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H2s start to carry surface-to-surface missles

oh they've already got humvees w/ missiles on 'em, don't you worry...

Forget hunters; they're too slow. What about using the same systems for defense as found on Navy destroyers such as the Arleigh Burke class, the Phalanx Close In Weapons System?. This point defense system is good enough to annihilate incoming missiles and stuff, incoming birds are equivalent to missiles in the windmill's case.

but don't things as small as paing flecks cause serious damage at the kind of speeds space junk goes at?

I assume you mean "paint flecks", and the answer is that they may cause minor damage. The space shuttle Challenger took a paint fleck hit on one of its windows, which left a crater about a quarter inch in diameter. Apparently such minor pitting on the thermal tiles is considered routine in the shuttle program.

Even at orbital speeds, paint flecks don't have enough momentum to worry about. The big worry is the ball-bearing-sized debris, which is essentially impossible to detect, and which could deliver the impact energy of a hand grenade explosion.

Gee, I believe you 're right!

Took the words right out of my mouth. I've be writting GUIs and graphics applications for X since X11R3. Xlib has a bit of a curve to it, but if you have any background at all in computer science and graphics, it isn't too hard to understand the abstractions. The X Window System has a long and interesting history.

Xlib still has a lot going for it, espcially in terms of availability on the various UNIX variants out there and one of it's often overlooked features, especially by younger less experienced developers: network portability. This feature is absolutely wonderful inside a corporate or research environment where your workstation isn't necessarily where you run your code and/or do your work.

Xlib + Xt + Motif + MotifTools (or whatever they are called today) is still a viable, useful toolchain for developing applications. Canada's latest civilian Air Traffic Control Enroute system (CAATS) uses Xlib + Xt + Motif for it's extremely customized UI. (It's not for the faint of heart -- no help ballons there). The Canadian Military also adopted a system based on the same underlying technology (from the same vendor) for it's ATC enroute and local control.

As always, the right tool for the right job, but also, the right developer for the right job helps a lot too. You wouldn't let a kid loose with a jackhammer, so why let an inexperienced software developer loose with Xlib + Xt + Motif? :-)

Took the words right out of my mouth. I've be writting GUIs and graphics applications for X since X11R3. Xlib has a bit of a curve to it, but if you have any background at all in computer science and graphics, it isn't too hard to understand the abstractions. The X Window System has a long and interesting history.

Xlib still has a lot going for it, espcially in terms of availability on the various UNIX variants out there and one of it's often overlooked features, especially by younger less experienced developers: network portability. This feature is absolutely wonderful inside a corporate or research environment where your workstation isn't necessarily where you run your code and/or do your work.

Xlib + Xt + Motif + MotifTools (or whatever they are called today) is still a viable, useful toolchain for developing applications. Canada's latest civilian Air Traffic Control Enroute system (CAATS) uses Xlib + Xt + Motif for it's extremely customized UI. (It's not for the faint of heart -- no help ballons there). The Canadian Military also adopted a system based on the same underlying technology (from the same vendor) for it's ATC enroute and local control.

As always, the right tool for the right job, but also, the right developer for the right job helps a lot too. You wouldn't let a kid loose with a jackhammer, so why let an inexperienced software developer loose with Xlib + Xt + Motif? :-)

http://itss.raytheon.com/cafe/qadir/q192.html

Do photons carry mass as suggested by the equation m = hf/c2 ?

If you take Einstein's equation E = m c^2 , where m = mass and c = speed of light, and the Planck equation for the energy of a photon, E = h f , where h = Planck's constant and f = the frequency of the photon, and combine them you get: m c^2 = hf or that m = h f/c^2. This equation says that the energy carried by a photon which has NO REST MASS, is equivalent to an amount of ordinary mass in grams, and that this 'effective mass' varies with the frequency of the photon. This effective mass can be acted upon by gravity which only cares how much mass a particle has; alternately, gravity only cares about how much mass or EQUIVALENT ENERGY a particle has given by E = m c^2. Also, if you prefer the particle description of physics over the wave description, you can approximate all photons as 'bullets' each carrying a mass of m = hf/c^2 and traveling at the speed of light.

That's exactly what I said, just in different words. Your "relativistic corrections" to Einstein's equation apply only if you plug in the rest mass, i.e. E = m0 c^2. Since the dynamical mass is given by m = gamma m0, the equation E = m c^2 already contains all relativistic effects. In summary, photons have a dynamical mass, but no rest mass.

Now, modern terminology tends to give the meaning of "rest mass" to the unspecified term "mass", but I pointed that out in my previous post already.

Thank you for submitting your idea. We found it interesting but currently have a system in place that accomplishes the similar goal. Our solution involves working with an in service "vector delivery system" that quickly removes any possible threat from our skies. Our flight "escort" service have even been warmly received by the flying public. Clearly our system has cost advantages over yours.

Thank you again for your time.

...from Raytheon's Stinger page:

The Stinger Family of Weapon Systems is combat-proven, fire-and-forget, lethal, lightweight, and multimission. That's the "Stinger Advantage."

I wonder if this trade show has booth babes...

And, lest we forget, there are thousands of privately owned companies that have stock holders, boards of trustees, etc. who all face the same issue. There are things you are allowed to disclose, and things you are not allowed to disclose. Stock holders generally don't care about the technical details of every single project that comes along. They are interested in whether it is generating revenue, if it is over budget, etc. These things can be discussed openly without fear of the gestapo coming knocking on the boardroom door.

I haven't read the article but since I just finished up at Berkeley, I know the research projects you are referring to. In particular I work peripherally on the SmartDust Project run bt Prof. Pister. He actually has referenced the issues of "the dark side" on that webpage. So it's not like the engineers and scientists working on this research don't know the implications of their work. Basically, Pister's philosophy is that the useage of these projects should be left up to the people (or the market if you like) in determining whether it is used for invasion of privacy or not. It's not up to HIM to stop his work based on the POSSIBILITY that these things can be used for nefarious purposes. Much like the scientists that synthesized chemicals that were the precursors for chemical weapons or the nuclear physicists who worked on fission, he is not out to be the moral authority deciding what is and is not used. That's why we have governments and such.

I agree with him to an extent, and it's the perogative of each and every researcher to decide what projects he or she wants to work on. For instance, I worked one summer at Raytheon. After the summer, I reflected on the work I was doing and decided that it didn't make me feel good knowing that my work would go towards the destruction of human life. I thought "If I agreed with each and every action that my governement undertakes while using this component, then I would have no problem creating it. But if I cannot make this claim, then I don't think I should use my abilities to create destruction." So that ended my work for defense contractors, and this was in 1999 mind you, before the current geopolitical situation.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that it's truly up to each and every one of us to decide how technology will be applied. We elect the officials (kinda, I suppose) and we can change things if we want to. We just have to have the WILL to act, and not stand by while other interests create a society that we disagree with.

• I am a pilot.
• I am a Software Engineer
• I worked on a large air traffic control system for 7.5 years
• I read the article

Actually, Raytheon sells a machine gun for clearing underwater mine fields that works by using super caviting bullets. It's called the "The Rapid Airborne Mine Clearance System (RAMICS)", and here's a link.

• "Hi. Yeah. Erm, what the hell are 'boxen', 'VAXen', 'OSen' and 'Virii'?"
  "These are mystical non-words, which have been conjured up by stupid wankers wanting to appear hip, cool and intellectual. Nothing to see here. Please move along."

• "Why is everyone so against Microsoft? And what is up with that dollar sign?"
  "Welcome to Slashdot. Much in the same way that one dog sniffs another's ass to evaluate that individual, so is this practice of marking your grounds of viewpoint. Think of it as a Linux user bending over and farting - It is all about making their views heard.

• "Who is Junis?"
  "The most legendary troll ever to grace the pages of Slashdot. Not only was a Slashdot editor duped into posting a complete article on the opression of Kabul's geeks, but it also spawned a veritable banquet of new trolling material (such as optimum temperatures for storing Commodore hardware buried under chicken huts and the abundance of DivX Baywatch episodes)"

• "What is 'YHBT. YHL. HAND.'? I see it everywhere!"
  "This is commonly seen in comments sections after a pathetic Slashboteer or paranoid YRO fanatic has been suckered into replying to a finely crafted piece of literary genius."

• "Why the hell would someone want to re-program some obscure electronic device that is no longer produced?"
  "Many cock-smoking Slashdot users like to claim that it is 'because they can'. In fact, it boils down to 'because I've got nothing else better to do'. These are normally the same people who think that their university attendance made them technical gods and everyone else is worthless."

• "I recently saw an article on programming, and lots of people posted code snippets. Problem is, most of it was wrong. Why is that?"
  "A high percentage of Slashdot users are still in university, and think that after day 1 of 'Introduction to C' that they are ready to code embedded systems for Boeing or Raytheon. They spend endless hours posting about how they've hacked device x, when in fact all they've done is downloaded the SDK, bragged about 16-bit bus register cron-job front side bus accumulators and watched 'Anti-Trust' for the 797th time."

This troll is dedicated to Nicola Wheeler on ITV's Emmerdale. mmmmm.... top heavy....

The military has been tracking projectiles for a long time. They had mortar tracking radar during the Vietnam War that could track the shell, predict its impact point, and more importantly, back calculate the launch point.

Ahh, you mean one of these. (Well, the Q37 is a little newer than Vietnam, but same idea)

I served for 3 years in target processing for the 10th Target Acquisition Detachment at Fort Drum. We happened to have two such radars.

Fun things, though you don't want to stand in front of one when it is radiating.

More info here. (and don't forget to look at it's younger brother, the Q36.)

but I never heard of a system that could work against targets of that size (projectile).

Buh? This is trivial. MMW radar's been around for decades, well capable of tracking objects of even smaller sizes. A freaking baseball is a good deal smaller than an artillery shell, and radar systems don't have a problem with that. There are counterbattery systems like Firefinder that do nothing but detect incoming artillery fire, track the trajectory, plot the trajectory backwards to calculate a point of origin, and feed that data to friendly fire-control systems so's they can blow the hell out of the source of the incoming rounds.

A laser system, even an IR one, has a wavelength considerably smaller than MMW radar, and is capable of tracking commensurately much smaller objects. An artillery shell is cake.

• "Hi. Yeah. Erm, what the hell are 'boxen', 'VAXen', 'OSen' and 'Virii'?"
  "These are mystical non-words, which have been conjured up by stupid wankers wanting to appear hip, cool and intellectual. Nothing to see here. Please move along."

• "Why is everyone so against Microsoft? And what is up with that dollar sign?"
  "Welcome to Slashdot. Much in the same way that one dog sniffs another's ass to evaluate that individual, so is this practice of marking your grounds of viewpoint. Think of it as a Linux user bending over and farting - It is all about making their views heard.

• "Who is Junis?"
  "The most legendary troll ever to grace the pages of Slashdot. Not only was a Slashdot editor duped into posting a complete article on the opression of Kabul's geeks, but it also spawned a veritable banquet of new trolling material (such as optimum temperatures for storing Commodore hardware buried under chicken huts and the abundance of DivX Baywatch episodes)"

• "What is 'YHBT. YHL. HAND.'? I see it everywhere!"
  "This is commonly seen in comments sections after a pathetic Slashboteer or paranoid YRO fanatic has been suckered into replying to a finely crafted piece of literary genius."

• "Why the hell would someone want to re-program some obscure electronic device that is no longer produced?"
  "Many cock-smoking Slashdot users like to claim that it is 'because they can'. In fact, it boils down to 'because I've got nothing else better to do'. These are normally the same people who think that their university attendance made them technical gods and everyone else is worthless."

• "I recently saw an article on programming, and lots of people posted code snippets. Problem is, most of it was wrong. Why is that?"
  "A high percentage of Slashdot users are still in university, and think that after day 1 of 'Introduction to C' that they are ready to code embedded systems for Boeing or Raytheon. They spend endless hours posting about how they've hacked device x, when in fact all they've done is downloaded the SDK, bragged about 16-bit bus register cron-job front side bus accumulators and watched 'Anti-Trust' for the 797th time."

This troll is dedicated to Nicola Wheeler on ITV's Emmerdale. mmmmm.... top heavy....

they also found this thing years ago.. well... known that it was out there for a while, just not exactly where. here's a page talking about it in Feb 2000, for example.

• "Hi. Yeah. Erm, what the hell are 'boxen', 'VAXen', 'OSen' and 'Virii'?"
  "These are mystical non-words, which have been conjured up by stupid wankers wanting to appear hip, cool and intellectual. Nothing to see here. Please move along."

• "Why is everyone so against Microsoft? And what is up with that dollar sign?"
  "Welcome to Slashdot. Much in the same way that one dog sniffs another's ass to evaluate that individual, so is this practice of marking your grounds of viewpoint. Think of it as a Linux user bending over and farting - It is all about making their views heard.

• "Who is Junis?"
  "The most legendary troll ever to grace the pages of Slashdot. Not only was a Slashdot editor duped into posting a complete article on the opression of Kabul's geeks, but it also spawned a veritable banquet of new trolling material (such as optimum temperatures for storing Commodore hardware buried under chicken huts and the abundance of DivX Baywatch episodes)"

• "What is 'YHBT. YHL. HAND.'? I see it everywhere!"
  "This is commonly seen in comments sections after a pathetic Slashboteer or paranoid YRO fanatic has been suckered into replying to a finely crafted piece of literary genius."

• "Why the hell would someone want to re-program some obscure electronic device that is no longer produced?"
  "Many cock-smoking Slashdot users like to claim that it is 'because they can'. In fact, it boils down to 'because I've got nothing else better to do'. These are normally the same people who think that their university attendance made them technical gods and everyone else is worthless."

• "I recently saw an article on programming, and lots of people posted code snippets. Problem is, most of it was wrong. Why is that?"
  "A high percentage of Slashdot users are still in university, and think that after day 1 of 'Introduction to C' that they are ready to code embedded systems for Boeing or Raytheon. They spend endless hours posting about how they've hacked device x, when in fact all they've done is downloaded the SDK, bragged about 16-bit bus register cron-job front side bus accumulators and watched 'Anti-Trust' for the 797th time."

This troll is dedicated to Nicola Wheeler on ITV's Emmerdale. mmmmm.... top heavy....

• "Hi. Yeah. Erm, what the hell are 'boxen', 'VAXen', 'OSen' and 'Virii'?"
  "These are mystical non-words, which have been conjured up by stupid wankers wanting to appear hip, cool and intellectual. Nothing to see here. Please move along."

• "Why is everyone so against Microsoft? And what is up with that dollar sign?"
  "Welcome to Slashdot. Much in the same way that one dog sniffs another's ass to evaluate that individual, so is this practice of marking your grounds of viewpoint. Think of it as a Linux user bending over and farting - It is all about making their views heard.

• "Who is Junis?"
  "The most legendary troll ever to grace the pages of Slashdot. Not only was a Slashdot editor duped into posting a complete article on the opression of Kabul's geeks, but it also spawned a veritable banquet of new trolling material (such as optimum temperatures for storing Commodore hardware buried under chicken huts and the abundance of DivX Baywatch episodes)"

• "What is 'YHBT. YHL. HAND.'? I see it everywhere!"
  "This is commonly seen in comments sections after a pathetic Slashboteer or paranoid YRO fanatic has been suckered into replying to a finely crafted piece of literary genius."

• "Why the hell would someone want to re-program some obscure electronic device that is no longer produced?"
  "Many cock-smoking Slashdot users like to claim that it is 'because they can'. In fact, it boils down to 'because I've got nothing else better to do'. These are normally the same people who think that their university attendance made them technical gods and everyone else is worthless."

• "I recently saw an article on programming, and lots of people posted code snippets. Problem is, most of it was wrong. Why is that?"
  "A high percentage of Slashdot users are still in university, and think that after day 1 of 'Introduction to C' that they are ready to code embedded systems for Boeing or Raytheon. They spend endless hours posting about how they've hacked device x, when in fact all they've done is downloaded the SDK, bragged about 16-bit bus register cron-job front side bus accumulators and watched 'Anti-Trust' for the 797th time."

This troll is dedicated to Nicola Wheeler on ITV's Emmerdale. mmmmm.... top heavy....

• "Hi. Yeah. Erm, what the hell are 'boxen', 'VAXen', 'OSen' and 'Virii'?"
  "These are mystical non-words, which have been conjured up by stupid wankers wanting to appear hip, cool and intellectual. Nothing to see here. Please move along."

• "Why is everyone so against Microsoft? And what is up with that dollar sign?"
  "Welcome to Slashdot. Much in the same way that one dog sniffs another's ass to evaluate that individual, so is this practice of marking your grounds of viewpoint. Think of it as a Linux user bending over and farting - It is all about making their views heard.

• "Who is Junis?"
  "The most legendary troll ever to grace the pages of Slashdot. Not only was a Slashdot editor duped into posting a complete article on the opression of Kabul's geeks, but it also spawned a veritable banquet of new trolling material (such as optimum temperatures for storing Commodore hardware buried under chicken huts and the abundance of DivX Baywatch episodes)"

• "What is 'YHBT. YHL. HAND.'? I see it everywhere!"
  "This is commonly seen in comments sections after a pathetic Slashboteer or paranoid YRO fanatic has been suckered into replying to a finely crafted piece of literary genius."

• "Why the hell would someone want to re-program some obscure electronic device that is no longer produced?"
  "Many cock-smoking Slashdot users like to claim that it is 'because they can'. In fact, it boils down to 'because I've got nothing else better to do'. These are normally the same people who think that their university attendance made them technical gods and everyone else is worthless."

• "I recently saw an article on programming, and lots of people posted code snippets. Problem is, most of it was wrong. Why is that?"
  "A high percentage of Slashdot users are still in university, and think that after day 1 of 'Introduction to C' that they are ready to code embedded systems for Boeing or Raytheon. They spend endless hours posting about how they've hacked device x, when in fact all they've done is downloaded the SDK, bragged about 16-bit bus register cron-job front side bus accumulators and watched 'Anti-Trust' for the 797th time."

This troll is dedicated to Nicola Wheeler on ITV's Emmerdale. mmmmm.... top heavy....

• "Hi. Yeah. Erm, what the hell are 'boxen', 'VAXen', 'OSen' and 'Virii'?"
  "These are mystical non-words, which have been conjured up by stupid wankers wanting to appear hip, cool and intellectual. Nothing to see here. Please move along."

• "Why is everyone so against Microsoft? And what is up with that dollar sign?"
  "Welcome to Slashdot. Much in the same way that one dog sniffs another's ass to evaluate that individual, so is this practice of marking your grounds of viewpoint. Think of it as a Linux user bending over and farting - It is all about making their views heard.

• "Who is Junis?"
  "The most legendary troll ever to grace the pages of Slashdot. Not only was a Slashdot editor duped into posting a complete article on the opression of Kabul's geeks, but it also spawned a veritable banquet of new trolling material (such as optimum temperatures for storing Commodore hardware buried under chicken huts and the abundance of DivX Baywatch episodes)"

• "What is 'YHBT. YHL. HAND.'? I see it everywhere!"
  "This is commonly seen in comments sections after a pathetic Slashboteer or paranoid YRO fanatic has been suckered into replying to a finely crafted piece of literary genius."

• "Why the hell would someone want to re-program some obscure electronic device that is no longer produced?"
  "Many cock-smoking Slashdot users like to claim that it is 'because they can'. In fact, it boils down to 'because I've got nothing else better to do'. These are normally the same people who think that their university attendance made them technical gods and everyone else is worthless."

• "I recently saw an article on programming, and lots of people posted code snippets. Problem is, most of it was wrong. Why is that?"
  "A high percentage of Slashdot users are still in university, and think that after day 1 of 'Introduction to C' that they are ready to code embedded systems for Boeing or Raytheon. They spend endless hours posting about how they've hacked device x, when in fact all they've done is downloaded the SDK, bragged about 16-bit bus register cron-job front side bus accumulators and watched 'Anti-Trust' for the 797th time."

This troll is dedicated to Nicola Wheeler on ITV's Emmerdale. mmmmm.... top heavy....

I worked for many years as a contractor at a large US-based defense company. They make lots of neat useful things, and some nasty things.
One thing was always stressed, in the hardware departments, in the software departments, in the finance departments, wherever. If you go into a lab, you must have ESD training. At least 3 levels of training existed. Level 1 was little more than awareness training. If something had an ESD warning label, stay clear of it. Don't touch. Etc. Why? The training also emphasized the costs associated with ESD damage to components. A great deal of effort was spent making sure that we all understood that ESD damage to components might not be visible or even detectable at test / QA time, HOWEVER, in the field, the defect rate over time was dramatically lower when ESD controls were in place on the assembly and test / QA lines. This was serious stuff, the examples ranged from deployed PCs going inop after years of reliable service up to air-to-air missiles not functioning due to static damage. In the end, a very large sum of money was spent investigating the effects of ESD on the reliability of components in the field and it was determined that the benefits far out paced the costs of training everyone and taking precautions in the labs.

I now work somewhere much smaller and have a really hard time getting people to believe that ESD is real. I even had to fight a bit to ESD mats at the workstations where we do assembly.

There are a lot of myths and misperceptions surrounding ESD incidents, and I think that people would be well served by understanding that damange to electronic devices is not either fatal or non-fatal. A FET device might have it's gate region severely weakened by an ESD incident, but it would appear to function normally for an extended period of time. Perhaps the thermal efficiency has been compromised because the gate has partially broken down. The added thermal stress on the part over time will lead to early failure. The reason, naively, would look like a bum part or a thermal problem. The ESD problems don't always reach out and slap you across the face with a sign that says: "Zapped by poor assembly / handling techniques".

I worked for many years as a contractor at a large US-based defense company. They make lots of neat useful things, and some nasty things.
One thing was always stressed, in the hardware departments, in the software departments, in the finance departments, wherever. If you go into a lab, you must have ESD training. At least 3 levels of training existed. Level 1 was little more than awareness training. If something had an ESD warning label, stay clear of it. Don't touch. Etc. Why? The training also emphasized the costs associated with ESD damage to components. A great deal of effort was spent making sure that we all understood that ESD damage to components might not be visible or even detectable at test / QA time, HOWEVER, in the field, the defect rate over time was dramatically lower when ESD controls were in place on the assembly and test / QA lines. This was serious stuff, the examples ranged from deployed PCs going inop after years of reliable service up to air-to-air missiles not functioning due to static damage. In the end, a very large sum of money was spent investigating the effects of ESD on the reliability of components in the field and it was determined that the benefits far out paced the costs of training everyone and taking precautions in the labs.

I now work somewhere much smaller and have a really hard time getting people to believe that ESD is real. I even had to fight a bit to ESD mats at the workstations where we do assembly.

There are a lot of myths and misperceptions surrounding ESD incidents, and I think that people would be well served by understanding that damange to electronic devices is not either fatal or non-fatal. A FET device might have it's gate region severely weakened by an ESD incident, but it would appear to function normally for an extended period of time. Perhaps the thermal efficiency has been compromised because the gate has partially broken down. The added thermal stress on the part over time will lead to early failure. The reason, naively, would look like a bum part or a thermal problem. The ESD problems don't always reach out and slap you across the face with a sign that says: "Zapped by poor assembly / handling techniques".

We can approximate that number with the Hubble Constant and then just multiply by 1.5 or 2 (depends on the company you work for) :)

http://itss.raytheon.com/cafe/qadir/q1797.html

Interesting concept but doesnt the slingshot effect use the gravity of planets (hence zero fuel ?) for travel ? Hence a path with nett gravity pulling the body to its destination would be of more use I think. Already the cassini mission used this principle to propel the craft to saturn (since the spacecraft lacked the fuel and the engines to propel itself to saturn).

-Dracken

But last I read, the Milky Way was thought to be a bared spiral.
This guy, these guys, and most convincingly, these guys, seem to all agree.

• Does anyone else remember from college how the poles just flip every million years or so, and no one really knows why

It's 250,000 years, and (some people will tell you) the field is winding down a bit right now, which is rather a bad thing unless you happen to have a cosmic ray proof bunker.

Every 250,000 years or so, the whole thing reverses polarity. And it's winding down right now, which is possibly a sign that we're due for another one. Don't invest too heavily in homing pigeons. ;-)

>> First the possible. A quick, back of a napkin
>> calculation shows that a supernovae at around 3
>> light years would appear roughly as bright as the
>> sun (depending on the circumstances).

You also forgot about what would happen 10-100 years later, when the actual blast wave of debris reached us.

Betelgeuse, which is around 500 LY away, may make travel in our solar system impossible (or a lot more costly) for a hundred years.

penguins with cell phones

"Lasers could also be used as an additional weapon system to fighters, bombers, helicopter gunships and warships but this is unlikely for a decade."

I find this quite puzzling. One of the big threats to warships (i.e. aircraft carriers) today, is cruise missiles.
To defend against those, we use missiles and gatling guns today.
Wouldn't something like this be a ideal supplement to CIWS? Moving a mirror around, directing the laser beam, to hit a sea-skimming cruise missile, should be easier than hitting that missile with lots-of-flying-lead[tm].

This is a concept commonly refered to as Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), a subset of Automated People Movers (APM) found at many airports. PRT has been around for a while and has somewhat fringe supporters (like me). Edward Anderson at the University of Minnesota has generated some of the most credible system designs and incorporated under Taxi2000. In fact, Raytheon developed a full test track of Anderson's concept outside of Boston; Bostonians can visit thier Marlborough, MA facility and see the future,!

The reason that PRT remains a fringe concept is related to economic challenges, not engineering ones. Although there are claims to the contrary, the general problem is that - like all public transit - PRT require a very high inital capital outlay. In dense urban areas, right-of-way costs are prohibitive. However, just as with information networks, public transit networks generate positive externalities: the larger the system, the more useful it is to everyone.

Furthermore there is little incentive to invest in expensive public works projects have prevented the testing of a fairly unproven technology. Public agencies would much rather invest in light rail systems that they have seen before than fancy driverless systems. Also, there is no conclusive proof that these decentralized systems can sustain the high corrider passenger/hour throughputs that make public transit so desirable for really dense urban areas.

Hopefully, projects like Cardiff will succeed and PRT will get recognition and legitimacy, but this is a technology that has been kicking around for a while and - as you can probably tell - is not insanely complex. As usual, economics and public policy get in the way of interesting engineering!

This is a concept commonly refered to as Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), a subset of Automated People Movers (APM) found at many airports. PRT has been around for a while and has somewhat fringe supporters (like me). Edward Anderson at the University of Minnesota has generated some of the most credible system designs and incorporated under Taxi2000. In fact, Raytheon developed a full test track of Anderson's concept outside of Boston; Bostonians can visit thier Marlborough, MA facility and see the future,!

The reason that PRT remains a fringe concept is related to economic challenges, not engineering ones. Although there are claims to the contrary, the general problem is that - like all public transit - PRT require a very high inital capital outlay. In dense urban areas, right-of-way costs are prohibitive. However, just as with information networks, public transit networks generate positive externalities: the larger the system, the more useful it is to everyone.

Furthermore there is little incentive to invest in expensive public works projects have prevented the testing of a fairly unproven technology. Public agencies would much rather invest in light rail systems that they have seen before than fancy driverless systems. Also, there is no conclusive proof that these decentralized systems can sustain the high corrider passenger/hour throughputs that make public transit so desirable for really dense urban areas.

Hopefully, projects like Cardiff will succeed and PRT will get recognition and legitimacy, but this is a technology that has been kicking around for a while and - as you can probably tell - is not insanely complex. As usual, economics and public policy get in the way of interesting engineering!

For the past 15 months, I've tried virtually every option available and I can't get it. The .com bust didn't help some struggling providers, but the real problem is the bastards that control the last mile. Because they have monopolies on the copper coming into my house, I am left with the poor prospect of allowing SpeakEasy.net to service themselves monthly on my posterior, while being grateful that they're only charging $89.99 for an 128k line.

I'd like to have other options, but reality has a nasty way of intruding on my dreams. Here's a quick rundown for those who are interested:

Cable Modem: Real Soon Now[TM], @Home says so. And that's been their story for the last 15 months.

Sprint Wireless: I live in a local valley that line-of-sight technologies can't penetrate. Of course, Sprint isn't even offering this now...

Wireless (Ricochet): Had a fat 128k pipe, but Chapter 13 took down the connection. Aerie (who bought Ricochet) claims to be offering service again. If only they would have done something 2 months sooner.

Satellite: Check out Huge Aircrash's, er I mean Hughes Electronics' spiffy DiRECWAY technology. What's that? Only available for Windows 98, 2k, and ME? Well Windows ME harder! I refuse to buy another computer to access the 'Net.

Fiber: I can pay to have Fiberhood run fibre to the rental I live in...or not.

DSL: Some local monopoly claims that they'll be upgrading their equipment in my area, which will shorten the 23,400 feet distance between my home and highspeed heaven Real Soon Now[TM]. And it's been their story for 15 months, too.

The real problem is that no one can afford to compete with the incumbent telcos. Even if someone could come up with a high-speed wireless solution (and 128k does not qualify) for my area, they'd be out of business within 2-3 years of inception and within 6-9 months of deployment. Why? Guess where the monopolies would spend their time upgrading their services--areas where customers have no choices, or areas where their monopoly is threatened?

The demand is threre. Content is not really holding up broadband. Broadband is being held up by the ILECs--at virtual gunpoint.

So if Microsoft launches Tomahawks at virus writers/terrorists, does it hit on the third try?

Raytheon and Teledyne (among other companies) have technology that lets planes fly themselves. What could be done is to have AI that absolutely prevents airplanes from flying into certain illegal areas (like cities. :))

Actually, it is Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile, or AMRAAM. You got the AIM-120 part right, though.

There have been tests using this as a ground to air missile, so it could possibly have been an AIM-120 he saw.

Neh

In any event (and this is not my specialty, so take this with the standard grain o' salt), the reason that a collapsar is expected to stop collapsing at neutron-star stage is that the neutron degeneracy pressure (basically, the Pauli Exclusion Principle in action) is able to resist the mutual gravitational forces up to some limit -- by calculation, 1.4 to 1.8 solar masses, although it appears that a value of 2.3 solar masses has been observed. Clearly, though, greater densities can exist, because if the limiting mass is exceeded the collapse continues -- to form a black hole, if you accept the present standard formulations of the problem. It's just that we don't know of a stronger force than neutron degeneracy, which will be able to resist the gravitational collapse. During the formation event (typically a supernova), if the collaspe forces (gravitation, implosion) exceed the neutron degeneracy forces, there's nothing to stop the continued collapse (through higher densities) to a black hole. Our lack of knowledge doesn't mean there's not a further stable state, though -- only that we don't know about it. Some scientists have speculated that a further point might exist in a quark star, which would consist (at least in its core) of free strange quarks. But some models of quark stars end up with lower densities than neutron stars... the problem is that we just don't know enough, yet.

(BTW, there's good info here on neutron stars, from a specialist.)

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I used to work for a large multinational corporation and was deployed over in Germany for a summer. I know lots of people who have had much longer deployments. Some of which who have jumped ship and taken up full-time employment and residency overseas.

It is far easier to have someone else deal with all the hassles of doing this: moving all your stuff legally, getting various papers, work permits, taxes, and immunization, if someone else is footing the tab. This stuff is non-trivial, it takes many people, lawyers, and years to get it done right.

A deployment acts as a nice transition period; your company will pay you lots of extra money (per-diem), you can fly home occasionally for free, take time to learn the language, and bail out if you don't like it. It's much easier to look for a job overseas if you already live there, so you'll have more choices. A big company like that will have lots of overseas projects, so you might even be able to pick where you want to go.

Sure, potential companies might pay for your expenses to fly out to interview and all you moving expenses. However, if you're already there, it makes you that much more marketable.

As for language, don't worry. European businesses workers mostly speak English; they need a common language to talk to other European countries. You'd be surprised how far you can get along without being able to speak the native language in a foreign country. Being able to read is far more important, and that's is relatively easy to learn on demand. For example, I can't speak much German (enough to order food, really) but I can read enough to run my own life when living there.

The barycenter (center of mass) of the earth-moon system is some 1707 km below Earth's surface. The Earth/Luna mass ratio is larger than any other planet/moon system in our solar system, bar Pluto/Charon, but I wouldn't go so far as to call the moon a planet.

Bottom line, your thesis is based on a faulty assertion. (i.e. Earth and Luna don't revolve around a common point in space - that point is comfortably beneath the earth's surface.)

See this link for greater detail.

-Isaac

Do we really think that the FBI Lab is capable of developing something like this on their own? (after they hid the fact that total credit for id'ing MafiaBoy should go to outside consultants)?

Silentrunner has a matching feature-set.

And Tom Perrine says source code will be a snapshot in time.. ahem, how about reconstructing ALL the capabilities from the code; then we know what is the worst it can do. Is the man an idiot or just trying to get a promotion?

I've seen the Cadillac Nightvision. Very nice toy, I'd say. Check out the link: Raytheon's IR Site
Raytheon makes the NightDriver stuff for Cadillac.

"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"