This research is actually being published in today's Nature. The Globe just regurgitated yesterday's NEC Research Institute press release, and did a good job of hiding the attribution in the middle of the article. NECRI will be making more info available via the web, but it wasn't up as of last night.
(Note to Rob: I submitted this same story to/. yesterday afternoon, with links and proper attribution to NECRI and Nature, but I guess accuracy doesn't count as much as timing.)
Correct Propaganda URL
on
QuickieWorld
·
· Score: 2
I am fully aware of the various flavors of ASIC, in both the factory customized and field programmable categories.
My implication, which I admit was obscure, was that the general architecture is valid with any encryption scheme, since the encryption engine is localized to a single component... which could be replaced... physically... with a programmable device, perhaps yes.
That means you have to actually touch the hardware; I know that's hard for some people to imagine...
What amuses me the most is that these arm-flailing, expectorating, bible-drumming indigniati actually sat there and counted the expletives. One can't help but suspect that they seek out the taboo thrill of listening to the words that they've conditioned themselves to be shocked by.
I never cease to be astonished by the capacity for humans to be so dogmatic and intolerant. I've worked with a few myself, and it seems that their self-righteousness and intolerance are inversely proportional to their intelligence and education. And they actually have visceral reactions when their belief systems are threatened or put under scrutiny - you can see them turn red with anger and begin to shake. It's like you're threatening their lives or something! They demand that you not only tolerate their intolerance, but tolerate their rabid expression of it... even when it's as offensive to you as South Park is to them.
In the 20 years I've been practicing geekdom, I've watched the term "Artificial Intelligence" be used more and more loosely. At first, AI was reserved for the most sophisiticated systems that could reasonably be expected to pass a Turing Test.
These days, though, any expert system or rules based engine exhibiting any kind of automated behavior is labelled "AI," even though (as in Warcraft or Starcraft) the behavior quickly demonstrates predictable and repeated weaknesses and a disappointing lack of adaptability.
At last there are a few games (half-life) where the term AI might apply, but they're still just adaptable expert systems. If the market weren't so oriented towards hi-res 3D realistic graphics, perhaps we'd have seen a decent AI earlier.
I'm not annoyed by the use of the term AI by game developers - that's the role their behavior engines are trying to fill. These engines just don't live up to the name. Yet.
There are a lot of wild conspiracy ideas floating around, but the truth is better:
The government of Israel has successfully lobbied Congress and the State Department to forbid US-based reconnaisance systems from imaging Israeli territory. By Law, Ikonos could not take pictures of Israel. This is the only place on earth which is forbidden to image from orbit.
It gets better. In 1995, the State Department denied the Israelis any special consideration, after lots of talking and negotiation. It was close, though. Then, in 1998, the issue came up again, and this time, the Israelis got their way.
Now that is fuel for conspiracy theorists...
Even I'm a bit POed - whose interests is our government supposed to look out for?? Ours or the Israelis?
There is a whole crop of hi-rez earth imaging satellites about to ripen, and Ikonos was just the second... unfortunately, it was also the second to fail upon launch (or so it seems today). Prior to Ikonos there was EarlyBird 1, a 3-meter camera by EarthWatch. Between now and next summer, several more systems will be launched, most notably EarthWatch's QuickBird and Orbital Imaging's OrbView-3 But don't count Ikonos out quite yet. Spacecraft have occasionally recovered from such conditions and provided a useful life. (After another day or two, though, you can nail the coffin shut. If Ikonos' batteries drain, there's no hope of recovery.)
As one of the systems engineers responsible for designing the optical and detector subsystems used on both the OrbView-3 and OrbView-4 satellites, I can tell you what these reconnaisance systems can and can't do.
Resolution translates to two seperate functions: detection and identification. At 1-meter resolution, these cameras can detect an automobile, a tree, or an individual steer. It's possible to detect even an individual sunbather (if she's got a dark tan and is contrasted against white sand), but unless you knew it was a sunbather beforehand, you wouldn't be able to tell if its a he or a she, or even tell it apart from a vacant beach chair. That would be identification. To identify an object, its image must span several pixels on the detector, if not dozens. Therefore, Ikonos could detect a police car, but it couldn't read the call letters on its roof to identify that car.
Further, most of these systems are limited by the power available to point the satellite accurately and to run the camera. Without a monstrous solar array to provide enough power to continuously run attitude control, transmitters and detectors, the spacecraft must rely on the energy stored in its batteries. Thus, the cameras are limited to less than a half an hour of imaging per 90-minute orbit. Less if the sattelite is required to reorient itself in order to photograph noncontiguous regions. By no means can these systems take daily global high-resolution photos of the entire earth.
These satellites generally orbit somewhere between 700 and 800 km above the earth, in a polar orbit inclined nearly 90 from the equator. This translates to a "ground speed" of about 7 km/s. Most operators aim for a "sun synchronous" polar orbit, meaning that the spacecraft passes the equator at the same times every day, once going northbound (ascending node) and once headed south (descending node). The OrbView satellites ascending node crossing time is 10:30 am, for example. All of these numbers add up to the fact that at best, these cameras can only take one good picture of you each day. If someone were really motivated, they might be able to take two or three, but only one could be from directly overhead.
This is true also because the detectors on these cameras are linear photodiode arrays, made by folks like Kodak. These detectors are almost identical to the ones found in your scanner or office copier. And they work pretty much the same way: the satellite carries the detector overhead at a constant rate, and samples the array thousands of times per second. The successive linear images are piled up to create a 2D photograph. It's even possible to take two "scans" of a region from different angles, and then process this information on the ground to create a stereo 3D image. If you have the money to pay for it...
Each of these systems carries more than one array. The 1-meter resolution arrays are panchromatic or black-and-white, and are sensitive to the entire range of visible and Near-IR light: wavelengths of 450 to 900 nanometers. There are also 4-meter resolution multispectral arrays, with pixels 4x as big as the panchromatic arrays. These are four arrays have color filters to distinguish radiance in four color bands, generally chosen in the same bands as used on LandSat systems: 450-520nm, 520-600nm, 625-695nm, and 760-900nm.
OrbView-4 is unique among these systems, carrying a hyperspectral detector. Hyperspectral detectors generally employ an imaging spectrometer: the telescope image is passed through a very narrow slit, focussed on a diffraction grating, and the dispersed light is then imaged on a 2D CCD array. This scheme provides hundreds of linear images covering a continous series of narrow wavelength bands. OrbView-4 will cover the range of 450-2500 nm, extending from blue deep into the infrared. This kind of detailed information sounds like a gold mine, but there is a slight risk - it's the first of its kind to provide this sort of information, so there's no established demand. In fact, scientists are still figuring out what to do with this much data...
What are the theoretical limits on these kinds of systems? One satellite in geostationary orbit, with unimaginatively expensive optics and an energy-gluttonous data system could indeed continuously monitor one-third of the globe. But in practice, a system like this would cost GigaDollars and prove very unreliable. The theoretical limit of resolution is approximately 10 centimeters, without using some sort of technique to instantaneously correct for atmospheric disturbances. And then there's the whole question of shipping all that data down to the folks who don't have time to look at it all...
And belive me, Space Imaging's investors put up way too much money to let the Pentagon commandeer a satellite that could potentially bring them very lucrative returns on their venture capitol. The Pentagon couldn't afford to pay these folks enough to shut them up. Besides, launch failures happen way too often to divert Occam's Razor to point to any other conclusion. The launch system is still the most risky and unreliable rung on the ladder to space. Given number of nearly identical imaging satellites on the way, it will be the launch systems that will sort out the winners from the losers.
I'm happy to entertain any questions you might have - be sure to de-spamproof my email address.
Hell. I remember it. Not only was I a geek, but my parents moved so much that I went to 5 different high schools in four years. Actually, that probably insulated me from a lot of peer abuse, but it also insulated me from peers in general. High school was a living hell for me, just as it is for Katz' correspondents.
Administrators at every level between guidance counselor to President Clinton are asking "what can be done?" Yet they fail to understand that they are as much to blame as the TCM's parents. They fostered the environment where anyone who is not a superficial stuck-up bimbo or a dumb masochistic macho jock is an outcast, and ridiculed.
What can be done? Provide some socially acceptable environment other than battle.net for exceptional teens. Don't penalize them for being bored by the least common denominator curriculum you dole out in uniform, non-challenging parcels. Give them some advanced curriculum that interests them. Just pay attention to them fer christsake, instead of ignoring and berating them... instead of joining along with the kids you're supposed to be leading.
These are the people we need to drag this sorry ass culture from the depths of fossil fuel addiction. These are the future researchers who will find cures for aids and cancer. These are the future entrepreneurs who will raise this economy from of the ashes of depression when our paper tiger economy burns up. Wouldn't it be wise to nurture them instead of the future Anchor Bimbos, Housewives, Lumberworkers, and Linesmen?
Maybe it would be a start if we began to place a little more value on the teachers and administrators themselves. We don't exactly attract the best people to these jobs - I can count on one hand the number of teachers that actually taught me something. I acquired an education in spite of the rest. And the administrators... well, I won't repeat cliched jokes.
But consider - when your principal and dean were in high school, which group did they belong to? It's a self-perpetuating system...
No, darn - there were way too many heads to catch them all. I was frantically trying to take in as many as I could. The best one, though, was Matt Groening's - it was just to the right of the gap that Fry and Bender were posing through...
Sounds like he got his information in a college physics class; where were you when they covered optics and electrostatics?
The higher the index (i.e. slower the speed of light) in a material, the thinner the lens. That's why I can get 1/8" thick polycarbonate lenses for my glasses that do the same job as 1/2" thick glass.
Spectral dispersion is a problem in this application, though... however, if you're doing spectroscopy, a high-dispersion prism is useful... so therefore spectroscopy may be one of the first applications of a condensate prism.
As for the capacitor issue - The permittivity (capacitance/thickness) of a material is established by the speed of propogation of an EM wave (e.g. light) through the material. So a Bose-Einstein Condensate could make an outstanding dielectric for a capacitor, assuming its breakdown potential and leakage properties are acceptable.
Slashdot Mirror
(Note to Rob: I submitted this same story to /. yesterday afternoon, with links and proper attribution to NECRI and Nature, but I guess accuracy doesn't count as much as timing.)
Minor typo in the Quickie. It should be http://propaganda.themes.org/.
My implication, which I admit was obscure, was that the general architecture is valid with any encryption scheme, since the encryption engine is localized to a single component... which could be replaced... physically... with a programmable device, perhaps yes.
That means you have to actually touch the hardware; I know that's hard for some people to imagine...
I never cease to be astonished by the capacity for humans to be so dogmatic and intolerant. I've worked with a few myself, and it seems that their self-righteousness and intolerance are inversely proportional to their intelligence and education. And they actually have visceral reactions when their belief systems are threatened or put under scrutiny - you can see them turn red with anger and begin to shake. It's like you're threatening their lives or something! They demand that you not only tolerate their intolerance, but tolerate their rabid expression of it... even when it's as offensive to you as South Park is to them.
In fact, it's beginning to look a little green, and its eyes and cheeks are bulging out... uh oh, DUCK!
(Of course, the spoilers only made me want to see the movie more.)
These days, though, any expert system or rules based engine exhibiting any kind of automated behavior is labelled "AI," even though (as in Warcraft or Starcraft) the behavior quickly demonstrates predictable and repeated weaknesses and a disappointing lack of adaptability.
At last there are a few games (half-life) where the term AI might apply, but they're still just adaptable expert systems. If the market weren't so oriented towards hi-res 3D realistic graphics, perhaps we'd have seen a decent AI earlier.
I'm not annoyed by the use of the term AI by game developers - that's the role their behavior engines are trying to fill. These engines just don't live up to the name. Yet.
Especially those new multi-angle DVD titles I saw last week that let you switch cameras on the fly. Could be dangerous...
Oh yea, and a lot of the cookbook criticism does seem disingenuous, but the magazine ads and the miscellaneous pics do harbor some gems...
The government of Israel has successfully lobbied Congress and the State Department to forbid US-based reconnaisance systems from imaging Israeli territory. By Law, Ikonos could not take pictures of Israel. This is the only place on earth which is forbidden to image from orbit.
It gets better. In 1995, the State Department denied the Israelis any special consideration, after lots of talking and negotiation. It was close, though. Then, in 1998, the issue came up again, and this time, the Israelis got their way.
Now that is fuel for conspiracy theorists...
Even I'm a bit POed - whose interests is our government supposed to look out for?? Ours or the Israelis?
As one of the systems engineers responsible for designing the optical and detector subsystems used on both the OrbView-3 and OrbView-4 satellites, I can tell you what these reconnaisance systems can and can't do.
Resolution translates to two seperate functions: detection and identification. At 1-meter resolution, these cameras can detect an automobile, a tree, or an individual steer. It's possible to detect even an individual sunbather (if she's got a dark tan and is contrasted against white sand), but unless you knew it was a sunbather beforehand, you wouldn't be able to tell if its a he or a she, or even tell it apart from a vacant beach chair. That would be identification. To identify an object, its image must span several pixels on the detector, if not dozens. Therefore, Ikonos could detect a police car, but it couldn't read the call letters on its roof to identify that car.
Further, most of these systems are limited by the power available to point the satellite accurately and to run the camera. Without a monstrous solar array to provide enough power to continuously run attitude control, transmitters and detectors, the spacecraft must rely on the energy stored in its batteries. Thus, the cameras are limited to less than a half an hour of imaging per 90-minute orbit. Less if the sattelite is required to reorient itself in order to photograph noncontiguous regions. By no means can these systems take daily global high-resolution photos of the entire earth.
These satellites generally orbit somewhere between 700 and 800 km above the earth, in a polar orbit inclined nearly 90 from the equator. This translates to a "ground speed" of about 7 km/s. Most operators aim for a "sun synchronous" polar orbit, meaning that the spacecraft passes the equator at the same times every day, once going northbound (ascending node) and once headed south (descending node). The OrbView satellites ascending node crossing time is 10:30 am, for example. All of these numbers add up to the fact that at best, these cameras can only take one good picture of you each day. If someone were really motivated, they might be able to take two or three, but only one could be from directly overhead.
This is true also because the detectors on these cameras are linear photodiode arrays, made by folks like Kodak. These detectors are almost identical to the ones found in your scanner or office copier. And they work pretty much the same way: the satellite carries the detector overhead at a constant rate, and samples the array thousands of times per second. The successive linear images are piled up to create a 2D photograph. It's even possible to take two "scans" of a region from different angles, and then process this information on the ground to create a stereo 3D image. If you have the money to pay for it...
Each of these systems carries more than one array. The 1-meter resolution arrays are panchromatic or black-and-white, and are sensitive to the entire range of visible and Near-IR light: wavelengths of 450 to 900 nanometers. There are also 4-meter resolution multispectral arrays, with pixels 4x as big as the panchromatic arrays. These are four arrays have color filters to distinguish radiance in four color bands, generally chosen in the same bands as used on LandSat systems: 450-520nm, 520-600nm, 625-695nm, and 760-900nm.
OrbView-4 is unique among these systems, carrying a hyperspectral detector. Hyperspectral detectors generally employ an imaging spectrometer: the telescope image is passed through a very narrow slit, focussed on a diffraction grating, and the dispersed light is then imaged on a 2D CCD array. This scheme provides hundreds of linear images covering a continous series of narrow wavelength bands. OrbView-4 will cover the range of 450-2500 nm, extending from blue deep into the infrared. This kind of detailed information sounds like a gold mine, but there is a slight risk - it's the first of its kind to provide this sort of information, so there's no established demand. In fact, scientists are still figuring out what to do with this much data...
What are the theoretical limits on these kinds of systems? One satellite in geostationary orbit, with unimaginatively expensive optics and an energy-gluttonous data system could indeed continuously monitor one-third of the globe. But in practice, a system like this would cost GigaDollars and prove very unreliable. The theoretical limit of resolution is approximately 10 centimeters, without using some sort of technique to instantaneously correct for atmospheric disturbances. And then there's the whole question of shipping all that data down to the folks who don't have time to look at it all...
And belive me, Space Imaging's investors put up way too much money to let the Pentagon commandeer a satellite that could potentially bring them very lucrative returns on their venture capitol. The Pentagon couldn't afford to pay these folks enough to shut them up. Besides, launch failures happen way too often to divert Occam's Razor to point to any other conclusion. The launch system is still the most risky and unreliable rung on the ladder to space. Given number of nearly identical imaging satellites on the way, it will be the launch systems that will sort out the winners from the losers.
I'm happy to entertain any questions you might have - be sure to de-spamproof my email address.
Administrators at every level between guidance counselor to President Clinton are asking "what can be done?" Yet they fail to understand that they are as much to blame as the TCM's parents. They fostered the environment where anyone who is not a superficial stuck-up bimbo or a dumb masochistic macho jock is an outcast, and ridiculed.
What can be done? Provide some socially acceptable environment other than battle.net for exceptional teens. Don't penalize them for being bored by the least common denominator curriculum you dole out in uniform, non-challenging parcels. Give them some advanced curriculum that interests them. Just pay attention to them fer christsake, instead of ignoring and berating them... instead of joining along with the kids you're supposed to be leading.
These are the people we need to drag this sorry ass culture from the depths of fossil fuel addiction. These are the future researchers who will find cures for aids and cancer. These are the future entrepreneurs who will raise this economy from of the ashes of depression when our paper tiger economy burns up. Wouldn't it be wise to nurture them instead of the future Anchor Bimbos, Housewives, Lumberworkers, and Linesmen?
Maybe it would be a start if we began to place a little more value on the teachers and administrators themselves. We don't exactly attract the best people to these jobs - I can count on one hand the number of teachers that actually taught me something. I acquired an education in spite of the rest. And the administrators... well, I won't repeat cliched jokes.
But consider - when your principal and dean were in high school, which group did they belong to? It's a self-perpetuating system...
Thanks to JabberWokky for writing the review of the review I wanted to write. Now I can go to lunch on time. All I wanted to add is in my title.
No, darn - there were way too many heads to catch them all. I was frantically trying to take in as many as I could. The best one, though, was Matt Groening's - it was just to the right of the gap that Fry and Bender were posing through...
Where I grew up (SE United States) 'poot' is a euphemism for flatus, especially when expressed by a lady or child.
As the saying goes, "Men fart; ladies poot."
Sounds like he got his information in a college physics class; where were you when they covered optics and electrostatics?
The higher the index (i.e. slower the speed of light) in a material, the thinner the lens. That's why I can get 1/8" thick polycarbonate lenses for my glasses that do the same job as 1/2" thick glass.
Spectral dispersion is a problem in this application, though... however, if you're doing spectroscopy, a high-dispersion prism is useful... so therefore spectroscopy may be one of the first applications of a condensate prism.
As for the capacitor issue - The permittivity (capacitance/thickness) of a material is established by the speed of propogation of an EM wave (e.g. light) through the material. So a Bose-Einstein Condensate could make an outstanding dielectric for a capacitor, assuming its breakdown potential and leakage properties are acceptable.