I've got to disagree with you there. I have a friend who has now published three books on dog training for hunting, each one with a full page ad on the back cover for whatever dog food company paid to have it printed and circulated. The advertising allows him to get his book out there, which I don't think he would be otherwise able to do, and it doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the book at all (provided dog training for hunting is something you enjoy).
Move the cockpit bulkhead back as far as the first class bathroom and enclose that and the boarding doorway in with the pilots. Board the passengers through another door entirely, and never shall the flight crew and passengers meet. At that point, who cares what happens to the passengers or their security? We'll never have another hijacking again unless someone wants to try and scale the exterior of the aircraft in flight. Good luck with that. As for my prize, I'll take cash in euros. I'm not to thrilled about the state of US money these days.
I notice that they list "slaughtering small mammals and birds" on the list. What the hell kind of skill is that? Did such a "skill" ever have value? Are computers now slaughtering all our small mammals and birds for us?
Oh, and one skill that I used to be quite good at that is now clearly obsolete: operating a mimeograph machine.
The reason things like abortion and marriage are played out on the federal level is because without it, you would end up with a completely unworkable patchwork of overlapping laws on a state by state basis. Let's say Roe v Wade is overthrown at the next opportunity and states are again allowed to decide the issue of abortion within their own borders, and somewhere like Kansas decides no abortions no way no how. People with money in Kansas who want an abortion would travel to somewhere else to get it, and poor people without the means to travel would be (for the second time) screwed. IANAL, but I suspect such a class distinction for fundamental medical care, especially in the case of a pregnancy endangering the mother, would be grounds for once again abortion fighting its way up to the Supreme Court. Or I could be wrong. I'd love to here from someone who is a lawyer on this concept.
You're already modded as high as you can go, or I'd mod you still higher. This is the exact thought that I had the day after 9-11. The old days of hijacking planes and flying them to Cuba were over. The only way to hijack a plane from 9-11 on out would be to kill every other passenger - no one was going to sit quietly in their seats despite any promises of "do what we say and no one will get hurt."
Wow, you just totally blew my mind by mentioning the Beagle Bros... Anyone remember a tank game called Bolo? Interesting side note: there was a gladiator game of sorts called Bilestoad that was so bloody (in 8 bit color low res) that parents groups wailed about it even then. The more things change... But to stay on topic, I'm one of those people who learned early programming by trying to cheat on games (no trainers back then). I had a book called "What's Where in your Apple 2) that had literally every fixed memory location in the machine and what it linked to. Awesome book for a burgeoning programmer.
Tolls throughout history have represented another cash grab by the government. It starts with a "pay for the road" bond, but trust me, long after that bond is dead and buried the toll remains, the money now going to all matter of stuff other than the road, which was, after all, its original intent. And in terms of efficiency per dollar collected, there's got to be almost nothing LESS efficient than a road toll. It endangers and slows traffic, has booths to maintain, now god help us Speedpass or EZpass machinery to maintain, there's a whole echelon of worker bees and their managers, and an entirely separate accounting system separate from the usual income collection system. You could probably, in many cities, remove the tolls and their associated meatware/hardware and probably discover that it's a wash - the tolls were going to support the toll authority. If not, add another dime to the gas tax - that revenue collection mechanism is already in place and is far less onerous than slowing me down, wasting gas and wear on my brakes, to collect your 50 cents.
There are actually two parts to my reply: One, I'm not sure where you live, but in the boonies of NH I can't get anything delivered, not even a pizza let alone groceries. Two, as an adult I like going shopping. I avoid the screaming children and crying babies by doing it later at night, about nine usually works around here. I get to walk up the aisles and think about what I want to eat that week. Does the chicken look good in the case this week, or is it all fat and funny color? Maybe I'll do the pork instead, or the beef. Is the lettuce wilted? I'll get swiss chard instead. Food for me is an experience, not simply fuel to keep the meat machine running. I plan, organize, and prepare my meals thoughtfully, and all that begins at the supermarket.
The reason this is fresh news now is that the system is going to be mounted on three aircraft in normal commercial service with American Airlines. Up until this point it had been only mounted on test units and not part of airline day-to-day operations.
Well, in my comment I said that I think the money could be better spent elsewhere, but to defend my product I'll go on to say that this system is capable of defeating all presently fielded shoulder fired seekers, regardless of the number of modes they track on. The RBS70, Starburst, Javelin... all use some type of base station, typically vehicle mounted though sometimes a man-portable (they actually call it multiman portable) launcher site. I'm not saying that they don't exist as threats, but from a terrorist perspective (cost, portability, ease of use, liklihood of detection), the shoulder-fired heat seeking missile is far more desirable, all other systems requiring at least two and often more than three people to operate, each with considerably more training.
It's complicated, but I'll give it a shot. The seeker modulates the continuous radiated energy from the aircraft engine to generate track information. The countermeasure laser is modulated, and through that modulation causes the seeker demodulation to generate false track information. The seeker modulation scheme only provides useful information if the source is continuous, otherwise the track data will be in error.
I work for the company that builds it. I'll even go so far as to say that I had a hand in the design of several key systems and leave it at that.
Point 1: The system proposed here is a variant of a system that is mounted on many military aircraft. It uses a laser to inject false tracking information into IR guided missiles. These missiles do not, for the most part, use focal plane arrays or any other similar technology. They have one pixel, and they use spatial modulation to generate corrective track and guidance information. The jamming laser cannot blind other pilots, shoot down other aircraft, or be used by the missile to generate valid track information (a concept we call home on jam). These systems are tested through many progressive levels using pieces of and then finally entire shoulder fired missile systems - real missiles, right out of the tube, with mass equivalents inserted in place of the warhead package. We shot real missiles at these systems dozens of times, and they work really, really well.
Point 2: The shoulder fired threat is real. There have been attempts to smuggle missiles into this country, as well as shoot down commercial aircraft (in Kenya, not in the US). They are cheap, readily available on the black market, and any yahoo with five minutes training can use one.
Point 3: Given both of the above, and with my paycheck riding on it, I still think it's a poor use of money. If you want to dollar cost average lives, I think there are other targets which have a greater possiblity for loss of life that can be protected for less money. What about using a SAR to try and keep pipe bombs out of malls or schools? What about a tracking system to keep an eye on LNG tanker trucks, a big mobile explodely temptation to terrorists if I ever saw one. 9-11 involved aircraft, but beyond that I think we're fixating a little too much.
Flares have one key problem, they eject and have to land somewhere. Burning pieces of countermeasure raining down on grandma's house in Bayonne when an aircraft takes off from JFK would be mighty unpopular.
Laser countermeasure systems don't "blind" guided missiles, they inject false track information that under no circumstances can be interpreted by the seeker as true guidance data. Try reading "The Infrared & Electro-Optical Systems Handbook. Passive Electro-Optical Systems, Volume 5" if you want to learn about how IR seekers guide.
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I've got to disagree with you there. I have a friend who has now published three books on dog training for hunting, each one with a full page ad on the back cover for whatever dog food company paid to have it printed and circulated. The advertising allows him to get his book out there, which I don't think he would be otherwise able to do, and it doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the book at all (provided dog training for hunting is something you enjoy).
Move the cockpit bulkhead back as far as the first class bathroom and enclose that and the boarding doorway in with the pilots. Board the passengers through another door entirely, and never shall the flight crew and passengers meet. At that point, who cares what happens to the passengers or their security? We'll never have another hijacking again unless someone wants to try and scale the exterior of the aircraft in flight. Good luck with that. As for my prize, I'll take cash in euros. I'm not to thrilled about the state of US money these days.
I notice that they list "slaughtering small mammals and birds" on the list. What the hell kind of skill is that? Did such a "skill" ever have value? Are computers now slaughtering all our small mammals and birds for us? Oh, and one skill that I used to be quite good at that is now clearly obsolete: operating a mimeograph machine.
Where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are all cops.
Somehow I expected a more insightful note from someone with such a low number. It's like the whole /. community has disappointed me all at once.
The reason things like abortion and marriage are played out on the federal level is because without it, you would end up with a completely unworkable patchwork of overlapping laws on a state by state basis. Let's say Roe v Wade is overthrown at the next opportunity and states are again allowed to decide the issue of abortion within their own borders, and somewhere like Kansas decides no abortions no way no how. People with money in Kansas who want an abortion would travel to somewhere else to get it, and poor people without the means to travel would be (for the second time) screwed. IANAL, but I suspect such a class distinction for fundamental medical care, especially in the case of a pregnancy endangering the mother, would be grounds for once again abortion fighting its way up to the Supreme Court. Or I could be wrong. I'd love to here from someone who is a lawyer on this concept.
You're already modded as high as you can go, or I'd mod you still higher. This is the exact thought that I had the day after 9-11. The old days of hijacking planes and flying them to Cuba were over. The only way to hijack a plane from 9-11 on out would be to kill every other passenger - no one was going to sit quietly in their seats despite any promises of "do what we say and no one will get hurt."
Wow, you just totally blew my mind by mentioning the Beagle Bros... Anyone remember a tank game called Bolo? Interesting side note: there was a gladiator game of sorts called Bilestoad that was so bloody (in 8 bit color low res) that parents groups wailed about it even then. The more things change... But to stay on topic, I'm one of those people who learned early programming by trying to cheat on games (no trainers back then). I had a book called "What's Where in your Apple 2) that had literally every fixed memory location in the machine and what it linked to. Awesome book for a burgeoning programmer.
Tolls throughout history have represented another cash grab by the government. It starts with a "pay for the road" bond, but trust me, long after that bond is dead and buried the toll remains, the money now going to all matter of stuff other than the road, which was, after all, its original intent. And in terms of efficiency per dollar collected, there's got to be almost nothing LESS efficient than a road toll. It endangers and slows traffic, has booths to maintain, now god help us Speedpass or EZpass machinery to maintain, there's a whole echelon of worker bees and their managers, and an entirely separate accounting system separate from the usual income collection system. You could probably, in many cities, remove the tolls and their associated meatware/hardware and probably discover that it's a wash - the tolls were going to support the toll authority. If not, add another dime to the gas tax - that revenue collection mechanism is already in place and is far less onerous than slowing me down, wasting gas and wear on my brakes, to collect your 50 cents.
There are actually two parts to my reply: One, I'm not sure where you live, but in the boonies of NH I can't get anything delivered, not even a pizza let alone groceries. Two, as an adult I like going shopping. I avoid the screaming children and crying babies by doing it later at night, about nine usually works around here. I get to walk up the aisles and think about what I want to eat that week. Does the chicken look good in the case this week, or is it all fat and funny color? Maybe I'll do the pork instead, or the beef. Is the lettuce wilted? I'll get swiss chard instead. Food for me is an experience, not simply fuel to keep the meat machine running. I plan, organize, and prepare my meals thoughtfully, and all that begins at the supermarket.
The reason this is fresh news now is that the system is going to be mounted on three aircraft in normal commercial service with American Airlines. Up until this point it had been only mounted on test units and not part of airline day-to-day operations.
Well, in my comment I said that I think the money could be better spent elsewhere, but to defend my product I'll go on to say that this system is capable of defeating all presently fielded shoulder fired seekers, regardless of the number of modes they track on. The RBS70, Starburst, Javelin... all use some type of base station, typically vehicle mounted though sometimes a man-portable (they actually call it multiman portable) launcher site. I'm not saying that they don't exist as threats, but from a terrorist perspective (cost, portability, ease of use, liklihood of detection), the shoulder-fired heat seeking missile is far more desirable, all other systems requiring at least two and often more than three people to operate, each with considerably more training.
It's complicated, but I'll give it a shot. The seeker modulates the continuous radiated energy from the aircraft engine to generate track information. The countermeasure laser is modulated, and through that modulation causes the seeker demodulation to generate false track information. The seeker modulation scheme only provides useful information if the source is continuous, otherwise the track data will be in error.
I work for the company that builds it. I'll even go so far as to say that I had a hand in the design of several key systems and leave it at that. Point 1: The system proposed here is a variant of a system that is mounted on many military aircraft. It uses a laser to inject false tracking information into IR guided missiles. These missiles do not, for the most part, use focal plane arrays or any other similar technology. They have one pixel, and they use spatial modulation to generate corrective track and guidance information. The jamming laser cannot blind other pilots, shoot down other aircraft, or be used by the missile to generate valid track information (a concept we call home on jam). These systems are tested through many progressive levels using pieces of and then finally entire shoulder fired missile systems - real missiles, right out of the tube, with mass equivalents inserted in place of the warhead package. We shot real missiles at these systems dozens of times, and they work really, really well. Point 2: The shoulder fired threat is real. There have been attempts to smuggle missiles into this country, as well as shoot down commercial aircraft (in Kenya, not in the US). They are cheap, readily available on the black market, and any yahoo with five minutes training can use one. Point 3: Given both of the above, and with my paycheck riding on it, I still think it's a poor use of money. If you want to dollar cost average lives, I think there are other targets which have a greater possiblity for loss of life that can be protected for less money. What about using a SAR to try and keep pipe bombs out of malls or schools? What about a tracking system to keep an eye on LNG tanker trucks, a big mobile explodely temptation to terrorists if I ever saw one. 9-11 involved aircraft, but beyond that I think we're fixating a little too much.
Flares have one key problem, they eject and have to land somewhere. Burning pieces of countermeasure raining down on grandma's house in Bayonne when an aircraft takes off from JFK would be mighty unpopular. Laser countermeasure systems don't "blind" guided missiles, they inject false track information that under no circumstances can be interpreted by the seeker as true guidance data. Try reading "The Infrared & Electro-Optical Systems Handbook. Passive Electro-Optical Systems, Volume 5" if you want to learn about how IR seekers guide.