Slashdot Mirror

Nice. It even points the user to ANOTHER non-.mil site to download a PKI certificate. That settles it for me. This is NOT the military.

The homepage of the site they are pointing to https://www.dodpke.com/ Says the site has moved to: another url

Which refers you to: this document

Which states the following:

Alternate method of retrieving DoD Root Certificate

If you have trouble accessing the page listed above you can also visit the following page to download the DoD Root Certificates: https://www.dodpke.com/InstallRoot.

The dodpke.com site is also linked by http://www.nsa.naples.navy.mil/bno/PKI/index.htm.

I cannot conclude that this is a scam, it appears to be probably legitimate, or at least the cert information is legitimate.

What they don't mention though is it's probably more secure to use a workstation that already has the certificate installed, download the file to a medium, then use the medium to install the certs on the 'fresh' workstation (No risk of man-in-the-middle while connecting with SSL to a site without a trusted cert).

dodpke.com has a registration date in 2002

Not quite. It says "similar techniques have also been used to make infrared and optical images of stellar surfaces"

In the optical, interferometry is done by actually combining light from two or more telescopes. So, first, the telescopes have to be close enough to do that. Second, the atmosphere limits your coherence between remote sites to 10's or 100's of meters at most (longer separation are possible in the IR than in the optical). Third, the wavelength is much smaller (a factor of ~ 10,000, typically), so source resolution effects (which in the radio start really hurting at an Earth radii or so), start really hurting at a few hundred meters or so. (The sources are typically different (stars versus quasars), but both tend to have sizes around a milli arc second or so.)

The canceled (but hopefully to be revived) SIM mission was an interferometer in space, where the atmospheric issues will not obtain, and you could get sufficient accuracy to see the effects of Earth size planets on their stars.

Office of Naval Research started developing Retinal Projection in 1991

http://www.cs.nps.navy.mil/people/faculty/capps/4473/projects/fiambolis/vrd/vrd_full.html

The Aegis Cruiser Yorktown [In service 1984-2004] was chosen in 1995 as the first "smart ship."

The test bed.

Test beds are pushed to failure.

The core technologies installed in YORKTOWN [were] a 16 workstation fiber optic Local Area Network (LAN), Integrated Bridge System (IBS), Voyage Management System (VMS), Damage Control System(DCS), Integrated Conditioning and Assessment System (ICAS), HYDRA wireless communication system, and Standard Machinery Control System (SMCS)

The Yorktown's last saw combat service in the Gulf in 2004. USS Yorktown CV-10 Association

It says something when you have to go back twelve years to make your point - and all you have to point to is a single incident in the introduction of COTS technology.

The Nimitz-class carrier USS Ronald Reagan runs Windows.

For projects on this scale, Microsoft Federal Systems becomes a sub-contractor working with the largest and most experienced of military contractors.

With rope?

It's the occulter pylon. It holds the occulting disk in place to mask out the light coming directly from the sun.

Actually, they do hate democracy. It's just not the only reason they hate the US in particular. Claiming they don't hate our culture and everything about it is naive, as is claiming that they wouldn't despise us except for our military presence in the middle east. Without both issues, I think it's doubtful they would be carrying out an active campaign against us.

If indeed Bush and friends trampled on your beloved Constitution and laws in doing so, I say they're more dangerous to you than what they claim they were protecting you from.

This much is obvious. Look at how many Americans died because of Bin Laden's orders. Roughly 3000. How many Americans died because of Bush's orders? Over 4000 in Iraq and over 600 in Afghanistan. How many American dollars were wasted because of the 9/11 attacks? We may have lost half a trillion dollars in GDP. But the Iraq war will cost us 3 trillion or more.

So yeah, with friends like these who needs enemies? Even if you care only about American lives and American dollars, Bush has clearly done more harm to the US than Bin Laden. And so, he should be treated no kinder than Bin Laden.

Some amateur satellites actually USE steel tape-measure as antennas. Here's a shot of PC-SAT. (Full site article)

Some amateur satellites actually USE steel tape-measure as antennas. Here's a shot of PC-SAT. (Full site article)

"The Japanese military, deeply engaged in the seemingly endless war it had started against China in mid-1937, badly needed oil and other raw materials. Commercial access to these was gradually curtailed as the conquests continued. In July 1941 the Western powers effectively halted trade with Japan. From then on, as the desperate Japanese schemed to seize the oil and mineral-rich East Indies and Southeast Asia, a Pacific war was virtually inevitable." here.

"Japan had to import steel and oil from the US, or get it from Southeast Asia and Pacific. The US protected the Pacific, and would not sell them the steel and particularly the oil, Japan needed. They found themselves at a point of no return- either attack the US while they still had oil to use, or in a year their navy would not have enough oil to fight. They decided not to give up their dream of possessing the resouces of East Asia/Pacific area, so found no way out but to attack the USA." more here.

"When France capitulated in June 1940, Japan moved into northern French Indochina. And though the United States had no interest there, we imposed an embargo on steel and scrap metal. After Hitler invaded Russia in June 1941, Japan moved into southern Indochina. FDR ordered all Japanese assets frozen.

But FDR did not want to cut off oil. As he told his Cabinet on July 18, an embargo meant war, for that would force oil-starved Japan to seize the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies. But a State Department lawyer named Dean Acheson drew up the sanctions in such a way as to block any Japanese purchases of U.S. oil. By the time FDR found out, in September, he could not back down.

Tokyo was now split between a War Party and a Peace Party, with the latter in power. Prime Minister Konoye called in Ambassador Joseph Grew and secretly offered to meet FDR in Juneau or anywhere in the Pacific. According to Grew, Konoye was willing to give up Indochina and China, except a buffer region in the north to protect her from Stalin, in return for the U.S. brokering a peace with China and opening up the oil pipeline. Konoye told Grew that Emperor Hirohito knew of his initiative and was ready to give the order for Japan's retreat.

Fearful of a "second Munich," America spurned the offer. Konoye fell from power and was replaced by Hideki Tojo. Still, war was not inevitable. U.S. diplomats prepared to offer Japan a "modus vivendi." If Japan withdrew from southern Indochina, the United States would partially lift the oil embargo. But Chiang Kai-shek became "hysterical," and his American adviser, one Owen Lattimore, intervened to abort the proposal.

Facing a choice between death of the empire or fighting for its life, Japan decided to seize the oil fields of the Indies. And the only force capable of interfering was the U.S. fleet that FDR had conveniently moved from San Diego out to Honolulu. " more here.

"Japan, hoping to capitalize on Germany's success in Europe, made several demands, including a steady supply of oil, from the Dutch East Indies; these talks, however, broke down in June.[79] In July, Japan seized military control of southern Indochina since it would not only put her in a better position... ( ... ) ... The United States, United Kingdom and other western governments reacted to the seizure of Indochina with a freeze on assets, while the United States (which supplied 80% of Japan's oil) responded by placing a complete oil embargo. Thus Japan was essentially forced to choose between withdrawing from Asia, or seizing the oil she needed by force; the Japanese military did not consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil embargo an unspoken declaration of war. The Imperial General Headquarte

"A very small, few-meter sized asteroid, designated 2008 TC3..." "It is very unlikely that any sizable fragments will survive passage through the Earth's atmosphere..." Let's pretend that "few-meter-sized" means 3m in diameter, that the space rock is perfectly spherical and will hit the Earth's surface in one piece. Mass of asteroid = density*volume = (3000kg/m^3)*(4*pi*(1.5m)^2/3) = 28274.334 kg (Density data from an eyeball-average of table in http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/asteroid_masses) If it hits the surface at 12800m/s, then: Kinetic energy = .5*mv^2 = 2316233431638.683 J ~ 2316 gigajoules 1 ton TNT = 4.184GJ (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule), so the meteorite impact is roughly 553.6 tons of TNT. Caveat emptor: many, many approximations.

Or the reporter misquoted him...

1 Atmosphere = 14.7 psi.
Pressure increases 1A every 33 feet
36,000 / 33 = 1091 Atmospheres.
1091 * 14.7 = 16038 psi

16,000 ~= 15000

http://www.onr.navy.mil/Focus/ocean/water/pressure1.htm

Not surprised, there is really no need to. Your GPSr doesn't care what time it is in human terms... I would be more surprised if they acutally didupdate GPS satellites with leap second fixes.

Actually that is one of the jobs of the US Naval Observatory. They constantly update the GPS satelights time and position information. If you have a hand held gps receiver you have an atomic accuracy clock in your hand. The USNO mission is to: 2 Provide astronomical and timing data required by the Navy and other components of the Department of Defense for navigation, precise positioning, and command, control, and communications. http://www.usno.navy.mil/mission.shtml If you have one clock you know the time but as soon as you have two clocks time becomes relative.

I don't understand what the DoD has to do with time, standards or measurements.

Navigation depends on time. The Navy is very interested in navigation. That's why they established the Naval Observatory in 1830.

We need to get the opinion of an expert, not some random poll..

USNO employs some of the formost experts on the subject. They are soliciting the opinions of some of the other stakeholders.

GPS epoch doesn't account for leap seconds

Google will have some of the same issues as that "other startup",
and lots that are different. A floating oil platform
(to me) works better than a ship based datacenter.

_IF_ Google was to do a floating datacenter, I'd love to see
them take one of the old nuke flat-tops, and use that...
The big E as a datacenter would be killer, better than a pile of scrap.
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/003578.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(CVN-65)
http://www.nvr.navy.mil/nvrships/details/CV64.htm

EACH of the A2W power plants can deliver over 26,000 kw
(over 200,000 kw total) , and if you combine the reactor
hot water output, with an amonia based cooling system,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator
http://www.nh3tech.org/absorption.html
can give low cost cooling.

Here is a letter that I sent to one of the VARS for the "other startup",
strangely enough, I never got an answer back. Perhaps it just got spam filtered out.

The questions remain unanswered....

*********** Mon Feb 4 11:23:17 2008
Received: from [****************.yahoo.com via HTTP; Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:23:17 PST
Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 11:23:17 -0800 (PST)
**********************
Subject: Floating Data Centers?!?
To: ken@teamsilverback.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Length: 8789

I saw your article about floating datacenters, and since you asked for
input, I thought I would chime in. Let me start off by saying I like the idea,
I know that there is great room for delivering a good product, at a good price point.

Now before I put my racks in a floating data center, here are some of my
concerns and references to real world issues. (I have a lot more, but
that depends on the ship and configuration.),

1) ""using sea water for their chill water"". Having seawater around is
a good heat sink, and since the ships are at dock most of the time, a long
pipe can be run to the cooler water zones to draw in water that is
close to freezing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_lake_water_cooling
Using colder sea water (after a standard air heat exchanger) can result in
good economies, if the heat exchangers can stand up to the corrosive environment.

2) ""All generators will have access to the ships fuel storage during disaster scenarios, which
allows them to operate for nearly a month without the need to refuel.""
Traditional fuel for gen sets and large ship engines are very different. An
onboard gen set is like a modern rail road locomotive engine
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:3000hp_curve_ver2.jpg ), and it runs on diesel,
a main power plant for a ship (also a diesel) traditionally runs on Heavy Fuel Oil
(HFO). Without modifications to either the main power plant, or the gen sets, both
engines can not share the same fuel source. Please note the differences between #2
(the traditional fuel for ship board gen sets) , and #6 (Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO), AKA
Bunker C, the traditional fuel for ships manufactured in the 1980's). #6 is almost
a jelly at cold temperatures, and must be heated (to around 100c ) for efficient
movement, and burning. The main engine on a large cargo vessel is also much more
efficient (up to %50) in its use of fuel, making them more economical than the
smaller generators. Gen sets use a small amount of diesel per day, (compared
to the main engine) a 3100 kw gen set will use 4253 gallons of fuel per day
(http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/living_and_working/diaries/rrs_james

DARPA had a project going on for awhile called UCAR, which was an unmanned autonomous combat helicopter. Unfortunately the war took all the money and DARPA had to cancel the competitions between Lockheed and Northrop.

Northrop currently has an unmanned helicopter called Firescout that has autonomously landed on a Navy ship while the ship was moving.

My point is that this type of work is nothing new.

Actually, I have been a fan of the USNO for a long time. Very cool stuff.

However there is a passage that I feel is most relevant:

The Second

In 1967, the 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures first defined the International System (SI) unit of time, the second, in terms of atomic time rather than the motion of the Earth. Specifically, a second was defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 cycles of microwave light absorbed or emitted by the hyperfine transition of cesium-133 atoms in their ground state undisturbed by external fields.

[emphasis mine].

My thought was this: If the distance from the sun affects the nuclear decay rate (which occurs at the subatomic level), could it also affect the speed at which the electron energy states changes in the cesium clock design?

Science starts by asking questions. Even when the answer to the question turns out to be, "nope, not that we can tell", other interesting things can be found along the way.

You should read up on the efforts of (e.g.) the United States Naval Observatory at keeping proper time, it's pretty cool stuff. In short, they use a lot of different devices to try and keep accurate time, not just cesium clocks. Also, cesium clocks work by what I think is called stimulated emission: they bombard the atom with microwaves until the electrons start losing their shit. In any case, it's not related to nuclear decay. While accurate timekeeping can be a challenge, this development shouldn't affect our current systems.

IANAP

And, let's not forget NRL.

Ring laser gyros were likely used for inertial navigation, though you bring up something interesting. SPAWAR System Center San Diego is the home to an active marine mammal program... orca with fricken laser beams, hmmm.

Jimmy Carter, a nuclear engineer...

This continues to be perpetuated, but it is inaccurate, at best:

http://atomicinsights.blogspot.com/2006/01/picking-on-jimmy-carter-myth.html

http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq60-14.htm

Not trying to pick on you, as what you wrote was sensible, just tired of seeing this "President Carter, nuclear expert" myth.

- T

What you are saying here isn't necessarily true. There are government research labs with government employees doing interesting and relevant scientific work. NIST and NRL are two that come to mind, and both have had somewhat recent Nobel winners. DARPA does manage a lot of contracts, but not every government/DoD lab does.

Is 1pm EST, 12 PM EDT? Which is what most of the east coast of the US is on? Current Time

Some relevant documents:
http://heseweb.nrl.navy.mil/glast/CALPDR/PDR_Summary_Report_16July.pdf
http://www-glast.slac.stanford.edu/software/AnaGroup/Atwood-GLASTEnergy-9dec02.ppt

According to the preliminary design report, the calorimeter is 8.5 radiation lengths deep, with 1.5 in the tracker. I forget my shower mechanics but 10 rad lengths seems like enough. The design goal is 20% accuracy for a high-energy range, and 10% and 6% at progressively lower energies.

This stuff makes me feel lucky that I work with lots of lead glass and PMTs.

Except the current study doesn't address airliners. The current study is for vehicles less that 40ft. long.

No, the 40' limitation is for the section on boats, not aircraft. That's a different project in the same solicitation. It's a response to the USS Cole incident. The U.S. Navy would like to have the capability to do something about unexpected approaching small boats, something less lethal than machine-gunning them.

You and your newfangled shiny TV stuff... Back in my day we had books...
 
  "Explorations: my quest for adventure and discovery under the sea." (Hyperion, 1995)
 
Seriously, not only is this not news, or even new news... TFA gets the sequence of events all wrong. Ballard had already been hunting Titanic with side scan sonar and photo sleds (which is even harder than finding a needle in a haystack) when the Navy approached him to map the wreckage of Thresher and Scorpion. Not find, but map (the locations were already known to the Navy). This was done as part of a Navy project to examine reactors known to be on the bottom of the ocean to determine if reactors could be disposed of by ocean dumping. They also dove on both wrecks using the Alvin (Oxford University Press, 1990) to take samples of the seabed and wreckage and to take radiation readings (photographs from this expedition can be seen at the Naval Historical Center page on Scorpion ).
 
When the Navy hired him to perform those surveys, he examined the earlier ones (there have been several), and realized that debris trails were the key to locating deep water wrecks. The Scorpion wreck site is compact as she broke up on impact with the bottom. Thresher's wreck on the other hand is scattered across a considerable area as she broke up (relatively) shallow. The Navy however refused to pay for a search for Titanic to prove the theory and to further test Dr. Ballard's new mapping sled. Instead the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution funded a search for Titanic as an extension of the expedition to map the Scorpion's wreckage. (Though all WHOI knew was that it was a classified USN expedition.)

...why if we knew where both of these submarines were located well before 1985 (the Thresher having been explored by the Trieste and the Scorpion having been located and thoroughly photographed by the end of 1968)?

Pics of the Thresher in 1963: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-t/ssn593-l.htm

Pics of the Scorpion in late 1968: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-s/ssn589-k.htm

Both of these seem to predate Ballard's "discoveries".

...why if we knew where both of these submarines were located well before 1985 (the Thresher having been explored by the Trieste and the Scorpion having been located and thoroughly photographed by the end of 1968)?

Pics of the Thresher in 1963: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-t/ssn593-l.htm

Pics of the Scorpion in late 1968: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-s/ssn589-k.htm

Both of these seem to predate Ballard's "discoveries".

USS Scorpion has been visited a couple of times, http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-s/ssn589-n.htm has pics.

Although it's gotten a little better over time, submarine warships are basically 300 foot long sewer pipes. After reading through the process of inboard venting the sanitary tank back in the day, I'm glad they didn't offer Smell O' Round VR for Das Boot.

Someone needs to bring down an ISS air sample for someone in NAVSEA to evaluate for pungency.

Which, if I remember correctly, is why sailors in the US Navy still use a sextant to figure out their position. The newest example I could find in a quick search was this picture: http://www.news.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=41572 The practice is probably done out of tradition, but hell... if I was on a ship and some knucklehead was able to knock out the electronics (hopefully not easy to do), then I wouldn't mind if someone aboard had the capability of telling the Captain where the hell to point the boat to in order to get to safety.

The thing that I wonder is this: if the GPS, the chronometer, and magnetic compass all go down, does that mean that they are in a condition where they're probably reduced to using oars for propulsion?

Galileo is a GPS. The US military system that everybody refers to incorrectly as "the GPS" is really called Navstar.

http://www.navyband.navy.mil/anthems/ANTHEMS/Russia.mp3

        Unbreakable Union of freeborn Republics,
        Great Russia has welded forever to stand.
        Created in struggle by will of the people,
        United and mighty, our Soviet land!

        Sing to the Fatherland, home of the free,
        Bulwark of peoples in brotherhood strong.
        O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people,
        To Communism's triumph lead us on!

the affected companies will feel "RAMMED AND BUSTED"... from behind in behind up behind

("UP BEHIND" IS a valid US Navy command to deck hands working lines or involved in Underway Replenishment operations.... I know, because it was used as late as 1984-86 when I was in the Deck force)

http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/commands_order.htm\

I just wonder if those companies will be able to "Walk Back Handsomely", hehehe

Kind of reminds ya of the 1990s urban legend about Canadian lighthouses and U.S. aircraft carriers.

US Ship: Please divert your course 0.5 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.

CND reply: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

US Ship: This is the Captain of a US Navy Ship. I say again, divert your course.

CND reply: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course!

US Ship: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS CORAL SEA*, WE ARE A LARGE WARSHIP OF THE US NAVY. DIVERT YOUR COURSE NOW!!

CND reply: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

Not true, of course. But, funny.

....and seemingly on the mark with regard to the Air Force's suggestions regarding email filtering, responsibility for security breaches etc.

7. This is absolutely critical. Most ISPs assign IP number through DHCP. The numbers are only leased for a short time. If the end-user's computer doesn't renew the lease (perhaps because it is shut off or the connection dropped) the number will be freed up and reassigned to someone else. The time (and timezone) at which the activity was recorded could impact who the IP number was supposed to be assigned to.

It is also critical that the system be synchronized regularly. Some systems will log when the clock is synchronized and record the amount of the adjustment. It's also important to note what the clock was synchronized with. Our nation's official time keeper is the U.S. Naval Observatory. They run an NTP server at tick.usno.navy.mil.

9. These are presumably the logs Dr. Jacobson analyzed to conclude no wireless adapter was used, so they should exist. The IP headers will tell you if loose source routing was used (one form of IP spoofing). There should be timestamps on the recorded packets which will tell you latency between MediaSentry and Ms. Lindor. If the latency is less than the speed of light (about 20ms from New York to California) then you know something fishy is going on. It will also give you an idea of what the transfer rate was. If it exceeds the service Ms. Lindor had subscribed to, you again know something is going on. Kazaa likely also includes a wealth of information in its layer of the protocol stack.

The logs may indicate many failed attempts to download files. If the infringer's machine was not able to respond to most download requests it would put an upper bound on damages.

You can set up your own test to prove that Dr. Jacobson's claim about wireless is bogus. Your own test would produce packets very similar to those from the logs.

11. Most software has bugs. Software that isn't exposed to the general public isn't tested as well and consequently has more bugs. It is virtually guaranteed any custom software MediaSentry developed has bugs in it. You need to determine if there were any bugs that would impact the claims MediaSentry is making.

13. If MediaSentry downloaded documents suggesting the machine belonged to someone else it would certainly be pertinent to the defense. Many a public figure has learned the hard way that Word documents record the user who created them. MP3 files contain IDT tags that can include arbitrary information (the actual information depends on the software that created the file). If the documents contain a name and that person uses the same DHCP server as Ms. Lindor it would be a huge red flag that the other person had a lease on the infringing IP number when the documents were downloaded.

16. 11 files in three seconds?? The logs from paragraph 9 would be interesting here.

27. As mentioned earlier the clocks are critical. If MediaSentry and Verizon were out of sync the IP number and all the evidence associated with it are meaningless as evidence.

It might be useful to learn something about military technology before you make such pronouncements. The weapons system that was used was the RIM-161 SM-3 ABM. It was designed to engage and destroy tactical ballistic missiles. It doesn't even have the capability to reach most satellites -- this one was within range because it's orbit was decaying.

This weapons system has nothing to do with the "deployment of weapons in space", unless the USS Lake Erie has some sort of secret warp drive that we don't know about.

>> The last naval battle this country had was against Libya, if I recall correctly.

A little history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis
http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/forces_cold.htm

• Better, more powerful reactors (3x increase in available power!)
  
• Stealth
  
• Electromagnetic catapults
  
• Greater automation leading to reduced crew complement
  
• Better survivability in a fight (like that's been a big concern :P)
  
• Advanced arresting gear (no idea what that means)
  
• Dual Band Radar support
  
• "Flexible ship infrastructure" (i.e. We can mount some kewl energy weapons once Congress gives us the green.)
  

While I agree with the general sentiments of Dubya, and didn't like Bush Sr as pres, Bush Sr was shot down in the Pacific during WWII when the plane he was flying was hit by Japanese anti-aircraft fire. If you have any info contradicting this I'd like to see it.

Check this out http://www.ncis.navy.mil/linx/national_capital_region.html They will be sharing incident data, finger prints, etc... It is a growing project with a number of states already involved.

"one of pure numbers where the Chinese have the advantage."

Can they swim?

"Do their cruise missiles even work without GPS?"

Since they tend to predate the GPS constellation, I'd imagine so.

"Any war by the US against a significantly developed nation runs the risk of rendering space completely useless for the next century."

If satellites require constant readjustment to compensate for drag (atmospheric, gravitational, etc.) and eventually have to be replaced after a few years as they run out of maneuvering fuel and fall out of orbit, why shouldn't the same be true of the debris?

"The economic damage from that stupidity would be huge."

1913 called, yadda.

If your information is right it seems to fly in the face of several acts and laws...

http://www.ssa.gov/legislation/legis_bulletin_010705.html
"Section 7214. Prohibition of the Display of Social Security Account Numbers on Drivers' Licenses or Motor Vehicle Registrations

        * Prohibits Federal, State, and local governments from displaying SSNs, or any derivative thereof, on drivers' licenses, motor vehicle registrations, or other identification documents issued by State departments of motor vehicles. "

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d051016t.pdf
Regarding many uses of your SSN

https://www.smartwebmove.navsup.navy.mil/swm/documents/SWM1Authority9397.pdf
The executive order regarding SSNs as use for identification

It is also surprising to note that there is no mandatory requirement to have a SSN, however in practice this is like saying there is no mandatory requirement to have a driver's license; it is next to impossible to do anything without one. It is also worth noting that many of the forms which ask for a SSN can be skipped; particularly those which are government oriented and not directly related to the uses authorized for the number. Doing so simply may mean that your forms don't get processed in a timely manner.

If the symmetry and isotropy give diamonds their shine, why are crystals of
for instance Si, Ge, Sn not as beautiful? They have the same isotropy and crystal structure.
And why is a low-symmetry sapphire prettier than high-symmetry table salt?
I would guess high index of refraction, and the lack of absorption of optical wavelengths are the more relevant properties.

(see any textbook on crystallography, or for instance http://cst-www.nrl.navy.mil/lattice/ )

I'm using perl threads in a production environment to generate 11K+ satellite images daily; I'd say they work pretty well... Check out the website for a look-see.

TAI itself isn't known until after the fact, since it is an average of multiple national time standards. Even those standards aren't synchronized to within their inherent precision. Different clocks which contribute to TAI can differ from each other in the microsecond range.

Timing GPS receivers can sync to well under that. NIST has some information on tracability.

The short answer is that your question was in regard to NTP, and a time server locked to GPS time is considered to be Stratum 1.