Well, you have to buy a pair of tin cans to put on 'em.
Actually, there's a couple other things involved, from what I understand--there's a coarse and fine adjustment for the resistances. While the alleged 'science' behind using it for some kind of invisible alien ghost detection is kinda bogus, it would be useful for, say, testing a batch of resistors for variances--you could adjust the tolerances as required, and so long as the needle stayed on-scale, your resistor would be acceptable for the value in question.
I think I've heard of this access before though...haven't they had it for a while?
Definitely abusive, and I definitely won't be going anywhere near eBay for the forseeable future.
I don't go for cutting-edge PCs, and have had reasonably good luck with refurbished business PCs that you can sometimes find being distributed without an OS. geeks.com and techforless.com have treated me well.
(I'm not associated with either--I just buy from 'em every once in a while)
I stress _BUSINESS_ PCs--the consumer-grade nonsense that you get from the box stores and the like is usually pretty dismal in quality. The ones intended for business tend to have fewer integrated parts, more expansion room, and other upgradeable features.
In a way, the Spice was a sort of information accessing material, if you think about it: it allowed the Navigator's Guild to navigate at FTL speeds by being able to see the pathways; it allowed the Reverend Mothers the means to tap their genetic memories, etc.--essentially, providing access to information that couldn't be found any other way, and thus giving them a great deal of power.
And whatever the network is compatible with, it won't be used with any current phones--after all, how are you supposed to talk on a cellphone in a spacesuit?
Unless they add bluetooth onto the spacesuit headsets, anyway...
There's only going to be four bars to provide coverage on the moon?
It had better be a small colony, then. Or they'd better be really big bars, hopefully without annoyingly trendy kitsch, and hopefully with some really good whiskey.
So offer it as an 'upgraded' model--give it a new avionics package (for "more accurate orbital insertions") and the like to explain away the extra electronics.
Actually, if you were particularly smart about it, you could use some of the processing from the spy satellite as the new avionics.
Or, alternately, try not making your satellites weigh six tons.
Where do you think Moxie came from? The stuff tastes like Love Potion #9 (it sure as hell smells like turpentine and looks like india ink...) but somehow stays reasonably popular amongst certain people...
(But then, it has more caffeine than some energy drinks...)
The robot--if such a word is even really appropriate--has only read access. There is no input from the device to the brain--there are only sensors reading the electrical and motor impulses. There's no "determination" of where the impulses are--there are merely changes recorded by sensors which the operator places on the head that passively read the electric fields.
The device does not in any way, shape, or form 'write' to the brain at all.
This is nowhere near a 'mind meld'--if anything, it's like a video camera that records electrical activity rather than visual spectrum activity.
No Matrix bots for you. Sorry. You'll have to wait a while before you can meet Agent Smith.
How exactly would you propose to turn a machine that acts out measured impulses into a mind control device?
It's nothing more than a sophisticated puppet; is it likely that the puppeteer of a Punch and Judy show will start feeding people to crocodiles and bashing folks over the head with a policeman's truncheon?
Spy satellites don't tend to be put into circular equatorial orbits--they tend to be put into fairly eccentric orbits, often with a fairly high degree of eccentricity, so that it can be very close to the earth during part of its orbit and spend the rest of it fairly far away.
Also, the orbit of the satellite will tend to be inclined fairly severely--after all, there's only so many things you can see from the equator, so an inclined (or even polar) orbit would be far more useful.
As a result, such a satellite will spend rather more time being illuminated than you might expect.
However, at night time, when you're in orbit, if you're pointing towards earth, you'll be pointing towards the sun, too.
Thus, if the face pointed towards earth is black, at earth night time, it'll be black-side-of-the-satellite daytime--and thus, electronics cooking time.
Or build it into an upper stage for a legit satellite, such that it enters into an 'effective' orbit after putting the legit satellite where it needs to be.
You get two satellites up there for the price of one, in essence, while disguising that one of 'em -is- a satellite, rather than just another discarded upper stage of a rocket.
There are several advantages of this method of doing things:
Number 1, you don't have to hide that it's up there at all. You can have everyone looking at it, but unless they spot the camera aperture, they're not likely to guess that it's being used for anything at all.
Number 2, because you don't have to worry about hiding it, you've got a bit more elbowroom--you don't have to fit it into a tiny form factor, or worry too much about hardening the electronics against excessive heat buildup. Wrap the thing in gold foil if you like, as nobody's going to see it inside the booster's skin. If you're clever, you can run the antenna out one of the ends without anything being too obvious.
Number 3, the cost of putting it up is lessened, because the company that's buying the shot will not necessarily even know that there's a hanger-on sitting below their TV satellite or whatnot.
Number 3b, because of the reduced cost, you can put more of 'em up and get better coverage.
Number 4, not only will the booster help hide the satellite from prying eyes visually, it will also hide it on infrared wavelengths--because of course the booster will be a bit warm; it's got a lot of mass and a fairly large size to pick up radiation with during the day.
Sure, there are some drawbacks--it may require some work to fit the components in around existing fuel tanks and the like--but it's doable, it's doable with today's technology, it's doable for less money than many other solutions, and, frankly, given my track record for ingenious ideas, it's probably already being done by at least three governments.
And when the satellite is going around to the night-side, and then has the black part facing the sun before it goes behind the earth's shadow--what then?
Would still have a bit in the way of heat problems. Even with a very low coefficient of heat transmission, you're still only going to have a limited lifespan before the electronics burn out.
I said this in the last thread, but I'll repeat it here--the best way to hide a satellite would be to make it look like something other than a satellite--a discarded upper stage for a 'legitimate' satellite, for instance.
If the gov't doesn't want people doing work for the Chinese government, then perhaps they ought to get smart and have 'em start doing work for their own purposes.
And I would note that rhetoric about 'lefties bashing the government' is somewhat disingenuous: if something the government is doing is counterproductive, then it is in every citizen's best interest--left, right, center, or whatnot--to do their best to correct it.
Just what I came in to say. If you're going to be putting up a covert satellite, you should put some sort of countermeasures on it to make sure nobody can see it.
What the US gov't should do is encourage this satellite spotting for two reasons:
Number 1, as mentioned, it's one hell of a great stress test for your anti-spotting capabilities if everybody's looking for it.
Number 2, if you have everyone keeping track of the -foreign- satellites as well, then you have a very large volunteer intel force to take advantage of.
There's really no such thing as secrecy--there's just things that haven't been found out yet.
It's kind of annoying how it's nearly impossible to get any sort of a decent phone without a camera built in. I mean, sure, it's convenient for some, and a nifty feature, but is it really -necessary-?
You can change which stories you can see in your preferences. If you don't want to see one of the common submitters, you can block any stories from 'em.
(I personally don't care about who submits the article; I'm just interested in the content.)
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Well, you have to buy a pair of tin cans to put on 'em.
Actually, there's a couple other things involved, from what I understand--there's a coarse and fine adjustment for the resistances. While the alleged 'science' behind using it for some kind of invisible alien ghost detection is kinda bogus, it would be useful for, say, testing a batch of resistors for variances--you could adjust the tolerances as required, and so long as the needle stayed on-scale, your resistor would be acceptable for the value in question.
I think I've heard of this access before though...haven't they had it for a while?
Definitely abusive, and I definitely won't be going anywhere near eBay for the forseeable future.
I don't go for cutting-edge PCs, and have had reasonably good luck with refurbished business PCs that you can sometimes find being distributed without an OS. geeks.com and techforless.com have treated me well.
(I'm not associated with either--I just buy from 'em every once in a while)
I stress _BUSINESS_ PCs--the consumer-grade nonsense that you get from the box stores and the like is usually pretty dismal in quality. The ones intended for business tend to have fewer integrated parts, more expansion room, and other upgradeable features.
In a way, the Spice was a sort of information accessing material, if you think about it: it allowed the Navigator's Guild to navigate at FTL speeds by being able to see the pathways; it allowed the Reverend Mothers the means to tap their genetic memories, etc.--essentially, providing access to information that couldn't be found any other way, and thus giving them a great deal of power.
And whatever the network is compatible with, it won't be used with any current phones--after all, how are you supposed to talk on a cellphone in a spacesuit?
Unless they add bluetooth onto the spacesuit headsets, anyway...
Good way to raise money, though. Ship a schoolteacher or something upstairs and put 'em in charge of communications of that sort.
Actually, not a bad idea. If you control the flow of information, then you control everything. *evil overlord grin*
There's only going to be four bars to provide coverage on the moon?
It had better be a small colony, then. Or they'd better be really big bars, hopefully without annoyingly trendy kitsch, and hopefully with some really good whiskey.
It will have exactly the same effect as any other EEG.
Or, in other words, no measurable effect.
Now, when are we going to get the moon-sized space station to put it on?
They may have--it'd be encoded into the compounds that provide the flavoring.
Certainly nothing on -Earth- tastes like Moxie...
So offer it as an 'upgraded' model--give it a new avionics package (for "more accurate orbital insertions") and the like to explain away the extra electronics.
Actually, if you were particularly smart about it, you could use some of the processing from the spy satellite as the new avionics.
Or, alternately, try not making your satellites weigh six tons.
Where do you think Moxie came from? The stuff tastes like Love Potion #9 (it sure as hell smells like turpentine and looks like india ink...) but somehow stays reasonably popular amongst certain people... (But then, it has more caffeine than some energy drinks...)
Not quite. I'm referring to this with the sig.
No two-way communication is occurring.
The robot--if such a word is even really appropriate--has only read access. There is no input from the device to the brain--there are only sensors reading the electrical and motor impulses. There's no "determination" of where the impulses are--there are merely changes recorded by sensors which the operator places on the head that passively read the electric fields.
The device does not in any way, shape, or form 'write' to the brain at all.
This is nowhere near a 'mind meld'--if anything, it's like a video camera that records electrical activity rather than visual spectrum activity.
No Matrix bots for you. Sorry. You'll have to wait a while before you can meet Agent Smith.
How exactly would you propose to turn a machine that acts out measured impulses into a mind control device?
It's nothing more than a sophisticated puppet; is it likely that the puppeteer of a Punch and Judy show will start feeding people to crocodiles and bashing folks over the head with a policeman's truncheon?
Not necessarily.
Spy satellites don't tend to be put into circular equatorial orbits--they tend to be put into fairly eccentric orbits, often with a fairly high degree of eccentricity, so that it can be very close to the earth during part of its orbit and spend the rest of it fairly far away.
Also, the orbit of the satellite will tend to be inclined fairly severely--after all, there's only so many things you can see from the equator, so an inclined (or even polar) orbit would be far more useful.
As a result, such a satellite will spend rather more time being illuminated than you might expect.
It would point toward the earth at night-time.
However, at night time, when you're in orbit, if you're pointing towards earth, you'll be pointing towards the sun, too.
Thus, if the face pointed towards earth is black, at earth night time, it'll be black-side-of-the-satellite daytime--and thus, electronics cooking time.
Or build it into an upper stage for a legit satellite, such that it enters into an 'effective' orbit after putting the legit satellite where it needs to be.
You get two satellites up there for the price of one, in essence, while disguising that one of 'em -is- a satellite, rather than just another discarded upper stage of a rocket.
There are several advantages of this method of doing things:
Number 1, you don't have to hide that it's up there at all. You can have everyone looking at it, but unless they spot the camera aperture, they're not likely to guess that it's being used for anything at all.
Number 2, because you don't have to worry about hiding it, you've got a bit more elbowroom--you don't have to fit it into a tiny form factor, or worry too much about hardening the electronics against excessive heat buildup. Wrap the thing in gold foil if you like, as nobody's going to see it inside the booster's skin. If you're clever, you can run the antenna out one of the ends without anything being too obvious.
Number 3, the cost of putting it up is lessened, because the company that's buying the shot will not necessarily even know that there's a hanger-on sitting below their TV satellite or whatnot.
Number 3b, because of the reduced cost, you can put more of 'em up and get better coverage.
Number 4, not only will the booster help hide the satellite from prying eyes visually, it will also hide it on infrared wavelengths--because of course the booster will be a bit warm; it's got a lot of mass and a fairly large size to pick up radiation with during the day.
Sure, there are some drawbacks--it may require some work to fit the components in around existing fuel tanks and the like--but it's doable, it's doable with today's technology, it's doable for less money than many other solutions, and, frankly, given my track record for ingenious ideas, it's probably already being done by at least three governments.
These satellites have only a relatively short lifespan by design, so a small nuclear reactor would be much more appropriate.
And when the satellite is going around to the night-side, and then has the black part facing the sun before it goes behind the earth's shadow--what then?
Would still have a bit in the way of heat problems. Even with a very low coefficient of heat transmission, you're still only going to have a limited lifespan before the electronics burn out.
I said this in the last thread, but I'll repeat it here--the best way to hide a satellite would be to make it look like something other than a satellite--a discarded upper stage for a 'legitimate' satellite, for instance.
We do.
The times of launch are obscured, the orbits are not announced, the satellites themselves tend to be relatively small and relatively hard to see, etc.
It's not really a strawman. A bit overblown, perhaps, but not a fallacious argument.
If the gov't doesn't want people doing work for the Chinese government, then perhaps they ought to get smart and have 'em start doing work for their own purposes.
And I would note that rhetoric about 'lefties bashing the government' is somewhat disingenuous: if something the government is doing is counterproductive, then it is in every citizen's best interest--left, right, center, or whatnot--to do their best to correct it.
Just what I came in to say. If you're going to be putting up a covert satellite, you should put some sort of countermeasures on it to make sure nobody can see it.
What the US gov't should do is encourage this satellite spotting for two reasons:
Number 1, as mentioned, it's one hell of a great stress test for your anti-spotting capabilities if everybody's looking for it.
Number 2, if you have everyone keeping track of the -foreign- satellites as well, then you have a very large volunteer intel force to take advantage of.
There's really no such thing as secrecy--there's just things that haven't been found out yet.
It's kind of annoying how it's nearly impossible to get any sort of a decent phone without a camera built in. I mean, sure, it's convenient for some, and a nifty feature, but is it really -necessary-?
You can change which stories you can see in your preferences. If you don't want to see one of the common submitters, you can block any stories from 'em.
(I personally don't care about who submits the article; I'm just interested in the content.)