Now, um, how did the darn thing "loose power?..." Bet that's a secret...
No kidding. You'd think with the government always trying to tighten power that you'd never see them do the opposite and loosen up power.
--
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Do you prefer tahini or lemon juice in your humous posts? Cumin and coriander?
If USA-193, via Milcom, it's only been up since DEC-06 and may be something other than the ordinary monitoring platform:
USA-193/NROL-21 Launch specifics: Launch date/time: December 13, 2006 2100 UTC 16:00 EST Launcher: Delta 2/7920-10 Launch location: Western Test Range, Vandenberg AFB, California Launch complex/pad: SLC2W International Designator: 2006-057A SSC #: 29651 Latest orbital parameters: 376 by 354 km orbit (91.83 minute period), inclined 58.5 degress.
Ted Molczan posted the preliminary orbital elset below on SEESAT-L:
"The ground track nearly repeats every 2 days (30.92 revs), enabling frequent revisit of observational targets of interest. The first four Lacrosses behaved similarly (28.9 revs in 2 days). Lacrosse 5 makes 43.05 revs in 3 days. Keyholes nearly repeat every 4 days; NOSS every 4 days."
Looking at the early Lacrosse satellite missions, Ted is correct, but, of course, the Lacrosse radar imaging missions are launched into much higher altitude orbits (nearly double the height of NROL-21).
Intl Desig SSC # USA Number Period Inc Apogee Perigee *1988-106B 19671 USA 034 97.91 56.98 660 657 1991-017A 21147 USA 069 98.00 68.00 667 660 *1997-064A 25017 USA 133 98.22 57.35 674 673 [Replaced Lacrosse 1] 2000-047A 26473 USA 152 98.47 67.99 690 681 [Replaced Lacrosse 2] *2005-016A 28646 USA 182 99.08 57.01 718 712 [Replaced Lacrosse 3] * Indicates a 57 degree inclination orbit, just 1.5 degree off the Lacrosse 57 deg inc plane.
As Jonathan McDowell points out in his Jonthan's Space Report Next Issue Draft: "In contrast to most secret launches, analysts appear to have little clue as to what this payload may be."
My best guess, at this early stage, is that this is probably some sort of mission sensor platform other than a visual photo recon imaging mission. It also could be a new sensor development mission. But that is "only" a best guess!
Pike, director of the defense research group GlobalSecurity.org, estimated that the spacecraft weighs about 20,000 pounds and is the size of a small bus. He said the satellite would create 10 times less debris than the Columbia space shuttle crash in 2003.
Now, um, how did the darn thing "loose power?..." Bet that's a secret...
In 2002, officials believe debris from a 7,000-pound science satellite smacked into the Earth's atmosphere and rained down over the Persian Gulf, a few thousand miles from where they first predicted it would plummet.
Trademarks are issued per-domain, such as Entertainment--Comedy. See USPTO.gov. A trademark issued in one domain will not protect you in another, thus, someone operating in another trade domain can use 'your' mark in domains outside yours AND have the domain name.
Also, you must show that you have business operations -- a product actually SOLD-- in a domain to be issued a mark by the USPTO.
The javascript on these articles sets the size as fixed and shuts off the resize tab. The quote marks and other elements of the document do not display correctly because of CSS errors. Your browser may respond differently to these commands; YMMV.
I can change the sizing, restore toolbars, etc in menus or (if this had been done worse) I can view source, edit out the offending code, and open the resulting document. Both are fairly inconvenient ways to get things done. Bottom line: the formatting of this is a barrier to people reading it.
I am fairly familiar with Reis and his ideas, which are posted elsewhere than Adage. I pretty much agree with each of his articles except this one on convergence. Darn it, it just doesn't make sense for me to carry a PDA, cell phone, and MP3 player!
That doesn't make any single device such as the Rokr sucessful; MP3 phones have been here for years, and I could give less than a flying fuck about iTunes integration. I've been settling for the Sony Ericsson P800 for two years-- with a 1GB card, it holds a few MP3s or a movie, can control a remote desktop, etc. But the interfacing is poor; the phone is awkward to use; as a PDA, it's not a Palm. And to boot, Cingular just shut off most 1900MHz equipment in my area, so rather than buy a 910a (=American, =850Mhz instead of 900, = won't work too well in Europe or Asia), I'm probably going to try a Treo. Oh what fun; another, inadequate interface, just different. My hands are to big for a laptop keyboard; why the #$(*& do I have to carry that... whatever it is that the Treo has below the screen...
The original post's contention that the Rokr should use cell phone downloads (at 5kbps, that's about an hour a song!) instead of USB is one indication of how ludicrous the first article is. The other suggestions probably make more sense, I just can't take the author seriously after reading that.
This brings up a pop-up window that is set at 120-point width, in huge text. I am not going to read through a long article in a huge font in a little bitty pop-up window 120 pixels wide. I am not going to bother to change my settings to fix this, much less edit the raw HTML. Ain't that important to read this guy, whatever he has to say, if he can't present his content in a palatable form. Whatever else this guy has going for him, a user interace guru he is not.
Comment intéressant! Vous grenouilles n'avez pas eu un tel ressentiment contre l'impérialisme renvoyé de nous yankees pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale, non?
[For the French-impaired, something like: "How interesting! And you frogs didn't resent Yankee imperialism so much during the Second World War, did you?"
and Range Aussi Ta Pere= Fuck your father as well= once popular French Rap group "RATP," whose initials are the same as the French National Rail company RATP...]
I don't think US carries have ever been that interested in supersonic aircraft. Boeing and NASA have been operating a joint supersonic project at Columbus for more than a decade.
Current thought in the US is that we will jump directly to hypersonic, first for military and then commercial uses, because its just so darn cheaper in the end.
What you are missing is that any reasonable supersonic aircraft would ride the sonic wave pattern, which (among other effects) provides some nice fuel savings. The SR-71 did this, and any modern super- or hyper-sonic craft will exploit such effects. The net is that supersonic craft should be more fuel efficient.
The SR-71 was of course late 50s design; the Concorde, in fact, was early 50s technology, basically a subsonic jet beefed up to withstand supersonic shock, but not a true supersonic design like the SR-71. Fifty years later, science can do a little better.
"Hello FBI. This is Joe Schmoeovich. I'm a sophomore at Lost High School in lower Macedonian. It seems the National Center for SuperComputing somewhere near someplace called San Diego in your country is mounting a DoS attack against the computer I hack from in a local cybercafe. Could you send an agent over and take action?"
In practice, the counterattacks will come from recognized entities and be against small-time, unknown entities. Good luck in getting any action.
In the UK, when somebody files a lawsuit and loses, not only do they have to pay for their own court expenses, but also those of the defendant. This isn't the case in the US,
Uh, what gave you that impression?
The principle that the losing party in any legitimate legal action pays fees is derived from common law, and applies in the US. Regardless of who brought the action, the loser generally must pay the cost, unless the judge or jury determines the action to have been frivilous (for instance, in many defamation cases where the claim is upheld but no damages can be shown, the defendent pays no or only a minor part of the opponent's legal cost, on the theory that the action was essentially frivoulous).
Given the current cost and difficulty of litigation, this creates a situation where legal filing is more a game of poker than a real process. When the cost of litigating a minor claim is $10-20K US, merely filing can cause another party to cave in, because the cost of even responding is too great. Car insurers, for instance, will usually not counter-litigate a case under $50,000, regardless of the chances of success, because the cost is on average greater than the loss.
Equally, in the case of an insurance company, if they are sued for judgement and they win, they can make the person who sued them liable for attorney's fees and court costs, but generally this person won't have the resources to suddenly pay $50-80K, so there's not much point to winning. Because of this, I've seen insurance companies cough up $10K in very trivial cases, and there are people who make a living getting into accidents and suing insurance companies.
This is one of many pieces of evidence against your statement:
US, which is why we are the most litigious country in the world.
In fact, the US is one of the least litigious countries, because among other things it is very expensive to litigate a problem, and the state of US law is ridiculously complex and technical (in comparison to hundreds of thosands of volumes of state law, the entire civil code for the Czech Republic fits into two volumes -- when printed in German and Czech on facing pages; in comparison with 18,000 pages of US tarrif codes and rates, Japan's tarrif rates fit on four pages in English). Historical studies have shown that the number of lawsuits filed per capita in the US is less than one-fifth the amount filed 1820-1840.
The bottom line is that the US system works far more poorly than it would if lawyers were paid less and there was more litigation at lower cost.
I would suspect that it is equally illegal to attack back
If someone steals from you, should you steal from them or hurt them? I would say no, and most moral philosophy would also say so too. From a legal standpoint, this is America dammit! Even if I try to take down slashdot.org their return attack has violated my rights to due process.
This seems to be an example of someone talking out of their rear end.
No, I cannot legally break into a thief's house and steal at will, whether or not that would be a good thing. But if that house is the center of an organized crime network, and the door is open to me-- say I knock and say "hey guys, I wanna join your network of theives--" there are then all sorts of interesting I can do to grab some of your property, as I am a private citizen. If I happen to pick up stolen property around your house and put it in escrow and inform the police, have fun trying to sue me for your loss.
"Due Process" of law is a formal right that you have in relation to US Courts, governmental agencies, and certain businesses and entities operating in the public domain and offering services known as "public accomodations." As a private citizen, I do not have to treat you with due process. I can pee on your foot because I don't like your eye color if I choose, just as a private club can restrict its membership to white non-Jews if it chooses, however objectionable either action may be.
If you come into a business, or my home, and steal something, the business (or I) do not have any obigation to offer you much due process. The police and the Courts owe you due process if I call them up, sure-- but so long as I don't actively break the law, I can do what I bloody please to you, which might be quite painful.
If you've just stolen something from me and happen to leave your car in my drive, drop your credit card on my floor while you're in my premise stealing things, etc., good luck in convincing any court that reasonable (if extreme) action to recover damages is "criminal." If I "break in" to your house and take something, sure that's breaking and entering-- but if I happen to know where you live and have a reasonable suspicion that you use the premises in the commission of felony acts (meaning it is subject to confiscation), and I come over and the door is open, and I pick up your TV and stereo and computer and put them in a legal escrow against the damages you've cause me, and send you notice-- don't expect a court too likely to call it a robbery. You're free to bring suit against me to recover the value of your properly and damages, if you think your chances as a thief in Court are very good.
If you're the local crack dealer, known for being violent and harassing the neighborhood, and you come over and beat up my wife and children after trying to extort some money out of them, don't be sure that I as a private citizen can't come over to the crack house (which is an illegal establishment) and shoot you, on the theory that you represent an imminent threat to other's lives.
Case law on these kinds of cases tends to side with the person whose family or community is hurt-- remember that wonderful guy in San Fransisco a few years back who dropped crowbars from the forth floor on the cars of Johns who were looking for prostitutes in his neighborhood? Aquitted, of course, and odd that he was charged.
Local law enforcement-- well, I've had officers suggests that "do it yourself" is the best way to get something done in certain situations. And if I have a squeaky-clean family-man record and my neighborhood is in decline because of your crack business, I can't see many DAs wanting the publicity of prosecuting such a case. "Due process" or not, you are a crack dealer and they are elected by the people, and if you think a crack dealers gets the same due process as a white family man in the United States, you are smoking something.
In cyberlaw, the chances of an attacking party claiming that a cou
Or one could simply be a defense or patent attorney, doctor or psychiatrist, or another similar professional with a legal obligation to take something between reasonable and "all necessary" measures to secure information that has been disclosed by a client.
Some people don't want their personal business displayed to the public, which is why we don't live in glass houses.
Heisenberg not only "worked on" Germany's abortive nuclear program, he directed it. It is also common historical judgement that he delayed the program-- including by providing information to the underground that allowed the Allied destruction of heavy water and other critical precursors, effectively crippling the program.
The best known written account is Thomas Powers' Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (Knopf, 1993). It is quite detailed in the intriques of who knew what when, and a wonderful read for those who have followed the histories of Oppenheimer and Teller.
The Allies were critically aware of Germany's bomb project and vice-versa. Indeed, many of those working on the Manhattan Project knew Heisenberg personally, and considered him as capable as Oppenheimer. The assumption was that the Allies were in a close race with Germany toward the bomb, and if were not for Heisenberg's singular actions in scuttling the project-- Heisenberg considered Hitler an ursurper-- the early months of 1945 may have begun with the destruction of London and Paris. In the annals of war, equally fortutious events prevented the Japanese from unleashing their anthrax and bubonic plague bombs on San Diego and San Francisco, but that is another story.
The Farm Hall transcripts contain the secretly recorded conversations of German scientists interred in England, and while the opinions of some scientists rather far down in the German program, the conversations of Heisenberg, von Weiszsaeker and other make it relatively clear that any German scientist involved in the Atomic Weapons program was quite aware that the US would succeed in producing a weapon. Heisenberg's largely unsung contribution to world peace was denying the bomb to Nazi Germany.
Obviously from the above, I do not accept the conclusion that the German scientists were simply incapable of constructing a bomb, which is also widely argued. Others argue that the German program was doomed because atomic production required large facilities that could be bombed, because the German military bureaucracy did not devote sufficient resources to it, or because demoralized German scientists working under a totalitarian regime "were not into it" and produced poor science. While there is truth to all these accounts, Power's account to me is a convincing argurment that Heisenberg and others did not want the Nazis to have the bomb, and took actions that were high treason and effectively ended the program.
Heisenberg and others were also quite clear on what it theoretically took to produce an atomic bomb, as this had been more or less publically published at the time (after the initial article on fission by Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch), and had worked out the blackboard details with typical Teutonic detail. Whether any of their design details survive is unknown to me, but they had designed a German atomic bomb and the precursor reactors, with whatever errors. In comparison the drawing in this article is child's work.
It is also claimed that Germany's separate military nuclear program had tested crude nuclear weapons or "dirty bombs" on Rügen island and near Ohrdruf, Thuringia. Evidence of this claim is scant, including unconfirmed radiological evidence and eyewitness accounts of burned bodies.
TO give one final comparison to the Farm Hill interviews, the Xanadu Project's Roger Gregory (who is now woriking on rotary rocket engine design) described the astonishment of German rocket engineers in finding the US did not have rocket (and jet) technology-- "but," they exclaimed at Los Alamos, "it's all there in Von Braun's patents." However the US scientists had been unable to move from Von Braun's theoretical patents through the mathematical engineering necessary to produce rocket engines. Post-WWII American dominance relied on the capture of German scientists for rocket work, and Japanese and Italian engineers for jet and bioweapons.
jhesse inscribed: traceroute results...:... 10 losang-snvang.abilene.ucaid.edu (198.32.8.94) 49.233 ms 49.033 ms 49.442 ms 11 hpr-lax-gsr1--abilene-LA-10ge.cenic.net (137.164.25.2) 49.51 ms 49.193 ms 50.6 ms 12 sdg-hpr1--lax-hpr1-10ge.-l3.cenic.net (137.164.25.5) 52.707 ms 53.57 ms 52.723 ms 13 hpr-sdsc-sdsc2--sdg-hpr-ge.cenic.net (137.164.27.54) 53.102 ms 52.966 ms 52.942 ms 14 medusa.sdsc.edu (132.249.30.10) 52.804 ms 53.187 ms 52.894 ms 15 www.dhs.gov (192.31.21.68) 52.887 ms 53.052 ms 53.007 ms
(see parent posts; and note that Akami merely provides distributed content caching for DHS)
This looks to be a BGP (or RIP) hack. I haven't played with routing protocols for half a decade; those more current wit them may want to look more closely.
As noted, this is the sort of thing SDSC is known for. During an interview, a former sysadmin at SDSC claimed that they (and he personally) were instrumental in tracing Mitnick down, and quickly asked me not to pass that on.
What is most interesting about this, however, is that it clearly involves computer intrusion and several other felonies. From all appearance, SDSC personel broke in to other companies' routers, and changed entries to point traffic to SDSC itself, (from where they forward it to DHS's Akami cache). This is simply illegal.
Since when does a US law enforcement agency ask a university research center to commit felonies? (Oh, ooops, I forgot...)
In any case, time for me to call my favorite EFF lawyer.
The US no longer has a tritium production capability, and hasn't had one since 1988
You are a little out of date. The Watts Bar NPP in the U.S. has been used for weapons-grade tritium production since October 2003, as a result of a projected need for tritium due to the 1998 shutdown. The rods used (approx 235 of a potential 2700 that were allocated for production) at Watts Bar will be de-fueled in April 2005 and transported to the Savannah River Site, where an extraction facility will be operational in late 2007.
Tritium currently costs around $100,000/gram. Current production is around 1500g/year, mostly from old CANDU reactors in Canada.
There's a modest demand for tritium. It's needed to recharge H-bombs[...] It's used for night lights in exit signs, watches, and gunsights. Tritium has a half life of about 12 years, so you lose 5.5% every year[...] So a new product that requires tritium faces a major supply problem.
You are also a bit uninformed.
Regular and planned tritium production is necessary to the production and maintenance of a nuclear arsenal, and sufficient production to meet this and any industrial needs is made years in advance.
While highly valueable, there is certainly enough flexibility in supply to keep up with some minor increases in demand for tritium. Most commercial devices -- those that you mention -- use tritium only in minute quantities (micrograms). (Another common use is tritium labeling of drugs and other compounds, a fact that those of us who've spent time near the Lawrence Berkeley Labs Tritium Labeling Facility are well aware of). The uses mentioned -- beginning with a pacemaker -- generally require only a few mg; this is not a laptop battery technology (though perhaps a satellite battery technology).
Aldridge's current research price of tritium, to authorized personnel, is $2/Ci. At about 10000 Ci/g, that's $20K/gram, not so high, and with real quantity there is likely further discount.
this will be a specialized technology of very limited application.
Thus common batteries with this technology might contain $40 or so of tritium. And 4 million batteries at 2 mg each would only require 8 kg of tritium. A battery for a satellite is quite a different thing, and of course is going to cost quite a bit more.
As about two grams or so of tritium are necessary to the production of a "boosted" (and thereby portable nuclear weapon), it is worth noting that possession of more than.01g comes under NRC class B regulation. Let's also not forget that tritium would simply be a perfect component for a so-called "dirty" bomb; see below; but any battery large enough to supply a laptop is (other concerns aside) going to be a NRC-regulated item.
The active US nuclear stockpile currently contains about 100 kg of tritium. At the "5.5% decay/yr" or so stated above (which is somewhat of a misunderstanding of half-life curve) the US would need to produce about 5 kg/yr to recoup loss and maintain its nuclear arsenal. Plus the US must theoretically recoup the 35 kg or so it lost between 1998 and 2007 during non-production. Russia has a similar problem, and all nuclear powers -- including Israel, Pakistan and North Korea -- are assumed to use tritium boosted bombs, as the use of tritium both drastically reduces the amount of weapons-grade material needed, and produces a bomb that cannot accidentally produce a nuclear explosion -- P239 particularly is unstable and prone to fission, and the tritium in a boosted bomb is stored just outside the bomb.
In any case, every nuclear power needs regular tritium production, international shipments of more than 1kg are regulated by the NRC, and you can check the records if you want to see what is produced where and where its going (or more to the point, not going). But this boils down to that each nuclear power produces its own tritium, that the world tritium market is probably 50kg/yr or s
This is an encrypted proxy system for browsing etc.; there are multiple proxy servers available worldwide and I've never had difficulty logging on to a tunnel from inside most Asian regimes, though my primary reason is to get around site restrictions, not avoiding traffic snooping.
Unlike TOR, Primedius' product (servers) does not seem routinely blocked, even in China, though my take is that WebTunnel is so rarely used that the "regimes" have better uses for their time than following/blocking it. If WebTunnel was regularly used then it might get more attention, and I am not sure if Primedius would be interested in working around that problem.
WebTunnel traffic is encrypted, but you would likely wish to examine that issue -- that is, how secure they really are -- in depth if you were to use it vs. a regime.
On a separate note, a more effective strategy might simply be to use VNC or Terminal Services etc to make connections to a server in a "free" country, doing all your work on the remote machine. Many companies offer such services at about $50/year/user and you may find them willing to offer a discount for "political" purposes, especially if the company can get free press by supporting you. Then you simply need a way around keyloggers if you want to use public terminals -- Knoppix etc if you are sure keylogging does not occur on a hardware level.
Another "trick" around keylogging that I didn't see above is to have a non-standard (random) keyboard layout installed on the remote terminal-- frustrating to learn, but your traffic will look incomprehensible. However note that (even if you keep switching layouts) this can be defeated by serious analysis of your traffic: it's just a matter of testing which ASCII code matches which character...
we estimate the manufactured cost for a 40-inch NED panel could be under $400.
Notwithstanding that this is a press release and quite likely vaporware, manufactured cost is not retail by far. The manufactured cost of a dual-layer DVD drive has been well under $10 for quite some time.
Add to this variuous overhead from shipping to marketing and, of course, profit! and retail may be 3-4x as much. That might be an advance, but as noted, this is only a press release which says they might have a product someday and the manufacture cost could, if they're really lucky and everything goes perfectly, be under $400.
Nothing to wet your diapers about, young SlashDotter.
A passport is required to re-enter the United States,
No. Proof of citizenship is required to re-enter the US. A birth certificate and government ID are commonly accepted on the Canadian and Mexican borders.
Because the island was outside US territorial waters, I had to show my passport at airport customs to get back in
Airport Customs generally assumes that you have gone somewhere that requires a passport if you arrive at Customs. However, it is still quite simple and common to leave territorial waters and return to a private port by yacht. The Coast Guard will accept US government ID as right to proceed for individuals travelling on US-registered vessels that are stopped, though I cannot recall ever being stopped by the CG on a private yacht displaying US registration.
Territorial waters extend 12 miles, so you must have been pretty far out if there was any requirement at all. There is no log book requirement if you do not enter another country's territorial waters; private vessels are supposed to log entry to other territorial waters, and, under the Albacore treaty, US fishing vessels must report their intent to cross 24 hours in advance for crossing US/Canadian territorial waters. Canadian fishing vessels must report 72 hour in advance due to Canadian regulations.
In a democracy, you get the government you pay for, vote for, or create.
so I told them what my opinion was with that and talked to everyone I could reach in the company. I also reported them to the consumer ombudsman...
Most Americans will wine and grump and murmur about problems for hours, but are unwilling to take such simple and direct citizen action as the above in order to preserve their freedom and privacy. Like spoiled children (which they have plenty of!), they expect someone else to do this for them.
The tragedy is, it is remarkably simple to get things done in the American democracy. Most Senators' senior staffers can be reached within 15-20 minutes during work hours. If everyone reading this just picked up the phone and called their Senate offices, this change would be a political issue and the FCC would never adopt it.
The simple fact is, the corporations organize to petitition and lobby on issues that matter to them. The Citizenry does not. This is not a matter of money -- as there are far more citizens and it is easy for them to be louder (and deliver "more votes")-- but a matter of representation. What it boils down to is that the US citizenry,/.ers included, is largely lazy, politically uneducated and unwilling or unable to represent their own interests.
In short, Americans like to bitch and complain, but they don't like to act.
The first market entrant to equip these with 2.5" or 1.8" laptop drives (at 20-100G) in USB caddies is going to crunch JVC right out of the market.
Truly, one has to wonder at the product managerment drones who plop (should I say poop?) these things out. MicroDrives are evidently closest in size and appearance to Memory Cards, so use MicroDrives... even though these camcorders are HUGE, and a small media format (and capacity) doesn't make that much sense.
Apple, where are you? Take the average consumer at Best Buy, and a piddly 4GB JVC 'corder for $499 sitting next to a 60GB iPod (or Sony, or TEAC or whomever) camcorder for $399. Any choice there?
I don't think so. Of course, if I ran JVC, I'd force all product managers to read Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
If USA-193, via Milcom, it's only been up since DEC-06 and may be something other than the ordinary monitoring platform:
.00011325 00000-0 10000-3 0 03
USA-193/NROL-21 Launch specifics:
Launch date/time: December 13, 2006 2100 UTC 16:00 EST
Launcher: Delta 2/7920-10
Launch location: Western Test Range, Vandenberg AFB, California
Launch complex/pad: SLC2W
International Designator: 2006-057A
SSC #: 29651
Latest orbital parameters: 376 by 354 km orbit (91.83 minute period), inclined 58.5 degress.
Ted Molczan posted the preliminary orbital elset below on SEESAT-L:
USA 193 0.0 0.0 0.0 4.8 v
1 29651U 06057A 06350.25405986
2 29651 58.4865 114.2852 0013244 81.7541 278.5044 15.68046894 05
WRMS error = 0.026 deg
Ted noted the following observations in his post:
"The ground track nearly repeats every 2 days (30.92 revs), enabling frequent revisit of observational targets of interest. The first four Lacrosses behaved similarly (28.9 revs in 2 days). Lacrosse 5 makes 43.05 revs in 3 days. Keyholes nearly repeat every 4 days; NOSS every 4 days."
Looking at the early Lacrosse satellite missions, Ted is correct, but, of course, the Lacrosse radar imaging missions are launched into much higher altitude orbits (nearly double the height of NROL-21).
Intl Desig SSC # USA Number Period Inc Apogee Perigee
*1988-106B 19671 USA 034 97.91 56.98 660 657
1991-017A 21147 USA 069 98.00 68.00 667 660
*1997-064A 25017 USA 133 98.22 57.35 674 673 [Replaced Lacrosse 1]
2000-047A 26473 USA 152 98.47 67.99 690 681 [Replaced Lacrosse 2]
*2005-016A 28646 USA 182 99.08 57.01 718 712 [Replaced Lacrosse 3]
* Indicates a 57 degree inclination orbit, just 1.5 degree off the Lacrosse 57 deg inc plane.
As Jonathan McDowell points out in his Jonthan's Space Report Next Issue Draft:
"In contrast to most secret launches, analysts appear to have little clue as to what this payload may be."
My best guess, at this early stage, is that this is probably some sort of mission sensor platform other than a visual photo recon imaging mission. It also could be a new sensor development mission. But that is "only" a best guess!
From Yahoo!
Pike, director of the defense research group GlobalSecurity.org, estimated that the spacecraft weighs about 20,000 pounds and is the size of a small bus. He said the satellite would create 10 times less debris than the Columbia space shuttle crash in 2003.
Now, um, how did the darn thing "loose power?..." Bet that's a secret...
In 2002, officials believe debris from a 7,000-pound science satellite smacked into the Earth's atmosphere and rained down over the Persian Gulf, a few thousand miles from where they first predicted it would plummet.
Anyone wanna take bets on this one hitting Iran?
WRONG.
Trademarks are issued per-domain, such as Entertainment--Comedy. See USPTO.gov. A trademark issued in one domain will not protect you in another, thus, someone operating in another trade domain can use 'your' mark in domains outside yours AND have the domain name.
Also, you must show that you have business operations -- a product actually SOLD-- in a domain to be issued a mark by the USPTO.
YMMV, IANAL.
Opera 8.02, Linux.
The javascript on these articles sets the size as fixed and shuts off the resize tab. The quote marks and other elements of the document do not display correctly because of CSS errors. Your browser may respond differently to these commands; YMMV.
I can change the sizing, restore toolbars, etc in menus or (if this had been done worse) I can view source, edit out the offending code, and open the resulting document. Both are fairly inconvenient ways to get things done. Bottom line: the formatting of this is a barrier to people reading it.
I am fairly familiar with Reis and his ideas, which are posted elsewhere than Adage. I pretty much agree with each of his articles except this one on convergence. Darn it, it just doesn't make sense for me to carry a PDA, cell phone, and MP3 player!
That doesn't make any single device such as the Rokr sucessful; MP3 phones have been here for years, and I could give less than a flying fuck about iTunes integration. I've been settling for the Sony Ericsson P800 for two years-- with a 1GB card, it holds a few MP3s or a movie, can control a remote desktop, etc. But the interfacing is poor; the phone is awkward to use; as a PDA, it's not a Palm. And to boot, Cingular just shut off most 1900MHz equipment in my area, so rather than buy a 910a (=American, =850Mhz instead of 900, = won't work too well in Europe or Asia), I'm probably going to try a Treo. Oh what fun; another, inadequate interface, just different. My hands are to big for a laptop keyboard; why the #$(*& do I have to carry that... whatever it is that the Treo has below the screen...
The original post's contention that the Rokr should use cell phone downloads (at 5kbps, that's about an hour a song!) instead of USB is one indication of how ludicrous the first article is. The other suggestions probably make more sense, I just can't take the author seriously after reading that.
Cheers.
go to this page and click on, "The Convergence Bubble."
http://www.ries.com/Articles/index.cfm?Page=adage
This brings up a pop-up window that is set at 120-point width, in huge text. I am not going to read through a long article in a huge font in a little bitty pop-up window 120 pixels wide. I am not going to bother to change my settings to fix this, much less edit the raw HTML. Ain't that important to read this guy, whatever he has to say, if he can't present his content in a palatable form. Whatever else this guy has going for him, a user interace guru he is not.
Imagine if intelligent design was applied to math, we'd end up with Pi to the value of 3 because 3.14.
You do realize that, in the State of Indiana, the legislature long ago declared the value of Pi to be 3?
Now letsee here...
MediaMaxx installs a driver/device using AutoRun on insertion a so-called "copy-protected" CD.
Australia has recently created a $10K/install fine for installing software without permission.
Hmmm.
Seriously, who leaves autorun turned on anyway?
Comment intéressant! Vous grenouilles n'avez pas eu un tel ressentiment contre l'impérialisme renvoyé de nous yankees pendant la deuxième guerre mondiale, non?
[For the French-impaired, something like: "How interesting! And you frogs didn't resent Yankee imperialism so much during the Second World War, did you?"
and Range Aussi Ta Pere= Fuck your father as well= once popular French Rap group "RATP," whose initials are the same as the French National Rail company RATP...]
Boeing and NASA have been operating a joint supersonic project at Columbus for more than a decade.
Current thought in the US is that we will jump directly to hypersonic, first for military and then commercial uses, because its just so darn cheaper in the end.
What you are missing is that any reasonable supersonic aircraft would ride the sonic wave pattern, which (among other effects) provides some nice fuel savings. The SR-71 did this, and any modern super- or hyper-sonic craft will exploit such effects. The net is that supersonic craft should be more fuel efficient.
The SR-71 was of course late 50s design; the Concorde, in fact, was early 50s technology, basically a subsonic jet beefed up to withstand supersonic shock, but not a true supersonic design like the SR-71. Fifty years later, science can do a little better.
Dear Anonymous Coward,
"Hello FBI. This is Joe Schmoeovich. I'm a sophomore at Lost High School in lower Macedonian. It seems the National Center for SuperComputing somewhere near someplace called San Diego in your country is mounting a DoS attack against the computer I hack from in a local cybercafe. Could you send an agent over and take action?"
In practice, the counterattacks will come from recognized entities and be against small-time, unknown entities. Good luck in getting any action.
Uh, what gave you that impression?
The principle that the losing party in any legitimate legal action pays fees is derived from common law, and applies in the US. Regardless of who brought the action, the loser generally must pay the cost, unless the judge or jury determines the action to have been frivilous (for instance, in many defamation cases where the claim is upheld but no damages can be shown, the defendent pays no or only a minor part of the opponent's legal cost, on the theory that the action was essentially frivoulous).
Given the current cost and difficulty of litigation, this creates a situation where legal filing is more a game of poker than a real process. When the cost of litigating a minor claim is $10-20K US, merely filing can cause another party to cave in, because the cost of even responding is too great. Car insurers, for instance, will usually not counter-litigate a case under $50,000, regardless of the chances of success, because the cost is on average greater than the loss.
Equally, in the case of an insurance company, if they are sued for judgement and they win, they can make the person who sued them liable for attorney's fees and court costs, but generally this person won't have the resources to suddenly pay $50-80K, so there's not much point to winning. Because of this, I've seen insurance companies cough up $10K in very trivial cases, and there are people who make a living getting into accidents and suing insurance companies.
This is one of many pieces of evidence against your statement:
US, which is why we are the most litigious country in the world.
In fact, the US is one of the least litigious countries, because among other things it is very expensive to litigate a problem, and the state of US law is ridiculously complex and technical (in comparison to hundreds of thosands of volumes of state law, the entire civil code for the Czech Republic fits into two volumes -- when printed in German and Czech on facing pages; in comparison with 18,000 pages of US tarrif codes and rates, Japan's tarrif rates fit on four pages in English). Historical studies have shown that the number of lawsuits filed per capita in the US is less than one-fifth the amount filed 1820-1840.
The bottom line is that the US system works far more poorly than it would if lawyers were paid less and there was more litigation at lower cost.
If someone steals from you, should you steal from them or hurt them? I would say no, and most moral philosophy would also say so too. From a legal standpoint, this is America dammit! Even if I try to take down slashdot.org their return attack has violated my rights to due process.
This seems to be an example of someone talking out of their rear end.
No, I cannot legally break into a thief's house and steal at will, whether or not that would be a good thing. But if that house is the center of an organized crime network, and the door is open to me-- say I knock and say "hey guys, I wanna join your network of theives--" there are then all sorts of interesting I can do to grab some of your property, as I am a private citizen. If I happen to pick up stolen property around your house and put it in escrow and inform the police, have fun trying to sue me for your loss.
"Due Process" of law is a formal right that you have in relation to US Courts, governmental agencies, and certain businesses and entities operating in the public domain and offering services known as "public accomodations." As a private citizen, I do not have to treat you with due process. I can pee on your foot because I don't like your eye color if I choose, just as a private club can restrict its membership to white non-Jews if it chooses, however objectionable either action may be.
If you come into a business, or my home, and steal something, the business (or I) do not have any obigation to offer you much due process. The police and the Courts owe you due process if I call them up, sure-- but so long as I don't actively break the law, I can do what I bloody please to you, which might be quite painful. If you've just stolen something from me and happen to leave your car in my drive, drop your credit card on my floor while you're in my premise stealing things, etc., good luck in convincing any court that reasonable (if extreme) action to recover damages is "criminal." If I "break in" to your house and take something, sure that's breaking and entering-- but if I happen to know where you live and have a reasonable suspicion that you use the premises in the commission of felony acts (meaning it is subject to confiscation), and I come over and the door is open, and I pick up your TV and stereo and computer and put them in a legal escrow against the damages you've cause me, and send you notice-- don't expect a court too likely to call it a robbery. You're free to bring suit against me to recover the value of your properly and damages, if you think your chances as a thief in Court are very good.
If you're the local crack dealer, known for being violent and harassing the neighborhood, and you come over and beat up my wife and children after trying to extort some money out of them, don't be sure that I as a private citizen can't come over to the crack house (which is an illegal establishment) and shoot you, on the theory that you represent an imminent threat to other's lives.
Case law on these kinds of cases tends to side with the person whose family or community is hurt-- remember that wonderful guy in San Fransisco a few years back who dropped crowbars from the forth floor on the cars of Johns who were looking for prostitutes in his neighborhood? Aquitted, of course, and odd that he was charged. Local law enforcement-- well, I've had officers suggests that "do it yourself" is the best way to get something done in certain situations. And if I have a squeaky-clean family-man record and my neighborhood is in decline because of your crack business, I can't see many DAs wanting the publicity of prosecuting such a case. "Due process" or not, you are a crack dealer and they are elected by the people, and if you think a crack dealers gets the same due process as a white family man in the United States, you are smoking something.
In cyberlaw, the chances of an attacking party claiming that a cou
--Bill Gates, in an address to the BSA, June 10th, 2005
Some people don't want their personal business displayed to the public, which is why we don't live in glass houses.
The best known written account is Thomas Powers' Heisenberg's War: The Secret History of the German Bomb (Knopf, 1993). It is quite detailed in the intriques of who knew what when, and a wonderful read for those who have followed the histories of Oppenheimer and Teller.
The Allies were critically aware of Germany's bomb project and vice-versa. Indeed, many of those working on the Manhattan Project knew Heisenberg personally, and considered him as capable as Oppenheimer. The assumption was that the Allies were in a close race with Germany toward the bomb, and if were not for Heisenberg's singular actions in scuttling the project-- Heisenberg considered Hitler an ursurper-- the early months of 1945 may have begun with the destruction of London and Paris. In the annals of war, equally fortutious events prevented the Japanese from unleashing their anthrax and bubonic plague bombs on San Diego and San Francisco, but that is another story.
The Farm Hall transcripts contain the secretly recorded conversations of German scientists interred in England, and while the opinions of some scientists rather far down in the German program, the conversations of Heisenberg, von Weiszsaeker and other make it relatively clear that any German scientist involved in the Atomic Weapons program was quite aware that the US would succeed in producing a weapon. Heisenberg's largely unsung contribution to world peace was denying the bomb to Nazi Germany.
Obviously from the above, I do not accept the conclusion that the German scientists were simply incapable of constructing a bomb, which is also widely argued. Others argue that the German program was doomed because atomic production required large facilities that could be bombed, because the German military bureaucracy did not devote sufficient resources to it, or because demoralized German scientists working under a totalitarian regime "were not into it" and produced poor science. While there is truth to all these accounts, Power's account to me is a convincing argurment that Heisenberg and others did not want the Nazis to have the bomb, and took actions that were high treason and effectively ended the program.
Heisenberg and others were also quite clear on what it theoretically took to produce an atomic bomb, as this had been more or less publically published at the time (after the initial article on fission by Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch), and had worked out the blackboard details with typical Teutonic detail. Whether any of their design details survive is unknown to me, but they had designed a German atomic bomb and the precursor reactors, with whatever errors. In comparison the drawing in this article is child's work.
It is also claimed that Germany's separate military nuclear program had tested crude nuclear weapons or "dirty bombs" on Rügen island and near Ohrdruf, Thuringia. Evidence of this claim is scant, including unconfirmed radiological evidence and eyewitness accounts of burned bodies.
TO give one final comparison to the Farm Hill interviews, the Xanadu Project's Roger Gregory (who is now woriking on rotary rocket engine design) described the astonishment of German rocket engineers in finding the US did not have rocket (and jet) technology-- "but," they exclaimed at Los Alamos, "it's all there in Von Braun's patents." However the US scientists had been unable to move from Von Braun's theoretical patents through the mathematical engineering necessary to produce rocket engines. Post-WWII American dominance relied on the capture of German scientists for rocket work, and Japanese and Italian engineers for jet and bioweapons.
jhesse inscribed: ...
traceroute results...:
10 losang-snvang.abilene.ucaid.edu (198.32.8.94) 49.233 ms 49.033 ms 49.442 ms
11 hpr-lax-gsr1--abilene-LA-10ge.cenic.net (137.164.25.2) 49.51 ms 49.193 ms 50.6 ms
12 sdg-hpr1--lax-hpr1-10ge.-l3.cenic.net (137.164.25.5) 52.707 ms 53.57 ms 52.723 ms
13 hpr-sdsc-sdsc2--sdg-hpr-ge.cenic.net (137.164.27.54) 53.102 ms 52.966 ms 52.942 ms
14 medusa.sdsc.edu (132.249.30.10) 52.804 ms 53.187 ms 52.894 ms
15 www.dhs.gov (192.31.21.68) 52.887 ms 53.052 ms 53.007 ms
(see parent posts; and note that Akami merely provides distributed content caching for DHS)
This looks to be a BGP (or RIP) hack. I haven't played with routing protocols for half a decade; those more current wit them may want to look more closely.
As noted, this is the sort of thing SDSC is known for. During an interview, a former sysadmin at SDSC claimed that they (and he personally) were instrumental in tracing Mitnick down, and quickly asked me not to pass that on.
What is most interesting about this, however, is that it clearly involves computer intrusion and several other felonies. From all appearance, SDSC personel broke in to other companies' routers, and changed entries to point traffic to SDSC itself, (from where they forward it to DHS's Akami cache). This is simply illegal.
Since when does a US law enforcement agency ask a university research center to commit felonies? (Oh, ooops, I forgot...)
In any case, time for me to call my favorite EFF lawyer.
The US no longer has a tritium production capability, and hasn't had one since 1988
.01g comes under NRC class B regulation. Let's also not forget that tritium would simply be a perfect component for a so-called "dirty" bomb; see below; but any battery large enough to supply a laptop is (other concerns aside) going to be a NRC-regulated item.
You are a little out of date. The Watts Bar NPP in the U.S. has been used for weapons-grade tritium production since October 2003, as a result of a projected need for tritium due to the 1998 shutdown. The rods used (approx 235 of a potential 2700 that were allocated for production) at Watts Bar will be de-fueled in April 2005 and transported to the Savannah River Site, where an extraction facility will be operational in late 2007.
Tritium currently costs around $100,000/gram. Current production is around 1500g/year, mostly from old CANDU reactors in Canada.
There's a modest demand for tritium. It's needed to recharge H-bombs[...] It's used for night lights in exit signs, watches, and gunsights. Tritium has a half life of about 12 years, so you lose 5.5% every year[...] So a new product that requires tritium faces a major supply problem.
You are also a bit uninformed.
Regular and planned tritium production is necessary to the production and maintenance of a nuclear arsenal, and sufficient production to meet this and any industrial needs is made years in advance.
While highly valueable, there is certainly enough flexibility in supply to keep up with some minor increases in demand for tritium. Most commercial devices -- those that you mention -- use tritium only in minute quantities (micrograms). (Another common use is tritium labeling of drugs and other compounds, a fact that those of us who've spent time near the Lawrence Berkeley Labs Tritium Labeling Facility are well aware of). The uses mentioned -- beginning with a pacemaker -- generally require only a few mg; this is not a laptop battery technology (though perhaps a satellite battery technology).
Aldridge's current research price of tritium, to authorized personnel, is $2/Ci. At about 10000 Ci/g, that's $20K/gram, not so high, and with real quantity there is likely further discount.
this will be a specialized technology of very limited application.
Thus common batteries with this technology might contain $40 or so of tritium. And 4 million batteries at 2 mg each would only require 8 kg of tritium. A battery for a satellite is quite a different thing, and of course is going to cost quite a bit more.
As about two grams or so of tritium are necessary to the production of a "boosted" (and thereby portable nuclear weapon), it is worth noting that possession of more than
The active US nuclear stockpile currently contains about 100 kg of tritium. At the "5.5% decay/yr" or so stated above (which is somewhat of a misunderstanding of half-life curve) the US would need to produce about 5 kg/yr to recoup loss and maintain its nuclear arsenal. Plus the US must theoretically recoup the 35 kg or so it lost between 1998 and 2007 during non-production. Russia has a similar problem, and all nuclear powers -- including Israel, Pakistan and North Korea -- are assumed to use tritium boosted bombs, as the use of tritium both drastically reduces the amount of weapons-grade material needed, and produces a bomb that cannot accidentally produce a nuclear explosion -- P239 particularly is unstable and prone to fission, and the tritium in a boosted bomb is stored just outside the bomb.
In any case, every nuclear power needs regular tritium production, international shipments of more than 1kg are regulated by the NRC, and you can check the records if you want to see what is produced where and where its going (or more to the point, not going). But this boils down to that each nuclear power produces its own tritium, that the world tritium market is probably 50kg/yr or s
Also: you may wish to see (from Global Voices online) Ethan Zuckerman's Technical Guide to Anonymous Blogging
Not yet mentioned here is a commercial product: Primedius webtunnel.
This is an encrypted proxy system for browsing etc.; there are multiple proxy servers available worldwide and I've never had difficulty logging on to a tunnel from inside most Asian regimes, though my primary reason is to get around site restrictions, not avoiding traffic snooping.
Unlike TOR, Primedius' product (servers) does not seem routinely blocked, even in China, though my take is that WebTunnel is so rarely used that the "regimes" have better uses for their time than following/blocking it. If WebTunnel was regularly used then it might get more attention, and I am not sure if Primedius would be interested in working around that problem.
WebTunnel traffic is encrypted, but you would likely wish to examine that issue -- that is, how secure they really are -- in depth if you were to use it vs. a regime.
On a separate note, a more effective strategy might simply be to use VNC or Terminal Services etc to make connections to a server in a "free" country, doing all your work on the remote machine. Many companies offer such services at about $50/year/user and you may find them willing to offer a discount for "political" purposes, especially if the company can get free press by supporting you. Then you simply need a way around keyloggers if you want to use public terminals -- Knoppix etc if you are sure keylogging does not occur on a hardware level.
Another "trick" around keylogging that I didn't see above is to have a non-standard (random) keyboard layout installed on the remote terminal-- frustrating to learn, but your traffic will look incomprehensible. However note that (even if you keep switching layouts) this can be defeated by serious analysis of your traffic: it's just a matter of testing which ASCII code matches which character...
Notwithstanding that this is a press release and quite likely vaporware, manufactured cost is not retail by far. The manufactured cost of a dual-layer DVD drive has been well under $10 for quite some time.
Add to this variuous overhead from shipping to marketing and, of course, profit! and retail may be 3-4x as much. That might be an advance, but as noted, this is only a press release which says they might have a product someday and the manufacture cost could, if they're really lucky and everything goes perfectly, be under $400.
Nothing to wet your diapers about, young SlashDotter.
No. Proof of citizenship is required to re-enter the US. A birth certificate and government ID are commonly accepted on the Canadian and Mexican borders.
Because the island was outside US territorial waters, I had to show my passport at airport customs to get back in
Airport Customs generally assumes that you have gone somewhere that requires a passport if you arrive at Customs. However, it is still quite simple and common to leave territorial waters and return to a private port by yacht. The Coast Guard will accept US government ID as right to proceed for individuals travelling on US-registered vessels that are stopped, though I cannot recall ever being stopped by the CG on a private yacht displaying US registration.
Territorial waters extend 12 miles, so you must have been pretty far out if there was any requirement at all. There is no log book requirement if you do not enter another country's territorial waters; private vessels are supposed to log entry to other territorial waters, and, under the Albacore treaty, US fishing vessels must report their intent to cross 24 hours in advance for crossing US/Canadian territorial waters. Canadian fishing vessels must report 72 hour in advance due to Canadian regulations.
so I told them what my opinion was with that and talked to everyone I could reach in the company. I also reported them to the consumer ombudsman...
Most Americans will wine and grump and murmur about problems for hours, but are unwilling to take such simple and direct citizen action as the above in order to preserve their freedom and privacy. Like spoiled children (which they have plenty of!), they expect someone else to do this for them. The tragedy is, it is remarkably simple to get things done in the American democracy. Most Senators' senior staffers can be reached within 15-20 minutes during work hours. If everyone reading this just picked up the phone and called their Senate offices, this change would be a political issue and the FCC would never adopt it.
The simple fact is, the corporations organize to petitition and lobby on issues that matter to them. The Citizenry does not. This is not a matter of money -- as there are far more citizens and it is easy for them to be louder (and deliver "more votes")-- but a matter of representation. What it boils down to is that the US citizenry, /.ers included, is largely lazy, politically uneducated and unwilling or unable to represent their own interests.
In short, Americans like to bitch and complain, but they don't like to act.
The first market entrant to equip these with 2.5" or 1.8" laptop drives (at 20-100G) in USB caddies is going to crunch JVC right out of the market.
Truly, one has to wonder at the product managerment drones who plop (should I say poop?) these things out. MicroDrives are evidently closest in size and appearance to Memory Cards, so use MicroDrives... even though these camcorders are HUGE, and a small media format (and capacity) doesn't make that much sense.
Apple, where are you? Take the average consumer at Best Buy, and a piddly 4GB JVC 'corder for $499 sitting next to a 60GB iPod (or Sony, or TEAC or whomever) camcorder for $399. Any choice there?
I don't think so. Of course, if I ran JVC, I'd force all product managers to read Slashdot.