While it does match the marketing lingo, the word "exponential" has specific mathematical meaning which does not even come close to your advertising driven use of the word.
Uh, steady growth at 20% per year IS exponential growth.
Vt = V0 * 1.2^t
Google's sales would be expected to double every 3.5 years.
After 24 year, I think that if it were to become the MS monstrosity, it would have done so by now. Consider how many times the DOS/Windows kernel has been rebooted in that time.
I'm not sure MS is really the right comparison here. They're actually fairly famous for never breaking userspace. I wouldn't be surprised if Calc.exe from Windows 386 ran fine on Windows 8. Device drivers are a different matter.
Actually, it turns out that systemd can re-exec itself.
However, you're now talking about dbus. The long-term solution to that is to just use kdbus, and as is the topic of the article, that can be upgraded in place as part of the kernel.
It isn't like the version in RAM magically stops working. If you want to use the features of the new version, then sure, you'll need to reboot.
Then again, I don't see any reason why systemd could just re-exec itself, and have the new version inherit the state of the previous version. I mean, that is basically what kexec is doing.
Not really specific to systemd either - if sysvinit has some bug and you want to fix it, you need to reboot. The main difference is that systemd does more and thus there may be more incentive to update it.
If you're running a backport-oriented distro then most likely you'll have no more cause for rebooting for systemd than you'd have for rebooting for any of your applications.
I'm fairly confident that I was struggling with most of this stuff when I was a kid, not that anybody really was into diagnosing Asperger's at that age, and I've never bothered to try to get a professional opinion because it really makes no difference at this point.
I think that if it provides additional support/etc getting Asperger's recognized early is helpful. Some kinds of coaching as a kid probably would have helped me to better relate to other kids.
On the other hand, if this just leads to kids getting doped up or compelled to do things that make them unhappy with the goal of getting them to fit back into the mold, then I have a big problem with it. I really wonder if I was born today if I'd make it through school without getting daily injections of who knows what.
I'm sure Asperger's affects different people in different ways. I've always been a bit handicapped socially but what doesn't necessarily come naturally can still be handled more "deliberately" now that I understand how people work to some extent. If somebody sat down with me as a kid and told me "hey, I know this seems dumb and makes no sense at all, but when somebody shows you their dumb hobby you can pretend to be interested and they'll like you" it would have gone a long way.
The dissenter here seems to be missing the point. Yes, there is a need for more funding of all CS education. It would be lovely if money grew on trees and the budget was infinite, but it isn't. On the other hand, that's quite separate from the issues facing girls and the desire of Microsoft and others to spend some cash trying to address it specifically.
I fall somewhere in the middle on this.
If there is a culture issue where we are systematically discouraging women to go into CS-like areas, and spending helps to fix that root cause, then I'm for it. That could include education sessions for elementary school teachers, or updates to textbooks if they have cultural issues, and so on.
On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of things like girl-only classes/programs/scholarships/etc. First, I think that is treating the symptoms - we might be getting more girls into a class, but it is at a big cost because we're basically subsidizing things instead of fixing the real problems. Second, I've always felt that these kinds of programs end up sending the message that what you look like ends up mattering more than ability/achievement/etc, which is really the exact opposite of what we're trying to do.
Sounds like the type of code a VB developer would write on Linux.:P
Just an illustration, but I have run stuff like this to clean up orphan processes. If you're running systemd there are also settings you can change which will cause it to clean up orphan processes as well (just don't do this if you like to leave stuff running under screen and so on).
In the case of VB it might have to do with the way it installs a debugger (assuming it still does that - has been ages since I've used it).
It is still a stupid design. In Linux I can debug a process without elevated privileges whatsoever. Now, messing with kernel debugging tools could potentially crash your system and requires elevated privileges, but, well, you're messing with the kernel.
Now, I could see a botched installer going nuts and killing other processes or whatever, requiring a user to log off and back on. You can't really prevent that sort of thing without going the SELinux route and restricting what a user's own processes can do within the context of their own account. If in linux as an unprivileged user I type "killall --user myself --signal SIGKILL" then I'm going to see a "crash" of sorts, but I'll just end up being dumped back at a getty or XDM screen or whatever.
I 100% agree in the law of conservation of mass/energy. If you feed somebody less, they'll lose weight at some point. That would work just fine if people were kept in cages like mice (individual cages, at that).
The problem is that this neglects the whole behavior side of nutrition. If I put 5000kcal worth of bacon on a plate in front of you, and 5000kcal worth of chocolate chip cookies on a plate in front of you, and left you in the room with them all day long, I can practically guarantee that you'll end up eating more calories worth of cookies than bacon, even if on a per-mass basis the bacon is more calorie-dense (I'm actually not 100% sure on that though - cookies have plenty of fat).
I've been eating low carb for the most part and I find that when all I have handy is meat/cheese/etc I really don't tend to snack much. I want to snack for sure, but I really don't care to cook up a pound of bacon and munch on it. However, when I used to bake cookies I could go through a can of them in a day. It isn't that I don't like bacon - I love it. You just don't get the same kinds of cravings and satisfaction physiologically when you eat it, and there is a lot of evidence that insulin/serotonin/etc fit into that.
Most MDs aren't biochemists. The extent of their understanding of things like cholesterol's role in the body depends entirely on whether they were paying attention in class that day.
Add to this the fact that real biochemists don't really understand all the nuances of what is going on. I think our biggest virtue is understanding our own ignorance better and not boldly making statements we can't substantiate.
Sure, we can correlate HDL/LDL levels/ratios/etc to disease rates, but we really only have a foggy sense of how changing those levels impacts health. Statins seem to work really well, and they definitely lower LDL, but the nature of that relationship is unclear. We know that people with higher HDL seem to be healthier, but on the other hand taking niacin doesn't seem to have much impact on outcomes.
Much of biochemistry as it applies to humans tends to be like hitting a computer case in a certain spot with a hammer and observing the effects. Maybe we can look at the pieces that fly out under an electron microscope and get a sense for some circuits that used to go somewhere, and maybe we can see what the chips they were a part of look like, but there are lots of details at both the micro and macro scale that we really don't appreciate.
That isn't a reason to give up on science. We just have to recognize just how little science goes into modern medicine. It isn't that people don't try - it is just really hard to do real science on human beings for ethical reasons. If we could breed humans like we do mice and treat them in the same way, then we'd probably have figured a lot of stuff out by now.
For whatever reason, whoever did the core work on bitcoins appears to have been pretty good; but the quality and competence of most of the surrounding activity and infrastructure are somewhere between 'crap' and 'are you sure that this isn't a parody?'
Well, US dollar bills are fairly well designed from an anti-counterfeitting standpoint.
However, if somebody walks up to you in the park and says that if you hand him a $20 bill today and show up at the same place tomorrow he'll give you back a $100 bill, and you give him your money, then you've lost your money. At no point was the integrity of the currency compromised - only the idiocy of those who have it.
None of these scams really have anything to do with bitcoin per se. They have to do with stupid people giving other people their money.
Now, the advantage of bitcoin is that you can do this stuff without some bank being able to freeze your assets, and often it is easier to do in a semi-anonymous manner. However, for a scam of this size I suspect they know exactly who stole their money, and they just have to wait for the police to catch them.
Sounds like it is a bunch of people who want to get free gear to play with drones, and they're trying to cash in on the whole NK thing.
If they just said that they want to play around with high-endurance drones they wouldn't get people throwing money at them, unless they asked the US Air Force (and their procurement process is a bit more rigorous than kickstarter).
Well, this is a solved problem, but for $10k? Voyager used that much just for gas! Of course, Voyager carried two people...
Well, it is a solved problem in the sense of NASA-like experimental projects using top-of-the-line materials, engineers, budgets, timelines, etc.
Kickstarter tends to be more about "hey, if we just use these commodity parts I can make a great $200 product." If I wanted to build a moon lander it wouldn't be the first time that it had ever been done, but it wouldn't exactly be a small project either.
If they had the skills to build an intercontinental UAV they would have realised that it will need solar power, overnight energy storage and high altitude flight capability. That's going to take it a long way over the limits for a model aircraft so they'll need FAA approval before their first test flights. Their target $10k might get them through that process but I wouldn't bet on it.
What limits for a model aircraft are those? The only "guideline" the FAA places on hobby aircraft is that they stay under 400 feet and within visual site. If you launched this thing from a beach or boat you probably could get it out of US airspace meeting those qualifications, and then of course you can do whatever the heck you want with it.
The FAA guidelines aren't even legally binding, as much as the FAA has been protesting otherwise. As far as I'm aware, in the only court case to be decided so far the court ruled against the FAA because they never followed the rulemaking process when they issued the ban on commercial use, etc.
You mean they're going to send it from the US, not South Korea?
From TFA: In other words, we want a drone to be able to fly from coastal California all the way to Pyongyang. This is a feat that would make even Kim Jong Un jealous.
Uh, yeah, that would probably make the US air force jealous if you're going to make it a round trip without refueling. I have no idea how far the big ones go but cross-pacific round trips without refueling generally involve spacecraft.
If all you wanted was some pictures of NK, it would make far more sense to launch the thing from South Korea.
There are lots of effective strategies that advertising-based media have used for many years to avoid self-censorship.
Sure, just buy all your ads from wherever The Pirate Bay used to get them and you'll never be questioned on your content by your advertisers. Granted, you'll be questioned about your content from all your intended viewers instead.
As to MIRV targeting, you're assuming the ICBM itself couldn't have targeting equipment on it. The ICBM does roughly come down over the target area.
Well, I suppose you could put a radar on the bus or something like that. That would be able to slightly adjust the trajectory during the terminal phase. You'd still need to know the position of the fleet fairly well at launch time. Unless you put a lot of propellant on each MIRV you can only steer them so much during cruise, and fairly little during re-entry.
However, if you know the position of the fleet well enough to get the MIRVs within range to maneuver, you wouldn't need to maneuver them at all. Maybe what you suggest might enable a hit with a conventional warhead.
Break apart the MIRVs shortly after apogee and then have them all talk to each other as they're coming in.
That is pretty late to change the course of something travelling near orbital velocity.
You're treating this like it is impossible. It seems quite practical with current technology to accomplish all these things.
You do understand how orbital mechanics works, right? Changing your impact point from anywhere other than the opposite side of the planet (ie the launch point in this case) is very expensive in terms of energy.
Are you telling me that you'd go to full blown MAD simply because I destroyed your carrier fleet? You say "when one flies they all fly" but why?
No, I'm saying that the US would go full blown MAD.
Think about the likely scenario. They nuke US ships. The US HAS to retaliate with nuclear weapons, or else the US basically invites open season on its ships/troops/whatever. The other side probably doesn't have any comparable naval targets, so the target has to be land-based. Any time you retaliate you have to inflict more damage on the enemy than they did on you, otherwise you again send the message that the original attack made sense and should be repeated. So, if you lose your entire pacific navy, then you have to make sure they lose their entire pacific army, which means blowing up numerous bases, which are probably located near population centers.
Before you know it you're firing off ICBMs left and right until one side runs out.
If you know that is the inevitable conclusion, then you might as well clobber them from the start. It isn't like anybody is going to care how many million civilians the fallout lands on.
You are the one saying he would launch hundreds of missiles without provocation. That is foolish.
Without provocation? You posited a nuclear attack on a naval battle group. If you just allow that without response, then you might as well not have a navy.
You also don't need hundreds of missiles if the target isn't the USSR. Most nations with nuclear forces don't have all that many nukes - the US wouldn't fire everything it had at a China or North Korea. They'd just hit their major bases and then take their time wiping the rest out with conventional forces.
Programming in where the enemy ICBM will be into an intercepting missile does not require a sensor package on the ABM system. It merely needs to follow the path that was programmed into it on launch and detonate at the pre programmed moment.
Interesting. I wonder why the Soviets and US wasted so much money building sophisticated ABM systems if they were unnecessary. They certainly used nuclear warheads. The US had nuclear SAMs for shooting down bombers, let alone ICBMs.
As to an ABM system needing to maneuver to intercept... that presumes that the ICBM is not predictable in its trajectory or that your original targeting information was inaccurate and needs to be refined. I would counter that ICBMs are very predictable and if you use a nuke to try and kill the enemy ICBM you don't need to be that accurate.
As to satellites, their primary defense and cost is simply launching them into space in the first place. Using conventional technology, every intercept would cost an orbit capable rocket.
That is not true. You don't need an orbit-capable rocket to shoot down a satellite, because the interceptor doesn't need to be in orbit. It just needs to reach the altitude of the satellite. A satellite in orbit has both potential energy and kinetic energy. Getting a satellite into orbit requires both. Shooting one down only requires imparting the potential energy of the target into the interceptor.
The interceptor is also much lighter than the target most likely, which also makes it easier to launch.
Russia might be able to do that but it would be a significant investment on their part.
Sure, but we're talking about US enemies attacking US carriers here. So, the country that wants to get rid of satellites is the US, and the US has already demonstrated its ability to shoot them down.
As to nuking a fleet, the MIRVs independently track targets and can retarget to some extent.
MIRVs don't track anything. They are guided to a pre-planned position, probably using GPS-corrected inertial guidance (though they probably are designed to not be dependent on GPS at all, since in a WW3 scenario you can't count on it). I don't believe that any have sensors capable of detecting an actual target.
I don't see why you couldn't have the MIRVs link to a central targeting system and be retargeted to land where the fleet currently is at that moment.
Not necessary for nuclear weapons as you point out. Again, this assumes you know where the fleet is at that moment. Other than in an initial strike you wouldn't have satellites so that requires having aerial or submarine recon, and the US is well-equipped to defeat both of these at sea.
Furthermore, if I nuked a carrier fleet would you respond by going to Defcon 1? If I hit no population centers and merely killed your carrier group... would you go to full blown MAD nuclear war? I think not.
Glad you're not in charge of anybody's nuclear weapons. The general school of thought with nuclear weapons is that when one flies they all fly, because any attack is going to result in a response, which results in a counter-response, and so on. Your greatest advantage is to just fire everything you have in the hope of blowing up as much of the enemy force on the ground as you can.
As to why the Russians use a nuclear missile to shoot nuclear missiles out of the sky... because when they built it they didn't think they could hit the missile directly. So they needed an explosion large and powerful enough to ensure a kill despite not getting especially close to the ICBM. Consult the Russia design. It is an old one but it seems effective.
Both the US and the Russians designed nuclear ABM systems. I wasn't disagreeing with that. I only was saying that they don't rely on ICBMs. An ICBM isn't defined as any missile that has a nuclear warhead on it. Even a nuclear-tipped ABM system needs radar guidance - you still need a fairly close hit to destroy a nuclear warhead and space is very big - you can't just fire an ICBM off in the general direction of an incoming warhead and try to set it off without knowing the exact position of your interceptor and the target.
An advantage of brutality is that it doesn't especially matter.
Well, it matters less, but it still matters. The 1970s-era ABM systems used huge phase array radars. That isn't the sort of thing you'd mount on a sub that happens to carry SLBMs.
So anyway, the Russians and chinese are upgrading their ICBMs to break apart and kick out a lot of electronic wa
... reconnaissance planes... passive sonar/acoustic listening buoys... etc. It is very hard to blind everything.
Sure, if you have all that stuff. Most people talking about carriers being obsolete tend to use it in the context of some small country that ONLY has satellites launching a few missiles at it.
If you're taking US vs USSR, then sure, the carriers are vulnerable.
What is more, it took years to put all those sats up. I really don't think they're going to drop them all that fast.
Satellites lack almost any defensive capability. It takes FAR less effort to shoot one down than to launch one. And how many satellites does anybody opposing the US actually have?
Once you blow up enough satellites the shrapnel will help take out the rest as well. It might be 100 years before anybody launches another satellite expecting it to last more than a week.
A big threat of course would be the enemy just nuking your fleet.
They have to know approximately where it is unless they're going to launch 50 ICBMs at a large area of ocean. ICBMs aren't THAT cheap.
Really no defense against that besides the Russian "big dog" defense... I think that is what it is called? Don't the Russians have an anti ICBM defense system that just fires an ICBM at the ICBM?
Many 1970s ICBM designs utilized nuclear warheads, but not ICBMs (why would you need something that large anyway?). ABMs are very limited in general - they're getting better but the areas you have to launch them from are fairly constrained. The US does have them, but relying on them too much would be a mistake. Also, a nuclear warhead on an ABM certainly doesn't hurt, but is neither essential nor guaranteed to be effective unless you get a reasonably close hit. We're talking about targetting small metal objects designed to withstand re-entry and likely hardened against nuclear attacks, not blowing up a bunch of civilian buildings.
So a carrier group that had a ballistic sub in the flotilla could fire one of its missiles at the incoming ICBM and detonate it on intercept. An idea in any case... Couldn't hurt trying.
Uh, no. ABMs require very specialized setups. Some Aegis ships might be able to do it, and they wouldn't be using ICBMs.
And you're certain that none of those constants were derived in a way that taints their values with possible propagation through other universes? As far as I'm aware, none of the values of the constants of the standard model are predicted by any kind of theory.
Well, they derive how much the shielding should be blocking, so they can go back to fundamentals there.
What fundamental laws that lack constants based on empirical measurements would they use?
The way you know how much radiation a 1" lead plate blocks is by passing radiation through a 1" lead plate. If you figure it out by looking up a figure in a reference book, it is only because somebody else did the measurement and put the constant in a book for you to look up.
Those experiments would have already accounted for leaking between branes. You'd need two complementary ways to do the measurement, with one of them susceptible to cross-brane communication and the other not.
I've seen them at Denver Stockshow. They are full of GPS maps, computer screens, video feeds etc. Cost as much as a small plane too.
I suspect that "jet cockpit" is probably a better description than "small plane" cockpit though. The latter tend look a lot like tractors from the 70s, unless it is one of the few made in the last decade. Heck, I'm not sure if modern piston general aviation aircraft are even using FADEC across the board.
Coming from the open source world, computer technology in farming, both in the machines themselves, and the software farmers use, is like stepping back in time 20 years or more.
Coming from the open source world, I think you'll find that computer technology in ANY sector of the economy other than software development is like stepping back in time 20 years or more.
When you go into the hospital, do you think that the blood analyzer that tests your samples is open source or owner-serviceable? How about the copy machine at the office? How about the machines used to manufacture paper, or toys, or car parts? How about the robots that make cars? How about the software that operates the petroleum refinery?
I think that farming has just become like every other industry in these regards.
Slashdot Mirror
While it does match the marketing lingo, the word "exponential" has specific mathematical meaning which does not even come close to your advertising driven use of the word.
Uh, steady growth at 20% per year IS exponential growth.
Vt = V0 * 1.2^t
Google's sales would be expected to double every 3.5 years.
It makes me sad. Not about version numbering. Why does Linus force the users to use Google+. It somehow feels very wrong to me.
It is a silly poll to express a completely non-binding opinion. Linus will do whatever he feels like doing in the end.
It isn't like the kernel now has a GOOGLE_ID config item that is validated before it will compile/run.
After 24 year, I think that if it were to become the MS monstrosity, it would have done so by now. Consider how many times the DOS/Windows kernel has been rebooted in that time.
I'm not sure MS is really the right comparison here. They're actually fairly famous for never breaking userspace. I wouldn't be surprised if Calc.exe from Windows 386 ran fine on Windows 8. Device drivers are a different matter.
Actually, it turns out that systemd can re-exec itself.
However, you're now talking about dbus. The long-term solution to that is to just use kdbus, and as is the topic of the article, that can be upgraded in place as part of the kernel.
No reboot needed or no reboot done?
It isn't like the version in RAM magically stops working. If you want to use the features of the new version, then sure, you'll need to reboot.
Then again, I don't see any reason why systemd could just re-exec itself, and have the new version inherit the state of the previous version. I mean, that is basically what kexec is doing.
Not really specific to systemd either - if sysvinit has some bug and you want to fix it, you need to reboot. The main difference is that systemd does more and thus there may be more incentive to update it.
If you're running a backport-oriented distro then most likely you'll have no more cause for rebooting for systemd than you'd have for rebooting for any of your applications.
I'm fairly confident that I was struggling with most of this stuff when I was a kid, not that anybody really was into diagnosing Asperger's at that age, and I've never bothered to try to get a professional opinion because it really makes no difference at this point.
I think that if it provides additional support/etc getting Asperger's recognized early is helpful. Some kinds of coaching as a kid probably would have helped me to better relate to other kids.
On the other hand, if this just leads to kids getting doped up or compelled to do things that make them unhappy with the goal of getting them to fit back into the mold, then I have a big problem with it. I really wonder if I was born today if I'd make it through school without getting daily injections of who knows what.
I'm sure Asperger's affects different people in different ways. I've always been a bit handicapped socially but what doesn't necessarily come naturally can still be handled more "deliberately" now that I understand how people work to some extent. If somebody sat down with me as a kid and told me "hey, I know this seems dumb and makes no sense at all, but when somebody shows you their dumb hobby you can pretend to be interested and they'll like you" it would have gone a long way.
The dissenter here seems to be missing the point. Yes, there is a need for more funding of all CS education. It would be lovely if money grew on trees and the budget was infinite, but it isn't. On the other hand, that's quite separate from the issues facing girls and the desire of Microsoft and others to spend some cash trying to address it specifically.
I fall somewhere in the middle on this.
If there is a culture issue where we are systematically discouraging women to go into CS-like areas, and spending helps to fix that root cause, then I'm for it. That could include education sessions for elementary school teachers, or updates to textbooks if they have cultural issues, and so on.
On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of things like girl-only classes/programs/scholarships/etc. First, I think that is treating the symptoms - we might be getting more girls into a class, but it is at a big cost because we're basically subsidizing things instead of fixing the real problems. Second, I've always felt that these kinds of programs end up sending the message that what you look like ends up mattering more than ability/achievement/etc, which is really the exact opposite of what we're trying to do.
"killall --user myself --signal SIGKILL"
Sounds like the type of code a VB developer would write on Linux. :P
Just an illustration, but I have run stuff like this to clean up orphan processes. If you're running systemd there are also settings you can change which will cause it to clean up orphan processes as well (just don't do this if you like to leave stuff running under screen and so on).
In the case of VB it might have to do with the way it installs a debugger (assuming it still does that - has been ages since I've used it).
It is still a stupid design. In Linux I can debug a process without elevated privileges whatsoever. Now, messing with kernel debugging tools could potentially crash your system and requires elevated privileges, but, well, you're messing with the kernel.
Now, I could see a botched installer going nuts and killing other processes or whatever, requiring a user to log off and back on. You can't really prevent that sort of thing without going the SELinux route and restricting what a user's own processes can do within the context of their own account. If in linux as an unprivileged user I type "killall --user myself --signal SIGKILL" then I'm going to see a "crash" of sorts, but I'll just end up being dumped back at a getty or XDM screen or whatever.
I 100% agree in the law of conservation of mass/energy. If you feed somebody less, they'll lose weight at some point. That would work just fine if people were kept in cages like mice (individual cages, at that).
The problem is that this neglects the whole behavior side of nutrition. If I put 5000kcal worth of bacon on a plate in front of you, and 5000kcal worth of chocolate chip cookies on a plate in front of you, and left you in the room with them all day long, I can practically guarantee that you'll end up eating more calories worth of cookies than bacon, even if on a per-mass basis the bacon is more calorie-dense (I'm actually not 100% sure on that though - cookies have plenty of fat).
I've been eating low carb for the most part and I find that when all I have handy is meat/cheese/etc I really don't tend to snack much. I want to snack for sure, but I really don't care to cook up a pound of bacon and munch on it. However, when I used to bake cookies I could go through a can of them in a day. It isn't that I don't like bacon - I love it. You just don't get the same kinds of cravings and satisfaction physiologically when you eat it, and there is a lot of evidence that insulin/serotonin/etc fit into that.
Most MDs aren't biochemists. The extent of their understanding of things like cholesterol's role in the body depends entirely on whether they were paying attention in class that day.
Add to this the fact that real biochemists don't really understand all the nuances of what is going on. I think our biggest virtue is understanding our own ignorance better and not boldly making statements we can't substantiate.
Sure, we can correlate HDL/LDL levels/ratios/etc to disease rates, but we really only have a foggy sense of how changing those levels impacts health. Statins seem to work really well, and they definitely lower LDL, but the nature of that relationship is unclear. We know that people with higher HDL seem to be healthier, but on the other hand taking niacin doesn't seem to have much impact on outcomes.
Much of biochemistry as it applies to humans tends to be like hitting a computer case in a certain spot with a hammer and observing the effects. Maybe we can look at the pieces that fly out under an electron microscope and get a sense for some circuits that used to go somewhere, and maybe we can see what the chips they were a part of look like, but there are lots of details at both the micro and macro scale that we really don't appreciate.
That isn't a reason to give up on science. We just have to recognize just how little science goes into modern medicine. It isn't that people don't try - it is just really hard to do real science on human beings for ethical reasons. If we could breed humans like we do mice and treat them in the same way, then we'd probably have figured a lot of stuff out by now.
I'm glad I wasn't the only person who ended up with a type mismatch. I did RTFS to find that it was an acronym.
For whatever reason, whoever did the core work on bitcoins appears to have been pretty good; but the quality and competence of most of the surrounding activity and infrastructure are somewhere between 'crap' and 'are you sure that this isn't a parody?'
Well, US dollar bills are fairly well designed from an anti-counterfeitting standpoint.
However, if somebody walks up to you in the park and says that if you hand him a $20 bill today and show up at the same place tomorrow he'll give you back a $100 bill, and you give him your money, then you've lost your money. At no point was the integrity of the currency compromised - only the idiocy of those who have it.
None of these scams really have anything to do with bitcoin per se. They have to do with stupid people giving other people their money.
Now, the advantage of bitcoin is that you can do this stuff without some bank being able to freeze your assets, and often it is easier to do in a semi-anonymous manner. However, for a scam of this size I suspect they know exactly who stole their money, and they just have to wait for the police to catch them.
Sounds like it is a bunch of people who want to get free gear to play with drones, and they're trying to cash in on the whole NK thing.
If they just said that they want to play around with high-endurance drones they wouldn't get people throwing money at them, unless they asked the US Air Force (and their procurement process is a bit more rigorous than kickstarter).
Well, this is a solved problem, but for $10k? Voyager used that much just for gas! Of course, Voyager carried two people...
Well, it is a solved problem in the sense of NASA-like experimental projects using top-of-the-line materials, engineers, budgets, timelines, etc.
Kickstarter tends to be more about "hey, if we just use these commodity parts I can make a great $200 product." If I wanted to build a moon lander it wouldn't be the first time that it had ever been done, but it wouldn't exactly be a small project either.
If they had the skills to build an intercontinental UAV they would have realised that it will need solar power, overnight energy storage and high altitude flight capability. That's going to take it a long way over the limits for a model aircraft so they'll need FAA approval before their first test flights. Their target $10k might get them through that process but I wouldn't bet on it.
What limits for a model aircraft are those? The only "guideline" the FAA places on hobby aircraft is that they stay under 400 feet and within visual site. If you launched this thing from a beach or boat you probably could get it out of US airspace meeting those qualifications, and then of course you can do whatever the heck you want with it.
The FAA guidelines aren't even legally binding, as much as the FAA has been protesting otherwise. As far as I'm aware, in the only court case to be decided so far the court ruled against the FAA because they never followed the rulemaking process when they issued the ban on commercial use, etc.
You mean they're going to send it from the US, not South Korea?
From TFA:
In other words, we want a drone to be able to fly from coastal California all the way to Pyongyang. This is a feat that would make even Kim Jong Un jealous.
Uh, yeah, that would probably make the US air force jealous if you're going to make it a round trip without refueling. I have no idea how far the big ones go but cross-pacific round trips without refueling generally involve spacecraft.
If all you wanted was some pictures of NK, it would make far more sense to launch the thing from South Korea.
There are lots of effective strategies that advertising-based media have used for many years to avoid self-censorship.
Sure, just buy all your ads from wherever The Pirate Bay used to get them and you'll never be questioned on your content by your advertisers. Granted, you'll be questioned about your content from all your intended viewers instead.
As to MIRV targeting, you're assuming the ICBM itself couldn't have targeting equipment on it. The ICBM does roughly come down over the target area.
Well, I suppose you could put a radar on the bus or something like that. That would be able to slightly adjust the trajectory during the terminal phase. You'd still need to know the position of the fleet fairly well at launch time. Unless you put a lot of propellant on each MIRV you can only steer them so much during cruise, and fairly little during re-entry.
However, if you know the position of the fleet well enough to get the MIRVs within range to maneuver, you wouldn't need to maneuver them at all. Maybe what you suggest might enable a hit with a conventional warhead.
Break apart the MIRVs shortly after apogee and then have them all talk to each other as they're coming in.
That is pretty late to change the course of something travelling near orbital velocity.
You're treating this like it is impossible. It seems quite practical with current technology to accomplish all these things.
You do understand how orbital mechanics works, right? Changing your impact point from anywhere other than the opposite side of the planet (ie the launch point in this case) is very expensive in terms of energy.
Are you telling me that you'd go to full blown MAD simply because I destroyed your carrier fleet? You say "when one flies they all fly" but why?
No, I'm saying that the US would go full blown MAD.
Think about the likely scenario. They nuke US ships. The US HAS to retaliate with nuclear weapons, or else the US basically invites open season on its ships/troops/whatever. The other side probably doesn't have any comparable naval targets, so the target has to be land-based. Any time you retaliate you have to inflict more damage on the enemy than they did on you, otherwise you again send the message that the original attack made sense and should be repeated. So, if you lose your entire pacific navy, then you have to make sure they lose their entire pacific army, which means blowing up numerous bases, which are probably located near population centers.
Before you know it you're firing off ICBMs left and right until one side runs out.
If you know that is the inevitable conclusion, then you might as well clobber them from the start. It isn't like anybody is going to care how many million civilians the fallout lands on.
You are the one saying he would launch hundreds of missiles without provocation. That is foolish.
Without provocation? You posited a nuclear attack on a naval battle group. If you just allow that without response, then you might as well not have a navy.
You also don't need hundreds of missiles if the target isn't the USSR. Most nations with nuclear forces don't have all that many nukes - the US wouldn't fire everything it had at a China or North Korea. They'd just hit their major bases and then take their time wiping the rest out with conventional forces.
Programming in where the enemy ICBM will be into an intercepting missile does not require a sensor package on the ABM system. It merely needs to follow the path that was programmed into it on launch and detonate at the pre programmed moment.
Interesting. I wonder why the Soviets and US wasted so much money building sophisticated ABM systems if they were unnecessary. They certainly used nuclear warheads. The US had nuclear SAMs for shooting down bombers, let alone ICBMs.
As to an ABM system needing to maneuver to intercept... that presumes that the ICBM is not predictable in its trajectory or that your original targeting information was inaccurate and needs to be refined. I would counter that ICBMs are very predictable and if you use a nuke to try and kill the enemy ICBM you don't need to be that accurate.
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As to satellites, their primary defense and cost is simply launching them into space in the first place. Using conventional technology, every intercept would cost an orbit capable rocket.
That is not true. You don't need an orbit-capable rocket to shoot down a satellite, because the interceptor doesn't need to be in orbit. It just needs to reach the altitude of the satellite. A satellite in orbit has both potential energy and kinetic energy. Getting a satellite into orbit requires both. Shooting one down only requires imparting the potential energy of the target into the interceptor.
The interceptor is also much lighter than the target most likely, which also makes it easier to launch.
Russia might be able to do that but it would be a significant investment on their part.
Sure, but we're talking about US enemies attacking US carriers here. So, the country that wants to get rid of satellites is the US, and the US has already demonstrated its ability to shoot them down.
As to nuking a fleet, the MIRVs independently track targets and can retarget to some extent.
MIRVs don't track anything. They are guided to a pre-planned position, probably using GPS-corrected inertial guidance (though they probably are designed to not be dependent on GPS at all, since in a WW3 scenario you can't count on it). I don't believe that any have sensors capable of detecting an actual target.
I don't see why you couldn't have the MIRVs link to a central targeting system and be retargeted to land where the fleet currently is at that moment.
Not necessary for nuclear weapons as you point out. Again, this assumes you know where the fleet is at that moment. Other than in an initial strike you wouldn't have satellites so that requires having aerial or submarine recon, and the US is well-equipped to defeat both of these at sea.
Furthermore, if I nuked a carrier fleet would you respond by going to Defcon 1? If I hit no population centers and merely killed your carrier group... would you go to full blown MAD nuclear war? I think not.
Glad you're not in charge of anybody's nuclear weapons. The general school of thought with nuclear weapons is that when one flies they all fly, because any attack is going to result in a response, which results in a counter-response, and so on. Your greatest advantage is to just fire everything you have in the hope of blowing up as much of the enemy force on the ground as you can.
As to why the Russians use a nuclear missile to shoot nuclear missiles out of the sky... because when they built it they didn't think they could hit the missile directly. So they needed an explosion large and powerful enough to ensure a kill despite not getting especially close to the ICBM. Consult the Russia design. It is an old one but it seems effective.
Both the US and the Russians designed nuclear ABM systems. I wasn't disagreeing with that. I only was saying that they don't rely on ICBMs. An ICBM isn't defined as any missile that has a nuclear warhead on it. Even a nuclear-tipped ABM system needs radar guidance - you still need a fairly close hit to destroy a nuclear warhead and space is very big - you can't just fire an ICBM off in the general direction of an incoming warhead and try to set it off without knowing the exact position of your interceptor and the target.
An advantage of brutality is that it doesn't especially matter.
Well, it matters less, but it still matters. The 1970s-era ABM systems used huge phase array radars. That isn't the sort of thing you'd mount on a sub that happens to carry SLBMs.
So anyway, the Russians and chinese are upgrading their ICBMs to break apart and kick out a lot of electronic wa
... reconnaissance planes... passive sonar/acoustic listening buoys... etc. It is very hard to blind everything.
Sure, if you have all that stuff. Most people talking about carriers being obsolete tend to use it in the context of some small country that ONLY has satellites launching a few missiles at it.
If you're taking US vs USSR, then sure, the carriers are vulnerable.
What is more, it took years to put all those sats up. I really don't think they're going to drop them all that fast.
Satellites lack almost any defensive capability. It takes FAR less effort to shoot one down than to launch one. And how many satellites does anybody opposing the US actually have?
Once you blow up enough satellites the shrapnel will help take out the rest as well. It might be 100 years before anybody launches another satellite expecting it to last more than a week.
A big threat of course would be the enemy just nuking your fleet.
They have to know approximately where it is unless they're going to launch 50 ICBMs at a large area of ocean. ICBMs aren't THAT cheap.
Really no defense against that besides the Russian "big dog" defense... I think that is what it is called? Don't the Russians have an anti ICBM defense system that just fires an ICBM at the ICBM?
Many 1970s ICBM designs utilized nuclear warheads, but not ICBMs (why would you need something that large anyway?). ABMs are very limited in general - they're getting better but the areas you have to launch them from are fairly constrained. The US does have them, but relying on them too much would be a mistake. Also, a nuclear warhead on an ABM certainly doesn't hurt, but is neither essential nor guaranteed to be effective unless you get a reasonably close hit. We're talking about targetting small metal objects designed to withstand re-entry and likely hardened against nuclear attacks, not blowing up a bunch of civilian buildings.
So a carrier group that had a ballistic sub in the flotilla could fire one of its missiles at the incoming ICBM and detonate it on intercept. An idea in any case... Couldn't hurt trying.
Uh, no. ABMs require very specialized setups. Some Aegis ships might be able to do it, and they wouldn't be using ICBMs.
And you're certain that none of those constants were derived in a way that taints their values with possible propagation through other universes? As far as I'm aware, none of the values of the constants of the standard model are predicted by any kind of theory.
Well, they derive how much the shielding should be blocking, so they can go back to fundamentals there.
What fundamental laws that lack constants based on empirical measurements would they use?
The way you know how much radiation a 1" lead plate blocks is by passing radiation through a 1" lead plate. If you figure it out by looking up a figure in a reference book, it is only because somebody else did the measurement and put the constant in a book for you to look up.
Those experiments would have already accounted for leaking between branes. You'd need two complementary ways to do the measurement, with one of them susceptible to cross-brane communication and the other not.
I've seen them at Denver Stockshow. They are full of GPS maps, computer screens, video feeds etc. Cost as much as a small plane too.
I suspect that "jet cockpit" is probably a better description than "small plane" cockpit though. The latter tend look a lot like tractors from the 70s, unless it is one of the few made in the last decade. Heck, I'm not sure if modern piston general aviation aircraft are even using FADEC across the board.
Coming from the open source world, computer technology in farming, both in the machines themselves, and the software farmers use, is like stepping back in time 20 years or more.
Coming from the open source world, I think you'll find that computer technology in ANY sector of the economy other than software development is like stepping back in time 20 years or more.
When you go into the hospital, do you think that the blood analyzer that tests your samples is open source or owner-serviceable? How about the copy machine at the office? How about the machines used to manufacture paper, or toys, or car parts? How about the robots that make cars? How about the software that operates the petroleum refinery?
I think that farming has just become like every other industry in these regards.