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Gosh, Dun Malg's right. I mean Powers was flying a U2, and we don't fly *those* any more. And we haven't had a propeller driven spy plane shot down in over two years now!

And their planes, missiles and computers haven't gotten any better.

Get your local times here: http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/LunarEclipse.htm l

--Asa

There's actually nothing wrong with saying "Earth hours". The fundamental unit of time is a "Day"; the time it takes between two successive transits of the Sun. (Actually, if you want to get technical, a Day is really defined as the average time between successive solar transits for a particular year: 1820). A second is *defined* to be the 1/86,400th part of a Day, a minute is *defined* to be 60 seconds, and an Hour is *defined* to be 60 minutes. The point is, they are all tied to the length of an Earth-Day, so using "Hours" on Mars is just as arbitrary as using "Days" on Mars.

Still not convinced? Merriam-Webster defines Hour as "the 24th part of a day", as does dictionary.com.

DoD Budget

It's a problem of priority. There are some of us that feel that advancing human knowledge is worth more than producing more machines of warfare. What a senseless waste. Perhaps Darwin was on to something.

Here's a nice collection of links and source codes I found back then: The Genetic Algorithm Archive

If you had bothered to read the first comment you'd know that what you have just typed is wildly inacurate.

While we're on the subject, they were called "Bugs" long before Grace Hopper found the moth; note that the log entry clearly states "First actual case of bug being found", implying that they had found plenty of "bugs" before then.

First computer bug. You will need to scroll down to the bottom to see the it. The rest of the page talks about Grace Hopper, who helped coin the phrase.

I recalled something about a piezo generator for underwater use, which relied on the flapping motion of a flag-like object to drive it from a current of water. I couldn't find it, but I did discover this. It would let you power things even if the ductwork wasn't vibrating.

Not true. GPS receivers get all the information they need directly from the GPS satellites - which track their own "GPS Time" that dispenses with the leap-seconds.

You're right that having an accurate astronomically-relevant time is important for navigation - if you are determining your position with a sextant. It's the decreasing relevance of sextants to the world of navigation, and the increasing need to keep electronic equipment of all sorts in lock-step, that is driving this movement away from the leap-seconds.

See a summary of the issues from one of the US Naval Observatory scientists in charge of this stuff: PDF, Postscript.

-renard

Not true. GPS receivers get all the information they need directly from the GPS satellites - which track their own "GPS Time" that dispenses with the leap-seconds.

You're right that having an accurate astronomically-relevant time is important for navigation - if you are determining your position with a sextant. It's the decreasing relevance of sextants to the world of navigation, and the increasing need to keep electronic equipment of all sorts in lock-step, that is driving this movement away from the leap-seconds.

See a summary of the issues from one of the US Naval Observatory scientists in charge of this stuff: PDF, Postscript.

-renard

IIRC, all leap seconds when inserted or deleted, is well planned in advance. IIRC, GPS is prepared for these events also. Here's a link.

This site may be more helpful, especially in clearing up some of the problems with leap seconds (and their ultimate creation of an offset from both TAI and GPS time)

A big focus of the project is open hardware and software - something that's sorely lacking in APRS. Take the MIM, for example. It's a pretty clever little telemetry transmitter, but it sells for $79. Seems pretty excessive for a circuit board with a PIC and some support circuitry. No source code is provided, either. I'm working on something similar, but it'll be completely open source, provided under the BSD license. Source, CAD drawings, foil patterns, and all that stuff will be published for anyone to duplicate or modify.

just learn Navajo. Works for some people.

Atomic clocks did not result from the discovery of uranium's radioactivity. In fact, they don't involve radioactivity at all. Here's a link that explains how they work. They are called 'atomic' because they rely on electronic transitions in isolated atoms

The Abrams tanks will auto aim your gun you just have to identify the target. The Phalanx is much more autonomous in tracking and killing incoming missiles.

If the scientists involved weren't taking this into account there would be problems, as the earth-to-sun distance varies by about 3% (when squared, still greater than 0.05%) each year, and the 11-year solar sunspot cycle also imparts significant variance in solar output. But the earth-sun distance averages out in the long term and sunspot patterns are predictable; according to this study, after taking this into account there's a 0.05%/decade difference left.

In a past life I was one of the guys who tested these puppies (Shrikes, HARMS, Cruise Missles, Mavericks, Smart Bomb guidance systems, etc.) at China Lake NWC. For Shrikes and HARMS we would setup dozens of "threat" simulators, each with slightly different modulation (CW, PRF, PW, jitter, spread codes, etc.) to simulate particular makes and models of radar, and each at different location to simulate real life deployment. You don't want to be near any source that is on a target signal profile list. One of my other duties included measuring the distance between the boresite and the missle's impact crater after a test. Often enough my simulators were damaged or destroyed by inert warheads alone :-). Let's just say the 100-hour 1st Gulf War wasn't much of a surprise - China Lake has geography a lot like Kuwait and Iraq.

It's certainly possible to discriminate targets well enough to avoid targetting TV satellite uplinks. It's even possible that journalist's military-supplied uplinks are provided with known spread code signals that are put on an avoid list. A warning and insistence on "equipment registration" may be CYA - unless they know the equipment's signature, there's still a small chance of a "mishap". However, unless they choose to target TV stations it would still probably be pretty safe (How many TV broadcasters does Iraq really have? Ah, maybe one? Compared to simply being shot by accident?) The spectral signatures of analog or digital TV are pretty different from radar (even spread spectrum radar).

<OffTopicWarning KarmaLock="disabled">

Despite my experience with this stuff, I'm still against this war and the facile justifications pathetically provided for it. If you don't see a patriot described above, you need to get your head examined!

This war is about extension of the Monroe Doctrine to the entire world and Manifest Destiny as a world hyperpower. It's spelled out on the PNAC web site. Note the founders include Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and other major hawks in the Bush Adminstration. Also note that the entire obsession with regime change and axis of evil predates 9-11 back to when Clinton was approached by PNAC with essentially the same Iraq/Axis of Evil plan. Clinton rejected it. Bush has embraced it. Linkage between Al Qaida and Iraq? Machiavelian fiction, nothing more. Weapons of Mass Destruction (worked on those too ;-| )? Doesn't add up in the context of post-War Iraqi infrastructure and economics, and especially not with forged documentery evidence provided by the US and UK intelligence agencies.

Creating a hegemon might not even seem so bad if you happen to be an American, but this type of foreign policy is certain to be mirrored in domestic policy: the beginning is Patriot I, Patriot II, TIA, CAPP and other recent laws and proposals.

For those who have read Linked, consider what a Bose-Einstein condensation of a geopolitical social network is in comparison to what it is for an economic social network. Consider that one of the desires of PNAC is to assure that the relationship between the US and each other country shall be stronger than the relationships between any pair of countries. What social network topology is that? Can you say: "All Roads Lead to Washington".

There are many active and reserve duty officers with similar concerns. I recently gave a speech about this subject where an officer I know, who is now serving in the Middle East, was in attendence. I was concerned about his reaction - these are scary ideas most people would prefer to ignore - but he approached me after the speech and was my stron

During WW2 the navajo language was used to transmit secret messages. How best to encrypt your messages than to translate it into a language only a very few people know. Now you take a language that is completly dead and you get the advantage. I would not be suprised if the US intellegence does not have most of these languages catalogued by now.

later,

Actually, it's the Air Force's. The Navy's page is here and this is the Army's page.

the Bush family supproted the Naziz and donated a large amount of money to them.

First of all it's Nazis, not Naziz. Second I doubt George Bush supported the Germans considering he fought in World War II for the USA.

Read about Dubya Senior's WWII experience here.

It's fine to dislike Bush, but at least get the facts straight.

A year is 365.24 days, and its convienient to have New Years at midnight every Dec. 31st, so every 4 years we add a day to account for the time we ignored the previous 3 years. The extensions of the rule exist to account for the fact that its not exactly 1/4 day off.

As for the clocks, the government tells us what time it is (See here and here). Everybody else is pretty much responsible for synchronizing to that time on their own... you adjust your personal timepieces when you start missing TV shows, being late for work, etc. For the most part, its a collective agreement (we had time/timepieces before the US government) and people adjust to an equilibrium because they have to coordinate activities.

All of these measurements are made under the purview of the International Earth Rotation Service. There are models for all manner of astrophysical and geophysical effects considered in the Conventions that are used when reducing the data.

The way that solar noon is kept at civil time noon is by inserting leap seconds. In most places civil time is offset directly from UTC. When a leap second is inserted the day is 86401 seconds long.

This irregularity upsets some kinds of timekeeping systems, and as a result there has been discussion that leap seconds should be abolished. That would cause noon to drift away from noon. That may not be a good thing.

Can someone answer this though: Do we manually synchronize our clocks every once and awhile (say every few years anyways) just to make sure? I heard a rumor about it (most people have to reset their clocks after the power goes out anyways, and PC clocks are horribly inaccurate), so is this true?

Are you referring to leap seconds?

Yayy, more leap seconds!

The best proposal I've seen is to use swarms of robots carrying anti-tank mines. The idea is to reconfigure faster than a breach can be opened thus slowing the progress of the mine-clearing force enough to bring artillery to bear. See Space and Naval Warfare Systems.

Does that mean they are all nuclear powered?

I spent 6 years on or working on fast attack subs. We had controls called Subsafe. This meant every part contributing to water tight integrity was tracked from the start of manufacture to installation.

Subsafe parts were quite expensive...but you were 100% pretty confident you weren't getting some cheap Taiwanese knockoff parts.

Where are these guys getting their stuff, the hardware store down the street? Enough said. Would I even think of going down in one of these boats? No...not ever.

Look at the lessons the Navy learned, Scorpion, Thresher. How are these things powered...batteries? Have you ever heard of the Bonefish

For the Germans, it was called Navajo.

http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/questions/lite huse.html

not true. makes a good point though.

This is the actual radio transcript used as the basis of the parent joke.

Messing with military radar by mimicking the signal has led to serious user harm. Use with caution.

So, although it's not as cost effective overall as the 18, for air defense give me a wing of Tomcats any day :)

Oh, references! Tomcat and Hornet

So, although it's not as cost effective overall as the 18, for air defense give me a wing of Tomcats any day :)

Oh, references! Tomcat and Hornet

Wow!

thanks for telling me about the USS Akron (ZRS-4)! sorry to read that she killed so many sailors though. I've always wondered why the flying airbase never eventuated, but I guess it's just hard to handle them.

oh well, as another poster said in another discussion airship carriers are cool in an anime sort of way.

crimson skies anyone?

but how many of the carriers have the FA-18s on them?

All of them. (If not -18's, they have -14's which are still pretty potent for air defense)

In addition, a carrier does not cruise alone. It is the centerpiece of a full battle group, with many other ships, whose duty is often to protect the carrier.

As for patrolling a larger area, the bubble around the carrier is a 1.000 nautical miles radius (http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/airc raft/air-fa18.html), so what's the point of making 35 more miles in an hour?

Actually I believe you meant to use the comma, not the period.

"CAPITAIN! Incomming enemy planes! They've got missles locked and ready to fire!"
"How far away are they?!?!"
"1.700 nautical miles!!"
"Damn! WE'RE FINISHED!" ;-)

Also, please be kind and link to your references. I'm more likely to read if I don't have to copy and paste. Besides, /. is lame and adds a space to URLs for no reason, so your link actually confused me until I noticed the unnessesary %20 in the URL.

Some interesting facts from that page:

Range:
Combat: 1,089 nautical miles (1252.4 miles/2,003 km), clean plus two AIM-9s
Ferry: 1,546 nautical miles (1777.9 miles/2,844 km), two AIM-9s plus three 330 gallon tanks

Ceiling: 50,000+ feet

Speed: Mach 1.7+

So any carrier which carries the FA-18 Hornet is pretty well protected. IANANM (I am not a Navy Man), but how many of the carriers have the FA-18s on them?

Another issue is security. Even though the article mentions that the system on the Howard uses 3DES or AES, I have been told that many of the key applications would require the transmission of classified data and thus necessitate the use of a Type-1 NSA approved device, such as Harris's SecNet-11. In addition there are additional security requirements being tested by SPAWAR Systems Centersurrounding emission control (EMCOM). I have been told that any operational system would need to be able to instantly shut down all 802.11 transmitters from a central location when the ship institutes EMCON procedures. Just some things to consider... In my opinion the article represents amateur, simplistic reporting on a very complex topic (why should this surprise anyone!)

Having worked on the AEGIS Weapon's System (the computer system that controls naval destroyers) I can say with a great deal of certainity that this is bullshit.

First of all, crew size is not being reduced on destroyers. The navy just awarded a contract called DD(x). This new generation of warship's are much smaller (hence--smaller crew size) and meant for latorial battle (close to shore).

The captain controls the ship from the CEC and all the equipment in the CEC is massive. The thing is, there are about a dozen operators required to control the ship. It's not something that one person can do off of a PDA.

Now, ships do have connections to the outside world. Mostly used for email and such. This connection is physically isolated from the rest of the ships computer systems. The wireless is simply for internet access. It's just so the captain can get his email off the toliet.

Like the moon, no one has been there since.

You are actually incorrect on this point. I'm also stuck with the lovely billet of being the NMCI rep for the unit, so I've done my homework here. You can start at EDS's site and then get even deeper at the contract award site. EDS is going to do exactly what their satement of work and contract say they have to do. Anything you may have read produced by the Navy or Marine Corps that contradicts these two sites is merely wishful thinking or bad information.

STRATIS(Warehouse management:Linux, Oracle), as well as ROLMS(Ammunition accounting:Solaris/NT, Oracle) and DMLSS(Medical Logistics:Oracle) are three systems that I am responsible for that employ non MS based solutions. All 3 of these systems have been identified by EDS Corp as LEGACY applications and will be supported in house by DOD personnel. The contract clearly explains the definition of legacy and non-legacy systems.

What you may have been thinking is what would happen if we elected to request EDS to support the functionality of the system. In this case, EDS would contract out and provide their own MS based solution which would be a non-legacy system. They would support every inch, or byte in this case, of the system. Legacy apps only get supported up to the link light on the LAN card...not the card itself mind you, just that there is a valid signal going to the card.

some very good points:

UFOs, as flown by some extra-terrestial intelligent beings, might generally be rather small objects. Space is big. SOHO's cameras do not have extremely good resolution and any visible object would have to be either enormous, very bright, or somewhat close to SOHO (and Earth), but between SOHO and Sun. Somehow that wouldn't seem to make much sense.

The LASCO coronograph is actually three telescopes. The tightest field of view looks out to 3 Solar radii. Even this is about a 0.03 radian field of view, so that something spacecraft-ish in size (even very large) would have to be quite close to make a good image. I get that a kilometer size image could be no further than about 10^5 km to even be a one pixel image. To register on several pixels in the tightest telescope, we're talking about 10^4 kilometers max for a big object. That's pretty close for deep space.

I don't buy Vogel's theory that such a thing could have been intentional. But it's hard to ignore the optical scans of reports of nuclear tests referring to them as a "mushroom to 18,000 feet in typical Port Chicago fashion". Or the fact that the same guy (USN Capt William Parsons) who wrote the initial report on the effects of Port Chicago's blast was a year later aboard the Enola Gay as the Manhattan Project scientist on the crew that attacked Hiroshima. The Napa Sentinel found that the ship's destination was Tinian, which was where the atomic attacks did actually originate a year later. And the atomic bombs were shipped through the rebuilt Port Chicago.

So what about the radiation? Well, it immediately struck me in the talk with my friend that we in the Bay Area "always thought the massively high cancer rates in Contra Costa County were due to the oil refineries." Since they have that problem there, once again I see logic pointing at checking it further, not dismissing it.

There seems to be disagreement over the presence of radiation at the scene of the explosion, since no one knew to watch for it. And the site remains under military control today. But this whole thing can be tested one way or the other by checking for elevated background radiation levels in the uninhabited areas of the Sacramento/San Joaquin River Delta to the northeast of the Concord Naval Weapons Center (formerly known as Port Chicago) which would have been downwind of the explosion in 1944 and where the fallout would have settled.

(In that part of California in July, overnight winds are always inland from San Francisco Bay into the Central Valley. And online info indicates that night in 1944 winds were out of the WSW as would be expected.)

They will recognize that the "Caribbean vacation" is a reference to Guantanamo Bay.

I was sure the incident sounded familiar, but not for the reason stated.

Port Chicago is known as a tragedy and milestone in race relations in the U.S. military, which was segregated throughout WWII. Here is the Navy account, not bad in its honesty.

"The explosion at Port Chicago accounted for fifteen percent of all African-American casualties of World War II." Some 320 people were killed instantly, nearly all of them black. The ordnance loaders were a black unit. Hundreds of the survivors refused to return to work after the accident without safety changes. A couple hundred were summarily court-martialed, and 50 more were tried for mutiny with a possible death sentence.

The incident drew a great deal of attention, again not for allegedly being nuclear, and mau have factored into President Truman's historic integration of the military.

This may not be a technological angle, but it does emphasize that poor safety practice with conventional explosives caused the disaster, as I suggested in an earlier post.

I thought that it was initially considered for entertainment purposes only by the video industry but the r&d/tech folks involved always considered it a multi-purpose data medium. *sigh* My life has been a sham. Well, there's always the next one. Thanks for the info. Trying to find further evidence led me to these two sites for anyone interested....

http://www.nswc.navy.mil/cosip/nov97/cots1197-1.sh tml (this one's actually interesting)
http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?DVD

Less known is that just after Sputnik was launched a bunch of the engineers grabbed whatever they could lay their hands on and attempted to orbit their own satellite dubbed NOTSnik. They made six launches and while they were unable to prove a successful orbit many believe that one launch did make it all the way around. Doubt any remain as space junk, though.

There are a lot of starbucks out there, this solution provides better automation (though is a bit more expensive.)

The solution.

The problem here is, you're browsing society at +5. The average 19th century house was built with the same surly, I-could-give-a-rat attitude that you find in many modern subcontractors. Or it was a bunch of logs thrown together, or even a construction based primarily on dirt. Not surprisingly, the average 19th century house is now rubble.

No, I think not. The problem is you are a product of a school system that teachs that humans are inherently corrupt and that mediocrity is human nature, except when they submit to an authoritarian power which knows better than they do. You are obviously from a suburban part of the world and have probably never even been to a neighborhood which existed in the 1880's let alone the 1920's. Walk into the Brooklyn Historical Society, or come to a neighborhood known as Cobble Hill, which was even in the 1970's a working class neighborhood. You will find brick town houses of relatively spacious size that look much as they did 120 years ago. These same brick houses which were once the homes of shippers who worked at the Brooklyn docks now go to rich financiers for well over $1 million. Yes, I love in Brooklyn. I am not even going to bother finding you references on this, if you can't come to the nations pre-emininent city and learn a little history, a quote won't matter to you one bit.

The houses you describe were generally the houses of the relatively wealthy. They would be the ones with the money to hire the best builders, and to maintain those houses properly. The amazing quality of the construction you're claiming is most likely a myth.

Relative to Africa? Yeah, maybe. But I think a dock worker who built a house now affordable only to the top .5% of the US population speaks for itself. And as far as the quality of construction, I would like to see your plywood home last for 100+ years.

Similar things could be said about your "average" fifteen year old infantryman. I doubt there were many to begin with. Even at the very end of the war, I don't believe they were drafting anyone under the age of 17. Since few people who were fifteen when the Civil War started even have grandchildren still living today, any letters you find were probably saved because they were particularly impressive.

This is where you astonish me. Do you really think I would just spout this shit out of my ass? This proves more than anything you have been brainwashed by the school system. 17? Coincidentally almost the age of adulthood today. Bad news jack. Another great step in the forced schooling enslavement was an attempt to increase childhood, so as to rob the youth of their opportunity to organize and revolt. 20th century rebellious youth did precious little compared to the "adolescents" of the 19th century. They did great stuff like stage the French Revolution and the American Revolution. Why do you think they use the term "rebellious" anyway?

Read upon Admiral Farragut. Admiral Farragut captured his first British ship during the War of 1812 at the ripe old age of eleven. He gained his first command at twelve. Granted he was young for his age. But my point is this, if you think 17 was the LOW end of infantrymen, let alone sailors... You know absolutely nothing of military history. But, this proves the system works. 12 year olds 200 years ago had no problems staging revolutions. 12 year olds today are barely off their mother's tit, and are more concerned with toys that the glory of war. You my friend, are exactly the young man JP Morgan wanted. Someone unwilling and incapable of waging war. A true bitch, forever a slave to the system.

Nor did literacy always imply fluency. I've had reason to read over quite a few nineteenth century documents. These people were, to put it mildly, not a generation of Edgar Allen Poes. For every person who could dash off a clear, insightful set of coherent sentences, there were a dozen who could just barely get the point across. Don't tell me that any fifteen year old in the nineteenth century could write better than 99% of Slashdot, because reading their journals is *exactly* like reading Slashdot.*

As a student of history, and someone who has spent much time reading civil war letters, I could not disagree with you more. But given your overall ignorance of the entire century you have exhibited thus far, I will give you one last change for redemption. Perhaps you can give me an example of this poor writing, so I can see for myself.