The private address block for IPv6 is not routable so is akin to RFC 1918 IPv4 addresses (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16). When a machine uses autoconfiguration to generate its global address, it can either use its 48/64 bit MAC address or it can just randomly generate these bits for privacy. If it changes addresses, it can still respond to older ones for a period of time.
Other than broadcasting, I do not know how other machines can track address changes. Presumably the local DNS server should be informed but I have not seen that done yet. On my home network, my machines use randomly generated global addresses except for one IPv6 server which uses its fixed MAC address so that my router can firewall it properly. I am not aware of any IPv6 firewalls which can properly handle randomly generated global addresses yet.
Meanwhile, IPv6 addresses are, from what I've read, mostly designed to be globally unique and thus globally routable, which I think is what PRMan was describing in his post. With such addresses, you'd have to explicitly configure your router/firewall to lock down local machines, no? Or is there some mechanism enabled by default to prevent local IPv6 machines from being accessed from outside the local network?
Two things come to mind for security. IPv6 includes a privacy mode where machines change their IPv6 address randomly within their subnet periodically so finding a machine would be basically impossible from outside of the network without help. As far as a firewall goes, just make it statefully block all incoming connections with a single rule. That duplicates any security which NAT provides.
That sounds like the brushless air core stator design using litz wire. I did not know they had gotten to that kind of power per weight. I wonder why it is not more popular in that type of application. Maybe the cost of the needed rare earth magnets make it uneconomical compared to an in board motor plus drive shaft?
I am leery of a design which lacks mechanical brakes as a backup but I am in the minority who prefers manual transmissions for reliability reasons.
They would consider superconducting magnets in motors to increase the power for a given size. The efficiency gain to be had is pretty small because electric motors are already very efficient.
Even if the power per volume is good enough, the motors are pretty heavy so mounting them in the wheels would compromise drivability because of the increased unsprung weight. Higher performance cars have inboard brakes for that very reason.
A 'solar shield' could be created by simply using shielding materials on every power point that would be affected: transformers, the stations themselves, at the source, etc. Launch a giant project to shield the most vulnerable points in the power-grid to hopefully minimize the damage of a seemingly inevitable catastrophe.
The vulnerable point that needs shielding is the transmission lines themselves and that is just not practical. When the CME hits the earth it pushes the magnetic field lines around which induce common mode voltage across the transmission lines. The failure then becomes common mode insulation breakdown at the transformers themselves. Options include either disconnecting the transformers from the transmission lines (difficult) or shunting the common mode voltage in such a way as to dissipate it (proposed).
It doesn't seem likely that the mics will distort in an ordinary environment, simply because if they could it seems to be like it would affect a large number of the microphones at once.
The microphones should not distort at all unless they selected the wrong ones for the application. Because a microphone operates as a small signal device instead of as a large signal device like a loudspeaker, it has better linearity and dynamic range. This is one application where 24 bits of analog to digital resolution might actually be useful.
This is a pretty standard application of beam forming which is made possible by the massive increases in digital signal processing that have become available. From the description, they compute the individual delay for each microphone given the geometric location of the sound source. Then they add all of the delayed signals together. The desired sound source signal from each microphone is now in phase and adds while the surrounding sources cancel.
Nowadays, "illegal" doesn't mean you can't do it -- it's just not admissable in court.
You can get your last dollar they still do it, but then need to come up with a pretense for anything involving the courts.
For the moment at least, a 4th amendment violation is still a 4th amendment violation even if they do not bother admitting any evidence they find into court. The court sanction of inadmissibility of evidence does not mean law enforcement is free to search and seize when they do not plan on admitting evidence. This came up in the past couple years when some jurisdiction started pulling people over for driving safely and giving them reward cards or coupons or something. It was still a seizure without warrant or probable cause and when this was pointed out they stopped since they were inviting a civil rights lawsuit.
If they gathered IR data without a warrant or probable cause and that lead them to further evidence gathering, the later evidence would also be inadmissible in court. As you point out of course, they can (and I am sure do) gather the IR data secretly and hide this from the court and the defense.
Remember, they can now slap a GPS device onto your car with absolutely no court oversight. Just imagine all of the illegal things they do and cover with sealed court proceedings.
The circuit courts are split on the GPS tracking matter so it is likely just a matter of time before the supreme court gets involved. The secret court proceedings and administrative actions are more insidious to my mind.
m0n0wall has full IPv6 support including built in AICCU if you want a tunnel from SIXXS. Just block all incoming IPv6 connections by default and then permit the ones you want through like port 80 to your IPv6 HTTP server.
It is locking up because the system you used thinks it has a connected IPv6 address when it really does not. Lots of IPv6 consumer routers advertise IPv6 routing even when it is not available.
Go set network.dns.disableIPv6 to true, fix your network, or disable IPv6 on that machine.
Of course, you might not be ABLE to switch carriers. If Time Warner were to put me behind NAT, I'd be pretty much screwed. I might be able to switch to some form of wireless connection, but that might not even be any better.
There are lots of VPN service providers selling $10/month accounts which give you a public routed IP address over PPTP, L2TP, or OpenVPN. People use them for WiFi hotspot security, avoiding government censorship, avoiding provider censorship, or gaining a public or static IP address among other reasons.
Join one of the two major parties. Doens't matter which one.
Then start voting for people in primaries who aren't either of the things you listed. Get involved at the local level in political discussions
The same problem with plurality in the general election applies to the primaries as well. It is turtles all the way down.
It's obvious overcoming the two party system is near impossible. So, work the system. Change it from within. But it's hard work. Do you really care enough do do this? Because in the end real change is hard work..
To quote a movie that does not exist, "It was all another system of control."
Truely alien aliens do not make very good stories because of the difficulty of the audience identifying with them. Niven wrote an essay about how to write science fiction that mentions this. The Fithp psychology was not human but was that of a herdbeast. One either submits or fights (or runs away but the humans could hardly leave Earth).
As an example of a historic screwup, Japan vs. the US. The Japanese believed in their racial superiority over the decadent, honorless West. They also believed that they had a right and duty to conquer the majority of the Pacific and institute a benevolent dictatorship over the other races. When it was pointed out that they lacked the industrial might to go toe to toe with the US, leadership scoffed and engaged in magical thinking. Americans are weak, they flee a fight. A strong Japanese fighting man could kill a hundred of them. Anyone who dissented from that view was considered a defeatist and would suffer the consequences. The self-reinforcing nature of the Japanese BS groupthink made an arrogant move like attacking Pearl Harbor inevitable. Why negotiate with the US, why avoid conflict when we know we can win? Except whoops, miscalculation.
Japan felt driven to go to war with a lack of any better actions available. Belief in racial superiority is just a propaganda measure that all nations and even religions use in times of war. Yamamoto certainly knew better but followed orders and came up with a plan very similar to that of the Fithp who were even more commited which is specifically pointed out (they can't go back) so Japan makes for a very apt comparison. Show the enemy how strong you are, stomp them into submission, then enforce your will. That is what we did when we won after dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. There is no negotiation as such and certainly none which would warn of surprise attack.
The story very specifically points out how foreign the concept of negotiation is to the Fithp. One either fights or submits. It is so foreign that they only have one incident in their history which would apply and that is the incident which creates Traveling Fithp and has them leaving their system and heading to Winterhome. They become much more effective after accepting and instituting the concept of of "negotiated loss of status" after they invade South Africa.
So yes, really dumb mistakes can happen. And when one side starts a war and loses it, of course there was a miscalculation. Hardly anyone starts a fight he knows he can't win. So yes, it's plausible for the traveler herd to come across the stars and do something completely stupid like starting a war. But the dynamics just weren't drawn out properly. The mistakes made by the herd weren't properly explained in the context of the story. Why attack first instead of negotiate? Or why not establish a threat display, drop some rocks in empty areas and show that they could land on cities next? Why not come with the foot in the first place? Why arrive at Earth, attack the space station, drop some smaller rocks, fly back out to pick up the rock, fly back in to drop it, land some troops in Kansas, flitter about doing some other things... Again, a disjointed and split-brained strategy could make sense if there were political turmoil within the herd but what was outlined was insufficient to explain what we saw.
Why did we drop the atomic bombs on Japan and then order unconditional surrender instead of just demonstrating it? What would be the point? We could enforce any settlement we wanted and that is what we did.
The initial Fithp invasion is a reconnaissance in force. Fight the enemy to learn about the enemy. They had no need to commit everything in the first battle before knowing more about our capability to wage war and they certainly had no need to risk the Mothership carrying their families. Later we threaten exactly that to force their surrender.
They had political turmoil within the herd. The Herd
Unfortunately I don't think the Space Shuttles are going to be available for use with the Orion-class vessel (called "Michael" in the book). They were supposed to be acting like fighters from the mothership being more like a carrier. I don't know if that ever would have worked, but at least it was plausible and something other SciFi movies have tried to take advantage of.
I agree it would make a might fine movie and something that ought to be made. The whole plot line with the Soviet Union isn't nearly as important and certainly could be updated to reflect the current world political situation.
Then again, I have no idea how you would put a nuclear Iran into the story or if it would be wise for the producers to even consider how to do that.
None of the needed changes would have to negatively impact the plot or theme.
We still have the battleship turrets available and could produce 5 inch and 8 inch guns on short notice. The shuttle could be replaced with any current spacecraft which includes restartable engines like the Space-X Kestrel.
Iran could almost take the place of South Africa as an isolated industrial nation being conquered but the South African nuclear capability was not an issue in the story anyway. I am sure any number of physically isolated but industrial advanced areas would work. South Africa was just a leading example at the time.
The partnership with the Soviets works almost as well when replaced with Russians but China could serve just as well if you want to keep more of the Cold War feel to it. You just need someone who could execute a nuclear strike on the American mid-west. The EU could play a bigger role as a more unified entity perhaps but I am not sure it would add enough to the story to be worth the screen time.
The biggest problem I see off hand is explaining why the aliens do not subvert our own computer networks which are much more important now then when the story was written but it would be easy enough to make a point that such subversion was insufficient in itself without military action. The aliens would at least have considered it.
I have occasional dreams about how to adapt Footfall and Lucifer's Hammer to a viable screenplay.
This is hand-waving about a lot of issues, like we've not designed the next generation of data radio to put Codec2 into. One might guess that such a thing could use IPV6, and better modulation than just FM, and FEC, etc.
I suspect FM voice compatibility and economics may be too important to justify switching to any modulation which is not constant envelope. I notice that all of the D-Star modes use GMSK (Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying) which is completely compatible with inexpensive and simple FM circuit design. A general purpose I/Q fed signal chain for supporting other than constant envelope modulation modes would require linear instead of class C amplifiers and AGC (Automatic Gain Control) instead of limiting.
I complain about D-Star's use of a proprietary codec whenever someone will listen but the choice of GMSK for simplicity, economics, and low adjacent channel interference is a good one.
24 hours per day and roughly 24,000 mile circumference so 1000 miles per hour will hold the sun in the same position in the sky. If you flew at 500 miles per hour then you could extend daylight by 50 percent.
Sometimes I wonder why it isn't possible to declare/register a PGP public key as official, and use that to authentify oneself. I mean, with that even email can be secure. Oh well, too complicated for the "general public" I guess, I mean keeping a spare of your (digital) key? That's far too complicated!
It is not possible because then the government would not be able to forge authentication in your name when needed. It is the same reason security certificates must be centrally managed.
I almost jumped up and cheered when the Reaver ship in the first episode of Firefly backed into the atmosphere even if it had to happen at the speed of plot.
The narrow data connector is usually right beside the wider but very similar looking data connector on most sata drives now. (100% of laptop drives, about 90% of desktop drives) So the provision seems to be there for power, just in an additional adjacent connector.
Sure. The problem is that power connector is way too wide for an embedded module which does not need 12 volts and 3.3 volts at high current.
Had they done it the way I suggested, the the motherboard data connector would have been lengthened by 4 pins, from 8 to 12, and the existing 8 pin data cables would have worked in it. As it is, how many motherboards have you seen with the SATA power connector inline with the SATA data connector? None? As far as I know, that is only done on SATA and SAS backplanes.
Just to add insult to injury, they managed to come up with two different eSATA standards because it never occurred to them that a self powered external enclosure might be handy and the powered one includes USB anyway!
I would say monkeys came up with the SATA connector standards (No positive retention mechanism? Really?) but that would be an insult to our primate cousins.
Does esata provide power? USB power (1-2) sucks, and nobody seems to want to use firewire which is awesome for providing power. Maybe they just need to change the data format.
Firewire power had the problem of requiring a full switching regulator on the drive side so it really was not competitive with any standard that could do without it. I suspect there were just too many variations of Firewire power to be supported reliably. Ultimately two different standards were needed for supporting external storage (laptop drives and smaller versus anything larger) but the later was already supported using other technologies even if poorly.
There are a few USB drives designed for embedded use which plug directly into the USB header on the motherboard but your solution is more cost effective for non-critical applications. I have a couple of IDE to CF adapters which I use for the same application.
I have seen this done with motherboard USB headers (which provide 2 USB ports plus 5V power) but unfortunately SATA does not have provisions for any sort of standardized combination data and power connection unless you want to use the backplane part of the standard which would require a very wide plug in module. Ideally, SATA would have supported 5V power sufficient for a 2.5 inch drive (somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 amps although the connector pins are rated to 1.5 amps) in the data connector while allowing the use of the existing data only cables. Given that the standard originally did not even include a positive retention mechanism, I am not surprised.
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The private address block for IPv6 is not routable so is akin to RFC 1918 IPv4 addresses (10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16). When a machine uses autoconfiguration to generate its global address, it can either use its 48/64 bit MAC address or it can just randomly generate these bits for privacy. If it changes addresses, it can still respond to older ones for a period of time.
Other than broadcasting, I do not know how other machines can track address changes. Presumably the local DNS server should be informed but I have not seen that done yet. On my home network, my machines use randomly generated global addresses except for one IPv6 server which uses its fixed MAC address so that my router can firewall it properly. I am not aware of any IPv6 firewalls which can properly handle randomly generated global addresses yet.
Two things come to mind for security. IPv6 includes a privacy mode where machines change their IPv6 address randomly within their subnet periodically so finding a machine would be basically impossible from outside of the network without help. As far as a firewall goes, just make it statefully block all incoming connections with a single rule. That duplicates any security which NAT provides.
That sounds like the brushless air core stator design using litz wire. I did not know they had gotten to that kind of power per weight. I wonder why it is not more popular in that type of application. Maybe the cost of the needed rare earth magnets make it uneconomical compared to an in board motor plus drive shaft?
I am leery of a design which lacks mechanical brakes as a backup but I am in the minority who prefers manual transmissions for reliability reasons.
They would consider superconducting magnets in motors to increase the power for a given size. The efficiency gain to be had is pretty small because electric motors are already very efficient.
Even if the power per volume is good enough, the motors are pretty heavy so mounting them in the wheels would compromise drivability because of the increased unsprung weight. Higher performance cars have inboard brakes for that very reason.
The vulnerable point that needs shielding is the transmission lines themselves and that is just not practical. When the CME hits the earth it pushes the magnetic field lines around which induce common mode voltage across the transmission lines. The failure then becomes common mode insulation breakdown at the transformers themselves. Options include either disconnecting the transformers from the transmission lines (difficult) or shunting the common mode voltage in such a way as to dissipate it (proposed).
Just that is enough reason to own one:
Marketting Dude: I left my calculator at home. May I borrow yours?
Engineer Agripa: Sure. Here. *hands over HP-48*
Marketting Dude: Um, no thanks.
The microphones should not distort at all unless they selected the wrong ones for the application. Because a microphone operates as a small signal device instead of as a large signal device like a loudspeaker, it has better linearity and dynamic range. This is one application where 24 bits of analog to digital resolution might actually be useful.
This is a pretty standard application of beam forming which is made possible by the massive increases in digital signal processing that have become available. From the description, they compute the individual delay for each microphone given the geometric location of the sound source. Then they add all of the delayed signals together. The desired sound source signal from each microphone is now in phase and adds while the surrounding sources cancel.
MEMS switches have been around for a while now in the ATE and RF markets:
http://www.memsindustrygroup.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3759
For the moment at least, a 4th amendment violation is still a 4th amendment violation even if they do not bother admitting any evidence they find into court. The court sanction of inadmissibility of evidence does not mean law enforcement is free to search and seize when they do not plan on admitting evidence. This came up in the past couple years when some jurisdiction started pulling people over for driving safely and giving them reward cards or coupons or something. It was still a seizure without warrant or probable cause and when this was pointed out they stopped since they were inviting a civil rights lawsuit.
If they gathered IR data without a warrant or probable cause and that lead them to further evidence gathering, the later evidence would also be inadmissible in court. As you point out of course, they can (and I am sure do) gather the IR data secretly and hide this from the court and the defense.
The circuit courts are split on the GPS tracking matter so it is likely just a matter of time before the supreme court gets involved. The secret court proceedings and administrative actions are more insidious to my mind.
m0n0wall has full IPv6 support including built in AICCU if you want a tunnel from SIXXS. Just block all incoming IPv6 connections by default and then permit the ones you want through like port 80 to your IPv6 HTTP server.
It is locking up because the system you used thinks it has a connected IPv6 address when it really does not. Lots of IPv6 consumer routers advertise IPv6 routing even when it is not available.
Go set network.dns.disableIPv6 to true, fix your network, or disable IPv6 on that machine.
There are lots of VPN service providers selling $10/month accounts which give you a public routed IP address over PPTP, L2TP, or OpenVPN. People use them for WiFi hotspot security, avoiding government censorship, avoiding provider censorship, or gaining a public or static IP address among other reasons.
Join one of the two major parties. Doens't matter which one.
Then start voting for people in primaries who aren't either of the things you listed. Get involved at the local level in political discussions
The same problem with plurality in the general election applies to the primaries as well. It is turtles all the way down.
It's obvious overcoming the two party system is near impossible. So, work the system. Change it from within. But it's hard work. Do you really care enough do do this? Because in the end real change is hard work..
To quote a movie that does not exist, "It was all another system of control."
Change will have to come from outside the system.
Truely alien aliens do not make very good stories because of the difficulty of the audience identifying with them. Niven wrote an essay about how to write science fiction that mentions this. The Fithp psychology was not human but was that of a herdbeast. One either submits or fights (or runs away but the humans could hardly leave Earth).
Japan felt driven to go to war with a lack of any better actions available. Belief in racial superiority is just a propaganda measure that all nations and even religions use in times of war. Yamamoto certainly knew better but followed orders and came up with a plan very similar to that of the Fithp who were even more commited which is specifically pointed out (they can't go back) so Japan makes for a very apt comparison. Show the enemy how strong you are, stomp them into submission, then enforce your will. That is what we did when we won after dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. There is no negotiation as such and certainly none which would warn of surprise attack.
The story very specifically points out how foreign the concept of negotiation is to the Fithp. One either fights or submits. It is so foreign that they only have one incident in their history which would apply and that is the incident which creates Traveling Fithp and has them leaving their system and heading to Winterhome. They become much more effective after accepting and instituting the concept of of "negotiated loss of status" after they invade South Africa.
Why did we drop the atomic bombs on Japan and then order unconditional surrender instead of just demonstrating it? What would be the point? We could enforce any settlement we wanted and that is what we did.
The initial Fithp invasion is a reconnaissance in force. Fight the enemy to learn about the enemy. They had no need to commit everything in the first battle before knowing more about our capability to wage war and they certainly had no need to risk the Mothership carrying their families. Later we threaten exactly that to force their surrender.
They had political turmoil within the herd. The Herd
None of the needed changes would have to negatively impact the plot or theme.
We still have the battleship turrets available and could produce 5 inch and 8 inch guns on short notice. The shuttle could be replaced with any current spacecraft which includes restartable engines like the Space-X Kestrel.
Iran could almost take the place of South Africa as an isolated industrial nation being conquered but the South African nuclear capability was not an issue in the story anyway. I am sure any number of physically isolated but industrial advanced areas would work. South Africa was just a leading example at the time.
The partnership with the Soviets works almost as well when replaced with Russians but China could serve just as well if you want to keep more of the Cold War feel to it. You just need someone who could execute a nuclear strike on the American mid-west. The EU could play a bigger role as a more unified entity perhaps but I am not sure it would add enough to the story to be worth the screen time.
The biggest problem I see off hand is explaining why the aliens do not subvert our own computer networks which are much more important now then when the story was written but it would be easy enough to make a point that such subversion was insufficient in itself without military action. The aliens would at least have considered it.
I have occasional dreams about how to adapt Footfall and Lucifer's Hammer to a viable screenplay.
I suspect FM voice compatibility and economics may be too important to justify switching to any modulation which is not constant envelope. I notice that all of the D-Star modes use GMSK (Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying) which is completely compatible with inexpensive and simple FM circuit design. A general purpose I/Q fed signal chain for supporting other than constant envelope modulation modes would require linear instead of class C amplifiers and AGC (Automatic Gain Control) instead of limiting.
I complain about D-Star's use of a proprietary codec whenever someone will listen but the choice of GMSK for simplicity, economics, and low adjacent channel interference is a good one.
24 hours per day and roughly 24,000 mile circumference so 1000 miles per hour will hold the sun in the same position in the sky. If you flew at 500 miles per hour then you could extend daylight by 50 percent.
It is not possible because then the government would not be able to forge authentication in your name when needed. It is the same reason security certificates must be centrally managed.
The Terminator, err, Lawyer was just being systematic.
I almost jumped up and cheered when the Reaver ship in the first episode of Firefly backed into the atmosphere even if it had to happen at the speed of plot.
Sure. The problem is that power connector is way too wide for an embedded module which does not need 12 volts and 3.3 volts at high current.
Had they done it the way I suggested, the the motherboard data connector would have been lengthened by 4 pins, from 8 to 12, and the existing 8 pin data cables would have worked in it. As it is, how many motherboards have you seen with the SATA power connector inline with the SATA data connector? None? As far as I know, that is only done on SATA and SAS backplanes.
Just to add insult to injury, they managed to come up with two different eSATA standards because it never occurred to them that a self powered external enclosure might be handy and the powered one includes USB anyway!
I would say monkeys came up with the SATA connector standards (No positive retention mechanism? Really?) but that would be an insult to our primate cousins.
Firewire power had the problem of requiring a full switching regulator on the drive side so it really was not competitive with any standard that could do without it. I suspect there were just too many variations of Firewire power to be supported reliably. Ultimately two different standards were needed for supporting external storage (laptop drives and smaller versus anything larger) but the later was already supported using other technologies even if poorly.
There are a few USB drives designed for embedded use which plug directly into the USB header on the motherboard but your solution is more cost effective for non-critical applications. I have a couple of IDE to CF adapters which I use for the same application.
http://www.transcendusa.com/Products/ModDetail.asp?ModNo=122&LangNo=0&Func1No=1&Func2No=159
http://www.psism.com/eusb.htm
http://www.ptiglobalusa.com/emusbfldrmo.html
http://www.atpinc.com/p2-4a.php?sn=00000417
It's even better when you consider Apple upgrades. Just throw your old one away, and buy a new one.
I have seen this done with motherboard USB headers (which provide 2 USB ports plus 5V power) but unfortunately SATA does not have provisions for any sort of standardized combination data and power connection unless you want to use the backplane part of the standard which would require a very wide plug in module. Ideally, SATA would have supported 5V power sufficient for a 2.5 inch drive (somewhere between 0.5 and 1.0 amps although the connector pins are rated to 1.5 amps) in the data connector while allowing the use of the existing data only cables. Given that the standard originally did not even include a positive retention mechanism, I am not surprised.