I wonder if this material would work well with the previously mentioned Spheral Solar technology people?
http://www.spheralsolar.com/
If the absorbtion range is as good as they said, then one would hope the same method could be used... I guess it is more an issue of the InGaN actually forming spheres.
IIRC, the project is the software that Carmack uses for the rocket telemetry and possible the engine throttling software as well, a really cool package of the actual tools that they're being really upfront about using.
Suprising to see how open Armadillo is in comparison to most of the other teams with once or twice a year updates, usually to the effect, 'uhhh, we actually aren't any further along'
The XCor folks certainly seem to have a good amount of engine testing complete, but I'm curious about their control systems and launch vehicle...
I'd put the Arrow, Armadillo and XCor teams at the forefront of the pack... the rest don't seem to be on track.
Well, while it is true that many large corporations/organizations suffer the same problems, a large degree of this is directly related to the fact that NASA encourages COST-plus accounting, and do not penalize their contractors for going over budget. That, and the fact that each of the NASA centers utilizes different accounting methods and software. Until they standardize on how they manage their contracts and accounts, NASA will continue to be a huge budgetary sink.
www.nasawatch.com is a great place if you want to found NASA for silly behavior. My favorite notes of recent past are the millions that go to prokbellying supportive districts with no direct link to science or aerospace concerns.
Hell, NASA in the past ten years couldn't even figure out HOW MUCH they were overspending! I think if a problem has been around for more than ten years, you might have had the time to deal with it in a professional manner.
and don't get me started on their whole 'preferred contractor' anti-competitive behavior...
Actually, that's what they ARE trying to do! They are constantly in the search for re-use of the packaging, when it something other than shrinkwrap.
The trouble with the DVD style cases is that the stickers can be hard to uniformly strip off, making it hard to convince people to take them/reuse them.
IIRC, they've talked with movie rental places, used DVD/CD stores, and schools about giving them the cases, since they're just interested in the CDs themselves...
All in all very pleasant fellows, looking for a creative way to apply the clue stick to a corporation that does'nt seem to get that sending multiple CDs to someone week after week is unlikely to make them sign up multiple times.
Since they've already done this for every other type of testing result in the past, that's hardly a suprise right?
'Oh you might have a heart problem sometime in the future, even though you're treating the issues and being proactive, I'm sorry, we're going to have to increase your premium 400%'
IIRC, UC-Berkeley employees ended up suing some of the HMOs because they were unfairly rejecting African Americans because they carried a higher risk for high blood pressure, sickle cell, etc.
Nevermind the issues for the whole 'expression of the predisposition' and how accurate these readings are at this time.
Diagnostics, the double/triple edged sword. Wheee!
There are several astro-databases, though the one I am most familar with is the MPC, which can be found at:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html
IIRC, the ESA, NASA and other space agencies also have their own DBs for this information, though they usually propigate the information out once they have enough confirmed sightings.... that's the real rub, there are sooo many planetoids in the KB, the main belt and NEOrbits that nailing down orbits for these faint objects is *really* tricky.
Unfortunately I am not in a good area for any sort of observations. I hope the current window for the Extra-solar planet observation folks get enough volunteers,/. certainly has had enough articles on it.
They've already filled a couple rooms with CDs and diskettes. They collect video captures of people who donate large numbers for a documentary as well.
It's scary to think how little they've collected (which takes up a ton of space) compared to the landfill levels that AOL sends out each day/week/month/year.
As always, asking here is fairly silly if you are looking for anything other than anecdotal evidence (though I know you said that was OK).
However, here are some suggestions.
You've already checked out and presumably read the FDA site... good first start. I recommend spending another month or two reading up on the technology, especially where it concerns other people with similar vision.
You get what you pay for: If you want those 199.95USD eyes, then by all means, goto the cheapest surgeon in town. Otherwise, talk to area optometrists and cross-correlate their suggestions. Prices I hear from the cross-correlated docs in my area tends to be about approx 3000-5000USD.
Once you have a surgeon or three in mind, goto their offices, ask for their statistics. If they wont tell you a) how many surgeries they've done b) the results (probably statistically lumped) over the past few years, you probably don't want to use them.
Re: halo'ing. For one thing occurs in a fairly small number of people (check the FDA and LASIK group sites for this year's stats) and for most fades over time. Most people who DO experience halo'ing already had halo issue pre-surgery. Look at the numbers at 6, 12 and 18 months, instead of the immediate results.
Re:20/20. "not _regaining_ 20/20"?? 20/20 combined eyesight in new surgeries is not hovering between 99-97% of all surgeries. Note: this is combined vision, not individual eyes. people tend to see better combined than they do per-eye.
Re:abberation issues (from other postings). A large number of people now are getting surgery done by lasers that ablate the surface of the cornea out further than before 8-9mm IIRC, where the max distance used to be 5-6 depending on the lasers.
There is also a new method that is having better returns called 'Thin Flap Lasik' and you should look into whether or not it fits your risk profile.
There ARE risks. All surgery does. You have to figure out what level of risk you're willing to take, is 1-3% OK for you, or do you want a.00001% risk? Some of these risks however come from incompitent doctors, dirty or misaligned tools, and unkempt lasers. So again, I highly recommend doing your area research on doctors and facilities before jumping into the surgery.
Re: the horror stories. Keep in mind horror stories make the best news, so instead of gathering anecdotal evidence, look at the real results of the doctors and facilities you're thinking of using and being honest about them about your concerns.
Honestly, you sound like you need a little while longer to chew through things. Take some time. The procedures will only get better, and the options will only expand. It's taken me 4 years to decide to get the surgery once I have the proper funds, and in that time the percents for my range have dropped from 6% to 2-3% non-"perfect" numbers. Though thenumber for error seems to maintain at the 1-2% value.
Re:Pretty stupid...
on
One Small Step
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The lander testing was done out of the "business park"/wharehouse location. It appears that is where they've done all the lander testing to date. The test area looks like it is between the different parking spaces for each building.
While I agree doing the test near the curb was apparently dangerous, they had the lander tethered, and I *believe* that it was tethered so that it wouldn't end up on the curb.
IIRC, they do all of the larger flight vehicle engine testing out at the OK "Space Facility"/ bunkers.
It sounds like they'll start doing more work on the tube vehicle now, and testing more for the 4 main engine model now.
Waiting for the weekly update is always exciting... it is a marvel that these guys share their findings so openly when a lot of other groups are fairly close mouthed about their process/progress.
To be fair, it IS partially NASA's fault. One, for having such bad accounting practices that they can't even tell how much they've spent in a given year (amongst other accounting sanfus). Two, for sole sourcing (excuse me, preferred vendors) the the three "Big Three", instead of smaller more efficent companies...Three for not having the gumption to actually stand up to Congress/the President and say "Quickly Made, Well Built or Cheap, pick any two" or to privatize the infrastructure and stick to science requirements.
But, I do definitely agree, the porkbarrelling of each of the individual Centers and the requisite Congressional non-tech savvy rulings have caused a majority of the current NASA issues. That and a decade+ of Dan Goldin.
Check out http://www.nasawatch.com Great site, always interesting scoops.
You do understand that there are strict limitations to where/when/how these tests are performed? That you need literally TONS of FAA waivers, claims, insurance, etc. and sometimes years of buck-passing before the larger rockets can even get an attempt at a launch date?
Do you think that being at NASA is the only way people can learn about modern aerospace engineering, that somehow they are magically endowed with special knowledge that hasn't been in the public domain for at least 50 years?
And the ESA, RSA, the Australians, the Indian space ministry and the Chinese seem to all be doing pretty good jobs as well... not to mention the countless other enthusiasts and engineers who've been studying rockets for a few decades.
AFAIK, for flights such as these, even when the flight path has a low population index, you STILL need to have a "remote detonation" capability to keep it for veering off course and crashing into important things/people.
With rockets, since the fuel is itself reactive/explosive, they can usually keep the explosives package fairly small and secure against false authorizations (your "Picard four-seven-alpha-tango).
I'm more bummed that all the instrumentation was destroyed, so it's going to be *very* difficult for them to figure out why the motor barfed. I wonder what they were collecting from ground sensors... It would definitely be neat to see how their avionics package compares to say Carmack's http://www.armadilloaerospace.com lander...
I believe this is what you are referring to: http://www.geophys.washington.edu/Space/SpaceMod el/M2P2/
A great site, though I wish they could get moving on... I'd love to see a probe get launched and "whip" out of the system...can't hurry progress I suppose.
The magnets(solenoids) in the M2P2 program are much much less massive, since they need to balance strength of the plasma field/bubble and containment of the plasma over time with mass of the entire system over the operational scope of project.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/energy-tech-02o.h tm l
Seems like another interesting way to sequester CO2. More ideas, more ways of approaching the problem...especially since peanuts are a pretty good soil-poor crop and have all those other uses.
I mean, you're going to have peanut shells anyways...
It could have easily been captured by skimming (creating a lot of drag on the orbit) the upper atmosphere. Dozens if not hundreds of small sizes asteriods do this each year, though most appear to 'bounce'/'skip' off (or conversely 'hit'). NASA uses aero-capture as a way to optimize propulsion costs. If the rock is small enough, once slowed, the dynamics of the Sol-Earth-Moon system could have perturbed it into something fairly 'normalized'.
In fact, one of the reasons SpaceWatch type asteriod monitoring solutions are discussed is that a lot of these atmosphere skimmers appear to be Nuke hits to poorly designed tracking systems, and unless we KNOW that a particular item is a piece of rock, someone monitoring Kashmir might get a little jumpy. Just because NORAD knows about something doesn't mean it SHARES.
Anyways, sounds like a great chance to study the dynamics of asteriod capture into our system.
Err, It's really heavy that's why. Suspesion, primary mirror and secondary mirror assemblies all weigh about 31,500 lbs. Which means you need about 492187.5 ft^3 of helium.
And to date, there are not highly sterrable, controllable ballons in operation that can oeprate at those heights (41,000 ft). Those companies pitching the 'new' blimp concepts just aren't there yet.
only one communication subsystem was rendered useless, and they have hopes that a slow testing process will 'wake up' the system eventually if the radiation spike wasn't too hard on the electronics.
the probe was hardly dstroyed.
but then again this is/., why would a submitter actually read the article they are submitting.
From what I understood from this article, as well as Bruce's presentation of it at the CSI conference, this is EXTREMELY useful to security staff and managers, in that it allows several things to happen:
- Each leaf or branch can be assigned valuations (assessments) of: risk, summed cost (all sub-leafs) to complete, time to complete, legal rick to attacker, physical risk to attacker, cost to correct, or just about any factor that you want to assign to the leaf/node.
- It helps you build the profile of attack by attacker if you happen to have formally though about who it is that might be interested in your system.
- It helps managers and planners think systematically about the structure and design of their security infrastrcuture.
- It illustrates weaknesses in another way, so that if you've developed tunnel vision by concentrating on one issue (PGP/BO/whatever), you'll see that you've been focusing on something that is harder to do than simply bribing the janitor to let someone in your office.
- Those values that you create (and you should assign a branch to 'Unknown attacks' with valuations) can be presented to management, showing you on behalf of the company are exercizing some due diligence just by thinking about this stuff.
- Each branch can be shared, if you so desire. If a specialist in physical security comes up with a novel way to bypass all standard deadbolts, they can post the new branch/node up and let people assign their own valuations to each step.
- You can constantly query a system that uses this model for the current weakpoints in your structure according to the most recent data and valuation. Of course, 'Unknown attack' may always be the highest weakness, but at least you can clean the rest of the slate as much as possible.
No, none of this is really revolutionary in terms of the structure. Game theroy has been around for a while, and been using this method for the same purposes, but an Industry Name such as Bruce's exposes it to a lot more people than the usual academics. It's not a solution or a cure, but a nice, illustrative TOOL.
I am not a doctor, but I researched this very extensively in the past year, and ended up being rejected for the procedure.
The reason for this was that I have rather large pupils (8.5mm dilated)that dilate past the areas where most of the lasers currently cut the cornea (7mm). So, all of the reputable surgeons I talked to said for me to wait until the software was reconfigured for the large pupil people of the world.
Now, the reason that a lot of people get the 'starring' and 'haze' at night, is that their pupils dilate past the 7mm area the lasers cut in, and let light bounce off a large 'ablation' (or stair-step of tissue).
The ablations are why most good doctors will not let people with large dilation pupils get LASIK. The stair-stepping of the tissue in the cuts is fine enough for most people, but they leave an 'edge' for the light to catch on, if your pupils are large.
Both of the major laser companies are currently working on this are trying to get the ablations down in general (better vision for everyone) and out further for those of us who have large pupils.
As others have stated, the benefits are great, but beware of any potential job or life activity that could take you into the realm of sudden pressure changes, as it appears the surgery MAY result in erratic sight behaviour.
Other advice:
- Get a list of _failures_ from the doctor performing... not just great successes, they like to stack the deck, but usually will supply people who have had 'non-successful' procedures.
-Always make sure you can get the success percentage of the doctor performing, not just the lab in general, people will try and group a really great doctor with a newbie and try and use the inital doctor's rates with the newbie as well.
- Don't try and save a few bucks on someone who's done less than a thousand procedures.
-Get someone with experience, who updates his software and machines frequently and who will supply every concieveable fact to you before you decide.
-Make sure that they're using the most recent machines and software for those machines, the machines get software updates about every 6 to 9 months. Make sure they are paying thier fees, so that the equipment is getting serviced every 10-20 single eye procedures. You want a very stable machine.
My final advice is: Wait. I was all gung-ho to have this done, and I'm waiting until they get the 20/20 success rate industry wide to 99%, currently it seems to waver in the 92-94% range. Re-research this every 9 months or so and see if any major progress has been made. I mean I wish I could swim without dorky goggles, but at the expense of my future sight, I'm not risking anything.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if this material would work well with the previously mentioned Spheral Solar technology people?
http://www.spheralsolar.com/
If the absorbtion range is as good as they said, then one would hope the same method could be used... I guess it is more an issue of the InGaN actually forming spheres.
Errr, no.
IIRC, the project is the software that Carmack uses for the rocket telemetry and possible the engine throttling software as well, a really cool package of the actual tools that they're being really upfront about using.
Suprising to see how open Armadillo is in comparison to most of the other teams with once or twice a year updates, usually to the effect, 'uhhh, we actually aren't any further along'
The XCor folks certainly seem to have a good amount of engine testing complete, but I'm curious about their control systems and launch vehicle...
I'd put the Arrow, Armadillo and XCor teams at the forefront of the pack... the rest don't seem to be on track.
Because there is a difference between 90+% of a market (DirecTV and Dish), and 10-15% of a market (Comcast + ATT).
Well, while it is true that many large corporations/organizations suffer the same problems, a large degree of this is directly related to the fact that NASA encourages COST-plus accounting, and do not penalize their contractors for going over budget. That, and the fact that each of the NASA centers utilizes different accounting methods and software. Until they standardize on how they manage their contracts and accounts, NASA will continue to be a huge budgetary sink.
www.nasawatch.com is a great place if you want to found NASA for silly behavior. My favorite notes of recent past are the millions that go to prokbellying supportive districts with no direct link to science or aerospace concerns.
Hell, NASA in the past ten years couldn't even figure out HOW MUCH they were overspending! I think if a problem has been around for more than ten years, you might have had the time to deal with it in a professional manner.
and don't get me started on their whole 'preferred contractor' anti-competitive behavior...
Actually, that's what they ARE trying to do! They are constantly in the search for re-use of the packaging, when it something other than shrinkwrap.
The trouble with the DVD style cases is that the stickers can be hard to uniformly strip off, making it hard to convince people to take them/reuse them.
IIRC, they've talked with movie rental places, used DVD/CD stores, and schools about giving them the cases, since they're just interested in the CDs themselves...
All in all very pleasant fellows, looking for a creative way to apply the clue stick to a corporation that does'nt seem to get that sending multiple CDs to someone week after week is unlikely to make them sign up multiple times.
Since they've already done this for every other type of testing result in the past, that's hardly a suprise right?
'Oh you might have a heart problem sometime in the future, even though you're treating the issues and being proactive, I'm sorry, we're going to have to increase your premium 400%'
IIRC, UC-Berkeley employees ended up suing some of the HMOs because they were unfairly rejecting African Americans because they carried a higher risk for high blood pressure, sickle cell, etc.
Nevermind the issues for the whole 'expression of the predisposition' and how accurate these readings are at this time.
Diagnostics, the double/triple edged sword. Wheee!
Yeah, too bad Dr. Forward's dead tho. He dealt with hard scifi subjects so well, and made them much more accesible to the layperson, IMHO.
Ah well, Ad Astra Robert.
There are several astro-databases, though the one I am most familar with is the MPC, which can be found at:
/. certainly has had enough articles on it.
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html
IIRC, the ESA, NASA and other space agencies also have their own DBs for this information, though they usually propigate the information out once they have enough confirmed sightings.... that's the real rub, there are sooo many planetoids in the KB, the main belt and NEOrbits that nailing down orbits for these faint objects is *really* tricky.
Unfortunately I am not in a good area for any sort of observations. I hope the current window for the Extra-solar planet observation folks get enough volunteers,
--foolish
I've met these guys!
They've already filled a couple rooms with CDs and diskettes. They collect video captures of people who donate large numbers for a documentary as well.
It's scary to think how little they've collected (which takes up a ton of space) compared to the landfill levels that AOL sends out each day/week/month/year.
--foolish
This has changed and changes every few months, as they update the software to ablate to areas larger and larger outside of the previous software revs.
So check what version of the software the laser is running and if the surgeon is keeping up with the laser manufacturer on maintenance.
As always, asking here is fairly silly if you are looking for anything other than anecdotal evidence (though I know you said that was OK).
.00001% risk? Some of these risks however come from incompitent doctors, dirty or misaligned tools, and unkempt lasers. So again, I highly recommend doing your area research on doctors and facilities before jumping into the surgery.
However, here are some suggestions.
You've already checked out and presumably read the FDA site... good first start. I recommend spending another month or two reading up on the technology, especially where it concerns other people with similar vision.
You get what you pay for: If you want those 199.95USD eyes, then by all means, goto the cheapest surgeon in town. Otherwise, talk to area optometrists and cross-correlate their suggestions. Prices I hear from the cross-correlated docs in my area tends to be about approx 3000-5000USD.
Once you have a surgeon or three in mind, goto their offices, ask for their statistics. If they wont tell you a) how many surgeries they've done b) the results (probably statistically lumped) over the past few years, you probably don't want to use them.
Re: halo'ing. For one thing occurs in a fairly small number of people (check the FDA and LASIK group sites for this year's stats) and for most fades over time. Most people who DO experience halo'ing already had halo issue pre-surgery. Look at the numbers at 6, 12 and 18 months, instead of the immediate results.
Re:20/20. "not _regaining_ 20/20"?? 20/20 combined eyesight in new surgeries is not hovering between 99-97% of all surgeries. Note: this is combined vision, not individual eyes. people tend to see better combined than they do per-eye.
Re:abberation issues (from other postings). A large number of people now are getting surgery done by lasers that ablate the surface of the cornea out further than before 8-9mm IIRC, where the max distance used to be 5-6 depending on the lasers.
There is also a new method that is having better returns called 'Thin Flap Lasik' and you should look into whether or not it fits your risk profile.
There ARE risks. All surgery does. You have to figure out what level of risk you're willing to take, is 1-3% OK for you, or do you want a
Re: the horror stories. Keep in mind horror stories make the best news, so instead of gathering anecdotal evidence, look at the real results of the doctors and facilities you're thinking of using and being honest about them about your concerns.
Honestly, you sound like you need a little while longer to chew through things. Take some time. The procedures will only get better, and the options will only expand. It's taken me 4 years to decide to get the surgery once I have the proper funds, and in that time the percents for my range have dropped from 6% to 2-3% non-"perfect" numbers. Though thenumber for error seems to maintain at the 1-2% value.
The lander testing was done out of the "business park"/wharehouse location. It appears that is where they've done all the lander testing to date. The test area looks like it is between the different parking spaces for each building.
While I agree doing the test near the curb was apparently dangerous, they had the lander tethered, and I *believe* that it was tethered so that it wouldn't end up on the curb.
IIRC, they do all of the larger flight vehicle engine testing out at the OK "Space Facility"/ bunkers.
It sounds like they'll start doing more work on the tube vehicle now, and testing more for the 4 main engine model now.
Waiting for the weekly update is always exciting... it is a marvel that these guys share their findings so openly when a lot of other groups are fairly close mouthed about their process/progress.
To be fair, it IS partially NASA's fault. One, for having such bad accounting practices that they can't even tell how much they've spent in a given year (amongst other accounting sanfus). Two, for sole sourcing (excuse me, preferred vendors) the the three "Big Three", instead of smaller more efficent companies. ..Three for not having the gumption to actually stand up to Congress/the President and say "Quickly Made, Well Built or Cheap, pick any two" or to privatize the infrastructure and stick to science requirements.
But, I do definitely agree, the porkbarrelling of each of the individual Centers and the requisite Congressional non-tech savvy rulings have caused a majority of the current NASA issues. That and a decade+ of Dan Goldin.
Check out http://www.nasawatch.com
Great site, always interesting scoops.
You do understand that there are strict limitations to where/when/how these tests are performed? That you need literally TONS of FAA waivers, claims, insurance, etc. and sometimes years of buck-passing before the larger rockets can even get an attempt at a launch date?
Do you think that being at NASA is the only way people can learn about modern aerospace engineering, that somehow they are magically endowed with special knowledge that hasn't been in the public domain for at least 50 years?
And the ESA, RSA, the Australians, the Indian space ministry and the Chinese seem to all be doing pretty good jobs as well... not to mention the countless other enthusiasts and engineers who've been studying rockets for a few decades.
Actually, it probably was.
AFAIK, for flights such as these, even when the flight path has a low population index, you STILL need to have a "remote detonation" capability to keep it for veering off course and crashing into important things/people.
With rockets, since the fuel is itself reactive/explosive, they can usually keep the explosives package fairly small and secure against false authorizations (your "Picard four-seven-alpha-tango).
I'm more bummed that all the instrumentation was destroyed, so it's going to be *very* difficult for them to figure out why the motor barfed. I wonder what they were collecting from ground sensors... It would definitely be neat to see how their avionics package compares to say Carmack's http://www.armadilloaerospace.com lander...
I believe this is what you are referring to:d el /M2P2/
http://www.geophys.washington.edu/Space/SpaceMo
A great site, though I wish they could get moving on... I'd love to see a probe get launched and "whip" out of the system...can't hurry progress I suppose.
The magnets(solenoids) in the M2P2 program are much much less massive, since they need to balance strength of the plasma field/bubble and containment of the plasma over time with mass of the entire system over the operational scope of project.
An interesting article at:
h tm l
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/energy-tech-02o.
Seems like another interesting way to sequester CO2. More ideas, more ways of approaching the problem...especially since peanuts are a pretty good soil-poor crop and have all those other uses.
I mean, you're going to have peanut shells anyways...
--foolish
It could have easily been captured by skimming (creating a lot of drag on the orbit) the upper atmosphere. Dozens if not hundreds of small sizes asteriods do this each year, though most appear to 'bounce'/'skip' off (or conversely 'hit'). NASA uses aero-capture as a way to optimize propulsion costs. If the rock is small enough, once slowed, the dynamics of the Sol-Earth-Moon system could have perturbed it into something fairly 'normalized'.
In fact, one of the reasons SpaceWatch type asteriod monitoring solutions are discussed is that a lot of these atmosphere skimmers appear to be Nuke hits to poorly designed tracking systems, and unless we KNOW that a particular item is a piece of rock, someone monitoring Kashmir might get a little jumpy. Just because NORAD knows about something doesn't mean it SHARES.
Anyways, sounds like a great chance to study the dynamics of asteriod capture into our system.
Err, It's really heavy that's why. Suspesion, primary mirror and secondary mirror assemblies all weigh about 31,500 lbs. Which means you need about 492187.5 ft^3 of helium.
And to date, there are not highly sterrable, controllable ballons in operation that can oeprate at those heights (41,000 ft). Those companies pitching the 'new' blimp concepts just aren't there yet.
--foolishone
only one communication subsystem was rendered useless, and they have hopes that a slow testing process will 'wake up' the system eventually if the radiation spike wasn't too hard on the electronics.
/., why would a submitter actually read the article they are submitting.
the probe was hardly dstroyed.
but then again this is
--foolish
http://spacedaily.com/news/energy-tech-02j.html
Tells you a bit more about the process and the diagram gives you a good glimpse at the device.
--foolish
From what I understood from this article, as well as Bruce's presentation of it at the CSI conference, this is EXTREMELY useful to security staff and managers, in that it allows several things to happen:
- Each leaf or branch can be assigned valuations (assessments) of: risk, summed cost (all sub-leafs) to complete, time to complete, legal rick to attacker, physical risk to attacker, cost to correct, or just about any factor that you want to assign to the leaf/node.
- It helps you build the profile of attack by attacker if you happen to have formally though about who it is that might be interested in your system.
- It helps managers and planners think systematically about the structure and design of their security infrastrcuture.
- It illustrates weaknesses in another way, so that if you've developed tunnel vision by concentrating on one issue (PGP/BO/whatever), you'll see that you've been focusing on something that is harder to do than simply bribing the janitor to let someone in your office.
- Those values that you create (and you should assign a branch to 'Unknown attacks' with valuations) can be presented to management, showing you on behalf of the company are exercizing some due diligence just by thinking about this stuff.
- Each branch can be shared, if you so desire. If a specialist in physical security comes up with a novel way to bypass all standard deadbolts, they can post the new branch/node up and let people assign their own valuations to each step.
- You can constantly query a system that uses this model for the current weakpoints in your structure according to the most recent data and valuation. Of course, 'Unknown attack' may always be the highest weakness, but at least you can clean the rest of the slate as much as possible.
No, none of this is really revolutionary in terms of the structure. Game theroy has been around for a while, and been using this method for the same purposes, but an Industry Name such as Bruce's exposes it to a lot more people than the usual academics. It's not a solution or a cure, but a nice, illustrative TOOL.
I am not a doctor, but I researched this very extensively in the past year, and ended up being rejected for the procedure.
The reason for this was that I have rather large pupils (8.5mm dilated)that dilate past the areas where most of the lasers currently cut the cornea (7mm). So, all of the reputable surgeons I talked to said for me to wait until the software was reconfigured for the large pupil people of the world.
Now, the reason that a lot of people get the 'starring' and 'haze' at night, is that their pupils dilate past the 7mm area the lasers cut in, and let light bounce off a large 'ablation' (or stair-step of tissue).
The ablations are why most good doctors will not let people with large dilation pupils get LASIK. The stair-stepping of the tissue in the cuts is fine enough for most people, but they leave an 'edge' for the light to catch on, if your pupils are large.
Both of the major laser companies are currently working on this are trying to get the ablations down in general (better vision for everyone) and out further for those of us who have large pupils.
As others have stated, the benefits are great, but beware of any potential job or life activity that could take you into the realm of sudden pressure changes, as it appears the surgery MAY result in erratic sight behaviour.
Other advice:
- Get a list of _failures_ from the doctor performing... not just great successes, they like to stack the deck, but usually will supply people who have had 'non-successful' procedures.
-Always make sure you can get the success percentage of the doctor performing, not just the lab in general, people will try and group a really great doctor with a newbie and try and use the inital doctor's rates with the newbie as well.
- Don't try and save a few bucks on someone who's done less than a thousand procedures.
-Get someone with experience, who updates his software and machines frequently and who will supply every concieveable fact to you before you decide.
-Make sure that they're using the most recent machines and software for those machines, the machines get software updates about every 6 to 9 months. Make sure they are paying thier fees, so that the equipment is getting serviced every 10-20 single eye procedures. You want a very stable machine.
My final advice is: Wait. I was all gung-ho to have this done, and I'm waiting until they get the 20/20 success rate industry wide to 99%, currently it seems to waver in the 92-94% range. Re-research this every 9 months or so and see if any major progress has been made. I mean I wish I could swim without dorky goggles, but at the expense of my future sight, I'm not risking anything.
--foolish