Time delay between event and info disseminated.
on
Latest Columbia News
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· Score: 1
I get so tired of that period of time between a catastrophic event and the time real information can be disseminated.
As someone who has worked on reconstructions, you have to realize everyone, including the engineers, would like to release more information sooner. The problem, particularly when you're under the National spotlight, is that you don't want to make retractions. As soon as you say one thing, discover you're wrong, and say something else some pundit will go ballistic. There will be accusations of a cover-up. Or people will remember only your first statement, and not your corrected one. Remember 9/11, NYC asks the government for 6,000 body bags. The next thing you know, this is the official body count. It took on a life of its own. The consequence is that engineers in a major accident would rather spend a couple of days getting an answer they're sure of rather then provide a free flow of information.
Its a trade-off of weight, bandwidth, etc.
on
Columbia Coverage
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· Score: 1
Anyone who has worked on a space program will tell you the engineers always want more sensors and faster update rates in the telemetry. But there is a trade-off, the more sensors you carry, the less payload you can have. If you filled every engineer's wishlist, and added up the weights of the sensors, wiring, multiplexers, sensor control systems, telemetry radios,..., it probably would be easy to fill the entire payload capacity of the space shuttle with sensors. But that would defeat its main purpose as a "space truck."
Then there are bandwidth concerns. You only have so many frequencies available for telemetry, so bandwidth trade-offs occur. What update rates are required for various types of data? Do you need more temperature data or spacecraft orientation data?
In the end, there are only so many sensors you can carry, and so much data you can transmit. (That's not to say that newer technology may have allowed better telemetry from Columbia.)
Off-scale and zero readings are still useful
on
Columbia Coverage
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· Score: 5, Informative
As was noted in the press conference over the weekend, off-scale and zero readings are still useful. For example, a zero reading in one sensor implies a broken sensor. When several read zero, it implies a multiplexer box is damaged or a wire has been cut.
So what the engineers will do is pull the threads. For example, it may be possible to explain all the off-scale and zero readings by assuming a particular wire bundle was cut at a certain point. This can lead them to look at the surrounding structure in more detail. They'll also look carefully at the times at which sensors went bad to determine how the structural damage evolved.
Basically the effort is to look at all possible causes of the disaster and use the telemtry to eliminate them one-by-one. Zero readings in sensors will probably be inconsistent with some possible explanations, thus eliminating them.
If you look up the frequencies that military radars and various consumer electronics use, you'll find many overlaps. So the military already has to be careful. For example, certain Navy radars use the same frequency band that cellphones use. When Navy ships are close to shore they are required to significantly reduce the amount of power they use to avoid interference. One of the most difficult jobs in the military is frequency management to prevent such interference.
U.S. military radars are pointed out of the U.S., to detect aircraft and missiles coming into the country. See for example the BMEWS radars that are located in Greenland, Alaska, and England. Or look at the radar Bush authorized for Star Wars, it will be built in Alaska and pointed at places like N. Korea. You don't waste time looking for ballistic missile launches in your own country. You presume that Kansas is NOT going to attack New York.
The FAA is responsible for air coverage within the U.S., they assume aircraft want to be tracked. The limitations associated with this were apparent on 9/11. The FAA lost track of the fourth hijacked aircraft because it descended below radar coverage.
For those who say Saddam can buy a radar detector at Best Buy, this is no big deal. Radar is radio waves, all you need to build is a radio to detect radar. This technology is about a hundred years old. Furthermore, Saddam can buy radar warning detectors on the open market. He can also buy radar jammers. Many countries build and sell them. See for example the recent stories about GPS jammers that he supposedly has.
The real problem is what to do with radar warning receivers and jammers. Say you detect a radar. If you jam it, the enemy knows he has been detected and can take evasive action. If you do nothing, you leave yourself vulnerable to attack. There are even more complications with missiles such as HARM that can home on radar and jammer emissions. Do you leave the radar on and let a missile guide right to you? If you turn it off, you're blind.
So much fear and uncertainty because this man once worked for Microsoft. Tell me, does Microsoft implant microchips in all employee brains to control them? Is the U.S. government suppose to automatically prevent all former Microsoft employees from ever holding a government job? Are we to eliminate the tens of thousands of former Microsoft employees from the job pool? What about fomer Sun employees? Apple? Redhat? So many people accuse Microsoft of FUD regarding Linux. From where I sit, this is a little like the pot calling the kettle black.
Don't forget that the major market for PowerPCs is embedded devices. One of the reasons Apple has lagged in the MegaHertz war is that Motorolla sells many more embedded CPUs then desktop CPUs. Since users of embedded CPUs generally are more interested in power consumption then speed, you can guess where Motorolla has focused.
The best part of Apple/BSD/Linux is dead headlines is that you can recycle. Pick a headline, and insert Apple, BSD, or Linux as appropriate. The best source of headlines is the Apple archives. They've been dying since 1984, longer than anybody.
There are some fundamental assumptions that you are making that are wrong.
1) No copyright infringement. We had licences for all software that I installed. I even used the company's registration numbers.
2) There was no security risk because the computer was not on a network. (Plus it was a Mac, so viruses are virtually nonexistent.)
3) The company I work for does extensive R&D. Most of the staff computers have custom software installed, or commercial software with only handful of copies of the program in the entire company. The IT staff was trying to run the company as if everyone needed a standard installation of the OS plus Microsoft Office. Unfortunately, under their standard installation, the custom software that I needed would not run. IT's response, tough. So I circumvented them. When my actions were brought to management's attention, management did the right thing and directed the IT staff to do the right thing. Somebody even lost their job and it wasn't me.
As I pointed out to management at the time, IT works for the staff, not vice versa. The arrogance of IT drones who forget this is what causes most people to hate IT with a passion.
The funny thing is that I got the IT drone fired... Let's just say my comment that the IT drones don't have a job without me, and that I might have a better idea of how to do my job then the IT drones, resonated with management. It was an argument that went all the way to the VPs. And I am proud to say I won.
My solution to power drunk IT drones was simple, I brought my system disks from home and reinstalled the system to my liking. After I did that a few times, they stopped f'ing with my computer and started asking before they made changes. The biggest problem I have with power drunk IT drones is they forget who they work for. The user brings in the money that pays for their jobs. No user, no job. And sometimes, yes sometimes, the user has a better clue on how the user does his work.
True, the magnets are turned off at sea, but you can't turn off a magnet of the strength mentioned and not have some residual field left over. In the world of physics, its called hysteresis. Physically, the electricity lines up the atoms to make a magnet. Turn off the electricity and most, but not all, will assume a random direction. The "but not all" is critical. They're responsible for the residual field. To remove it, you actually have to reverse the direction of the electricity slightly. To exactly cancel the residual field is a not trivial and requires sensitive measuring equipment. There lies the problem -- Navy ships want to be as close to zero magnetism as possible so they don't trigger mines. (By the way, mines are typically deployed at chockpoints, such as the exits to ports.)
Navies spend a lot of time and money making sure that their ships have small magnetic signatures -- magnetic triggers are common in undersea mines. Somehow slapping a few big magnets on the side of a ship everytime it docks doesn't seem like a good idea.
Even if only 20% hit that's better then dumb bombs
on
GPS Jamming for $50
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· Score: 3, Informative
If you read the GAO report you will find that the Air Force tended to take a liberal view of defining a hit, the GAO took a conservative view. However, even using the 20% hit rate that you quote, that far exceeds the capability of dumb bombs. Take a look at WWII hit statistics, they were horrible. They would send massive bomber raids against a German factory and have the factory completely missed. Or look at the number of bombers sent against the Thanh Hoa bridge in North Vietnam. The Air Force sent over 800 aircraft on bombing runs to destroy it and DIDN'T. (And lost four aircraft in the process.) Add in smart bombs, four aircraft latter, the bridge is destroyed.
My point -- even if the GAO's conservative estimate of only 20% hitting their target is correct, it is FAR better than the alternative of dumb bombs. So to say they're produced just for industry profits is stupid. At worst, it is your typical manufacturer's propaganda, somewhat like Microsoft saying Windows is secure.
Your website indicates that you are an employee of IBM, a PCI-SIG member. We therefore request that you work through IBM to investigate the possibility of creating a similar database of PCI Vendor ID numbers which would be available on the official PCI-SIG website
If they were trying to destroy him, they wouldn't have made this offer. In fact, it seems to have some pluses to it. For example, he'll no longer have to host a website, pay for bandwidth, etc.
I once read a detailed explaination of the reasons for not allowing cellphones on planes. The reasons are actually somewhat valid. Basically, cellphones will work in an airplane. However, they play havoc with the ground system. As you know, cell phones automatically switch to the cell tower with the strongest signal. The algorithm assumes that the cellphone will only see two or three towers, not the literally hundreds that it will see from an airplane. Furthermore, the algorithm assumes that the cellphone lingers in each cell for a while, an assumption blown out of the water when the cellphone is moving at 600 mph. Putting it altogether, the cellphone system is not designed for this type of switching (which plays havoc with the billing system).
If I understand this whole thing, I'm trying to understand why any manjor company would want this on their ecommerce site. As a CEO, I would say, "Let me understand this. We will no longer keep detailed customer information. Some service provider will?." I'd hit the roof. Ask my employees what were they thinking. Giving up one of our most precious resources, information on our customers. I'd fire the whole group, and get new people with more intelligence. Quite frankly, I don't see this being accepted by major corporations. And I seriously doubt "Mom and Pop" operations, which wouldn't want the trouble of maintaining such data, is a big enough market to support these efforts.
Actually, they're doing what Congress told them to do. As you may remember, a couple of years ago during the height of the Napster craze, Congress looked at forcing the music industry to provide music over the Internet. Some of the guidance from Congress, was "industry fix this problem or we'll fix it for you." Anyone who has experienced Congress' help, would rather avoid it in the future. So it is not surprising that these two groups got together. In fact, it is a good thing. Do YOU really want Congress deciding this issue.
The referenced article never mentions a 20 year penalty. So where did you get that figure? The original article clearly states that current guidelines base penalties on financial lose. Thus there is a sliding scale.
Congress seems to have asked a reasonable question, are there situations in which hacking sentences should be based on on other things? Are cases possible where it is closer to murder? There many obvious examples of this, such as hacking into a water dam's control system and flooding towns downstream. Congress asking whether the current guidelines are relevant to these other scenarios is pretty good question.
The article summary is obvious flame-bait. While there is room for legitimate discussion of U.S. actions in Guantánamo, it has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with appropriate prison sentences for black-hatters.
How about referencing recent hacker cases, and the sentences that were imposed. How about some information on the ages of the black-hatters. No, that would be relevant to the discussion...
They weren't in trouble because they had a product that was sold in Russia. They were in trouble because they sold the product in the U.S. With a major point being that they used servers owned by an American company. As with the recent court cases concerning whether Calif. courts have jurisdiction, that fact was important. Without the sales in the U.S., they could not have been tried.
So many of the comments here say that Internet leading to freedom is a myth because it hasn't worked yet. The problem is that there is no way it can work quickly. Does anyone really think that just giving someone the Internet is going to make the population of some country slap themselves on the collective forehead, and say "How dumb were we?" At best, it will take years before even relatively free desemination of information will undermine a totalitarian regime. The flow information must cause ideas to germinate, discussion to start, groups to form, and a movement to start. Just look at the Vietnam war protests. They didn't happen overnight. It took 10 years for them to develop into their full-blown power. Or even the American Revolution, that didn't happen overnight in 1776. There were years, arguably decades, of events leading up to it.
Steve Jobs invited others to extend Keynote
on
Keynote Really is XML
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· Score: 5, Informative
For those worried about extending Keynote, Steve explicitly invited others to extend Keynote's capabilities. It's why he mentioned the XML format.
As a side note, Apple does sue, but there is a pattern. They don't sue when someone adds modules or other capabilities to their applications. For example, its easy to find new transition effects for iMovie on the web. Apple sues when someone "steals" their designs. For example, trying to replicate the look of Aqua, a trademarked design. Or designing a PC with a case virtually identical to the original iMac. (Particularly when the company states it's intended purpose is to steal iMac sales.)
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Then there are bandwidth concerns. You only have so many frequencies available for telemetry, so bandwidth trade-offs occur. What update rates are required for various types of data? Do you need more temperature data or spacecraft orientation data?
In the end, there are only so many sensors you can carry, and so much data you can transmit. (That's not to say that newer technology may have allowed better telemetry from Columbia.)
So what the engineers will do is pull the threads. For example, it may be possible to explain all the off-scale and zero readings by assuming a particular wire bundle was cut at a certain point. This can lead them to look at the surrounding structure in more detail. They'll also look carefully at the times at which sensors went bad to determine how the structural damage evolved.
Basically the effort is to look at all possible causes of the disaster and use the telemtry to eliminate them one-by-one. Zero readings in sensors will probably be inconsistent with some possible explanations, thus eliminating them.
(Based on your UK web address, I realize you may not know how diverse a state it is.)
If you look up the frequencies that military radars and various consumer electronics use, you'll find many overlaps. So the military already has to be careful. For example, certain Navy radars use the same frequency band that cellphones use. When Navy ships are close to shore they are required to significantly reduce the amount of power they use to avoid interference. One of the most difficult jobs in the military is frequency management to prevent such interference.
The FAA is responsible for air coverage within the U.S., they assume aircraft want to be tracked. The limitations associated with this were apparent on 9/11. The FAA lost track of the fourth hijacked aircraft because it descended below radar coverage.
For those who say Saddam can buy a radar detector at Best Buy, this is no big deal. Radar is radio waves, all you need to build is a radio to detect radar. This technology is about a hundred years old. Furthermore, Saddam can buy radar warning detectors on the open market. He can also buy radar jammers. Many countries build and sell them. See for example the recent stories about GPS jammers that he supposedly has.
The real problem is what to do with radar warning receivers and jammers. Say you detect a radar. If you jam it, the enemy knows he has been detected and can take evasive action. If you do nothing, you leave yourself vulnerable to attack. There are even more complications with missiles such as HARM that can home on radar and jammer emissions. Do you leave the radar on and let a missile guide right to you? If you turn it off, you're blind.
So much fear and uncertainty because this man once worked for Microsoft. Tell me, does Microsoft implant microchips in all employee brains to control them? Is the U.S. government suppose to automatically prevent all former Microsoft employees from ever holding a government job? Are we to eliminate the tens of thousands of former Microsoft employees from the job pool? What about fomer Sun employees? Apple? Redhat? So many people accuse Microsoft of FUD regarding Linux. From where I sit, this is a little like the pot calling the kettle black.
Don't forget that the major market for PowerPCs is embedded devices. One of the reasons Apple has lagged in the MegaHertz war is that Motorolla sells many more embedded CPUs then desktop CPUs. Since users of embedded CPUs generally are more interested in power consumption then speed, you can guess where Motorolla has focused.
The best part of Apple/BSD/Linux is dead headlines is that you can recycle. Pick a headline, and insert Apple, BSD, or Linux as appropriate. The best source of headlines is the Apple archives. They've been dying since 1984, longer than anybody.
1) No copyright infringement. We had licences for all software that I installed. I even used the company's registration numbers.
2) There was no security risk because the computer was not on a network. (Plus it was a Mac, so viruses are virtually nonexistent.)
3) The company I work for does extensive R&D. Most of the staff computers have custom software installed, or commercial software with only handful of copies of the program in the entire company. The IT staff was trying to run the company as if everyone needed a standard installation of the OS plus Microsoft Office. Unfortunately, under their standard installation, the custom software that I needed would not run. IT's response, tough. So I circumvented them. When my actions were brought to management's attention, management did the right thing and directed the IT staff to do the right thing. Somebody even lost their job and it wasn't me.
As I pointed out to management at the time, IT works for the staff, not vice versa. The arrogance of IT drones who forget this is what causes most people to hate IT with a passion.
The funny thing is that I got the IT drone fired... Let's just say my comment that the IT drones don't have a job without me, and that I might have a better idea of how to do my job then the IT drones, resonated with management. It was an argument that went all the way to the VPs. And I am proud to say I won.
My solution to power drunk IT drones was simple, I brought my system disks from home and reinstalled the system to my liking. After I did that a few times, they stopped f'ing with my computer and started asking before they made changes. The biggest problem I have with power drunk IT drones is they forget who they work for. The user brings in the money that pays for their jobs. No user, no job. And sometimes, yes sometimes, the user has a better clue on how the user does his work.
True, the magnets are turned off at sea, but you can't turn off a magnet of the strength mentioned and not have some residual field left over. In the world of physics, its called hysteresis. Physically, the electricity lines up the atoms to make a magnet. Turn off the electricity and most, but not all, will assume a random direction. The "but not all" is critical. They're responsible for the residual field. To remove it, you actually have to reverse the direction of the electricity slightly. To exactly cancel the residual field is a not trivial and requires sensitive measuring equipment. There lies the problem -- Navy ships want to be as close to zero magnetism as possible so they don't trigger mines. (By the way, mines are typically deployed at chockpoints, such as the exits to ports.)
Navies spend a lot of time and money making sure that their ships have small magnetic signatures -- magnetic triggers are common in undersea mines. Somehow slapping a few big magnets on the side of a ship everytime it docks doesn't seem like a good idea.
My point -- even if the GAO's conservative estimate of only 20% hitting their target is correct, it is FAR better than the alternative of dumb bombs. So to say they're produced just for industry profits is stupid. At worst, it is your typical manufacturer's propaganda, somewhat like Microsoft saying Windows is secure.
I once read a detailed explaination of the reasons for not allowing cellphones on planes. The reasons are actually somewhat valid. Basically, cellphones will work in an airplane. However, they play havoc with the ground system. As you know, cell phones automatically switch to the cell tower with the strongest signal. The algorithm assumes that the cellphone will only see two or three towers, not the literally hundreds that it will see from an airplane. Furthermore, the algorithm assumes that the cellphone lingers in each cell for a while, an assumption blown out of the water when the cellphone is moving at 600 mph. Putting it altogether, the cellphone system is not designed for this type of switching (which plays havoc with the billing system).
If I understand this whole thing, I'm trying to understand why any manjor company would want this on their ecommerce site. As a CEO, I would say, "Let me understand this. We will no longer keep detailed customer information. Some service provider will?." I'd hit the roof. Ask my employees what were they thinking. Giving up one of our most precious resources, information on our customers. I'd fire the whole group, and get new people with more intelligence. Quite frankly, I don't see this being accepted by major corporations. And I seriously doubt "Mom and Pop" operations, which wouldn't want the trouble of maintaining such data, is a big enough market to support these efforts.
Actually, they're doing what Congress told them to do. As you may remember, a couple of years ago during the height of the Napster craze, Congress looked at forcing the music industry to provide music over the Internet. Some of the guidance from Congress, was "industry fix this problem or we'll fix it for you." Anyone who has experienced Congress' help, would rather avoid it in the future. So it is not surprising that these two groups got together. In fact, it is a good thing. Do YOU really want Congress deciding this issue.
Congress seems to have asked a reasonable question, are there situations in which hacking sentences should be based on on other things? Are cases possible where it is closer to murder? There many obvious examples of this, such as hacking into a water dam's control system and flooding towns downstream. Congress asking whether the current guidelines are relevant to these other scenarios is pretty good question.
How about referencing recent hacker cases, and the sentences that were imposed. How about some information on the ages of the black-hatters. No, that would be relevant to the discussion...
They weren't in trouble because they had a product that was sold in Russia. They were in trouble because they sold the product in the U.S. With a major point being that they used servers owned by an American company. As with the recent court cases concerning whether Calif. courts have jurisdiction, that fact was important. Without the sales in the U.S., they could not have been tried.
So many of the comments here say that Internet leading to freedom is a myth because it hasn't worked yet. The problem is that there is no way it can work quickly. Does anyone really think that just giving someone the Internet is going to make the population of some country slap themselves on the collective forehead, and say "How dumb were we?" At best, it will take years before even relatively free desemination of information will undermine a totalitarian regime. The flow information must cause ideas to germinate, discussion to start, groups to form, and a movement to start. Just look at the Vietnam war protests. They didn't happen overnight. It took 10 years for them to develop into their full-blown power. Or even the American Revolution, that didn't happen overnight in 1776. There were years, arguably decades, of events leading up to it.
As a side note, Apple does sue, but there is a pattern. They don't sue when someone adds modules or other capabilities to their applications. For example, its easy to find new transition effects for iMovie on the web. Apple sues when someone "steals" their designs. For example, trying to replicate the look of Aqua, a trademarked design. Or designing a PC with a case virtually identical to the original iMac. (Particularly when the company states it's intended purpose is to steal iMac sales.)