Of course, all of this depends on your frame of reference.
From the traveler's frame of reference, you can travel any distance in any amount of time. I can get from here to Andromeda in 5 seconds, and if I measured my speed relative to light I'd clearly see that I'm travelling at 0% of C the whole time (although I'd see my surroundings flying past me at 99.999% of C or whatever). My measurement of the distance I travelled would also clearly show that I had only travelled a relatively short distance (maybe a few hundred thousand miles) in those 5 seconds, but I'd get to the destination just the same (well, minus the fact that the cosmic background would incinerate what is left of my body after sustaining that kind of acceleration).
Now, from the Earth's frame of reference, an outside observer would see me take off and accelerate to nearly the speed of light and get to M31 in a few hundred thousand years or however long it takes.
From an external frame of reference an object can accelerate to any speed arbitrarily close to C. From an internal frame of reference you don't move at all, but you can make your surroundings fly past as close to C as you'd like, and you can also make the distance between you and any other point in the universe as arbitrarily short as you'd like. Once you finally get where you're going the clocks will sort everything out...
Define "harm" such that these video game AIs could do something with it.
If the human says "destroy everything" maybe the AI would figure that out.
If the human says "carry this black box to the top floor of this building and push the red button," how is the robot going to evaluate whether that will cause harm?
The other post had some good tips. Note that strictly speaking you don't need a tracking telescope. You can take a bunch of 10s exposures with a half-decent camera and then overlay them to get a better image. There is software out there that will do this semi-automatically (google for stacking), or you can just use Photoshop.
Don't expect to get something like what you'd see out of the Hubble. In my light-polluted area (suburban), with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, I was able to get a small hazy disc with a central bulge. I suspect my focus was a bit off (very hard to focus a camera on a dark sky - use live view if you have it). Even so, it was fairly clear that the object was a galaxy.
To help locate it in a photo be sure to consult a star chart that includes low-magnitude stars. The stars that you can actually see will be fairly large and prominant in your photo, but they'll be far apart. You'll have lots of small stars that you can't see with your eyes, but decent charts will have them.
Astronomy software will calculate the altitude (angle above horizon) and azimuth (compass heading) for any location date/time. If you don't have access to software, this website will work. You need to enter your own lat/long, and the time in UTC. For the RA/Dec use (from wikipedia): Right ascension 00h 42m 44.3s Declination +41 16 9
Right now it appears that in the US that M31 is below the horizon for most of the night. You might have to wait six months to get a good shot.
Disclaimer - while I have an interest in this stuff I wouldn't call myself even an amateur astronomer. Also - if Andromeda is invisible I suspect there is a chance that Orion is above the horizon and it also has a decent-sized nebula (but I'm not sure if you could get that without a telescope).
As others have pointed out, the issue was with luminosity, not being too small to see.
In fact, these rings are SO big that being close probably makes them even harder to see.
Consider that we know exactly what the shape of the Andromeda galaxy is, but we only have a general knowledge of the shape of our own galaxy. Or, consider that a person in a hedge maze might need an hour or two to accurately map it, but somebody flying overhead would just have to snap a photo.
On the topic of Andromeda - that galaxy is actually similar to the size of the moon in the sky (maybe bigger). However, it is too dim to see with the naked eye (maybe just a splotch in a very dark sky). A simple camera can get a decent shot of it given a long enough exposure time.
I tend to agree with your points. The only question I'd have is whether ZDNet was contacted about the copyrighted materials and asked to take them down.
If the copyright holder asked them to take down the materials and they refused, then clearly they're completely liable under the DMCA.
On the other hand, if the first notice they've gotten about hosting the files is a lawsuit, then that is a bit unfair (and not generally compliant with the DMCA).
The issue isn't so much that file-hosting sites exist. The problem is when they don't respond to requests to remove illegal content.
Sorry, if you did understand this you'd have realized how silly it was to make the claim that the Fed can always just issue bonds. It can't. There are limits.
Well, in practice yes. However, I'm not convinced that we're facing them anytime soon. It just comes down to how much interest you're willing to offer. If Uncle Sam offered to pay $2M next week for a $1M bond today, lots of people would be happy to buy it.
Your understanding is also quite flawed when you dismiss inflation by claiming that wages will raise. Wages don't simply do that when you have massive unemployment and global wage arbitrage.
When you're talking about essentials for survival (food/clothing/shelter/medicine), there really isn't that much arbitrage. If you need a doctor it doesn't help you that the ones 5000 miles away are paid less. If you need food it doesn't help that people who live in some area devoid of farmland 5000 miles away would be willing to work crops cheaper. And, if necessary I'm sure the government would institute trade restrictions if necessary.
Plus, you're neglecting the fact that any economic meltdown that actually bankrupted the US treasury would almost certainly leave every other country on the planet in very dire straits. It isn't like the Ethiopians are suddenly going to be able to buy our homes for pennies on the dollar, and even if they did it isn't like any Sheriffs are going to actually evict people.
Most of this stuff is super-hypothetical. Nobody would let it get that far. You'd see imposition of martial law and a command economy before you'd just see everybody sit down and accept that they're going to starve to death.
As far as oil goes - sure, I'm all for reducing dependence on oil. However, I don't think that it is suddenly going to disappear. You'd see a nuclear war before you'd see starvation on account of insufficient fuel to manufacture fertilizer.
You really have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about, do you? In this market, that's dangerous.
Actually, I did understand everything you wrote - I just happen to disagree.
As far as "printing money" goes, the $5 Trillion necessary is a significant chunk of GDP. Guess what the effect of $30 per gallon for gasoline would do to the economy?
Probably not a whole lot when minimum wage is $500/hr. Nothing really changes except the number of zeros on price tags and salaries. It isn't like the change would happen overnight - since not every bank would fail overnight. In fact, there really aren't any indications that they're suddenly all going to go completely insolvent with not even a dime to back up their deposits. Even so, I'm all for increasing the amount of reserves to reign things in a bit.
Please get a slight clue of what your talking about if you want to survive this economic crisis.
I'm not sure what exactly I have to be worried about. My primary asset is my ability to work, and that isn't affected at all by government policy (unless they start breaking kneecaps). Sure, maybe the amount of times I can eat out in a month might change, but I doubt that my very "survival" is at stake. I'm sure I could figure out how to fix farm equipment somewhere to earn my room and board if the whole country collapses.
I don't see any risk of hyperinflation. The only people who really have anything to worry about are those nearing retirement or with tons of cash in the bank.
If the US Government REALLY needed $5 trillion dollars, it would just issue bonds, or if necessary print the currency. Sure, it might not get 3% interest rates, but it could borrow the money if it had to. A $100 dollar bill probably costs a few cents to print, so that is always an option as well. Sure, it would cause inflation, but the total amount of cash in the economy is just a drop in the total GDP.
Sure, if I were in charge I'd be doing things a little differently. I'd probably bail out the banks, but when bailing out a bank I'd also do the following:
1. Government assumes ownership of bank. Existing owners/shareholders are paid for any assets the bank held after deducting the estimated costs to clean up. Most likely the shareholders won't get a dime. 2. Executives at the bank are generally imprisoned and fined. That includes recent past executives (last few years) who had anything to do with the mess. The Board of Directors (and recent board-members) are also potentially punished. There has to be deterrance so that other banks have incentive to clean up their acts. 3. Government cleans house, stabilizes the bank, and sells it off somehow.
The solution to fraud isn't to give those who perpetuated it more money...
I've been seeing these attacks since Sep 30th as well. Denyhosts has been steadily blocking IPs, but I'm still getting quite a few attempts.
All you need to do is set a long window for failed login attempts. Then have the window reset for successful login attempts. So, if I mistype my password 3 times in a week no big deal. If a bot does it, then it is blocked.
If I did manage to block my own IP by mistake somehow, it isn't really the end of the world. I just need to pick up my cell phone or whatever to ssh in and remove the block. I can even whitelist IPs if I want to, but I've never had to to do that.
Lots of wars have been won on intelligence (think Battle of Midway). Lots of wars have been lost on intelligence (think Normandy and the counter-intel work the Allies did).
It is what it is - you need to make use of what you have, and try to make what you have as useful as it can be. However, if Hitler would have had the ability to defend beaches adequately he would have been a fool not to do so - despite all the intel that showed the allies were landing at Calis. He couldn't defend both, however.
In the case of Iran the world doesn't need intel to take action. If they just show strong resolve chances are that Iran would back down in any case. Right now they can't manage to pull off even an embargo, so there is no reason the Iranians are going to back off.
Yup - there are tons of tools for doing exactly this (they tend to be expensive - so most undergrads don't get much exposure to them - SciFinder is probably about the extent of it). If the drawings were actually digitized into a searchable format (SMILES or whatever) then a suitable substructure search program would make it trivial to search through a database as small as a textbook.
Well, people seem to focus on the design of the bomb itself, and they forget about the fuel needed for it. The bomb does present its own engineering challenges (as others have pointed out in this thread). However, by far the biggest problem is making the enriched uranium.
Sure, everybody knows from wikipedia that it is done with centrifuges. But, how do you build those centrifuges? You need a LOT of them to make serious quantities of enriched uranium. During WWII the US spent a decent percentage of its entire economy making the stuff. Sure, with modern technology it is easier now, but it is still a very hard problem. Mostly it takes trial and error to make enough machines that are reliable enough to make the stuff.
An analogy would be the difference between making black powder in your kitchen and making it in a munitions factory. If you used the same techniques in a factory you'd need an incredible amount of manual labor, and there is a good chance you'd end up making a mistake and blowing the entire place up. Quite a bit of care probably goes into scaling up the process in a way that is efficient and safe. The uranium problem is much more complicated than this, however.
In military matters I do feel that I could trust the EU, NZ, and Australia.
That's only because you aren't looking back far enough in history. Back in the day when those nations had powerful militaries (the British navy in the case of NZ/Austrailia) they were hardly the models of pacifism and non-intervention.
Basically, the only countries that can be "trusted" with militaries are the ones that don't really have them. That's just human nature for you. So, I'll just have to settle for "trusting" nations that at least have interests that are fairly aligned with my own. I'm sure lots of people on the Earth would rather have the positions of Iran and the US reversed. Fortunately, most of those people don't have any power either...
Yup - it probably isn't fair that the US is "allowed" to have nuclear weapons, and Iran isn't.
I, for one, am happy that it isn't the other way around. I'm sure that if Germany had won WWII they'd be the ones with the bombs, and few others would have them.
In any case, it is in the collective interests of the permanent members of the security council to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. I'm amazed that they're collectively dragging their feet. At least France is smart enough to put enough reliance on nuclear power that they won't be quite as heavily impacted by a spike in the price of oil. It seems to me like first world nations have one of two choices - quit the love affair with oil, or keep Iran from getting the bomb...
Hey, I'm not a fan about China having the bomb either. However, they've managed to not blow up everybody for a few decades. Maybe Iran would turn out the same way, and maybe they wouldn't. I personally don't feel like finding out by trial and error.
Don't get me wrong - I'd be happier if nuclear weapons didn't exist at all. However, since they do exist I am a bit picky about the nations that are allowed to have them.
As a member of the NPT Iran is well within its rights to posses the outlined technologies. The article clearly omits the fact that such capabilities can also lead to better yeilds from civilian/peaceful uses of nuclear technology.
Clearly this is a weakness in the NPT. No question that it isn't clear that Iran has violated this treaty.
I believe the adage of "it takes one to know one" can be attributed to people claiming Iran intends to use such technologies for aggressive non-peaceful purposes.
Yup. Perhaps it would be more fair if the Iranians were allowed to develop nuclear weapons. I for one am not interested in fairness on the battlefield, however. It is in the interest of every first world nation to put a rapid stop to Iranian nuclear enrichment efforts. If Iran has complaints about being embargoed or bombed by most of the members of the security council they can file an appeal with the security council.
The balance of terror that currently exists with nuclear weapons is hardly ideal. However, right now it is at least a fairly stable situation (granted, issues with Russia's early warning systems have made things less stable). Dictatorships like Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan tend to destabilize the situation quite a bit. Now, the other two nations lack ICBM capability and only have a few weapons, so that lowers their strategic impact (except for South Korea, Japan, China, and India). Iran is much closer to Europe and everybody is dependant on the Middle East, so they're potentially a lot more dangerous. Plus, Iran has tended to be a bit more flamboyant with regard to rhetoric. NK isn't much better, but China tends to hold them in check since they've very dependant on them.
The world seriously needs to become less dependant on oil. All this blustering in the Middle East would go away pretty quickly if that happened. The region would just turn into another Central Africa where the various parties fight it out and nobody hears about it aside from the occasional relief mission...
I think that people have some kind of idea that intelligence is supposed to be perfect. It never is. At best it can give you general information about what somebody is up to, and it can also give you misinformation if the aversary is clever enough to feed it to you carefully.
Intelligence is a good way to supplement policy, or military strategy. It can't replace other factors, such as strong negotiating power or a strong military. It must still be used with caution.
IMHO, the world is playing a very dangerous game with Iran. It seems like people are under the impression that it is fine to just wait to the last minute to commit to a particular course of action. If people are waiting for some unambiguous piece of intelligence before they decide to take action on Iran, I suspect that they're going to be still waiting when the first test detonation goes off.
On the other hand, I can understand US reluctance to take action. Everybody seems to love to poke at the US for taking unilateral action (granted, Iraq certainly didn't help here). However, Iran isn't just a US problem. The US would be better off trying to become less dependant on oil from the middle east, and let the Europeans deal with Iran (they're the only ones in range of their missiles right now). Then the US press can sit back and take pot shots at European leaders when they make mistakes...:)
I agree with you. However, a company needs to do more than just translate its customer's needs as well - it has to have a vision of its own.
I have to deal with a software vendor at work which gets this completely wrong. Whenever we sit down and ask them what they're working on, we get the question "well, what would you like us to work on?" Oh, and usually it comes along with an implicit understanding that we'll have to pay them to work on anything at all (over and above software upgrade subscriptions).
I appreciate that a company wants to know what I think. However, if a company just wants to be my software development outsource provider, I can probably find cheaper options. Innovative and successful companies listen to their customers, and then they build a product that they feel will sell well (even if nobody has asked for it).
This of course begs the question of why people should be forced to pay for the Olympics. There is no reason it couldn't be funded purely through ticket sales, television rights, and, if necessary, participation fees.
Perhaps it would be OK if it were put up to a local referendum, and then any money that is pledged would be obtained from a tax on local businesses that would benefit from the tourism. If the Brazilians want to pay more money to host a sporting event, more power to them.
Meanwhile the manufacturer avoids the risk of arbitrage
Which is exactly why this practice should either be banned, or outsourcing to low-wage nations should be banned.
Manufacturers want laws that:
1. Make workers with different income levels completely interchangable. 2. Make products sold to people with different income levels completely non-interchangable.
The logic behind the ATM that took your card was that if you failed to enter your PIN correctly they would keep your card. Seems to not be an issue these days.
Most of those units would also retract the card and keep it if it isn't removed from the slot after a set period of time.
As was said by someone else on this post, if net neutrality existed on phone networks, this wouldn't be an issue.
True, but if we want net neutrality on phones then probably a good first step would be getting rid of all the crazy pricing schemes that exist. Frankly, these kinds of scams aren't fair to ANYBODY.
Look, I'm fine with a system that lets some farmer have a phone without having to pay $500 per month, but there has to be a better way. Net Neutrality doesn't mean charging people using pricing games for providing a "service" that they don't actually need (such as providing "rural" service to a call center that is actually located in a city).
I'm actually a fan of usage-based charges. ISPs shouldn't be able to advertise unlimited plans, and then cut people off for using them in an unlimited fashion.
Right now provider A and provider B both advertise unlimited plans with the same bandwidth and cost - so which should I choose? Instead, suppose provider A indicates that their plan is limited to 20GB per month and provider B limits at 60GB per month. Now I know which one I want. I might even sacrifice a little speed in favor of a higher total cap.
This should of course be combined with net-neutrality. No unlimited caps for content providers x, y, and z.
ISPs could also use this to distribute traffic - no limits during particular hours, etc.
Your monthly fee would cover some level of total usage (possibly zero), and then there would be a charge per MB/GB/whatever (with the term "MB" defined as either a MB or MiB - I don't care which as long as it is disclosed). Customers should also be allowed to set a limit on their total bill so that when they get a worm infection they don't get a $5000 bill. As an aside, cell phone companies need a similar law. If the customer doesn't want to be able to upload 500GB of data then they should be allowed to tell the ISP to just cut them off before they go over their limit until the next billing cycle.
True, but this is designed for survailence of areas where the military already has control (at a military level). Nobody in the opposition has howitzers or anything like that.
Plus, you could probably make them really cheap (minus the payload). A strategy would be to launch a bunch with minimal equipment and let them just float over enemy airspace. Anything that opens fire would betray its location.
You mention HARMs, but there are lots of other bad things that can happen to people who launch attacks using serious hardware. When you fire a howitzer your shells are instantly picked up by radar, and your artillery is instantly located. The US military can bring down counterbattery fire within minutes, and you're not going to move something like that quickly enough to evade. Even if the blimp doesn't have a HARM, it can report the radar location before it is shot down, and now you'll end up on a target list. In an theater like Afganistan where US planes are all over the place unopposed you could have a suitably-equipped fighter bearing down on you in minutes.
Nobody is going to send in blimps on the first wave of an attack. You bring those in the same time that you bring in all the other peacekeeping logistics - long after any real military resistance is gone. A resistance force can't support heavy weaponry like the kind you describe.
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Of course, all of this depends on your frame of reference.
From the traveler's frame of reference, you can travel any distance in any amount of time. I can get from here to Andromeda in 5 seconds, and if I measured my speed relative to light I'd clearly see that I'm travelling at 0% of C the whole time (although I'd see my surroundings flying past me at 99.999% of C or whatever). My measurement of the distance I travelled would also clearly show that I had only travelled a relatively short distance (maybe a few hundred thousand miles) in those 5 seconds, but I'd get to the destination just the same (well, minus the fact that the cosmic background would incinerate what is left of my body after sustaining that kind of acceleration).
Now, from the Earth's frame of reference, an outside observer would see me take off and accelerate to nearly the speed of light and get to M31 in a few hundred thousand years or however long it takes.
From an external frame of reference an object can accelerate to any speed arbitrarily close to C. From an internal frame of reference you don't move at all, but you can make your surroundings fly past as close to C as you'd like, and you can also make the distance between you and any other point in the universe as arbitrarily short as you'd like. Once you finally get where you're going the clocks will sort everything out...
Define "harm" such that these video game AIs could do something with it.
If the human says "destroy everything" maybe the AI would figure that out.
If the human says "carry this black box to the top floor of this building and push the red button," how is the robot going to evaluate whether that will cause harm?
Now, that sounds like something that I could almost get into!
Too bad that I have to drive two hours to get to a decent deep-sky location.
The other post had some good tips. Note that strictly speaking you don't need a tracking telescope. You can take a bunch of 10s exposures with a half-decent camera and then overlay them to get a better image. There is software out there that will do this semi-automatically (google for stacking), or you can just use Photoshop.
Don't expect to get something like what you'd see out of the Hubble. In my light-polluted area (suburban), with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, I was able to get a small hazy disc with a central bulge. I suspect my focus was a bit off (very hard to focus a camera on a dark sky - use live view if you have it). Even so, it was fairly clear that the object was a galaxy.
To help locate it in a photo be sure to consult a star chart that includes low-magnitude stars. The stars that you can actually see will be fairly large and prominant in your photo, but they'll be far apart. You'll have lots of small stars that you can't see with your eyes, but decent charts will have them.
Astronomy software will calculate the altitude (angle above horizon) and azimuth (compass heading) for any location date/time. If you don't have access to software, this website will work. You need to enter your own lat/long, and the time in UTC. For the RA/Dec use (from wikipedia):
Right ascension 00h 42m 44.3s
Declination +41 16 9
Right now it appears that in the US that M31 is below the horizon for most of the night. You might have to wait six months to get a good shot.
Disclaimer - while I have an interest in this stuff I wouldn't call myself even an amateur astronomer. Also - if Andromeda is invisible I suspect there is a chance that Orion is above the horizon and it also has a decent-sized nebula (but I'm not sure if you could get that without a telescope).
As others have pointed out, the issue was with luminosity, not being too small to see.
In fact, these rings are SO big that being close probably makes them even harder to see.
Consider that we know exactly what the shape of the Andromeda galaxy is, but we only have a general knowledge of the shape of our own galaxy. Or, consider that a person in a hedge maze might need an hour or two to accurately map it, but somebody flying overhead would just have to snap a photo.
On the topic of Andromeda - that galaxy is actually similar to the size of the moon in the sky (maybe bigger). However, it is too dim to see with the naked eye (maybe just a splotch in a very dark sky). A simple camera can get a decent shot of it given a long enough exposure time.
I tend to agree with your points. The only question I'd have is whether ZDNet was contacted about the copyrighted materials and asked to take them down.
If the copyright holder asked them to take down the materials and they refused, then clearly they're completely liable under the DMCA.
On the other hand, if the first notice they've gotten about hosting the files is a lawsuit, then that is a bit unfair (and not generally compliant with the DMCA).
The issue isn't so much that file-hosting sites exist. The problem is when they don't respond to requests to remove illegal content.
Sorry, if you did understand this you'd have realized how silly it was to make the claim that the Fed can always just issue bonds. It can't. There are limits.
Well, in practice yes. However, I'm not convinced that we're facing them anytime soon. It just comes down to how much interest you're willing to offer. If Uncle Sam offered to pay $2M next week for a $1M bond today, lots of people would be happy to buy it.
Your understanding is also quite flawed when you dismiss inflation by claiming that wages will raise. Wages don't simply do that when you have massive unemployment and global wage arbitrage.
When you're talking about essentials for survival (food/clothing/shelter/medicine), there really isn't that much arbitrage. If you need a doctor it doesn't help you that the ones 5000 miles away are paid less. If you need food it doesn't help that people who live in some area devoid of farmland 5000 miles away would be willing to work crops cheaper. And, if necessary I'm sure the government would institute trade restrictions if necessary.
Plus, you're neglecting the fact that any economic meltdown that actually bankrupted the US treasury would almost certainly leave every other country on the planet in very dire straits. It isn't like the Ethiopians are suddenly going to be able to buy our homes for pennies on the dollar, and even if they did it isn't like any Sheriffs are going to actually evict people.
Most of this stuff is super-hypothetical. Nobody would let it get that far. You'd see imposition of martial law and a command economy before you'd just see everybody sit down and accept that they're going to starve to death.
As far as oil goes - sure, I'm all for reducing dependence on oil. However, I don't think that it is suddenly going to disappear. You'd see a nuclear war before you'd see starvation on account of insufficient fuel to manufacture fertilizer.
You really have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about, do you? In this market, that's dangerous.
Actually, I did understand everything you wrote - I just happen to disagree.
As far as "printing money" goes, the $5 Trillion necessary is a significant chunk of GDP.
Guess what the effect of $30 per gallon for gasoline would do to the economy?
Probably not a whole lot when minimum wage is $500/hr. Nothing really changes except the number of zeros on price tags and salaries. It isn't like the change would happen overnight - since not every bank would fail overnight. In fact, there really aren't any indications that they're suddenly all going to go completely insolvent with not even a dime to back up their deposits. Even so, I'm all for increasing the amount of reserves to reign things in a bit.
Please get a slight clue of what your talking about if you want to survive this economic crisis.
I'm not sure what exactly I have to be worried about. My primary asset is my ability to work, and that isn't affected at all by government policy (unless they start breaking kneecaps). Sure, maybe the amount of times I can eat out in a month might change, but I doubt that my very "survival" is at stake. I'm sure I could figure out how to fix farm equipment somewhere to earn my room and board if the whole country collapses.
I don't see any risk of hyperinflation. The only people who really have anything to worry about are those nearing retirement or with tons of cash in the bank.
If the US Government REALLY needed $5 trillion dollars, it would just issue bonds, or if necessary print the currency. Sure, it might not get 3% interest rates, but it could borrow the money if it had to. A $100 dollar bill probably costs a few cents to print, so that is always an option as well. Sure, it would cause inflation, but the total amount of cash in the economy is just a drop in the total GDP.
Sure, if I were in charge I'd be doing things a little differently. I'd probably bail out the banks, but when bailing out a bank I'd also do the following:
1. Government assumes ownership of bank. Existing owners/shareholders are paid for any assets the bank held after deducting the estimated costs to clean up. Most likely the shareholders won't get a dime.
2. Executives at the bank are generally imprisoned and fined. That includes recent past executives (last few years) who had anything to do with the mess. The Board of Directors (and recent board-members) are also potentially punished. There has to be deterrance so that other banks have incentive to clean up their acts.
3. Government cleans house, stabilizes the bank, and sells it off somehow.
The solution to fraud isn't to give those who perpetuated it more money...
That sounds great. We should call it DenyHosts!
I've been seeing these attacks since Sep 30th as well. Denyhosts has been steadily blocking IPs, but I'm still getting quite a few attempts.
All you need to do is set a long window for failed login attempts. Then have the window reset for successful login attempts. So, if I mistype my password 3 times in a week no big deal. If a bot does it, then it is blocked.
If I did manage to block my own IP by mistake somehow, it isn't really the end of the world. I just need to pick up my cell phone or whatever to ssh in and remove the block. I can even whitelist IPs if I want to, but I've never had to to do that.
Lots of wars have been won on intelligence (think Battle of Midway). Lots of wars have been lost on intelligence (think Normandy and the counter-intel work the Allies did).
It is what it is - you need to make use of what you have, and try to make what you have as useful as it can be. However, if Hitler would have had the ability to defend beaches adequately he would have been a fool not to do so - despite all the intel that showed the allies were landing at Calis. He couldn't defend both, however.
In the case of Iran the world doesn't need intel to take action. If they just show strong resolve chances are that Iran would back down in any case. Right now they can't manage to pull off even an embargo, so there is no reason the Iranians are going to back off.
Yup - there are tons of tools for doing exactly this (they tend to be expensive - so most undergrads don't get much exposure to them - SciFinder is probably about the extent of it). If the drawings were actually digitized into a searchable format (SMILES or whatever) then a suitable substructure search program would make it trivial to search through a database as small as a textbook.
Well, people seem to focus on the design of the bomb itself, and they forget about the fuel needed for it. The bomb does present its own engineering challenges (as others have pointed out in this thread). However, by far the biggest problem is making the enriched uranium.
Sure, everybody knows from wikipedia that it is done with centrifuges. But, how do you build those centrifuges? You need a LOT of them to make serious quantities of enriched uranium. During WWII the US spent a decent percentage of its entire economy making the stuff. Sure, with modern technology it is easier now, but it is still a very hard problem. Mostly it takes trial and error to make enough machines that are reliable enough to make the stuff.
An analogy would be the difference between making black powder in your kitchen and making it in a munitions factory. If you used the same techniques in a factory you'd need an incredible amount of manual labor, and there is a good chance you'd end up making a mistake and blowing the entire place up. Quite a bit of care probably goes into scaling up the process in a way that is efficient and safe. The uranium problem is much more complicated than this, however.
In military matters I do feel that I could trust the EU, NZ, and Australia.
That's only because you aren't looking back far enough in history. Back in the day when those nations had powerful militaries (the British navy in the case of NZ/Austrailia) they were hardly the models of pacifism and non-intervention.
Basically, the only countries that can be "trusted" with militaries are the ones that don't really have them. That's just human nature for you. So, I'll just have to settle for "trusting" nations that at least have interests that are fairly aligned with my own. I'm sure lots of people on the Earth would rather have the positions of Iran and the US reversed. Fortunately, most of those people don't have any power either...
Yup - it probably isn't fair that the US is "allowed" to have nuclear weapons, and Iran isn't.
I, for one, am happy that it isn't the other way around. I'm sure that if Germany had won WWII they'd be the ones with the bombs, and few others would have them.
In any case, it is in the collective interests of the permanent members of the security council to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. I'm amazed that they're collectively dragging their feet. At least France is smart enough to put enough reliance on nuclear power that they won't be quite as heavily impacted by a spike in the price of oil. It seems to me like first world nations have one of two choices - quit the love affair with oil, or keep Iran from getting the bomb...
I actually did include Pakistan.
Hey, I'm not a fan about China having the bomb either. However, they've managed to not blow up everybody for a few decades. Maybe Iran would turn out the same way, and maybe they wouldn't. I personally don't feel like finding out by trial and error.
Don't get me wrong - I'd be happier if nuclear weapons didn't exist at all. However, since they do exist I am a bit picky about the nations that are allowed to have them.
As a member of the NPT Iran is well within its rights to posses the outlined technologies. The article clearly omits the fact that such capabilities can also lead to better yeilds from civilian/peaceful uses of nuclear technology.
Clearly this is a weakness in the NPT. No question that it isn't clear that Iran has violated this treaty.
I believe the adage of "it takes one to know one" can be attributed to people claiming Iran intends to use such technologies for aggressive non-peaceful purposes.
Yup. Perhaps it would be more fair if the Iranians were allowed to develop nuclear weapons. I for one am not interested in fairness on the battlefield, however. It is in the interest of every first world nation to put a rapid stop to Iranian nuclear enrichment efforts. If Iran has complaints about being embargoed or bombed by most of the members of the security council they can file an appeal with the security council.
The balance of terror that currently exists with nuclear weapons is hardly ideal. However, right now it is at least a fairly stable situation (granted, issues with Russia's early warning systems have made things less stable). Dictatorships like Iran, North Korea, and Pakistan tend to destabilize the situation quite a bit. Now, the other two nations lack ICBM capability and only have a few weapons, so that lowers their strategic impact (except for South Korea, Japan, China, and India). Iran is much closer to Europe and everybody is dependant on the Middle East, so they're potentially a lot more dangerous. Plus, Iran has tended to be a bit more flamboyant with regard to rhetoric. NK isn't much better, but China tends to hold them in check since they've very dependant on them.
The world seriously needs to become less dependant on oil. All this blustering in the Middle East would go away pretty quickly if that happened. The region would just turn into another Central Africa where the various parties fight it out and nobody hears about it aside from the occasional relief mission...
I think that people have some kind of idea that intelligence is supposed to be perfect. It never is. At best it can give you general information about what somebody is up to, and it can also give you misinformation if the aversary is clever enough to feed it to you carefully.
Intelligence is a good way to supplement policy, or military strategy. It can't replace other factors, such as strong negotiating power or a strong military. It must still be used with caution.
IMHO, the world is playing a very dangerous game with Iran. It seems like people are under the impression that it is fine to just wait to the last minute to commit to a particular course of action. If people are waiting for some unambiguous piece of intelligence before they decide to take action on Iran, I suspect that they're going to be still waiting when the first test detonation goes off.
On the other hand, I can understand US reluctance to take action. Everybody seems to love to poke at the US for taking unilateral action (granted, Iraq certainly didn't help here). However, Iran isn't just a US problem. The US would be better off trying to become less dependant on oil from the middle east, and let the Europeans deal with Iran (they're the only ones in range of their missiles right now). Then the US press can sit back and take pot shots at European leaders when they make mistakes... :)
I agree with you. However, a company needs to do more than just translate its customer's needs as well - it has to have a vision of its own.
I have to deal with a software vendor at work which gets this completely wrong. Whenever we sit down and ask them what they're working on, we get the question "well, what would you like us to work on?" Oh, and usually it comes along with an implicit understanding that we'll have to pay them to work on anything at all (over and above software upgrade subscriptions).
I appreciate that a company wants to know what I think. However, if a company just wants to be my software development outsource provider, I can probably find cheaper options. Innovative and successful companies listen to their customers, and then they build a product that they feel will sell well (even if nobody has asked for it).
This of course begs the question of why people should be forced to pay for the Olympics. There is no reason it couldn't be funded purely through ticket sales, television rights, and, if necessary, participation fees.
Perhaps it would be OK if it were put up to a local referendum, and then any money that is pledged would be obtained from a tax on local businesses that would benefit from the tourism. If the Brazilians want to pay more money to host a sporting event, more power to them.
Meanwhile the manufacturer avoids the risk of arbitrage
Which is exactly why this practice should either be banned, or outsourcing to low-wage nations should be banned.
Manufacturers want laws that:
1. Make workers with different income levels completely interchangable.
2. Make products sold to people with different income levels completely non-interchangable.
Anybody else see an inconsistency?
The logic behind the ATM that took your card was that if you failed to enter your PIN correctly they would keep your card. Seems to not be an issue these days.
Most of those units would also retract the card and keep it if it isn't removed from the slot after a set period of time.
As was said by someone else on this post, if net neutrality existed on phone networks, this wouldn't be an issue.
True, but if we want net neutrality on phones then probably a good first step would be getting rid of all the crazy pricing schemes that exist. Frankly, these kinds of scams aren't fair to ANYBODY.
Look, I'm fine with a system that lets some farmer have a phone without having to pay $500 per month, but there has to be a better way. Net Neutrality doesn't mean charging people using pricing games for providing a "service" that they don't actually need (such as providing "rural" service to a call center that is actually located in a city).
I'm actually a fan of usage-based charges. ISPs shouldn't be able to advertise unlimited plans, and then cut people off for using them in an unlimited fashion.
Right now provider A and provider B both advertise unlimited plans with the same bandwidth and cost - so which should I choose? Instead, suppose provider A indicates that their plan is limited to 20GB per month and provider B limits at 60GB per month. Now I know which one I want. I might even sacrifice a little speed in favor of a higher total cap.
This should of course be combined with net-neutrality. No unlimited caps for content providers x, y, and z.
ISPs could also use this to distribute traffic - no limits during particular hours, etc.
Your monthly fee would cover some level of total usage (possibly zero), and then there would be a charge per MB/GB/whatever (with the term "MB" defined as either a MB or MiB - I don't care which as long as it is disclosed). Customers should also be allowed to set a limit on their total bill so that when they get a worm infection they don't get a $5000 bill. As an aside, cell phone companies need a similar law. If the customer doesn't want to be able to upload 500GB of data then they should be allowed to tell the ISP to just cut them off before they go over their limit until the next billing cycle.
True, but this is designed for survailence of areas where the military already has control (at a military level). Nobody in the opposition has howitzers or anything like that.
Plus, you could probably make them really cheap (minus the payload). A strategy would be to launch a bunch with minimal equipment and let them just float over enemy airspace. Anything that opens fire would betray its location.
You mention HARMs, but there are lots of other bad things that can happen to people who launch attacks using serious hardware. When you fire a howitzer your shells are instantly picked up by radar, and your artillery is instantly located. The US military can bring down counterbattery fire within minutes, and you're not going to move something like that quickly enough to evade. Even if the blimp doesn't have a HARM, it can report the radar location before it is shot down, and now you'll end up on a target list. In an theater like Afganistan where US planes are all over the place unopposed you could have a suitably-equipped fighter bearing down on you in minutes.
Nobody is going to send in blimps on the first wave of an attack. You bring those in the same time that you bring in all the other peacekeeping logistics - long after any real military resistance is gone. A resistance force can't support heavy weaponry like the kind you describe.