First off, I think because of this study, we're going to see less 'short and wide' type glasses at bars - at least the greedy club type places.
But anywho, I find myself amazed sometimes when I figure out which glasses hold more than others. The last time I was in New York, I was being a typical tourist and was having a nice beer outside watching some sort of food festival. It started to rain as soon as I got my second beer, which was in one of those nice tall, sort of large pint glasses. Looks like it held at least 16 oz. The bartender comes out with one of those short plastic cups, it looked smaller than those red and blue "Solo" cups I used so much for beer pong in college. Anywho, I poured the pint glass into the plastic cup, waiting for the cup to fill up, but it never overflowed. The darn thing held more than the tall pint glass. So that just shows that some people (at least me) can be deceived by glasses with larger bases. They just hold more than we realize I guess. Sorry... this kind of went on and on...
While I run anti-virus software once in a while for peace of mind, I don't keep realtime protection on. I do this because all the free A/V software sucks. AVG keeps saying I have a virus that isn't there (some java/javascript thing in my browser cache), and Avast! is a memory hog with a horrible interface.
So, with such crappy options, I just don't run any anti-virus. But that doesn't make my PC insecure -- it's probably safer that 95% of all PCs out there that are running Norton/McAffee/whatever.
If you know how to actually use the computer securely, you won't get viruses. A proper firewall (hardware/NAT, XP SP2, software firewall) and a secure browser/email client with the right settings will keep viruses out. I can't remember the last time I had one.
Well, if a lawsuit results in a judgement for the plaintiff, then it's not frivolous lawsuit...
In this example, if you get sued by the RIAA, and the RIAA wins, you were almost certainly guilty, and as such, were stupid to go to court with them. Obviously, the RIAA has had it's infamous screw-ups, but we're talking about judgements that result in criminal convictions, and those judgements are held to the whole "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. The RIAA can have all the money in the world, but it's still illegal to draw out trials, and money won't affect any decisions made by the appellate courts to hear the appeal that the RIAA would make if it lost the 'first round').
But to be fair (I really am just playing devil's advocate here, IIRC, the RIAA doesn't try to recoup legal fees), this does rely on the presumption that the little guy can win against the RIAA if he's innocent. But then again, doesn't everything concerning convictions/payments/jailtime assume that?
A similar case was when DirecTV was suing people for having hacked cards to view all the channels for free. I have a "friend" who did this, and he was pretty much expecting the letter demanding $3,000 (the out of court settlement requested to avoid a trial). He kept very close attention to other's cases in his state, and until he found a case where the defendent was able to get the case thrown out (setting a precedent), he had is $3,000 saved up because going to court against DirecTV when he was guilty would've been stupid (and I believe this was a civil suit, which is held to a lesser standard ('preponderence of evidence')).
They did send out tickets to speeders. My old roommate got one on 295 just north of the beltway. Fortunately for him, there was another car in a certain section of the picture that made the ticket invalid. It was the same type of ticket you get for running red lights - I forget the name, but it's just a civil offense and not a criminal one. The owner of the car gets hit with a fine ($75-$100 or so), but no points are put on anyone's record, since they can't prove who the driver is. But that was a couple of years ago, and I haven't seen them since, so I guess they did stop using them.
I have a problem that I'd like to see solved - the standard Rubik's cube you get at a toy store is pretty cheap - the stickers come off too easily. I started solving the cube a few months back, and I'm still nowhere near good yet, but my stickers have fallen off already. Do you get your cubes from a certain place, or do you just spend the $5 every few months?
I know - I was surprisded to learn that pirates cost our company moeny (albeit indirectly) - we build large devices that are used on ships, and once in a while we test our systems in African waters. Apparantly pirates will come along in rafts armed with AK-47s and board the ship. They open up our devices, with hundreds of thousands of dollar's worth of components, only to look for and steal batteries. As a result, my company is forced to pay very high premiums for insurance for this.
In any event, we're told to just do whatever the pirates say, and don't try to act like a hero.
Just to nitpick, seeing as you got to post my usual favorite point before me (hypothesis vs theory).
Hypothesis, theories, and laws are not words that lie on some scale of certainty - a theory not only matches tested data (your point), but perhaps more importantly, is used to describe a set of facts. So they're on different planes - one is conjecture, and one is a description of a system built upon these former conjectures. This is why we can have both a law of gravity (mutual attractions between objects...) and a theory of gravity (the Earth revolves around the sun because...) in use at the same time.
Either way, the important thing here is that "Evolution is just a theory" is a worthless statement, because in this case, IDers are mistakingly using one of "theory"'s other (and quite unfortunate) definitions that treats a theory as a hypothesis (rather than using the scientific theory definition, which is discussed above).
I'm 27. And yes, the 1.25 GHz Mini takes longer to complete tasks than the first computer I started using in 1988 (before Win 3.1 was even out). It was a 1.25 MHz Compaq with 2 MB of memory.
And that's the thing - I'm not doing any gaming on it. Just launching Firefox or iTunes or iPhoto takes 15 seconds at times. 15 seconds isn't going to kill anyone, but it's a lot longer than my PC. I'd like to think it's just a bad install of OS X, but it's been doing this since I got the computer, and since I reinstalled after getting Tiger.
I do like Apple, but I think the poster was right - I'd say Apples cost 20%+ more than equally performing PCs, especially for nice ones. Maybe you got a good deal on the Powerbook or something, but if Macs were really 10% more than PCs, Apple would be doing better. I know, I know, OS X is great, and there is added benefit for that extra money, but it still costs a lot.
I just got my first Mac in April - a Mini. It cost me $750 and is the slowest computer I've ever used. I can still VNC into my Windows computer that I paid $800 for in 2000 (which is pretty ancient in computer years), and I'm always surprised at how fast it is, and I end up wishing I'd just bought a Dell for that $750.
I think he's talking about low-pass filters being applied to audio signals before they reach your speakers, rather than equipment simply not being able to produce 20 Hz.
Oh, definitely. My point is just that some things, modern observations and theories for the most part, can't be verified by utilizing the resources available to the average person. Which means that a lot of us devotees to science/evolution have to trust scientists, as well as their processes for validating theories (submitting theories to peer-reviewed publications, having theories validating by other scientists and experiments... etc) to get our views of the world.
For example, utilizing GPS measurements, we now know that England is moving away from the US at two meters every 100 years - which supports the idea of plate tectonics (which only gained acceptance as late as the 1950's after much reluctance, particularly in the US). But you and I don't have that type of equipment so we're relegated to trusting what the geologists say. It's no problem if we trust in the whole hypothesis -> observation -> conclusion -> verification system, which almost everyone does. But some people, namely the IDers, simply don't trust this method for something with as much magnitude as where humans came from.
Clearly, this doesn't explain why they trust their faith so much. It does seem odd that people don't trust scientists and their findings (even when their findings are presented in a style suitable for the public like as in a magazine article), but they trust a 2000 year old mythology book based on oral tradition.
To be fair, I don't think any of us have been sitting around and observed any continents drift, so that puts in the same ballpark as the other two. And even if we were witness to events like earthquakes, we'd only suspect something like continental drift has occured because scientists have told us what's going on.
Now, I'm playing devil's advocate here, I'm a science nerd and would really like all these IDers to just shut the hell up. But anywho, to their point, I also have never seen a virus, nor Pluto, but I still believe that they exist.
It comes down to how willing people are to trust other experts and what their theories are. Some people are raised in environments where all the 'big' questions (how old is the earth, what is our place on this planet, how does life come into existence) are the domain of the bible - it's in there, and supposedly the word of God, so that's all you need to know. Obviously, this is a bad environment to come out of, but that's just how it is.
Lower frequencies have greater range and are needed to detect faraway objects. Low-freq sonar can reach the bottom of the ocean, while high-freq stuff will last only a kilometer. The same effect is seen when listening to the radio while you're in a tunnel - the AM can propogate through the water and the concrete, while higher-frequnecy FM programming can't.
High frequency systems are used in shallow water though when distance isn't as important as accuracy (with a shorter wavelentgh, a high freq system is better for finding underwater obstacles/mines). It just happens that the ideal frequencies used in sonar match the frequencies used by marine mammals (actually, I think sonar tends to be higher in frequency, but it's still well within the hearing range of the animals).
I work on sonar systems for the Navy, and in order to ensure that the system is operating normally, you do need to send out the same signal you're planning on using in wartime (the less variables the better and such). The intelligence gathered by these tests tell the captain how far he can be from a target/shoreline in order to protect his crew.
But the idea of listening for marine mammals beforehand and then gradually increasing ping volumes is interesting (and something that I've never seen aboard a ship, but maybe I was just out of the loop on that). I'm not sure how effective that is since you'd have to wait a long time for the mammals to leave the area, but still not a bad idea.
I've been on sea trials and heard the whales 'sing' over the passive sonar, and it's pretty neat. I've also been right next to the sonar dome when they go active, and that's on the opposite end of the fun scale.
For what it's worth, a lot of comments want to open-source the code because they think that it won't have any adverse effect on the company. But I do believe that forcing a company's IP into the open could certainly cause undue profit losses. One thing that comes to mind - what if a breathalyzer company comes up with an algorithm that's twice as fast and twice as reliable as their competitor? Their product would probably priced higher than the competitor, due to either better hardware, or for the simple fact that this company had to pay a lot of bright people some good money to come up with this. I think that their investment in their employees needs to be rewarded, and giving away their hard work to a competitor that can simply plug in this new code isn't right.
The flip side to this is to use the already-established method of protecting your investment in your workers - trademarks. Maybe if they were given a trademark, and given 5 years of exclusive rights to the algorithm, it might work (my company is a small defense research company, and we operate on similar contracts given to us by the government). Seems to work, and I do believe you can TM an algorithm, so maybe this whole post is moot. Just thinking out loud here (it's bad enough I defended against "profit losses"... I personally would like to see the whole thing open-sourced, provided the company that invented the code doesn't go under)
Although I'm a huge fan of the scientific achievements we've made over the centuries, as well as the ones we're sure to make in the future, I find it humbling that the 'new hotness' material is something that mother nature's had for plain old insects for millions of years. And this certainly isn't the first time that nature has shown to be superior to our synthetic devices. I guess millions of years of evolution can produce some amazing things.
When's the last time you checked this? I just tried it, and Google Maps called it I-35E (well, the graphic was I-35, the text in the directions was I-35E).
Re:What's the deal with GPS on cell phones?
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Wireless Positioning
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· Score: 1
The scheme you describe is TDMA (time-division multiplexing algorithm), and it was in use before everyone went to CDMA/GSM. Anywho, IIRC (that's a big if), the time signal was sent from the cell tower, and GPS-level accuracy wasn't needed. Each phone that operated TDMA off of a tower was assigned a time slot when the call was initiated and simply kept it's own time internally and it worked well enough because microprocessers had no problem keeping millisecond timings correct for a couple of minutes.
Yeah, the bulbs are about $400, and last about 2000-3000 hours if used correctly (which just means you shouldn't turn the thing on or off rapidly - most firmwares have a cooldown period where you can't turn the bulb back on for 60 seconds). Understanibly, DLP won't be a huge seller until bulbs are made to last longer.
DLP was perfect for me though, as I wanted a front projection system, and only for movies, which is to say about 6 hours a week. For under $1200 I was able to get a DLP projecter that puts up a 76" image, which is only limited by my small room:)
The other disadvantage is the rainbow effect. For those that don't know, DLP throws up an all-red image, then all-green, then all-blue. In these fractions of a second, if there is movement on the screen, you can sometimes see the seperation, and the edges become multicolored. But this usually happens on high-contrast areas with only fast movement. Plus, they're working on a new wheel that displays 1/3 red, 1/3 green, and 1/3 blue for 1/3 of the pixels on the screen (evenly spaced) and then get the other two thirds on the other two light flashes, which should solve the problem.
I've noticed more and more places around me (Maryland) not needing signatures/IDs for amounts under $25. I use my credit card all the time because I have like to have a written record of purchases, so I think this is pretty cool. Any reputable credit card issuer will defend you if you refute a charge (if it's not habitual, they just give you your money back no questions asked), so the risk of actually losing money on a stolen credit card is still low.
The industrial revolution pumped tons of gasses into the atmosphere in record quantities, and we continue these practices to this day. Much like introducing a foreign species to a new ecosystem, chances are this is going to f up the status quo. Good or bad or whatever, somethings going to happen. Since us humans have adapted to this whole ozone thing, chances are any changes in it are going to cause adverse situations. That much is what I'm certain of.
But anyone claiming the sky is falling and we're all going to need SPF 900 in 5 years is an extremist with either a political agenda or a distorted view on reality. The earth is huge, and although humans are capable of long-term effects, we're not very good at dramatically changing the planet. So I ignore the extrememists. I also ignore anyone saying that there's absolutely no such thing, only because all that CO2 is doing something up there, and like I said, it's probably not good.
Almost all modern fighters have systems to detect incoming missiles. I'm sure it depends on the tech of the missile, but at the very least they could use radar.
As for keeping focused, a system could be designed to keep the laser oriented in the same direction, indepenedent of the plane's path (put the laser on a swivel that gets data from the nav system). This has already been done on the F117A stealth fighters - their air-to-ground "smart bombs" worked by sensing a pulse-coded laser reflecting off the target. That laser originated from the underneath of the fighter, so as the fighter flew over the target, the laser's mount would compensate and keep the laser pointed on the same point on the ground.
I'm definitely no expert, but I'd imagine this is how the system would be used.
Honestly, most of your recommendations are not needed for Secret level compliance. The hardware for such a machine doesn't need to be any different from an unclass machine. The only exception being that if the machine is giong to be unused and unattended, the hard drive should be removable (for storage in a DoD-approved safe).
Based on the Secret machines I've seen:
You don't need a password protected BIOS (the logon screen is good enough)
No password needs to be on the screen saver
Stickers are needed, but not for tamper-proofing. Instead, they're there to simply identify the computer's classification level.
Backups don't need to be encrypted, but like all calssified material, need to be stored properly (DoD safe again), and obviouisly, there is a great deal of control (logging/labelling of all info that comes off the machine).
TEMPEST (anti-emisssions) systems are not required for Secret level machines.
The keylogger convienently brings me to the whole point - having a Secret machine is based more on the environment and control of the information, not hardware. The machine in question must be in a seperate area with controlled access. No one should ever be in the same room as the Secret-level machine without being authorized to do so. There will always be some sort of access control on the door to the room, and most of the time there is a log that you have to sign. The only exception I've seen for this is aboard a Navy ship, but then again, you needed clearance just to be on the ship, so my identity was verified beforehand.
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First off, I think because of this study, we're going to see less 'short and wide' type glasses at bars - at least the greedy club type places. But anywho, I find myself amazed sometimes when I figure out which glasses hold more than others. The last time I was in New York, I was being a typical tourist and was having a nice beer outside watching some sort of food festival. It started to rain as soon as I got my second beer, which was in one of those nice tall, sort of large pint glasses. Looks like it held at least 16 oz. The bartender comes out with one of those short plastic cups, it looked smaller than those red and blue "Solo" cups I used so much for beer pong in college. Anywho, I poured the pint glass into the plastic cup, waiting for the cup to fill up, but it never overflowed. The darn thing held more than the tall pint glass. So that just shows that some people (at least me) can be deceived by glasses with larger bases. They just hold more than we realize I guess. Sorry... this kind of went on and on...
If it's already happened to you, just delete your history.dat file in your profile folder, and FireFox will create a new (empty) one on startup.
It's possible that this guy is simply recording all those patents (which they mail out a CD biweekly) and applying for the same items in the US.
So, with such crappy options, I just don't run any anti-virus. But that doesn't make my PC insecure -- it's probably safer that 95% of all PCs out there that are running Norton/McAffee/whatever.
If you know how to actually use the computer securely, you won't get viruses. A proper firewall (hardware/NAT, XP SP2, software firewall) and a secure browser/email client with the right settings will keep viruses out. I can't remember the last time I had one.
In this example, if you get sued by the RIAA, and the RIAA wins, you were almost certainly guilty, and as such, were stupid to go to court with them. Obviously, the RIAA has had it's infamous screw-ups, but we're talking about judgements that result in criminal convictions, and those judgements are held to the whole "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. The RIAA can have all the money in the world, but it's still illegal to draw out trials, and money won't affect any decisions made by the appellate courts to hear the appeal that the RIAA would make if it lost the 'first round').
But to be fair (I really am just playing devil's advocate here, IIRC, the RIAA doesn't try to recoup legal fees), this does rely on the presumption that the little guy can win against the RIAA if he's innocent. But then again, doesn't everything concerning convictions/payments/jailtime assume that?
A similar case was when DirecTV was suing people for having hacked cards to view all the channels for free. I have a "friend" who did this, and he was pretty much expecting the letter demanding $3,000 (the out of court settlement requested to avoid a trial). He kept very close attention to other's cases in his state, and until he found a case where the defendent was able to get the case thrown out (setting a precedent), he had is $3,000 saved up because going to court against DirecTV when he was guilty would've been stupid (and I believe this was a civil suit, which is held to a lesser standard ('preponderence of evidence')).
They did send out tickets to speeders. My old roommate got one on 295 just north of the beltway. Fortunately for him, there was another car in a certain section of the picture that made the ticket invalid. It was the same type of ticket you get for running red lights - I forget the name, but it's just a civil offense and not a criminal one. The owner of the car gets hit with a fine ($75-$100 or so), but no points are put on anyone's record, since they can't prove who the driver is. But that was a couple of years ago, and I haven't seen them since, so I guess they did stop using them.
I have a problem that I'd like to see solved - the standard Rubik's cube you get at a toy store is pretty cheap - the stickers come off too easily. I started solving the cube a few months back, and I'm still nowhere near good yet, but my stickers have fallen off already. Do you get your cubes from a certain place, or do you just spend the $5 every few months?
In any event, we're told to just do whatever the pirates say, and don't try to act like a hero.
Hypothesis, theories, and laws are not words that lie on some scale of certainty - a theory not only matches tested data (your point), but perhaps more importantly, is used to describe a set of facts. So they're on different planes - one is conjecture, and one is a description of a system built upon these former conjectures. This is why we can have both a law of gravity (mutual attractions between objects...) and a theory of gravity (the Earth revolves around the sun because...) in use at the same time.
Either way, the important thing here is that "Evolution is just a theory" is a worthless statement, because in this case, IDers are mistakingly using one of "theory"'s other (and quite unfortunate) definitions that treats a theory as a hypothesis (rather than using the scientific theory definition, which is discussed above).
And that's the thing - I'm not doing any gaming on it. Just launching Firefox or iTunes or iPhoto takes 15 seconds at times. 15 seconds isn't going to kill anyone, but it's a lot longer than my PC. I'd like to think it's just a bad install of OS X, but it's been doing this since I got the computer, and since I reinstalled after getting Tiger.
I just got my first Mac in April - a Mini. It cost me $750 and is the slowest computer I've ever used. I can still VNC into my Windows computer that I paid $800 for in 2000 (which is pretty ancient in computer years), and I'm always surprised at how fast it is, and I end up wishing I'd just bought a Dell for that $750.
I think he's talking about low-pass filters being applied to audio signals before they reach your speakers, rather than equipment simply not being able to produce 20 Hz.
For example, utilizing GPS measurements, we now know that England is moving away from the US at two meters every 100 years - which supports the idea of plate tectonics (which only gained acceptance as late as the 1950's after much reluctance, particularly in the US). But you and I don't have that type of equipment so we're relegated to trusting what the geologists say. It's no problem if we trust in the whole hypothesis -> observation -> conclusion -> verification system, which almost everyone does. But some people, namely the IDers, simply don't trust this method for something with as much magnitude as where humans came from.
Clearly, this doesn't explain why they trust their faith so much. It does seem odd that people don't trust scientists and their findings (even when their findings are presented in a style suitable for the public like as in a magazine article), but they trust a 2000 year old mythology book based on oral tradition.
Now, I'm playing devil's advocate here, I'm a science nerd and would really like all these IDers to just shut the hell up. But anywho, to their point, I also have never seen a virus, nor Pluto, but I still believe that they exist.
It comes down to how willing people are to trust other experts and what their theories are. Some people are raised in environments where all the 'big' questions (how old is the earth, what is our place on this planet, how does life come into existence) are the domain of the bible - it's in there, and supposedly the word of God, so that's all you need to know. Obviously, this is a bad environment to come out of, but that's just how it is.
High frequency systems are used in shallow water though when distance isn't as important as accuracy (with a shorter wavelentgh, a high freq system is better for finding underwater obstacles/mines). It just happens that the ideal frequencies used in sonar match the frequencies used by marine mammals (actually, I think sonar tends to be higher in frequency, but it's still well within the hearing range of the animals).
But the idea of listening for marine mammals beforehand and then gradually increasing ping volumes is interesting (and something that I've never seen aboard a ship, but maybe I was just out of the loop on that). I'm not sure how effective that is since you'd have to wait a long time for the mammals to leave the area, but still not a bad idea.
I've been on sea trials and heard the whales 'sing' over the passive sonar, and it's pretty neat. I've also been right next to the sonar dome when they go active, and that's on the opposite end of the fun scale.
For what it's worth, a lot of comments want to open-source the code because they think that it won't have any adverse effect on the company. But I do believe that forcing a company's IP into the open could certainly cause undue profit losses. One thing that comes to mind - what if a breathalyzer company comes up with an algorithm that's twice as fast and twice as reliable as their competitor? Their product would probably priced higher than the competitor, due to either better hardware, or for the simple fact that this company had to pay a lot of bright people some good money to come up with this. I think that their investment in their employees needs to be rewarded, and giving away their hard work to a competitor that can simply plug in this new code isn't right.
The flip side to this is to use the already-established method of protecting your investment in your workers - trademarks. Maybe if they were given a trademark, and given 5 years of exclusive rights to the algorithm, it might work (my company is a small defense research company, and we operate on similar contracts given to us by the government). Seems to work, and I do believe you can TM an algorithm, so maybe this whole post is moot. Just thinking out loud here (it's bad enough I defended against "profit losses"... I personally would like to see the whole thing open-sourced, provided the company that invented the code doesn't go under)
Although I'm a huge fan of the scientific achievements we've made over the centuries, as well as the ones we're sure to make in the future, I find it humbling that the 'new hotness' material is something that mother nature's had for plain old insects for millions of years. And this certainly isn't the first time that nature has shown to be superior to our synthetic devices. I guess millions of years of evolution can produce some amazing things.
When's the last time you checked this? I just tried it, and Google Maps called it I-35E (well, the graphic was I-35, the text in the directions was I-35E).
The scheme you describe is TDMA (time-division multiplexing algorithm), and it was in use before everyone went to CDMA/GSM. Anywho, IIRC (that's a big if), the time signal was sent from the cell tower, and GPS-level accuracy wasn't needed. Each phone that operated TDMA off of a tower was assigned a time slot when the call was initiated and simply kept it's own time internally and it worked well enough because microprocessers had no problem keeping millisecond timings correct for a couple of minutes.
DLP was perfect for me though, as I wanted a front projection system, and only for movies, which is to say about 6 hours a week. For under $1200 I was able to get a DLP projecter that puts up a 76" image, which is only limited by my small room :)
The other disadvantage is the rainbow effect. For those that don't know, DLP throws up an all-red image, then all-green, then all-blue. In these fractions of a second, if there is movement on the screen, you can sometimes see the seperation, and the edges become multicolored. But this usually happens on high-contrast areas with only fast movement. Plus, they're working on a new wheel that displays 1/3 red, 1/3 green, and 1/3 blue for 1/3 of the pixels on the screen (evenly spaced) and then get the other two thirds on the other two light flashes, which should solve the problem.
To see this, check out the old-and-busted color wheel: traditional color wheel
and the new hotness: SCR wheel
Why they haven't got to using all SCR all the time is beyond me. Maybe the math involved as to which pixels get turned at which time) is too tough :)
I've noticed more and more places around me (Maryland) not needing signatures/IDs for amounts under $25. I use my credit card all the time because I have like to have a written record of purchases, so I think this is pretty cool. Any reputable credit card issuer will defend you if you refute a charge (if it's not habitual, they just give you your money back no questions asked), so the risk of actually losing money on a stolen credit card is still low.
The industrial revolution pumped tons of gasses into the atmosphere in record quantities, and we continue these practices to this day. Much like introducing a foreign species to a new ecosystem, chances are this is going to f up the status quo. Good or bad or whatever, somethings going to happen. Since us humans have adapted to this whole ozone thing, chances are any changes in it are going to cause adverse situations. That much is what I'm certain of.
But anyone claiming the sky is falling and we're all going to need SPF 900 in 5 years is an extremist with either a political agenda or a distorted view on reality. The earth is huge, and although humans are capable of long-term effects, we're not very good at dramatically changing the planet. So I ignore the extrememists. I also ignore anyone saying that there's absolutely no such thing, only because all that CO2 is doing something up there, and like I said, it's probably not good.
Almost all modern fighters have systems to detect incoming missiles. I'm sure it depends on the tech of the missile, but at the very least they could use radar. As for keeping focused, a system could be designed to keep the laser oriented in the same direction, indepenedent of the plane's path (put the laser on a swivel that gets data from the nav system). This has already been done on the F117A stealth fighters - their air-to-ground "smart bombs" worked by sensing a pulse-coded laser reflecting off the target. That laser originated from the underneath of the fighter, so as the fighter flew over the target, the laser's mount would compensate and keep the laser pointed on the same point on the ground. I'm definitely no expert, but I'd imagine this is how the system would be used.
Based on the Secret machines I've seen:
You don't need a password protected BIOS (the logon screen is good enough)
No password needs to be on the screen saver
Stickers are needed, but not for tamper-proofing. Instead, they're there to simply identify the computer's classification level.
Backups don't need to be encrypted, but like all calssified material, need to be stored properly (DoD safe again), and obviouisly, there is a great deal of control (logging/labelling of all info that comes off the machine).
TEMPEST (anti-emisssions) systems are not required for Secret level machines.
The keylogger convienently brings me to the whole point - having a Secret machine is based more on the environment and control of the information, not hardware. The machine in question must be in a seperate area with controlled access. No one should ever be in the same room as the Secret-level machine without being authorized to do so. There will always be some sort of access control on the door to the room, and most of the time there is a log that you have to sign. The only exception I've seen for this is aboard a Navy ship, but then again, you needed clearance just to be on the ship, so my identity was verified beforehand.