of the populace in the state militia?
• The Constitution and its amendments are the supreme law of the land. States can pass laws, but if they run afoul of the U.S. Constitution, then they are null & void. If the intent was to tell "each individual state to keep a militia", then why isn't that spelled out? The way the founders left it, a state could disband its militia and that would be totally constitutional. They couldn't, however, restrict the citizens from keeping & bearing arms. (But they still do.)

(By the way, I looked up the National Guard FAQ that you wrote about in your comment. All I could find was this small blurb that mentions the authority for the creation of the Guard. Their use of the 2nd Amendment does not exclude citizens from owning firearms. There can be both a militia [National Guard] and citizens who keep and bare arms. The two are not exclusive in my mind.)

In light of these real-world interpretations of other amendments, why do many members/supporters of the NRA (*cough*AshcroftnBush*cough*) feel that the second amendment should have no limitations whatsoever?

I support them in fighting gun registrations because history has shown that gun registrations are usually a prelude to gun confiscation. (See Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, California and New York.) I also support them in stopping the gradual encroachment on the types of guns we can own because there are many like you, who if they had their wish, "all guns would vanish tomorrow." (They don't have the where-with-all to admit it, though, like you do. They would use small bans to advance that agenda and settle for banning hand guns here, semi-automatic rifles there, until they reach their goal.) There is no good reason for law abiding citizens to be barred from having hand guns or semi-automatic rifles. (The only reasons I've ever heard boil down to what amounts to emotional security of those who have little experience with guns or the belief that citizens have no responsibility to protect themselves [i.e. it is the exclusive power of the government to protect the individual].)

The NRA does support keeping felons from owning/possessing firearms, which would be a "real-word interpretation" of the 2nd Amendment, no? See the NRA FAQ for what their views are. I appreciate you honestly sharing your views in such a well-reasoned manner. Again, I apologize for not seeing your comment for over a week. Take care.

It doesn't? Are you sure you're talking about the right kind of PLC?

• Public Limited Corporation
• Palestinian Legislative Council
• Power Line Communication
• Polymer Liquid Crystal
• Programmable Lighting Controller
• Planar Lightwave Circuit
• Preliminary Load Cycle
• Power Line Conditioner

In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin "What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?" Paul's straight-faced response: " There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms."

Anyone serious about preservation of his/her DNA would best save $498,000 and bank their blood or other bodily fluids for 10 or so years. Some companies even offer payment plans on that $2000 charge.

In ten years time the technology to sequence quickly will allow for this operation to be done at 1% of today's cost. (Yes, I will put money on that prediction.)

Of course when the time comes, if you really want to keep the sequence a long time, I wouldn't suggest CD-ROM. With a shelf-life of 50-200 years under optimal conditions, you'd be better with a book printed on acid-free paper. There you're looking at a shelf life of half a millenium or more under the same conditions.

-j

From what I know, most anti-personel (and I'd assume, anti-vehicle mines) are burried a few inches underground for concealment. If at all, the only part that is above the ground is the pressure plate that activates the mine. Perhaps adding focused sound waves or other suitable technology can distrupt the ground nearby enough to allow the laser to reach the entire mine. This device is therefor only suitable for mines strewn about by helicopters or low-flying aircraft.

But that's the type of minefield that the U.S. is concerned about quickly defeating. An enemy force can use a surface-laid expedient minefield in order to protect their flank during a retreat. U.S. forces train to use the Volcano Mine Dispenser in such a situation. While the MICLIC can quickly clear a lane through such a minefield, a system like this laser makes it possible to quickly and safely clear the majority of the minefield without putting soldiers at risk. There are other devices in development like Mine Flails for quickly clearing buried minefields. But even these take a while to clear a large area, and usually require dismounted soldiers with metal detectors sweeping the area locating the mines.

bzzzztt! wrong. software does fail (crashing is one example of a software failure). software engineering uses MBTF and/or MTTF (Mean Time To Failure). google it. its a standard software engineering practice. here is a decent link explaining MBTF for software.

You are right - I was (mis) speaking of the S.L.O.C. (Source Lines Of Code) metric which commonly accompanies the complexity metric.

It is worth pointing out that most times cyclomatic complexity and S.L.O.C. are in direct correlation with one another - but obviously not in the case of the pathological foo routine...

Here's a Decent Link for Cyclomatic formula:
spec
Later,
Wade

head spokesbeing for the FoG, has urged the United Nations to pass a resolution banning the use of such ecologically unfriendly bullets in favor of bullets fashioned from naturally-occurring stores of driftwood or pebbles.

Sarcasm noted. However, there is a serious effort underway to replace lead with less toxic materials. Keeping not just battlefields (on which people will eventually live and work), but training grounds, free of toxic heavy metals is a good thing.

The Chinese have got a pretty good point. There's no particular reason that they can't militarize space the same way the US is trying to. The US isn't even very secretive about its plans to flaunt international treaties regarding the militarization of space. In fact, their websites have stories about how they are currently researching war in space. If anyone started an arms race in space, it wasn't China, it was the US and the former USSR.

Oh, yes there is. Check out the AS&E Backscatter X-Ray BodySearch(tm) system. Used in prisons now; coming soon to your local airport, office building, etc.

They're very impressive systems. Check out the pictures. Detects both weapons and drugs. Price is about $120K, and the machine is rather bulky (12' high), but that will come down when the new model comes out.

It's still an invasion of privacy, but it only takes three seconds.

To answer JonKatz’s questions: Not necessarily. A lot. Maybe, different people have different expectations. Probably not, but see previous answer. As I said, a lot. Yes. Sometimes, it depends on the data. No, you can never guarantee perfect safety. Yes. Sometimes, it depends on how clever the launderers are. Yes. Yes, IF it is properly applied. Sometimes. As I said, a lot but it can’t do everything.

Technology is one way to gain an advantage in conflict. But it is not the only way. We have a positive asymmetry of technology. In other words, we have better and more technology than Al-Qaeda. But, for example, we have a negative asymmetry of means. In other words, even if terrorists had skyscrapers and jet liners we would NOT fight them by slamming one into the other to kill thousands of non-combatants. At least I like to think we wouldn’t. We historically have had a negative asymmetry of will with these groups. The terrorists were willing to endure more hardship to achieve victory than we would. That has changed, as a result of poor intelligence (the military kind) on their part. They went too far, caused too many casualties; and now we are much more willing to endure hardship in order to eliminate them as a threat. At least I like to think we are. Technology gives us one type of advantage in this conflict, but just as Airpower alone won’t win this war, so to Technology alone is not enough of an advantage to guarantee victory.

I will address two specific areas of warfare that have been impacted by technology, psychological operations and the principle of mass.

War is usually a psychological phenomenon. It is possible to eliminate an enemy by killing every last one of them, but it is difficult. It is more efficient to either break their will or convince them to join your side, and so that is what is usually done. The terrorists know this. They stage their events for maximum media exposure and psychological effect. Or at least they try to. The technology that gives us mass media and instant communications thus becomes a tool to break the will of our society. But our side can use technology for it’s psychological operations, too. Not just in delivering the message* but in figuring out what message to send and when to send it. Psychological operations becomes married with the concepts of Civil Affairs and Grand Strategy. Technology is more than just machines with blinking lights. Technology includes things like advertising and marketing techniques (if you don’t think we have the best marketing technology in the world, watch commercials from other cultures) and even psychology, socionomy (I refuse to use the term psycho-history), and econometrics. Everyone focuses on the sophisticated eavesdropping equipment the NSA and NIMA have, but few people talk about the sophisticated social, economic, and psychological models that the CIA has. These models are supposedly just as advanced above their civilian counterparts as the spy satellites are from civilian imaging satellites. These models can allow us to understand which groups to target militarily, psychologically, or politically. This better understanding, both on an intuitive and an analytical level, of human nature and international politics means the difference between an overly lethal terrorist attack that unifies its victims and a slowly built, carefully targeted, well explained coalition attack that minimizes the number of supporters that are driven to the terrorist’s power base. It may be hard to think of an academic paper on Disaster Sociology as technology, but such “soft science” developments are just as much of a technological edge as their “hard science” counterparts.

Perhaps the biggest effect technology has had on how war is waged is by changing the principle of mass. Not mass as in Newton, mass as in a lot of troops in a small area. Robert Leonhard points out that in ancient times, when one man, on average, killed less than one opponent it was necessary to mass troops in order to maximize killing power. Troops needed their comrades help in dispatching the enemy and if alone would be vulnerable to massed troops from the other side. When one man can kill more than one opponent, then mass no longer becomes desirable**. A large tight group of troops just becomes a juicy target for one of those highly lethal enemy soldiers armed with high rate of fire, ranged weapons. Despite the obvious transition point at the 1=1 ratio, this is not a sudden switch. Some well equipped veteran troops in the War of Northern Aggression (the American Civil War for you Yankees and foreigners) probably moved into this “modern” region of the lethality curve. On the other hand, there are many units in modern armies that cannot achieve a lethality greater than 1. No one will dispute that well equipped (with high tech weapons) , well trained (with high tech training and simulation tools, some of which comes from the entertainment industry), disciplined (with modern indoctrination methods), Special Forces units supported by quality C4ISR*** (also driven by technology) can achieve a lethality of a dozen or more. Veteran Mujahideen fighting on well known terrain can probably also achieve high lethalities. It is likely, therefore, that small, self contained, dispersed units, supported by high tech logistics, intel, and ranged attack units will play a key role not only in this conflict, but in all future ones.


* Can anyone think of improvments we can make in the psy-op technology used to reach such people. Leaflets are the primary technology, but we also drop cheap radios tuned to Radio Liberty and the like. Could we combine the two into a thin leaflet/solar-powered radio? One of the advantages of a leaflet is an enemy soldier can hide it (sometimes we print stuff on the back side that allows the enemy to hide a leaflet more easily) and read it when alone, for a radio that would mean including an earphone, which would probably increase cost, mass, and bulk too much to be used on each leaflet. What about an e-paper leaflet with a small computer chip that would allow it to display more information (and even animation) than a conventional leaflet is limited to. What about using the e-paper to make a leaflet that could be reprogrammed by an encrypted wireless signal, so that it could be updated with new informtion. It could be sort of like a "closed captioned" radio. How soon could such a thing be made? Could it be powered by solar energy or otherwise freed from the constraints of battery life? Got any better ideas?

**Like some of Leonhard’s other conclusions, I feel that he has ALMOST got it but has somehow still missed the mark. The real equation describing the desire for mass must surely include not only your own troops lethality against the enemy, but also the enemy’s lethality against yours. Regardless, it is clear that technology has transformed warfare by greatly increasing the lethality of the individual, and therefore turning warfighting principles that were true for thousands of years on their heads within the last century.

*** Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance. Formerly C4IS, formerly C4I, formerly, C3I.

References
Metz, Steven; Johnson, Douglas V., II., Asymmetry and U.S. Military Strategy: Definition, Background, and Strategic Concepts , ARMY WAR COLL STRATEGIC STUDIES INST, 2001, ADA387381 [http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/fulcrum_main.pl?da tabase=ft_u2&searchid=100264671422011&keyf ieldvalue=ADA387381&filename=%2Ffulcrum%2Fdata %2FTR_fulltext%2Fdoc%2FADA387381.pdf]
(remove excess spaces in urls)

Feder, Stanley A., “Factions and Policons: New Ways to Analyze Politics,” Studies in Intelligence, vol. 31 no. 1, pp 41-57, 1987

Leonhard, Robert R., The Principles of War for the Information Age, Presidio Press, 1998, ISBN 0-89141-647-1

This device has spectroscopic properties. It sees atomic number. It can distinguish tobacco, drugs, and explosives from clothing and human bodies, not just detect metals.

A big complaint about that unit is that it's too good. Look at the images on that site. It generates a good nude image of the person scanned. A technical paper, which includes bigger images, gives an idea of just how good it is. Civil liberties groups have complained. The manufacturer is looking into suppressing the body outline in the video processing.

Surprisingly, this device doesn't generate much of an X-ray exposure.

A competitive unit, the CONPASS Total Recall Body Scanner not only detects weapons, but diagnoses breast and lung cancer. It's a human-sized version of the line scanners used for luggage.

Until recently, these elaborate scanning units were considered too expensive for widespread deployment. But now, we'll probably see many more of them.

Maybe we'll even see one on the Internet. Some nightclub that uses weapon detection might do that.

no reference work started out comprehensive

And what exactly are you basing that observation on? I have a facimille of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica and, while some of the articles are a bit shorter that we would expect in a modern volume (famously the complete entry for Woman runs: "the female of man. See Homo.") but it is comprehensive with few, if any, obvious omissions.

Similarly, the French L'Encyclopédie was, with its original 28 and first edition 35 volumes in folio size, a remarkably comprehensive work.

Indeed, I would argue that (commercial) encyclopaedias have a history of being very comprehensive from the first edition onwards. In this spirit, none of the free versions are anywhere close, not even beta.

The point of an encyclopaedia is, indeed, to be comprehensive and also authoritative. I had a look at the "best of Wikipedia" pages, and while the writing was sometimes engaging, on these two counts the articles simply did not measure up.

As an example, look at the article on Calendar. On the first count, that of being comprehansive, it fails obviously by missing half of the articles to specific calendars it mentions at the bottom. (This may change over time.)

On the second count, that of being authoritative, the Encyclopædia Britannica (subscription required, yadayada) runs to 17 double column pages in my printed edition. It mentions over 15 specific calendars, as opposed to the 6 of Wiki (3 of which has no content).

And - I almost forgot! - the Wiki page is factually incorrect. A calendar does not measure time, a clock does. The printed Britannica definition "a calendar is a means of grouping days in ways convenient for regulating life and religious observances and for historical and scientific purposes" is much better.

For the computer programmers out there, think of the calendar as the thing that translates time (time_t or whatever; an event in the Universe) into a date; a date having a legal or social meaning. In this context it is interesting that the calendar can change with eight to ten weeks' notice.

So I guess I'm not impressed yet. Still, it is early days and the project may grow.

First, the aggregate log data would deal with IP addresses, computer names, workgroups, dates, times, attempted websites, and perhaps even a deeper explaination as to why it was blocked (Nudity, graphic violence, what have you).

One would also probably know which sites were most visited, and as such, which sites were set as the home pages for the school (if they were set to outside of the local network, at least). From there, ad affiliates would be listed, so one would be able to find out which companies (doubleclick, et al.) were most prevalent. From there, you could determine what cookies were being set on the browsers, and coordinate with doubleclick to see a refined view of what is being served.

So what we would have is, possibly parsed by school topology, what grade teachers and grade students (I've seen schools where grades are seperated by location) are going to what websites, what sites are blocked, how often the blocked sites are hit, and manages to go through.

Maybe DoD wants to know how many people are visiting /., reading JK's article, and trying to order a copy of Voices in the Hellmouth ;) I highly doubt that the DoD would be looking for successfully visited sites. Advertising wouldn't have much to do with National Defense. Of course, maybe they're in cahoots with the NSA in looking for brainwashing ad services. Who knows.

Let's deal now with sites being blocked. It's well known that most, if not all of the filtering software out there doesn't publish which sites are blocked. There's just a huge string database and a list of blocked domains and IP addresses, or what have you. Maybe further information is being blocked through there.

Let's also look at the issues at hand: the ruling about public facilities paid by the government will have to use censorware to continue receiving funding. Public facilities are exactly that: any Joe Schmoe can come off the street and get to a computer.

Toss a little paranoia onto the fray, and anyone could come off of the street and get instructions on building bombs, or somehow get some subversive material, hate-mongering information, etc at your local library.

Let's go full scale in paranoia. Our own governmental facilities would be its own falldown! Criminals (or potential criminals) could come off the street, fire up IE or Netscape, and go to bombs.com or nuke-your-government.net or maybe suicide-bombers.middle-east.gov or something. And that would be a sad day in history, my friends, a sad day indeed that another domestic terrorist attack goes on that could have been prevented, if only we had the sense and decency to remove that demon-spawn, evil-filled internet!

If only we knew from whence that evil was spawned! ...oh yeah, that's right. ARPAnet. Something about government. I don't remember. But it wasn't OUR government. Must've been them damn Iraqis or something. Saddam Hussein's granddad did it.

Anyways.

My guess is that DoD is looking for aggregate ratios of visited to blocked sites. Maybe comparing that against information received from Pinkerton, comparing that against the Student Violence Prevention hotlines or whatever they're called. Find out where the next Columbine is going to go down. Maybe figure out what grade said students are in, and what area is most likely to break out. Then put a little more pressure on the Hive Students to rat out the 'dangerous' ones. Who knows. All kidding aside, I believe it's more for the blocked site information than kiddie marketing information. Don't look at the Black Text on the White Background, look at the White background itself. Something like that.

Which brings another issue: if the DoD is buying this, than we as taxpayers are paying for this information as well. I'm going to spend some time going over the Annual Defense Report for 2001 and see if there's any reason, or any other possible links, for buying this information.

This result on searching for "Children" shows survey results for of-age teens going into the military, and how often they thought about it. Maybe DoD is doing some research. If a lot of .gov hits are coming from one school, toss a few more recruiters there? About halfway down on that site is a listing of 10 objectives that the DoD has on youth support. It's a good read, I won't toss em on here. Let's get a lot of seperate IP addresses hitting a few specific gov pages, just for fun ;)

Actually...I may have found it right here.

"So two years ago, we asked McKinsey and Company to start a very large marketing study for the Army and, as a result of a lot of their work, some of the insights they gave us is that we needed to do research-based advertising, understanding youth attitudes and needs. We had the Rand Corporation do a very large marketing study of more than 7,000 individuals, focusing precisely on youth attitudes and needs and how to communicate with today's 18- to 24-year-old. Every generation of 18-year-olds is different. Gen X is different from Gen Y, is different from today's 18- to 24-year-olds, is different from the one that will be here in a couple of years. So that research that we're doing, that market research, will now be an ongoing part of how the Army thinks about how it communicates with young people.

And later on...

"You will also note that in this advertising, we talk about 212 ways to be a soldier. We identify specific military specialties. Part of what we want them to understand is that the kind of interests they have in occupational training and work experience, they can get it through the Army; that they should come and explore those 212 ways to be a soldier to find the one that's right for them, whether it is as an infantryman, or as an artilleryman, or as a medical technician, a computer repairman, a helicopter repairman, a wheeled-vehicle generator repairman. We want to drive them to the web site where they're going to get more of that information about the opportunities that are available, and help them make an informed decision. Our goal is to make the Army one of the options that they are considering for the future."

And on the costs...

"Q: Could you talk about the budget for this and how much the -- particularly how much the spot will be that's debuting tomorrow night, and then the overall budget numbers?

Caldera: It's about $150 million for the advertising campaign. Over the last few years, actually, the amount of money we put into advertising has not kept pace with inflation in advertising. So it's fairly consistent with what we've done in the past. We are trying to take advantage of the ability to buy earlier and get better prices and be more targeted in the shows that actually fit the demographic that we're trying to reach.

And once more...

Wolf: The key with any advertising is understanding the target that that advertising is directed at. And that's we did, is we dug into our target and really understood them. To our target, to those young adults, "Be all you can be" was not motivating.

This report was dated the 10th of January, this year.

Anyways...if anyone finds anything else, please reply =)

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More people, or organizations, are moving away from the big Windows NT, and to more secure things, such as linux, unix, and Macs. This is similar as when the Army said they were using MacOs instead of WinNT.

During my sophomore year at the U.S. Naval Academy, we completed a pretty large "mission" if you will. In previous years, mascots had been stolen by both sides. But there was always a spare mascot to bring to the game (Navy has a goat, and Army has mules -- yeah yeah tradition I know :)).

Anyhow, this particular year, we managed to steal ALL 4 of Army's mules prior to the football game. This was planned out a year in advance, with the assistance of one of our company officers (he's a SEAL, in fact). The planning was needed, since the mules are kept on the USMA campus, which is, in fact, a military base.

We had a civilian travelling on their campus as a tourist, driving a horse-carriage vehicle. At the same time, we had subdued some of their people at a gate, and replaced them with our own (in full Army uniform). This was possible mainly because we had observed the watch rotations for a long time in advance.

Some of our other people, in a separate vehicle made their way to the mules and broke them out. They were then loaded to the carriage which drove NORTH to Albany for awhile. This was to avoid the helicopters which Army sent out to search for the carriage. The rest of us headed south, back to USNA.

Finally we joined up with 4 mules, quite a successful rally, and the only time in the history of these two schools that ALL mascots were stolen from one side. Unfortunately some of our superiors would not allow us to shave NAVY in them before returning them for the game :-)

Best regards,

SEAL