And they do. A lot. Thankfully, getting new crew members delivered to earth is a cheap and routine procedure. That's the trouble with the ISS case: replacements are expensive and sometimes delayed; and I bet that everyone else on board the station hopes that whatever the plan for storing the dead guy until the next supply rocket comes up remains purely theoretical.
It also doesn't help that Intel's actual attempt in the rPi range(the "Edison" boards based on 'quark' cores) omit video entirely and have deeply, deeply, limited GPIO. It's actually pretty weird: in their attempt to stay relevant in phones and tablets, Intel has actually built the most FOSS-friendly SoC GPUs around; but their entries in the cheapie SBC arena seem hell-bent on dragging defeat from the jaws of victory.
But does the SoC actually have any busses other than USB to hang a 'proper NIC' from? Messing around with a goofy USB NIC would not have been the cheapest option if the SoC had an integrated NIC(or even a MAC that just needed an external PHY); but I don't think that that one does; nor does it implement a PCIe controller, so that's off the table.
It could also be pragmatism: there is definitely survivor bias at work in our treatment of the 'too-genius-and-disruptive-for-college' narrative; but even if you recognize that your "drop out of college and make a zillion bucks in internet money" story is wildly non-representative; you will still recognize that your business has need of a great many technicians, at the most aggressive prices available. Using your position of influence to experiment with new ways of producing them is only logical.
That seems especially weird since, in addition to annoying you, the copy that they wanted $30 for is the one that they've already paid to ship to a retail location and dedicate shelf space to, while the one that they'll sell you for $20 would have to be shipped specially(presumably aggregated as much as possible with any other orders set to be delivered to that store; but not a regularly scheduled delivery) and is presumably taking up cheaper warehouse space. br.
Was it a new release? The only way that seems like a sensible plan is if you suspect that enough customers are in need of instant gratification and don't have other options for getting it(eg. not yet on Netflix, hulu, ITMS, whatever).
There is an argument for some additional cost(certain inmates are people who you have justifiable concerns about their communicating with confederates on the outside, so you probably need more oversight than a standard fully automated system).
Aside from that, though, there are reasons, just bad ones. You've got a captive audience, and you can bid to be the exclusive provider, so competition isn't a concern; and states looking to be tough on crime without paying for it are more than happy to treat prisoner phone calls, commisary purchases, etc. as a profit center.
It's horribly penny-wise, pound-foolish, of course because making it easier for inmates to maintain social bonds reduces recidivism at relatively low cost(obviously it isn't 100% effective; but landline minutes are hilariously cheap compared to even the most basic correctional staff, never mind any sort of specialists, so it's hard to argue with the value for money); but that isn't how the immediate incentives line up, so they do it anyway.
So, are there any human social institutions that aren't actually a malignant scheme on the part of some puppetmaster; or would we be largely solitary if it weren't for the scamming opportunities?
It was my understanding that, especially for comparatively low-margin-high-volume purposes, the virtues you looked for in a datacenter site were "Cheap land, cheap power, relatively easy to put a fence and some security around if needed".
That seems like a set of requirements that would mostly encourage construction out in the sticks, where concerned neighbors are going to be few and moderately distant.
I realize that there are some datacenters in densely settled areas(often grown up around historic telco and fiber infrastructure; or catering to businesses that want a colo they can check up on in short order if the need arises); but I'd always gotten the impression that those were relatively expensive boutique offerings, while the truly gargantuan 'stack-em-deep, sell-em-cheap' "cloud" and web-services stuff was much more cost sensitive.
Am I substantially misinformed, and there are actually a lot of people trying to put a datacenter and some ghastly diesel generators in the middle of an urban neighborhood? Are these various concerned citizens mostly residents of thinly settled rural areas who want to continue enjoying the openness of a parcel of open land that they don't actually own?
The 'invention' was sophmoric at best(but, kiddo was a freshman who at least apparently cared about what his engineering teacher thinks, so there is at least room for cautious optimism about actually interesting future projects); but the support, while not merited by the 'invention' was arguably a valuable pushback against the mixture of idiot reflexive terror of circuit boards and shitkicking petty authoritarianism that he received.
The point isn't "Wow, kid took apart a clock, how amazing, we should celebrate!!!"; but "When somebody does something other than text messaging with a gadget, we should encourage them to pursue even more interesting projects in the future; not pretend that exposed FR4 is somehow a WMD." Patting kiddo on the back just happened to be the most efficient way of telling the school district that they'd made themselves look like total morons in front of everyone.
I must confess to knowing almost nothing about what approaches people doing railgun R&D at higher-than-recreational power levels use to cope with this tradeoff; but it wouldn't entirely surprise me if some sort of lubricant(whether fluid or powder) does figure into the plan. One of the issues with resistive heating at the rail/projectile interface, especially before the projectile has picked up speed, is that it can actually weld the projectile to the rail; which either stops it dead or reduces firing efficiency because some of the energy that should go into accellerating the projectile goes into tearing it loose. One approach is to use a pneumatic or similar 'first-stage' accelerator, so that the projectile is already moving when it hits the rails; but a conductive fluid, graphite powder, or something in that vein might also help.
My impression, based on the videos of the navy's railgun experiments(notably, the dramatic billowing clouds of glowing metal vapor/metal plasma) is that, in practice, the projectile does end up with a fluid layer between it and the rail, whether you want it or not; because resistive heating causes some of the rail and some of the projectile to vaporize or flash into plasma at the point of contact. The currents involved are simply too high to keep all the metal solid. Presumably, a suitably elegant choice of materials might produce a vapor that serves as a fairly good conductive fluid lubricant, while a poor choice might be substantially resistive or dielectric; but we are talking about downright alarming power densities at points of contact between the projectile and the rails.
A theoretical 'ideal' railgun(superconductive in all the parts that need to be conductive, frictionless in all the parts that experience abrasion), would just convert electrical energy to kinetic energy, with little drama. A real world railgun( like this navy test model features a dramatic cloud of gas and/or plasma because of just how much material gets vaporized by non-ideal conditions. Especially when the plan is to substantially exceed the energy levels or muzzle velocities of existing gunpowder weapons; the currents involved are truly massive.
They may or may not have any better people on the job; but 'enterprise' SED usually means 'TCG Opal Compliant', which would require a different implementation than the drives described here. I don't know how well that spec prevents shoddy implementations; but it involves a bunch of standardized interaction between the drive, OS/driver, and TPM; while the 'encryption' here is purely between WD's lousy software and their dodgy little USB/SATA bridge chip.
I don't know how much better the situation is or isn't; but it's unlikely that they were able to reuse too much.
The UK used to be substantially harder on the riffraff, debtors, and similar underclass trash; but can you point me to a time where the great and good of society were at greater risk?
I'm no expert; but a quick look at suppliers of sporting bows turned up numbers in the 350 fps range(with substantial variation based on draw weight, with kiddie stuff coming in well below that; but not much available above 400, either because the draw weights become impractical or because of limits on how fast available materials release stored tension) so arrows are substantially slower, ~100-120m/s.
The electrical effects are pretty brutal, as well. The two rails function as bus bars, with the conductive projectile completing the circuit. Given the fairly heroic currents required to get useful projectile velocities, you are squeezed between trying to reduce resistance(which makes driving the railgun easier and makes for less arcing and resistive heating; but involves more contact area between the projectile and the rails, and greater mechanical wear) and trying to reduce friction(which reduces friction heating, mechanical wear, and slowing of the projectile by the rails; but tends to increase resistance, encourage arcing and electrical damage, and so on).
Your ideal rail/projectile interface would be a frictionless superconductor; a flavor of unobtanium that is in short supply at present. By throwing enough power at the problem, and treating much of the rail assembly as sacrificial, you can get pretty impressive results; but if you thought that barrel erosion sucked in gunpowder weapons...
Aside from just being an unbelievably gigantic dick move; this arrangement seems rather foolish on the bank's part: I suspect that they are correct in thinking that they have enough leverage to get the contract signed; but they can't seriously imagine that (even if the terms hold up in court) they'll be able to compel competent, motivated, actual-best-effort assistance under terms that are such an overt screwjob. And for something like software engineering or complex IT projects, do you really want people with good reasons to hate you and absolutely no incentive to do more than bare minimum touching anything? You've already axed them, so they have no incentive to do anything more than whatever is required to avoid legal action.
You'd think that it would be much more sensible(even if some asshole bean-counter thinks that it looks like leaving money on the table) to not fuck them over; so that they might actually be willing to do some contracting for you in good faith and with actual effort.
That is unbelievably ballsy. I'd want a fantastic severance package to even consider an offer as insulting as "2 years of unpaid on-call for your cheaper replacements".
Maybe, if the severance package happened to be generous enough to roughly approximate 2 years of being on retainer plus some consulting time; I'd be willing to charitably describe it as 'poorly worded'; but anything less is just bullshit.
I sincerely hope that SunTrust Banks enjoys a...truly service-oriented...response any time they attempt to tap one of the employees they axed.
Given the combination of convenience(the samples are already collected for you; so it's just a request for a copy from some database) and the '3rd party doctrine' eliminating any pesky 4th amendment issues; the far greater surprise would be the feds not taking advantage of the situation.
There is room for the argument that a thing can contain art; but not be art(the most agonizing example is the lobby of your average generic corporate campus/office complex: there will invariably be some sort of 'art' hung around to keep the walls from just being bare; but the result is not what you'd call a work of art.)
However, we don't seem to bring that argument out when somebody directs a play: Well, sure, Macbeth is art, and the costumes are art, and the set is art; as are the choreography and lighting; but the director is just a menial logistics technician." Might start a fun fight; but not a generally accepted opinion. I'd be curious to hear anyone who thinks that directing is art; but games aren't, discuss why exactly a game isn't analogous to a complex and technically demanding play with elements of audience participation and improvisation.
They do a certain amount of voluntary-standardization(both things like standardizing banner ad sizes and more PR-driven exercises like their "Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising"; but it is worth never forgetting that one of the sections of the 'About us' page is as follows: They do some lightweight standards work; but are mostly just another industry pressure group; for an atypically odious industry.
"Through the work of its public policy office in Washington, D.C., the IAB advocates for its members and promotes the value of the interactive advertising industry to legislators and policymakers."
You do realize that the rules regarding the status of medical staff are the ones that the US and major European players of the time hammered out, voluntarily, for themselves?
The matter might be a bit dodgy if MSF 'mysteriously' concluded that the area of greatest humanitarian need was always in the logistics/support area of a given group of combatants; but that's far from what happened here:
MSF opened the Kunduz facility in 2011; because medical aid is what they do and that area of Afghanistan had basically zero medical coverage, and definitely none of any sophistication, before they set up shop. I don't know if the location was the world's best possible use of their resources; but 'open hospital in impoverished hellhole where medical care isn't available' is pretty innocent humanitarian aid stuff.
The Taliban offensive didn't occur until late September of this year, with the conteroffensive and ongoing fighting continuing into October. Once the war zone came to them, MSF provided their coordinates to all parties in an attempt to avoid incidents; and continued to provide treatment(shockingly enough, urban warfare really heats up the market for trauma surgery, among both civilians and combatants); while attempting to prevent anyone bringing their weapons in with them; attempting to execute/capture the other guy's casualties, etc.
The hospital predated the battle by over four years, and had an obvious humanitarian reason for being where it was. The war came to them.
It's just one of those ossified axioms of political discourse: democrats are 'soft' as an article of faith, so self-evident as to require no proof. Since this is not a matter of crass empiricism, it's irrelevant that Obama apparently flips through 'baseball cards', deciding who to have the CIA execute, about as casually as most people manage fantasy football teams.
Notably absent from this response: Any discussion of why this 'thorough, individualized, review' process, complete with meaningful constraints, robust oversight, and other cool stuff; were classified to hell and back(Secret/No Foreign).
While there is an obvious security interest in keeping who you are gunning for at the moment; and how you are tracking them, under wraps; why exactly is the decisionmaking process(which is apparently reassuring and lovely) itself a secret, apparently even to our various Freedom Buddies in cooperating countries?
There are specifics that might need to be elided, or at least have their publication deferred; but why hide the decision process itself? Are scary terrorists going to use this to have their terror-lawyers come up with clever technicalities and beat the rap?
Short of near-constant human attention; or a humanoid robot with scary-good emulation of human attention; I'm not actually that optimistic about their being a solution. General purpose cognition is a wildly powerful tool, and when yours starts to go all problems become more difficult.
I merely proposed it as a possibility worth examining because it's an already-implemented take on the problem of converting location data into a cue for the user; and one potentially amenable to a 'keep moving in the direction of the vibration and you'll get there' variation.
I'm not wildly optimistic; but, given the cognitive demands of the UIs of most mapping and navigation systems, those seemed like they'd be an unsuitable option. This at least has a pretty undemanding UI.
It isn't what you'd call god's gift to style; but there's a neat little idea floating around of the 'haptic compass' that provides the user with a tactile cue about where north is, with the idea that this subtle, but persistent, stimulus will be integrated into their overall navigational capability.
For your use case, you probably wouldn't want a system that points 'true north' all the time; but if you have an itinerary, you only need a real time clock and the user's current location to provide a haptic nudge in the correct direction. Are GPS or AGPS fixes within this facility OK, or is this system going to need to navigate the hard way?
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, yes... your 'technology' is mine to devour!
And they do. A lot. Thankfully, getting new crew members delivered to earth is a cheap and routine procedure. That's the trouble with the ISS case: replacements are expensive and sometimes delayed; and I bet that everyone else on board the station hopes that whatever the plan for storing the dead guy until the next supply rocket comes up remains purely theoretical.
It also doesn't help that Intel's actual attempt in the rPi range(the "Edison" boards based on 'quark' cores) omit video entirely and have deeply, deeply, limited GPIO. It's actually pretty weird: in their attempt to stay relevant in phones and tablets, Intel has actually built the most FOSS-friendly SoC GPUs around; but their entries in the cheapie SBC arena seem hell-bent on dragging defeat from the jaws of victory.
But does the SoC actually have any busses other than USB to hang a 'proper NIC' from? Messing around with a goofy USB NIC would not have been the cheapest option if the SoC had an integrated NIC(or even a MAC that just needed an external PHY); but I don't think that that one does; nor does it implement a PCIe controller, so that's off the table.
It could also be pragmatism: there is definitely survivor bias at work in our treatment of the 'too-genius-and-disruptive-for-college' narrative; but even if you recognize that your "drop out of college and make a zillion bucks in internet money" story is wildly non-representative; you will still recognize that your business has need of a great many technicians, at the most aggressive prices available. Using your position of influence to experiment with new ways of producing them is only logical.
That seems especially weird since, in addition to annoying you, the copy that they wanted $30 for is the one that they've already paid to ship to a retail location and dedicate shelf space to, while the one that they'll sell you for $20 would have to be shipped specially(presumably aggregated as much as possible with any other orders set to be delivered to that store; but not a regularly scheduled delivery) and is presumably taking up cheaper warehouse space.
br. Was it a new release? The only way that seems like a sensible plan is if you suspect that enough customers are in need of instant gratification and don't have other options for getting it(eg. not yet on Netflix, hulu, ITMS, whatever).
There is an argument for some additional cost(certain inmates are people who you have justifiable concerns about their communicating with confederates on the outside, so you probably need more oversight than a standard fully automated system).
Aside from that, though, there are reasons, just bad ones. You've got a captive audience, and you can bid to be the exclusive provider, so competition isn't a concern; and states looking to be tough on crime without paying for it are more than happy to treat prisoner phone calls, commisary purchases, etc. as a profit center.
It's horribly penny-wise, pound-foolish, of course because making it easier for inmates to maintain social bonds reduces recidivism at relatively low cost(obviously it isn't 100% effective; but landline minutes are hilariously cheap compared to even the most basic correctional staff, never mind any sort of specialists, so it's hard to argue with the value for money); but that isn't how the immediate incentives line up, so they do it anyway.
So, are there any human social institutions that aren't actually a malignant scheme on the part of some puppetmaster; or would we be largely solitary if it weren't for the scamming opportunities?
It was my understanding that, especially for comparatively low-margin-high-volume purposes, the virtues you looked for in a datacenter site were "Cheap land, cheap power, relatively easy to put a fence and some security around if needed".
That seems like a set of requirements that would mostly encourage construction out in the sticks, where concerned neighbors are going to be few and moderately distant.
I realize that there are some datacenters in densely settled areas(often grown up around historic telco and fiber infrastructure; or catering to businesses that want a colo they can check up on in short order if the need arises); but I'd always gotten the impression that those were relatively expensive boutique offerings, while the truly gargantuan 'stack-em-deep, sell-em-cheap' "cloud" and web-services stuff was much more cost sensitive.
Am I substantially misinformed, and there are actually a lot of people trying to put a datacenter and some ghastly diesel generators in the middle of an urban neighborhood? Are these various concerned citizens mostly residents of thinly settled rural areas who want to continue enjoying the openness of a parcel of open land that they don't actually own?
The 'invention' was sophmoric at best(but, kiddo was a freshman who at least apparently cared about what his engineering teacher thinks, so there is at least room for cautious optimism about actually interesting future projects); but the support, while not merited by the 'invention' was arguably a valuable pushback against the mixture of idiot reflexive terror of circuit boards and shitkicking petty authoritarianism that he received.
The point isn't "Wow, kid took apart a clock, how amazing, we should celebrate!!!"; but "When somebody does something other than text messaging with a gadget, we should encourage them to pursue even more interesting projects in the future; not pretend that exposed FR4 is somehow a WMD." Patting kiddo on the back just happened to be the most efficient way of telling the school district that they'd made themselves look like total morons in front of everyone.
I must confess to knowing almost nothing about what approaches people doing railgun R&D at higher-than-recreational power levels use to cope with this tradeoff; but it wouldn't entirely surprise me if some sort of lubricant(whether fluid or powder) does figure into the plan. One of the issues with resistive heating at the rail/projectile interface, especially before the projectile has picked up speed, is that it can actually weld the projectile to the rail; which either stops it dead or reduces firing efficiency because some of the energy that should go into accellerating the projectile goes into tearing it loose. One approach is to use a pneumatic or similar 'first-stage' accelerator, so that the projectile is already moving when it hits the rails; but a conductive fluid, graphite powder, or something in that vein might also help.
My impression, based on the videos of the navy's railgun experiments(notably, the dramatic billowing clouds of glowing metal vapor/metal plasma) is that, in practice, the projectile does end up with a fluid layer between it and the rail, whether you want it or not; because resistive heating causes some of the rail and some of the projectile to vaporize or flash into plasma at the point of contact. The currents involved are simply too high to keep all the metal solid. Presumably, a suitably elegant choice of materials might produce a vapor that serves as a fairly good conductive fluid lubricant, while a poor choice might be substantially resistive or dielectric; but we are talking about downright alarming power densities at points of contact between the projectile and the rails. A theoretical 'ideal' railgun(superconductive in all the parts that need to be conductive, frictionless in all the parts that experience abrasion), would just convert electrical energy to kinetic energy, with little drama. A real world railgun( like this navy test model features a dramatic cloud of gas and/or plasma because of just how much material gets vaporized by non-ideal conditions. Especially when the plan is to substantially exceed the energy levels or muzzle velocities of existing gunpowder weapons; the currents involved are truly massive.
They may or may not have any better people on the job; but 'enterprise' SED usually means 'TCG Opal Compliant', which would require a different implementation than the drives described here. I don't know how well that spec prevents shoddy implementations; but it involves a bunch of standardized interaction between the drive, OS/driver, and TPM; while the 'encryption' here is purely between WD's lousy software and their dodgy little USB/SATA bridge chip.
I don't know how much better the situation is or isn't; but it's unlikely that they were able to reuse too much.
The UK used to be substantially harder on the riffraff, debtors, and similar underclass trash; but can you point me to a time where the great and good of society were at greater risk?
I'm no expert; but a quick look at suppliers of sporting bows turned up numbers in the 350 fps range(with substantial variation based on draw weight, with kiddie stuff coming in well below that; but not much available above 400, either because the draw weights become impractical or because of limits on how fast available materials release stored tension) so arrows are substantially slower, ~100-120m/s.
The electrical effects are pretty brutal, as well. The two rails function as bus bars, with the conductive projectile completing the circuit. Given the fairly heroic currents required to get useful projectile velocities, you are squeezed between trying to reduce resistance(which makes driving the railgun easier and makes for less arcing and resistive heating; but involves more contact area between the projectile and the rails, and greater mechanical wear) and trying to reduce friction(which reduces friction heating, mechanical wear, and slowing of the projectile by the rails; but tends to increase resistance, encourage arcing and electrical damage, and so on).
Your ideal rail/projectile interface would be a frictionless superconductor; a flavor of unobtanium that is in short supply at present. By throwing enough power at the problem, and treating much of the rail assembly as sacrificial, you can get pretty impressive results; but if you thought that barrel erosion sucked in gunpowder weapons...
Aside from just being an unbelievably gigantic dick move; this arrangement seems rather foolish on the bank's part: I suspect that they are correct in thinking that they have enough leverage to get the contract signed; but they can't seriously imagine that (even if the terms hold up in court) they'll be able to compel competent, motivated, actual-best-effort assistance under terms that are such an overt screwjob. And for something like software engineering or complex IT projects, do you really want people with good reasons to hate you and absolutely no incentive to do more than bare minimum touching anything? You've already axed them, so they have no incentive to do anything more than whatever is required to avoid legal action.
You'd think that it would be much more sensible(even if some asshole bean-counter thinks that it looks like leaving money on the table) to not fuck them over; so that they might actually be willing to do some contracting for you in good faith and with actual effort.
That is unbelievably ballsy. I'd want a fantastic severance package to even consider an offer as insulting as "2 years of unpaid on-call for your cheaper replacements".
Maybe, if the severance package happened to be generous enough to roughly approximate 2 years of being on retainer plus some consulting time; I'd be willing to charitably describe it as 'poorly worded'; but anything less is just bullshit.
I sincerely hope that SunTrust Banks enjoys a...truly service-oriented...response any time they attempt to tap one of the employees they axed.
Given the combination of convenience(the samples are already collected for you; so it's just a request for a copy from some database) and the '3rd party doctrine' eliminating any pesky 4th amendment issues; the far greater surprise would be the feds not taking advantage of the situation.
There is room for the argument that a thing can contain art; but not be art(the most agonizing example is the lobby of your average generic corporate campus/office complex: there will invariably be some sort of 'art' hung around to keep the walls from just being bare; but the result is not what you'd call a work of art.)
However, we don't seem to bring that argument out when somebody directs a play: Well, sure, Macbeth is art, and the costumes are art, and the set is art; as are the choreography and lighting; but the director is just a menial logistics technician." Might start a fun fight; but not a generally accepted opinion. I'd be curious to hear anyone who thinks that directing is art; but games aren't, discuss why exactly a game isn't analogous to a complex and technically demanding play with elements of audience participation and improvisation.
They do a certain amount of voluntary-standardization(both things like standardizing banner ad sizes and more PR-driven exercises like their "Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising"; but it is worth never forgetting that one of the sections of the 'About us' page is as follows: They do some lightweight standards work; but are mostly just another industry pressure group; for an atypically odious industry. "Through the work of its public policy office in Washington, D.C., the IAB advocates for its members and promotes the value of the interactive advertising industry to legislators and policymakers."
You do realize that the rules regarding the status of medical staff are the ones that the US and major European players of the time hammered out, voluntarily, for themselves?
The matter might be a bit dodgy if MSF 'mysteriously' concluded that the area of greatest humanitarian need was always in the logistics/support area of a given group of combatants; but that's far from what happened here:
MSF opened the Kunduz facility in 2011; because medical aid is what they do and that area of Afghanistan had basically zero medical coverage, and definitely none of any sophistication, before they set up shop. I don't know if the location was the world's best possible use of their resources; but 'open hospital in impoverished hellhole where medical care isn't available' is pretty innocent humanitarian aid stuff.
The Taliban offensive didn't occur until late September of this year, with the conteroffensive and ongoing fighting continuing into October. Once the war zone came to them, MSF provided their coordinates to all parties in an attempt to avoid incidents; and continued to provide treatment(shockingly enough, urban warfare really heats up the market for trauma surgery, among both civilians and combatants); while attempting to prevent anyone bringing their weapons in with them; attempting to execute/capture the other guy's casualties, etc.
The hospital predated the battle by over four years, and had an obvious humanitarian reason for being where it was. The war came to them.
It's just one of those ossified axioms of political discourse: democrats are 'soft' as an article of faith, so self-evident as to require no proof. Since this is not a matter of crass empiricism, it's irrelevant that Obama apparently flips through 'baseball cards', deciding who to have the CIA execute, about as casually as most people manage fantasy football teams.
Notably absent from this response: Any discussion of why this 'thorough, individualized, review' process, complete with meaningful constraints, robust oversight, and other cool stuff; were classified to hell and back(Secret/No Foreign).
While there is an obvious security interest in keeping who you are gunning for at the moment; and how you are tracking them, under wraps; why exactly is the decisionmaking process(which is apparently reassuring and lovely) itself a secret, apparently even to our various Freedom Buddies in cooperating countries?
There are specifics that might need to be elided, or at least have their publication deferred; but why hide the decision process itself? Are scary terrorists going to use this to have their terror-lawyers come up with clever technicalities and beat the rap?
Short of near-constant human attention; or a humanoid robot with scary-good emulation of human attention; I'm not actually that optimistic about their being a solution. General purpose cognition is a wildly powerful tool, and when yours starts to go all problems become more difficult.
I merely proposed it as a possibility worth examining because it's an already-implemented take on the problem of converting location data into a cue for the user; and one potentially amenable to a 'keep moving in the direction of the vibration and you'll get there' variation.
I'm not wildly optimistic; but, given the cognitive demands of the UIs of most mapping and navigation systems, those seemed like they'd be an unsuitable option. This at least has a pretty undemanding UI.
It isn't what you'd call god's gift to style; but there's a neat little idea floating around of the 'haptic compass' that provides the user with a tactile cue about where north is, with the idea that this subtle, but persistent, stimulus will be integrated into their overall navigational capability.
For your use case, you probably wouldn't want a system that points 'true north' all the time; but if you have an itinerary, you only need a real time clock and the user's current location to provide a haptic nudge in the correct direction. Are GPS or AGPS fixes within this facility OK, or is this system going to need to navigate the hard way?