It's not an orbital WMD platform, that would be against the treaty. It's just a plane..which can stay in orbit for most of a year...and drop a nuke anywhere in the world, at any time. Totally different thing.
> This has thankfully prevented it from becoming the language of choice in major outsourcing and offshoring destinations > like India, Pakistan and Vietnam
A quick perusal of iPhone-related questions on Apple's discussion boards, or on stackoverflow.com, would quickly cure you of this belief. A lot of people at the "bang the rocks together" level of expertise are trying to develop iPhone apps. People (and companies) go where the opportunity is.
I've been approached by one India-based organization to act as a "Public face" for them here in the states, so I know there are shops full of inexperienced iPhone developers in India who are pitching US companies on developing their "mobile strategy" for them.
Extracting private keys from smart cards would be one application. That's a case where you have "physical access" to the key holder, but it's protected by physical security. The card will erase the key if you open the box, but it provides a digital signature service, which you can exploit via this method to extract the key without opening the case.
That's hilarious - you accuse me of hand waving, and link to a post that contains you doing exactly that - mentioning various factors that *you assume* might come into play, but nothing in the way of actual data or calculations. I see in another thread where you also ignored the test that Car & Driver did which showed that of 3 cars they tested (including one of Toyota's recalled models), all were able to stop from 100MPH with the engine at full throttle.
Since you claim in your other post that people are ignoring other factors (and provide a nice list of them) why not enlighten us with your knowledge? I'd be perfectly happy to post the spreadsheet I used for my calculations up on Google Docs, if you wanted to take a look at it.
>On many vehicles the brakes can not stop a vehicle in this situation
For a basic reality check - have you *ever* seen published performance specifications or test results for any vehicle where the stopping distance from 60mph(100km/h) was more than 200 feet(60m)? No? Me neither.
To stop a 2-ton vehicle from 60 mph in 200 feet takes about 400 horsepower. If the brakes can apply the equivalent of 400HP to the wheels (actually more, since the stopping distance has friction with the road as a limiting factor), then the car *will* slow down when you press on the brake, regardless of the power being output by the engine. The braking force varies with speed, but not enough to matter for this calculation.
Of course, if your engine is racing at full throttle putting out 200 horsepower, and you're already doing 60 mph, it'll take longer than usual to stop - on the order of 10 seconds, rather than 4 seconds. If you wait until you've reached 120 mph before you decide to stand on the brake, it'll take 40 seconds to stop, and a distance of over 1/2 mile. I could see that being a problem, particularly with a panicking driver...
> I have taught myself C++, Java, python, PHP, etc
Depending on how deeply you "know" each of those languages, you may be lacking experience in some very different ways of doing things. You ought to at least add one functional language (Scheme or Haskell), and do some really low-level programming (in assembly language, or C). If you haven't looked into C++ templates yet, that is another very different paradigm worth learning.
Complexity analysis sometimes evades the college-educated, too, but it's a particular weakness among the self-taught programmers I have known. It's a little sad to see someone trying to micro-optimize the heck out of a very inefficient algorithm, when f they just used a BST or a hash table instead of a list, they'd have vastly better performance.
A lot of toothpastes made for children are fruit-flavored, and Tom's of Maine (http://www.tomsofmaine.com) makes a few non-minty flavors. Also try your local natural foods store - they probably have some wacky flavors.
I just did a quick survey of all the computer equipment in easy reach from my office chair:
Mac Pro computer - built in China
Apple Keyboard: Made in China
Wacom digitizer: Made in Japan
Logitech Speaker: Made in China
iSight Camera: Made in China
Vakoss USB Hub: Made in China
Apple Cinema Display: Made in China
Slightly skewed due to all the Apple equipment, but none of the top 4 PC manufacturers builds much of anything in the US or Europe anymore. This skips over the fact that there are components inside the computer from a number of different manufacturers. A lot of these sub-components contain firmware loaded in Chinese factories, as well.
I got a magna-doodle for my wife when she was recovering from some voice problems, and it worked pretty well. It didn't do very well with small writing. Since the boogie board uses a stylus, it might be better in that regard.
What happens when a person going 70mph suddenly loses control of their vehicle?
They won't "lose control", exactly. It'll just get a lot harder to steer, and the car will slow down rapidly
How accurate can that sort of gun be? Over what sort of angle and distance is it will effective?
Not terribly accurate. The spread of the beam is determined by the antenna geometry and the frequency of the radiation. The range, of course, is subject to the power level. With a big antenna, and enough power, you could disable a car from miles away. Practically speaking, it'll probably need to be effective from 100 yards or so in order to be useful. I expect that the effective width of the "beam" would be several lanes wide at that range.
Is there a way to shield the car with a faraday cage to prevent this sort of thing from happening?
Not really. I mean, you *could do so*, but it'd be hard to make the car 100% shielded. It's probably 90% covered already, actually.
And if not, wouldn't this just mess up the police cars?
Well, the bulk of the radiation pattern will go forward, obviously. The backward-facing component can be made arbitrarily small.
What's going to stop the police (or **AA) from "accidentally" frying your computer with one of these?
Probable cause? The police can't just destroy property because they feel like it. Unless you're currently engaged in a crime, they wouldn't have a reason to try to kill your computer.
Automotive electronics are fairly tough, because of the noisy environment they operate in. I would bet that in the typical case, the voltage pulse just confuses the computer, and/or latches a few inputs, causing it to shut down. You could likely start it right back up afterward.
I get what you're going for here, but comparing a race engine with a mainstream engine is pointless. The race engine only needs to run for a short period between overhauls, while the V8 truck engine can get minimal maintenance and run problem-free for 200,000 miles. Yes, higher-tech engines can have much better efficiency, but at the cost of complexity. For some applications, the increased reliability of a larger, simpler engine is important.
As another irrelevant data point - Naturally-aspirated V8 engines in Formula 1 produce upwards of 700 horsepower - but those are tiny, 2.4l engines. In NHRA Pro Stock, big-block V8's like the ones referenced in this article commonly produce 1000-1500 horsepower. If you put twin-turbochargers on a race-car V8, you can get 2000-3000 horsepower.
The difference is that the other features you listed (3D, speed, administration) are features of the software, while the "freeness" is a characteristic of the folks producing the software. If I go to read a review of a bunch of new car models to try to determine what to buy, I wouldn't expect the characteristics of the car company to be included in the review scores, unless it's relevant to the job the car is supposed to be doing.
javascript is (finally) starting to evolve more rapidly into a reasonable language for application development. You can already get Javascript VMs with excellent performance, and they're only getting better. With the growing adoption of Javascript for server-side work, there's a lot more support for the kind of improvements in Javascript that "real programmers" want.
ECMAscript 5 is a step in the right direction, and Harmony will build upon that. And with Google, Apple, and Mozilla now all on-board to improve Javascript's improvement, it'll get better quickly, whether Microsoft is interested in keeping up or not, will become increasingly irrelevant.
One problem with Java becoming a first-class citizen in the browser is that it's often seen as an all-or-nothing proposition. The Java language, and some of the libraries, might be useful in that context, but the Java VM, the memory model, the class loader, etc, aren't really appropriate for use in an interactive browser environment.
Whether it meets some arbitrary definition of "freedom" shouldn't affect its score. If "freedom" is a desirable feature for certain users, they can certainly weigh that appropriately themselves.
Does tension build up and then sometimes you get big slips and thus big quakes? So maybe causing an earthquake a day is a good idea?
Generally speaking, tension builds up in multiple places on the fault at once, then a series of slips occur as the rocks in the various places let go. So, yeah - in general, multiple small quakes in one location will relieve tension that would otherwise ultimately cause a bigger quake there. The boundary between the two "sides" of a fault is very very complex, though, so it's impossible to determine what exactly will happen to the rest of the fault when a particular slippage occurs.
For instance, whenever part of the fault moves, some part of that tension is transferred to somewhere else on the fault. If that happens to push that part of the fault over it's limit, it'll let go, causing tension on other parts to change... This can ultimately lead to the whole fault moving at once - which gives you the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
From what I've read, the intent is to limit how large of a *container* you can bring on board. Yes 5 people can bring on 5x the amount of explosive precursors. But they'll have to mix it up in 5 batches, which will take multiple trips to the restroom, careful coordination, etc, etc.
They're not worried about someone bringing actual liquid explosives on board. They have equipment that will detect those compounds reliably.
In the USA, at least, the manufacturer can't deny warranty coverage due solely to modifications, unless those modifications directly caused the damage resulting in the warranty claim. SO, even if you modify the heck out of your engine, they still have to honor the warranty for the rest of the car.
a receiving dish would be so big, that they could just put solar cells there, and get orders of magnitude more power from it. Is it really that silly and stupid, or where am I wrong?
It's an efficiency thing. Ground-based solar cells might typically convert 14% of the light that falls on them to electricity. By comparison, the receiving antenna for the space power system will convert 80-90% of the microwaves that land on it to power.
Of course, to capture that power in the first place, the solar array in space has to cover several times as much area as the receiving patch down on the earth. A solar array of the same size would capture about 44% more energy by being above the atmosphere.
What effect does this have on the atmosphere? I'd guess somewhat the same as in a microwave: Ionization and heating.
Not much ionization is going to happen with microwaves, they're at too low of a frequency. Hence why light and radio waves are commonly referred to as "non-ionizing radiation".
Localized heating shouldn't be much of a problem, either - radio waves are harder to focus than light, so the beam will necessarily be quite large. The numbers I remember reading were on the order of a few watts per square meter, significantly less than the total energy from sunlight over the same area.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not an orbital WMD platform, that would be against the treaty. It's just a plane..which can stay in orbit for most of a year...and drop a nuke anywhere in the world, at any time. Totally different thing.
> This has thankfully prevented it from becoming the language of choice in major outsourcing and offshoring destinations
> like India, Pakistan and Vietnam
A quick perusal of iPhone-related questions on Apple's discussion boards, or on stackoverflow.com, would quickly cure you of this belief. A lot of people at the "bang the rocks together" level of expertise are trying to develop iPhone apps. People (and companies) go where the opportunity is.
I've been approached by one India-based organization to act as a "Public face" for them here in the states, so I know there are shops full of inexperienced iPhone developers in India who are pitching US companies on developing their "mobile strategy" for them.
Extracting private keys from smart cards would be one application. That's a case where you have "physical access" to the key holder, but it's protected by physical security. The card will erase the key if you open the box, but it provides a digital signature service, which you can exploit via this method to extract the key without opening the case.
That's hilarious - you accuse me of hand waving, and link to a post that contains you doing exactly that - mentioning various factors that *you assume* might come into play, but nothing in the way of actual data or calculations. I see in another thread where you also ignored the test that Car & Driver did which showed that of 3 cars they tested (including one of Toyota's recalled models), all were able to stop from 100MPH with the engine at full throttle.
Since you claim in your other post that people are ignoring other factors (and provide a nice list of them) why not enlighten us with your knowledge? I'd be perfectly happy to post the spreadsheet I used for my calculations up on Google Docs, if you wanted to take a look at it.
>On many vehicles the brakes can not stop a vehicle in this situation
For a basic reality check - have you *ever* seen published performance specifications or test results for any vehicle where the stopping distance from 60mph(100km/h) was more than 200 feet(60m)? No? Me neither.
To stop a 2-ton vehicle from 60 mph in 200 feet takes about 400 horsepower. If the brakes can apply the equivalent of 400HP to the wheels (actually more, since the stopping distance has friction with the road as a limiting factor), then the car *will* slow down when you press on the brake, regardless of the power being output by the engine. The braking force varies with speed, but not enough to matter for this calculation.
Of course, if your engine is racing at full throttle putting out 200 horsepower, and you're already doing 60 mph, it'll take longer than usual to stop - on the order of 10 seconds, rather than 4 seconds. If you wait until you've reached 120 mph before you decide to stand on the brake, it'll take 40 seconds to stop, and a distance of over 1/2 mile. I could see that being a problem, particularly with a panicking driver...
> I have taught myself C++, Java, python, PHP, etc
Depending on how deeply you "know" each of those languages, you may be lacking experience in some very different ways of doing things. You ought to at least add one functional language (Scheme or Haskell), and do some really low-level programming (in assembly language, or C). If you haven't looked into C++ templates yet, that is another very different paradigm worth learning.
Complexity analysis sometimes evades the college-educated, too, but it's a particular weakness among the self-taught programmers I have known. It's a little sad to see someone trying to micro-optimize the heck out of a very inefficient algorithm, when f they just used a BST or a hash table instead of a list, they'd have vastly better performance.
A lot of toothpastes made for children are fruit-flavored, and Tom's of Maine (http://www.tomsofmaine.com) makes a few non-minty flavors. Also try your local natural foods store - they probably have some wacky flavors.
I just did a quick survey of all the computer equipment in easy reach from my office chair:
Mac Pro computer - built in China
Apple Keyboard: Made in China
Wacom digitizer: Made in Japan
Logitech Speaker: Made in China
iSight Camera: Made in China
Vakoss USB Hub: Made in China
Apple Cinema Display: Made in China
Slightly skewed due to all the Apple equipment, but none of the top 4 PC manufacturers builds much of anything in the US or Europe anymore. This skips over the fact that there are components inside the computer from a number of different manufacturers. A lot of these sub-components contain firmware loaded in Chinese factories, as well.
I got a magna-doodle for my wife when she was recovering from some voice problems, and it worked pretty well. It didn't do very well with small writing. Since the boogie board uses a stylus, it might be better in that regard.
Your average high-speed chase participant is not a criminal mastermind. They're somebody who got caught doing something stupid, and panicked.
What happens when a person going 70mph suddenly loses control of their vehicle?
They won't "lose control", exactly. It'll just get a lot harder to steer, and the car will slow down rapidly
How accurate can that sort of gun be? Over what sort of angle and distance is it will effective?
Not terribly accurate. The spread of the beam is determined by the antenna geometry and the frequency of the radiation. The range, of course, is subject to the power level. With a big antenna, and enough power, you could disable a car from miles away. Practically speaking, it'll probably need to be effective from 100 yards or so in order to be useful. I expect that the effective width of the "beam" would be several lanes wide at that range.
Is there a way to shield the car with a faraday cage to prevent this sort of thing from happening?
Not really. I mean, you *could do so*, but it'd be hard to make the car 100% shielded. It's probably 90% covered already, actually.
And if not, wouldn't this just mess up the police cars?
Well, the bulk of the radiation pattern will go forward, obviously. The backward-facing component can be made arbitrarily small.
What's going to stop the police (or **AA) from "accidentally" frying your computer with one of these?
Probable cause? The police can't just destroy property because they feel like it. Unless you're currently engaged in a crime, they wouldn't have a reason to try to kill your computer.
Automotive electronics are fairly tough, because of the noisy environment they operate in. I would bet that in the typical case, the voltage pulse just confuses the computer, and/or latches a few inputs, causing it to shut down. You could likely start it right back up afterward.
I get what you're going for here, but comparing a race engine with a mainstream engine is pointless. The race engine only needs to run for a short period between overhauls, while the V8 truck engine can get minimal maintenance and run problem-free for 200,000 miles. Yes, higher-tech engines can have much better efficiency, but at the cost of complexity. For some applications, the increased reliability of a larger, simpler engine is important.
As another irrelevant data point - Naturally-aspirated V8 engines in Formula 1 produce upwards of 700 horsepower - but those are tiny, 2.4l engines. In NHRA Pro Stock, big-block V8's like the ones referenced in this article commonly produce 1000-1500 horsepower. If you put twin-turbochargers on a race-car V8, you can get 2000-3000 horsepower.
The difference is that the other features you listed (3D, speed, administration) are features of the software, while the "freeness" is a characteristic of the folks producing the software. If I go to read a review of a bunch of new car models to try to determine what to buy, I wouldn't expect the characteristics of the car company to be included in the review scores, unless it's relevant to the job the car is supposed to be doing.
javascript is (finally) starting to evolve more rapidly into a reasonable language for application development. You can already get Javascript VMs with excellent performance, and they're only getting better. With the growing adoption of Javascript for server-side work, there's a lot more support for the kind of improvements in Javascript that "real programmers" want.
ECMAscript 5 is a step in the right direction, and Harmony will build upon that. And with Google, Apple, and Mozilla now all on-board to improve Javascript's improvement, it'll get better quickly, whether Microsoft is interested in keeping up or not, will become increasingly irrelevant.
One problem with Java becoming a first-class citizen in the browser is that it's often seen as an all-or-nothing proposition. The Java language, and some of the libraries, might be useful in that context, but the Java VM, the memory model, the class loader, etc, aren't really appropriate for use in an interactive browser environment.
Whether it meets some arbitrary definition of "freedom" shouldn't affect its score. If "freedom" is a desirable feature for certain users, they can certainly weigh that appropriately themselves.
Does tension build up and then sometimes you get big slips and thus big quakes? So maybe causing an earthquake a day is a good idea?
Generally speaking, tension builds up in multiple places on the fault at once, then a series of slips occur as the rocks in the various places let go. So, yeah - in general, multiple small quakes in one location will relieve tension that would otherwise ultimately cause a bigger quake there. The boundary between the two "sides" of a fault is very very complex, though, so it's impossible to determine what exactly will happen to the rest of the fault when a particular slippage occurs.
For instance, whenever part of the fault moves, some part of that tension is transferred to somewhere else on the fault. If that happens to push that part of the fault over it's limit, it'll let go, causing tension on other parts to change... This can ultimately lead to the whole fault moving at once - which gives you the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
From what I've read, the intent is to limit how large of a *container* you can bring on board. Yes 5 people can bring on 5x the amount of explosive precursors. But they'll have to mix it up in 5 batches, which will take multiple trips to the restroom, careful coordination, etc, etc.
They're not worried about someone bringing actual liquid explosives on board. They have equipment that will detect those compounds reliably.
2^32=4,294,967,296 /1000 (ms per second) = 4,294,967.296
/ 60 (seconds per minute) = 71,582.788266666667
/ 60 (minutes per hour) = 1,193.0464711111111
/ 24 (hours per day) = 49.71 days
In the USA, at least, the manufacturer can't deny warranty coverage due solely to modifications, unless those modifications directly caused the damage resulting in the warranty claim. SO, even if you modify the heck out of your engine, they still have to honor the warranty for the rest of the car.
Wouldn't "Dude! this Xbox has a mod-chip so you can play copied games!" be the main selling point of such a console?
I think IBM invented hypervisors to allow running multiple OS's on the same hardware back in the 1960s...
Yep: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor#Mainframe_origins
It's an efficiency thing. Ground-based solar cells might typically convert 14% of the light that falls on them to electricity. By comparison, the receiving antenna for the space power system will convert 80-90% of the microwaves that land on it to power.
Of course, to capture that power in the first place, the solar array in space has to cover several times as much area as the receiving patch down on the earth. A solar array of the same size would capture about 44% more energy by being above the atmosphere.
You can see some of the relevant math in the Wikipedia article, in particular in the safety section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power
Not much ionization is going to happen with microwaves, they're at too low of a frequency. Hence why light and radio waves are commonly referred to as "non-ionizing radiation".
Localized heating shouldn't be much of a problem, either - radio waves are harder to focus than light, so the beam will necessarily be quite large. The numbers I remember reading were on the order of a few watts per square meter, significantly less than the total energy from sunlight over the same area.