Look, they have two completely separate computer networks. They've got a network that can access all the Classified Military Shit, and then they have the computers that can access Everything Bad in the Multiverse. (My terms, not theirs.) The two never meet. Never ever ever, and not even then.
99% of the time, you work with the Unclassified stuff. It's a PITA to work with Classified documents. You've got to go to a secure room, you can't make a copy unless you've signed off a billion times, you have to work on a special computer, you have to have a buddy / guard / watcher, and you've got to go through a debriefing after you've goofed around with it.
If your average worker / troop / contractor picked up a USB drive and put it into their EBitM network and it took over every machine in a billionth of a second and sent all the info on the EBitM network to China, Russia, and Zork the Evil, the risk to National Security would be zilch. Yeah, it would be a PITA to fix the compys, but it would be no worse than the same PITA you'd get in any large civilian network. The only difference is that it's a huge fucking PR nightmare. Think about how embarrassing it would be if Norton was taken down due to a worm. Now go up two orders of magnitude.
The computers you see the troops using are almost always personal property used for emailing back home, watching movies, playing games, and otherwise fucking around. The work computers are usually tied into the EBitM network and they use them for work. Unless you are one of The Anointed Few, you haven't even seen a computer that's handled Classified information.
You pack it as BCD, so you get Byte 1: 48 Byte 2: 07 Byte 3: 03 Byte 4: Flags for 100, N, and W. Byte 5: 11 Byte 6: 31 Byte 7: 00 Byte 8: minutes since last fix
This system, complete with a RTC, processor, VHF transmitter, and GPS receiver consumes 8uA in standby mode, ~40mA when transmitting over VHF, and ~50mA when getting a GPS fix. A D-sized Lithium cell holds 20Ah. That's 400 hours of continuous operation. (You wouldn't do that.)
A single 8Mbit Flash chip would hold 125k GPS locations.
It would cost about $300 for the tracker. The receiver would be about $1000. I used to work at a place that tracked animals via GPS / VHF collars for wildlife researchers. There were a few cases where the animal would look, shall we say, rather humanoid, but in all of those cases that was a willing animal.
Anyway, that $300 would get you a GPS unit with antenna, a processor board with memory, and a VHF transmitter that sends out the location. They'd be able to read that location on the receiver. The battery would be a Lithium cell and would run for up to a year. It would be potted for weather proofing. If they had reusable batteries, then you'd be able to use the units pretty much indefinitely.
It could also be set up to record your location throughout the day at intervals no finer than 1/second. (Civilian GPS refreshes that fast, and there's no way they could get their hands on milspec.) It could easily save up the data and broadcast it at a set time (like 3am when you're asleep or 4pm when you're at work) and the receiver would get all the locations you've been in the last day. It only takes about 8 bytes to store a GPS location, so an 8Mbit Flash module is enough to store a year's worth of locations. This would all be on a board roughly 1" x 1.5" x 0.5", plus battery and antenna.
They put the speed traps in high-revenue spots over and over again. There's a pattern. There are GPS units that list all the known speed traps and warn you as you approach. There's no radar to jam, no lasers to thwart, just the position of known speed traps.
Er, sorry, what I meant to say was that since the police would only enforce the speed limits in areas that are particularly dangerous to speed in, it warns you to slow down as you approach a hazardous area.
Also, the GPS tracker would have to chirp to send out your data. It would probably be of VHF since that's unregulated (148 - 152 MHz is a good one) so all you'd have to do is check for broadcasts of that frequency. GPS refreshes at 1Hz, so that's probably what they would chirp at unless they're using burst downloads.
FYI, the range on GPS / VHF transmissions in urban environmentsis very short. It gets unreliable after a few hundred meters and it completely thwarted by brick.
You wouldn't have to be powered on during the flight. Newton's law and all that. Just wait for enough solar energy to trip a threshold and then start unpacking.
I got the bill when I booked 2 when my kids were hit by a car. The whole accident required 5 ambulances.
My friend got the bill when his daughter stopped breathing, and it was still $65 even though they sent a second one with a pediatric specialist to meet the first ambulance halfway.
The problem was that people were using them for taxi services. "Oh, this is close to the hospital, so I'll use them instead of a taxi."
By disclosing your patentable idea before filing your patent you've invalidated any patent claim you may have.
You might - depending on where you live - have copyright on the items you just wrote, but that may require you to affix a copyright tag on it. ( Too bad/. doesn't have a way to edit posts. )
Your business model is more of a trade secret anyway, since showing that actual model to someone would get you fucked over in court. That's the official legal term.
Meh, LEGO Star Wars just has everyone throw thermal detonators around the cantina. "Sorry about the mess... KABOOM!"
I want them to show R2D2 as the Sith Lord he really is.
Think about it: 1. What happened to Anakin? Put into a metal box after serious injury. 2. What would happen to a seriously injured Sith member of Yoda's race? A box, just like R2D2's. 3. We've seen R2D2 use lightning. Sith. 4. Watch the scene with the Cave of Vader and the scene where R2 stares Yoda down. Sith. 5. We've seen R2 Force Destroy a droid. Sith. 6. He hung around Anakin as a kid WAY more than Sidious / Palpatine. 7. We know that Sith can hide their force power. Sith. 8. We've seen R2 fly. Sith. 9. Force Persuade on the gunner. "Hold your fire. No life signs aboard."
Seriously, watch TOT thinking of R2 as a Sith.
I'd also like to hear the Storm Trooper's communications during Endor: "Sir, we're under attack by what seems to be children." "Say again?" "Children, sir. They're 3 feet tall. Do we have a kill order?" "Hold your fire. The Empire does not fire on children. Am I clear?" "Yes sir, we're taking heavy losses here." "Understood. We'll put you in Bacta Tanks on the Star once it's over." "Yes Sir. Can we use STUN?" "Negative. STUN might harm children and that's unacceptable."
Then the officer on the Star: "Emperor's Secretary, this is General Endor Command. I have to hologram him, but it's not going through." "He's busy." "Our troops are under attack and I require a kill order signed by him." "I'm sorry General, but he said explicitly that he is not to be disturbed by anyone." "Our troops are under fire right now by children." "By the force, kids? What are you doing?" "We're standing fast. What, do you think I'm a monster?" "Oh good, you scared me for a minute. What are you going to do?" "Bacta tanks are ready. They're just using sticks. We can write off the AT-ATs, but Engineering's going to be pissed."
I'm a long-suffering Ubuntu user, and I agree with you wholeheartedly.
If Macs are gay then bring on the gay. Ubuntu -- and for that matter -- all the other *nix distros I've used are clunky, fugly, and stupid. They're great for people who know what they're doing. For the 90% of users who just want the compruter to facebook, it's a damn pain in the ass. *nix is designed by people who have no sense of marketing nor design, and it shows. Apple's attitude is that "it's not enough to be good, you have to look good doing it." MS's attitude is "it's like your old comfy jeans. You're never going to throw them away." *nix's attitude is "BIKE SHORTS MOTHERFUCKER RTFM".
Let's be fabulous and make 2011 the year of the Linux desktop -- while we're still using desktops, FFS.
You're conflating liberalism with fascism. In the US, both the Republicans and Democrats are far-right-leaning parties that at their core believe in a system that expands and restricts your personal liberties. True liberalism is that the government provides essential services (sewer, garbage, police, etc.), they can't spend more than they take in, and that's it. What we've got in NA is parties that want to spend every last dollar the can to get re-elected, keep the begeezus scared out of you, and cut back or regulate all the things you want to do in your spare time.
Some people think that handguns, gay marriage, marijuana, abortion, porn, software piracy, alcohol, prostitution, and just about anything else you can name are all a) perfectly fine and b) none of the government's fucking business.
(I know: "Beardo, I don't know when your next party is, but DAMN I want an invite.")
Also, a typical Captain wouldn't follow orders to sink a civilian vessel anyway. "This is the USS Abraham Lincoln. There's no way on god's green earth that we're going to attack a container ship, SIR." (Actual dialog may contain more swearing.)
Navies only defend the state against attacks against the state. It's not like in GTA when they'll call in the Army if the FBI can't capture you. Torpedos are fucking expensive. The odds are very high that it cost more than your house, and depending on where you live, more than your entire neighbourhood put together.
The reason you wouldn't be able to do this is a simple one of supply. Either you would have to keep getting food or you'd have to keep it unmanned.
If you want to eat, then you have to go ashore to a country that will either be a) ready to arrest you or b) ready to sell you out.
If there's a derelict ship in International waters that's full of computers and other expensive shit, I promise that some enterprising individual will make a field trip and just steal the fucking thing.
Your ship eats too -- that fuel isn't going to just magically fall from the sky.
You would also have to find a way to get Internet access to your ship. Are you using a satellite? A giant danlgy cable? Where is the feed going ashore?
As for getting away with crimes just because you're not at home, Canada has laws against "sex tourism" -- essentially, if you break Canadian law while overseas, you can go to jail for it. I'm sure that similar legislation exists in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
It's always someone's first day. It took you years to get to the point you could even post on /.
They have.
Look, they have two completely separate computer networks. They've got a network that can access all the Classified Military Shit, and then they have the computers that can access Everything Bad in the Multiverse. (My terms, not theirs.) The two never meet. Never ever ever, and not even then.
99% of the time, you work with the Unclassified stuff. It's a PITA to work with Classified documents. You've got to go to a secure room, you can't make a copy unless you've signed off a billion times, you have to work on a special computer, you have to have a buddy / guard / watcher, and you've got to go through a debriefing after you've goofed around with it.
If your average worker / troop / contractor picked up a USB drive and put it into their EBitM network and it took over every machine in a billionth of a second and sent all the info on the EBitM network to China, Russia, and Zork the Evil, the risk to National Security would be zilch. Yeah, it would be a PITA to fix the compys, but it would be no worse than the same PITA you'd get in any large civilian network. The only difference is that it's a huge fucking PR nightmare. Think about how embarrassing it would be if Norton was taken down due to a worm. Now go up two orders of magnitude.
The computers you see the troops using are almost always personal property used for emailing back home, watching movies, playing games, and otherwise fucking around. The work computers are usually tied into the EBitM network and they use them for work. Unless you are one of The Anointed Few, you haven't even seen a computer that's handled Classified information.
If you aren't raising the question, you're begging it.
I used to work for a company that made these, so I actually do know what I'm talking about. Since you're curious:
$GPGGA,123519,4807.038,N,01131.000,E,1,08,0.9,545.4,M,46.9,M,,*47
You pack it as BCD, so you get
Byte 1: 48
Byte 2: 07
Byte 3: 03
Byte 4: Flags for 100, N, and W.
Byte 5: 11
Byte 6: 31
Byte 7: 00
Byte 8: minutes since last fix
This system, complete with a RTC, processor, VHF transmitter, and GPS receiver consumes 8uA in standby mode, ~40mA when transmitting over VHF, and ~50mA when getting a GPS fix. A D-sized Lithium cell holds 20Ah. That's 400 hours of continuous operation. (You wouldn't do that.)
A single 8Mbit Flash chip would hold 125k GPS locations.
It would cost about $300 for the tracker. The receiver would be about $1000. I used to work at a place that tracked animals via GPS / VHF collars for wildlife researchers. There were a few cases where the animal would look, shall we say, rather humanoid, but in all of those cases that was a willing animal.
Anyway, that $300 would get you a GPS unit with antenna, a processor board with memory, and a VHF transmitter that sends out the location. They'd be able to read that location on the receiver. The battery would be a Lithium cell and would run for up to a year. It would be potted for weather proofing. If they had reusable batteries, then you'd be able to use the units pretty much indefinitely.
It could also be set up to record your location throughout the day at intervals no finer than 1/second. (Civilian GPS refreshes that fast, and there's no way they could get their hands on milspec.) It could easily save up the data and broadcast it at a set time (like 3am when you're asleep or 4pm when you're at work) and the receiver would get all the locations you've been in the last day. It only takes about 8 bytes to store a GPS location, so an 8Mbit Flash module is enough to store a year's worth of locations. This would all be on a board roughly 1" x 1.5" x 0.5", plus battery and antenna.
Cops are lazy.
They put the speed traps in high-revenue spots over and over again. There's a pattern. There are GPS units that list all the known speed traps and warn you as you approach. There's no radar to jam, no lasers to thwart, just the position of known speed traps.
Er, sorry, what I meant to say was that since the police would only enforce the speed limits in areas that are particularly dangerous to speed in, it warns you to slow down as you approach a hazardous area.
Also, the GPS tracker would have to chirp to send out your data. It would probably be of VHF since that's unregulated (148 - 152 MHz is a good one) so all you'd have to do is check for broadcasts of that frequency. GPS refreshes at 1Hz, so that's probably what they would chirp at unless they're using burst downloads.
FYI, the range on GPS / VHF transmissions in urban environmentsis very short. It gets unreliable after a few hundred meters and it completely thwarted by brick.
I was not aware of that. Thanks for the correction.
There's money in the banana stand.
Safety deposit boxes...
Offshore bank account...
Rental housing...
I don't have a cell phone either. It's not called a "cell" because it's short for "cellular"...
I've got a packed social schedule, two kids, and I do on-site inspections fairly often at work. (I'm an EE.) They just aren't necessary tools.
I suggested this at a previous place; they said it was fine as long as I made up the time at the end of the day. ;)
You wouldn't have to be powered on during the flight. Newton's law and all that. Just wait for enough solar energy to trip a threshold and then start unpacking.
Bah-weep-Graaaaag nah wheep ni ni bong.
It's $65 and it's for all ambulance calls.
I got the bill when I booked 2 when my kids were hit by a car. The whole accident required 5 ambulances.
My friend got the bill when his daughter stopped breathing, and it was still $65 even though they sent a second one with a pediatric specialist to meet the first ambulance halfway.
The problem was that people were using them for taxi services. "Oh, this is close to the hospital, so I'll use them instead of a taxi."
I wasn't sure how that could be possible until this morning.
That's the same as Canada -- anything you write is automatically copyrighted -- but I wasn't sure if that applied in the US.
It doesn't mean that you can do anything with it.
By disclosing your patentable idea before filing your patent you've invalidated any patent claim you may have.
You might - depending on where you live - have copyright on the items you just wrote, but that may require you to affix a copyright tag on it. ( Too bad /. doesn't have a way to edit posts. )
Your business model is more of a trade secret anyway, since showing that actual model to someone would get you fucked over in court. That's the official legal term.
hunter2
/. does not differentiate between patents, trademarks, copyright, industrial design, or trade secrets.
Meh, LEGO Star Wars just has everyone throw thermal detonators around the cantina. "Sorry about the mess... KABOOM!"
I want them to show R2D2 as the Sith Lord he really is.
Think about it:
1. What happened to Anakin? Put into a metal box after serious injury.
2. What would happen to a seriously injured Sith member of Yoda's race? A box, just like R2D2's.
3. We've seen R2D2 use lightning. Sith.
4. Watch the scene with the Cave of Vader and the scene where R2 stares Yoda down. Sith.
5. We've seen R2 Force Destroy a droid. Sith.
6. He hung around Anakin as a kid WAY more than Sidious / Palpatine.
7. We know that Sith can hide their force power. Sith.
8. We've seen R2 fly. Sith.
9. Force Persuade on the gunner. "Hold your fire. No life signs aboard."
Seriously, watch TOT thinking of R2 as a Sith.
I'd also like to hear the Storm Trooper's communications during Endor:
"Sir, we're under attack by what seems to be children."
"Say again?"
"Children, sir. They're 3 feet tall. Do we have a kill order?"
"Hold your fire. The Empire does not fire on children. Am I clear?"
"Yes sir, we're taking heavy losses here."
"Understood. We'll put you in Bacta Tanks on the Star once it's over."
"Yes Sir. Can we use STUN?"
"Negative. STUN might harm children and that's unacceptable."
Then the officer on the Star:
"Emperor's Secretary, this is General Endor Command. I have to hologram him, but it's not going through."
"He's busy."
"Our troops are under attack and I require a kill order signed by him."
"I'm sorry General, but he said explicitly that he is not to be disturbed by anyone."
"Our troops are under fire right now by children."
"By the force, kids? What are you doing?"
"We're standing fast. What, do you think I'm a monster?"
"Oh good, you scared me for a minute. What are you going to do?"
"Bacta tanks are ready. They're just using sticks. We can write off the AT-ATs, but Engineering's going to be pissed."
I'm a long-suffering Ubuntu user, and I agree with you wholeheartedly.
If Macs are gay then bring on the gay. Ubuntu -- and for that matter -- all the other *nix distros I've used are clunky, fugly, and stupid. They're great for people who know what they're doing. For the 90% of users who just want the compruter to facebook, it's a damn pain in the ass. *nix is designed by people who have no sense of marketing nor design, and it shows. Apple's attitude is that "it's not enough to be good, you have to look good doing it." MS's attitude is "it's like your old comfy jeans. You're never going to throw them away." *nix's attitude is "BIKE SHORTS MOTHERFUCKER RTFM".
Let's be fabulous and make 2011 the year of the Linux desktop -- while we're still using desktops, FFS.
Woah there, cowboy.
You're conflating liberalism with fascism. In the US, both the Republicans and Democrats are far-right-leaning parties that at their core believe in a system that expands and restricts your personal liberties. True liberalism is that the government provides essential services (sewer, garbage, police, etc.), they can't spend more than they take in, and that's it. What we've got in NA is parties that want to spend every last dollar the can to get re-elected, keep the begeezus scared out of you, and cut back or regulate all the things you want to do in your spare time.
Some people think that handguns, gay marriage, marijuana, abortion, porn, software piracy, alcohol, prostitution, and just about anything else you can name are all a) perfectly fine and b) none of the government's fucking business.
(I know: "Beardo, I don't know when your next party is, but DAMN I want an invite.")
Also, a typical Captain wouldn't follow orders to sink a civilian vessel anyway. "This is the USS Abraham Lincoln. There's no way on god's green earth that we're going to attack a container ship, SIR." (Actual dialog may contain more swearing.)
Navies only defend the state against attacks against the state. It's not like in GTA when they'll call in the Army if the FBI can't capture you. Torpedos are fucking expensive. The odds are very high that it cost more than your house, and depending on where you live, more than your entire neighbourhood put together.
The reason you wouldn't be able to do this is a simple one of supply. Either you would have to keep getting food or you'd have to keep it unmanned.
If you want to eat, then you have to go ashore to a country that will either be a) ready to arrest you or b) ready to sell you out.
If there's a derelict ship in International waters that's full of computers and other expensive shit, I promise that some enterprising individual will make a field trip and just steal the fucking thing.
Your ship eats too -- that fuel isn't going to just magically fall from the sky.
You would also have to find a way to get Internet access to your ship. Are you using a satellite? A giant danlgy cable? Where is the feed going ashore?
As for getting away with crimes just because you're not at home, Canada has laws against "sex tourism" -- essentially, if you break Canadian law while overseas, you can go to jail for it. I'm sure that similar legislation exists in the US.
Are you really asking that?
Nah, they'll listen to Reason.
When I was about six years old, my cousin challenged me to solve a scrambled Rubik's Cube. The family figured it would keep me busy for hours.
I solved it in the fastest possible way: I pulled off every sticker and put them on the right sides.
Problem solved; it wasn't MY fault they didn't define the problem properly.