You don't drop the payload indescriminantly. You make use of the fact that nearly every android applet has over-extended priviledges to begin with, and request access to contact list and sdcard the sae as just about every other free app. You go ahead and make a nice and well polished app, then only drop the payload on specific phones, by checking for some criteria. You want this to be just a handful of very high profile people, not joe schlubb.
While I admit you probably won't have "angry birds" level on your install base, you could probably draw a nice one if you made a very nice and attractive app that caters to corporate types.
Your payload depostion routine would be selective, using the phone's phonebook to get the phone number for the device, and checking that internally to see if its on the app's hitlist.
If it is, it activates the malware. If not, enjoy the ad supported app.
With the degree of information proliferation, things like private cell numbers are considerably less private. Engineering such an attack is more patience than anything else. You could even make it look like you were a victim of a hack yourself as a cover.
If I were a malicious programmer out to get corporate dirt, I would release a "perfectly harmless" appstore game or business applet. This applet does not in any way harm the phone, or call home. What I does instead is drop some binaries on the root of the internal sdcard or flash memory storage device to mimic this attack.
This has several advantages:
1) you can update your penetration package as part of an app update, which the user won't catch.
2) you can target a device frequently demanded to be added to device exception lists, such as corporate CEOs insisting their iBone be able to sync their corporate email.
This gives you a mostly unprotected path to the mailserver if the package delivery mechanism is done right.
In the case of android phones at least, you can control how the device talks to the computer, and what HID classes it wants. This could let the phone operate as a hardware keylogger, etc.
Its better to just design your long-term spaceflight vehicle to accommodate artificial gravity through centrifugal force. (Yes, I know it isn't a real force. That is immaterial here.)
A well designed craft could include the rotating grav habitats as part of the attitude control system, so that altering effective gravity in them could flip the ship around, etc.
It would greatly cut down on useage of control thrusters, and would resolve the gravity problem just fine. Make the grav habitats sealed away from space inside a non_moving, pressurized shell and you solve a slew of other problems too, such as reducing the need for EVAs, improve ability to repair the habitats considerably, etc.
The real issues involved are really radiation and cost. Cost being the biggest obstacle.
A ship that properly houses its crew would cost so much to orbit that it isn't fiscally reasonable.
That's the real problem. I get tired of people talking about how to solve the gravity issue: its solved. Has been since man figured out that water stays in buckets when you spin around. Radiation can be solved several ways.
This filament is between two neighboring GALAXIES.
Compare:
fastest manmade objects in existence: voyager space probes. Probes have been in flight for over 40 years. They are just now entering the interstellar medium.
At this rate, it would take millions of years for one of these probes to reach the fillament. One way. They are hundreds of thousands of lightyears away.
The mars probes' batteries would be dead long before reaching the filament, and humanity would have evolved into a new lifeform in the intervening time.
"A few years" is a literally astronomical understatement.
(Ok, I'll do my best... Poe's law hysterionics in 3.. 2....)
In My home state of Kansas, we riteously teach that GOD created the universe, and that he did so in a mere SEVEN days! Your horrible, adulturous theories involving the spontaneous breaking of the perfect symmetry of the grand and unified existence before the universe as being its source is straight up wrong!
For starters, this "mathematically perfect and timeless" so called "symmetrical" particle that you claim our universe came from sounds suspiciously like a divine manifestation of God. Normally, we would be happy that science had triumphed in proving God's will to be the undeniable truth, but this theory requires the DESTRUCTION of this perfect existence in order to create our ouniverse! Clearly, these physicists are working for SATAN spreading EVIL LIES about the death of God!
On top of that CLEAR slap in God's face, you have the GALL to try to teach the clearly unbiblical theory of so called "spontaneous symmetry breaking!" The bible is explicit on this: God hates when things he brings together are put asunder! This kind of blatant excuse that perfect unions will tear themselves apart all on their own is a clear attac behind the sacrosanct divine philosophical principles behind such holy and Godly traditions as heterosexual marriage! Endorsing this worldview that the perfect must ultimately decay into the profane, break apart, and become desolate is clearly un-Christian, and must be resisted!
It seems that just in time to ruin our victory over his evil lies about "evolution", Satan has been working overtime influencing his godless scientists to find a new method of attacking the FAITH of our brothers and sisters in christ!
I call upon all our faithful to RESIST this evil teaching! The bible is the direct gospel of God given to man, and it CLEARLY says that the earth is not millions of years old like these perverse spreaders of untruths would have our CHILDREN believe! Resist satan and his lies! Teach the GODLY truth in our schools and universities! Resist the devil, and he shall flee!
(Ok.. that's enough. I think I lost a few IQ points doing that.:P)
Unfortunately, SETI is doing the exact same thing you demonize.
Specifically, it's looking for just one thing: easily determinable artificial radio wave signals.
Unless the aliens are advancing MUCH slower than we are, it will take hundreds of years for a "Ping" to reach our planet, and for our reply to get there. We have been using radio waves as a medium for exchanging information for what... almost 100 years now? How long was it until we started compressing the data? 70? Do you really think, that outside SETI, we will have analog data reception equipment in active service to pick up an actively returned radio ping after our broadcast noise reaches some of the systems that Kepler has determined might be habitable?
It relies on a whole series of HIGHLY improbable things:
1) That our radio broadcasts retain sufficient energy after expanding in radius at least 50 light years that aliens can still pick it out of the noise floor. (good luck with that. Same with us listening for them!)
2) that the aliens will identify it as an artificial source.
3) that the aliens will agree to a massive project to build a high power antenna array to send us a return message.
4) that we wont have gutted our previous radio infrastructure through incremental upgrades, and will be able to detect the return signal.
5) that the return signal even reaches us in the first place.
6) that we acknowledge the signal with one of our own by investing money and manpower.
and
7) are willing to wait 200 years for all that to happen.
Here's a reminder. We went from oil lamps to rocket ships to the internet in 200 years, and we have a hard time getting a commitment from govt for even 10 years.
It isnt winning the lottery. It's trying to find tiny picogram sized particles of a rapidly decaying radio isotope from the sand on an oceanfront beach, before the isotope can decay. and that's just the reception side of the problem!
Unless SETI was listening to the whole sky, constantly, on super-wide band, the vast majority of possible signal events would slip right through their fingers.
If they managed to capture one, they would get bogged down in red tape. Take for instance, the "Wow signal". Look at the controversy behind it, because it didnt repeat long enough to satisfy everyone. Even if we *DID* detect an ET, I have serious reservations about our positively identifying. Not because I think the aliens would do a bad job sending us a signal; but because I have that little faith in our political systems, both governmental and academic. I believe we would argue about the significance of the signal, debate its origin, spin our wheels hemming and hawing over it, and generally accomplish a whole lot of nothing.
Do I think looking for ETs is a waste of time though? No.
I simply think the current methods are sufficiently unrealistic in uncovering an ET, that it makes more sense to use the search budget to research better forms of detection at this point. The budget should still be focused toward finding ET, (and not re-allocated to pregnant teen mothers, for instance) but should be spent looking for a better way to observe and process the cosmos looking for signs of artificial activity.
I was referring more to the alcubierre metric based theory, than the wormhole based theory.
Both require fantastic (and likely non-existant in any real sense) energy or matter to operate though.
The alcubierre metric requires an "expansive" negative energy field to inflate spcetime, and a contrictive, gravity-like energy field to compress it. Putting both around the ship (aft and forward, respectively) creates a little patch of space that gets taken for a ride, that the ship surfs in. It has no fixed velocity limit. The ship itself is stationary, the spacetime around the ship is what moves, and it doesn't have a speed limit. However, unlss we suddely master the higgs boson in a radical way, so we can fundementally alter the masses of the virtual particle flux in front of a space ship, and also master dark energy to cause runaway hubble expansion behind it, the alcubierre metric falls flat. (But if you can do that, its a perfectly valid solution to general and special relativity that permits effective FTL transport.)
The wormhole method requires exotic matter with antimass (possibly existing as exotic particles, at least in virtual form if hawking radiation is real.) To hold the bridge open, or it will slam shut before even a single neutrino can transit. It also requires retarded control over gravitational effects to create the event horizon, and I can't think of any reliable way to ensure the stable formation of the bridge between controllable locations in spacetime. (I certainly don't know any theoretical ones at least.)
The alcubierre method is at least plausible, and it would also have a very detectable signature.
I've said this for years, but it makes diehard seti fanatics angry.
SETI is looking for the wrong things.
Your argument against radio communications is dead on. interstellar flight capable aliens would almost certainly not be using radio waves as their primary way of making calls.
Instead, look to hard science and physics to get an idea of something that an FTL capable species would have to be creating, if they travel regularly:
Gravity waves.
More specifically, we need realtime analysis of the CBR. An alien ship zipping across the galaxy at FTL speed is going to leave a gravity shockwave behind it, like the wake on an ocean liner. Realtime measurements of the CBR, cross-referenced over time will highlight the major "shipping lanes", if any exist.
It would also be a major boon to cosmologists, in and of itself.
So... Seti should stop fighting the cosmologists. They should stop trying to compete for money. They should agree that they both need better tools, and collaborate to make those tools real, than share the data feeds.
The whole POINT, is that you CAN'T burn the glass.
It makes absolutely no sense to go through all the trouble to pull carbon out of the air, only for some simpleton to do everything they ca to put it right back in.
Sequestration: it means putting it away, and never getting it back out again. It does *not* mean you get to hide it for awhile, then just puke it right back into the fishbowl.
After the carboniferous period, brown mold and tree fungi experienced an evolutionary mutation that allowed them to digest a structural protein found in wood, which was previously undigestible. It was that indigestibility that allowed wood, leaves, and other bio matter to fall into peat bogs and not fully decmpose.
In the world today, where molds and fungus can completely decompose the organic substrate, such sequestration is impossable.
It is important to note that the natural sequestration still had partial decomposition of the biomatter. Only a fraction of that mass became coal. The rest re-entered the carbon cycle.
Artificial sequestration, such as putting the biomass in a hermetically sealed crucible, and heating it with sunlight, turns more than 90% of the hydrocarbons into elemental carbon. This is vastly more efficient than natural sequestration. As such, artificial sequestration would take significantly less time than the carboniferous period did to sequester the same amount of carbon.
The problem is not if it can be done or not. It certainly can. The problem is that it is economically disadvantageous to do so. This is because our economic policies are based on the philosophy of whooping it up, and leaving other people with the bill. We act like we can do this forever.
Stort of it: we can't. We can't, and it's gonna eat us alive in the end.
On the one hand, people proclaim their superior intellect and ability to understand the universe and make useful predictions of future events, and say it is what sets men apart from animals.
I dunno... the carbon credit shell game could make carbon sequestration services lucrative.
The deal with producing geologically stable carbon deposits, and rendering them unburnable, is that the exact same process creates potential fuel in an energy hungry economy.
As natural energy supplies dwindle, created carbon, such as through a biochar operation, begin to reach price parity through scarcity. Burying that carbon after rendering it unburnable (such as by sintering it with silicates so that it is more silicate than carbon, and doesn't stay lit) needs to be subsidized, otherwise the big money is in providing biochar for energy production.
A combination of peak energy, and carbon tax/credit, could create financial incentives to fix the co2 problem.
Take something like kudzu. Evil vine that ate the south. It grows over a foot PER DAY.
Ok, plant it on an enclosed, circular growing area, with a slow moving, automated cutting system that continually dead-heads the vines, and keeps them inside. The cut off cruft is put into a hermitically sealed solar sintering system with sand, and heated to vitrefaction.
Carbon rich black glass is produced. The stuff would be more geologically stable than coal.
Slow, but could be nearly completely automated. Done on a large scale, you could remove tons of carbon from the atmosphere daily in rainy tropical areas.
Fair use allows for small segments of a copyrighted work to be distributed and consumed by the public, as long as the intent of the distribution is associated with an academic or journalistic purpose.
So..
This is the modern internet age.
Let's say that I exhaustively comb the internet for examples of these real fair use samples found in free journals, news reports, and academic publications, until I have collected sufficient numbers of these fragments to reconstruct whole works from, paper-mache style.
Would I be in violation of copyright for distributing a list of discovered segments that could be assembled into whole works?
More interesting, since we are talking digital data...
Let's say I did a file compare analysis against a huge swath of completely unrelated files on the internet, and created a wget script + shell script to pull just a few bytes or kilobytes from Jpegs, wav files, HTML files,.swf files, etc-- from all over the internet, then assembled them with concatenation to produce a de-facto copy of a protected media file. Would that be infringing? I have clear server logs showing that not a single one of the bits transferred belonged to that protected file.
Now I wonder something... several somethings actually.
Let's say I troll the internet for all the fair use samples of a given work. Let's say a song. If by collecting these fair use clips, used in literary articles, and sew them all together using audacity so that I know have the complete song, does this implicate the fair use fragment publishers in my alledged "theft" of that work, should I be the subject of prosecution?
Also, if the enjoinder for this case is upheld concerning merely sitting in the swarm as being evidence of being complicit, could this not be utlilized as prima-fascia evidence in other cases, where a music group's sting operations participation in a swarm that also is involved in the transfer of a copyrighted work to which they don't have authoritative copyright powers (say, RIAA sting over a beiber 'song', while the swarm also is involved with a motion picture, say, the last samurai) could the RIAA sting group be enjoined in the movie sharing case later, having gone on record and under oath as having participated in the swarm to gather their evidence?
I ask this because swarms are rarely discrete entities with a 1 file 1 swarm relationship. Many members of the swarm will be members of othery swarms, and since this is guilt by association, where does the court draw the line?
I barely made it through the first page of that thing. If I didn't know better, I would call it a poe's law prank.
Seriously, how does insanity like that shit (really "sanctity of life crom fertilization to grave"? The authority of the family "defined as a man and a woman", and all that rhetoric? Wow. Heil hitler fuckers. Oh wait, this is the us. "Praise jesus!". My bad.) Manage to get taken seriously in a country *FOUNDED* on independent thought and the outright refusal of state sponsored religion?
Holy fuck batman, joker's got a jackhammer jesus dildo!
I've often wondered why they dont use a 2.4ghz band dual chamber resonant klystron for use as a vehicle killer.
While the vehicle *IS* a conductor, it is not a perfectly effective Faraday cage, as evidenced by morons talking on cellphones, and stealing wifi while wardriving.
A really high energy microwave beam from a mobile klystron is way more energy efficient, easier to cool, and would be radically more effective at killing the onboard electronics in a modern vehicle. It would also be more effective at killing the occupant, which is probably desirable by military ideals.
It would require violation of FCC broadcast energy on that band, but since this is the military, they should be exempt anyway. That it would knock out every wifi network for over a mile around, possibly with antenna damage, is potentially useful militarily as well.
(I am thinking on the order of 200w of broadcast in the directional microwave beam. More than enough to smoke electronics. 700w would be able to cook hotdogs at a distance, but less portable.)
I am sure they can tell your anus from a planet. While it certainly is quite conspicuous, given your rivalry with goatse, a gas giant is still far larger, and easily distinguished. You've got some more..practice...to do before you are ready for that competition.
Or did you mean the local planet? I seriously doubt that the astronomers in question have instruments that poorly calibrated that 50 light minutes could be confused with 50 light years... just sayin.
What is your desired skills list, and what other outstanding criteria would you consider when selecting participants?
Careful screening of participants to be polymaths with extensive skills in multiple disciplines, including the hard manual labor that will be involved in establishing a martian base camp and collecting water from chemical deposits and rock ice will be of paramount importance if the mission is to be a success. What specific skills do you consider the most important to screen for, and why?
Since you mention that the venture is to be supported via media hype, I should presume that you desire fit and attractive participants as well.
It has been my experience that usually the most useful and practical people for dealing with harsh environments and challenging circumstances are not the aesthetically pleasing variety. How do you intend to rectify this situation?
Slashdot Mirror
I see your niave good intentions, and raise you a commerce clause.
As if there would be any doubt whatsoever about this being abused! Hah!
Its simple.
You do both.
You don't drop the payload indescriminantly. You make use of the fact that nearly every android applet has over-extended priviledges to begin with, and request access to contact list and sdcard the sae as just about every other free app. You go ahead and make a nice and well polished app, then only drop the payload on specific phones, by checking for some criteria. You want this to be just a handful of very high profile people, not joe schlubb.
While I admit you probably won't have "angry birds" level on your install base, you could probably draw a nice one if you made a very nice and attractive app that caters to corporate types.
Your payload depostion routine would be selective, using the phone's phonebook to get the phone number for the device, and checking that internally to see if its on the app's hitlist.
If it is, it activates the malware. If not, enjoy the ad supported app.
With the degree of information proliferation, things like private cell numbers are considerably less private. Engineering such an attack is more patience than anything else. You could even make it look like you were a victim of a hack yourself as a cover.
Personally, I'd target smartphones.
If I were a malicious programmer out to get corporate dirt, I would release a "perfectly harmless" appstore game or business applet. This applet does not in any way harm the phone, or call home. What I does instead is drop some binaries on the root of the internal sdcard or flash memory storage device to mimic this attack.
This has several advantages:
1) you can update your penetration package as part of an app update, which the user won't catch.
2) you can target a device frequently demanded to be added to device exception lists, such as corporate CEOs insisting their iBone be able to sync their corporate email.
This gives you a mostly unprotected path to the mailserver if the package delivery mechanism is done right.
In the case of android phones at least, you can control how the device talks to the computer, and what HID classes it wants. This could let the phone operate as a hardware keylogger, etc.
Seriously, smartphones are a torpedo.
Its better to just design your long-term spaceflight vehicle to accommodate artificial gravity through centrifugal force. (Yes, I know it isn't a real force. That is immaterial here.)
A well designed craft could include the rotating grav habitats as part of the attitude control system, so that altering effective gravity in them could flip the ship around, etc.
It would greatly cut down on useage of control thrusters, and would resolve the gravity problem just fine. Make the grav habitats sealed away from space inside a non_moving, pressurized shell and you solve a slew of other problems too, such as reducing the need for EVAs, improve ability to repair the habitats considerably, etc.
The real issues involved are really radiation and cost. Cost being the biggest obstacle.
A ship that properly houses its crew would cost so much to orbit that it isn't fiscally reasonable.
That's the real problem. I get tired of people talking about how to solve the gravity issue: its solved. Has been since man figured out that water stays in buckets when you spin around. Radiation can be solved several ways.
Price. Its the space killer.
you clearly werent in Kansas during the 90s, when the suicide bombers blowing up abortion clinics were all the rage.
There was a clear and present vandetta against Dr Tiller. It only stopped when they shot him in the face.
Look it up.
Fundies are more scary-dangerous than you realize.
Uhm?
This filament is between two neighboring GALAXIES.
Compare:
fastest manmade objects in existence: voyager space probes.
Probes have been in flight for over 40 years. They are just now entering the interstellar medium.
At this rate, it would take millions of years for one of these probes to reach the fillament. One way. They are hundreds of thousands of lightyears away.
The mars probes' batteries would be dead long before reaching the filament, and humanity would have evolved into a new lifeform in the intervening time.
"A few years" is a literally astronomical understatement.
(Ok, I'll do my best... Poe's law hysterionics in 3.. 2....)
In My home state of Kansas, we riteously teach that GOD created the universe, and that he did so in a mere SEVEN days! Your horrible, adulturous theories involving the spontaneous breaking of the perfect symmetry of the grand and unified existence before the universe as being its source is straight up wrong!
For starters, this "mathematically perfect and timeless" so called "symmetrical" particle that you claim our universe came from sounds suspiciously like a divine manifestation of God. Normally, we would be happy that science had triumphed in proving God's will to be the undeniable truth, but this theory requires the DESTRUCTION of this perfect existence in order to create our ouniverse! Clearly, these physicists are working for SATAN spreading EVIL LIES about the death of God!
On top of that CLEAR slap in God's face, you have the GALL to try to teach the clearly unbiblical theory of so called "spontaneous symmetry breaking!" The bible is explicit on this: God hates when things he brings together are put asunder! This kind of blatant excuse that perfect unions will tear themselves apart all on their own is a clear attac behind the sacrosanct divine philosophical principles behind such holy and Godly traditions as heterosexual marriage! Endorsing this worldview that the perfect must ultimately decay into the profane, break apart, and become desolate is clearly un-Christian, and must be resisted!
It seems that just in time to ruin our victory over his evil lies about "evolution", Satan has been working overtime influencing his godless scientists to find a new method of attacking the FAITH of our brothers and sisters in christ!
I call upon all our faithful to RESIST this evil teaching! The bible is the direct gospel of God given to man, and it CLEARLY says that the earth is not millions of years old like these perverse spreaders of untruths would have our CHILDREN believe! Resist satan and his lies! Teach the GODLY truth in our schools and universities! Resist the devil, and he shall flee!
(Ok.. that's enough. I think I lost a few IQ points doing that. :P)
Unfortunately, SETI is doing the exact same thing you demonize.
Specifically, it's looking for just one thing: easily determinable artificial radio wave signals.
Unless the aliens are advancing MUCH slower than we are, it will take hundreds of years for a "Ping" to reach our planet, and for our reply to get there. We have been using radio waves as a medium for exchanging information for what... almost 100 years now? How long was it until we started compressing the data? 70? Do you really think, that outside SETI, we will have analog data reception equipment in active service to pick up an actively returned radio ping after our broadcast noise reaches some of the systems that Kepler has determined might be habitable?
It relies on a whole series of HIGHLY improbable things:
1) That our radio broadcasts retain sufficient energy after expanding in radius at least 50 light years that aliens can still pick it out of the noise floor. (good luck with that. Same with us listening for them!)
2) that the aliens will identify it as an artificial source.
3) that the aliens will agree to a massive project to build a high power antenna array to send us a return message.
4) that we wont have gutted our previous radio infrastructure through incremental upgrades, and will be able to detect the return signal.
5) that the return signal even reaches us in the first place.
6) that we acknowledge the signal with one of our own by investing money and manpower.
and
7) are willing to wait 200 years for all that to happen.
Here's a reminder. We went from oil lamps to rocket ships to the internet in 200 years, and we have a hard time getting a commitment from govt for even 10 years.
It isnt winning the lottery. It's trying to find tiny picogram sized particles of a rapidly decaying radio isotope from the sand on an oceanfront beach, before the isotope can decay. and that's just the reception side of the problem!
Unless SETI was listening to the whole sky, constantly, on super-wide band, the vast majority of possible signal events would slip right through their fingers.
If they managed to capture one, they would get bogged down in red tape. Take for instance, the "Wow signal". Look at the controversy behind it, because it didnt repeat long enough to satisfy everyone. Even if we *DID* detect an ET, I have serious reservations about our positively identifying. Not because I think the aliens would do a bad job sending us a signal; but because I have that little faith in our political systems, both governmental and academic. I believe we would argue about the significance of the signal, debate its origin, spin our wheels hemming and hawing over it, and generally accomplish a whole lot of nothing.
Do I think looking for ETs is a waste of time though? No.
I simply think the current methods are sufficiently unrealistic in uncovering an ET, that it makes more sense to use the search budget to research better forms of detection at this point. The budget should still be focused toward finding ET, (and not re-allocated to pregnant teen mothers, for instance) but should be spent looking for a better way to observe and process the cosmos looking for signs of artificial activity.
I was referring more to the alcubierre metric based theory, than the wormhole based theory.
Both require fantastic (and likely non-existant in any real sense) energy or matter to operate though.
The alcubierre metric requires an "expansive" negative energy field to inflate spcetime, and a contrictive, gravity-like energy field to compress it. Putting both around the ship (aft and forward, respectively) creates a little patch of space that gets taken for a ride, that the ship surfs in. It has no fixed velocity limit. The ship itself is stationary, the spacetime around the ship is what moves, and it doesn't have a speed limit. However, unlss we suddely master the higgs boson in a radical way, so we can fundementally alter the masses of the virtual particle flux in front of a space ship, and also master dark energy to cause runaway hubble expansion behind it, the alcubierre metric falls flat. (But if you can do that, its a perfectly valid solution to general and special relativity that permits effective FTL transport.)
The wormhole method requires exotic matter with antimass (possibly existing as exotic particles, at least in virtual form if hawking radiation is real.) To hold the bridge open, or it will slam shut before even a single neutrino can transit. It also requires retarded control over gravitational effects to create the event horizon, and I can't think of any reliable way to ensure the stable formation of the bridge between controllable locations in spacetime. (I certainly don't know any theoretical ones at least.)
The alcubierre method is at least plausible, and it would also have a very detectable signature.
I've said this for years, but it makes diehard seti fanatics angry.
SETI is looking for the wrong things.
Your argument against radio communications is dead on. interstellar flight capable aliens would almost certainly not be using radio waves as their primary way of making calls.
Instead, look to hard science and physics to get an idea of something that an FTL capable species would have to be creating, if they travel regularly:
Gravity waves.
More specifically, we need realtime analysis of the CBR. An alien ship zipping across the galaxy at FTL speed is going to leave a gravity shockwave behind it, like the wake on an ocean liner. Realtime measurements of the CBR, cross-referenced over time will highlight the major "shipping lanes", if any exist.
It would also be a major boon to cosmologists, in and of itself.
So... Seti should stop fighting the cosmologists. They should stop trying to compete for money. They should agree that they both need better tools, and collaborate to make those tools real, than share the data feeds.
This "but ..but..... radios!" Nonsene has to end.
The whole POINT, is that you CAN'T burn the glass.
It makes absolutely no sense to go through all the trouble to pull carbon out of the air, only for some simpleton to do everything they ca to put it right back in.
Sequestration: it means putting it away, and never getting it back out again. It does *not* mean you get to hide it for awhile, then just puke it right back into the fishbowl.
Natural sequestration is a punctured equilibrium.
Here's the scoop:
After the carboniferous period, brown mold and tree fungi experienced an evolutionary mutation that allowed them to digest a structural protein found in wood, which was previously undigestible. It was that indigestibility that allowed wood, leaves, and other bio matter to fall into peat bogs and not fully decmpose.
In the world today, where molds and fungus can completely decompose the organic substrate, such sequestration is impossable.
It is important to note that the natural sequestration still had partial decomposition of the biomatter. Only a fraction of that mass became coal. The rest re-entered the carbon cycle.
Artificial sequestration, such as putting the biomass in a hermetically sealed crucible, and heating it with sunlight, turns more than 90% of the hydrocarbons into elemental carbon. This is vastly more efficient than natural sequestration. As such, artificial sequestration would take significantly less time than the carboniferous period did to sequester the same amount of carbon.
The problem is not if it can be done or not. It certainly can. The problem is that it is economically disadvantageous to do so. This is because our economic policies are based on the philosophy of whooping it up, and leaving other people with the bill. We act like we can do this forever.
Stort of it: we can't. We can't, and it's gonna eat us alive in the end.
Hypocricy at its finest.
On the one hand, people proclaim their superior intellect and ability to understand the universe and make useful predictions of future events, and say it is what sets men apart from animals.
The on the other, they say and do shit like this.
I dunno... the carbon credit shell game could make carbon sequestration services lucrative.
The deal with producing geologically stable carbon deposits, and rendering them unburnable, is that the exact same process creates potential fuel in an energy hungry economy.
As natural energy supplies dwindle, created carbon, such as through a biochar operation, begin to reach price parity through scarcity. Burying that carbon after rendering it unburnable (such as by sintering it with silicates so that it is more silicate than carbon, and doesn't stay lit) needs to be subsidized, otherwise the big money is in providing biochar for energy production.
A combination of peak energy, and carbon tax/credit, could create financial incentives to fix the co2 problem.
That's why you need to bind it in an inflamable matrix.
I suggest adding the carbon powder to sand in a sealed solar sintering pot, then using the resulting "black glass" for architectural purposes.
The glass would not be flamable, and could contain up to around 30% carbon by weight.
I have actually thought about this.
Take something like kudzu. Evil vine that ate the south. It grows over a foot PER DAY.
Ok, plant it on an enclosed, circular growing area, with a slow moving, automated cutting system that continually dead-heads the vines, and keeps them inside. The cut off cruft is put into a hermitically sealed solar sintering system with sand, and heated to vitrefaction.
Carbon rich black glass is produced. The stuff would be more geologically stable than coal.
Slow, but could be nearly completely automated. Done on a large scale, you could remove tons of carbon from the atmosphere daily in rainy tropical areas.
Who can take a stem cell... And cover it with goo?
Whip it in a blender and make a liver made for you?
The candy man! The candy man can!
Who make IPS culture, and slather it with Gly....
Shape it in a scaffold and make a kidney for some guy?
The candy man! The candy man can!
Fair use allows for small segments of a copyrighted work to be distributed and consumed by the public, as long as the intent of the distribution is associated with an academic or journalistic purpose.
So..
This is the modern internet age.
Let's say that I exhaustively comb the internet for examples of these real fair use samples found in free journals, news reports, and academic publications, until I have collected sufficient numbers of these fragments to reconstruct whole works from, paper-mache style.
Would I be in violation of copyright for distributing a list of discovered segments that could be assembled into whole works?
More interesting, since we are talking digital data...
Let's say I did a file compare analysis against a huge swath of completely unrelated files on the internet, and created a wget script + shell script to pull just a few bytes or kilobytes from Jpegs, wav files, HTML files, .swf files, etc-- from all over the internet, then assembled them with concatenation to produce a de-facto copy of a protected media file. Would that be infringing? I have clear server logs showing that not a single one of the bits transferred belonged to that protected file.
Now I wonder something... several somethings actually.
Let's say I troll the internet for all the fair use samples of a given work. Let's say a song. If by collecting these fair use clips, used in literary articles, and sew them all together using audacity so that I know have the complete song, does this implicate the fair use fragment publishers in my alledged "theft" of that work, should I be the subject of prosecution?
Also, if the enjoinder for this case is upheld concerning merely sitting in the swarm as being evidence of being complicit, could this not be utlilized as prima-fascia evidence in other cases, where a music group's sting operations participation in a swarm that also is involved in the transfer of a copyrighted work to which they don't have authoritative copyright powers (say, RIAA sting over a beiber 'song', while the swarm also is involved with a motion picture, say, the last samurai) could the RIAA sting group be enjoined in the movie sharing case later, having gone on record and under oath as having participated in the swarm to gather their evidence?
I ask this because swarms are rarely discrete entities with a 1 file 1 swarm relationship. Many members of the swarm will be members of othery swarms, and since this is guilt by association, where does the court draw the line?
Oh, so its like windows in bootcamp then?
Now imagine 2 more techs, and tagging will be a sight indeed!
Just need spraypaint photocells, and spraypaint Oleds.
Booyah. Neon tagging.
I barely made it through the first page of that thing. If I didn't know better, I would call it a poe's law prank.
Seriously, how does insanity like that shit (really "sanctity of life crom fertilization to grave"? The authority of the family "defined as a man and a woman", and all that rhetoric? Wow. Heil hitler fuckers. Oh wait, this is the us. "Praise jesus!". My bad.) Manage to get taken seriously in a country *FOUNDED* on independent thought and the outright refusal of state sponsored religion?
Holy fuck batman, joker's got a jackhammer jesus dildo!
Seriously. What. The. Fuck.
I've often wondered why they dont use a 2.4ghz band dual chamber resonant klystron for use as a vehicle killer.
While the vehicle *IS* a conductor, it is not a perfectly effective Faraday cage, as evidenced by morons talking on cellphones, and stealing wifi while wardriving.
A really high energy microwave beam from a mobile klystron is way more energy efficient, easier to cool, and would be radically more effective at killing the onboard electronics in a modern vehicle. It would also be more effective at killing the occupant, which is probably desirable by military ideals.
It would require violation of FCC broadcast energy on that band, but since this is the military, they should be exempt anyway. That it would knock out every wifi network for over a mile around, possibly with antenna damage, is potentially useful militarily as well.
(I am thinking on the order of 200w of broadcast in the directional microwave beam. More than enough to smoke electronics. 700w would be able to cook hotdogs at a distance, but less portable.)
I am sure they can tell your anus from a planet. While it certainly is quite conspicuous, given your rivalry with goatse, a gas giant is still far larger, and easily distinguished. You've got some more..practice...to do before you are ready for that competition.
Or did you mean the local planet? I seriously doubt that the astronomers in question have instruments that poorly calibrated that 50 light minutes could be confused with 50 light years... just sayin.
What is your desired skills list, and what other outstanding criteria would you consider when selecting participants?
Careful screening of participants to be polymaths with extensive skills in multiple disciplines, including the hard manual labor that will be involved in establishing a martian base camp and collecting water from chemical deposits and rock ice will be of paramount importance if the mission is to be a success. What specific skills do you consider the most important to screen for, and why?
Since you mention that the venture is to be supported via media hype, I should presume that you desire fit and attractive participants as well.
It has been my experience that usually the most useful and practical people for dealing with harsh environments and challenging circumstances are not the aesthetically pleasing variety. How do you intend to rectify this situation?