I do it all the time, after a fashion. It's amateur radio, and we use ionospheric skips to get over the horizon.
Yeah, sort of. That's really just the ionosphere refracting your wave back down to Earth. Once you get to a certain density of charged particles, the atmosphere begins to bend waves, much in the same way light bends when it enters a medium of different density like glass.
This is slightly heating and cooling a long stream of rapidly moving charge particles circling the arctic region. I'll point out that something like the space shuttle releases LOADS more heat into the ionosphere than HAARP ever could.
So you're saying that since you don't know how it could be used for that, then it can't be used for that?
Yes I am. In much the same way I'd say you can't use a microwave oven to heat Yankee stadium (and proportionately, HAARP is much much smaller then a microwave oven to a stadium).
Do you have any idea the amount of energy it would take to affect the Earth's weather patterns with microwave radiation?
HAARP is powered by four diesel locomotives that have been converted to a power plant. That may seem like alot of power (it burns about $60,000 in fuel per hour of operation), but you have to consider the scales on which weather phenomena occur.
Think of it this way. The earth's weather is generated by (among other things) a combination of the Moon's gravity (tides), Solar radiation, and the spin of the Earth. The amount of energy generated by these processes is (many) orders of magnitude beyond anything man-made, with perhaps the exception of thermo-nuclear bombs.
And for the idiot who claimed HAARP generates "billions" of watts of power... well I just can't help you. HAARP generates a MAXIMUM of about 4MW. The diesel engines can maybe generate 10MW. Where do these lunatics think HAARP gets these billions of watts from? Some gigantic hidden powerplant that generates no exhaust, noise, or smell?
Must be a slow day. Conspiracy articles about HAARP causing Moscow to burn, and an article about a security flaw that has been fixed. Fascinating stuff... What's next?
I worked with HAARP for several years, including conducting several experiments at the facility itself.
While it is certainly a neat piece of hardware, there's absolutely nothing sinister going on there. I tried to explain what we were doing at the facility to some of the tin-foil-hat-wearing locals, but unfortunately they didn't even want to try to understand.
It's just a big microwave pointed at the sky. It illuminates a stream of charged particles which circle the earth at high latitude, known as the electrojets. By heating and cooling this stream of particles in the ionosphere, we were able to modulate a signal onto the electrojet (since it's conductivity is temperature dependent), turning the electrojet into a gigantic low frequency antenna. We used the signals generated to study the ionosphere and magnetosphere of the earth.
As much as I would like to be able to claim that it can be used to control the weather, such far-fetched notions are pure fantasies, spawned from the minds of those who don't understand the physics of space plasmas. Or have any notion of what a plasma is. Or how weather patterns are created. I mean hell, we were barely able to use it to generate a coherent signal using the electrojet (already quite the feat of science). How the hell could we use it to affect the weather???
Well, speeding is illegal. Apparently having pre-installed software which takes pictures isn't.
Now if they were pictures in the bathroom, it would be a different story... I'm not saying I agree with the fact that this sort of monitoring software isn't explicitly illegal... But afaik it's not illegal to take pictures of people in the US without informing them, unless of course, you intend to use them for some unlawful purpose.
The case isn't dropped completely, and for that I'm glad:
A student and his family sued the district in February, claiming officials invaded his privacy by activating the software. That case continues.
But still, it really grinds my gears that this whole thing isn't explicitly illegal. The fact that it's legal for the school district to take thousands of screenshots of unsuspecting children is really pretty upsetting.
Umm no... you are not committing a crime if you withhold facts from the police, at least not anywhere in the USA. Enjoy your new-found constitutional rights!
You sure about that? If someone I know kidnaps a person, and I know about it but don't tell the Police, I'm not committing a crime?
The fifth amendment only protects you from self-incrimination, not against the incrimination of others.
If you hide essential facts regarding yourself, it is a 5th amendment issue (not a crime).
Only if by speaking you'd be incriminating yourself (or, I believe, your spouse).
If you hide information from the police which would have led to the arrest of someone else, you become guilty of obstructing justice. Say, for instance, you were a Priest having sex at your lover's house when you saw someone get murdered through the window (while going at it furiously with your secret gay life-partner in the living room). You might not say anything to the Police in order to avoid the embarrassment of having your sordid affair become public. The fifth amendment would not apply, since you aren't avoiding self-incrimination, merely self-embarrassment.
Bits are only bits in a context. When that context is code it is completely different than when taken in a data context.
Right, and there is no steadfast distinction. Code is data until it gets interpreted into a series of instructions. Even that you could still call data, since it is still only a sequence of bits residing somewhere in memory which describe a possible sequence of actions.
The point is that nothing residing in a computer CAN be an algorithm, since an algorithm is a theoretical construct. A program is just data which describes what happens when it is applied to other data.
So it doesn't matter where you draw the line between cipher and key. It may take a little mind-bending, but data describes the path that will be taken just as much as the program itself. A "program" and its "data" are just two pieces of data being combined. We call one "program" and the other "data" to help our understanding. But as Prune was saying, the line is often blurred, if not completely thrown out. If I imbed a virus in an image file, is it "data" or a "program"?
The people who want to change Iran will have to display a greater will to power than the Islamocracy. That's a very tough act to follow. It would require a Maoist level of ruthlessness, not the trifling discontent of a few young people.
Unfortunately, very true. Americans were spoiled by a revolution that was really quite easy when it comes down to it. Britain was ruled by a King who was borderline (if not completely) insane, and was distracted by their on-again-off-again war with the French. Not to mention the vast array of other colonial possessions they needed to keep in line.
I imagine a revolution in Iran would be much more along the lines of the first French revolution. It's not a colonial revolution. It's overthrow of a regime governed by their own people. The Supreme Leader is not going to just roll over and let disgruntled students overthrow their "perfect" theocracy, where nobody is gay, women are never raped, and everyone is a devout Muslim. To achieve true Democracy, heads will need to roll, blood will need to wash clean the atrocities and oppression of the current rulers. I just hope that the US government is smart enough to realize that this sort of revolution cannot be instigated from abroad; it must come directly and unequivocally from within.
I think the point trying to be made is that bits are bits, and that drawing the distinction between those which act on others, and those which are acted upon is merely a construct we use to keep things sane.
You could just as easily make data which contains an algorithm (say, self extracting compressed files), as you could make an algorithm which contains data (any algorithm which contains a pre-defined filter).
Right. He's not a journalist, since he doesn't really report, he merely transports facts from the hidden vaults their stored in to the light of day. Which makes him a member of the press, since press without facts is just fiction printed on grey paper.
How can a democracy exist if there is no one you can trust to lead?
Yes, at some point you have to trust them. I'd say that point is AFTER they present the facts to you, rather than BEFORE.
How can it exist if all of its soldiers are wiped out because the enemy has the truth of all your troop movements and plans?
Who's releasing plans and troops movements? These are after-action reports.
If it harms us to release reports about what we've done, then so be it. If I hide essential facts from the police simply because disclosing them would make me look bad, I'm committing a crime. But if our government does it, its okay? We choose to accept those risks in the name of freedom and an open society. I'd rather lose justly, with honor, than win through secrecy and deceit. That used to be the American-way, but it seems more and more that people believe the end justifies the means.
I don't think you're allowed to call your opinion "humble" when its calling for anyone who's ever committed treason to be shot.
Should Schindler have been shot? The thousands of families that hid Jews? The Quakers who ferried slaves to freedom?
Oh wait, I guess we don't need to shoot THOSE people because God's on our side, right?
Yes, and some truth-hidings result in people dying. Trying to strike the perfect balance of "hidden" versus "exposed" "truths" is ridiculous. Release all reports, and accept the consequences of your actions. How can a Democracy exist if the people aren't allowed to make informed decisions? How can the American people vote concerning the war this November if they aren't given access to any information about the war??
How can you "hide" behind freedom of the press? Do you only consider "press" to be the corporate propaganda mass-media drivel fed to you by Fox and Friends?
If anything, Assange is much more of a reporter than anyone in the US media. He takes information, and he disseminates it freely to the public, without modifying it (except for removing names and the like). That's much more in line with what the "press" should be than the constant editorializing you get from Glenn Beck.
We live in an open society (or rather, we purport to...), and with that comes danger. We claim to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the rest of the world, but then cover up our actions by burying them under the cloak of "National Security".
Yeah or we could "assume" that Hinduism, Buddhism, or Jainism are right, that the practice of Ahimsa is essential, and that, in attempting to end violence, he was acting not only morally, but nobly.
He broke the UCMJ, and he'll be punished for it. That's only fair. But don't try to start tying morality into this sort of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I do it all the time, after a fashion. It's amateur radio, and we use ionospheric skips to get over the horizon.
Yeah, sort of. That's really just the ionosphere refracting your wave back down to Earth. Once you get to a certain density of charged particles, the atmosphere begins to bend waves, much in the same way light bends when it enters a medium of different density like glass.
This is slightly heating and cooling a long stream of rapidly moving charge particles circling the arctic region. I'll point out that something like the space shuttle releases LOADS more heat into the ionosphere than HAARP ever could.
"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions. They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."
But Google, I don't WANNA. No Google, don't get mad! AHHHHHH!
So you're saying that since you don't know how it could be used for that, then it can't be used for that?
Yes I am. In much the same way I'd say you can't use a microwave oven to heat Yankee stadium (and proportionately, HAARP is much much smaller then a microwave oven to a stadium).
HAARP is powered by four diesel locomotives that have been converted to a power plant. That may seem like alot of power (it burns about $60,000 in fuel per hour of operation), but you have to consider the scales on which weather phenomena occur.
Think of it this way. The earth's weather is generated by (among other things) a combination of the Moon's gravity (tides), Solar radiation, and the spin of the Earth. The amount of energy generated by these processes is (many) orders of magnitude beyond anything man-made, with perhaps the exception of thermo-nuclear bombs.
And for the idiot who claimed HAARP generates "billions" of watts of power... well I just can't help you. HAARP generates a MAXIMUM of about 4MW. The diesel engines can maybe generate 10MW. Where do these lunatics think HAARP gets these billions of watts from? Some gigantic hidden powerplant that generates no exhaust, noise, or smell?
Woh woh woh. Yes, perhaps the Nazi reference was a bit over the top. But it wasn't an important part of the poster's comment.
Must be a slow day. Conspiracy articles about HAARP causing Moscow to burn, and an article about a security flaw that has been fixed. Fascinating stuff... What's next?
It's just a big microwave pointed at the sky. It illuminates a stream of charged particles which circle the earth at high latitude, known as the electrojets. By heating and cooling this stream of particles in the ionosphere, we were able to modulate a signal onto the electrojet (since it's conductivity is temperature dependent), turning the electrojet into a gigantic low frequency antenna. We used the signals generated to study the ionosphere and magnetosphere of the earth.
As much as I would like to be able to claim that it can be used to control the weather, such far-fetched notions are pure fantasies, spawned from the minds of those who don't understand the physics of space plasmas. Or have any notion of what a plasma is. Or how weather patterns are created. I mean hell, we were barely able to use it to generate a coherent signal using the electrojet (already quite the feat of science). How the hell could we use it to affect the weather???
Well, speeding is illegal. Apparently having pre-installed software which takes pictures isn't.
Now if they were pictures in the bathroom, it would be a different story... I'm not saying I agree with the fact that this sort of monitoring software isn't explicitly illegal... But afaik it's not illegal to take pictures of people in the US without informing them, unless of course, you intend to use them for some unlawful purpose.
A student and his family sued the district in February, claiming officials invaded his privacy by activating the software. That case continues.
But still, it really grinds my gears that this whole thing isn't explicitly illegal. The fact that it's legal for the school district to take thousands of screenshots of unsuspecting children is really pretty upsetting.
Umm no ... you are not committing a crime if you withhold facts from the police, at least not anywhere in the USA. Enjoy your new-found constitutional rights!
You sure about that? If someone I know kidnaps a person, and I know about it but don't tell the Police, I'm not committing a crime? The fifth amendment only protects you from self-incrimination, not against the incrimination of others.
If you hide essential facts regarding yourself, it is a 5th amendment issue (not a crime).
Only if by speaking you'd be incriminating yourself (or, I believe, your spouse).
If you hide information from the police which would have led to the arrest of someone else, you become guilty of obstructing justice. Say, for instance, you were a Priest having sex at your lover's house when you saw someone get murdered through the window (while going at it furiously with your secret gay life-partner in the living room). You might not say anything to the Police in order to avoid the embarrassment of having your sordid affair become public. The fifth amendment would not apply, since you aren't avoiding self-incrimination, merely self-embarrassment.
Bits are only bits in a context. When that context is code it is completely different than when taken in a data context.
Right, and there is no steadfast distinction. Code is data until it gets interpreted into a series of instructions. Even that you could still call data, since it is still only a sequence of bits residing somewhere in memory which describe a possible sequence of actions.
The point is that nothing residing in a computer CAN be an algorithm, since an algorithm is a theoretical construct. A program is just data which describes what happens when it is applied to other data.
So it doesn't matter where you draw the line between cipher and key. It may take a little mind-bending, but data describes the path that will be taken just as much as the program itself. A "program" and its "data" are just two pieces of data being combined. We call one "program" and the other "data" to help our understanding. But as Prune was saying, the line is often blurred, if not completely thrown out. If I imbed a virus in an image file, is it "data" or a "program"?
The people who want to change Iran will have to display a greater will to power than the Islamocracy. That's a very tough act to follow. It would require a Maoist level of ruthlessness, not the trifling discontent of a few young people.
Unfortunately, very true. Americans were spoiled by a revolution that was really quite easy when it comes down to it. Britain was ruled by a King who was borderline (if not completely) insane, and was distracted by their on-again-off-again war with the French. Not to mention the vast array of other colonial possessions they needed to keep in line.
I imagine a revolution in Iran would be much more along the lines of the first French revolution. It's not a colonial revolution. It's overthrow of a regime governed by their own people. The Supreme Leader is not going to just roll over and let disgruntled students overthrow their "perfect" theocracy, where nobody is gay, women are never raped, and everyone is a devout Muslim. To achieve true Democracy, heads will need to roll, blood will need to wash clean the atrocities and oppression of the current rulers. I just hope that the US government is smart enough to realize that this sort of revolution cannot be instigated from abroad; it must come directly and unequivocally from within.
I think the point trying to be made is that bits are bits, and that drawing the distinction between those which act on others, and those which are acted upon is merely a construct we use to keep things sane. You could just as easily make data which contains an algorithm (say, self extracting compressed files), as you could make an algorithm which contains data (any algorithm which contains a pre-defined filter).
Right. He's not a journalist, since he doesn't really report, he merely transports facts from the hidden vaults their stored in to the light of day. Which makes him a member of the press, since press without facts is just fiction printed on grey paper.
How can a democracy exist if there is no one you can trust to lead?
Yes, at some point you have to trust them. I'd say that point is AFTER they present the facts to you, rather than BEFORE.
How can it exist if all of its soldiers are wiped out because the enemy has the truth of all your troop movements and plans?
Who's releasing plans and troops movements? These are after-action reports. If it harms us to release reports about what we've done, then so be it. If I hide essential facts from the police simply because disclosing them would make me look bad, I'm committing a crime. But if our government does it, its okay? We choose to accept those risks in the name of freedom and an open society. I'd rather lose justly, with honor, than win through secrecy and deceit. That used to be the American-way, but it seems more and more that people believe the end justifies the means.
I don't think you're allowed to call your opinion "humble" when its calling for anyone who's ever committed treason to be shot. Should Schindler have been shot? The thousands of families that hid Jews? The Quakers who ferried slaves to freedom? Oh wait, I guess we don't need to shoot THOSE people because God's on our side, right?
Some truth-tellings result in people dying.
Yes, and some truth-hidings result in people dying. Trying to strike the perfect balance of "hidden" versus "exposed" "truths" is ridiculous. Release all reports, and accept the consequences of your actions. How can a Democracy exist if the people aren't allowed to make informed decisions? How can the American people vote concerning the war this November if they aren't given access to any information about the war??
How can you "hide" behind freedom of the press? Do you only consider "press" to be the corporate propaganda mass-media drivel fed to you by Fox and Friends? If anything, Assange is much more of a reporter than anyone in the US media. He takes information, and he disseminates it freely to the public, without modifying it (except for removing names and the like). That's much more in line with what the "press" should be than the constant editorializing you get from Glenn Beck. We live in an open society (or rather, we purport to...), and with that comes danger. We claim to hold ourselves to a higher standard than the rest of the world, but then cover up our actions by burying them under the cloak of "National Security".
So, assuming hell exists and it is as Dante wrote
Yeah or we could "assume" that Hinduism, Buddhism, or Jainism are right, that the practice of Ahimsa is essential, and that, in attempting to end violence, he was acting not only morally, but nobly. He broke the UCMJ, and he'll be punished for it. That's only fair. But don't try to start tying morality into this sort of thing.