Indeed, it always bothers me greatly to hear Americans saying things like, "We're not at all like them! They're bad people! They kill innocents in the pursuit of their objectives!"
As if the US hasn't likewise declared objectives and knows damned well that they're going to be killing innocent people in the pursuit of their objectives, and has ruled them to be "acceptable losses" to achieve their objectives.
I mean, *Really*? You don't see the glaring moral hole there?
If I'm not mistaken, doesn't FB learn what you look like based on photos that you've been tagged in?
So couldn't you, for example, consistently mistag yourself (or even a complete stranger) if you wanted to confuse it? Oh, sure, your friends might wonder why Facebook keeps suggesting that you get tagged whenever a picture of the president's dog shows up, but...
As a side curiosity, when, in humanity's future, do you think it'll be before the first asteroid gets turned into an art project (artistically painted/decorated across its entire surface or whatnot)?
But the asteroid will always be rotating a bit so painting won't help
Yes, it will. The details of course depend on the particular asteroid, but even painting the entire surface white will alter its trajectory.
Also, really, pretty much any method proposed for spacecraft acceleration would work for asteroids as well. Laser-pumped? Check. Solar sail? Check. Even some of the less commonly known ones like a magnetic field generator to repel the solar wind would work. It all depends on how big you're willing to go and how quickly you need to move the thing.
One of the simplest ways to slowly nudge an asteroid off course is simply to have your spacecraft hover near it, with its (low thrust/high ISP) jets askew (instead of pointing straight at the asteroid). You don't need to be physically attached to an asteroid to tow it; gravity can be your "cable".
Another even slower but potentially even simpler way proposed to move an asteroid out of an intercept course is to "paint" it (basically, detonate one or more bombs of reflective dust) on particular locations and use the change in solar radiation pressure to do the work for you.
Very doubtful. But we could potentially build such a bomb if the Earth depended on it for some reason; the Teller-Ulam configuration scales indefinitely. The problem is it'd be way too massive to get off the ground.
Of course, these students were simply calculating the (very unrealistic) scenario found in the movie, of the asteroid right about to impact, and of deflection involving splitting it in half and having one half go each way around the Earth. As they note, more realistic deflection scenarios involve hitting it much earlier and simply trying to alter it's trajectory intact (but that's not fitting for Hollywood)
Also it should be noted that the Tsar Bomba mentioned in the article was deliberately cut down to half of its design yield (replacing the uranium tamper with a lead one) to make it burn cleaner. It was not only the biggest atomic bomb ever detonated on Earth, but also the cleanest per unit of energy output.
What part of a "this is from a wouldn't it be awesome to open your door with a rock" perspective, not a "this is the bestest-security-ever-conceived" perspective, is difficult? I mean, a keypad? Really?
. that thing will have a characteristic impedance that can likely be emulated by a not-too-difficult-to-make matching network.
Across a super-wide frequency range from multiple contact points on its surface? I really doubt it.
And? It's not like the database contains secret information. It simply contains *authoritative* information about people's contact info. "Leaking" its contents would just be a glamorous publication of a phone book. Are you saying that your biggest concern would be people breaking into the national database to secretly change everyone's addresses, and nobody's going to notice, and there's not going to be any restoring from backups? Is that your scenario here?
Then you're exceedingly unusual. A quick Google Search turns up this:
* Americans write 42.5 billion checks per year - that's one check per person every three days. * In the United States checks are among the most popular form of payment, above credit cards. * People write roughly 450 million "bad checks" or checks that bounce every year - that's 1.5 per person per year. * 60 percent of all transactions not paid for with cash are paid by check. * Consumers are 65 percent more likely to use checks than other forms of electronic payments. * The number of checks used by Americans is increasing. In recent years check use rose 54 percent alone. * More than 39 trillion dollars in payments are made every year with checks, compared to just 7 trillion for other forms of payment.
Mind you, I have no way to validate those numbers, but it matches my experience with the American check culture. A lot of places in America don't have options for online bill paying. You just happen to have lucked into being in a place that does. Americans typically write each other checks to send each other money as well - such as a "birthday check" from a parent or whatnot.
One, it's not like Iceland is so unusually forwards in this; it's that America is so unusually backwards in this. Countries much poorer than America, more corrupt, and still with large populations and land area have done it. Two, it's *harder* for small countries. Where are small countries supposed to get the resources to write new systems if something is so difficult? So much here has to be is imported. To give you a sense of what it's like, there's only a couple TV channels here that are even subtitled in Icelandic. If I watch, say, Mythbusters on Discovery Channel, the Mythbusters are speaking American English, the in-show announcers British English, the between-show announcements Norwegian. That is, Britain imported from the American Discovery channel, Norway imported the British Discovery Channel, and then Iceland imported the Norwegian Discovery channel.
What's inconvenient about *not* having to write checks and being able to do everything online?
"Roll this out"? May I reiterate, "if you wanted a really nifty-looking key to your door" and "I was mainly thinking of that from a "wouldn't this be awesome and probably not that hard to implement?" approach"? You make it sound like trying to revolutionize the world's security. I'm talking about unlocking your front door with a piece of quartz or whatnot.
Yeah, made out of silicon or germanium and doped with some exotic materials in a odd pattern... aka a transistor or IC
I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I'm talking about "random object picked up in a field or thrift store used as a key". Not making a chip specifically to function as a key.
Oh boy please talk to some RF EEs before you roll this idea out. Generations of EEs have written books and created careers on this very topic of wide band antenna/matching networks. Its not trivial, but its not really all that hard either. Some of the math is quite icky, but we have computers now.
"Quite icky" is an understatement. You're dealing with differential equations here (Kirchoff's Laws); you can't just converge linearly to a solution. The more complex and diverse the inputs, the exponentially harder it gets to reverse-engineer.
What good does the fact that a lock knows the digital signature of its key do for you unless you plan to physically compromise the lock using to get the code out?
I was thinking the same thing. I'd thought of this concept a while back as a "turn almost anything into a key *except* a living organism" approach. That is, if you wanted a really nifty-looking key to your door, it could be some mystic-looking crystal, or some stone sigil, or whatnot. Measure how it interacts with a wide range of AC inputs provided from specific electrodes, and (assuming you have a good mechanism to fit it precisely in place on the same electrodes each time) you've got a unique signature for that object to unlock the door with. I'd think it would be very hard to fake, since trying to tune the shape/composition of a dummy "key" to adjust one frequency will mess with all the others.
Of course more than security, I was mainly thinking of that from a "wouldn't this be awesome and probably not that hard to implement?" approach.
Exactly. An ID number is just a unique representation of an individual - think of it as an alternative name, guaranteed to be unique. The difference is, the SSN is supposed to be "semi-secret", kind of secret, kind of not. It's your ID and password all bundled into one! Aka, idiotic. And not linked at all in a consistent, queryable manner with your contact information. Doubly idiotic. And while it functions as a kind-of password, it's semi-predictable. A triple-play of Fail.
In America, someone sends you a bill... how do you pay it? You write them a check.
Here, someone sends you a bill. You log on to netbanking (for example) with a password and rotating-code keyfob, go to the payments page, punch in the ID and account number information of who you're looking to pay, the bill pops up, you confirm the amount you want to pay and enter your netbanking pin... and that's that. No check ordering, no postal service, no stamps, no handwriting, no interpreting of handwriting, no fraudulent checks, no bounced checks... you know, an actual "modern" system.
The only reason your ridiculous system makes sense to you is because it's the only system you have experience with. It's totally antiquated and broken.
Our system here in Iceland is like yours in Brazil. I just don't get how America can be so backwards in so many regards. And people there by and large don't even realize it.
I'm saying that you should have your own system similar to ours, and that the reason you (and your companies) are so vulnerable to identity theft is because you don't.
Slashdot Mirror
$100 - their pets
$10 - their bicycles
$1 - their mailboxes
$0.10 - their shopping lists
$0.01 - their acne medication, toothpaste, etc.
Indeed, it always bothers me greatly to hear Americans saying things like, "We're not at all like them! They're bad people! They kill innocents in the pursuit of their objectives!"
As if the US hasn't likewise declared objectives and knows damned well that they're going to be killing innocent people in the pursuit of their objectives, and has ruled them to be "acceptable losses" to achieve their objectives.
I mean, *Really*? You don't see the glaring moral hole there?
Gee, thanks a lot for leaking that, Julian. Now we've got to scrap our entire Roomba bomb program and start from square one...
Using chicks doesn't work. You have to wait until they're fully grown.
If I'm not mistaken, doesn't FB learn what you look like based on photos that you've been tagged in?
So couldn't you, for example, consistently mistag yourself (or even a complete stranger) if you wanted to confuse it? Oh, sure, your friends might wonder why Facebook keeps suggesting that you get tagged whenever a picture of the president's dog shows up, but...
As a side curiosity, when, in humanity's future, do you think it'll be before the first asteroid gets turned into an art project (artistically painted/decorated across its entire surface or whatnot)?
Thank goodness science is about what random slashdotters intuitively believe. It'd be a crazy world if, you know, it relied on peer-reviewed papers.
Yes, it will. The details of course depend on the particular asteroid, but even painting the entire surface white will alter its trajectory.
Also, really, pretty much any method proposed for spacecraft acceleration would work for asteroids as well. Laser-pumped? Check. Solar sail? Check. Even some of the less commonly known ones like a magnetic field generator to repel the solar wind would work. It all depends on how big you're willing to go and how quickly you need to move the thing.
I assume everyone here has played around with the Earth Impact Effects Program?
One of the simplest ways to slowly nudge an asteroid off course is simply to have your spacecraft hover near it, with its (low thrust/high ISP) jets askew (instead of pointing straight at the asteroid). You don't need to be physically attached to an asteroid to tow it; gravity can be your "cable".
Another even slower but potentially even simpler way proposed to move an asteroid out of an intercept course is to "paint" it (basically, detonate one or more bombs of reflective dust) on particular locations and use the change in solar radiation pressure to do the work for you.
Yes, if only there was a way to know what the students meant, like, oh I don't know, reading the article?
Very doubtful. But we could potentially build such a bomb if the Earth depended on it for some reason; the Teller-Ulam configuration scales indefinitely. The problem is it'd be way too massive to get off the ground.
Of course, these students were simply calculating the (very unrealistic) scenario found in the movie, of the asteroid right about to impact, and of deflection involving splitting it in half and having one half go each way around the Earth. As they note, more realistic deflection scenarios involve hitting it much earlier and simply trying to alter it's trajectory intact (but that's not fitting for Hollywood)
Also it should be noted that the Tsar Bomba mentioned in the article was deliberately cut down to half of its design yield (replacing the uranium tamper with a lead one) to make it burn cleaner. It was not only the biggest atomic bomb ever detonated on Earth, but also the cleanest per unit of energy output.
What part of a "this is from a wouldn't it be awesome to open your door with a rock" perspective, not a "this is the bestest-security-ever-conceived" perspective, is difficult? I mean, a keypad? Really?
Across a super-wide frequency range from multiple contact points on its surface? I really doubt it.
Modded down? Hmm, was it because there was no context?
And? It's not like the database contains secret information. It simply contains *authoritative* information about people's contact info. "Leaking" its contents would just be a glamorous publication of a phone book. Are you saying that your biggest concern would be people breaking into the national database to secretly change everyone's addresses, and nobody's going to notice, and there's not going to be any restoring from backups? Is that your scenario here?
Then you're exceedingly unusual. A quick Google Search turns up this:
* Americans write 42.5 billion checks per year - that's one check per person every three days.
* In the United States checks are among the most popular form of payment, above credit cards.
* People write roughly 450 million "bad checks" or checks that bounce every year - that's 1.5 per person per year.
* 60 percent of all transactions not paid for with cash are paid by check.
* Consumers are 65 percent more likely to use checks than other forms of electronic payments.
* The number of checks used by Americans is increasing. In recent years check use rose 54 percent alone.
* More than 39 trillion dollars in payments are made every year with checks, compared to just 7 trillion for other forms of payment.
Mind you, I have no way to validate those numbers, but it matches my experience with the American check culture. A lot of places in America don't have options for online bill paying. You just happen to have lucked into being in a place that does. Americans typically write each other checks to send each other money as well - such as a "birthday check" from a parent or whatnot.
One, it's not like Iceland is so unusually forwards in this; it's that America is so unusually backwards in this. Countries much poorer than America, more corrupt, and still with large populations and land area have done it. Two, it's *harder* for small countries. Where are small countries supposed to get the resources to write new systems if something is so difficult? So much here has to be is imported. To give you a sense of what it's like, there's only a couple TV channels here that are even subtitled in Icelandic. If I watch, say, Mythbusters on Discovery Channel, the Mythbusters are speaking American English, the in-show announcers British English, the between-show announcements Norwegian. That is, Britain imported from the American Discovery channel, Norway imported the British Discovery Channel, and then Iceland imported the Norwegian Discovery channel.
What's inconvenient about *not* having to write checks and being able to do everything online?
"Roll this out"? May I reiterate, "if you wanted a really nifty-looking key to your door" and "I was mainly thinking of that from a "wouldn't this be awesome and probably not that hard to implement?" approach"? You make it sound like trying to revolutionize the world's security. I'm talking about unlocking your front door with a piece of quartz or whatnot.
I don't think we're talking about the same thing. I'm talking about "random object picked up in a field or thrift store used as a key". Not making a chip specifically to function as a key.
"Quite icky" is an understatement. You're dealing with differential equations here (Kirchoff's Laws); you can't just converge linearly to a solution. The more complex and diverse the inputs, the exponentially harder it gets to reverse-engineer.
GRAMMAR!
What good does the fact that a lock knows the digital signature of its key do for you unless you plan to physically compromise the lock using to get the code out?
I was thinking the same thing. I'd thought of this concept a while back as a "turn almost anything into a key *except* a living organism" approach. That is, if you wanted a really nifty-looking key to your door, it could be some mystic-looking crystal, or some stone sigil, or whatnot. Measure how it interacts with a wide range of AC inputs provided from specific electrodes, and (assuming you have a good mechanism to fit it precisely in place on the same electrodes each time) you've got a unique signature for that object to unlock the door with. I'd think it would be very hard to fake, since trying to tune the shape/composition of a dummy "key" to adjust one frequency will mess with all the others.
Of course more than security, I was mainly thinking of that from a "wouldn't this be awesome and probably not that hard to implement?" approach.
Exactly. An ID number is just a unique representation of an individual - think of it as an alternative name, guaranteed to be unique. The difference is, the SSN is supposed to be "semi-secret", kind of secret, kind of not. It's your ID and password all bundled into one! Aka, idiotic. And not linked at all in a consistent, queryable manner with your contact information. Doubly idiotic. And while it functions as a kind-of password, it's semi-predictable. A triple-play of Fail.
In America, someone sends you a bill... how do you pay it? You write them a check.
Here, someone sends you a bill. You log on to netbanking (for example) with a password and rotating-code keyfob, go to the payments page, punch in the ID and account number information of who you're looking to pay, the bill pops up, you confirm the amount you want to pay and enter your netbanking pin... and that's that. No check ordering, no postal service, no stamps, no handwriting, no interpreting of handwriting, no fraudulent checks, no bounced checks... you know, an actual "modern" system.
The only reason your ridiculous system makes sense to you is because it's the only system you have experience with. It's totally antiquated and broken.
Our system here in Iceland is like yours in Brazil. I just don't get how America can be so backwards in so many regards. And people there by and large don't even realize it.
I'm saying that you should have your own system similar to ours, and that the reason you (and your companies) are so vulnerable to identity theft is because you don't.