You say: Personally, I think the attacks were unexpected.
But just below your post another/.ter mentions another article which says:
"The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.
I hear this claim not the first time, and there should be plenty of physical evidence to support this claim if it's true (such as receipts for Cipro retained at pharmacies.) And if this is true then the attacks were expected, and the "right people" were advised to act ahead of time.
When else do you see so many dedicated athletes performing at their best on such a massive scale?
And why do we need to see them performing at their best? And why do they need to do that? I personally have zero interest in sports, and probably negative interest in "spectator" sports where you just sit and watch someone running. Such observations don't help me, or anyone else, in any way. I can easily outperform the entire Olympics if I only learn how to plant a tree, and then go and do it on a hillside that asks for a tree.
Will this be a major trouble for you in future? A good computer forensics expert can easily figure what you did
There is no law against carrying a freshly reimaged computer. You only need to be truthful if asked, and that applies to every answer you give at the border. You do not need to explain your reasons, though if needed such an explanation would be obvious and unimpeacheable: "I was concerned about security of my old business documents that I worked with over the years, they might be recoverable from the HDD if the computer is stolen. So I decided to wipe it all clean before the trip, and I will be using it only to browse the Web."
Those boring things like 'privacy', 'due process', 'habeas corpus', 'Separation of powers' etc. exist to make sure nobody can grab the power and install a dictatorship
You have a nice way to explain things. However on my planet water is H(2)O, not H(2)C like on yours. Would such a molecule even exist? (IANAC) H-C---C-H
So according to that line of thought if I had met a girl in high school and I was aware that her current boy friend was unstable and likely to kill himself if she goes out with someone else then I can not ask her out without some legal jeopardy.
Legal jeopardy aside, would you do it just knowing that it may kill someone who you don't care much about? Or rephrasing that, would you kill someone just for your convenience, in public, if you knew for a fact that you won't be indicted? (But everyone would know who did it.)
Laws only enforce existing moral norms of the society. There are new laws that deviate from this principle, but in the case here the moral norms are clear - adults are not permitted to harass children (or even other adults.) If the victim dies the harasser gets arrested and tried, and his/her guilt is parsed and weighted.
Each person must keep their own act together without regard to how hard others are slamming their sacred buttons or smacking them in their tender spots.
And if a child violates this law she is punished by death. Right. I guess life on your planet is harsh.
In this case, one could not have necessarily predicted that Lori Drew's torments would result in the girl's suicide.
And what exactly this Drew person should have predicted?
As matter of fact, there is no lawful, let alone moral, reason for this setup to have place. Imagine you walk on a sidewalk and I suddenly push you. You fall on the road and may or may not be ran over by a car. There is no way to predict if a car will be there when you fall, so should such a crime be forgiven? Of course not, because nobody is allowed to endanger you like that.
If I were on the jury, this to me would look like a voluntary manslaughter, and I'd have no objections to sending her to death. But now that I said it, I won't be allowed on that jury even if summoned:-)
There should be no way to plug J345 into P346. Even with a sledgehammer. Three signatures is not enough.
True, but this is yet another obstacle on the road of "faster, cheaper, better" - connectors don't grow on trees, and it's already hard to get what you need. It doesn't get any easier if you start fiddling with shell sizes and insert configurations. A large entity can deal with it; a small company would rather use the same part number everywhere, even though it has a potential for a major failure.
we'd love to know who this author is
I read this novel only 2 days ago, so it still was in Firefox's history: Technocosm
It's fairly large, but here is the Google's translation of the relevant paragraph; I fixed some bugs of translation.
"I can not disclose to you all the secrets of our technology, but the surface of balloons will have virtually no friction on the air. The outer surface of the balloons will be adaptive. They will consist of nanomachines undergoing rapid microscopic movement to prevent the emergence of turbulence in the air. Archimedes's force shots balloons outside the atmosphere with tremendous speed. When the balloons are in a vacuum, nanomachines move closer, the bubble contracts, and high pressure starts building up inside. Pressurized gas will then be sent through the gas nozzle, creating reactive force, and this will push the module to the low Earth orbit. At the Earth orbit modules link up with our interplanetary tug and we send them to Jupiter."
As I said, I have no clue if this could possibly work - but why not if there are no constraints on the forces within the walls of such a balloon (a deus et machina.) In the story each balloon was supposed to lift a small payload, something about 5 to 10 kg.
But the story in general describes a method for advanced civilizations to travel and communicate between the stars and the galaxies if FTL travel is absolutely, unconditionally impossible.
There is one small catch. Soyuz was redesigned (back in 1970's) to fix the problems. STS was not sufficiently redesigned to fix its flaws (because it is not possible.) That's one of the reasons STS is being scrapped - it can't be made safe enough.
At a guess, their "live video" is on a 30 second delay
I agree with your guess. I was watching both the video and the mission status (a blog) and the mission status was about 20-30 seconds ahead of the video, even though the blogger had to type the text. There was definitely some delay in the video.
If it succeeds, then we not only know that a barebones approach works, but it can immediately begin driving launch costs down globally.
It will still be more risky. To fix that you need to build simpler rockets. Look at the STS - its complexity kills its reliability.
IMO, if SpaceX is to succeed eventually, they have to adopt the same quality control guidelines that everyone else in the world [who is successful enough] is using. That may involve, for example, three signatures just to confirm that J345 is plugged into P345 (and not into P346 which is of the same type and only 1" to the left.)
I personally believe that we are witnessing the apex of the rocket-driven space program. Rockets are so expensive, and lift so little of payload, that the cost can be reduced only so much. Cost of fuel (kerosene in SpaceX case) will rise. Rockets still would be usable for satellite launches, but large scale programs (a Mars expedition, for example) will be too expensive. Troubles with the world's financial system don't help here either. To get further we need cheaper *technologies*, not cheaper rockets. For example, one SciFi writer offered lighter than air balloons which first rise in the atmosphere, and then morph into jet engines, using the gas to get to an LEO. This is a complex system and it may not even work, but this type of new technologies can give us cheap access to space. Rockets that we have today can't do that, and I don't see anyone working on new types of rockets.
However if anyone downloads the music it will be legal because the music was uploaded by the copyright holder, and there is no purpose in uploading other than to facilitate downloading. Since the upload was through BitTorrent (which uploads and downloads at the same time) all consequent uploads are probably also permitted.
You can always delete the file from the physical key before crossing the border and re-download it after you crossed. Flickr has enough photos for many, many keys.
A cell phone CCD will be about 20 grams. But you also need the decoder, the DSP, and the transmitter, and the battery. If you still manage to do all that, then what's the use of a low-res image from 400 km? I understand that it might be cool once or twice, but that's what amateur satellites are for (this includes ham and non-ham ones.) These satellites don't weigh 20 grams - they are larger, but they actually work.
Usually amateur satellites hitch a ride on some other commercial launch, for a fraction of cost. There is no need to invent yer own rocket for $2,000 - use already developed hardware that works for real. Besides, rocketry is not a safe hobby when you deal with enough propellant to lift something to an LEO. When you try to do it on the cheap things only get scarier.
On subject of RC planes: a half a gram RC plane only needs to receive, so its power budget is not as tough as a satellite that has to have a large antenna and/or a powerful transmitter to send its status and data back to Earth. But half a gram RC plane is still an achievement, and it is useful because you can fly it and enjoy its flight. People are free to make a 20g satellite also, but it will be far less useful than a tiny RC plane.
The requirements ask for lifting a 20g "satellite" (I'd call it a "space junk" instead). What could be the value of such a construct? More importantly, what value the humanity can obtain from building a super-cheap and super-unreliable launch vehicle that has a 20g payload? This N-Prize should be seen as a joke.
The lunar soil contains He(3) in 0.01 ppm concentration. If you want one gram of He(3) you need to excavate, process and dispose of 100 tons of regolith. This one gram will yield about 200 MW*h (per your link to Wikipedia.) This is also 272,000 hp*h which amounts to 1,000 hours of work of one machine with 272 horsepower engine. I am very much unsure if this budget is even enough to dig up and carry all this regolith to the processing plant - which also needs energy, which has to be taken from the mining allocation. So there is a good chance that use of He(3) on the Moon is cash-negative.
I read quite a few some science fiction novels where Earth bureaucracy attempted to extend its reach way beyond the planet, even to a spaceship that is on its way to another star. So basically the bureaucracy will always take all it can get away with, and will be claiming more power next time around.
It is unwarranted to assume that its only possible harmful effect is thermal.
We act on our current knowledge because we can not act on something that we do not know. For example, it is equally unwarranted to assume that radiation from our cell phones does not prolong our lives. Should we act on this belief?
For example if these creatures lived in a one or two dimensional universe then how could they exist in a 3 dimensional universe?
True, but we don't need to discuss this specific case. It's far more interesting to see how a 3D creature can move from his 3D universe into a neighboring 3D universe. We can, of course, always say that there is no such thing as multiple universes, but our opinion is just as valid as a 2D flatlander's opinion that his sheet of paper is the only one in existence - even when we can see that his sheet is #42 in the ream.
Or land their crates safely after traveling for billions of miles
You answer your own question. After "traveling for billions of miles" aliens' piloting skills can become rusty. There is a huge difference between space navigation and trying visually estimate altitude, speed, and wind on the ground. Or maybe the landing equipment was malfunctioning... the fact is that you can't crash in space, and if you spend a lot of time in space that can make pilots lazy and over-confident.
Slashdot Mirror
You say: Personally, I think the attacks were unexpected.
But just below your post another /.ter mentions another article which says:
"The attacks were not entirely unexpected. I had been told soon after Sept. 11 to secure Cipro, the antidote to anthrax. The tip had come in a roundabout way from a high government official, and I immediately acted on it. I was carrying Cipro way before most people had ever heard of it.
I hear this claim not the first time, and there should be plenty of physical evidence to support this claim if it's true (such as receipts for Cipro retained at pharmacies.) And if this is true then the attacks were expected, and the "right people" were advised to act ahead of time.
When else do you see so many dedicated athletes performing at their best on such a massive scale?
And why do we need to see them performing at their best? And why do they need to do that? I personally have zero interest in sports, and probably negative interest in "spectator" sports where you just sit and watch someone running. Such observations don't help me, or anyone else, in any way. I can easily outperform the entire Olympics if I only learn how to plant a tree, and then go and do it on a hillside that asks for a tree.
Will this be a major trouble for you in future? A good computer forensics expert can easily figure what you did
There is no law against carrying a freshly reimaged computer. You only need to be truthful if asked, and that applies to every answer you give at the border. You do not need to explain your reasons, though if needed such an explanation would be obvious and unimpeacheable: "I was concerned about security of my old business documents that I worked with over the years, they might be recoverable from the HDD if the computer is stolen. So I decided to wipe it all clean before the trip, and I will be using it only to browse the Web."
Those boring things like 'privacy', 'due process', 'habeas corpus', 'Separation of powers' etc. exist to make sure nobody can grab the power and install a dictatorship
s/exist/used to exist/ :-(
You have a nice way to explain things. However on my planet water is H(2)O, not H(2)C like on yours. Would such a molecule even exist? (IANAC)
H-C---C-H
Meaning two blondes make a brunette?
Only if they are of different gender, and with 25% chance :-)
So according to that line of thought if I had met a girl in high school and I was aware that her current boy friend was unstable and likely to kill himself if she goes out with someone else then I can not ask her out without some legal jeopardy.
Legal jeopardy aside, would you do it just knowing that it may kill someone who you don't care much about? Or rephrasing that, would you kill someone just for your convenience, in public, if you knew for a fact that you won't be indicted? (But everyone would know who did it.)
Laws only enforce existing moral norms of the society. There are new laws that deviate from this principle, but in the case here the moral norms are clear - adults are not permitted to harass children (or even other adults.) If the victim dies the harasser gets arrested and tried, and his/her guilt is parsed and weighted.
Each person must keep their own act together without regard to how hard others are slamming their sacred buttons or smacking them in their tender spots.
And if a child violates this law she is punished by death. Right. I guess life on your planet is harsh.
In this case, one could not have necessarily predicted that Lori Drew's torments would result in the girl's suicide.
And what exactly this Drew person should have predicted?
As matter of fact, there is no lawful, let alone moral, reason for this setup to have place. Imagine you walk on a sidewalk and I suddenly push you. You fall on the road and may or may not be ran over by a car. There is no way to predict if a car will be there when you fall, so should such a crime be forgiven? Of course not, because nobody is allowed to endanger you like that.
If I were on the jury, this to me would look like a voluntary manslaughter, and I'd have no objections to sending her to death. But now that I said it, I won't be allowed on that jury even if summoned :-)
There should be no way to plug J345 into P346. Even with a sledgehammer. Three signatures is not enough.
True, but this is yet another obstacle on the road of "faster, cheaper, better" - connectors don't grow on trees, and it's already hard to get what you need. It doesn't get any easier if you start fiddling with shell sizes and insert configurations. A large entity can deal with it; a small company would rather use the same part number everywhere, even though it has a potential for a major failure.
we'd love to know who this author is
I read this novel only 2 days ago, so it still was in Firefox's history: Technocosm
It's fairly large, but here is the Google's translation of the relevant paragraph; I fixed some bugs of translation.
"I can not disclose to you all the secrets of our technology, but the surface of balloons will have virtually no friction on the air. The outer surface of the balloons will be adaptive. They will consist of nanomachines undergoing rapid microscopic movement to prevent the emergence of turbulence in the air. Archimedes's force shots balloons outside the atmosphere with tremendous speed. When the balloons are in a vacuum, nanomachines move closer, the bubble contracts, and high pressure starts building up inside. Pressurized gas will then be sent through the gas nozzle, creating reactive force, and this will push the module to the low Earth orbit. At the Earth orbit modules link up with our interplanetary tug and we send them to Jupiter."
As I said, I have no clue if this could possibly work - but why not if there are no constraints on the forces within the walls of such a balloon (a deus et machina.) In the story each balloon was supposed to lift a small payload, something about 5 to 10 kg.
But the story in general describes a method for advanced civilizations to travel and communicate between the stars and the galaxies if FTL travel is absolutely, unconditionally impossible.
There is one small catch. Soyuz was redesigned (back in 1970's) to fix the problems. STS was not sufficiently redesigned to fix its flaws (because it is not possible.) That's one of the reasons STS is being scrapped - it can't be made safe enough.
At a guess, their "live video" is on a 30 second delay
I agree with your guess. I was watching both the video and the mission status (a blog) and the mission status was about 20-30 seconds ahead of the video, even though the blogger had to type the text. There was definitely some delay in the video.
If it succeeds, then we not only know that a barebones approach works, but it can immediately begin driving launch costs down globally.
It will still be more risky. To fix that you need to build simpler rockets. Look at the STS - its complexity kills its reliability.
IMO, if SpaceX is to succeed eventually, they have to adopt the same quality control guidelines that everyone else in the world [who is successful enough] is using. That may involve, for example, three signatures just to confirm that J345 is plugged into P345 (and not into P346 which is of the same type and only 1" to the left.)
I personally believe that we are witnessing the apex of the rocket-driven space program. Rockets are so expensive, and lift so little of payload, that the cost can be reduced only so much. Cost of fuel (kerosene in SpaceX case) will rise. Rockets still would be usable for satellite launches, but large scale programs (a Mars expedition, for example) will be too expensive. Troubles with the world's financial system don't help here either. To get further we need cheaper *technologies*, not cheaper rockets. For example, one SciFi writer offered lighter than air balloons which first rise in the atmosphere, and then morph into jet engines, using the gas to get to an LEO. This is a complex system and it may not even work, but this type of new technologies can give us cheap access to space. Rockets that we have today can't do that, and I don't see anyone working on new types of rockets.
However if anyone downloads the music it will be legal because the music was uploaded by the copyright holder, and there is no purpose in uploading other than to facilitate downloading. Since the upload was through BitTorrent (which uploads and downloads at the same time) all consequent uploads are probably also permitted.
You can always delete the file from the physical key before crossing the border and re-download it after you crossed. Flickr has enough photos for many, many keys.
But a cellphone cam might just work.
A cell phone CCD will be about 20 grams. But you also need the decoder, the DSP, and the transmitter, and the battery. If you still manage to do all that, then what's the use of a low-res image from 400 km? I understand that it might be cool once or twice, but that's what amateur satellites are for (this includes ham and non-ham ones.) These satellites don't weigh 20 grams - they are larger, but they actually work.
Usually amateur satellites hitch a ride on some other commercial launch, for a fraction of cost. There is no need to invent yer own rocket for $2,000 - use already developed hardware that works for real. Besides, rocketry is not a safe hobby when you deal with enough propellant to lift something to an LEO. When you try to do it on the cheap things only get scarier.
On subject of RC planes: a half a gram RC plane only needs to receive, so its power budget is not as tough as a satellite that has to have a large antenna and/or a powerful transmitter to send its status and data back to Earth. But half a gram RC plane is still an achievement, and it is useful because you can fly it and enjoy its flight. People are free to make a 20g satellite also, but it will be far less useful than a tiny RC plane.
Discussion of issues leads to prudent decisions.
The requirements ask for lifting a 20g "satellite" (I'd call it a "space junk" instead). What could be the value of such a construct? More importantly, what value the humanity can obtain from building a super-cheap and super-unreliable launch vehicle that has a 20g payload? This N-Prize should be seen as a joke.
I was more thinking of YouTube doing no processing at all, and so that the client can apply its own if it wishes.
All the things that you want to apply to the playback before the playback even starts, or even before the file is even fully downloaded.
The lunar soil contains He(3) in 0.01 ppm concentration. If you want one gram of He(3) you need to excavate, process and dispose of 100 tons of regolith. This one gram will yield about 200 MW*h (per your link to Wikipedia.) This is also 272,000 hp*h which amounts to 1,000 hours of work of one machine with 272 horsepower engine. I am very much unsure if this budget is even enough to dig up and carry all this regolith to the processing plant - which also needs energy, which has to be taken from the mining allocation. So there is a good chance that use of He(3) on the Moon is cash-negative.
I read quite a few some science fiction novels where Earth bureaucracy attempted to extend its reach way beyond the planet, even to a spaceship that is on its way to another star. So basically the bureaucracy will always take all it can get away with, and will be claiming more power next time around.
It is unwarranted to assume that its only possible harmful effect is thermal.
We act on our current knowledge because we can not act on something that we do not know. For example, it is equally unwarranted to assume that radiation from our cell phones does not prolong our lives. Should we act on this belief?
Then the number (3W) is irrelevant and meaningless. RF exposure is calculated on the average basis because its effect is thermal.
For example if these creatures lived in a one or two dimensional universe then how could they exist in a 3 dimensional universe?
True, but we don't need to discuss this specific case. It's far more interesting to see how a 3D creature can move from his 3D universe into a neighboring 3D universe. We can, of course, always say that there is no such thing as multiple universes, but our opinion is just as valid as a 2D flatlander's opinion that his sheet of paper is the only one in existence - even when we can see that his sheet is #42 in the ream.
Or land their crates safely after traveling for billions of miles
You answer your own question. After "traveling for billions of miles" aliens' piloting skills can become rusty. There is a huge difference between space navigation and trying visually estimate altitude, speed, and wind on the ground. Or maybe the landing equipment was malfunctioning... the fact is that you can't crash in space, and if you spend a lot of time in space that can make pilots lazy and over-confident.