Comments Posted By DocMartyn
Displaying 11 To 18 Of 18 Comments
IS BUSH TOO SURE OF HIMSELF ON DOMESTIC SPYING?
I think we will find that this is going to be another case of technology driven law. Legislation always follows the development of new devices, so without phones, there can be no phone taps. But how does the law stand on using computers to look for "patterns" in the use of digital information flows? Can you use the information gained from looking at the pattern of phone calls/internets activity to look for information networks, without a warrent, because you don't listen to the phone calls themselves. For instance, what if you hold a large number of phone conversations in a buffer memory, say for 48 hours, and only listen to the ones that you find interesting immeadietly before and after a stimulas. e.g. a bombing. The pattern of calls preciding and after a bombing could be very useful. Having the calls, which are far too many to listen to, would allow forensic scientists to work out who had fore knowlege. The vast magority of the calls would not be listened to, but would be avalible to be listened to if wanted. I know that is the sort of thing I would wish to do if I were involved in tracking terrorists, supporters and cheerleaders.
Comment Posted By DocMartyn On 2.01.2006 @ 20:19
THE WARRANTLESS GEIGER COUNTER
"Only 2% of containers entering the country are ever inspected. Al Qaeda is juat as aware of that as the administration is, but Bush has done nothing about it."
There is nothing like common knowelege, so the US has an array of radiation detectors pointed here there and everywhere, but not at it ports. Strange.
Please note that 18 months ago or so, a single bolt that had been recycled in India, from a reactor was able to set off alarms at a British port. The story was buried pretty quickly.BTW Do you need a court order to monitor water down stream from a factory or farm? If so the various Federal and State environmental agencies will soon be covered with law suits as they take soil and water samples from water courses all over the USA and analyse them for a great number of toxic chemicals, including radioactive ones.
Comment Posted By DocMartyn On 25.12.2005 @ 10:02
OVERHEARD BY NSA AGENTS UNDER RULES MANDATED BY DEMOCRATS
There is an awlful lot more information that can be gleaned from the phone call, than the spoken contents. You can know whom is in contact with whom, where they are calling from, what local time they phoned. What other calls were made by the caller and callie, and whom those calls were made to. You fleshout the communications of a suspect and findout not only that he calls his mum, sister and Ali in Pakistan, but who he calls at 4:30 every morning after he gets a call from Pakistan.
Comment Posted By DocMartyn On 23.12.2005 @ 14:18
"A TERRORISTS DREAM: AN AMERICAN NIGHTMARE"
"The fact that the military has spent billions in hardening their electronics makes me think that either Doc is wrong or that we have been flummoxed into wasting a lot of money."
No they spent it to make sure that they survive near by explosions. The internet was developed so that a network of computers to route a message from A to B, but a very large number of route. All our electonics are hardened to survive , or be easily repairable, after Solar and atmospheric storms. These happen all the time, and were known about since the 60's by the militaries in the US and USSR, but not by most civilian scientist. Given the large electical potentials generated in the upper atmosphere have little effect on our electical devices, models which postulate large consequences for similar, man made, potentials, should be taken with a grain of salt.
Comment Posted By DocMartyn On 7.12.2005 @ 16:59
You probably know as much about milking a Yak, as do scientist know about the electical properties of the upper atmosphere. The physics and chemistry is funny there. Hard to get to and impossible to replicate in the lab. This is one of the reasons the US played with helium ballons so much in the 60's and 70's.
The things I do when I should be working.
If the table doesn't come out, tough, write your own damn spreadsheet, the maths is easy.
Here is a quick overview of emp, which I did just now when is was suposed to be analysing crystal structures. Enjoy.Conversion of units.
1KT of TNT is 4.2 x 109 joules.http://www.ieer.org/clssroom/unitconv.html
and
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci499008,00.html
Overview of electrical storms in the upper atmosphere.
“The global view of lightning activity offered by detectors in space has increased our appreciation of the importance of atmospheric electrical processes. There are between about 40 and 100 lightning discharges every second, each radiating electromagnetic pulses at up to 20 GW peak power and producing quasi-static electric fields up to 1 kV/m at 50–80 km altitude in the mesosphere. The electromagnetic energy couples with the plasma in the magnetosphere. Wave–particle interactions with radiation belt electrons (keV–MeV energies) result in scattering of some of the population out of the atmosphere. Intense lightning may also result in electrons being accelerated to relativistic energies in the upper atmosphere and injected into the magnetosphere. It is thought that thunderstorms provide a source of inner radiation belt electrons in this way. Electric processes within the troposphere then affect directly the atmospheric layers above, out to the near-Earth space environment.â€From Astronomy & Geophysics, Volume 43 Issue 6 Page 6.09 - December 2002
“ The electric Earth Cosmic influences on the atmosphere†Neil Arnold and Torsten Neubert.So an average ‘discharge†of lighting in the upper atmosphere releases at 20 GW peak power which is equal to 20*10^9 joules in a second, which is equal to 4.7 KT of TNT. We have between 40 and 100 events like this, every second, about 5% of the discharges are in the 50 KT range, that is 2-5 per second.
The energy density of an explosion falls with distance, the further away you are the better, here is the falloff of a 20 KT device.
Miles Meters km Joules Fractional of original Energy
0.0 1.0 0.001 8.4E+10 1
0.0 10.0 0.010 8.4E+08 1.E-02
0.1 100.0 0.100 8.4E+06 1.E-04
0.6 1000.0 1.000 8.4E+04 1.E-06
3.1 5000.0 5.000 3.4E+03 4.E-08
6.1 10000.0 10.000 8.4E+02 1.E-08
30.6 50000.0 50.000 3.4E+01 4.E-10
61.2 100000.0 100.000 8.4E+00 1.E-10
306.2 500000.0 500.000 3.4E-01 4.E-12
At 300 miles you get 1/4000000000000 of the energy output. This is only a real problem in electrical devices, if you have a long antenna, to collect a larger fraction of the energy in a long line. This can happen, as happened high-altitude nuclear testing in 1962 over Kazakhstan, (probably 300 KT and at 175 miles above the earth (http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/tests/USSR-ntests1.html)) several system effects were noted due to the high altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP). In particular a 500-km long aerial communications line experienced a failure. This test was designed to see what happened if you used a 300 KT device, in emp mode. The question the Soviets wanted to know was, does a 300 KT device going off at 290 km above a city give me a better effect than if it goes off at 290 meters above a city. The answer is NO.IEEE Transactions On Electromagnetic Compatibility, 40, 1998.
“Response of Long Lines to Nuclear High-Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP)â€
Vasily N. Greetsai, Andrey H. Kozlovsky, Vadim M. Kuvshinnikov, Vladimir M. Loborev, Yuri V. Parfenov, Oleg A. Tarasov, and Leonid N. Zdoukhov.
They concluded that the main problem is with the type of porcelain insulators used.“The HEMP hazard to a line has clearly been shown through full-scale (atmospheric tests) experiments and has been corroborated by the results of further years of experimental investigation.
Particularly, it was found that for power lines with 5-kV operating voltage and below, line-isolation spark over occurs under the action of surges with amplitudes on the order of 100 kV. Then, under operating voltage conditions, the transition from spark overs to arcs occurred and created two and three-phase short circuits, and the porcelain insulator’s glaze failed and fused. Experiments have indicated, however, that glass and polymeric insulators have not shown the same problems. Additional experimental investigations on substation equipment protective devices have also shown that due to their voltage-time characteristics, they will conduct high-amplitude HEMP surges.â€So, don’t worry about emp.
Comment Posted By DocMartyn On 7.12.2005 @ 09:49
Oh come on people, do the maths. What the is describing is impossible for two reasons. 1) The propergation of energy from a source follows a cube law (as it propergates in s sphere), so the distance eats up power. The further away you are, the much, much smaller is the effect.
2) The earth itself is a sphere. To hit a large fraction of the US, then the bonb has to be in the upper atmosphere. The higher up it its, the less power gets to earth.
So that is the physics taken care of.
So, could a device take out all our electronics?
No, they are hardened and can handle anything unless it's quite close. Now it might be a bit sad for you to realize in the time it takes between your eyeballs melting and the blastwave smashing you to pieces, that your TV is destroyed for good, but that is about as much as we have to fear from emp. It makes more sense to us a blast effect to kill everyone, rather than try to take out their electonics.
How do we know what I am saying is true? Well, not a single nuclear attack plan of the USSR or the USA (who had all the unpublished data from atomospheric testing), contained an emp component. Never did either side attempt to disrupt the electronic devices of the other side using emp. All bombs were designed to destroy targets, by heta and blast.It is however a good idea to persuade the Iranians and the North Koreans that a 20KT blast at 30,000 feet above the USA will bring its civilization to a halt. That way they would announce that they have crossed the nuclear Rubicon by causing 30 seconds of interference on our TV and mobile phones. Then we could nuke them properly.
Comment Posted By DocMartyn On 6.12.2005 @ 19:04
IRAN: RUNNING TOWARD THE GASOLINE DUMP WITH A LIT MATCH
This is a sign of weakness, not strength. They know they are hated by their own people, there is a whole generation of young people who have heard all their lives the lies of the clerics and then their grandparents telling them about before.
Comment Posted By DocMartyn On 23.11.2005 @ 20:37
I note with interest something he did on assuming power, thay you didn't list.
He massively increased the number of morality police in Iran. He is more afraid about the people at home than he is about the Americans on two of his boarders, never mind Isreal. Their persuit of a bomb is an atempt to use the "Nationalist", not the "Islamic" card. They may have to live under these Evil bastards, but the Persians are still a proud people.
Wait five years or so, the clerics will be hung from the lamp post by their turbans.
This I think covers the obligation of a commander to his troops during and after wartime.
Henry V
ACT IV SCENE I The English camp at Agincourt.
WILLIAMS
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.
KING HENRY V
So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness by your rule, should be imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a servant, under his master's command transporting a sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the business of the master the author of the servant's damnation: but this is not so: the king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of his servant; for they purpose not their death, when they purpose their services.
Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have defeated the law and outrun native punishment, though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to fly from God: war is his beadle, war is vengeance; so that here men are punished for before-breach of the king's laws in now the king's quarrel: where they feared the death, they have borne life away; and where they would be safe, they perish: then if they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of their damnation than he was before guilty of those impieties for the which they are now visited. Every subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained: and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.WILLIAMS
Comment Posted By DocMartyn On 20.08.2005 @ 19:33
'Tis certain, every man that dies ill, the ill upon his own head, the king is not to answer it.
