Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:So? (Score 1) 487

One of the key problems that was identified during 9/11 was the inability of emergency responders to communicate with each other effectively because different departments and jurisdictions used different codes to refer to the same situation, or the same code to refer to different situations. One of the solutions has been to limit the use of 10- codes so that inter-agency cooperation is simpler in an emergency.

As soon as police forces start encrypting their communications, you solve that problem by leaving them unable to effectively communicate with other agencies entirely, due to different encryption methods and keys. In the event of a large emergency, response time and effectiveness will likely be worse as a result.

Comment Re:bad thing? (Score 1) 404

Canada may be the second largest nation by size, but in terms of population, it ranks between Uganda and Algeria, which no one thinks of as particularly large in any sense. Looking at population density, it averages less than 10 people per square mile. Granted, the population is clustered near the southern border, but that means that US culture and media is that much more pervasive, since most Canadians are within an easy drive of the US and can receive broadcast stations from there.

Comment Re:pandemic == marketing hype (Score 1) 105

I've read some speculation that the 1918 pandemic was especially virulent because it started among soldiers at the front. Normally, the sickest people with the flu stay home and the less sick are more likely to go out and infect others, leading to the virus becoming less dangerous over time. Among the soldiers, though, the less sick would stay with their companies, limiting their contagiousness, while the more sick would go to the military hospitals, where they would come into contact with more people, and bring somewhat more virulent varieties into a larger number of people. This then lead (by this hypothesis) to an overall strengthening of the dangerousness of the flu before it spread to many countries outside Europe.

Comment Re:Thinking back to Millenium Challenge '02 (Score 1) 547

This is certainly an interesting line of thought. The only objection I can see is that right now, ICBM and rocket launches are closely monitored by multiple nations as an early warning system in the event of nuclear attack. By outfitting the same ICBM with a conventional warhead, one risks provoking a nuclear response to a conventional assault.

Comment Re:The fore front of technlogiy. (Score 5, Interesting) 104

The SR-71s were certainly noticed by the Soviet's as they were passing through their airspace, and while successful, certainly, they could also have been used to hide the existence of the various spy satellite programs by providing a plausible alternative means by which the US could have gained the information they used at various treaty negotiations. Eisenhower's Corona program began in 1960, years before the blackbird began overflights of the Soviet Union, and was clearly both a gigantic success and a gigantic secret. Setting up a secondary secret program which had telltale signs the Soviet's could pick up on to mask the existence of the primary one seems like a great way to keep the satellite programs a secret both externally and within the US government, where they could also be attributed to the other program when discussing the results with individuals who needed the information but did not need to know about the program itself.

Slashdot Top Deals

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso

Working...