A pulse that short can only be made with UV light (otherwise it would be shorter than a single wavelength). Wouldn't be transmitted by fibers. Its very interesting for science, but no clear application for communications.
I'm not so sure they will just let you go. If you cast this sort of wide net often, you will find cases where the coincidences add up. The prosecution will try to argue that the odds of a false match are "six trillion to one" (I've heard this number used many times - it is simply not true). They will use the match to get a warrant to look at all your computer records - oh darn, you happen to like violent porn - legal but VERY SUSPICIOUS to a jury.
At this point in the US you would be given a choice of pleading guilty to some lesser crime (say manslaughter) and serving 3 years + parole, or go before a jury and risk a Murder 1 charge with a life sentence. Even an innocent man might not risk a jury trial given the evidence above.
From what I've seen, competition between accelerator projects leads to better machine performance. The SLAC B-factory / KEK-B competition resulted in both machines operating well above their design performance. I'm seeing similar effects with the new X-ray FELs. When there is no competition it is too easy for a lab to take an overly conservative approach.
There is an advantage to having the cutting edge machines in your own country to attract the best scientists and engineers.
In many ways the technology development for these accelerators is more valuable to society than the basic science that they produce. A variety of research tools with direct industrial application were developed as a result of high energy physics R&D: Spallation neutron sources, Synchrotron light sources, X-ray FELs, etc. These may seem somewhat esoteric devices, but there is $10s billion invested in them world wide and they are valuable for a variety of materials, biological and energy research.
The reason that the elevator can work without unobtainium is that its EASY to get off the moon. The delta-v required is withing the range of all sorts of technologies (rockets - don't even need H2, could probably use O2 or N2 exhaust), mass drivers, etc.
This project would be insanely expensive - need to get the elevator (still a multi-thousand km structure) to the moon, set up etc.
Insane to think it could be done in 8 years.
Once you've done all that, there just isn't that much you really want from the moon. He3 is a somewhat better fusion fuel than D-T, but we are still at least several decades and several 10s of billions of dollars (probably MUCH more) away from fusion.
People fear a change in the way that they will need to interact with the computer that will result in them being less productive. This could result in lower pay and lower job satisfaction. It potentially IS a big deal.
While the Win7 fallback seems appealing, there is the risk that this will be de-emphasized and eventually removed - like the standard menus in Office.
Personally I do not know how to do my job using Win 8 (or Unity or Gnome 3). I need to have multiple windows open, some large, some small. When I am designing accelerator beamlines I run simulations, look at multiple graphs (in Matlab) displayed on the screen, and adjust parameters.I need to also be looking at notes, a spread sheet and possibly several drawings. This works fine with a standard window manager on big monitors, but I don't know how to do it where the UI really wants me to have one window made full screen and doesn't let me place the other windows in a logical order.
Completely agree, Titan is extremely interesting. The problem is that government funding systems have a way of rejecting higher risk projects, even if they are higher payoff.
Just to continue the musing... IF our (or some other species) did have data intentionally stored in their DNA it was presumably done in a way to allow it be deciphered after a long period of time, without a key, and with accumulated errors. I wonder if anyone has thought of how you might code such a signal, and what sort of analysis of patterns would let you detect it. Then - has anyone analyzed known "junk" sequences to see if there is encoded data. Imagine finding a prime-number sequence in DNA somewhere.....
(gives a whole new meaning to intelligent design).
Is there any message (probably could only be a few MB) that is worth passing down through the eons?
Encode the data into DNA, then splice the DNA fragment into a self reproducing organism and release into the environment. You end up with trillions of copies of the original data distributed all over the world. (error correction codes would deal with transcription mistakes)
Future generations, even future sentient life forms millions of years later would the be able to decode the data. It would be very obvious as soon as they had sequencing technology: organisms with large parts of their DNA that don't code for anything useful...........
I've been watching Moller produce beautiful fiberglass shapes for at least 25 years now. They are everything you could ever want in a flying car - other than for it to fly.
In that case it needs to be compared to a conventional airplane. The terrafugia has the advantage that you don't need to move your stuff between your car, the plane, and the rental car, but it still requires all the other time: preflight, weather check, departure clearances, etc.
You can't drive an terrafugia onto a runway and immediately take off any more than you can hop into a conventional airplane and take off without doing all the required checks.
Once in the air, it is going to be a lot slower and less capable than a comparable purpose-built airplane. The extra performance of the conventional plane will make up the (small) difference in set-up time for all but the shortest trips.
It is a beautiful fantasy: you are stuck in endless traffic, you push a button on the dash and float into the air, then zoom along effortlessly to your destination while looking down on all the "normal" people stuck in traffic.
Unfortunately without a major technology breakthrough (which none of the designs are), it will remain a fantasy.
Aircraft are technically marginal devices - minor increases in weight and drag have a significant effect on their overall performance. The compromises required to allow an aircraft to be used on the road will make it a really poor aircraft. If you read the performance information carefully on the Terrafuga, you will find that it is slow, doesn't carry much weight and has a very limited range.
People have come to expect a very high level of performance from their cars. The compromises required to make a car operate as an aircraft will make it a poor road vehicle.
The use case just isn't that compelling. Most of these vehicles will only be able to fly from airport to airport - which are often located in areas with large amounts of traffic. Once at the airport, the usual The pre-flight checks, and taxi / departure clearances will be required. The airplane / cars that have so far been exhibited are also not designed to deal with significant weather, or to operate over high terrain.
The existing model where you drive your (optimized) car to the airport and then fly your (optimized) airplane to its destination seems better. Rental cars are available at the general aviation terminals at many US airports, generally set up to minimize the time it takes to pick up and drop off.
Its a pretty tricky question. At this sort of temperature 5 trillion degrees corresponds to something like 500MeV, easily enough energy to create particle / anti-particle pairs from the vacuum. So, the energy of the incoming lead ions winds up being distributed among a much larger number of particles. As the fireball expands, some of these will decay into other particles. You can work out the fireball conditions from the types and energies of the particles that are produced, but I don't think its at all simple. I don't know if the collisions last long enough for the system to reach anything like thermal equilibrium.
Are they covered by normal FAA regulations? Do they need transponders - if so, with new Mode-S requirements anyone can buy a receiver and know where they are.
Do they need annual, and 100 hour inspections? Flight certifications? Will the manufacturers issue airworthiness directives? With this the cost of operating a drone could approach the cost of a conventional aircraft.
What are the requirements for drone pilots - do they need a commercial certificate with a "drone" rating? A type-rating for each type of drone? Who is responsible for accidental damage done by the drone?
Are drones equipped with cameras sufficient to meet see-and-avoid rules for flying in visual conditions (even if flying under IFR rules).
Are drones exempt from rules that prohibit low flight over high density areas? Are they treated like helicopters? If so, does that make sense since some can't land vertically or hover?
Basically there is a huge array of regulations that cover the operation of civilian aircraft in US airspace (and in most of the world). Drones do not carry passengers, but they can still destroy other aircraft or kill people on the ground. It isn't at all clear to me how they will operate alongside of conventional aircraft in the airspace, or how they will be treated with respect to aviation regulations.
It would be worth watching the progress on Merlin 2, but as far as I can tell, SpaceX isn't publicly releasing their progress on the engine. That's absolutely fine, but it probably don't make sense to design a new rocket around the engine until it either exists, or the company commits to producing it. There have been lots of aerospace ventures that have been canceled for technical or economic reasons after the program started.
In a lot of ways we have stacked the deck against the government doing successful projects.
The public gets upset when government workers are highly paid or get nice perks (see the recent GSA Las Vegas conference fiasco), so it is not easy for them to attract top talent.
The public wants more oversight of government projects than is typical for industry. This results in non-standard accounting practices that require custom management software. The accounting requirements can also significantly distort engineering efforts - it is difficult to pay for R&D the benefits multiple programs due to the difficult of knowing what account to charge.
Project cycles are so long that top managers have every incentive to underestimate budgets. If there is a project up for grabs, it goes to the organization that *claims* it can do it most cheaply. If 10 years down the road the project is over budget, the original manager is likely long gone to another project, and probably doesn't even receive any blame for the overruns - that goes to the poor SOB who took over the project without realizing what shape it was actually in.
Government funding is driven by the winds of politics. Projects are created, then delayed, then restarted, then scope changes, the canceled - then revived. Engineering teams are formed and disbanded, then need to be re-formed.
In the end I agree that government projects are inefficient, but I think a lot of the inefficiency comes from misguided attempts by the public to force more efficiency. I don't believe that regulations can make poor engineers into good engineers. If you want good engineers you need to make your jobs more attractive than the jobs offered by the competition.
You can't fly VFR above 18000' in the US (class A airspace), and that limitation would substantially increase the operating costs of biz jets.
The DEA has also started searching aircraft that fly VFR between airports on "drug smuggling routes". I know someone who, along with his family, was detained for several hours while they searched his plane.
Charter planes would fix this, since the passenger wouldn't be identified with the N number, but I don't see an easy fix for privately owned aircraft.
I've been working in a mostly male organization for ~20 years now, and I can't remember a significant case of harassment. We have clear policies and really will fire anyone who breaks them. Everyone knows the rules when they accept their jobs, if they don't like them, they can find a different employer.
People are expected to behave like professionals at work. If they can't, well there are a lot of other skilled people out there who are looking for jobs. I'm not saying that work needs to be dull, or non-social. Just that certain topics and types of jokes are completely off limits.
Managers here are trained in harassment issues, but this training is not for crude jokes (though they are of course mentioned), we assume everyone already knows that sort of behavior is unacceptable. The training focuses on the much more tricky / subtle issues of harassment outside of the workplace, relationships between employees, and a host of difficult legal issues.
I am really astonished that someone needed to even ask a question like this in the modern world. The original poster REALLY needs to fix this now, if there is an incident, upper management would be completely justified in firing him as well as the offending workers.
This system is clearly more complex and expensive per mile than conventional trains. I honestly don't know why it is so expensive to build high speed rail in the US ($70B estimated for SF to LA, and most projects come in over budget), but it seems the vacuum train would be a lot more.
The high speed vacuum train idea has been around since at least the 60s, and while it would be great, I doubt we can afford the capital costs.
BTW: no reason not to keep accelerating for long trips (NY -> Shanghai). Once you exceed orbital speed, the train rolls inverted into a forced orbit. Nothing like 25000 mph, upside down. (especially if they used a clear tube above ground).
The US shares in in the high energy physics knowledge that was gained, but it does not have as large a share as it might in all of the technology developed to make the LHC, ATLAS and CMS. It is never clear in advance where new technological developments will lead, but as a closely related example, the accelerator technology developed for the proposed Linear Collider (another several-billion$ machine) was directly applied to to the X-ray lasers now operating in Hamburg (DESY / FLASH), Stanford (SLAC / LCLS) and Japan (Spring-8/SACLA). These machines have been very valuable research tools for science with direct practical applications including catalysts, biomedical studies and new energy studies. At the moment several more of these ~500M$-$1B machines are under construction or seriously proposed around the world.
Earlier high energy physics accelerator developments led to the synchrotron light sources that are the primary X-ray research tools used around the world.
So, access to the science from LHC is great, but it would have been nice if the US had also had a larger share of all of the other technologies that will be spun off.
I expect fraud will be most common where there is the most motivation and the most opportunity. Motivation can be a direct profit motive - so drug tests need special scrutiny. Motivation can also be for career / academic success - so universities might want to carefully consider policies that promote scientists based heavily on their number of publications.
Fields where small groups of researchers work on expensive to reproduce projects are more suspect. Medical tests requiring large numbers of subjects are an example. Research that requires unique equipment might also be suspect (say experiments at LHC), but fortunately most of those collaborations involve large groups of scientists, so fraud would me much more difficult to hide.
A particular problem with reports of this type of fraud is that it may encourage other researchers to do the same. If they see someone who had a successful career for 20 years, it might be tempting. I'm NOT suggesting that we cover up fraud, just that reporting may have an unfortunate side effect.
It is the weapons, not the intended effects that are somewhat new. The US and Israel have essentially admitted that they did this, which implies that they do not think such an attack is a violation of international law. (They had the option of declaring that the attack was not authorized, firing a few people etc - it wouldn't be believed, but it would show that we do not consider this a legal act). I think this is an unfortunate choice for several reasons:
The US currently is in a position of unchallenged strength in conventional war. I would have thought that it was in our military interest to equate a cyber attack with a physical attack so that we could retaliate in a theater where we had superiority. We are unlikely to maintain similar superiority in cyber weapons - the more electronic infrastructure a country has, the more vulnerable it is. In particular open societies are likely to be more vulnerable than tightly controlled ones like North Korea.
Cyber attacks are easily targeted against civilian populations. Separate from any physical damage or loss of life that could be caused, the widespread destruction of non-secure personal data could be very expensive. An attack could destroy personal financial records, wipe email and contact lists, steal and distribute credit card numbers and other personal information, make online purchases, dial expensive cell-phone numbers, etc. Non of these would kill people, but multiplied by 10s of millions this could create significant chaos.
Slashdot Mirror
A pulse that short can only be made with UV light (otherwise it would be shorter than a single wavelength). Wouldn't be transmitted by fibers. Its very interesting for science, but no clear application for communications.
I'm not so sure they will just let you go. If you cast this sort of wide net often, you will find cases where the coincidences add up. The prosecution will try to argue that the odds of a false match are "six trillion to one" (I've heard this number used many times - it is simply not true). They will use the match to get a warrant to look at all your computer records - oh darn, you happen to like violent porn - legal but VERY SUSPICIOUS to a jury.
At this point in the US you would be given a choice of pleading guilty to some lesser crime (say manslaughter) and serving 3 years + parole, or go before a jury and risk a Murder 1 charge with a life sentence. Even an innocent man might not risk a jury trial given the evidence above.
Do all quantum gravity models require spacetime to be non-smooth at the plank scale?
The data only looks like 3sigma so it could be the mini-bursts of gammas were coincidence, but more data should really nail it down.
If true this is a really important bit of research.
From what I've seen, competition between accelerator projects leads to better machine performance. The SLAC B-factory / KEK-B competition resulted in both machines operating well above their design performance. I'm seeing similar effects with the new X-ray FELs. When there is no competition it is too easy for a lab to take an overly conservative approach.
There is an advantage to having the cutting edge machines in your own country to attract the best scientists and engineers.
In many ways the technology development for these accelerators is more valuable to society than the basic science that they produce. A variety of research tools with direct industrial application were developed as a result of high energy physics R&D: Spallation neutron sources, Synchrotron light sources, X-ray FELs, etc. These may seem somewhat esoteric devices, but there is $10s billion invested in them world wide and they are valuable for a variety of materials, biological and energy research.
The reason that the elevator can work without unobtainium is that its EASY to get off the moon. The delta-v required is withing the range of all sorts of technologies (rockets - don't even need H2, could probably use O2 or N2 exhaust), mass drivers, etc.
This project would be insanely expensive - need to get the elevator (still a multi-thousand km structure) to the moon, set up etc.
Insane to think it could be done in 8 years.
Once you've done all that, there just isn't that much you really want from the moon. He3 is a somewhat better fusion fuel than D-T, but we are still at least several decades and several 10s of billions of dollars (probably MUCH more) away from fusion.
People fear a change in the way that they will need to interact with the computer that will result in them being less productive. This could result in lower pay and lower job satisfaction. It potentially IS a big deal.
While the Win7 fallback seems appealing, there is the risk that this will be de-emphasized and eventually removed - like the standard menus in Office.
Personally I do not know how to do my job using Win 8 (or Unity or Gnome 3). I need to have multiple windows open, some large, some small. When I am designing accelerator beamlines I run simulations, look at multiple graphs (in Matlab) displayed on the screen, and adjust parameters.I need to also be looking at notes, a spread sheet and possibly several drawings. This works fine with a standard window manager on big monitors, but I don't know how to do it where the UI really wants me to have one window made full screen and doesn't let me place the other windows in a logical order.
Completely agree, Titan is extremely interesting. The problem is that government funding systems have a way of rejecting higher risk projects, even if they are higher payoff.
Just to continue the musing...
IF our (or some other species) did have data intentionally stored in their DNA it was presumably done in a way to allow it be deciphered after a long period of time, without a key, and with accumulated errors. I wonder if anyone has thought of how you might code such a signal, and what sort of analysis of patterns would let you detect it. Then - has anyone analyzed known "junk" sequences to see if there is encoded data. Imagine finding a prime-number sequence in DNA somewhere.....
(gives a whole new meaning to intelligent design).
Is there any message (probably could only be a few MB) that is worth passing down through the eons?
Encode the data into DNA, then splice the DNA fragment into a self reproducing organism and release into the environment. You end up with trillions of copies of the original data distributed all over the world. (error correction codes would deal with transcription mistakes)
Future generations, even future sentient life forms millions of years later would the be able to decode the data. It would be very obvious as soon as they had sequencing technology: organisms with large parts of their DNA that don't code for anything useful...........
I've been watching Moller produce beautiful fiberglass shapes for at least 25 years now. They are everything you could ever want in a flying car - other than for it to fly.
In that case it needs to be compared to a conventional airplane. The terrafugia has the advantage that you don't need to move your stuff between your car, the plane, and the rental car, but it still requires all the other time: preflight, weather check, departure clearances, etc.
You can't drive an terrafugia onto a runway and immediately take off any more than you can hop into a conventional airplane and take off without doing all the required checks.
Once in the air, it is going to be a lot slower and less capable than a comparable purpose-built airplane. The extra performance of the conventional plane will make up the (small) difference in set-up time for all but the shortest trips.
It is a beautiful fantasy: you are stuck in endless traffic, you push a button on the dash and float into the air, then zoom along effortlessly to your destination while looking down on all the "normal" people stuck in traffic.
Unfortunately without a major technology breakthrough (which none of the designs are), it will remain a fantasy.
Aircraft are technically marginal devices - minor increases in weight and drag have a significant effect on their overall performance. The compromises required to allow an aircraft to be used on the road will make it a really poor aircraft. If you read the performance information carefully on the Terrafuga, you will find that it is slow, doesn't carry much weight and has a very limited range.
People have come to expect a very high level of performance from their cars. The compromises required to make a car operate as an aircraft will make it a poor road vehicle.
The use case just isn't that compelling. Most of these vehicles will only be able to fly from airport to airport - which are often located in areas with large amounts of traffic. Once at the airport, the usual The pre-flight checks, and taxi / departure clearances will be required. The airplane / cars that have so far been exhibited are also not designed to deal with significant weather, or to operate over high terrain.
The existing model where you drive your (optimized) car to the airport and then fly your (optimized) airplane to its destination seems better. Rental cars are available at the general aviation terminals at many US airports, generally set up to minimize the time it takes to pick up and drop off.
Its a pretty tricky question. At this sort of temperature 5 trillion degrees corresponds to something like 500MeV, easily enough energy to create particle / anti-particle pairs from the vacuum. So, the energy of the incoming lead ions winds up being distributed among a much larger number of particles. As the fireball expands, some of these will decay into other particles. You can work out the fireball conditions from the types and energies of the particles that are produced, but I don't think its at all simple. I don't know if the collisions last long enough for the system to reach anything like thermal equilibrium.
Are they covered by normal FAA regulations? Do they need transponders - if so, with new Mode-S requirements anyone can buy a receiver and know where they are.
Do they need annual, and 100 hour inspections? Flight certifications? Will the manufacturers issue airworthiness directives? With this the cost of operating a drone could approach the cost of a conventional aircraft.
What are the requirements for drone pilots - do they need a commercial certificate with a "drone" rating? A type-rating for each type of drone? Who is responsible for accidental damage done by the drone?
Are drones equipped with cameras sufficient to meet see-and-avoid rules for flying in visual conditions (even if flying under IFR rules).
Are drones exempt from rules that prohibit low flight over high density areas? Are they treated like helicopters? If so, does that make sense since some can't land vertically or hover?
Basically there is a huge array of regulations that cover the operation of civilian aircraft in US airspace (and in most of the world). Drones do not carry passengers, but they can still destroy other aircraft or kill people on the ground. It isn't at all clear to me how they will operate alongside of conventional aircraft in the airspace, or how they will be treated with respect to aviation regulations.
What do you think the flag and footprint would sell for at auction? Almost worth another lunar visit...
It would be worth watching the progress on Merlin 2, but as far as I can tell, SpaceX isn't publicly releasing their progress on the engine. That's absolutely fine, but it probably don't make sense to design a new rocket around the engine until it either exists, or the company commits to producing it. There have been lots of aerospace ventures that have been canceled for technical or economic reasons after the program started.
In a lot of ways we have stacked the deck against the government doing successful projects.
The public gets upset when government workers are highly paid or get nice perks (see the recent GSA Las Vegas conference fiasco), so it is not easy for them to attract top talent.
The public wants more oversight of government projects than is typical for industry. This results in non-standard accounting practices that require custom management software. The accounting requirements can also significantly distort engineering efforts - it is difficult to pay for R&D the benefits multiple programs due to the difficult of knowing what account to charge.
Project cycles are so long that top managers have every incentive to underestimate budgets. If there is a project up for grabs, it goes to the organization that *claims* it can do it most cheaply. If 10 years down the road the project is over budget, the original manager is likely long gone to another project, and probably doesn't even receive any blame for the overruns - that goes to the poor SOB who took over the project without realizing what shape it was actually in.
Government funding is driven by the winds of politics. Projects are created, then delayed, then restarted, then scope changes, the canceled - then revived. Engineering teams are formed and disbanded, then need to be re-formed.
In the end I agree that government projects are inefficient, but I think a lot of the inefficiency comes from misguided attempts by the public to force more efficiency. I don't believe that regulations can make poor engineers into good engineers. If you want good engineers you need to make your jobs more attractive than the jobs offered by the competition.
I agree. Even in my bonanza I mostly fly IFR, especially in crowded airspace.
You can't fly VFR above 18000' in the US (class A airspace), and that limitation would substantially increase the operating costs of biz jets.
The DEA has also started searching aircraft that fly VFR between airports on "drug smuggling routes". I know someone who, along with his family, was detained for several hours while they searched his plane.
Charter planes would fix this, since the passenger wouldn't be identified with the N number, but I don't see an easy fix for privately owned aircraft.
I've been working in a mostly male organization for ~20 years now, and I can't remember a significant case of harassment. We have clear policies and really will fire anyone who breaks them. Everyone knows the rules when they accept their jobs, if they don't like them, they can find a different employer.
People are expected to behave like professionals at work. If they can't, well there are a lot of other skilled people out there who are looking for jobs. I'm not saying that work needs to be dull, or non-social. Just that certain topics and types of jokes are completely off limits.
Managers here are trained in harassment issues, but this training is not for crude jokes (though they are of course mentioned), we assume everyone already knows that sort of behavior is unacceptable. The training focuses on the much more tricky / subtle issues of harassment outside of the workplace, relationships between employees, and a host of difficult legal issues.
I am really astonished that someone needed to even ask a question like this in the modern world. The original poster REALLY needs to fix this now, if there is an incident, upper management would be completely justified in firing him as well as the offending workers.
This system is clearly more complex and expensive per mile than conventional trains. I honestly don't know why it is so expensive to build high speed rail in the US ($70B estimated for SF to LA, and most projects come in over budget), but it seems the vacuum train would be a lot more.
The high speed vacuum train idea has been around since at least the 60s, and while it would be great, I doubt we can afford the capital costs.
BTW: no reason not to keep accelerating for long trips (NY -> Shanghai). Once you exceed orbital speed, the train rolls inverted into a forced orbit. Nothing like 25000 mph, upside down. (especially if they used a clear tube above ground).
The US shares in in the high energy physics knowledge that was gained, but it does not have as large a share as it might in all of the technology developed to make the LHC, ATLAS and CMS. It is never clear in advance where new technological developments will lead, but as a closely related example, the accelerator technology developed for the proposed Linear Collider (another several-billion$ machine) was directly applied to to the X-ray lasers now operating in Hamburg (DESY / FLASH), Stanford (SLAC / LCLS) and Japan (Spring-8 /SACLA). These machines have been very valuable research tools for science with direct practical applications including catalysts, biomedical studies and new energy studies. At the moment several more of these ~500M$-$1B machines are under construction or seriously proposed around the world.
Earlier high energy physics accelerator developments led to the synchrotron light sources that are the primary X-ray research tools used around the world.
So, access to the science from LHC is great, but it would have been nice if the US had also had a larger share of all of the other technologies that will be spun off.
I expect fraud will be most common where there is the most motivation and the most opportunity. Motivation can be a direct profit motive - so drug tests need special scrutiny. Motivation can also be for career / academic success - so universities might want to carefully consider policies that promote scientists based heavily on their number of publications.
Fields where small groups of researchers work on expensive to reproduce projects are more suspect. Medical tests requiring large numbers of subjects are an example. Research that requires unique equipment might also be suspect (say experiments at LHC), but fortunately most of those collaborations involve large groups of scientists, so fraud would me much more difficult to hide.
A particular problem with reports of this type of fraud is that it may encourage other researchers to do the same. If they see someone who had a successful career for 20 years, it might be tempting. I'm NOT suggesting that we cover up fraud, just that reporting may have an unfortunate side effect.
It is the weapons, not the intended effects that are somewhat new. The US and Israel have essentially admitted that they did this, which implies that they do not think such an attack is a violation of international law. (They had the option of declaring that the attack was not authorized, firing a few people etc - it wouldn't be believed, but it would show that we do not consider this a legal act). I think this is an unfortunate choice for several reasons:
The US currently is in a position of unchallenged strength in conventional war. I would have thought that it was in our military interest to equate a cyber attack with a physical attack so that we could retaliate in a theater where we had superiority. We are unlikely to maintain similar superiority in cyber weapons - the more electronic infrastructure a country has, the more vulnerable it is. In particular open societies are likely to be more vulnerable than tightly controlled ones like North Korea.
Cyber attacks are easily targeted against civilian populations. Separate from any physical damage or loss of life that could be caused, the widespread destruction of non-secure personal data could be very expensive. An attack could destroy personal financial records, wipe email and contact lists, steal and distribute credit card numbers and other personal information, make online purchases, dial expensive cell-phone numbers, etc. Non of these would kill people, but multiplied by 10s of millions this could create significant chaos.