By the same argument you could say that all the geosynchronous satellites are running in tandem with each other, so they must be spying on each other. While it is possible, I'd say a more likely reason is that whatever the two of them are doing up there, they are observing the same areas around the world.

The article I read, which was many years ago, long before the internet, said that the mask was normally clear, but turned opaque when it sensed a nuclear flash, and then turned back when it was over. The test subject said it was so fast he didn't even know that it worked at first. Therefore the user would have normal vision, but all the high power flashes would be blocked.

If I remember correctly, air force pilots used to have special googles that could turn opaque very rapidly to protect the pilots' eyes from optical damage from nuclear blasts. I wonder if such technology could be adapted to protect against such light dazzler devices.

Its the perfect setup for a Star Wars joke.

Hm, I sense an aftermarket for infrared filters. I also wonder how long before hackers start leaving infrared transmitters all over the place to annoy anyone with an iphone.

If there is or may be a problem, then develop a standard for both the electronic device maker and the navigation system maker can work with. I'm sick and tired of airplane makers saying that everyone must shut down all possible electronic devices or the airplane will crash into the ocean Does that include pace makers? How about artificial limbs that are electrically powered? Navigation systems should be defined to work with a given amount of noise on various frequency bands. It is not reasonable in today's world to design a system that assumes that the only RF transmitter for 100 miles around is the proper transmitter. Think of what a terrorist could do if they find such a vulnerability that can let them remotely down an airplane.

Conversely, electronic device makers must start shielding their equipment and start certifying that they meet this same standard. I've seen too many devices that have the EMF of a telsa coil and wipe out any other wireless device within 30 feet. One device was not even a wireless device. It was a street light that ran on 2.4Ghz, and wiped out WiFi whenever it was on.

I think it would be interesting to compare brain scans of different factions of computer programmers. Any number of programmer religious wars: vi vs emacs, Unix vs Windows, GUI vs CLI, indenting with blanks vs tabs, C vs Perl vs Ruby vs .Net vs Python vs JavaScript.

Sounds like the Cone of Silence from Get Smart. Lets just hope it works better :-)

At an old job I did a number of upgrades to office equipment. Some of the office equipment was so old I took parts I retired from my home system and put them into the work ones. I've added memory, replaced hard drives, added a NIC so I could do testing on an isolated segment that I controlled, even added an internal fan to help cool off a system that was always overheating. I rescued systems that were to be tossed because "they are too old to run the operating system" (they thought Linux was an application) for test DNS, NTP and other servers. Sometimes its just easier to bring stuff in from home than trying to fight through the procurement process.

Wow, in my college and post college days I used that protocol in so many places and so many ways I can't even begin to count. That was a very conservative protocol that was able to go through almost anything. One time I had it go from a portable computer over a modem connection to an Equinox data switch to an AT&T 3b5 Unix, to a cu back to the Equinox (to change the speed from 300 baud to 9600 baud) to an IBM 7171 protocol converter to an IBM 4361. And it could actually transfer files. Another time I had to stress test a DECNET terminal simulator on a Sun (the old version would fail in the middle of the day on the busiest of days) So I used kermit to connect to host1, then to host 2, back to host 1, back to host 2, I think something like 40 times. Then I did a file transfer through all the connections. It worked.