Re: Signal-Scrambling Tech `Freezes' Drones in Midair

[mg]

On Wed, 14 Oct 2015 05:16:23 GMT, aw...@blackhole.nyx.net (arthur
wouk) wrote:

>
>http://m.livescience.com/52448-new-tech-freezes-drones.html
>
>A new device that can detect, target and deter commercial drones
>could be used to keep the flying robots away from areas where
>they're not wanted, like government properties, airports or your
>own backyard.

That would require the transmission of radio frequencies at a
relatively high power level. So, I don't think it would be legal to
do it in your own backyard. It certainly ought to be relatively easy
for a government or an airport to do, though.

Terrorists would probably use an unknown frequency, though. So, it
would probably be easier to try to shoot them down.

[islander]

The one paragraph near the end of the article looks promising, however.
Find the operator and you can end the threat. Should be relatively
easy to use directional signal location techniques and the military has
a lot of proven technology to do exactly that.

[mg]

On Wed, 14 Oct 2015 07:31:07 -0700, islander <no...@priracy.com>
wrote:

Yes, I remember seeing an old movie years ago where an insurgent, or
an American spy, I suppose, was being hunted down by some Nazis in a
car with an antenna on top of it. :-)

So, indeed that technology is very old and I'm sure that they have
really refined it by now.

[GLOBALIST]

I would think however that first of all you have
to know one is in the area, because they can fly so
damned low.

[mg]

Yes, I thought of that, too. However the device described in the
article has radar, also, and would presumably have to be manned full
time, 24/7.

[islander]

Not necessarily. One of the devices that was developed recently for the
Army is a small radar mounted on a vehicle which continuously scans for
an incoming RPG or anti-vehicle missile. It can react so quickly that a
shotgun like device can be used to target the incoming device and
destroy it before it hits the vehicle. God only knows how much it costs!

On the other hand, you may have noticed on the vehicles coming out of
Iraq that they all had hurricane fencing like material mounted around
the outside. This would make an incoming device detonate before
actually hitting the vehicle. Inches evidently count. My SIL sent
pictures of buildings in Cairo which were adorned with hurricane fencing
intended to serve the same purpose. Talk about low tech!

[mg]

On Wed, 14 Oct 2015 15:12:43 -0700, islander <no...@priracy.com>
wrote:

Yes, that makes sense. It would be interesting to put some of these
military costs in perspective, although I've never tried to do it.
If the federal government had an effective cost-sharing,
tuition-assistance program with the states, for instance, for
community colleges, how much would that cost in comparison to what
we spend on the military?

>
>On the other hand, you may have noticed on the vehicles coming out of
>Iraq that they all had hurricane fencing like material mounted around
>the outside. This would make an incoming device detonate before
>actually hitting the vehicle. Inches evidently count. My SIL sent
>pictures of buildings in Cairo which were adorned with hurricane fencing
>intended to serve the same purpose. Talk about low tech!

When I went to school, I really had to pick and choose what I was
interested in and what I wasn't in order to survive. Some of those
items that I slept through class with was anything to do with
physics such as the inverse-square law. However, the situation with
the fencing might be related to the inverse-square law which says:

"In physics, an inverse-square law is any physical law stating that
a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportional
to the square of the distance from the source of that physical
quantity."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law

I see a similarity, incidentally, between that situation and the
situation with power loss which can be calculated with I**2 x R,
which shows how foolish and bullheaded Benjamin Franklin was in
trying to fight mother nature with the idea of transporting
electrical power using low-voltage, direct current.

[Bill Bowden]

"mg" <no...@none.nl> wrote in message
news:l8qt1bdbg7rtgflv1...@4ax.com...

> On Wed, 14 Oct 2015 15:12:43 -0700, islander <no...@priracy.com>

>>Not necessarily. One of the devices that was developed recently for the
>>Army is a small radar mounted on a vehicle which continuously scans for
>>an incoming RPG or anti-vehicle missile. It can react so quickly that a
>>shotgun like device can be used to target the incoming device and
>>destroy it before it hits the vehicle. God only knows how much it costs!
>>
> Yes, that makes sense. It would be interesting to put some of these
> military costs in perspective, although I've never tried to do it.
> If the federal government had an effective cost-sharing,
> tuition-assistance program with the states, for instance, for
> community colleges, how much would that cost in comparison to what
> we spend on the military?

Probably not much since most college courses will be available online in the
near future. Exams can be proctored where the student goes personally to a
testing location where the tests are supervised. I think the universities
are about to have an awakening and realize they cannot charge thousands of
dollars for a semester of school. They might even need to lower the tuition
to fill up the classroom, and student loans will be a thing of the past.

>>
>>On the other hand, you may have noticed on the vehicles coming out of
>>Iraq that they all had hurricane fencing like material mounted around
>>the outside. This would make an incoming device detonate before
>>actually hitting the vehicle. Inches evidently count. My SIL sent
>>pictures of buildings in Cairo which were adorned with hurricane fencing
>>intended to serve the same purpose. Talk about low tech!
>
> When I went to school, I really had to pick and choose what I was
> interested in and what I wasn't in order to survive. Some of those
> items that I slept through class with was anything to do with
> physics such as the inverse-square law. However, the situation with
> the fencing might be related to the inverse-square law which says:
>
> "In physics, an inverse-square law is any physical law stating that
> a specified physical quantity or intensity is inversely proportional
> to the square of the distance from the source of that physical
> quantity."
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law
>
> I see a similarity, incidentally, between that situation and the
> situation with power loss which can be calculated with I**2 x R,
> which shows how foolish and bullheaded Benjamin Franklin was in
> trying to fight mother nature with the idea of transporting
> electrical power using low-voltage, direct current.
>

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ne...@netfront.net ---

[mg]

On Wed, 14 Oct 2015 19:03:30 -0700, "Bill Bowden"
<bpe...@bowdenshobbycircuits.info> wrote:

>
>"mg" <no...@none.nl> wrote in message
>news:l8qt1bdbg7rtgflv1...@4ax.com...
>> On Wed, 14 Oct 2015 15:12:43 -0700, islander <no...@priracy.com>
>>>Not necessarily. One of the devices that was developed recently for the
>>>Army is a small radar mounted on a vehicle which continuously scans for
>>>an incoming RPG or anti-vehicle missile. It can react so quickly that a
>>>shotgun like device can be used to target the incoming device and
>>>destroy it before it hits the vehicle. God only knows how much it costs!
>>>
>> Yes, that makes sense. It would be interesting to put some of these
>> military costs in perspective, although I've never tried to do it.
>> If the federal government had an effective cost-sharing,
>> tuition-assistance program with the states, for instance, for
>> community colleges, how much would that cost in comparison to what
>> we spend on the military?
>
>Probably not much since most college courses will be available online in the
>near future. Exams can be proctored where the student goes personally to a
>testing location where the tests are supervised. I think the universities
>are about to have an awakening and realize they cannot charge thousands of
>dollars for a semester of school. They might even need to lower the tuition
>to fill up the classroom, and student loans will be a thing of the past.
>
>

Logically, I don't see any reason why all, or most all, of the
general educational classes one takes during the first two years of
college couldn't be done with online classes. In fact, it's probably
true to a large extent even after that.

[islander]

You may be thinking of Thomas Edison and his war with George
Westinghouse over whether DC or AC would be the standard of power
transmission. Edison was pretty bull headed and was convinced that DC
would be much safer for power transmission. He understood the problem
of power loss and hired Nikola Tesla to try to find a solution to the
problem. Tesla advised Edison to switch to AC but Edison refused and
moved ahead with his plans for his power company based on DC. Tesla
left Edison's employ and started his own power company based on AC but
he didn't have the financial resources to compete. Enter Westinghouse
who not only had the assets, but who enjoyed a good fight. The story of
the current wars is well documented including the part where Edison
invents the Electric Chair in order to demonstrate how dangerous AC
current is, electrocuting stray dogs to illustrate the principle. New
York State decided to use the approach in their executions and attempted
to buy one of Westinghouse's AC generators. Westinghouse refused but
Edison built one for them. Westinghouse continued to oppose
electrocution, even funding the appeal process for the first victim.
The appeal lost and the man was executed in a seriously botched
execution. Westinghouse commented by saying that, "They could have done
better with an ax."

[rumpelstiltskin]

Edison may have been a great inventor but he sure seems
to have been a lousy human being.

[islander]

He was a bit of an obsessive compulsive asshole. In the story above, he
fired Tesla and refused to pay him for the work that he had done.

Edison is credited with inventing the light bulb, but he essentially got
his workers to experiment with all sorts of materials to use as
filaments until they finally found a plant fiber that worked. I guess
that that is one example of how invention is often 99% perspiration.

[Bill Bowden]

"islander" <no...@priracy.com> wrote in message
news:mvofnl$9af$1...@dont-email.me...

Actually, DC is more efficient than AC since insulation requirements are
reduced and AC reactave losses are eliminated. But it requires expensive
switching systems to convert DC to AC at the destination. I think most all
long distance power transmission is DC nowadays.

[mg]

On Thu, 15 Oct 2015 08:13:52 -0700, islander <no...@priracy.com>

The electric chair always seemed to be a particularly gruesome and
brutal method of execution to me, but then so does hanging. I think
that the good, old-fashioned firing squad is probably the best
method.

In regard to the guillotine, incidentally, I have read that a person
stays alive for a short period after his head is cut off.

While, we are dabbling with the morbid side of things, when I was
gambling in Las Vegas and studying Vegas history, I came across a
gangster called "Ice Pick Willie". He reputedly used to stab people
in the ear with a concealed ice pick and then nonchalantly walk away
before the victim fell to the ground. I also remember reading about
a mobster who used to kill his victim by stabbing him under the chin
and running the blade up, into the brain.

[islander]

Not yet, but probably soon. For very high voltage transmission, DC
offers advantages over AC, not only because reactive losses are avoided
(especially when power lines are undergrounded) but skin effects on
large diameter conductors are eliminated. In Edison's day, AC was the
only way to easily and effectively step up and step down voltages
through the use of transformers, so our dependence on AC systems today
is influenced heavily on what was economical in the past. On long
distance power transmission, these economics are changing. I doubt that
we will see DC voltages in our communities any time soon, however.
Still too expensive.

[islander]

I've been told, but don't know if it is true, that the best way to
assassinate someone is by firing a .22 upward into the base of the
skull. The bullet severs the spinal chord before entering the brain and
the victim simply collapses with little loss of blood. Also, not much
noise.

On the PBS Newshour on Tue, SCOTUS judge Stephen Breyer was interviewed
about his new book about the consideration of foreign law in domestic
cases. One issue related to capital punishment which he thinks will
soon be declared unconstitutional. He argument was interesting because
it was not based on "cruel and unusual punishment."

[rumpelstiltskin]

On Thu, 15 Oct 2015 15:25:31 -0700, islander <no...@priracy.com> wrote:
>On 10/15/2015 8:54 AM, rumpelstiltskin wrote:

<snip>

>> Edison may have been a great inventor but he sure seems
>> to have been a lousy human being.
>>
>He was a bit of an obsessive compulsive asshole. In the story above, he
>fired Tesla and refused to pay him for the work that he had done.
>
>Edison is credited with inventing the light bulb, but he essentially got
>his workers to experiment with all sorts of materials to use as
>filaments until they finally found a plant fiber that worked. I guess
>that that is one example of how invention is often 99% perspiration.

He was the manager, so he gets the credit. Most of Microsoft
was not Bill Gates' work either. In science (as opposed to
business or technology), the people who make the discoveries
are usually the ones who get the credit.

[Bill Bowden]

"rumpelstiltskin" <x...@y.com> wrote in message
news:jir02btsosq4n5bhm...@4ax.com...

Yes, I think that happened with William Shockley who invented the transistor
in 1947. He got the credit, but the technicians did the work. I think the
same thing happened with the triode vacuum tube. They already had diode
vacuum tube rectifiers and someone decided to play around with an additional
element between the plate and cathode to control the current flow and
discovered the first amplifier where a small voltage change on the input
could control a large current through the tube. I don't know who got credit
for that, but it was probably some tech just playing around and said: "hey
boss, look what happens with this setup" .

[Bill Bowden]

"islander" <no...@priracy.com> wrote in message

news:mvpbhk$sf9$1...@dont-email.me...

Yes, I thought skin effects at low frequency was almost nothing, but it
turns out skin depth at 60Hz is around 3/8 of an inch. So, the solution
might be to use a large diameter copper pipe with maybe a 3/8 inch
thickness, or a little more. Still DC is the way to go.

[mg]

On Thu, 15 Oct 2015 16:28:16 -0700, islander <no...@priracy.com>

I've never had any strong feelings about capital punishment, one way
or the other. Instead, I would simply be in favor of removing
violent people from society in the most inexpensive and efficient
way possible. The big disadvantage with capital punishment, of
course, is the possibility of executing innocent people.

For a long time now, incidentally, I've thought it would be a great
idea, if the jury and judge, when a defendent is found guilty were
required to assign a degree-of-certainty figure to the probability
of guilt, with a numbering ranging from 1 to 10, for example.

With that kind of system, if a defendent, was sentenced to be
executed, but only had a degree of certainty number of 8, for
example, his lawyer might want to file an appeal with the Supreme
Court that basically asked why he was being sentenced to death when
the state was only 80% certain that he was guilty.

[rumpelstiltskin]

Shockley was even more famous for being an IQ loonie later,
along the lines of those people whom El Castor has been
admiring for years now.

From the Wiki article on Shockley:

William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 – August 12, 1989)
was an American physicist and inventor. Shockley was the manager of a
research group that included John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain,
the duo who invented the transistor. The three were jointly awarded
the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.

...

Late in his life, Shockley became intensely interested in questions of
race, human intelligence, and eugenics. He thought this work was
important to the genetic future of the human species and came to
describe it as the most important work of his career, even though
expressing his views damaged his reputation. Shockley argued that a
higher rate of reproduction among the less intelligent was having a
dysgenic effect, and that a drop in average intelligence would
ultimately lead to a decline in civilization. Shockley's published
writings and lectures to scientific organizations on this topic were
partly based on the writings of psychologist Cyril Burt and were
funded by the Pioneer Fund. Shockley also proposed that individuals
with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization.[34]

Anthropologist Roger Pearson, whose writings are based on an
evolutionary and racialist[35] approach, has defended Shockley in a
self-published book co-authored with Shockley.[36] University of
Wisconsin–Milwaukee professor Edgar G. Epps[37] argued that "William
Shockley's position lends itself to racist interpretations".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley

(Cyril Burt, mentioned above, was the founder of "Mensa"
and was later found to have forged some of his data.)

[islander]

And, perhaps we could include a short course in probability and
statistics for the judge and jury so that the number would actually have
some meaning?

[islander]

Invented by Lee de Forest in 1906.

[mg]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2015 08:07:01 -0700, islander <no...@priracy.com>

I don't know?? I think most people understand the concept of "on a
scale of 1 to 10" (fill in the blank).

For example, on a scale of 1 to 10, how do you rate this movie, or
how do you rate this song, or how much do you like your car, or how
sure are you that the sun will come up tomorrow, etc.

[islander]

I'm not sure that I would want my chances of getting executed based on a
jury's gut estimate of the probability that I was guilty. Think about
who serves on a jury!

[mg]

On Fri, 16 Oct 2015 11:39:55 -0700, islander <no...@priracy.com>

My suggestion sounds awfully simple at first glance, but then when
one thinks about it you can, I suppose, find ramifications, on top
of ramifications, on top of ramifications. What would the Supreme
Court say about that idea? We humans, by our very nature, seem to
hate to put numbers on things. I think that a lot of scientists and
engineers tend to be an exception to that, but not all of them, and
that's a result of their training. With anything to do with
philosophy, or ideology, or theology, however, everybody hates
numbers.

When my kids were at home, to illustrate the importance of numbers I
used to tell them that in the old days, when asked the question of
how many deer are on a mountain, an Indian might say, "Ugh, plenty",
but now days the state fish and game department would do a survey,
and count them, and tell you, with good accuracy, how many there are
per acre.

Here's an interesting quote by Lord Kelvin:

"I often say that when you can measure what you
are speaking about, and express it in numbers,
you know something about it; but when you
cannot measure it, when you cannot express it
in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and
unsatisfactory kind."
--Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) from lecture to the
Institute of Civil Engineers, 3 May 1883

[Bill Bowden]

"rumpelstiltskin" <x...@y.com> wrote in message

news:9n612bp2tbv3s4hr8...@4ax.com...

> On Thu, 15 Oct 2015 21:10:22 -0700, "Bill Bowden"
>>

>>Yes, I think that happened with William Shockley who invented the
>>transistor
>>in 1947. He got the credit, but the technicians did the work. I think the
>>same thing happened with the triode vacuum tube. They already had diode
>>vacuum tube rectifiers and someone decided to play around with an
>>additional
>>element between the plate and cathode to control the current flow and
>>discovered the first amplifier where a small voltage change on the input
>>could control a large current through the tube. I don't know who got
>>credit
>>for that, but it was probably some tech just playing around and said: "hey
>>boss, look what happens with this setup" .
>
>
>
> Shockley was even more famous for being an IQ loonie later,
> along the lines of those people whom El Castor has been
> admiring for years now.
>

I've heard Shockley was a racist, but maybe those IQ tests are rigged and
you need to know how to take the test to get a good score. I remember
studying for a FCC license exam by reading a book which had sample test
questions and answers (multiple choice a,b,c,d) which made it easy, even if
you didn't know much about the subject.

> From the Wiki article on Shockley:
>

> William Bradford Shockley Jr. (February 13, 1910 - August 12, 1989)

> was an American physicist and inventor. Shockley was the manager of a
> research group that included John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain,
> the duo who invented the transistor. The three were jointly awarded
> the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.
>
> ...
>
> Late in his life, Shockley became intensely interested in questions of
> race, human intelligence, and eugenics. He thought this work was
> important to the genetic future of the human species and came to
> describe it as the most important work of his career, even though
> expressing his views damaged his reputation. Shockley argued that a
> higher rate of reproduction among the less intelligent was having a
> dysgenic effect, and that a drop in average intelligence would
> ultimately lead to a decline in civilization. Shockley's published
> writings and lectures to scientific organizations on this topic were
> partly based on the writings of psychologist Cyril Burt and were
> funded by the Pioneer Fund. Shockley also proposed that individuals
> with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization.[34]
>
> Anthropologist Roger Pearson, whose writings are based on an
> evolutionary and racialist[35] approach, has defended Shockley in a
> self-published book co-authored with Shockley.[36] University of

> Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Edgar G. Epps[37] argued that "William

> Shockley's position lends itself to racist interpretations".
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley
>
> (Cyril Burt, mentioned above, was the founder of "Mensa"
> and was later found to have forged some of his data.)