Why not identify and agree to "CB" use on an identified subset of the transponded bandwidth and have the governments in question explicitly authorize that use?
Then the people will get the service that they want and can get no other practical way, while the enforcement efforts can be focussed on a much smaller number of people who don't play by the rules - working outside the alloted band(s), using excessive power ("quieting" the other signals or running down the transponder power supply), or otherwise interfering with the operation of both the intended services and the other "CB" users.
Instead of flickering one row or column at a time, flicker ALL the letters simultaneously in different patterns. The brainwave trace should follow the one you're watching and the wait for it to be identified and confirmed will be much shorter.
What if he's shot in the field and the *enemy* saturates all the frequencies?
The enemy will WANT him to be rescued. (Only exception is if he's the only guy with some information they want to keep quiet - which is really rare.)
Kill a guy and your opponent is down one guy. Wound him and have him rescued and your enemy is down several guys and a bunch of materiel for weeks - while the wounded guy is out of action for months to the length of his enlistment and he doesn't leave family members unsupported and bent on revenge after the war is over. So wounding is more effective in the immediate (guys out of action in THIS battle), short (resources tied up or consumed for the duration of the war), and long (after war is over and you're trading partners and allies) term.
This is why military rifles and ammunition are designed to wound rather than kill (on the average and within the constraint of incapacitating the victim) and are often too underpowered to be used for hunting (where you're supposed to kill the critters quick so they don't suffer).
My guess is they will waste the budget money and keep them online far too long.
What budget money? If I'm not mistaken they're solar powered and self-contained.
It costs (a small amount of) money - mainly in the form of people and equipment time that could be used for better things - to make the decision and send the signal to turn them off (and maybe a lot to provide replacement service for any authorized usage they still support). It cost nothing to leave them on until they fail on their own or run out of station-keeping fuel and drift off to somewhere where they'll interfere with something else and NEED to be turned off, or until their "real estate" in orbit and radio channels is needed for another satellite.
Sounds to me more like he's alluding to the current shrinkage of the Great Red Spot - a long-term storm larger than the earth in Jupiter's atmosphere (which occasionally dissipates, followed by the formation of another one).
We might be giving a company the power to change our weather? Not sure how I feel about this..
It would be really expensive for them to do it. They'd have to put a LOT of power into a beam that they could otherwise sell. Like enough to heat up a bunch of clouds - or power several cities for hours.
(They'd also have to retune the beam from a band that passes through water - and birds, cows, people, etc. to one that is strongly absorbed. Or they'd have to have built TWO sets of transmitters - with one used only for weather modification.)
So you know they're not going to do it just for fun, altruism, or world domination. Somebody has to pay the bill. And their infrastructure is gigantic and spindly, hanging there in the sky ready to be blasted into fragments by any government that thinks they're misbehaving.
Also: "We might be giving...?" Is that the same sort of doublespeak as a tax cut being a government subsidy? If they end up doing this it won't be a matter of some "We" "giving" them anything. They'll have to build it, at great expense in capital, time, materials, and rare peoples' careers spent working on it rather than something else useful, in the hope that somebody will pay them enough to use it to recover the cost and make a profit on it.
For right now, of course, it's just a defensive patent. If they're going to be building a space solar power system that COULD be retweaked to kill hurricanes, they're bloody well going to make sure nobody ELSE patents doing that and locks them out of their own invention.
But "pioneering" it? Give me a break. Agricultural robotics ("agrobots") has been a going field for decades. The devices are very capable and some are quite inexpensive - to the point that there is at least one organic farm I know about that doesn't use or need the price breaks from exploiting foreign and/or illegal workers to run at a solid profit, despite pressure from the local authorities to hire illegals.
Look at The Mitchell Farm just for starters. (NOT the one I characterized above, by the way.) There are others using various levels of automation in Oregon, California, etc. And those are just places I KNOW about.
Just like there's no such thing as... clean sun (break-even on solar panels just sucks,...
Photovoltaic cells actually reach energy breakeven (more energy out than it took to build them) after only a couple years (depending on technology). Claims that it took more than the life of the panel proved bogus.
But that's not the point.
The purpose of the panels (and their supporting systems of mounts, batteries, inverters,..) is to deliver high-quality electric energy to a location. As such the proper comparison is between the costs (energy and otherwise) to do this with the panels versus the alternatives. The main alternatives are grid power and (worse) local fuel-driven generators.
So you don't compare the energy cost of building a panel installation capable of powering your load to what it puts out. You compare it to the energy cost of supplying grid power. Melting and forming metal and other materials for power lines, insulators, wires, support guys and guy anchors, transformers, power meters, enclosure boxes, main breakers, - for the run to the load and the load's share of the generation and common transmission infrastructure. Cutting and chemically treating trees to make poles. Clearing land (and dedicating it to the power line in perpetuity). Shipping the materials, equipment, and workers to (and from) the site. Drilling the holes and setting the poles. And so on.
Then once it's installed, you also have to count the energy cost in raw fuel BTU (or whatever) to MAKE the delivered energy - a cost the panels don't have. For instance: burning fuel to make heat, running it through a heat engine to make horsepower, running that through a generator to make electricity, running that through the generator and transformer coils and transmission lines, etc. You lose in the heat engine, the mechanical friction, electrical resistance in all that copper, hysteresis in the generator and transformer cores, excitation power for the generators, minor loads in the control logic, etc.
So the grid takes FAR more energy input than it delivers. Do you hear anybody claim it should therefore be shut down because it's not some more than 100% efficient perpetual motion machine? Of COURSE not! So why do you hear (and repeat) the "less than breakeven" claim about photovoltaic cells and use it (even if it WERE true, which it isn't) as an argument not to use them?
If someone were fool enough to try to MAKE photovoltaic panels using ONLY the electric output of other photovoltaic panels for ALL the energy of their construction (even getting the raw heat from resitive heaters and eschewing even thermal solar panels), the energy breakeven question might have some merit. (But even in that absurd scenario the panels would more than pay off their own energy cost.)
= = = =
Photovoltaic panels have limited deployment because they're still MORE EXPENSIVE than grid power in many situations - including powering houses in cities and suburbs. But about a 5:1 improvement would bring it to sunny suburbs as well.
Also: A link to a Washington Times story about this one is now the top item on the Drudge Report. Right above the story about the governor of Texas supporting their tenth-amendment resolution.
That's an interesting juxtaposition. One of the things that makes a group right-wing extremist, according to the report in question, is "reject[ing] federal authority in favor of state or local authority". So I guess the government of Texas is now a DHS-certified right-wing extremist group - or will be if the resolution passes. B-)
The first one has been all over the news for a while. Ron Paul and several other named candidates demanded an apology and at lease one official involved is on suspension.
For the second one (just a couple days since the leak) the DHS already took it down from their web site. But here's links to one saved copy and another.
The third (Muslim) one I heard about from a close friend whom I trust but haven't seen it myself. (It was supposedly leaked from a Texas Fusion Center.)
When GWB was elected I thought that I should have gone out and bought up shares in defense and oil, only I was a poor college kid at the time,...
Next time you have such an insight, buy call options.
They're a pure bet that stock prices will rise above a specified threshold before a specified date. You get all the gain beyond the threshold plus your buy-in price and transaction costs (or maybe sell the bet to somebody else for a different price before it expires) and can't lose more than you bet.
Downside is that the price of the options is set by other betters, usually with a better idea of the market than you have. But if you call a major move correctly you can get ENORMOUS leverage without being caught in a squeeze if your bet goes wrong.
Following same logic, bin Laden should be named as anti-terrorist chief of operations.
After some of the documents that the DHS has lately leaked out of their "Fusion Centers", I'm inclined to think he's found somebody even more "appropriate".
FYI: "Fusion Centers" are interagency training and intelligence groups where the DHS and FEMA train the state, county, and local law enforcement. They've recently been caught feeding them two documents claiming people who voted for Ron Paul or a third party candidate, have such a bumper sticker on their cars, and listing a number of other "signs" (like wanting to audit or regulate the Federal Reserve, opposing the bailouts, pushing to lower taxes or government spending,...) are probably right-wing extremists and members of white-supremacist militias and likely to shoot at police during traffic stops. (The second was funny in that it used the phrase "right wing extremist" in virtually every paragraph. If you say it often enough...) Also a third one making similar claims that anybody who wears Muslim clothing or goes to a mosque is probably a terrorist and out to kill first-responders.
The RIAA are beginning to have their asses kicked in court because more and more people are standing up and speaking out against them, thanks to the guidance of the EFF and Beckerman types.
So it's time to jump ship rater than ride it down. And then to use the skills and lessons learned in another venue, where the opposition isn't yet ready for it and the precedents blunting the attacks aren't yet set.
It will be interesting to see how the Justice Department operates over the next few years. (Seems to me that, if you want to turn the US into a fascist country, RIAA and MPAA lawyers would be just DANDY candidates for its legal arm - especially the prosecutorial part of it.)
... the complete disregard for both justice and the standard of law in this country pretty much makes them crappy appointments for the JUSTICE department.
Well that depends on just HOW Obama wants the justice department run, doesn't it?
A very risky joke at the best of times. But especially during the runup to fascism. It's right up there with waving at your friend Jack whom you've just noticed on the other side of the plane and yelling: "Hi, Jack!"
Security personnel are paid to have NO sense of humor. This is at least partly because REAL bad guys often talk about things as they work themselves up to doing them - and try to claim they were joking if anybody calls them on it.
Back during the "Vietnam Era" (it was undeclared so I STILL won't call it a war) there was a guy who wrote "P*ss on LBJ" on the outside of letters he sent. After a while he noticed that Secret Service agents were following him around. He confronted one and, upon finding out he was Secret Service asked him why he was being followed. Answer: "If enough people p*ssed on LBJ it would kill him."
There are three possibilities here: - he just sucks at gift-giving, and picked up something he had laying around the house. - he wants to give what is most precious to his donors: intellectual property and entertainment. - he wants to put the spotlight on how absurd it is that his gift to the queen is potentially illegal.
Fourth possibility: The issue never crossed his mind or those of his advisers.
Note that it matters. Despite attempts to criminalize copyright violation this is all about CIVIL liability. So if the copyright holders are aware of the copying there's no foul unless they think there's a foul and claim it. Given the situation, and the value of keeping Obama in their pocket, they're no doubt quite happy to treat this particular set of copies as "authorized" and let it go. They'd probably have paid for them and gifted them themselves if it wasn't more legal trouble and protocol clumsiness than the current situation.
If they're concerned about the precedent they could explicitly announce they've authorized this particular set of copies, putting the issue to rest without waiving any other rights. But I'm sure they're more than happy to watch us all waste effort wringing hands about it. B-(
I'll be really interested in how they deal with Hepatitis and Prions, which are extremely hardy. (Ordinary autoclaving won't touch either of 'em, and I somehow doubt all that water is pressure-cooked. Fortunately they don't reproduce outside bodies without major support.) Also in how often they have breakdowns that cause the release of live pathogens of more mundane types.
Meanwhile there are plenty of nutrients in the effluent even when "tertiary treated" - turning the evaporative coolers' contents into a dandy culture medium for many sorts of pathogens that might, even once, escape treatment, or which are picked up from the incoming air, sucked-in insects, bird and rodent droppings, dust,... A cooler is often the only handy source of water for animals and thus may be quite a popular destination for them despite the noise level.
I'm presuming they're using treated sewage (equivalent to the "recycled water" used for lawn irrigation at some silicon valley sites and including black water before treatment) rather than "proper" gray water (i.e. untreated sewage from bathtubs, sinks, and floor drains, but not toilets.)
See this FAQ for San Jose, CA's similar operation.
And if you think this stuff is safe, ask yourself why they can't use it for drinking. (And think about what it takes to kill Hepatitis virus, just for starters...)
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Why not identify and agree to "CB" use on an identified subset of the transponded bandwidth and have the governments in question explicitly authorize that use?
Then the people will get the service that they want and can get no other practical way, while the enforcement efforts can be focussed on a much smaller number of people who don't play by the rules - working outside the alloted band(s), using excessive power ("quieting" the other signals or running down the transponder power supply), or otherwise interfering with the operation of both the intended services and the other "CB" users.
Instead of flickering one row or column at a time, flicker ALL the letters simultaneously in different patterns. The brainwave trace should follow the one you're watching and the wait for it to be identified and confirmed will be much shorter.
= = = =
How is this better than eye tracking?
What if he's shot in the field and the *enemy* saturates all the frequencies?
The enemy will WANT him to be rescued. (Only exception is if he's the only guy with some information they want to keep quiet - which is really rare.)
Kill a guy and your opponent is down one guy. Wound him and have him rescued and your enemy is down several guys and a bunch of materiel for weeks - while the wounded guy is out of action for months to the length of his enlistment and he doesn't leave family members unsupported and bent on revenge after the war is over. So wounding is more effective in the immediate (guys out of action in THIS battle), short (resources tied up or consumed for the duration of the war), and long (after war is over and you're trading partners and allies) term.
This is why military rifles and ammunition are designed to wound rather than kill (on the average and within the constraint of incapacitating the victim) and are often too underpowered to be used for hunting (where you're supposed to kill the critters quick so they don't suffer).
My guess is they will waste the budget money and keep them online far too long.
What budget money? If I'm not mistaken they're solar powered and self-contained.
It costs (a small amount of) money - mainly in the form of people and equipment time that could be used for better things - to make the decision and send the signal to turn them off (and maybe a lot to provide replacement service for any authorized usage they still support). It cost nothing to leave them on until they fail on their own or run out of station-keeping fuel and drift off to somewhere where they'll interfere with something else and NEED to be turned off, or until their "real estate" in orbit and radio channels is needed for another satellite.
Sounds to me more like he's alluding to the current shrinkage of the Great Red Spot - a long-term storm larger than the earth in Jupiter's atmosphere (which occasionally dissipates, followed by the formation of another one).
Not to mention the fact that we obviously perfectly understand ...
If we waited for "perfect" understanding nothing would EVER get done.
Am I the only one concerned what might happen to other weather systems ...
No.
And I'm sure that if the equipment is ever built and used the people operating it will be concerned as well.
Especially they'll be concerned about being blamed for ANYTHING damaged by weather for months, or years, after they tweak a hurricane.
We might be giving a company the power to change our weather? Not sure how I feel about this..
It would be really expensive for them to do it. They'd have to put a LOT of power into a beam that they could otherwise sell. Like enough to heat up a bunch of clouds - or power several cities for hours.
(They'd also have to retune the beam from a band that passes through water - and birds, cows, people, etc. to one that is strongly absorbed. Or they'd have to have built TWO sets of transmitters - with one used only for weather modification.)
So you know they're not going to do it just for fun, altruism, or world domination. Somebody has to pay the bill. And their infrastructure is gigantic and spindly, hanging there in the sky ready to be blasted into fragments by any government that thinks they're misbehaving.
Also: "We might be giving ...?" Is that the same sort of doublespeak as a tax cut being a government subsidy? If they end up doing this it won't be a matter of some "We" "giving" them anything. They'll have to build it, at great expense in capital, time, materials, and rare peoples' careers spent working on it rather than something else useful, in the hope that somebody will pay them enough to use it to recover the cost and make a profit on it.
For right now, of course, it's just a defensive patent. If they're going to be building a space solar power system that COULD be retweaked to kill hurricanes, they're bloody well going to make sure nobody ELSE patents doing that and locks them out of their own invention.
Kudos for MIT for working on this problem.
But "pioneering" it? Give me a break. Agricultural robotics ("agrobots") has been a going field for decades. The devices are very capable and some are quite inexpensive - to the point that there is at least one organic farm I know about that doesn't use or need the price breaks from exploiting foreign and/or illegal workers to run at a solid profit, despite pressure from the local authorities to hire illegals.
Look at The Mitchell Farm just for starters. (NOT the one I characterized above, by the way.) There are others using various levels of automation in Oregon, California, etc. And those are just places I KNOW about.
Just like there's no such thing as ... clean sun (break-even on solar panels just sucks,...
Photovoltaic cells actually reach energy breakeven (more energy out than it took to build them) after only a couple years (depending on technology). Claims that it took more than the life of the panel proved bogus.
But that's not the point.
The purpose of the panels (and their supporting systems of mounts, batteries, inverters, ..) is to deliver high-quality electric energy to a location. As such the proper comparison is between the costs (energy and otherwise) to do this with the panels versus the alternatives. The main alternatives are grid power and (worse) local fuel-driven generators.
So you don't compare the energy cost of building a panel installation capable of powering your load to what it puts out. You compare it to the energy cost of supplying grid power. Melting and forming metal and other materials for power lines, insulators, wires, support guys and guy anchors, transformers, power meters, enclosure boxes, main breakers, - for the run to the load and the load's share of the generation and common transmission infrastructure. Cutting and chemically treating trees to make poles. Clearing land (and dedicating it to the power line in perpetuity). Shipping the materials, equipment, and workers to (and from) the site. Drilling the holes and setting the poles. And so on.
Then once it's installed, you also have to count the energy cost in raw fuel BTU (or whatever) to MAKE the delivered energy - a cost the panels don't have. For instance: burning fuel to make heat, running it through a heat engine to make horsepower, running that through a generator to make electricity, running that through the generator and transformer coils and transmission lines, etc. You lose in the heat engine, the mechanical friction, electrical resistance in all that copper, hysteresis in the generator and transformer cores, excitation power for the generators, minor loads in the control logic, etc.
So the grid takes FAR more energy input than it delivers. Do you hear anybody claim it should therefore be shut down because it's not some more than 100% efficient perpetual motion machine? Of COURSE not! So why do you hear (and repeat) the "less than breakeven" claim about photovoltaic cells and use it (even if it WERE true, which it isn't) as an argument not to use them?
If someone were fool enough to try to MAKE photovoltaic panels using ONLY the electric output of other photovoltaic panels for ALL the energy of their construction (even getting the raw heat from resitive heaters and eschewing even thermal solar panels), the energy breakeven question might have some merit. (But even in that absurd scenario the panels would more than pay off their own energy cost.)
= = = =
Photovoltaic panels have limited deployment because they're still MORE EXPENSIVE than grid power in many situations - including powering houses in cities and suburbs. But about a 5:1 improvement would bring it to sunny suburbs as well.
Also: A link to a Washington Times story about this one is now the top item on the Drudge Report. Right above the story about the governor of Texas supporting their tenth-amendment resolution.
That's an interesting juxtaposition. One of the things that makes a group right-wing extremist, according to the report in question, is "reject[ing] federal authority in favor of state or local authority". So I guess the government of Texas is now a DHS-certified right-wing extremist group - or will be if the resolution passes. B-)
The first one has been all over the news for a while. Ron Paul and several other named candidates demanded an apology and at lease one official involved is on suspension.
For the second one (just a couple days since the leak) the DHS already took it down from their web site. But here's links to one saved copy and another.
The third (Muslim) one I heard about from a close friend whom I trust but haven't seen it myself. (It was supposedly leaked from a Texas Fusion Center.)
... if the "vimeo" video streams had actually RUN on my at-work linux box. (Gentoo, Firefox, ...)
They're a pure bet that stock prices will rise ...
There are also call options on commodities.
Also "put" options - bets that the price will fall.
When GWB was elected I thought that I should have gone out and bought up shares in defense and oil, only I was a poor college kid at the time, ...
Next time you have such an insight, buy call options.
They're a pure bet that stock prices will rise above a specified threshold before a specified date. You get all the gain beyond the threshold plus your buy-in price and transaction costs (or maybe sell the bet to somebody else for a different price before it expires) and can't lose more than you bet.
Downside is that the price of the options is set by other betters, usually with a better idea of the market than you have. But if you call a major move correctly you can get ENORMOUS leverage without being caught in a squeeze if your bet goes wrong.
Kinda like how Benito didn't make the Italian trains run on time. He made the Italian press SAY he'd made the trains run on time.
Elian Gonzales? Ruby Ridge? Waco?
We could be in for REALLY interesting times...
... but the light side is sticky.
(Wait. That's duct tape!)
Following same logic, bin Laden should be named as anti-terrorist chief of operations.
After some of the documents that the DHS has lately leaked out of their "Fusion Centers", I'm inclined to think he's found somebody even more "appropriate".
FYI: "Fusion Centers" are interagency training and intelligence groups where the DHS and FEMA train the state, county, and local law enforcement. They've recently been caught feeding them two documents claiming people who voted for Ron Paul or a third party candidate, have such a bumper sticker on their cars, and listing a number of other "signs" (like wanting to audit or regulate the Federal Reserve, opposing the bailouts, pushing to lower taxes or government spending, ...) are probably right-wing extremists and members of white-supremacist militias and likely to shoot at police during traffic stops. (The second was funny in that it used the phrase "right wing extremist" in virtually every paragraph. If you say it often enough...) Also a third one making similar claims that anybody who wears Muslim clothing or goes to a mosque is probably a terrorist and out to kill first-responders.
The RIAA are beginning to have their asses kicked in court because more and more people are standing up and speaking out against them, thanks to the guidance of the EFF and Beckerman types.
So it's time to jump ship rater than ride it down. And then to use the skills and lessons learned in another venue, where the opposition isn't yet ready for it and the precedents blunting the attacks aren't yet set.
It will be interesting to see how the Justice Department operates over the next few years. (Seems to me that, if you want to turn the US into a fascist country, RIAA and MPAA lawyers would be just DANDY candidates for its legal arm - especially the prosecutorial part of it.)
... the complete disregard for both justice and the standard of law in this country pretty much makes them crappy appointments for the JUSTICE department.
Well that depends on just HOW Obama wants the justice department run, doesn't it?
i dunno... how much are bullets these day?
ha, ha, just a joke, folks! ;-)
A very risky joke at the best of times. But especially during the runup to fascism. It's right up there with waving at your friend Jack whom you've just noticed on the other side of the plane and yelling: "Hi, Jack!"
Security personnel are paid to have NO sense of humor. This is at least partly because REAL bad guys often talk about things as they work themselves up to doing them - and try to claim they were joking if anybody calls them on it.
Back during the "Vietnam Era" (it was undeclared so I STILL won't call it a war) there was a guy who wrote "P*ss on LBJ" on the outside of letters he sent. After a while he noticed that Secret Service agents were following him around. He confronted one and, upon finding out he was Secret Service asked him why he was being followed. Answer: "If enough people p*ssed on LBJ it would kill him."
There are three possibilities here:
- he just sucks at gift-giving, and picked up something he had laying around the house.
- he wants to give what is most precious to his donors: intellectual property and entertainment.
- he wants to put the spotlight on how absurd it is that his gift to the queen is potentially illegal.
Fourth possibility: The issue never crossed his mind or those of his advisers.
Note that it matters. Despite attempts to criminalize copyright violation this is all about CIVIL liability. So if the copyright holders are aware of the copying there's no foul unless they think there's a foul and claim it. Given the situation, and the value of keeping Obama in their pocket, they're no doubt quite happy to treat this particular set of copies as "authorized" and let it go. They'd probably have paid for them and gifted them themselves if it wasn't more legal trouble and protocol clumsiness than the current situation.
If they're concerned about the precedent they could explicitly announce they've authorized this particular set of copies, putting the issue to rest without waiving any other rights. But I'm sure they're more than happy to watch us all waste effort wringing hands about it. B-(
The water treatment takes care of pathogens
I'll be really interested in how they deal with Hepatitis and Prions, which are extremely hardy. (Ordinary autoclaving won't touch either of 'em, and I somehow doubt all that water is pressure-cooked. Fortunately they don't reproduce outside bodies without major support.) Also in how often they have breakdowns that cause the release of live pathogens of more mundane types.
Meanwhile there are plenty of nutrients in the effluent even when "tertiary treated" - turning the evaporative coolers' contents into a dandy culture medium for many sorts of pathogens that might, even once, escape treatment, or which are picked up from the incoming air, sucked-in insects, bird and rodent droppings, dust, ... A cooler is often the only handy source of water for animals and thus may be quite a popular destination for them despite the noise level.
See this post for my reply.
I'm presuming they're using treated sewage (equivalent to the "recycled water" used for lawn irrigation at some silicon valley sites and including black water before treatment) rather than "proper" gray water (i.e. untreated sewage from bathtubs, sinks, and floor drains, but not toilets.)
See this FAQ for San Jose, CA's similar operation.
And if you think this stuff is safe, ask yourself why they can't use it for drinking. (And think about what it takes to kill Hepatitis virus, just for starters...)