how long until the general public has caught on to the point where Spam is no longer profitable
You're assuming the scammers and the emailers are one and the same.
Much more likely you have the scammers fronting some money to the emailers. As long as theres one scammer out there with a hairbrained business plan, the emailers will be hired and put to work.
Don't know if the UK situation is similar to the US situation, but in the US its almost a stereotype that some percentage of people whom take out home equity lines of credit set up a retail store, despite the complete lack of experience, selling stuff like "pirate products", "decorative candles", cupcakes, small restaurants, etc. Then six months later when the seed cash is gone they fold and file personal bankruptcy.
Interestingly, the local cops thought it so unusual that the local candle store was still open for business after about three years, that they investigated it, and it seems the candle store was selling weed on the side, Busted!
I grew up in the '80s on a steady diet of Byte and Compute! magazines, banging in page after page of code line-by-line, and figuring out how sound, graphics and input devices worked along the way.
They only existed in the 80s because the device manufacturers had no way to distribute large multi page paper documents for free. Sure, if you were a Genuine Degreed BS-EE with the job title to match, salesdroids would pretty much send you anything you ask for as samples. The general public, believe it or not, was expected to actually pay for printed appnotes and even printed datasheets.
Nowadays, if you want to learn how to make sound, or program a LCD, or run a A/D converter, you just download the appnotes from the manufacturers website, typically you get a PDF explaining in great detail how it works, schematics, and example code to get you started out. Some manufacturers go further and sell demoboards for a really modest (probably subsidized) fees.
Either the manufacturer's appnotes are so simple and clear that a "D" student could figure it out, or they go out of business and are replaced by a manufacturer with better tech writers. The quality level is generally excellent.
He asked where to find a good, consistent source of articles about that kind of problems.
So lmgtfy is wrong in what manner? Google will do it.
Instructables.com is the only other "search" site you need.
I will concede the point that one thing google is iffy at best is finding the stereotypical electronics manufacturer appnote. Then again, how hard is it to figure out, if you want to do something with PICs, you go to microchip.com, click app notes, and do the obvious searchy searchy thing for what you want to do?
Which isn't a peer-reviewed scientific paper, it's a government committee report. Those aren't always 100% truthful, or they at least tend to massage the truth to come up with politically convenient answers (e.g. Warren Commission, 9/11 Commission, etc.) Yet sometimes they're right on, the trick is knowing which is which.
To figure how likely it was to be true, look at this individual scenario. The report came out in 2005 and was written roughly in the middle of an administration that was more that willing to outright lie to the public to start multi-front wars, using a preferred propaganda technique of fear and intimidation to scare people into submission. I don't think this is a controversial opinion. To some extent the current administration does the same thing, just not as blatantly.
Given the govt at that time, I'd expect the report to lean more towards a conclusion that the arabs will destroy all our all american pickup trucks and big iron muscle cars unless we launch a new crusade in the middle east for the sake of spreading the gospel of christianity, and bomb every brown skinned nation on earth just because they hate our freedoms, and also all true patriotic americans should be proud to give up our civil rights, and nazi style torture/concentration/death camps are a great idea as long as they're only for brown skinned people. Because nothings more important to us Americans than driving our cars. Personally I find that all rather repulsive, but thats the kind of writing I'd expect to read in a "Bush-era post-9/11 world".
However, the way it actually turned out, the best they could terrify us into submission with, was less than 1 in 10 cars stalled but started right back up again, and one dude needed a new radio? That's not exactly worthy of a presentation to the UN to open a third front in the middle eastern wars, and a presentation like that is in extremely high demand.
So, I think the report was accurate, honest, truthful, at least in part because it didn't meet the governments needs.
As for the video, there's a fine line between making a visually impressive marketing video where you control all the variables for all aspects of the single demonstration, and outright faking. Is it true that one specially selected car year and model with a certain maintenance history under utterly ideal conditions could be damaged in some manner? Maybe. Would I trust an obvious PR video just slightly above the level of a late night infomercial? Heck no.
So, my wife's got an original model mac mini with like a 1 GHZ processor that must be approaching 5 years old. She's got a perfectly good large VGA monitor and USB keyboard/mouse etc.
This seems like it would be the perfect forklift upgrade for her. Almost ten times the disk space with the 500 gb model, the CPU is about 6 times faster making DVD movie burning somewhat more bearable, new OSX version. Its about time to upgrade.
Yet the whole slashdot article is about hooking it up to a TV (why? I already have a perfectly operational mythtv system) and complaining about why it can't be bundled with a monitor I don't need, or trying to explain why I should buy a fragile laptop with a microscopic little bitty screen that costs quite a bit more.
Right, but other than spark plug wires, what critical sensors and cabling are unshielded/ungrounded? Like you say, you can't hear anything coming out, so not much can get in either.
Crankshaft position sensor buried deep inside the aluminum block by the flywheel...
O2 exhaust sensor, not critical to operation, buried deep inside the SS exhaust manifold
Fuel pump, inside an enclosed literally gas tight pressurized steel fuel tank.
Fuel injectors, inside an enclosed aluminum intake manifold.
I'll give you the heavy gauge cables to the battery and starter, but those laugh at 1K amp starting current and the internal resistance of the battery is obviously low enough to eat any voltage spike for dinner.
Everything else is as stated before, steel boxes mounted on the inside of a steel cage.
So, I'm thinking the most sensitive wiring is the spark plugs, and we agree they are pretty bullet proof from an EMP perspective.
My wife's Prius, not that might have a problem based on the RF noise it radiates. But my old Saturn, not really.
You're looking at it from a consumer perspective. The real problem is infrastructure.
I can buy a remarkable quantity and variety of food at my local weekly farmers market direct from the local farmers... I would assume that could scale up quite a bit if necessary.
I'm not belittling the other problems, just saying that is possible to buy food, in fact excellent locally grown food, beyond pizza rolls from a walmart supercenter. I/we can eat quite well indeed without making sam walton's heirs richer, or making the new york banks richer by swiping a VISA card.
I would agree that coasties in the heart of big cities and desert dwellers in AZ would pretty much have to starve to death. But the quality of life is already so low in such areas, can you be surprised at the results if an EMP dropped the QOL even further? Not really.
Most of the population has zero/negative net worth, with only 1% or so having almost all the money. Frankly a financial reboot would probably do a lot of good for the country. This coming from a guy who's doing pretty good although not quite in the 1% yet.
The problem you're not seeing is infrastructure. No electricity rapidly means no plumbed treated tap water. The good news is I live in a river community. The bad news is the communities upstream have no electricity to run their sewage treatment plans. Pestilence and disease is going to be the big problem.
Pure info-tainment. Like those TV people that strap bombs to the gas tank of cars to make better explosion videos, or those TV people that rig tires to detonate to make the SUV flip. Try a real information source summarizing results from real scientific experiments like:
Then check out the "Critical National Infrastructures Report"
Look for this around page 115. The idea that some cars stalling, coasting to a stop, and needing to be restarted will create a crisis is fairly unbelievable from the perspective of a daily rush hour driver like myself whom is used to crazy stop and go traffic, but I guess that was the most terrifying scenario they could produce, so they had to run with what they had.
We tested a sample of 37 cars in an EMP simulation laboratory, with automobile vintages ranging from 1986 through 2002. Automobiles of these vintages include extensive electronics and represent a significant fraction of automobiles on the road today. The testing was conducted by exposing running and nonrunning automobiles to sequentially increasing EMP field intensities. If anomalous response (either temporary or permanent) was observed, the testing of that particular automobile was stopped. If no anomalous response was observed, the testing was continued up to the field intensity limits of the simulation capability (approximately 50 kV/m).
Automobiles were subjected to EMP environments under both engine turned off and engine turned on conditions. No effects were subsequently observed in those automobiles that were not turned on during EMP exposure. The most serious effect observed on running automobiles was that the motors in three cars stopped at field strengths of approximately 30 kV/m or above. In an actual EMP exposure, these vehicles would glide to a stop and require the driver to restart them. Electronics in the dashboard of one automobile were damaged and required repair. Other effects were relatively minor. Twenty-five automobiles exhibited malfunctions that could be considered only a nuisance (e.g., blinking dashboard lights) and did not require driver intervention to correct. Eight of the 37 cars tested did not exhibit any anomalous response.
Based on these test results, we expect few automobile effects at EMP field levels below 25 kV/m. Approximately 10 percent or more of the automobiles exposed to higher field levels may experience serious EMP effects, including engine stall, that require driver intervention to correct. We further expect that at least two out of three automobiles on the road will manifest some nuisance response at these higher field levels. The serious malfunctions could trigger car crashes on U.S. highways; the nuisance malfunctions could exacerbate this condition. The ultimate result of automobile EMP exposure could be triggered crashes that damage many more vehicles than are damaged by the EMP, the consequent loss of life, and multiple injuries.
There are hundreds of electrical systems in a car.
All installed in sealed Faraday cages bolted to the inside of a big car shaped Faraday cage, and designed to work in very close proximity to spark plugs (unless your car is a diesel)
It doesn't matter, we have electronic controls everywhere. If there's an EMP-level event from the Sun, any cars made since about 1970 will be rendered inoperable.
Why? The electronics are buried in fully enclosed little steel boxes, installed in big car sized fully enclosed steel boxes, with short wires designed not just to survive electrical sparks, but to control those electrical sparks. And none of the electrical wires are longer than a couple meters at most, and none of them connect outside the vehicle (the occasional winter time engine block heater excepted). The only things tougher than automotive electronics are diesel electric locomotive electronics and military electronics.
I suppose you're referring to the way high power broadcast transmitter antennas, military search radars, and airport radars are always surrounded by dead cars with blown computers. Oh wait, that never happens.
Also, what was added to cars in 1970? Tailfins? My old '87 plymouth horizon would "run" without its ECU computer, of course it would never take the computerized choke off and the engine timing advance would not "advance" so performance was remarkably poor, but for a young kid, it got me around. That was manufactured about 17 years after your arbitrary cutoff date.
Also, my computer is pretty much a large steel cage, with the magnetic platters encased in another thick layer of metal, how vulnerable would a regular tower be?
Simultaneously plugged into a multi-thousand mile grid of copper electrical power wiring and miles of aluminum hardline for the cablemodem, not so good.
Unplugged in a box, excellent chance of survival.
Also, electrical fields have no direct effect on magnetic material, you can completely vaporize the electronic of a computer in a lightning strike and a cleanroom service can install new circuit boards and recover most/all of the data off the drive. Now, heat the platters above the curie temperature, like in a fire, and you're screwed.
So would something like an EMP destroy pace makers
Pacemakers are installed inside a poorly constructed Faraday cage. That being your highly conductive body. Pacemakers historically have occasionally gotten all wound up in high RF fields, but aside from folks working at high power UHF TV station transmitters it has not been a serious issue.
You can "short out" and essentially blow the fuses of a pacemaker. Of course it takes more than enough power to hopelessly electrocute someone, in fact depending on the design you pretty much need to cook them like one of those electric hot dog cookers.
Its pretty much the usual useless scaremongering B.S.
would something like this essentially kill anyone with an artificial/bionic enhancement that controls life support?
Could something worse than we have ever experienced, result in deaths? Just speaking generally, not about any specific threat, and taking a wild guess, I'd say that's a good solid maybe, unless my salary depending on raising money by saying yes, in which case I'd say yes.
It would be a silly scheme though considering that this is a safe Republican seat anyway.
You don't practice and hone your skills on the important 50:50 battles, you practice and hone your skills on the pointless irrelevant battles. Since this is an irrelevant battle, it doesn't matter so much whom is to blame for this individual irrelevant battle, so much as it matters that someone out there is preparing for the big one...
curb our species appetites for.... sex (overpopulation)
We've got great technological solutions for that particular problem, its just the religious lunatics don't like it. Need to go to the root cause, not just list a symptom, which in that case would be religious lunacy. And pretty much all major world religions, except Buddhism, glorify warfare and demonize the victims, so the loons get some blame there too. And pretty much all major world religions glorify the opposite of "reduce", obviously thats how they got to be major world religions instead of some ancient dead sect that no one will remember (think of heavens gate in comparison to the judeo-christian order to go forth and multiply)
I'm curious why you say that. RC dating works because theres a certain believed fixed ratio of carbon isotopes in the air and general environment, and once something dies and is buried the active isotopes start decaying into the stable isotopes. The active isotopes come from cosmic rays and are very optimistically believed to be constant and/or have been correlated on earth with sedimentation and other data.
Works just fine with inorganic samples. Crush the heck out of some martian rocks and the trapped atmosphere, conveniently mostly carbon containing CO2, and you'll know how long those little bubbles of atmosphere have been trapped in the rock.
RC dating only works over a certain date range because eventually "almost all" the isotopes have decayed. So, simply try a different atom. Stuff that contains unstable isotopes that crystalizes into chemically pure crystals is pretty convenient because you know it was 100% pure at one time and now is X% decayed whatever.
what you describe seems to be the recipe for a "Big Bang" and the plot could involve a scientist trying to recreate the Big Bang and make a whole new universe.
Well that seems a bit too stereotypical, especially if you add a hot woman to the mix do the ever tiresome boy-meets-girl plot, and I suppose lots of gunfire in the mid-late book. And atomic physics doesn't create "big bangs" out of boring (although high power) fission reactions.
The result of my idea would be a bit more like a remotely launched, extremely short range, extremely low yield fission bomb. Very star trek phaser-like which means its pretty much been written to death in sci fi as a plot device. Or more likely you "beam" a microscopic small and very modest power "virtual-fission-bomb" some distance away from the expensive machinery, over to a nice really efficient heat exchanger, making an extremely convenient power source, another topic that has been absolutely done to death in sci fi, pretty much just drop in place of any other stereotypical transportable-sized fusion reactor.
Theres probably some pretty interesting materials science implications of making something like a nuclear welding machine. Things that can't be done with current technology, or would be insanely difficult, would be pretty easy with a machine that can generate nearly infinite amounts of heat at any depth of metal. Trivially weld battleship armor plates together. Probably much easier to make composite tank armor. Simple and easy assembly of titanium submarine hulls. That type of thing.
Of course the interesting part is not that it could be yet another overdone plot line, but that it might theoretically be constructable... or maybe not.
Yeah, I mean, quantum tunneling? Quantum confinement? Those effects totally just cancel out and never do us any good!
It would be a heck of a lot of fun to reduce the inertial mass of some hydrogen ions so the can be accelerated to high speed with very little power, then increase their gravitic mass until the inevitably fuse into a cloud of an atom with an atomic number and atomic mass in the zillions, then shut "the magic field" off and watch the giant atoms fission releasing considerable energy to their surroundings.
AKA a perpetual motion machine, at least from the thermodynamic perspective.
Imagine if you could lift an aircraft carrier sized ship in to space with nearly no energy, then accelerate to.999 light speed with no more thrust than a model rocket.
Note that one situation means low/zero gravitic mass, the other means low/zero inertial mass. You might be able to arbitrarily control both. You might be able to trade one off for another. Or maybe only modify one. Also, the problems with SR and QM are at a small scale, so your aircraft carrier might only be one atom in diameter or something.
Finally, I haven't read the paper, but it'll be interesting to see how it gets around various perpetual motion type problems. Right off the top of my head, extracting energy from a pendulum where gravitic and inertial mass are different and varying is going to be a serious issue.
Changing inertial mass would do pretty weird things to rotating flywheels. I suppose you could make a spinning flywheel break apart with immense violence at a very low rotational speed. Or rotate a spinning flywheel at insane speeds without it flying apart. All at the same stored energy level. Theres probably a perpetual motion machine that would involve extracting constant energy at a constant torque at high vs low RPMs.
Similar problems at a quantum scale. Otherwise it would be too easy to accelerate two beams of "reduced inertial mass" deuterium to an arbitrarily high velocity and then increase their gravitic mass at the collision point until they fuse.
Finally, the most interesting apps might be arbitrarily increasing inertial and gravitic mass. Increasing gravitic mass would make gravity wave detectors much simpler to make. The odds of increasing the gravitic mass of something small on a spacecraft to something large like a planet seem unlikely aka artifical gravity. Increasing inertial mass might be useful for weapons, armor, pretty much anywhere you use lead, tungsten, or DU.
It seems to me most of the of the people who complain about the "science gap" are those who aren't actually working in the field...
I would disagree, only in that the complainers are generally the managers and administrators whom are fed up at having to pay princely stipends like $20K/yr and are hoping for maybe half that. Or whatever the dollar value of scientist pay is, they're hoping a dramatically increased supply of unemployed science graduates will result in dramatically lower salaries.
Same B.S. from management in respect to I.T. or engineering, or pretty much any job that pays over minimum wage.
It seems to me that somebody could also use one of these in combination with a fresnel lens or some other photon amplifying device and REALLY crank up the power.
I think you're using words, but don't know what they mean?
If a Fresnel lens made photons out of the thin air, it would make an excellent perpetual motion machine in tandem with a couple mirrors.
Pointing this thing at a 1-meter Fresnel is only going to illuminate about one millionth the lens, before it makes a hole in it. And I'd assume the beam is already reasonably well focused so there is little point in further focusing?
I have a CNC milling machine. Completely enclosed milling cabinets are an off the shelf item, and I can make it light tight fairly easily. So, rather than pay $15K for a laser engraver, I'll pay about $200 or whatever. Not bad, not bad at all.
Research experiments that could be done?
How attractive of an artwork can I engrave on the back of ipods, laptops, etc. Can I lasercut wood and plexi? How long until the smoke and fumes from laser engraving kill me and/or set off the smoke alarm? How long until I F up and engrave into my mills table, much like the mechanical mill guys occasionally drill into their tables?
What kind of safety goggles are used with this (material/wavelength tint/etc) and what kind of clothing/protective gear will NOT set on fire if accidental exposure should occur?
I don't think any goggles could save your eyes from a watt or so. I'm told charcoal works pretty well as a beam dump, it takes 1500 watts about 15 minutes to start a charcoal grill, so I think a watt or two for a minute or two should be quite safe.'
or is this a plug in stationary laser
I'm going to be plugging mine in, one way or another. Probably by unplugging the milling machine motor and plugging the laser in its place, so as to use the SSR (solid state relay) to turn the laser on and off.
This neatly works with your typical CNC machining enclosure which has door open interlocks to shut off the "motor" (or laser, in my case).
Slashdot Mirror
how long until the general public has caught on to the point where Spam is no longer profitable
You're assuming the scammers and the emailers are one and the same.
Much more likely you have the scammers fronting some money to the emailers. As long as theres one scammer out there with a hairbrained business plan, the emailers will be hired and put to work.
Don't know if the UK situation is similar to the US situation, but in the US its almost a stereotype that some percentage of people whom take out home equity lines of credit set up a retail store, despite the complete lack of experience, selling stuff like "pirate products", "decorative candles", cupcakes, small restaurants, etc. Then six months later when the seed cash is gone they fold and file personal bankruptcy.
Interestingly, the local cops thought it so unusual that the local candle store was still open for business after about three years, that they investigated it, and it seems the candle store was selling weed on the side, Busted!
I grew up in the '80s on a steady diet of Byte and Compute! magazines, banging in page after page of code line-by-line, and figuring out how sound, graphics and input devices worked along the way.
They only existed in the 80s because the device manufacturers had no way to distribute large multi page paper documents for free. Sure, if you were a Genuine Degreed BS-EE with the job title to match, salesdroids would pretty much send you anything you ask for as samples. The general public, believe it or not, was expected to actually pay for printed appnotes and even printed datasheets.
Nowadays, if you want to learn how to make sound, or program a LCD, or run a A/D converter, you just download the appnotes from the manufacturers website, typically you get a PDF explaining in great detail how it works, schematics, and example code to get you started out. Some manufacturers go further and sell demoboards for a really modest (probably subsidized) fees.
Either the manufacturer's appnotes are so simple and clear that a "D" student could figure it out, or they go out of business and are replaced by a manufacturer with better tech writers. The quality level is generally excellent.
He asked where to find a good, consistent source of articles about that kind of problems.
So lmgtfy is wrong in what manner? Google will do it.
Instructables.com is the only other "search" site you need.
I will concede the point that one thing google is iffy at best is finding the stereotypical electronics manufacturer appnote. Then again, how hard is it to figure out, if you want to do something with PICs, you go to microchip.com, click app notes, and do the obvious searchy searchy thing for what you want to do?
Which isn't a peer-reviewed scientific paper, it's a government committee report. Those aren't always 100% truthful, or they at least tend to massage the truth to come up with politically convenient answers (e.g. Warren Commission, 9/11 Commission, etc.) Yet sometimes they're right on, the trick is knowing which is which.
To figure how likely it was to be true, look at this individual scenario. The report came out in 2005 and was written roughly in the middle of an administration that was more that willing to outright lie to the public to start multi-front wars, using a preferred propaganda technique of fear and intimidation to scare people into submission. I don't think this is a controversial opinion. To some extent the current administration does the same thing, just not as blatantly.
Given the govt at that time, I'd expect the report to lean more towards a conclusion that the arabs will destroy all our all american pickup trucks and big iron muscle cars unless we launch a new crusade in the middle east for the sake of spreading the gospel of christianity, and bomb every brown skinned nation on earth just because they hate our freedoms, and also all true patriotic americans should be proud to give up our civil rights, and nazi style torture/concentration/death camps are a great idea as long as they're only for brown skinned people. Because nothings more important to us Americans than driving our cars. Personally I find that all rather repulsive, but thats the kind of writing I'd expect to read in a "Bush-era post-9/11 world".
However, the way it actually turned out, the best they could terrify us into submission with, was less than 1 in 10 cars stalled but started right back up again, and one dude needed a new radio? That's not exactly worthy of a presentation to the UN to open a third front in the middle eastern wars, and a presentation like that is in extremely high demand.
So, I think the report was accurate, honest, truthful, at least in part because it didn't meet the governments needs.
As for the video, there's a fine line between making a visually impressive marketing video where you control all the variables for all aspects of the single demonstration, and outright faking. Is it true that one specially selected car year and model with a certain maintenance history under utterly ideal conditions could be damaged in some manner? Maybe. Would I trust an obvious PR video just slightly above the level of a late night infomercial? Heck no.
So, my wife's got an original model mac mini with like a 1 GHZ processor that must be approaching 5 years old. She's got a perfectly good large VGA monitor and USB keyboard/mouse etc.
This seems like it would be the perfect forklift upgrade for her. Almost ten times the disk space with the 500 gb model, the CPU is about 6 times faster making DVD movie burning somewhat more bearable, new OSX version. Its about time to upgrade.
Yet the whole slashdot article is about hooking it up to a TV (why? I already have a perfectly operational mythtv system) and complaining about why it can't be bundled with a monitor I don't need, or trying to explain why I should buy a fragile laptop with a microscopic little bitty screen that costs quite a bit more.
Looks like a great desktop to me!!!
Right, but other than spark plug wires, what critical sensors and cabling are unshielded/ungrounded? Like you say, you can't hear anything coming out, so not much can get in either.
Crankshaft position sensor buried deep inside the aluminum block by the flywheel...
O2 exhaust sensor, not critical to operation, buried deep inside the SS exhaust manifold
Fuel pump, inside an enclosed literally gas tight pressurized steel fuel tank.
Fuel injectors, inside an enclosed aluminum intake manifold.
I'll give you the heavy gauge cables to the battery and starter, but those laugh at 1K amp starting current and the internal resistance of the battery is obviously low enough to eat any voltage spike for dinner.
Everything else is as stated before, steel boxes mounted on the inside of a steel cage.
So, I'm thinking the most sensitive wiring is the spark plugs, and we agree they are pretty bullet proof from an EMP perspective.
My wife's Prius, not that might have a problem based on the RF noise it radiates. But my old Saturn, not really.
grocery distribution
You're looking at it from a consumer perspective. The real problem is infrastructure.
I can buy a remarkable quantity and variety of food at my local weekly farmers market direct from the local farmers... I would assume that could scale up quite a bit if necessary.
I'm not belittling the other problems, just saying that is possible to buy food, in fact excellent locally grown food, beyond pizza rolls from a walmart supercenter. I/we can eat quite well indeed without making sam walton's heirs richer, or making the new york banks richer by swiping a VISA card.
I would agree that coasties in the heart of big cities and desert dwellers in AZ would pretty much have to starve to death. But the quality of life is already so low in such areas, can you be surprised at the results if an EMP dropped the QOL even further? Not really.
Most of the population has zero/negative net worth, with only 1% or so having almost all the money. Frankly a financial reboot would probably do a lot of good for the country. This coming from a guy who's doing pretty good although not quite in the 1% yet.
The problem you're not seeing is infrastructure. No electricity rapidly means no plumbed treated tap water. The good news is I live in a river community. The bad news is the communities upstream have no electricity to run their sewage treatment plans. Pestilence and disease is going to be the big problem.
In the program Future Weapons: EMP Bomb
Pure info-tainment. Like those TV people that strap bombs to the gas tank of cars to make better explosion videos, or those TV people that rig tires to detonate to make the SUV flip. Try a real information source summarizing results from real scientific experiments like:
http://www.empcommission.org/
Then check out the "Critical National Infrastructures Report"
Look for this around page 115. The idea that some cars stalling, coasting to a stop, and needing to be restarted will create a crisis is fairly unbelievable from the perspective of a daily rush hour driver like myself whom is used to crazy stop and go traffic, but I guess that was the most terrifying scenario they could produce, so they had to run with what they had.
We tested a sample of 37 cars in an EMP simulation laboratory, with automobile vintages
ranging from 1986 through 2002. Automobiles of these vintages include extensive
electronics and represent a significant fraction of automobiles on the road today. The
testing was conducted by exposing running and nonrunning automobiles to sequentially
increasing EMP field intensities. If anomalous response (either temporary or permanent)
was observed, the testing of that particular automobile was stopped. If no anomalous
response was observed, the testing was continued up to the field intensity limits of the
simulation capability (approximately 50 kV/m).
Automobiles were subjected to EMP environments under both engine turned off and
engine turned on conditions. No effects were subsequently observed in those automobiles
that were not turned on during EMP exposure. The most serious effect observed on running
automobiles was that the motors in three cars stopped at field strengths of approximately
30 kV/m or above. In an actual EMP exposure, these vehicles would glide to a
stop and require the driver to restart them. Electronics in the dashboard of one automobile
were damaged and required repair. Other effects were relatively minor. Twenty-five
automobiles exhibited malfunctions that could be considered only a nuisance (e.g.,
blinking dashboard lights) and did not require driver intervention to correct. Eight of the
37 cars tested did not exhibit any anomalous response.
Based on these test results, we expect few automobile effects at EMP field levels below
25 kV/m. Approximately 10 percent or more of the automobiles exposed to higher field
levels may experience serious EMP effects, including engine stall, that require driver
intervention to correct. We further expect that at least two out of three automobiles on the
road will manifest some nuisance response at these higher field levels. The serious malfunctions
could trigger car crashes on U.S. highways; the nuisance malfunctions could
exacerbate this condition. The ultimate result of automobile EMP exposure could be triggered
crashes that damage many more vehicles than are damaged by the EMP, the consequent
loss of life, and multiple injuries.
Why should we expect a worse sun spot maximum than previous maxima?
Because the folks studying it want more money. Hence the prediction of it being worse.
No different than Ms Cleo saying something terrible will happen unless you send her money to learn about it in advance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Cleo
There are hundreds of electrical systems in a car.
All installed in sealed Faraday cages bolted to the inside of a big car shaped Faraday cage, and designed to work in very close proximity to spark plugs (unless your car is a diesel)
It doesn't matter, we have electronic controls everywhere. If there's an EMP-level event from the Sun, any cars made since about 1970 will be rendered inoperable.
Why? The electronics are buried in fully enclosed little steel boxes, installed in big car sized fully enclosed steel boxes, with short wires designed not just to survive electrical sparks, but to control those electrical sparks. And none of the electrical wires are longer than a couple meters at most, and none of them connect outside the vehicle (the occasional winter time engine block heater excepted). The only things tougher than automotive electronics are diesel electric locomotive electronics and military electronics.
I suppose you're referring to the way high power broadcast transmitter antennas, military search radars, and airport radars are always surrounded by dead cars with blown computers. Oh wait, that never happens.
Also, what was added to cars in 1970? Tailfins? My old '87 plymouth horizon would "run" without its ECU computer, of course it would never take the computerized choke off and the engine timing advance would not "advance" so performance was remarkably poor, but for a young kid, it got me around. That was manufactured about 17 years after your arbitrary cutoff date.
Also, my computer is pretty much a large steel cage, with the magnetic platters encased in another thick layer of metal, how vulnerable would a regular tower be?
Simultaneously plugged into a multi-thousand mile grid of copper electrical power wiring and miles of aluminum hardline for the cablemodem, not so good.
Unplugged in a box, excellent chance of survival.
Also, electrical fields have no direct effect on magnetic material, you can completely vaporize the electronic of a computer in a lightning strike and a cleanroom service can install new circuit boards and recover most/all of the data off the drive. Now, heat the platters above the curie temperature, like in a fire, and you're screwed.
So would something like an EMP destroy pace makers
Pacemakers are installed inside a poorly constructed Faraday cage. That being your highly conductive body. Pacemakers historically have occasionally gotten all wound up in high RF fields, but aside from folks working at high power UHF TV station transmitters it has not been a serious issue.
You can "short out" and essentially blow the fuses of a pacemaker. Of course it takes more than enough power to hopelessly electrocute someone, in fact depending on the design you pretty much need to cook them like one of those electric hot dog cookers.
Its pretty much the usual useless scaremongering B.S.
would something like this essentially kill anyone with an artificial/bionic enhancement that controls life support?
Could something worse than we have ever experienced, result in deaths? Just speaking generally, not about any specific threat, and taking a wild guess, I'd say that's a good solid maybe, unless my salary depending on raising money by saying yes, in which case I'd say yes.
It would be a silly scheme though considering that this is a safe Republican seat anyway.
You don't practice and hone your skills on the important 50:50 battles, you practice and hone your skills on the pointless irrelevant battles. Since this is an irrelevant battle, it doesn't matter so much whom is to blame for this individual irrelevant battle, so much as it matters that someone out there is preparing for the big one...
curb our species appetites for .... sex (overpopulation)
We've got great technological solutions for that particular problem, its just the religious lunatics don't like it. Need to go to the root cause, not just list a symptom, which in that case would be religious lunacy. And pretty much all major world religions, except Buddhism, glorify warfare and demonize the victims, so the loons get some blame there too. And pretty much all major world religions glorify the opposite of "reduce", obviously thats how they got to be major world religions instead of some ancient dead sect that no one will remember (think of heavens gate in comparison to the judeo-christian order to go forth and multiply)
What if they're intelligent oil eating creatures, who just run out of "food"?
Isn't that basically modern western civilization right about now, aka peak oil?
There's radioactive carbon dating. Oh, won't work.
I'm curious why you say that. RC dating works because theres a certain believed fixed ratio of carbon isotopes in the air and general environment, and once something dies and is buried the active isotopes start decaying into the stable isotopes. The active isotopes come from cosmic rays and are very optimistically believed to be constant and/or have been correlated on earth with sedimentation and other data.
Works just fine with inorganic samples. Crush the heck out of some martian rocks and the trapped atmosphere, conveniently mostly carbon containing CO2, and you'll know how long those little bubbles of atmosphere have been trapped in the rock.
RC dating only works over a certain date range because eventually "almost all" the isotopes have decayed. So, simply try a different atom. Stuff that contains unstable isotopes that crystalizes into chemically pure crystals is pretty convenient because you know it was 100% pure at one time and now is X% decayed whatever.
I haven't read picture books since I was about 4.
what you describe seems to be the recipe for a "Big Bang" and the plot could involve a scientist trying to recreate the Big Bang and make a whole new universe.
Well that seems a bit too stereotypical, especially if you add a hot woman to the mix do the ever tiresome boy-meets-girl plot, and I suppose lots of gunfire in the mid-late book. And atomic physics doesn't create "big bangs" out of boring (although high power) fission reactions.
The result of my idea would be a bit more like a remotely launched, extremely short range, extremely low yield fission bomb. Very star trek phaser-like which means its pretty much been written to death in sci fi as a plot device. Or more likely you "beam" a microscopic small and very modest power "virtual-fission-bomb" some distance away from the expensive machinery, over to a nice really efficient heat exchanger, making an extremely convenient power source, another topic that has been absolutely done to death in sci fi, pretty much just drop in place of any other stereotypical transportable-sized fusion reactor.
Theres probably some pretty interesting materials science implications of making something like a nuclear welding machine. Things that can't be done with current technology, or would be insanely difficult, would be pretty easy with a machine that can generate nearly infinite amounts of heat at any depth of metal. Trivially weld battleship armor plates together. Probably much easier to make composite tank armor. Simple and easy assembly of titanium submarine hulls. That type of thing.
Of course the interesting part is not that it could be yet another overdone plot line, but that it might theoretically be constructable... or maybe not.
Yeah, I mean, quantum tunneling? Quantum confinement? Those effects totally just cancel out and never do us any good!
It would be a heck of a lot of fun to reduce the inertial mass of some hydrogen ions so the can be accelerated to high speed with very little power, then increase their gravitic mass until the inevitably fuse into a cloud of an atom with an atomic number and atomic mass in the zillions, then shut "the magic field" off and watch the giant atoms fission releasing considerable energy to their surroundings.
AKA a perpetual motion machine, at least from the thermodynamic perspective.
Imagine if you could lift an aircraft carrier sized ship in to space with nearly no energy, then accelerate to .999 light speed with no more thrust than a model rocket.
Note that one situation means low/zero gravitic mass, the other means low/zero inertial mass. You might be able to arbitrarily control both. You might be able to trade one off for another. Or maybe only modify one. Also, the problems with SR and QM are at a small scale, so your aircraft carrier might only be one atom in diameter or something.
Finally, I haven't read the paper, but it'll be interesting to see how it gets around various perpetual motion type problems. Right off the top of my head, extracting energy from a pendulum where gravitic and inertial mass are different and varying is going to be a serious issue.
Changing inertial mass would do pretty weird things to rotating flywheels. I suppose you could make a spinning flywheel break apart with immense violence at a very low rotational speed. Or rotate a spinning flywheel at insane speeds without it flying apart. All at the same stored energy level. Theres probably a perpetual motion machine that would involve extracting constant energy at a constant torque at high vs low RPMs.
Similar problems at a quantum scale. Otherwise it would be too easy to accelerate two beams of "reduced inertial mass" deuterium to an arbitrarily high velocity and then increase their gravitic mass at the collision point until they fuse.
Finally, the most interesting apps might be arbitrarily increasing inertial and gravitic mass. Increasing gravitic mass would make gravity wave detectors much simpler to make. The odds of increasing the gravitic mass of something small on a spacecraft to something large like a planet seem unlikely aka artifical gravity. Increasing inertial mass might be useful for weapons, armor, pretty much anywhere you use lead, tungsten, or DU.
It seems to me most of the of the people who complain about the "science gap" are those who aren't actually working in the field...
I would disagree, only in that the complainers are generally the managers and administrators whom are fed up at having to pay princely stipends like $20K/yr and are hoping for maybe half that. Or whatever the dollar value of scientist pay is, they're hoping a dramatically increased supply of unemployed science graduates will result in dramatically lower salaries.
Same B.S. from management in respect to I.T. or engineering, or pretty much any job that pays over minimum wage.
It seems to me that somebody could also use one of these in combination with a fresnel lens or some other photon amplifying device and REALLY crank up the power.
I think you're using words, but don't know what they mean?
If a Fresnel lens made photons out of the thin air, it would make an excellent perpetual motion machine in tandem with a couple mirrors.
Pointing this thing at a 1-meter Fresnel is only going to illuminate about one millionth the lens, before it makes a hole in it. And I'd assume the beam is already reasonably well focused so there is little point in further focusing?
I thought to myself, "Gee, if I had a laser, I could win." For $200 I could clean out a few barbercut machines
Sure, a $500 pentagon mil-spec hammer isn't going to work, but how about a $20 hardware store sledgehammer?
What is the target purpose for this?
I have a CNC milling machine. Completely enclosed milling cabinets are an off the shelf item, and I can make it light tight fairly easily. So, rather than pay $15K for a laser engraver, I'll pay about $200 or whatever. Not bad, not bad at all.
Research experiments that could be done?
How attractive of an artwork can I engrave on the back of ipods, laptops, etc. Can I lasercut wood and plexi? How long until the smoke and fumes from laser engraving kill me and/or set off the smoke alarm? How long until I F up and engrave into my mills table, much like the mechanical mill guys occasionally drill into their tables?
What kind of safety goggles are used with this (material/wavelength tint/etc) and what kind of clothing/protective gear will NOT set on fire if accidental exposure should occur?
I don't think any goggles could save your eyes from a watt or so. I'm told charcoal works pretty well as a beam dump, it takes 1500 watts about 15 minutes to start a charcoal grill, so I think a watt or two for a minute or two should be quite safe.'
or is this a plug in stationary laser
I'm going to be plugging mine in, one way or another. Probably by unplugging the milling machine motor and plugging the laser in its place, so as to use the SSR (solid state relay) to turn the laser on and off.
This neatly works with your typical CNC machining enclosure which has door open interlocks to shut off the "motor" (or laser, in my case).