You warm yourself around that pilot light you call the community that will unite & overthrow all the "spooks" as you put it elsewhere. I'll note that even with a president elected on a platform to supposedly roll back everything you denounce came to precisely nothing.

No, they shouldn't, but some of them are going to anyway. Since your loved ones will therefore be just as injured/dead if they are the unlucky ones who get hit by a bad driver who was going too fast, dismissing technology that might help those bad drivers to be better, safer drivers seems uncalled for.

With Isis, Putin, Ebola, etc in the world, you think that _this_ is "one of if not the closent things to a dragon in the world", then talk in the next sentence about "species survival"?!?! Talk about self delusion, you _ARE_ don Neckbeard. Remember this moment don Neckbeard if you are lucky enough to live another few decades and think about how wrong you were to predict the disparition of your so called useless "spooks".

If anything is too big to fail, you are usually better off making it fail anyway as soon as possible to minimise the damage. Some of the problems in the global financial industry today aren't because of inherent weaknesses in the system. Instead they have been caused precisely by allowing organisations to grow too big, or perhaps more accurately by allowing them to take on disproportionate levels of risk, and then supporting those organisations at government level instead of allowing them to go under when they should have.

But it won't, because plenty of other CAs are used and plenty of sites don't use HTTPS routinely yet. All the big sites, the Facebooks and Googles and Amazons of the world, would have switched to another CA within an hour. All the truly security-sensitive organisations like your bank or card company or government would update their certificates very quickly as well.

CAs determined to protect their reputation at a time when their industry would inevitably be seriously damaged in the credibility stakes might take longer to issue things like EV certificates as they made a point of fully validating the organisations requesting them. However, basic HTTPS access and the highly recognisable padlock symbol would be back on all the big sites almost immediately. The worst they would likely suffer would be a few minutes of downtime (assuming organisations on that scale don't routinely have back-up certificates with a completely independent chain on permanent stand-by anyway) and maybe a slight increase in customer support calls as genuinely security-conscious users noticed the lack of EV identity for a while.

Meanwhile, any browser that didn't remove a known-compromised CA from its trusted list very quickly would be vulnerable to justified criticism and no doubt plenty of rhetoric built on top about being insecure, and how users mustn't use that browser to visit safe sites like their bank or someone will empty their account. The geeks would get hold of the story first, of course, but as soon as it made front-page news (and something on this scale probably would) everyone would be talking about it that day.

Trusting any one of many different CAs has obvious vulnerabilities, as this case demonstrates (and it's not exactly the first time the problem of an untrustworthy CA has been observed in the wild). The current CA system isn't really a web of trust, because it ultimately depends on multiple potential single points of failure.

One way or another, in the absence of out-of-band delivery of appropriate credentials, you have to trust someone, so I suspect the pragmatic approach is to move to a true web-of-trust system, where you trust a combination of sources collectively but never trust any single source alone, and where mistrust can also be propagated through the system. Then at least you can still ship devices/operating systems/browsers seeded with a reasonable set of initial sources you trust, but any single bad actor can quickly be removed from the trust web by consensus later while no single bad actor can undermine the credibility of the web as a whole. Such a system could still allow you to independently verify that the identity of a system you're talking to via out-of-band details if required.

I suggested that you make the attempt, assuming that you would do so using the simplest method: Holding your breath. After multiple attempts & achieving nothing I'd hoped that your oxygen deprived mind would come to the realization that tilting at windmills is futile. It was a forlorn hope Don Neckbeard...

I stand corrected. Mod parent up. Mod me down if you like.

US patent: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8981261.PN.&OS=PN/8981261&RS=PN/8981261

With each of the embodiments discussed, the system 10 is deployed to attenuate the energy of an advancing shockwave 24 form an explosion 22 by creating a second fluid medium 30 that differs from the first fluid medium 26, which may be ambient air, positioned so that it interacts with the shockwave. As shown in FIG. 10, as the shockwave contacts the interface 90 between the first fluid medium 26 and the second fluid medium 30, the difference in refractive index reflects a fraction of the incoming energy toward the explosion 22, as indicated by arrows A. This partial reflection occurs a second time as the shockwave passes through the second fluid medium 30 and contacts the interface 92 between the second medium and the ambient 26 as it exits the second medium. All gradients or discontinuities in the medium provide a reflection point for the incoming shockwave 24. For example, if the second medium 30 is non-uniform, reflection will occur at each of many places within the medium.

As shown in FIG. 11, shockwaves 24 obey Fermat's theory of least time and therefore an effective refractive index for the shockwave can be defined that is inversely proportional to the shock speed. The properties or composition of the second medium 30 are chosen such that the effective refractive index of the second medium 30 differs from the first medium 26 in at least one of temperature, molecular weight and composition. As the shockwave passes into or out of the second medium 30, the difference in effective refractive index refracts the wave, as shown by lines B, diverting it and defocusing it away from the protected asset 18. In the disclosed embodiments, the second medium 30 is created such that the shockwave travels faster in the second medium 30 than in the first medium 26, so the refractive index of the second medium is less than that of the first medium. Further, the second medium is created to have a convex shape and therefore acts as a divergent lens, so that the energy of the shockwave 24 spreads out, as shown by lines C, so its intensity drops as it approaches the protected asset 18.

In addition, the second medium 30 may absorb some shock energy as the shock travels through it. Factors contributing to the absorption of energy include energy retained in the molecules of the second medium itself (e.g., enhanced rotational energy, excited molecular bonds, excited electrons, molecular decomposition, and ionization) and shock energy converted to electromagnetic energy through blackbody emission from hot particles or photon emission from de-exciting various excited states.

A further mechanism for attenuating the energy density of the shockwave 24 is momentum exchange. If the second medium 30 is moving relative to the first medium 26, then it will exchange momentum with the shockwave 24. The result is a combination of reflection, slowing, and redirection of the shockwave. Any or all of the foregoing mechanisms may operate in a given embodiment. The composition, temperature, speed and location of the second medium 30 may be chosen or created to create any one or all of the aforementioned mechanisms.

So, it's not necessarily lasers that generate the plasma, and the protection comes mainly from the plasma having a different refractive index than the air through which the shock wave has propagated.

My comment that this serves as a "counter-wave" is in the patent but only as a "it might also do this" thing, not as the main thing.

Countering a shock wave with a generated one would be horribly complex.

I never thought they were trying to cancel out the explosion with another explosion whose sound waves have opposite phase to the first.

I tried to read TFA and figure out what the invention really did. You are right, going to the actual patent text was a better idea. That article did not do a good job of explaining the science.

No, Candide, these practices are NOT new, nor are they in any way different from the espionage nations & kingdoms & city-states have been engaging in since mankind began to write on papyrus & clay tablets.

It seems like we probably agree on the general idea here, but I was impressed on a recent visit to a museum where they had mobile apps you could download in advance and WiFi available on-site. Together these let you choose from a number of recommended tours based on duration and topic(s) and then guided you around with directions, highlights, and more in-depth background on various other exhibits you'd pass along the way if you were interested. It was a well made presentation that someone had obviously worked hard to put together, and the only thing that was a little awkward was walking around holding a tablet with headphones plugged in for the whole visit. That's an area where I could see an unintrusive headset might be an advantage.

the shields really didn't appear to do a damn thing as far as I could tell. I remember the "double front" thing now that you mention it, but I'm not sure what those shields actually accomplished.

I think the in-universe explanation is that the shields were double front to protect against fire from the laser turrets on the Death Star, but when Vader and his TIE fighters hit the fighters from behind, the front shields didn't do any good.

This has always been fine with me. These are fighters, and it would be silly for the fighters to be invulnerable. They are small, and they have decent engines, decent weapons, and (at least X-Wings) even have a hyperdrive. It would be hard to believe they could have all that and also impenetrable shields. As with jet fighters in real life, their best defense is to blow up attackers before being attacked, or avoid the attack completely. If you can hit a modern jet with a missile you likely destroy that jet, and similarly if you can get a solid laser hit on a "snub fighter" you likely destroy it.

If you accept the LucasArts video game as canon, "double front" disables all shields to the rear, using the full output of the shield generators toward the front.

the shields on Hoth did what exactly?

The in-universe explanation was that the base was secure inside its shield bubble; the ships in orbit couldn't breach the shield. So the Imperial Walkers were landed somewhere outside the perimeter of the shield, then walked up until they could attack the shield generator.

I must admit I've never bought this. If you handwave a bit, maybe you can make it make sense: they Imperials know the rebels have multiple bases, and they want to capture people alive for interrogation to find other rebels; they could have swatted the base from orbit but it would leave a smoking crater, so they wanted to take the shield down and take prisoners. This seems inconsistent with the Empire that shot down escape pods in the first movie.

Also, I have really never bought the idea that the ground base was able to protect the transports by firing some sort of weapon at the ships in space, from the ground. But never mind.

I don't recall any shields in Star Wars. ;-)

One more: spacecraft hangars didn't have airlocks; just force fields, and the spacecraft could simply fly through the force field while atmosphere didn't leak out. I've never understood how exactly that's supposed to work.

And one more: a major plot point of Return of the Jedi was that the partially-completed new Death Star was protected by a shield generator on Endor. Until that shield was disabled, the rebels couldn't even attack the Death Star.

Star Wars features force fields that can, for example, hold the air in a spacecraft hangar even while a spacecraft flies out.

Boeing has developed a technology where lasers fire a burst of energy to turn air into plasma, causing a shock wave. When sensors detect an incoming pressure wave (from an explosion or whatever) this system creates a counter-wave.

Even when I squint and wave my hands a lot, those two things don't look much alike.

The prior art on this is not Star Wars, but reactive tank armor.

And today there are quiet carriages on trains, coffee shops with no-phones policies, and generally if you're the guy who talks really loud on the phone then everyone around you still gets annoyed and may actually challenge you if you carry on for long.

And that's for a device that is just an interruption, not a device that a lot of people perceive to be an inherently creepy invasion of their privacy literally because someone just looked at them funny.

I expect technology similar to Google Glass will make it, but I also suspect it will be used primarily for specific applications where it has a clear benefit. I don't think anything too similar will be worn by a lot of people all the time in the near future.

For example, someone walking around a museum might borrow some sort of headset that guides them on a tour and provides background information about each exhibit they are looking at. Staff at a warehouse used for on-line grocery shopping might have a headset that guides them to collect the items purchases in the most efficient way.

However, I think perhaps the tide is already starting to turn against mass surveillance culture, intrusive personalised advertising, and the like. Surely it's only going to get more hostility as things like insurance premiums that people see directly in their bank balance become ever more customised behind the scenes, and as more people suffer significant problems due to identity theft or embarrassing disclosures themselves or know close friends or family members who have.

In fact, I wonder whether even the US government, not exactly a bastion of privacy advocacy, might be having second thoughts about how much personal data is casually thrown around, now that hostile forces are openly doxxing US service personnel and encouraging allies within the US to attack those people and their families at home, as was reported this week.

So if I were going to place a long-term bet on new technologies tomorrow, I certainly wouldn't be backing an obviously intrusive device like the previous Google Glass, complete with tiny camera, always-on microphone, and wireless connection to the mothership. On the other hand, build a device with similar useful features but a less goofy design, and then back it with a widely-advertised and genuine emphasis on privacy so it didn't engender the same degree of hostility from others nearby, and you might be on to something.

Among all the people who read my comment, you're the only person unable to connect the dots, yet I'm the one with problems. Suuure...

You adopt the Obama's past platform without taking the effort to understand why he changed nor why you think he was wrong to do so. Your only justification being some childish sense of outrage.

This is an example of your Intellect? No attempt at justifying why your current platform has been disavowed by the man elected president upon it years ago, just trite remarks? My latest flash of insight is that you never graduated kindergarten & are jealous of those who have. Would you like to borrow a crayon to help you express yourself? Need help peeling the paper off?

What? Publicly stating on /. that we do NOT approve is insufficient?!?