Years ago, when I was in elementary school and the HST was being built, a group of us got to tour the Perkin Elmer facility where it was being built. By then, though, the mirror blank had already been ground, and wasn't available for viewing as it was off being silvered. A couple of other similar mirrors, though, were out and viewable. I asked what the other mirrors were for, since the HST would only need one. The tour guide, one of the engineers, stayed silent for a while, then asked us not to ask any more questions about those mirrors. In retrospect, of course, it's apparent these were mirrors for use on spy telescopes, and our guide was probably breaking some regulations just by showing them to us. Beautiful things, you could stand at the other end of the big room they were worked on in, and see yourself magnified perfectly, if you stood in the right spot.
This only works until the enemy develops the means to jam your remote control -- something any nation with access to modern technology should be able to achieve with a bit of R&D. Without an on-board pilot, the probability of having your own weapons taken and used against you remains a problem.
Some of my faourite observations of growth are that at the current rate, in 1000 years the mass of humanity will be packed so tightly that the earth will glow orange from the heat, and we will be consuming the entire energy output of the sun. In 2,500 years we will be using all the energy in the entire milky way and in 6000 years, the boundary of the expanding mass of human flesh will be moving outwards at the speed of light.
And taking into account the current rate of decrease in population growth year over year, we'll be extinct within 1000 years. Problem solved.
The surface fleet was obsoleted once we had working nukes and short-range ballistic delivery systems. The ability to "shoot down" incoming ordinance doesn't work once you're hit with a strong EMP (and, no, our advanced defense systems are not hardened to withstand that, even on aircraft carriers.) Of course, once nukes are used between superpowers, it's all over for everyone once the fallout settles.
Sure, I have a SecureID card for a system; if it is used incorrectly 3 times it falls out of sync with the system and can no longer be used to access it. Thing is, such systems, because it is easy to lose access, always have back doors so a new card can be configured, or an admin can override the lockout.
So, yeah, if you were willing to lose access to the encrypted info with a 3-oops mistake or loss of the physical token, you could set up such a system. I doubt any major manufacturer would design such a system, though, as it would be too easy to be locked out permanently, and the market for such would be fairly limited.
> What do you think the Manhattan Project was? All they had was the physics and theory, and that's all they needed.
Well, physics, theory, and a metric buttload of money. The uranium separation facility needed so much copper, there wasn't enough available at the time, so the US government gave them 14,700 tons of silver out of the national reserves to build it with. By some estimates, the cost of the Manhattan Project was some $2billion US in 1941, or about 24.4 billion in 2011, 90% of which went to building the factories and reactors that provided the materials, and that doesn't include the cost of the silver, which was only loaned for the project.
Just knowing the physics won't get you enough HEUranium or Pu239 to make a bomb. Someone is still going to have to dig up the ore, process it into fuel elements, run it through a reactor, separate out the desired isotopes, and provide a delivery mechanism.
"You're also making the assumption that you have enough stored gas (call it air) to repressurize the spacecraft."
Since the pressure on a space station 1atm (according to wikipedia, at least), you could depressurize to 1/10th that, low enough to squelch combustion, by using a giant hefty bag out in space to hold it until the fire's out, then pump it back in. Ok, a giant heatproof hefty bag that can hold in 1/10th atm.
Have you ever ridden in a high-use taxi? The garbage, the smells, the seats worn past the point of comfort -- no, people who can afford one will buy their own auto, just as they do now, and for much the same reason -- it's *theirs,* they can set it up as they like it, keep it as clean or cluttered as they like, and it's always there, ready to transport them when they're ready, not after half an hour or waiting for the car to show up. Big cities and similar scenarios will have Zipcar-like auto clubs, but just like today, they'll probably be in the minority.
Fear is driving this. Fear and paranoia that the official channels of communication will be filled with nothing but propaganda and misinformation should something truly important happen. The hams I know are adamant that should a terrorist nuke go off in a big city, or civil unrest to the point of conflict, or a solar flare take out the electrical infrastructure, they'll be the ones communicating and coordinating the relief/rebuilding efforts. In their defense, many hams have kept by their radios during times of local emergency, just in case, and in some highly-touted instances actually proved useful.
Yeah, I gave up after he started projecting short-term trends into permanent ones. Every technical article on Moore's Law, for example, includes a statement somewhere that the current rate of growth is unsustainable -- eventually you will run into limits of transistor density, heat dissipation, and element size -- can't send an electron down a wire less than an atom's width and thickness, and you'll probably need several such thicknesses worth to avoid quantum effects. Every non-dumbed-down article on AI comes to a similar conclusion -- we humans just don't have the capacity, programming-wise, to program with the efficiency and accuracy required to create a hard AI, and from what we can see, there isn't even a strong effort to do so outside of a few underfunded academic and amature efforts.
Sure, I believe, personally, that we're going to have automated restaurants (honestly, I don't know why one of the major chains hasn't at least set up a pilot program yet), and in some circumstances a robot is the answer. Hell, I have robots in my workshop at home -- a laser etcher, cnc lathe and mills, and the computers that run them, even a bit of automation from 1929 in the form of a 50-lb ram Little Giant power hammer -- but if I wanted to go full time professional, I'd have to hire people to handle the things that, still, only people can do.
Creative work, human relations, rapid adaption to change, sales, plus any job which requires the jack-of-all-trades human ability to learn and adapt. Heck, even temp work will stick around -- it's a lot easier and cheaper to hire a guy who can think for himself than to buy/lease/rent a 'bot and then try to program it to do something new.
Well, if you want a secure system, don't outsource. It's true at all levels, from your home wireless network to the millitary networks.
There's a dearth of jobs in this country as well. One piece of legislation that would solve some of that is simple: the US Millitary may no longer use foreign-sourced materials, equipment, or contractors for any of its goods. Everything, from the rare earths mined to make the chips and components, the labor, and the corporate profits have to be in the US to even be considered. No exceptions. If the US Millitary wants it, it has to be local, or they do without.
Yes, it means no more cheap laptops or hard drives, nor any COTS equipment or software, unless they come from the US. It will mean that, at minimum, the US will have a top to bottom supply chain that it can actually monitor, and ensure that those laptops and software aren't spying on us, nor are they capable of being shut off remotely by any enemy. Right now, do you really think that the components that go into our missles, our tanks, our communications gear doesn't have hidden hooks to allow the Chinese, or whatever entity that created the components, to control, destroy, or turn it against us?
The US would have to start up a working rare-earths mining and refining industry, set up fab lines and clean rooms, actually hire Americans and train them and keep the working knowledge here, and not send it to who-knows-where. I'd imagine that would impact the job market a bit, in a positive way. It would also help ensure that the equipment we have will keep working if we decide to, say, defend Taiwan against a mainland China attack.
But, this won't happen. It might cut into the military contractor's profits, and would certainly cause the politicians the Chinese and others have bought outright to squeal. So long as someone can make a few more bucks by outsourcing, so long as someone can keep the loopholes and exemptions in place, we'll still have this vulnerability, and the jobs (and experience, and knowledge, and capability) will continue to drain out.
All these wonderful high-speed Internet connections do us no good if the telcos refuse to deploy them. I live just a few miles out from DC, and I can't get any broadband because Verizon refuses to install it.
Maybe it will lead to actual treatment and rehabilitation of criminals, instead of the current punishment model. Or even the restructuring of our "Justice" system to separate true criminal activity from truly victimless crimes.
Oh, who am I fooling, this will be abused like every other technology, used to throw the underclasses into some hellhole via forced "confessions" and gullible juries.
When I read things like this, I wonder if we should send similar rovers to places like NYC and London -- I know I'd read their reports on attempts to discover "life," and the oddities they encounter.
The author seems to have bought into the hype about "web 2.0" and "web 3.0,' as if somehow they can operate without physical hardware.
DDOS can be remedied by an inbound filter, or in extreme cases renumbering your server and updating DNS after placing a blackhole route on the attacked IP at the ISP level.
Infiltrate a server, and it might require a reload and reboot to recover. Sure, you might lose a few days data if you've been sloppy, but if you're keeping proper backups, it'll be good again in a few days.
Attack physical hardware, such as cable plants, colos, and satellite farms, and it may well be down for weeks to months -- plus once you know it's being worked on by the relatively few people who have the know-how to fix them, you can get them too. Take out power and water at the same time, and your enemy will have higher priorities than fixing their Internet infrastructure.
In a cyber war, a real one where a declared enemy is using the Internet to actually do damage, I suspect the US Military will simply destroy the enemy infrastructure. Physical attacks can't be firewalled against.
It wouldn't take much to add in an area denial ability, just something that at the right time exothermically disassembles the probe into lots of rapidly moving debris. They'll already be headed in the right direction, and theoretically have a shotgun-like effect on a large portion of the L2 area, quite likely at least damaging a stealthed alien reconnaissance satellite.
It's often bothered me that we can't set up a few days a year -- when meteor showers are expected, perhaps for a lunar eclipse or when there's a comet in the sky -- when everyone who can shuts off their outside lights so people can enjoy the sky.
Flying at night show how much light is just wasted energy -- vast empty parking lots with lights pointed upwards, empty streets brightly lit for nonexistent drivers, buildings lit up with nobody at home.
I have long maintained that for the military to outsource any aspect of production of war materiel to a foreign country, no matter how friendly, is a serious mistake and a security breach waiting to happen. Sadly, I suspect it will take a incident of epic proportions to drive this home, at which point it will most likely be too late.
Several private airlines exist -- they operate out of smaller airports without a TSA presence, and out of separate terminals at the larger airports. Expect to pay several times more than 1st class at a regular airline, though, and to be on a smaller plane. It's what the wealthy and powerful people use.
"How could they afford that next Gulfstream jet or vacation home?"
But they're not buying the jet or the vacation home. They (the ultra-wealthy) aren't doing anything with the money that could "trickle down" like that -- they're shoving it into ever-more-questionable investment schemes so that they can have *more* money.
You may not be aware of this, but most people who go out hiking in desert and wilderness areas are trying to get away from civilization for a while. I would find it extremely annoying, after having settled in for the evening or while trying to take a siesta, to have a robot intrude and offer me water. Given how most programming works, over and over and over again.
Stranded motorists will be by the road; backcountry hikers won't want the interruption; about the only places where what you're proposing would make any sort of sense is on the desert border crossings, and I'm pretty sure that if we send robots into that area, they won't be offering water to those the drones are tracking.
Yeah, it happens in other hobbies as well. I'm a blacksmith, I'm looking to trade in my 1929 Little Giant power hammer (50 lb ram) for something a bit more modern, probably a 1980's era forging press or similar. Given that the power hammer, despite being 80 years old, will probably sell for ~$3000, that's about 80% of the cost of a suitable forging press.
--d
Who do you think decides where cheerleaders cheer at? It's certainly not the cheerleaders themselves. In my experience, it's been the PE teachers -- in other words, jocks. Oh, the administration had some input, and the outside influence is probably why you're starting to see cheers at non-sporting events, but if it was a choice between the football team getting cheerleaders for a local game, and even a world-class robotics squad at a national competition, you know where the girls will be, no matter where they themselves would prefer.
Slashdot Mirror
Years ago, when I was in elementary school and the HST was being built, a group of us got to tour the Perkin Elmer facility where it was being built. By then, though, the mirror blank had already been ground, and wasn't available for viewing as it was off being silvered. A couple of other similar mirrors, though, were out and viewable. I asked what the other mirrors were for, since the HST would only need one. The tour guide, one of the engineers, stayed silent for a while, then asked us not to ask any more questions about those mirrors. In retrospect, of course, it's apparent these were mirrors for use on spy telescopes, and our guide was probably breaking some regulations just by showing them to us. Beautiful things, you could stand at the other end of the big room they were worked on in, and see yourself magnified perfectly, if you stood in the right spot.
This only works until the enemy develops the means to jam your remote control -- something any nation with access to modern technology should be able to achieve with a bit of R&D. Without an on-board pilot, the probability of having your own weapons taken and used against you remains a problem.
Some of my faourite observations of growth are that at the current rate, in 1000 years the mass of humanity will be packed so tightly that the earth will glow orange from the heat, and we will be consuming the entire energy output of the sun. In 2,500 years we will be using all the energy in the entire milky way and in 6000 years, the boundary of the expanding mass of human flesh will be moving outwards at the speed of light.
And taking into account the current rate of decrease in population growth year over year, we'll be extinct within 1000 years. Problem solved.
The surface fleet was obsoleted once we had working nukes and short-range ballistic delivery systems. The ability to "shoot down" incoming ordinance doesn't work once you're hit with a strong EMP (and, no, our advanced defense systems are not hardened to withstand that, even on aircraft carriers.) Of course, once nukes are used between superpowers, it's all over for everyone once the fallout settles.
Sure, I have a SecureID card for a system; if it is used incorrectly 3 times it falls out of sync with the system and can no longer be used to access it. Thing is, such systems, because it is easy to lose access, always have back doors so a new card can be configured, or an admin can override the lockout. So, yeah, if you were willing to lose access to the encrypted info with a 3-oops mistake or loss of the physical token, you could set up such a system. I doubt any major manufacturer would design such a system, though, as it would be too easy to be locked out permanently, and the market for such would be fairly limited.
> What do you think the Manhattan Project was? All they had was the physics and theory, and that's all they needed. Well, physics, theory, and a metric buttload of money. The uranium separation facility needed so much copper, there wasn't enough available at the time, so the US government gave them 14,700 tons of silver out of the national reserves to build it with. By some estimates, the cost of the Manhattan Project was some $2billion US in 1941, or about 24.4 billion in 2011, 90% of which went to building the factories and reactors that provided the materials, and that doesn't include the cost of the silver, which was only loaned for the project. Just knowing the physics won't get you enough HEUranium or Pu239 to make a bomb. Someone is still going to have to dig up the ore, process it into fuel elements, run it through a reactor, separate out the desired isotopes, and provide a delivery mechanism.
"You're also making the assumption that you have enough stored gas (call it air) to repressurize the spacecraft." Since the pressure on a space station 1atm (according to wikipedia, at least), you could depressurize to 1/10th that, low enough to squelch combustion, by using a giant hefty bag out in space to hold it until the fire's out, then pump it back in. Ok, a giant heatproof hefty bag that can hold in 1/10th atm.
Have you ever ridden in a high-use taxi? The garbage, the smells, the seats worn past the point of comfort -- no, people who can afford one will buy their own auto, just as they do now, and for much the same reason -- it's *theirs,* they can set it up as they like it, keep it as clean or cluttered as they like, and it's always there, ready to transport them when they're ready, not after half an hour or waiting for the car to show up. Big cities and similar scenarios will have Zipcar-like auto clubs, but just like today, they'll probably be in the minority.
Fear is driving this. Fear and paranoia that the official channels of communication will be filled with nothing but propaganda and misinformation should something truly important happen. The hams I know are adamant that should a terrorist nuke go off in a big city, or civil unrest to the point of conflict, or a solar flare take out the electrical infrastructure, they'll be the ones communicating and coordinating the relief/rebuilding efforts. In their defense, many hams have kept by their radios during times of local emergency, just in case, and in some highly-touted instances actually proved useful.
Yeah, I gave up after he started projecting short-term trends into permanent ones. Every technical article on Moore's Law, for example, includes a statement somewhere that the current rate of growth is unsustainable -- eventually you will run into limits of transistor density, heat dissipation, and element size -- can't send an electron down a wire less than an atom's width and thickness, and you'll probably need several such thicknesses worth to avoid quantum effects. Every non-dumbed-down article on AI comes to a similar conclusion -- we humans just don't have the capacity, programming-wise, to program with the efficiency and accuracy required to create a hard AI, and from what we can see, there isn't even a strong effort to do so outside of a few underfunded academic and amature efforts. Sure, I believe, personally, that we're going to have automated restaurants (honestly, I don't know why one of the major chains hasn't at least set up a pilot program yet), and in some circumstances a robot is the answer. Hell, I have robots in my workshop at home -- a laser etcher, cnc lathe and mills, and the computers that run them, even a bit of automation from 1929 in the form of a 50-lb ram Little Giant power hammer -- but if I wanted to go full time professional, I'd have to hire people to handle the things that, still, only people can do. Creative work, human relations, rapid adaption to change, sales, plus any job which requires the jack-of-all-trades human ability to learn and adapt. Heck, even temp work will stick around -- it's a lot easier and cheaper to hire a guy who can think for himself than to buy/lease/rent a 'bot and then try to program it to do something new.
Well, if you want a secure system, don't outsource. It's true at all levels, from your home wireless network to the millitary networks. There's a dearth of jobs in this country as well. One piece of legislation that would solve some of that is simple: the US Millitary may no longer use foreign-sourced materials, equipment, or contractors for any of its goods. Everything, from the rare earths mined to make the chips and components, the labor, and the corporate profits have to be in the US to even be considered. No exceptions. If the US Millitary wants it, it has to be local, or they do without. Yes, it means no more cheap laptops or hard drives, nor any COTS equipment or software, unless they come from the US. It will mean that, at minimum, the US will have a top to bottom supply chain that it can actually monitor, and ensure that those laptops and software aren't spying on us, nor are they capable of being shut off remotely by any enemy. Right now, do you really think that the components that go into our missles, our tanks, our communications gear doesn't have hidden hooks to allow the Chinese, or whatever entity that created the components, to control, destroy, or turn it against us? The US would have to start up a working rare-earths mining and refining industry, set up fab lines and clean rooms, actually hire Americans and train them and keep the working knowledge here, and not send it to who-knows-where. I'd imagine that would impact the job market a bit, in a positive way. It would also help ensure that the equipment we have will keep working if we decide to, say, defend Taiwan against a mainland China attack. But, this won't happen. It might cut into the military contractor's profits, and would certainly cause the politicians the Chinese and others have bought outright to squeal. So long as someone can make a few more bucks by outsourcing, so long as someone can keep the loopholes and exemptions in place, we'll still have this vulnerability, and the jobs (and experience, and knowledge, and capability) will continue to drain out.
All these wonderful high-speed Internet connections do us no good if the telcos refuse to deploy them. I live just a few miles out from DC, and I can't get any broadband because Verizon refuses to install it.
As a blacksmith, I just with they'd sell the tiles. I could make a gas forge that would Rock with those!
Maybe it will lead to actual treatment and rehabilitation of criminals, instead of the current punishment model. Or even the restructuring of our "Justice" system to separate true criminal activity from truly victimless crimes. Oh, who am I fooling, this will be abused like every other technology, used to throw the underclasses into some hellhole via forced "confessions" and gullible juries.
When I read things like this, I wonder if we should send similar rovers to places like NYC and London -- I know I'd read their reports on attempts to discover "life," and the oddities they encounter.
The author seems to have bought into the hype about "web 2.0" and "web 3.0,' as if somehow they can operate without physical hardware. DDOS can be remedied by an inbound filter, or in extreme cases renumbering your server and updating DNS after placing a blackhole route on the attacked IP at the ISP level. Infiltrate a server, and it might require a reload and reboot to recover. Sure, you might lose a few days data if you've been sloppy, but if you're keeping proper backups, it'll be good again in a few days. Attack physical hardware, such as cable plants, colos, and satellite farms, and it may well be down for weeks to months -- plus once you know it's being worked on by the relatively few people who have the know-how to fix them, you can get them too. Take out power and water at the same time, and your enemy will have higher priorities than fixing their Internet infrastructure. In a cyber war, a real one where a declared enemy is using the Internet to actually do damage, I suspect the US Military will simply destroy the enemy infrastructure. Physical attacks can't be firewalled against.
It wouldn't take much to add in an area denial ability, just something that at the right time exothermically disassembles the probe into lots of rapidly moving debris. They'll already be headed in the right direction, and theoretically have a shotgun-like effect on a large portion of the L2 area, quite likely at least damaging a stealthed alien reconnaissance satellite.
It's often bothered me that we can't set up a few days a year -- when meteor showers are expected, perhaps for a lunar eclipse or when there's a comet in the sky -- when everyone who can shuts off their outside lights so people can enjoy the sky. Flying at night show how much light is just wasted energy -- vast empty parking lots with lights pointed upwards, empty streets brightly lit for nonexistent drivers, buildings lit up with nobody at home.
I have long maintained that for the military to outsource any aspect of production of war materiel to a foreign country, no matter how friendly, is a serious mistake and a security breach waiting to happen. Sadly, I suspect it will take a incident of epic proportions to drive this home, at which point it will most likely be too late.
Several private airlines exist -- they operate out of smaller airports without a TSA presence, and out of separate terminals at the larger airports. Expect to pay several times more than 1st class at a regular airline, though, and to be on a smaller plane. It's what the wealthy and powerful people use.
"How could they afford that next Gulfstream jet or vacation home?" But they're not buying the jet or the vacation home. They (the ultra-wealthy) aren't doing anything with the money that could "trickle down" like that -- they're shoving it into ever-more-questionable investment schemes so that they can have *more* money.
You may not be aware of this, but most people who go out hiking in desert and wilderness areas are trying to get away from civilization for a while. I would find it extremely annoying, after having settled in for the evening or while trying to take a siesta, to have a robot intrude and offer me water. Given how most programming works, over and over and over again. Stranded motorists will be by the road; backcountry hikers won't want the interruption; about the only places where what you're proposing would make any sort of sense is on the desert border crossings, and I'm pretty sure that if we send robots into that area, they won't be offering water to those the drones are tracking.
Actually, you can make a pretty loud explosion with a plastic bottle, baking soda, and vinegar. I expect that to be banned soon as well.
Yeah, it happens in other hobbies as well. I'm a blacksmith, I'm looking to trade in my 1929 Little Giant power hammer (50 lb ram) for something a bit more modern, probably a 1980's era forging press or similar. Given that the power hammer, despite being 80 years old, will probably sell for ~$3000, that's about 80% of the cost of a suitable forging press. --d
Who do you think decides where cheerleaders cheer at? It's certainly not the cheerleaders themselves. In my experience, it's been the PE teachers -- in other words, jocks. Oh, the administration had some input, and the outside influence is probably why you're starting to see cheers at non-sporting events, but if it was a choice between the football team getting cheerleaders for a local game, and even a world-class robotics squad at a national competition, you know where the girls will be, no matter where they themselves would prefer.