The recurrent weakness in US military thinking (and procuring) is that small numbers of fancy, high tech stuff can beat large numbers of low tech things.
This is also the same reason the Nazis tanks lost their battle against he Russians... most of them failed due to mechanical problems, only a smaller amount of them were destroyed in combat. One might almost think that all those scientists from Project Paperclip infected us with the need to do fancy things.
So you are arguing against widely distributed small generators on that basis? They provide LOCALIZATION OF PRODUCTION by their very nature, so I suggest you be a bit more honest about your reason for objecting to them.
As nuclear is far more reliable
If there were thousands of little generating plants, we wouldn't need a big heavy duty grid... but solar is not a generating plant. It is a sometimes available source of energy which perturbs the balance of the grid over the time frame of seconds.
The Grid is a system designed to reliably deliver power from a set of fairly reliable constant power sources. Those sources were designed to go online and stay at design load for many months at a crack, then have a scheduled maintenance outage. and then do it again. There are stresses associated with each transition, which are cumulative, and result in finite lifespans for things like generator shafts.
Yes... a generator shaft is a big dumb piece of steel... until you start to think about it and dig deeper. It was probably cast in a spinning mold with a vacuum applied to cause any defects to be located in the center of the shaft. Those defects are then bored out, and thus you have a nice, strong, reliable piece of steel good for 5 decades of service, with a huge margin of safety. This huge margin considered 12 outages and/or unit trips per year, a safety factor of probably 20 for good measure, and an outrageous 50 year service life.
Since the 1950s... plants now cycle far more often thanks to big cheap nukes.... cutting that margin way back. Now you want to cycle them every time a cloud passes through the neighborhood of a large solar installation? They won't last 5 years at that rate.
The stresses on the whole grid from crappy politically special flowers will eventually collapse the grid unless some heavy, HEAVY upgrades are done... which just ain't gonna happen.
Solar/Wind is going to kill the grid... just wait and see.
The Republic of Texas has its own power grid. I've heard rumors in the distance past that they have the ability to isolate their phone lines. I see no reason to doubt that they kept up with the times when it comes to the Internet.
I completed the Stanford AI course, recently did a course in communications from the University of Amsterdam. In both cases, time management was a problem for me, I simply had other things to do, and drifted away... catching back up in the nick of time. Trying to fit distance learning into the regular schedule of campus life seems to be the problem here... it is definitely not the depth of material that is any kind of a stopper.
I think that guided deep dives into topics we would otherwise not understand, is going to be how we keep accumulating knowledge as a species in the future. Deep diving takes time, and unlike the real diving... it doesn't all have to happen in one shot.
On a side note... it is worth at least $20 to me... possibly much more... if someone can give me the deep dive that results in me understanding the Higgs field, and the Higgs particle. A true understanding... not some vague notion of mexican hats and potential.
It is utterly offensive to me that the State Department gets to decide who and what groups are "terrorists". Free Association is one of the key tenants of a functioning Democracy.
I find the associations between lobbyists and government officials to be a clear and present danger to our country... but what can I do about it?
You do mean 616, don't you? Its bad enough when governments break their promise to pay money for currency.. the ability to take all of your money and your identity in one fell swoop seem to be the ultimate tool for sorting out Serfs and Lords.
Instead of trying to harden an OS, why not use a system designed to be secure from the start, one that supports multilevel security. The technology was created in response to data processing demands during the Viet Nam conflict, and perfected during the 70s and 80s.
The root cause is that the security model of Unix that everyone copied isn't compatible with the modern world. The OS never asks what resources you want to allow a given program to access, instead it ass-u-me-s that it should have full run of everything, and just trusts the program to do the right thing.
So antivirus programs were invented to serve as a "no-fly-list" type system.... only programs on the list are stopped. This worked well until methods for changing the signature of programs got up to speed. Imagine a terrorist being able to make up a name before trying to buy/board a flight... this is where we are now.
Until we get the OS to ask what resources a program should be allowed... things will keep getting worse.
Because 10% of a working system can't be measured. Even a 100% completed to spec system is worthless until it has actually been used for a while... when it will prove to need about 100% more work.
Most software projects fail, unlike construction, etc... engineering can't be applied.
The lowest frequency you could use to track a target should be on the order of one that results in the target being 1/2 wavelength. Given the F35 is 16 meters long, that works out to about 10 Mhz. I highly doubt there is an effective way to absorb/deflect a radar pulse at such a low frequency (and depth of penetration) in an aircraft.
I've known this since the 1980s... I highly doubt that I'm in any way unique. I expect there are a number of spread spectrum 30-50 Mhz radars out there, just for catching "stealth" targets.
If this were a couple of kids in the US... they would both be on their way to Gitmo, the anti-rejection drugs the kid probably needs to stay alive wouldn't be addressed... then the remaining kid would probably go on a hunger strike in Solitary.
Oh... and someone at the Bank would be put in charge of a new "cyber security" division, with a big bonus and a corner office.
That doesn't address the issue of unintended side effects from existing bugs. I agree that a separate LAN can help mitigate things, but it doesn't eliminate the odd things that can happen in a world where code is trusted by default.
Imagine if your garage light switch would 1 out of every 1000,000 times, cause your roof to fall off your house.... this is the world of software that can do anything.
The problem IS that things are trusted by default... but not in the way the author thought. If you trust every program you run by default, you are doomed. An operating system should NEVER trust anything by default... Linux, Windows, OSX all violate this principle. So do embedded devices base on some variant of them.
Never trust by default, and you stop having to worry about side-effects, and start deciding what the limits are ahead of time.
I sit here in the Cassandra suite, watching the tech community finally waking up to the reality of the world. You are starting to panic because you know none of the operating system choices you have are viable for truly secure systems. Soon you will learn about Multi-Level Secure systems, Capabilities, and other features of the secure computing..
About 10 years from now, you'll get the hints the universe has dropped on you, and start implementing these systems.
About 10 years after that, some real old timers (or young punks who've read history) will point out that this stuff was actually figured out in the late 1960s, and early 1970s.
Slashdot Mirror
This is also the same reason the Nazis tanks lost their battle against he Russians... most of them failed due to mechanical problems, only a smaller amount of them were destroyed in combat. One might almost think that all those scientists from Project Paperclip infected us with the need to do fancy things.
If there were thousands of little generating plants, we wouldn't need a big heavy duty grid... but solar is not a generating plant. It is a sometimes available source of energy which perturbs the balance of the grid over the time frame of seconds.
The Grid is a system designed to reliably deliver power from a set of fairly reliable constant power sources. Those sources were designed to go online and stay at design load for many months at a crack, then have a scheduled maintenance outage. and then do it again. There are stresses associated with each transition, which are cumulative, and result in finite lifespans for things like generator shafts.
Yes... a generator shaft is a big dumb piece of steel... until you start to think about it and dig deeper. It was probably cast in a spinning mold with a vacuum applied to cause any defects to be located in the center of the shaft. Those defects are then bored out, and thus you have a nice, strong, reliable piece of steel good for 5 decades of service, with a huge margin of safety. This huge margin considered 12 outages and/or unit trips per year, a safety factor of probably 20 for good measure, and an outrageous 50 year service life.
Since the 1950s... plants now cycle far more often thanks to big cheap nukes.... cutting that margin way back. Now you want to cycle them every time a cloud passes through the neighborhood of a large solar installation? They won't last 5 years at that rate.
The stresses on the whole grid from crappy politically special flowers will eventually collapse the grid unless some heavy, HEAVY upgrades are done... which just ain't gonna happen.
Solar/Wind is going to kill the grid... just wait and see.
Who is going to replicate these experiments? It's not science until someone can do it, and then someone else... and then someone else...
The Republic of Texas has its own power grid. I've heard rumors in the distance past that they have the ability to isolate their phone lines. I see no reason to doubt that they kept up with the times when it comes to the Internet.
Of course... it's just a rumor.
How fittin' it is that this tail comes on talk like a pirate day. The lubber has no idea what the crew has ready, once we host the jolly roger.
How the heck did ISIS make it up into orbit to attack the space station? You can't trust the Russkies, can you?
Next thing you know ISIS will be on the moon, and we'll have to bomb them. ;-)
I completed the Stanford AI course, recently did a course in communications from the University of Amsterdam. In both cases, time management was a problem for me, I simply had other things to do, and drifted away... catching back up in the nick of time. Trying to fit distance learning into the regular schedule of campus life seems to be the problem here... it is definitely not the depth of material that is any kind of a stopper.
I think that guided deep dives into topics we would otherwise not understand, is going to be how we keep accumulating knowledge as a species in the future. Deep diving takes time, and unlike the real diving... it doesn't all have to happen in one shot.
On a side note... it is worth at least $20 to me... possibly much more... if someone can give me the deep dive that results in me understanding the Higgs field, and the Higgs particle. A true understanding... not some vague notion of mexican hats and potential.
It is utterly offensive to me that the State Department gets to decide who and what groups are "terrorists". Free Association is one of the key tenants of a functioning Democracy.
I find the associations between lobbyists and government officials to be a clear and present danger to our country... but what can I do about it?
You do mean 616, don't you? Its bad enough when governments break their promise to pay money for currency.. the ability to take all of your money and your identity in one fell swoop seem to be the ultimate tool for sorting out Serfs and Lords.
Instead of trying to harden an OS, why not use a system designed to be secure from the start, one that supports multilevel security. The technology was created in response to data processing demands during the Viet Nam conflict, and perfected during the 70s and 80s.
The root cause is that the security model of Unix that everyone copied isn't compatible with the modern world. The OS never asks what resources you want to allow a given program to access, instead it ass-u-me-s that it should have full run of everything, and just trusts the program to do the right thing.
So antivirus programs were invented to serve as a "no-fly-list" type system.... only programs on the list are stopped. This worked well until methods for changing the signature of programs got up to speed. Imagine a terrorist being able to make up a name before trying to buy/board a flight... this is where we are now.
Until we get the OS to ask what resources a program should be allowed... things will keep getting worse.
Because 10% of a working system can't be measured. Even a 100% completed to spec system is worthless until it has actually been used for a while... when it will prove to need about 100% more work.
Most software projects fail, unlike construction, etc... engineering can't be applied.
What, the Wealthy Industrialists who funded a clearly insane person on the assumption they could control him?
The lowest frequency you could use to track a target should be on the order of one that results in the target being 1/2 wavelength. Given the F35 is 16 meters long, that works out to about 10 Mhz. I highly doubt there is an effective way to absorb/deflect a radar pulse at such a low frequency (and depth of penetration) in an aircraft.
I've known this since the 1980s... I highly doubt that I'm in any way unique. I expect there are a number of spread spectrum 30-50 Mhz radars out there, just for catching "stealth" targets.
How did this get down-voted? Settlement is a thing
The big issue is that one group of refugees from an attempted Genocide is creating another group of refugees from their attempted Genocide.
All else is lies.
I just gave up, and read the following things /.
email
metafilter
boingboing
facebook
youtube
doc searls web log
and that's it. The internet was nice while it lasted.
If this were a couple of kids in the US... they would both be on their way to Gitmo, the anti-rejection drugs the kid probably needs to stay alive wouldn't be addressed... then the remaining kid would probably go on a hunger strike in Solitary.
Oh... and someone at the Bank would be put in charge of a new "cyber security" division, with a big bonus and a corner office.
I wish we could be more like Canada some times.
That doesn't address the issue of unintended side effects from existing bugs. I agree that a separate LAN can help mitigate things, but it doesn't eliminate the odd things that can happen in a world where code is trusted by default.
Imagine if your garage light switch would 1 out of every 1000,000 times, cause your roof to fall off your house.... this is the world of software that can do anything.
The problem IS that things are trusted by default... but not in the way the author thought. If you trust every program you run by default, you are doomed. An operating system should NEVER trust anything by default... Linux, Windows, OSX all violate this principle. So do embedded devices base on some variant of them.
Never trust by default, and you stop having to worry about side-effects, and start deciding what the limits are ahead of time.
This sounds exactly like a Fountain Code to me, which isn't exactly news.
I find it interesting that an insightful mention of some spooks gets down voted at the same time some spammer shows up and spoils the story.
When you listen to them talking politics, and then bomb the wedding down the street instead... that's US Intelligence.
Wouldn't surprise me at all
I sit here in the Cassandra suite, watching the tech community finally waking up to the reality of the world. You are starting to panic because you know none of the operating system choices you have are viable for truly secure systems. Soon you will learn about Multi-Level Secure systems, Capabilities, and other features of the secure computing..
About 10 years from now, you'll get the hints the universe has dropped on you, and start implementing these systems.
About 10 years after that, some real old timers (or young punks who've read history) will point out that this stuff was actually figured out in the late 1960s, and early 1970s.