The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
You are right that the 4th ammendment doesn't say anything about anonymity. But there is still a problem.
In the old days, it was possible to be a pamphleteer, and have people pass out your works in the town commons. If you were careful, people might not ever connect you to the work. But nowadays, the internet has sort of become the commons, and to be a modern pamphleteer, you need to use the internet. So there should be some way for people to publish radical political works without disclosing their identity. I'm not saying that this principle is enshrined in the constitution, but it is still good policy and an important freedom.
Well, war is hell. A whole separate set of ethics governs it. Since this is a hypothetical scenario (inspired by an April Fool's joke, I might add...), we can't say which action is more ethical.
But in general, I would think that aiding countries with a recent track record of agression with their neighbors is not morally justified.
We can't pretend that both participants in every dispute are equally right. In some cases it may be very hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys, but in other cases it may be clear. The point is that if you throw this technology out into the world, the clear bad guys could get hold of it, and I believe that that is an ethical problem.
Keep in mind, too, that people who are true traitors to their own country are universally hated. Even disinterested parties view them with disgust. So if you think giving anti-aircraft technology to countries hostile to your own is a good idea, prepare to be hated.;-)
Don't be naive. These are anti-aircraft missiles you are talking about, not anti-missile missiles. And aircraft often have pilots. If you shoot down a plane, you generally kill the pilot.
If, for example, North Korea were to attack South Korea, the South (and the USA) would be obliged to retalliate, including aerial attacks on North Korea. In that scenario, the anti-aircraft (not anti-missile as you said) missiles would be trying to shoot down US and South Korean pilots. It would certainly be unethical to aid the North in this effort.
Of course, given the technological state of North Korea, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be manning a surface-to-air missile site when the US comes flying in.
He doesn't need legal advice. This is an April Fool's joke, and even if it weren't, there is a simple answer.
In the US, a wide variety of technologies are subject to export restrictions for strategic reasons. This would definitely include software for controlling anti-aircraft systems. So, in the US it would be illegal to release it under GPL or even to make it public. I guarantee that anyone who tries to do this will receive a large amount of undesireable attention, will be stopped, and may even be detained.
And of course there is the ethical aspect of it. If it is out in the open, then it can be used by hostile countries and possibly against the US and its allies! There is a word for people who live among us and deliberately arm our enemies: "traitor.";-)
I was an intern, briefly, at a medium-sized daily newspaper, and we would never publish press-releases in a news section.
In something like the garden section or entertainment or a special topic section (e.g., a bridal section in the spring), we might very well put in a press-release with only light editing. They call it "re-writing" the press release. In fact, I was assigned to do it once or twice.;-)
MM --
Re:Safety of sample return missions?
on
Methane on Mars?
·
· Score: 1
"(I'm also concerned that we may have already contaminated Mars with earthborn bacteria)."
They sterilized the rovers before blast-off. Even surgerey sometimes results in infection, but they did what they could.
MM --
Re:Feasibiliy of High Speed Travel
on
X-43A Hits Mach 7
·
· Score: 1
I was assuming that what you were talking about was that the maximum forward force, assuming that the dragster has ample power, is dictated by the maximum frictional force of the tires on the pavement. This, in turn, is a function of the weight of the dragster and the friction of the tire on the pavement. (Increasing weight doesn't necessarily help you, though, because as you add weight, you also increase the force needed to reach equivalent acceleration.) Any application of power which causes the wheels to break loose (and therefore switch over to their dynamic coefficient of friction) will create an expensive blue cloud.
If you are talking about something else, then maybe you should explain in more detail where this fundamental limit arises from and how mass enters into the equation.
MM --
Re:Feasibiliy of High Speed Travel
on
X-43A Hits Mach 7
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The only thing is, during much of the acceleration time, they will have to use a different type of motor, since a scramjet motor will not work at lower speeds.
However they get up to minimum scramjet ignition speed, there is likely to be a pretty good kick in the pants when the scramjet ignites.
And the question of how they get up to that speed is a very important one to work out. If a rocket is used, then acceleration will be very brisk. Also, if you are going to use a rocket anyway, why bother with the scramjet at all? (In fact, a lot of people feel that scramjets are a solution in search of a problem.)
If a rocket is not used, then what will get you up to that speed? They could climb to 70,000 feet, then go into a power dive to start the scramjet, but can you imagine the G's when you pull out of a dive at hypersonic speed?
I'm not saying it can't work, I'm just pointing out that there are many issues to resolve before commercial flights are remotely feasible.
For very high speed travel, leaving the atmosphere may be the way to go. Hypersonic atmospheric travel is almost like constant re-entry. And designing a craft to get up to those speeds from horizontal takeoff is no joke.
Just some things to think about.
MM --
Re:Feasibiliy of High Speed Travel
on
X-43A Hits Mach 7
·
· Score: 1
physics _does_ say that a car that is propelled by frictional forces (i.e. tires) will never be able to accelerate faster than it's mass times it's c.o.f. doesn't matter how big the engine, how powerful the fuel, etc.
Or in less scientific terms, it doesn't matter how much horsepower you have if you can't get hookup. You'll just sit and spin, turning expensive tire rubber into blue smoke.
The article said that the teeth don't engage properly.
On high-load gears, the teeth are sometimes designed so that the faces which mesh are perpendicular to the force they apply. This keeps the gears from pushing each other away when they are loaded, and makes the gears engage more positively. But as a consequence, the teeth cannot be perfectly symmetrical.
If one of the gears is installed upside down, then the teeth would be loaded on a smaller surface area than designed (since their faces are now not parallel) which could cause them to deform or fracture. Also, since they now do push each other away, they could simply slip.
Obviously, if they fracture and leave a piece of metal free inside the gearbox, that could lead to a lockup.
But let me put it to you this way: how many security leaks do we have and have had in this country? The answer: not many. The reason: because the gov't takes security seriously, and understands it better to secure too much than secure too little.
Actually we had some pretty bad security problems during the cold war. Does the name Robert Hansen ring a bell? But that just proves your point that security is a real threat and needs to be treated as such.
Still, when people in the security world bungle something through mismanagement, or make an end run around congress, they shouldn't be able to hide behind security. They should be held accountable.
You could well be right about the OP living with the parental units. But the OP also said something about the number of support calls dropping dramatically. I (perhaps mistakenly) took that as an indication that the OP did not live with the parental units.
And I am in no position to make fun of people who live with their parents at relatively mature ages.;-)
I don't see any reason to believe that the Amazon post you linked to is authentic. For all we know, it could have been written by the same guy as the post above.
Hmmm. MAC ID's don't usually go over the internet (they are local to a LAN) unless you are doing proxy ARP, which requires the cooperation of an entity on your parents' subnet.
So what you say doesn't make too much sense to me. How do you connect remotely if you've configured the firewall to block all connections not originating from your MAC ID?
Look at it this way, Dell, HP, etc don't give a damn what Microsoft says, If they could turn a decent profit selling window Less machines, they would. The problem is, we/. geeeks are not their Market, so they don't.
Actually, I doubt very much that this is true.
In the past microsoft forced all of the big computer sellers to sign a secret agreement (I'm not making this up... even disclosing that there was an agreement violated the agreement) or they wouldn't give them OEM pricing on Windows.
Based on this history, I feel pretty sure that Microsoft can still find subtle ways to coerce or persuade the vendors not to offer linux-based or OS-less PC's for the desktop. (Dell does offer Linux and OS-less "server" PC's.)
Microsoft's reasoning would be something like, "Come-on, outside of the server market, nobody uses anything but Windows on a PC, so every OS-less PC that goes out the door is going to a software pirate."
People in the industry don't bash Microsoft just for fun or just because they are in the number one position. They bash Microsoft because a lot of the stuff they did (and probably continue to do) is very anti-consumer, and anti-competitive. It's not just sour grapes.
I had to go to a small-time vendor the last time I bought PC's, because I wanted one with Windows, and one blank, so I could install linux (or gnu/linux for those so-inclined). I refused to pay the Microsoft Tax. Of course, this small-time vendor was only allowed to resell the full version (not the OEM version) of Windows, so Microsoft probably actually got more money from me than if I had just bought two OEM versions from a big vendor and wiped one of them. So maybe I was stupid.
Didn't you see the movie _Seabiscuit_? We have to let China get out in the lead for a year or so in the moon base race. Then the US will mobilize its awsome productive capacity and we'll be back in the lead in no time.
[please don't mod this insightful; I'm going more for funny.]
I am slowly formulating the opinion that Ignorant America deserved 9/11, whoever really perpetrated it, for letting Bush hi-jack their government, letting him wreck the Kyoto accords, letting him foist un-fathomable depravity on his subjects in the name of Big Business and Special Interest. 3000 New-Yorkers died. Big Deal. Bush was the worse disaster to happen to the USA.
You are either trolling or your hatred of Bush has caused you to lose all traces of human empathy. I encourage you to re-read what you wrote and see whether it truly reflects your opinion. If it does, then something is seriously wrong with you. (I'm not talking about the anti-Bush stuff, but the way you say that the US deserved the September 11 attack and the way you discount the suffering of 3000 victims and their loved ones.)
I don't know. From the first article, it sounds as though the designer's attorney tacitly acknowleded the demand for $300,000:
Richard then demanded $300,000 of taxpayer dollars from the county. Richard said the money would offset the huge expense of running the Web site for the 33 months.
"That was by no means the end of negotiations," said Simmons, Richard's attorney. "He shut it down because he didn't want to lose any more money."
The court will have to sort it out. In any event, I believe that there is fault on both sides.
In my post, I didn't mean to allege that the designer broke the law. It was probably a mistake for me to use the term "ransom."
I just wanted to point out that the guy's behavior, as I understand it from the article (which was vague on some points), was unprofessional and unwise.
I also noted that the charges would probably be dropped, and that the sherrif's department would probably be sued for false arrest. So I think we are substantially in agreement.
Slashdot Mirror
You are right that the 4th ammendment doesn't say anything about anonymity. But there is still a problem.
In the old days, it was possible to be a pamphleteer, and have people pass out your works in the town commons. If you were careful, people might not ever connect you to the work. But nowadays, the internet has sort of become the commons, and to be a modern pamphleteer, you need to use the internet. So there should be some way for people to publish radical political works without disclosing their identity. I'm not saying that this principle is enshrined in the constitution, but it is still good policy and an important freedom.
MM--
Well, war is hell. A whole separate set of ethics governs it. Since this is a hypothetical scenario (inspired by an April Fool's joke, I might add...), we can't say which action is more ethical.
;-)
But in general, I would think that aiding countries with a recent track record of agression with their neighbors is not morally justified.
We can't pretend that both participants in every dispute are equally right. In some cases it may be very hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys, but in other cases it may be clear. The point is that if you throw this technology out into the world, the clear bad guys could get hold of it, and I believe that that is an ethical problem.
Keep in mind, too, that people who are true traitors to their own country are universally hated. Even disinterested parties view them with disgust. So if you think giving anti-aircraft technology to countries hostile to your own is a good idea, prepare to be hated.
MM
--
Don't be naive. These are anti-aircraft missiles you are talking about, not anti-missile missiles. And aircraft often have pilots. If you shoot down a plane, you generally kill the pilot.
If, for example, North Korea were to attack South Korea, the South (and the USA) would be obliged to retalliate, including aerial attacks on North Korea. In that scenario, the anti-aircraft (not anti-missile as you said) missiles would be trying to shoot down US and South Korean pilots. It would certainly be unethical to aid the North in this effort.
Of course, given the technological state of North Korea, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be manning a surface-to-air missile site when the US comes flying in.
MM--
He doesn't need legal advice. This is an April Fool's joke, and even if it weren't, there is a simple answer.
;-)
In the US, a wide variety of technologies are subject to export restrictions for strategic reasons. This would definitely include software for controlling anti-aircraft systems. So, in the US it would be illegal to release it under GPL or even to make it public. I guarantee that anyone who tries to do this will receive a large amount of undesireable attention, will be stopped, and may even be detained.
And of course there is the ethical aspect of it. If it is out in the open, then it can be used by hostile countries and possibly against the US and its allies! There is a word for people who live among us and deliberately arm our enemies: "traitor."
MM
--
I was an intern, briefly, at a medium-sized daily newspaper, and we would never publish press-releases in a news section.
;-)
In something like the garden section or entertainment or a special topic section (e.g., a bridal section in the spring), we might very well put in a press-release with only light editing. They call it "re-writing" the press release. In fact, I was assigned to do it once or twice.
MM
--
"(I'm also concerned that we may have already contaminated Mars with earthborn bacteria)."
They sterilized the rovers before blast-off. Even surgerey sometimes results in infection, but they did what they could.
MM
--
I was assuming that what you were talking about was that the maximum forward force, assuming that the dragster has ample power, is dictated by the maximum frictional force of the tires on the pavement. This, in turn, is a function of the weight of the dragster and the friction of the tire on the pavement. (Increasing weight doesn't necessarily help you, though, because as you add weight, you also increase the force needed to reach equivalent acceleration.) Any application of power which causes the wheels to break loose (and therefore switch over to their dynamic coefficient of friction) will create an expensive blue cloud.
If you are talking about something else, then maybe you should explain in more detail where this fundamental limit arises from and how mass enters into the equation.
MM
--
The only thing is, during much of the acceleration time, they will have to use a different type of motor, since a scramjet motor will not work at lower speeds.
However they get up to minimum scramjet ignition speed, there is likely to be a pretty good kick in the pants when the scramjet ignites.
And the question of how they get up to that speed is a very important one to work out. If a rocket is used, then acceleration will be very brisk. Also, if you are going to use a rocket anyway, why bother with the scramjet at all? (In fact, a lot of people feel that scramjets are a solution in search of a problem.)
If a rocket is not used, then what will get you up to that speed? They could climb to 70,000 feet, then go into a power dive to start the scramjet, but can you imagine the G's when you pull out of a dive at hypersonic speed?
I'm not saying it can't work, I'm just pointing out that there are many issues to resolve before commercial flights are remotely feasible.
For very high speed travel, leaving the atmosphere may be the way to go. Hypersonic atmospheric travel is almost like constant re-entry. And designing a craft to get up to those speeds from horizontal takeoff is no joke.
Just some things to think about.
MM
--
Or in less scientific terms, it doesn't matter how much horsepower you have if you can't get hookup. You'll just sit and spin, turning expensive tire rubber into blue smoke.
MM
--
Actually, I liked the one about hitting redline then closing the throttle and listening to the ghosts scream.
I tried to go back and get the exact quote, but the mirror was starting to lag.
MM
--
"What does "gear" mean in this context? (English is not my first language) A toothed wheel?"
Yes. A toothed wheel or something very similar to a toothed wheel. (For example, it could be only part of a wheel, like 90 degrees or 180 degrees.)
MM
--
The article said that the teeth don't engage properly.
On high-load gears, the teeth are sometimes designed so that the faces which mesh are perpendicular to the force they apply. This keeps the gears from pushing each other away when they are loaded, and makes the gears engage more positively. But as a consequence, the teeth cannot be perfectly symmetrical.
If one of the gears is installed upside down, then the teeth would be loaded on a smaller surface area than designed (since their faces are now not parallel) which could cause them to deform or fracture. Also, since they now do push each other away, they could simply slip.
Obviously, if they fracture and leave a piece of metal free inside the gearbox, that could lead to a lockup.
MM
--
I'm sure American Express will accept and hold the parcel for you. This is one of their services for cardholders.
I haven't done it in a while, however.
MM
--
They're not going all that high. They aren't even achieving escape velocity.
So the re-entry heating won't be all that great. This is one of the things that makes the x-prize achievable.
MM
--
The main article stated clearly that the system is running FreeBSD. You must have skimmed over that paragraph too fast. ;-)
MM
--
Actually we had some pretty bad security problems during the cold war. Does the name Robert Hansen ring a bell? But that just proves your point that security is a real threat and needs to be treated as such.
Still, when people in the security world bungle something through mismanagement, or make an end run around congress, they shouldn't be able to hide behind security. They should be held accountable.
MM
--
You could well be right about the OP living with the parental units. But the OP also said something about the number of support calls dropping dramatically. I (perhaps mistakenly) took that as an indication that the OP did not live with the parental units.
;-)
And I am in no position to make fun of people who live with their parents at relatively mature ages.
MM
--
I don't see any reason to believe that the Amazon post you linked to is authentic. For all we know, it could have been written by the same guy as the post above.
Who knows?
MM
--
Hmmm. MAC ID's don't usually go over the internet (they are local to a LAN) unless you are doing proxy ARP, which requires the cooperation of an entity on your parents' subnet.
So what you say doesn't make too much sense to me. How do you connect remotely if you've configured the firewall to block all connections not originating from your MAC ID?
MM
--
Actually, I doubt very much that this is true.
In the past microsoft forced all of the big computer sellers to sign a secret agreement (I'm not making this up... even disclosing that there was an agreement violated the agreement) or they wouldn't give them OEM pricing on Windows.
Based on this history, I feel pretty sure that Microsoft can still find subtle ways to coerce or persuade the vendors not to offer linux-based or OS-less PC's for the desktop. (Dell does offer Linux and OS-less "server" PC's.)
Microsoft's reasoning would be something like, "Come-on, outside of the server market, nobody uses anything but Windows on a PC, so every OS-less PC that goes out the door is going to a software pirate."
People in the industry don't bash Microsoft just for fun or just because they are in the number one position. They bash Microsoft because a lot of the stuff they did (and probably continue to do) is very anti-consumer, and anti-competitive. It's not just sour grapes.
I had to go to a small-time vendor the last time I bought PC's, because I wanted one with Windows, and one blank, so I could install linux (or gnu/linux for those so-inclined). I refused to pay the Microsoft Tax. Of course, this small-time vendor was only allowed to resell the full version (not the OEM version) of Windows, so Microsoft probably actually got more money from me than if I had just bought two OEM versions from a big vendor and wiped one of them. So maybe I was stupid.
MM--
Didn't you see the movie _Seabiscuit_? We have to let China get out in the lead for a year or so in the moon base race. Then the US will mobilize its awsome productive capacity and we'll be back in the lead in no time.
[please don't mod this insightful; I'm going more for funny.]
MM
--
You are either trolling or your hatred of Bush has caused you to lose all traces of human empathy. I encourage you to re-read what you wrote and see whether it truly reflects your opinion. If it does, then something is seriously wrong with you. (I'm not talking about the anti-Bush stuff, but the way you say that the US deserved the September 11 attack and the way you discount the suffering of 3000 victims and their loved ones.)
MM--
This was the scenario in _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ by Robert A. Heinlein.
Just thought I'd throw that in to the mix.
MM
--
I don't know. From the first article, it sounds as though the designer's attorney tacitly acknowleded the demand for $300,000:
The court will have to sort it out. In any event, I believe that there is fault on both sides.
MM
--
In my post, I didn't mean to allege that the designer broke the law. It was probably a mistake for me to use the term "ransom."
I just wanted to point out that the guy's behavior, as I understand it from the article (which was vague on some points), was unprofessional and unwise.
I also noted that the charges would probably be dropped, and that the sherrif's department would probably be sued for false arrest. So I think we are substantially in agreement.
MM
--