No, the reason we can't have nice things is because of overlord over-reaction. Don't be such a submissive putz.

None of that matters... The fact is, a thousand of these crimes are committed every day, how many of them have international arrest warrants with all the money spent on them that this one has?

The sheer effort put forth is beyond nuts... the whole thing stinks...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

The explanation exceeds that which is interesting to all but the REALLY curious...

There you go... :)

The Mk-48 ADCAP torpedo does require prep time, they aren't generally kept in a "ready to fire" situation all the time.

I would imagine one simple solution would be a capacitor, since the battery has to be good in storage for long periods of time, but when actually needed, only has to work for between 10 minutes an hour. So the torpedo has some spin up time while the battery charges the capacitor, however it is also possible to get its initial charge from the launching vessel (while in the tube), they are wire-guided after all so in the tube, they are "plugged in" to the ship.

Why an hour of battery when the run time of the motor is 7 minutes? Because in a combat situation, the captain may well order torpedoes loaded and they may sit in the tubes ready to go, so the batteries are running. It is possible that if they drain the tubes and pull them out, the batteries have to be replaced.

These are all minor considerations, considering that each Mk-48 ADCAP costs $3.5 million dollars each, they can (or should) be able to afford both the best batteries as well as spares and replacements.

Also worth noting is that a torpedo is not a small weapon, the modern versions being over 19 feet long.

Why would they need that much instant current? The battery doesn't power the torpedo through the water, it just runs the guidance system.

Population is provided by "Otto fuel II" which is a hot expanding gas that provides an average of 7 minutes of run time, but at 55+ kts it is enough.

Get off it -- that search warrant was based on a reporter posting a link to data. The underlying issue is that he is being punished for engaging in 1st Amendment activity, the ultimate basis for his punishment doesn't matter to the Feds.

Think of it this way: say you decided to install Chrome on your computer, so you download it from the official location and install it. Then a warrant is issued so the cops can examine your laptop to figure out if you installed Chrome. You're thinking "WTF?" that's not a crime and so you give them some lip. Now you're fucked. They hated you because of some random reason, but now they get to punish you -- that it is for some random reason doesn't matter. That's what happened here -- the Feds were out to get him and they got him.

He isn't even a hacker -- he's a reporter FFS. He's going down for reporting stuff the powers that be didn't want reported, the actual crime he is being punished under is just a technicality.

This is /. not People Magazine. It is sort of reasonable to think the usual readership would be familiar with Barrett Brown. Of course there's always wikipedia. Let me tell you how to get there. Go to the Start button and press on the blue "E" icon. That will get you the internets ....

10.5 decades to be exact.

Barrett Brown Faces 105 Years in Jail: But no one can figure out what law he broke. Introducing America's least likely political prisoner

And just so it is clear what level of morality exists among Federal prosecutors, consider this "game" which certainly gets applied in real life:

At the federal prosecutor's office in the Southern District of New York, the staff, over beer and pretzels, used to play a darkly humorous game. Junior and senior prosecutors would sit around, and someone would name a random celebrity -- say, Mother Theresa or John Lennon.

It would then be up to the junior prosecutors to figure out a plausible crime for which to indict him or her. The crimes were not usually rape, murder, or other crimes you'd see on Law & Order but rather the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield: Crimes like "false statements" (a felony, up to five years), "obstructing the mails" (five years), or "false pretenses on the high seas" (also five years). The trick and the skill lay in finding the more obscure offenses that fit the character of the celebrity and carried the toughest sentences. The, result, however, was inevitable: "prison time."

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Complacency. What freedom haters have for breakfast.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

Aside from statutes, beware the CFRs:

These rules can carry the force of federal criminal law. Estimates of the number of regulations range from 10,000 to 300,000. None of the legal groups who have studied the code have a firm number.

"There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime," said John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor who has also tried counting the number of new federal crimes created in recent years. "That is not an exaggeration."

Exactly. Everyone seems to think he was a hacker. He's a __reporter__ .

Not hacker.

Writer.

It's his job to tell people the news. He's going to jail essentially (though not technically) for linking to data. That ain't hacking.

Barret Brown didn't do any hacking. He's a reporter. Reporters are fucking supposed to report the news, not keep it secret. This was just an example of the fact if the Feds want to get you, they have criminal code base so large, nobody can even count crimes let alone fit all of that knowledge into a single brain. Of course, not knowing the law is no excuse (unless you are cop), and having no intent to break the is irrelevant. What this boils down to, is the Feds can fuck you up any time they want if they don't like you. It's called tyranny.

[In 1998, the ABA tried to count crimes contained in Federal statutes but gave up estimating the number to be in excess of 3000.]

* * *

None of these studies broached the separate -- and equally complex -- question of crimes that stem from federal regulations, such as, for example, the rules written by a federal agency to enforce a given act of Congress. These rules can carry the force of federal criminal law. Estimates of the number of regulations range from 10,000 to 300,000. None of the legal groups who have studied the code have a firm number.

"There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime," said John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor who has also tried counting the number of new federal crimes created in recent years. "That is not an exaggeration."

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...

See also, "Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent" http://www.amazon.com/Three-Fe...

That sounds so nice, doesn't it...

The law of unintended consequences would kick in... because the minute the government goes around taking companies, everyone else sees this...

Then the government discovered what a great money maker this is, and goes after all companies for anything they might be doing wrong...

It is a bad path to go down... and the people hurt are the employees and customers, not the big fish...

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What you are suggesting has actually been done, in other countries... it isn't pretty...