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Comment Re:They had space weapons in the 80's (Score 1) 83

And a few years ago we did a quick launch from off the Lake Erie (or her sister ship) using an SM-3 rocket to take a out one of our malfunctioning sats as a show of force after the PRC got some attention by doing something similar. We did it quicker, with better precision, and in a lower orbit so there wasn't much debris. Space weapons are not needed at this time.

Comment Re:China's not poor? (Score 1) 97

And they pollute just the same. Been to Nepal - wonderful people, clean streets, clean buildings, clean people, generally a very tidy place. Rivers were a mass of waste and mountain streams were just as bad. Most tourists / hikers would kill themselves before littering but, I saw more natives just tossing stuff willy nilly for others to pick up and transport to the burn pits.
This was the same in most third-world countries I've visited and would expect it to be the same for all. Not saying the USA is any better about littering, we just seem to have more cleanup teams for the visible stuff.

Comment Re: Blade Runner - bad example? (Score 1) 197

Except that air-gapped is only secure as the area its in and the person who has physical access to it. I doubt there was any true security being as there were so many "flesh-bots" walking around on all the ships. With as many "X malware/worm/virus/windows update enables transfer of data through lights/sound/fan speed/power bus/CPU temp/media seek" stories we get on Slashdot monthly, would you really trust any systems on the BSG to un-compromised? It was a TV show but, whomever wrote it certainly didn't think about cyber security when coming up with plot devices or continuity.

Comment Re: Please don't move to public cloud. (Score 1) 192

Between NIST & NSA published standards (available on both web sites, more with gov/mil access) every MS product and many of the *NIX flavors have been secured (for the most part). The problem is the bureaucracy -- the documentation, paperwork, politics, more paperwork, studies, dick sucking, etc... required to get an agency (hell, a sub-department) to change anything is so mind numbing it is just not worth the effort for the most part. If you climb the ladder high enough to actually be able to change something, your efforts are usually stalled by infighting because you stepped into someone else's office empire and there will be blood.

Submission + - SPAM: New House coalition fights rise in government surveillance

schwit1 writes: An unusual coalition of 13 Republicans and 12 Democrats on Wednesday announced the creation of the House Fourth Amendment Caucus to protect Americans' privacy rights against calls for increased government surveillance in the wake of terrorist attacks.

The group named itself after the Fourth Amendment because the lawmakers fear that the government is increasingly seeking the power to search Americans' electronic data without a warrant. They see that as a threat to the Constitutional amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Link to Original Source

Submission + - Why BART is Falling Apart

HughPickens.com writes: Matthias Gafni writes in the San Jose Mercury News that the engineers who built BART, the rapid transit system serving the San Francisco Bay Area that started operation in 1972, used principles developed for the aerospace industry rather than tried-and-true rail standards. And that's the trouble. "Back when BART was created, (the designers) were absolutely determined to establish a new product, and they intended to export it around the world," says Rod Diridon. "They may have gotten a little ahead of themselves using new technology. Although it worked, it was extremely complex for the time period, and they never did export the equipment because it was so difficult for other countries to install and maintain." The Space Age innovations have made it more challenging for the transit agency to maintain the BART system from the beginning. Plus, the aging system was designed to move 100,000 people per week and now carries 430,000 a day, so the loss of even a single car gets magnified with crowded commutes, delays and bus bridges. For example, rather than stick to the standard rail track width of 4 feet, 8.5 inches, BART engineers debuted a 5-foot, 6-inch width track, a gauge that remains to this day almost exclusive to the system. Industry experts say the unique track width necessitates custom-made wheel sets, brake assemblies and track repair vehicles.

Another problem is the dearth of readily available replacement parts for BART's one-of-a-kind systems. Maintenance crews often scavenge parts from old, out-of-service cars to avoid lengthy waits for orders to come in; sometimes mechanics are forced to manufacture the equipment themselves. "Imagine a computer produced in 1972," says David Hardt. "No one is supporting that old equipment any longer, but those same microprocessors are what we have controlling our logic systems." Right now BART needs 100 thyristors at a total cost of $100,000. BART engineers said it could take 22 weeks to ship them to the San Francisco Bay Area to replace in BART’s "C" cars, which make up the older cars in the fleet. Right now, the agency has none. Nick Josefowitz says it makes no sense to dwell on design decisions made a half-century ago. "I think we need to use what we have today and build off that, rather than fantasize what could have been done in the past. The BART system was state of the art when it was built, and now it's technologically obsolete and coming to the end of its useful life."

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