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Unmanned Aerial Drones Coming Soon Above U.S.
cnet-declan writes "Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been flying over Iraq and Afghanistan, but now the Bush administration wants to use them for domestic surveillance. A top Homeland Security official told Congress today, according to this CNET News.com article, that: "We need additional technology to supplement manned aircraft surveillance and current ground assets to ensure more effective monitoring of United States territory." One county in North Carolina is already using UAVs to monitor public gatherings. But what happens when lots of relatively dumb drones have to share airspace with aircraft carrying passengers? A pilot's association is worried."
At major events in Israel, they already use unmanned blimps to monitor it from a distance. If they can keep it out of commericial airspace, it shouldn't be a problem.
Boil a frog slowly...
My new sig seems even more appropriate than usual.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
hail skynet.
MORTAR COMBAT!
But what happens when lots of relatively dumb drones have to share airspace with aircraft carrying passengers? Hilarity ensues...
First it was the domestic wiretap issue; the administration not only didn't deny doing it, they flat-out flaunted it. Now they want to put unmanned drones in the air to watch God-knows-what. There's no longer even a pretense, a facade, even the slightest attempt to hide the surveillance society.
I thought that actions like appropriating the military for civilian law enforcement, spying on US citizens within the US, etc. were illegal. Why doesn't anyone seem to give a shit anymore?
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
We can't control our own borders but we will use tech like this to monitor our own citizens...
Anyone else find that just a little weird?
Nobody in America gives a shit for several reasons.
The first is the same bread-and-circuses problem that plagued the Roman Empire. As long as they have beer and football, Mountain Dew and XBox, or their cell phones and MTV, most Americans are quite content.
The second is a lousy mass media. Many people who might take a stand against anti-freedom activities such as this aren't even aware of the issue, just because it isn't reported well by major news outlets.
The third is a lack of understanding. Low-quality history lessons in schools, often teaching what amounts to idealistic propaganda, have resulted in many youths (and now adults) not even being able to comprehend the issues at hand. They are unaware of how such 'security' measures were the hallmarks of numerous totalitarian regimes, just in the 20th century alone.
It's a multifaceted problem, and no solution is readily available.
Hmm, you know fuel prices are high when the unmarked black helicopters have been replaced with unmarked black blimps :-).
The US is made of thousands upon thousands of immigrant. Very few of us are native. The current political and powers that be want everyone watched 24x7. It's scary to think that we'd spy on our own citizens just to protect them. But if we allow such things as domestic USVs, what's next? Tracking chips implanted in everyone? I don't know where this is all headed, but there are some crazy politicians and military forces out there that think they should play god to their own citizens. In times like these, we need to consider the repercussions of our actions. I hate to see this ever happen on American soil.
Give me a productive error over a boring, mundane and unproductive fact any day. ~Anon
But can they run Linux?
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
How high do these things fly above ground ? Are then within rifle range ? :) Skeet shooting could take on a whole new perspective!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Every fucking time I turn around another police outfit from Bumblefuck, U.S.A. has bought itself a shiny new toy with my "homeland security" tax dollars. (Add your least favorite story about the new SWAT team in a county with three homocides a year, an armored car for a town of 50K people, etc.) And because there usually aren't any terrorists anywhere near them, these knuckledraggers end up figuring out a way to chase the usual crowd of inbred drunks around town with it.
Unmaned blimps are far more fuel efficient than unmaned planes. Plus they can stay airborne for more time. Why don't they use blimps all along ?
Because you can't reroute blimps to get a closer look at something very easily.
Funny this article gets posted while I'm in the middle of writing a proposal for follow-on funding on my research into UAV control algorithms...
Endurance is a concern. Collision avoidance is a concern. But UAVs offer incredible surveillance opportunities that stationary sensors just can't match.
I could go on and on but I need to get back to writing my UAV proposal. UAVs are one of the hottest military technologies these days. It's not surprising that the commercial and civilian sector is starting to take a look at how these maturing drones can be used to solve their problems.
GMD
watch this
OK guys. The government is literally, unabashedly making automated drones for domestic surveilance....it's like hey guys, here are some neat robots we're going to use to spy on you with. This is literally, undeniably, frighteningly Orwellian.
Of course, journalists must be up in arms over this, right? Yes! Finally, our free press is holding our government accountable!
Oh wait. No.
"That raises not just privacy concerns," but [ insert a whole screenful of blather about how the FAA might have trouble "integrating" these drones into their flight paths. ]
Next we'll be seeing articles about how digital media companies are rushing to produce products that cut back on that pesky echo in your phones due to all the government wiretaps. "It raises not just privacy concerns, but audio fidelity ones as well!"
I wish Orwell's 1984 was required to be taught and discussed to death in citizenship classes in high school. What most people don't seem to understand is that 1984 is not really about "big brother" but instead it foretells what Orwell deeply distrusted: a global information system and the abuse of it. In a way Orwell was a pessimist - he knew that no matter how well intentioned any system would be abused. UAV's are a symptom of Orwell's fears, they are just more information inputs into a global database. By themselves it's almost silly to complain about them but in aggregate with other databases the whole becomes dangerous to liberty. Everyone has broken some law somewhere and if that information is easily looked up it makes everyone susceptible to blackmail - who did you have an affair with last year? There was an old soviet joke about having laws against everything so if the KGB wanted you they would simply selectively enforce any law they wanted to against you. What citizens should demand to combat Orwell's dystopia is transparency in the process' and records of their government. Yes some things do need to be classified but they are usually the exception and not the rule. And no matter how classified everything should eventually become known.
;) :)
Anyway, I'm too drunk to continue so please correct and extend what I've said. Goodnight.
Shh.
Everybody is blinded by the media and by schools. Teachers are threatened by the government, and are forced to spread the propaganda to our children, and it is even starting to happen in Universities. Patriotism is being turned into extremism. History teachers and professors know about it, people who read the news from free media outlets such as this one know about it, but the masses cannot even fathom the idea that our government is corrupt and are fixated into this mindset that if a superior (President, Media, Retail Salesman) tells them something, that they must obey and follow. Any out-speak or saying different to them is seen as uncivilized and outrageous.
Sig: I stole this sig.
The first is the same bread-and-circuses problem that plagued the Roman Empire. As long as they have beer and football, Mountain Dew and XBox, or their cell phones and MTV, most Americans are quite content.
Funny you should mention beer, football, cell phones, mass media, and MTV in your post about why UAV surveillance is evil.
Most people are disgusted by the post-SuperBowl riots that envitably ensue when a few celebrating football fans, drunk with beer, start using the occasion as an opportunity to cause mayhem. UAVs monitoring a crowd can make sure that troublemakers are quickly identified and subdued by police before they incite a violent riot.
MTV and other youth-oriented mass media are fairly blatant in their encouragement of young people to protest the G8 summit or the meeting of the World Bank by going ape shit. Gone are the days of peaceful protests. Leaders of political groups have realized that causing mayhem is one sure-fire way of attracting attention (positive or negative -- it doesn't matter) to their cause and making life tough for their political enemies. Attempts by police to remove troublemakers from the crowd of mostly-peaceful demonstrators is foiled as highly-organized groups use cell phones to adapt to police movements in real-time.
It's a multifaceted problem, and no solution is readily available.
Oh, indeed it is a multifaceted problem. It's not clear to me, however, that you have considered the other facet of surveillance and what it means in today's society. Technology is a tool. It can be used for good or for evil.
GMD
watch this
You must give up freedom to protect freedom. That is, unless you hate freedom. How did this happen to my country in 6 years? How the fuck.
I hate sigs.
We've got little time left before the borders completely close.
There are only two choice at this point in my opinion:
1) Openly take back the government by hook or by crook. This is costly in life, money, and security but has been shown by other people of the world to work.
or
2) Leave the country until it collapses or someone cleans it up. Depending on how you look at it this could be construed as an abandonment of one's responsibilities as a US citizen but those of you with family and small children, like me, should seriously think about what kind of country they are going to grow up in. If they can't defend themselves then you have to move them elsewhere.
This is one of those times I wish I hadn't been right to wear my tinfoil. I wish I could see a path to be able to remove it. But I don't see that in my lifetime especially if these things get worse as I suspect they will.
In my opinion this is one step before the wall.
(Why isn't this article in the YRO section?)
I await the inevitable mod down by those that think I'm OT, Troll, Overrated, or Flamebait...
"Bah!" - Dogbert
World Trade Center building 7 fell in exactly the same exactly symmetrical way as WTC 1 and 2, and it was NOT hit by an airplane. ALL the collapses looked like controlled demolitions. See the news footage in the movie Loose Change. It is a work in progress, but already very informative.
Why is there always one of these?
Okay, I'll preface this by saying that I'm a leftist, and hate the Bush administration as much as anyone, but there WERE NO FUCKING EXPLOSIVES IN THE TOWERS.
They fell like controlled demolitions because controlled demolitions are implosions. What do you think happens when you heat and soften the trusses on an exoskelital building?
(I'll tell you because you obviously don't know.) The trusses sag and fail causing the outside, load bearing members buckle without their lateral stabilization, the top falls, and the whole thing comes crashing inward.
It's the fire, not the impact that caused the real damage, and if I remember rightly number seven was heavily fire damaged as well. Next time try a little science before breaking out the crackpot conspiricy theories please. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to hate the Bush administration that don't make you look like a nut.
UAVs are one of the hottest military technologies these days. It's not surprising that the commercial and civilian sector is starting to take a look at how these maturing drones can be used to solve their problems.
..Once everyone is watching everyone else then we'll have no more problems?
Thats great, because I hear that naked people have the most to hide
Most of the airspace below 12500 feet in north america is class X (dont remember X), where you can fly around anywhere without a previously declared plan. You need a mode C transponder, but youre free to fly VFR. Thats reflective of the freedom provided to you. Certain regions, cities, airports etc are more restricted, but the default piece of ground is this VFR class.
Looks like this class might be eliminated completely to allow drones to fly around anywhere. Which means a general aviation airplane will have to always file a flightplan and possibly remain on IFR, except on airport approaches, where they can request a VFR type approach. Flying will never be the same.
Its easy to sell this to the general public. "We dont want to let anyone fly just anywhere" and "we could use the extra security" and "War against terrorism" whatever that means. But somewhere in the future Americans will realize what they lost.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Of course, since UAV communications are though an open standard, you could always try to hook in yourself. Then you can see what 'big brother' is looking at.
This is the TCS specification. Used in the U.S.
This is the NATO standard, a bit newer.
Of course, people should use VPN or similar, but it isn't required.
Freedom over. Police state = very yes.
Keep your eyes to the sky.
I am a licensed pilot, and I am worried about the risk of a midair collision. I would not want to be flying (either private or commercial) in the vicinity of one of these UAVs.
No steel framed buildings have EVER collapsed due to fire before 9/11 even though much fiercer and hotter fires have occurred within them.
Here's a link to respected scientist Dr Steven Jones paper on his doubts. http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.ht ml
Simple physics tells us the melting point of steel is 1100-1600C and a kerosene fire can go up to 600C with good oxygen flow. Why did the ( heat shielded) steel buckle? No warping of the buildings structure was observable before collapse.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Full disclosure up front -- I am an AOPA member.
The issue with UAVs from a pilot's point of view (OK, THIS pilots pov) is mostly one of safety. One of the AOPA articles referenced noted the creation of a TFR, which is a flight-restricted zone of the national airspace. (TFR stands for 'Temporary Flight Restriction')
If a TFR is created, it is the responsibility of the pilot to determine its existence before venturing into that airspace. This is burdensome, but is not difficult. Literally hundreds of resources are available online and via the phone to help pilots plan flights.
For me it isn't a big deal to fire up the computer and check to see if anything is going on that might make for an overly adventursome day in the sky. (I live 100 miles from DC so it is also a way of life for pilots here.) Older pilots, however, have great difficulty adjusting to these TFRs.
Most non-pilots have absolutely no idea how unregulated the vast majority of our airspace is. For example, there is no requirement whatsoever for a personal flight conducted in good weather (VFR) to communicate with air traffic control unless the aircraft ventures into the airspace near a busy airport or flies above 17999 feet. Hell, you are not even required to HAVE a radio or transponder to fly into most of our airports. If you have such equipment (and most planes do) you still don't have to use it unless the specifics of the situation demand it. (Another disclaimer - I do not believe that minimum adherence to the rules results in the safest possible flying conditions. In other words, if you've got a freakin' radio, use it.)
The idea that some podunk police department in NC (not far from where I live!) could have one of these things cruising around at 1000 ft or more is absolutely frightening. Even if I make the required inquiries about how to safely conduct my flight, a non-FAA-regulated aircraft could ruin my day in a hurry, and the podunk police department in question would almost certainly bear no legal liability for my demise since they were operating their UAV in compliance with established law. To their credit, the podunk police department agreed to operate their drones according to the requirements for model aircraft (below 400 ft). This is below the minimum altitude for safe, legal operations unless going that low for reasons necessary for the safe conduct of the flight, i.e. taking off or landing.
On the larger, more philosophical question of whether unmanned spy vehicles should be welcome over our homes, I tend to think the answer is NO. On whether information about all such activities should be made as readily available to pilots as the weather forecast, the answer is undoubtedly yes. And that means national coordination, and that means the FAA.
Somewhere between 99.999% and 99.99999999% of the terrorists (call it an educated guess, based on the number of suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks that have occurred in this country since 9-11) are outside this country -- probably in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran -- and we're spending serious effort on domestic surveillance?
What this says to me is that the Bush administration is fscking terrified that the tall grass is full of terrorists, and that we have zero resources capable of dealing with them in their own space (the CIA having been preoccupied with telling the boss what he wants to hear), and have so pissed off our former friends who might actually have some field intelligence, but would now prefer to see us twist in the wind, making an excellent target to draw out the terrorists.
Actually, that last bit doesn't hold water, 'cause plenty of European nations have been hit since 9-11. If anyone had any field intelligence, it would be used.
But why aren't we deploying surveillance drones over Saudi Arabia, or at least Pakistan? And we certainly ought to have every pile of rubble with a roof over it in Afghanistan bugged.
But this continued insistence on domestic surveillance looks for all the world as if the Bush administration is on the side of the terrorists, or is at least gearing up to declare martial law and replace our broken, wobbly charicature of a representative democracy with a theocratic monarchy.
Either that, or they're just incredibly, unbelievably inept.
I hope they can see well enough to get a good up close view of my middle finger. I'll even isolate it for them to make it easier.
Shouldn't be a problem for who?
Are they armed? How long until they are?
"I don't see these measures as an infringement on personal freedom, because the measures will target people I don't like."
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
It's quite clear that Automated Google Crawlers will, in the future, log all your anti-establishment comments. Only people doing something wrong are afraid of law enforcement. I, for one, welcome our future law-enforcing overlords.
You're right. Technology is a tool that can be used for both good and evil. Surveillance is something that can be used for both good and evil. However, early Americans believed (from history, I imagine) that is most cases it will be used mostly for evil, thereby increasing the risk vs the benefits that it may be used for good. If it were the other way around, it would be more than fine to disarm the public (because the government will protect us), allow the police to install cameras in all homes as a requirement (it will only be used to good purposes), and so forth. Early on people decided that the best government is one that you do not trust, so that the your trust cannot be abused. Hence, we have various checks and balances in our system, including a right to privacy from others and the government. If there is a need to violate that right, a warrant will be issued, which is perfectly legal.
Also, he wasn't giving those as examples of why UAV surveillance is evil. He was giving them as examples as to why nobody will stand up to the government if they believe that UAV domestic serveillance is evil. One of the reasons peaceful protests are a thing of the past are because people are quite ignorant. You just helped that point along. Read his statement carefully. Heh, and I'm not even for OR against this as I haven't looked it up. This pertains more to your response to his response.
UAVs are here today and the elimination of the human pilot is many years off; we DO need to worry about the time in between now and then.
I wish the article said what kind of UAV is going to be used, because they can get pretty big: the RQ-1 Predator is comperable in length, height, and weight to a Cessna 152, and in wingspan it's 15 feet longer. The wrong paint scheme could render predator-sized UAV practically invisible, and a smaller UAV could easily be missed by a pilot. Given the damage that birds can do, a collision with all but the smallest ones could cause catastrophic damage to a small plane like a 152. I suspect that predator-sized UAVs will be out of budget for most applications, which means that pilots will have to start watching out for smaller and smaller traffic. The last thing pilots need, especially recreational pilots who don't fly daily, is another distraction to watch for. There are all sorts of restrictive rules for planes and pilots: I don't see why any of them should be relaxed for UAVs. Indeed, they should be subject to closer scrutiny simply because they have no brain.
If UAVs remain doing the jobs they're currently doing: monitoring borders and ports, I don't forsee many problems. If these things start making their way into more populated areas, big issues arise. The biggest issue that I can think of is one of th e first things I learned in flight school: the final responsibility for avoiding other air traffic always falls with the pilot. When the pilot is a computer, does it have any responsibility? This rule works best when there are real pilots in each plane; when one of the planes is a drone, the other pilots have double responsibility.
I vividly remember one graph from my textbook while I was taking flying lessons: there was a chart with 2 lines: NECESSARY pilot skill to operate the plane, and AVAILABLE pilot skill. During preflight and taxi, there was plenty of room between the two lines. During takeoff, the lines were closer but there was still a good margin. During cruise and nazvigation, there was once again a large safety margin. Landing was the interesting part: the available skill and necessary skill lines were really damn close. Plenty of pilots have more than enough skill to land safely all the time. It only takes one pilot who doesn't to make the news. Naturally, these UAVs would be in closest contact with other planes when around airports: the times when the pilot has the least amount of extra attention to spare for a UAV in the traffic pattern.
Do UAVs check above and below themselves before ascending or descending like human pilots do? Do they check for planes that don't have transponders or radios like human pilots? Do they take into account the fact that other planes might have malfunctioning equipment like human pilots? Did a pilot write the code that flies the UAV or was it a programmer working overtime to make a deadline? Personally, I would like these issues and more brought up to the aviation community and satisfactorily addressed before UAVs become a common sight in the sky.
- "Nobody came out that night, not one was ever seen. But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy sick and mean!"
-You don't need to melt a truss, you just need to soften it. If it softens the geometry changes and the strength drops.
-I don't know what the ends were on the floor trusses, but a sagging truss will put them in tension. I doubt they were designed for this.
-Heat shielding doesn't stand up too well to an exploding airplane.
-The design in question is not typical of steel buildings, which tend to be latticed structures rather than tubes.
Note that it's the floor collapsing that starts the process. A load-bearing exoskeleton is an inherently unstable design prevented from buckling only by the floors forcing it to stay aligned.
As you say, no warping was observed before collapse. It was the internal structure that failed before the collapse. As soon as the external structure drifted out of alignment it was over. Instantaneously. This is how buckling behaves.
(Oh, and this guy isn't much of a scientist. "Nobody has a good idea what happened. IT MUST HAVE BEEN THERMITE!" Typical crackpot paper . . . . . . )
(Science aside, how the hell could a deliberate demolition be pulled off without anyone finding out before or finding actual evidence after? Such things take rather a lot of setup to pull off.)
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
As a little kid I actually tried put this myth to the test it worked flawlessly.
Take for example, the latest Downing Street memo. It revealed that prior to the invasion of Iraq, Bush thought the evidence of WMD was so weak that he suggested tricking Iraq into firing on a U-2 spyplane painted with UN colors. Wingnuts like Confederate Yankee dismissed the memo as nonsense, primarily on the grounds that you wouldn't be able to see the plane at it's operation altitude from the ground. That's a Bigfoot moment, because the fact that U-2's fly at 70,000 does nothing to debunk the idea that "putting food on our families" Bush wouldn't have hatched the scheme in the first place.
It mentions the federal government is only interested in using this to replace existing flights by manned aircraft at over 12,500 feet, with filed flight plans. This is your own local officials doing this backyard surveillance, not "the big evil Bush" that everyone seems to like to blame for everything. But MAN does throwing "the Bush administraion" in the summary really catch eyeballs, regardless of whether it's true or not.
More "Bigfoot" nonsense. Dismissing the involvment of the Bush Administration by talking about locals in this is like trying to claim that the Administration and the GOP majority in Congress didn't have anything to do with the Patriot Act because it is used & abused by local law enforcement. And you conviniently ignored the quote that was in the summary: "A top Homeland Security official told Congress today..."
This might be news to you, but the Dept of Homeland Security is part of the Executive Branch, headed by a Cabinent-level official, with all top level officials either being directly appointed by Bush or appointed by appointees of Bush, which makes it part of the......drumroll please....Bush administration.
*sigh* Typical slashdot.
No, typical kneejerk defense by what appears to be a member of the Church of Bush. There have been many times when you guys end up falling all over yourselves in the rush to defend our dear president, only to be proven wrong later. See the Katrina video or the Downing Street memos, for example. And that's just what's filtered out through a stonewalling GOP government. If the Dem's have the balls to actually go out and win the Senate or the House AND investigate the White House, the shit is really going to hit the fan.
Bush is draging this country down, and guys like you are helping him.
I agree with the sentiment that this whole plan infringes most grievously upon our freedoms, however, this comment is a more than a little asine:
But what happens when lots of relatively dumb drones have to share airspace with aircraft carrying passengers?
UAVs are unmanned in the sense that there is no pilot aboard the aircraft itself. NOT in the sense that they're flying around up there on autopilot, oblivious to other air traffic. A UAV is operated by a trained pilot on the ground. I don't know about these civilian jobbies, but the military ones have radar and IFF transponders so that the pilots can see other aircraft in the area and, just as importantly, other aircraft can see the UAV.
Summary of differences between normal aircraft and UAV:
- UAVs cost far less (no need for a cockpit)
- Pilot avoids hazards normally associated with flying, most of them involving gravity
All I saw you responding with was an almost verbatim repitition of a NOVA story on the subject of the rafters being the cause of the building failure. A theory that has since been realized to be faulty in many ways, by such 'radical crazies' as, FEMA, and the NIST. For instance, the NOVA video shows nothing of the 47 steel pillars in the center of the building. The pillars are completly left out of the video(actually its a computer animation, you shouldnt be using that as 'evidence' to begin with).
Also, as a result of simply repeating what you have been told(thats science to you?), you seem to be missing the obvious point you are making about the buildings collapse. In one statement, you claim that the exoskeleton of the WTC towers is what supported all the weight(false, 47 center pier pillars did), and when the trusses on those failed, the whole building collapsed. And not a few sentences later, you use fire damage to explain the collapse of WT7. Yet that building was not what you claim to be an 'exoskeleton' framed building.
There are enough questions, and enough contradictory explanations in my mind to warrant further inspection of the conjecture that the US government actually was involved in this, or is at the very least involved in not telling the whole truth. And when you come to argue the point of such questions by demanding science, and then simply repeating a story you heard someone else tell you upon which you did no further investigation on, hardly gives me the impression that you are aware of what science actually is.
Perhaps before you approach different ideas with a condescending attitude of 'lets try science' you should be aware exactly what science is. Dont believe me? Tell you what, you research what I said, and I will research what you said. Although, it may be hard doing research on some of your facts presented, as one of the sources is said to have been 'if I remember correctly'.
Why not remote control cars, too? We could change traffic rules to give priority to robot police cars, which could observe us, too.
It's a clear violation of airspace safety in which the pilot is ALWAYS reponsible for avoiding other aircraft. It's the most basic rule you learn when you become a pilot, and it's what every examiner checks for before each maneuver during the practical exam. Unfortunately, the engineers designing these things aren't pilots or air traffic controllers and have no idea how our airspace works. (They work fine in Iraq, but that's a war zone with no civilian aviation.) Apparently engineers do know how to weasel our tax dollars to fund their overpriced remote control toys.
If AI was smart enough to fly an airplane, why aren't they flying airliners? They'd be way cheaper than pilots. If there's no pilot, there's no see-and-avoid. When a camera can see and process as quickly as a human, then it might work, but before then, the only way to do this is to not allow them to fly anywhere near humans fly.
There's currently no FAA-approved technology to relieve a pilot of her duty to see and avoid other aircraft whether or not the AC is on an IFR flight plan. Next time you're on an airliner, listen to the channel with the pilots talking to TRACON or CENTER. There's a lot of human interaction.
In the late seventies, CIA funding changed from human intelligence gathering to satellite intelligence gathering. We can see every place in the world and pick up all their signals, but we still couldn't tell India was testing an Atomic bomb. With all the billions of dollars spent on overhead technology, we still haven't found Osama. Now the people selling the things tell us how similar technology will solve our crime problem...
- "They looked like controlled demolitions"...but what is the basis for comparison? How many people repeating this line have ever witnessed or even seen video of an *uncontrolled* demolition of a skyscraper--other than the WTC buildings? In other words the visual similarity is TRUE, however it is not necessarily UNEXPECTED. ALL demolitions of tall buildings will look similar, regardless of how they are initiated. Even if you blow out one side first, the building won't tip over like a coat rack. Remove support and the mass being supported falls--straight down.
n ter_Site_After_9-11_Attacks_With_Original_Building _Locations.jpg
- The buildings did not fall neatly into their footprints. Look at this picture:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World_Trade_Ce
- There were thousands of people in the buildings that day. The first attack took place around 9am--after many people had arrived at work. In fact the estimate is that at least 10,000 people were in WTC 1 and 2 when the first plane hit. They had arrived by subway, walking, cab, and driving--some had parked in the garage. They proceeded through the building that morning as normal. After the first hit, most of them evacuated safely--almost everyone below the point of impact in both buildings. YET not one of them has come forward with stories of seeing the building pillars in the parking garage wrapped with drums and det wire. No one had stories of elaborately laid wire harnesses throughout the floors of the building. Not that morning or any morning previous.
Wiring a building for controlled demolition is not a quick thing. It takes a long time to load in the explosives and wire it all up safely and reliably. And it's not something easily hidden. It's hard to bring down buildings like the WTC-- a big truck bomb won't do it. You have to distribute a lot of explosive around a lot of the support structure and set it all off in just the right sequence. It would probably be impossible to hide, especially in a building like the WTC towers, where the outer shell carries so much of the weight.
Yes, the firefighters heard noises that sounded like explosions. But I'm not interested in hearsay--I want to hear from the people who eye-witnessed demolition charges and equipment set that morning. Until then I'm not buying it.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It's a multifaceted problem, and no solution is readily available.
The way I see it, the problem is by design. It's well known that there's been a lot of "media consolidation" over the past few decades, so that the major outlets are controlled in the hands of a few corporations (e.g. Clearchannel).
John Taylor Gatto tells us in his books & presentations that the government's schools were set up to provide workers for industry. Before government schools, the American dream was an independant livelihood. After government schools, the expectation shifted to finding employment with a good company with good benefits.
The problem is that the same group of people are behind both efforts. Is it really so odd to propose that a small, dedicated group of families has been steadily concentrating wealth in their own pockets for centuries?
Furthermore, why is it that the same group of rotten scoundrels install themselves in government? George H. W. Bush was in the CIA at least as far back as the 60's. Head of the CIA, Vice President for 8 years, president for another 4.
Donald Rumsfeld was in the Nixon, Ford & Reagan administrations, according to Wikipedia. He even got his picture taken with Saddam Hussein back in 1983. Now he's secretary of defense. Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense under Papa Bush, and before that he got himself elected as representative from Wyoming.
I'm sure there are more examples. The problem, as I see it, is that the same rotten bastards keep getting recycled through the political system. Watch for the keywords: Project for the New American Century, Bilderburg Group, Trilateral Commission, Council on Foreign Relations, etc... And that's not even mentioning the more secretive enclaves. See The Controllers: Secret Rulers of the World for a timeline of the consolidation of power over the last 100+ years.
What's more, anytime this sort of observation comes up, the masses have been conditioned to just snicker and dismiss the messenger as a "conspiracy theorist". But how do said masses know that there is no conspiracy? They don't "know", but social conditioning has implanted a nearly impervious belief.
Expose the so-called "illuminati" and their plots, and the problem will begin to go away.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
(Waypoint) UAV's tend to navigate via GPS or beacon telemetry, so laser pointers will do squat to them navigation-wise. You'd still have the FAA on your ass for lasing an aircraft, though.
Whatever else the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan were, they were undeniably not illegal.
I'm less clear on the Afghanistan front, but the gov't there was officially harboring the group which killed ~3,000 civilians on our soil, etc.
As for Iraq, that is easy. The USA has been in the region since '91-ish, which if you recall, was when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and was making eyes at Saudi Arabia next. Iraq was the military powerhouse in that section of the world, and no one there had the military might to stop Iraq. That's where the USA came in. Saddam surrendered and signed a peace treaty, the violation of which legally allows the USA to continue the previous war as though it had never ended. If you watched the news during the early '90s, you most assuredly saw near-constant reports of missiles fired at our patrolling planes, etc., in violation of said treaty.
Sure, maybe the given reasons for the Iraq invasion were a mistake, intelligence failure, lie, whatever... but whatever else the Iraq invasion is, it is most certainly not illegal.
No steel framed buildings have EVER collapsed due to fire before 9/11 even though much fiercer and hotter fires have occurred within them.
Not true. I doubt you heard of it, but in 1993 the tennis hall of SALK, a large tennis club in Stockholm, was destroyed in a fire. The hall collapses because the steel frame that span the roof is softened by the fire. The frame, which was curved in a semi-circular fashion, bends near the ground, exactly where you would expect from your solid mechanics course (if you took one).
Just because you never saw it before it doesn't mean it has never happened before.
I don't believe that's relevant. I see no mention about aircraft registration requirements in FAA's Procedures for Handling Airspace Matters, Chapter 29, Outdoor Laser Operations, mainly laser operation restrictions within certain ranges of airports.
I know they had something like this in Orwelles 1984, I guess it just took us a little longer.
At this point, Bush should probably just go for broke and insert RFIDs into everyone scalp. I don't think he's gong to stop until this is implimented. So go for it. Hopefully we'll have sufficient liberal backlash to bring the country back into line with reality. At this rate we'll surpass most police states in a decade. I'm not exactly a liberal or a conservative, but this stuff is getting out of hand.
You don't care about corruption at home (e.g. Florida vote rigging), you don't care about inaction at home (e.g. New Orleans), you don't care that you have a completely insane attitude to firearms (everybody should have one (which the rest of the world sees as ludicrous)
;-)
.22 I've only ever used for target practice. In fact, I've never taken a single shot at anything that was alive, and I prob
While I do agree with your sentiments for the most part, I just wanted to clarify something for you...
Because I DO care about "corruption at home" is the reason everyone should have the right to bear arms. I'm not advocating civil war or anything, but when it really comes down to it and when the shit really hits the fan, an armed society may be the only way to remove said corruption.
There's a famous American saying, which I'll paraphrase for you:
"In times of trouble, there are three boxes one can use- the soap box, the ballot box, and the ammo box- use in that order."
I'm no rabid NRA fan, but I understand that this is the exact reason the Founding Fathers wrote into the Constitution the "Right to Bear Arms".
Any strategist, (be they political, military, or religious) knows that to defeat a political movement, an enemy invader, or a native populace (say for example, German Jews) you remove their tools. The FBI silenced the Weather Underground, The Church burned its detractors (and many loyalists, too) alive, and the Nazis disallowed the owning of weapons by the Jews. This is the first step to destroying your opposition.
If and when the Neocon-agenda succeeds in removing our right to peacably assemble, to carry arms, when the presses fall silent except for "approved" literature, when Haebeous Corpus is suspended, and I no longer have the right to petition my government for redress---
YOU are going to want us to have those guns, I guarantee it. The present Administration would like us to believe "democracy is contagious", while they would like us to forget that CORRUPTION IS CONTAGIOUS, too.
That Neocon-agenda I mentioned earlier? There are some among us who are paying attention who feel that those days may have already come- that we are so mired in corruption, deceit, betrayal, and TREASON, (remember that part in the Presidential Pledge of Office about "upholding and protecting the Constitution"?) that the fetid stink of it all wafts from the top of the Capitol Dome all the way down to every city council and county board in the land.
It's hard to pick out that stink sometimes- it's so interspersed with the filth of corporate corruption in this nation that it's become nigh impossible to discern one from the other- for indeed they are both the same.
Don't begrudge me my guns- someday you may want me to pass one to you- you may "aim to misbehave" as they say.
I love America, (for all it's horrible, evil, and destructive history) and I believe in the American Dream and the American ideal that is written into the Constitution- that the beautiful language and ideals on those parchments stand for something, something unique and special, something that all men can aspire to.
The way the Neocons have sold my beloved nation away makes me want to cry- each and every day I read of the Fed reaching it's hands further and further into peoples homes, bank accounts, family life, credit history, etc. Common People just want to be free- the Neoncons just want Common People to be slaves.
TO BEGRUDGE US OUR GUNS IS THE LAST STEP TOWARDS MAKING US ALL SLAVES.
I know this sounds melodramatic, but in reality, this view is NOT: insanity, paranoia, conjecture, theory, conspiracy, or conspiracy theory- this is simply the history of mankind- of all groups who sought to control another.
So if you don't want the right to carry arms, fine. I realize most people don't- in fact, the only firearm I own is one given to me as a young man- a small, single-shot
I'm quite impressed with this Slashdot article, not because of TFA, nor because of its content.
But I am surprised how many of you realize the problems that your society is having (Yes, I am adressing US citizens). We, in Europe, often speak about those issues of freedom being taken away in the name of a so-called War on Terror, and we see the same roots of the problem, being the media providing bread-and-games distraction, partial/idealistic education and other things.
But, I have come to realize, we unfairly generalize the US citizens, as if all of you didn't realize what's going on. But then, I see stuff like Sorry Everybody, and I am reminded that lots of you don't like the system either. And most of the comments on this article (which have been modded up) express an understanding of what is going wrong.
People - you have to do something!. I am not in the position to be lecturing you (since I am but a 19-year-old German student), but I wonder how come that so many of you see the problems, and yet Nothing Ever Happens. I wonder if it is because there's no way for the "extraparliamentary opposition" (read up on the German one) to express itself, or because there simply is no movement which unites people who feel like you do, and like I do, too. What I see is a great potential for protest, but only in places like Slashdot does it become aparent.
There really is no important bottom line to this. It's what I perceive and what I wonder about.
Those aren't any fun until you mention the second part: laser-guided missiles.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
How exactly is increased surveillance when you are in a public place an infringement on your personal freedoms?
Are you joking? OK, one example off the top of my head. There are plenty more.
You are in an unfamiliar neighborhood. You pull over and waive someone down and ask for directions. He comes up to your car and you ask him for directions to the hotel. He points and gives you directions and you drive off.
That man later turns out to be a terrorist or drug dealer.
Now, thanks to ubiquitous surveilance, you are on videotape associating with a terrorist. This information can and will be taken out of context and used against you if, say you ever run for office or are accused of a minor crime.
What do you think happens when you heat and soften the trusses on an exoskelital building? (I'll tell you because you obviously don't know.) The trusses sag and fail causing the outside, load bearing members buckle without their lateral stabilization, the top falls, and the whole thing comes crashing inward.
Since this is something that you claim to "know", perhaps you could point to one other example of a fire causing a building to collapse in such a fashion.
And if this never happened anywhere else ever, you might want to ask why it happened three times on 9/11.
TFR == Temporary Flight Restriction, a short-term restriction on flight in a specified area.
VFR == Visual Flight Rules. Flying by looking out the window rather than using instruments to maintain separation from terrain and other aircraft.
ADIZ == Air Defense Identification Zone. Airspace which is prohibited to aircraft who have not obtained prior authorization. In theory, violators will be shot down.
Part 121 traffic. Dunno.
Part 135 traffic. Dunno.
Class B airspace. Dunno.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Aircraft that are rated for ILS Cat-IIIa/b/c approaches can autoland with flare and rollout. The only thing that the pilot needs to do is pull the throttles over the numbers, and the plane will flare, settle to the runway, and rollout with autobraking (provided that brakes are armed). Cat-IIIc approaches are zero/zero - no decision height and down to zero visibility.
A Cat-III-rated aircraft has multiple, redundant autopilots, at least two of which must be functional and locked in to autoland. There are crosswind limitations, but your example (30KTS at 35 from centerline) is a headwind component of 24KTS and 17KTS crosswind component, both of which are within (for instance) the Cat-III autoland restrictions for the 747 (25KT headwind, 25KT crosswind).
At 3 A.M. you can see people's auras; at five you can see their contrails...
American society despises intelligence, despises reason, despises logic. Is it any wonder when we laud and fawn over our sports "heroes" and entertainment "stars"? When more people vote for the next "American Idol" than vote for the person in charge of the entire nuclear arsenal of the United States (and then get a former coke addict and alcholic), we geeks realize there is something wrong. However, no matter what we say or inform our supposed non-geek peers about this and other issues, we are looked at with derision, with contempt. How dare we say they are wrong! How dare we upset the curve, once again!
Ultimately, the problems we see, the problems we know can and will grow larger, if only we controlled or eliminated them today (and they go way beyond mere societal issues), are all small and insignificant on the radars of the larger American society. For there to be any great change, the problems need to affect way more of the population, beyond just us little piss-ants of geekdom. Unfortunately, we geeks also know, given the technology and controls now in the hands of the controllers, that even if the problems become huge and unwieldy - so big as to drive stakes through the hearts, minds, and lives of the greater society - that ultimately there might not be a way out except through gross and sheer death. Millions of deaths. Those that die will be suicides, or worse.
I think I hear the trains pulling into the station - do you hear them...?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
You have the right to revolt; just not necessarily the guarantee of success.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.