NP Friday May 05 2017

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

9 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

The reason the information was underestimated was, once again, the mindset of the times. Terrorists had never acted in such a manner before. If someone had told me such a story on the tenth of September that year, I would likely have boggled at it, or even scoffed.

Need more science-fiction fans in the field.  Seven Days had an episode where a terrorist flew a plane into the White House, and I think I recall at least one other such planes-as-weapons plot before 9/11 although I cannot remember which series (books or TV) it was from.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

24 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Need more science-fiction fans in the field.

The collectable card game "Illuminati, New World Order" by Steve Jackson Games, released in 1994, included cards that described the death of Princess Diana in  1997, September 11 2001, and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

21 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

The collectable card game "Illuminati, New World Order" by Steve Jackson Games, released in 1994, included cards that described the death of Princess Diana in  1997, September 11 2001, and the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

Back in 1888, someone wrote a book called The Titan, or Futility, in which a massive passenger liner said to be unsinkable met a disastrous end while crossing the Atlantic.

[Vorlonagent 442]

15 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Meh. I am no conspiracy theorist. I might go so far as to say that it is conceivable but that I am personally unconvinced of it. I would demand just as rigorous proof of it as you would before I bought into it. Unfortunately, the deleterious effect on the public mind remains there even if it was unintentional or inadvertent.

A one-off is just that: A one-off.  Sight-unseen I don't think 24 would make a deep or lasting change in most people's psyches just of itself.  TV can be a powerful mind-changing tool, but it has to be used in a certain way to be powerful.  It's reasonable to be concerned but I think also reasonable to feel reassured if 24 is not fitting a larger pattern of propaganda.

15 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Fair enough, and you are substantially correct, yes. It is an important reason I object to the ticking clock argument. Another reason is that conventional interrogation may -- may -- be slower than torture, but it is not necessarily slow and it is by far more reliable.

I'd class Torture as an expedient and agree that the dice roll with different modifiers for each that are case by case.  I think history bears out the expedient aspect but I'll also concede that both historically and by distribution across the planet today, governments who feel compelled to give a damn about the people they govern are few and far between.  Maybe we haven't given interrogators their due.

15 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

I have to object to the phrase 'immediacy that would require torture' due to my stated conviction that torture is unreliable and counterproductive, hence n

I can roll with this.

15 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

Hum. I do not quite agree with that last as the plot could still have been foiled at a very late stage with the simple instructions of "Ground all flights. Scramble interceptors over important areas. Any planes that disregard instructions to land and be inspected are to be forced down." Admittedly such an order would have to come from someone very high up, but if the Oval Office is issuing the order it would presumably happen, right? Still, you could reasonably call that a quibble.

The reason the information was underestimated was, once again, the mindset of the times. Terrorists had never acted in such a manner before. If someone had told me such a story on the tenth of September that year, I would likely have boggled at it, or even scoffed. It is all too easy to condemn the intelligence agencies and the administration in hindsight. Whatever other issues I might have with the GWB administration, failing to prevent 9/11 is not one.

Agreed.  I have no condemnation for US intelligence or the FBI.

And there were other factors. 

Following the 60s, the US had installed a legal firewall that kept foreign intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA from operating on US soil or sharing information with domestic law enforcement like the FBI. 

9/11 took place after a very divisive election with the presidency changing parties and the new guy attempting to set up shop against the backdrop of a recession-slumped economy.  The executive branch was both still struggling to get moving and was very distracted.

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

36 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

A one-off is just that: A one-off.  Sight-unseen I don't think 24 would make a deep or lasting change in most people's psyches just of itself.  TV can be a powerful mind-changing tool, but it has to be used in a certain way to be powerful.  It's reasonable to be concerned but I think also reasonable to feel reassured if 24 is not fitting a larger pattern of propaganda.

Hm. In this I am truly a little at sea. I am convinced that 24 had some effect on the public mindset but you are correct in that it would be a stretch to claim that it was transformative in its own right. Nonetheless, as a catalyst I feel it still did grave harm by helping to legitimise a mindset I consider insupportable. As to the larger pattern of propaganda, it is always there but as before I am reluctant to believe that there might be some great conspiracy behind it. For one thing it would be entirely unneeded, man is a political animal and expresses its ideas in its arts and entertainment. Why posit a conspiracy when just a few dozen entirely independent creators with related opinions airing their creations might have the same effect? And this goes for the entire political spectrum, of course, from left through middle to right.

45 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

I'd class Torture as an expedient and agree that the dice roll with different modifiers for each that are case by case.  I think history bears out the expedient aspect but I'll also concede that both historically and by distribution across the planet today, governments who feel compelled to give a damn about the people they govern are few and far between.  Maybe we haven't given interrogators their due.

This is what I believe. Skilled interrogators are at the base of all information gathering. As you demonstrated earlier, they can be stunningly efficient when operating in a context where the subjects do not even know they are being interrogated. I cannot articulate scientific proof but I am nonetheless convinced that such comparatively 'gentle' methods can yield a great deal of fruit and certainly enough to be well worth basing an information network on.

I should also mention that even within the framework of the Geneva Convention, harder forms of interrogation may nonetheless be comparatively róugh. One of my former superiors used to be in the Danish equivalent of the Seals. This is a very small but elite group which has at times had occasion to work together with the Seals. During one big exercise he was 'captured' and subjected to interrogation that kept inside the limits of the Convention and it did NOT sound like a picnic. Sleep deprivation, being forced to stand up in his undies against a wall for long hours at end, very harsh psychological methods used when he was actually being interrogated, and worst of all, those bastard interrogators got coffee and he didn't.

Along the gentler lines, police interrogators have a huge cornucopia of tricks to draw on. The good cop/bad cop method is ages old but the reason it has lasted so long is that it works, even on subjects who know of it. Sitting down in a friendly manner with a subject and turning a visible tape recorder off, implying that this is 'off the record.' One very important technique is establishing a theme. If the interrogator can gain control of the narrative by convincing the subject that they are some form of authority, or that they actually want to help them, this confers enormous advantages. And so forth.

56 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Following the 60s, the US had installed a legal firewall that kept foreign intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA from operating on US soil or sharing information with domestic law enforcement like the FBI. 

9/11 took place after a very divisive election with the presidency changing parties and the new guy attempting to set up shop against the backdrop of a recession-slumped economy.  The executive branch was both still struggling to get moving and was very distracted.

Again, this was an era with an entirely different mindset.

I recently had an interesting experience. I was discussing 'Star Wars: A New Hope' with a younger friend of mine. One thing he did not understand was the lackadaisical manner of the Imperials who just let the droids escape in their pod with the Death Star plans. He blamed it on cartoonish incompetence and felt it was 'an annoying but forgivable error.' I, on the other hand, had a different perspective. My friend had grown up in the increasingly security-minded post-9/11 era whereas I was a 70s kid. George Lucas made his first movie in an era where that sort of security would be considered obsessive and paranoid. The rather lax standards of the Empire fit with the times. I actually consider this a decent example of that very different mindset.

[Vorlonagent 442]

19 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Hm. In this I am truly a little at sea. I am convinced that 24 had some effect on the public mindset but you are correct in that it would be a stretch to claim that it was transformative in its own right. Nonetheless, as a catalyst I feel it still did grave harm by helping to legitimise a mindset I consider insupportable. As to the larger pattern of propaganda, it is always there but as before I am reluctant to believe that there might be some great conspiracy behind it. For one thing it would be entirely unneeded, man is a political animal and expresses its ideas in its arts and entertainment. Why posit a conspiracy when just a few dozen entirely independent creators with related opinions airing their creations might have the same effect? And this goes for the entire political spectrum, of course, from left through middle to right.

There is also the question of opportunity.  The US entertainment Industry culture has a definite opinion on the matters politic and that can put a thumb on the scales for or against certain perspectives getting screen time.

I tend to think that any propaganda value 24 had was not lasting without reinforcement from other venues.  It may have had an effect, but it was very likely a self-correcting one.

27 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

This is what I believe. Skilled interrogators are at the base of all information gathering. As you demonstrated earlier, they can be stunningly efficient when operating in a context where the subjects do not even know they are being interrogated. I cannot articulate scientific proof but I am nonetheless convinced that such comparatively 'gentle' methods can yield a great deal of fruit and certainly enough to be well worth basing an information network on.

I should also mention that even within the framework of the Geneva Convention, harder forms of interrogation may nonetheless be comparatively róugh. One of my former superiors used to be in the Danish equivalent of the Seals. This is a very small but elite group which has at times had occasion to work together with the Seals. During one big exercise he was 'captured' and subjected to interrogation that kept inside the limits of the Convention and it did NOT sound like a picnic. Sleep deprivation, being forced to stand up in his undies against a wall for long hours at end, very harsh psychological methods used when he was actually being interrogated, and worst of all, those bastard interrogators got coffee and he didn't.

Along the gentler lines, police interrogators have a huge cornucopia of tricks to draw on. The good cop/bad cop method is ages old but the reason it has lasted so long is that it works, even on subjects who know of it. Sitting down in a friendly manner with a subject and turning a visible tape recorder off, implying that this is 'off the record.' One very important technique is establishing a theme. If the interrogator can gain control of the narrative by convincing the subject that they are some form of authority, or that they actually want to help them, this confers enormous advantages. And so forth.

It only occurred to me this morning that I might be reflecting some kind of selection bias.  The world could use torture because the world's always used torture, not necessarily because it's even the best tool for the job but because it's what we've always done.."A foolish consistence is the hobgoblin of tiny minds" and all that.

An episode of Mythbusters attempted to determine if Chinese water torture was effective.  It was scary effective at least on someone not trained to deal with it.

40 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

I recently had an interesting experience. I was discussing 'Star Wars: A New Hope' with a younger friend of mine. One thing he did not understand was the lackadaisical manner of the Imperials who just let the droids escape in their pod with the Death Star plans. He blamed it on cartoonish incompetence and felt it was 'an annoying but forgivable error.' I, on the other hand, had a different perspective. My friend had grown up in the increasingly security-minded post-9/11 era whereas I was a 70s kid. George Lucas made his first movie in an era where that sort of security would be considered obsessive and paranoid. The rather lax standards of the Empire fit with the times. I actually consider this a decent example of that very different mindset.

A well-timed tractor beam would have aborted the entire trilogy.  It would have been foolish to open fire on an uninhabited escape pod.  If someone had, for example, tossed the plans in the pod and hit the launch button, you want those plans so you know you have actually found them.  So you don't just let the pod go.  But the last thing you want to do is blow it up.  even an inhabited one.  Whoever is running from the empire, you want them alive.

Lucas can be excused for not thinking in terms of electronic documents which could be copied any number of times.  The 70s thought in terms of paper documents so there was only one copy of the plans to find.  Rogue One on the other hand can be faulted. 

SPOILERS FOR ROGUE ONE!

It's very dramatic to have Princess Leia's ship depart the fast-disappearing Rebel flagship but in reality the flagship should have rebroadcast the plans the moment It had the chance.  One set of plans = single point of failure. 

I was annoyed that they chose to have Leia's ship speeding away from the doomed known-Rebel ship.  It's probably more dramatic that way, but there would be no way it could expect to maintain its cover as a diplomatic vessel as Leia maintained in Ep 4 when it is observed leaving the scene.  She should have been close but safely away from the action, receiving the plans and running before the ship was detected beyond the sensor blip when it went to lightspeed. 

For Vader to find her ship that fast after the Rogue One raid, Leia had to be under suspicion for some time.

As with the Rebel flagship, once Leia's ship was outside Imperial detection, its first job would be to create alternate routes for delivering the plans to the Rebel leadership.

[hkmaly 490]

3 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

9/11 took place after a very divisive election with the presidency changing parties and the new guy attempting to set up shop against the backdrop of a recession-slumped economy.  The executive branch was both still struggling to get moving and was very distracted.

It's interesting that the elections AFTER that seem to get worse and worse. Hopefully executive branch don't get distracted so easily now - oh wait.

2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

and worst of all, those bastard interrogators got coffee and he didn't.

Perhaps the torture used to be more necessary in past because nowadays people are spoilt rotten?

2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

My friend had grown up in the increasingly security-minded post-9/11 era whereas I was a 70s kid. George Lucas made his first movie in an era where that sort of security would be considered obsessive and paranoid. The rather lax standards of the Empire fit with the times. I actually consider this a decent example of that very different mindset.

The issue is that autocratic regimes ARE usually more obsessive and paranoid than democratic ones. So, I would consider it more example of resting on their laurels ...

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

Lucas can be excused for not thinking in terms of electronic documents which could be copied any number of times.  The 70s thought in terms of paper documents so there was only one copy of the plans to find.  Rogue One on the other hand can be faulted. 

Hollywood still has major problems with this, as obvious from their stance on copyright violation. Maybe they think the plans have very good copy protection?

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

It's probably more dramatic that way, but there would be no way it could expect to maintain its cover as a diplomatic vessel as Leia maintained in Ep 4 when it is observed leaving the scene. 

On the other hand, that diplomatic vessel cover didn't worked well in episode 4 ...

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

As with the Rebel flagship, once Leia's ship was outside Imperial detection, its first job would be to create alternate routes for delivering the plans to the Rebel leadership.

I would consider viral tactic. EVERY SINGLE REBEL should get his own copy of plans as soon as possible. It was completely irresponsible from R2D2 he didn't copied the plans to C3PO - what if something happened to him? Wait, something DID happened: Jawas captured him (although they captured C3PO as well). Along with bunch of other robots. Who he AGAIN failed to copy the plans to.

[Vorlonagent 442]

26 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

It's interesting that the elections AFTER that seem to get worse and worse. Hopefully executive branch don't get distracted so easily now - oh wait.

Yeah.  It's gotten worse and it has escalated through following election cycles.  I'd say more but that would be fore the politics thread.

28 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

The issue is that autocratic regimes ARE usually more obsessive and paranoid than democratic ones. So, I would consider it more example of resting on their laurels ...

Autocratic regimes also tend to choose leaders for loyalty rather than ability, often relying on family ties.  (Some NSFW language)

34 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Hollywood still has major problems with this, as obvious from their stance on copyright violation. Maybe they think the plans have very good copy protection?

I'm the sure the Rebels would have been stopped by that opening "FBI Warning" screen you can't FF past...  (which come to think of it you may not see in European region disks or tapes, but probably see something similar)

38 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

On the other hand, that diplomatic vessel cover didn't worked well in episode 4 ...

I think we saw an effective cover finally failing.  I think the Empire suspected Leia, but she was too politically delicate to touch.  Remember Leia's quote "the more you tighten your grip, the more systems slip through your fingers".  I'm petty sure she also said the Senate wouldn't stand for her ship being stopped and boarded.  That all says the Empire still needed the voluntary cooperation of planetary governments to rule.  They were likely looking for a reason to arrest her that would pass muster and hadn't found anything that would justify the risk of actually moving against her.  They couldn't just park a star destroyer on her for fun or come down on her like the mafia the way they did Lando in "Empire Strikes back".

Believing she had the stolen Death Star plans would change that calculus.

53 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I would consider viral tactic. EVERY SINGLE REBEL should get his own copy of plans as soon as possible. It was completely irresponsible from R2D2 he didn't copied the plans to C3PO - what if something happened to him? Wait, something DID happened: Jawas captured him (although they captured C3PO as well). Along with bunch of other robots. Who he AGAIN failed to copy the plans to.

maybe Jawas have horrible wifi... 

And to be honest if I were R2D2, I'm not sure *I'd* trust C3PO with a copy of the plans.  K2SO4, on the other hand, I'd copy plans over to without a clock-cycle's hesitation. 

I'm not sure R2D2 could have trusted any of the other droids in the Jawa sandcrawler either.   Once R2D2 left Leia's ship, his decisions to keep the plans to himself seems reasonable even if there are valid second-guesses you can make..

Restraining bolts might also make copying to anyone difficult without the Jawas knowing or impossible without having to ask them.

Nor would I hand out copies of the plans to every rebel.  Not even close.  Just playing the odds, some are going to get caught and some of them are going to break under torture and that creates a data trail pointing back at you.  (Until the star destroyer is in your rearview mirror, maintaining cover would continue to be important)  You do, however, transmit to a small number of reliable couriers to get the plans moving by different routes. 

[hkmaly 490]

35 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

The issue is that autocratic regimes ARE usually more obsessive and paranoid than democratic ones. So, I would consider it more example of resting on their laurels ...

Autocratic regimes also tend to choose leaders for loyalty rather than ability, often relying on family ties.  (Some NSFW language)

Good point.

35 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Hollywood still has major problems with this, as obvious from their stance on copyright violation. Maybe they think the plans have very good copy protection?

I'm the sure the Rebels would have been stopped by that opening "FBI Warning" screen you can't FF past...  (which come to think of it you may not see in European region disks or tapes, but probably see something similar)

I must admit I have no idea. I always played just the main title.

(EDIT: Just tried LOTR:ROTK DVD. That screen is not even video - it's just still image. Without special support in player - which mplayer lacks - it's hard to read it. And it's on title 15. And yes FBI is not mentioned.)

35 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

They were likely looking for a reason to arrest her that would pass muster and hadn't found anything that would justify the risk of actually moving against her.

Exactly. Senate is bureaucracy. Things like Leia's ship speeding away from the doomed known-Rebel ship might NOT pass muster, no matter how obvious it looks for non-politicians.

35 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

And to be honest if I were R2D2, I'm not sure *I'd* trust C3PO with a copy of the plans.

Well if you didn't told him what those are ...

35 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Restraining bolts might also make copying to anyone difficult without the Jawas knowing or impossible without having to ask them.

Hmmm, that makes sense.

35 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

Nor would I hand out copies of the plans to every rebel.  Not even close.  Just playing the odds, some are going to get caught and some of them are going to break under torture and that creates a data trail pointing back at you.  (Until the star destroyer is in your rearview mirror

I meant when already followed. The data trail pointing back at point which Empire already KNOWS contained the plan doesn't need to be hidden. (Did I mentioned I didn't saw the movie?)

BTW, didn't we talked about torture recently?

 

 

[Vorlonagent 442]

47 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I must admit I have no idea. I always played just the main title.

On US disks and tapes a FBI warning comes very first thing when the disk spins upB  before main title, before ads for other movies or disks, before the logo animations for all the production companies.  First. Thing.

47 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Exactly. Senate is bureaucracy. Things like Leia's ship speeding away from the doomed known-Rebel ship might NOT pass muster, no matter how obvious it looks for non-politicians.

That too but what I meant is that roughing up leia's ship would create too many protests in the Senate, weakining the Empire's hold more than bringing in a Rebel spy would strengthen it.  It's still politics though.

47 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Well if you didn't told him what those are ...

Maybe.  The only way would be if I could hack C3P) and put the files on his drive without him knowing with a little program that would pop up and tell him if the need arose.  He'd sell the Rebellion out without even intending to, just by blurting the wrong thing out at the wrong time.

47 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

I meant when already followed. The data trail pointing back at point which Empire already KNOWS contained the plan doesn't need to be hidden. (Did I mentioned I didn't saw the movie?)

There's really no time.  Leia doesn't know her cover has been blown until after she'd been boarded and even then she's still trying to maintain the fiction that the Empire attacked and boarded a diplomatic vessel. 

47 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

BTW, didn't we talked about torture recently?

I seem to remember something... 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

There is also the question of opportunity.  The US entertainment Industry culture has a definite opinion on the matters politic and that can put a thumb on the scales for or against certain perspectives getting screen time.

I tend to think that any propaganda value 24 had was not lasting without reinforcement from other venues.  It may have had an effect, but it was very likely a self-correcting one.

True. As to 24, I think it served mainly as a catalyst. It introduced the notions that torture was 1) effective and 2) justifiable. Other shows would then go on to reinforce this new trope.

4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

It only occurred to me this morning that I might be reflecting some kind of selection bias.  The world could use torture because the world's always used torture, not necessarily because it's even the best tool for the job but because it's what we've always done.

*sigh* Yes. Mind, I actually find it suggestive that interrogation without torture developed right alongside torture itself. It indicates that a significant percentage of investigators throughout history either doubted its efficacy or rejected it on ethical grounds, or both.

4 hours ago, Vorlonagent said:

Lucas can be excused for not thinking in terms of electronic documents which could be copied any number of times.  The 70s thought in terms of paper documents so there was only one copy of the plans to find.  Rogue One on the other hand can be faulted. 

SPOILERS FOR ROGUE ONE!

It's very dramatic to have Princess Leia's ship depart the fast-disappearing Rebel flagship but in reality the flagship should have rebroadcast the plans the moment It had the chance.  One set of plans = single point of failure.

True. Mind you, I still think it can be justified. Those plans were MASSIVE in size. Remember that enormous antenna the archive used as its transmitter? And it still took it, what, a minute to upload the entire set of blueprints. The flagship itself was in the middle of a fast-changing combat situation. In order to rebroadcast, it is not unreasonable to posit that it would need clear space and be able to remain stationary in order to properly aim the transmission. Remember, when Vader received news that the Emperor wanted to speak to him back in Empire Strikes Back, he ordered his Star Destroyer moved free of the asteroid field and into a position where it could get a direct line to Coruscant. And that was just for image and voice.

What becomes a bit harder to justify was that Leia's corvette itself didn't either rebroadcast or create more physical hardcopies of the plans. Even ONE copy might have served the purpose of making the Empire think it had recaptured the stolen plans. Leia keeps the stolen plans on her person, R2 flies off with a copy of them, and whoever captured Leia returns satisfied. Mind you, I do not think Vader would have been fooled, but it might have been a lesser officer doing the capturing.

1 hour ago, Vorlonagent said:

maybe Jawas have horrible wifi... 

That seems entirely reasonable. Everything else they use is secondhand, stolen or salvaged, why not the wifi? o.O

25 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

On US disks and tapes a FBI warning comes very first thing when the disk spins upB  before main title, before ads for other movies or disks, before the logo animations for all the production companies.  First. Thing.

Yeah. My wife and I have this standard spoof of it that we recite in unison every time it appears. "It is bad to do bad things and illegal to do illegal things." >.>

27 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

BTW, didn't we talked about torture recently?

I seem to remember something... 

Eh, it was a long tortuous argument. o.O

[hkmaly 490]

36 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

I must admit I have no idea. I always played just the main title.

On US disks and tapes a FBI warning comes very first thing when the disk spins upB  before main title, before ads for other movies or disks, before the logo animations for all the production companies.  First. Thing.

Did you TRIED? Download mplayer and play the medium with it (there IS windows version somewhere as well).

On tapes, sure. But on DVD, they rely on players cooperating to make it come first and be unskipable. Any player which don't care can skip it just fine. Players on linux tend to not care, as the big companies didn't care about linux so the community wrote their own players ... based on DeCSS.

(Disclaimer: I'm not lawyer, so I can't confirm nor deny if the code is still illegal in US under DMCA.)

36 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

Well if you didn't told him what those are ...

Maybe.  The only way would be if I could hack C3P) and put the files on his drive without him knowing with a little program that would pop up and tell him if the need arose.  He'd sell the Rebellion out without even intending to, just by blurting the wrong thing out at the wrong time.

Yes. You think C3PO will be hard to hack?

36 minutes ago, Vorlonagent said:

There's really no time.  Leia doesn't know her cover has been blown until after she'd been boarded and even then she's still trying to maintain the fiction that the Empire attacked and boarded a diplomatic vessel. 

The previous ship. I DID saw episode 4. I didn't saw the new movie but based on what was said here, there was known rebel ship suspected from having the plans which gave them to Leia. THEY should try to give the plan to everyone.

 

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

Yes, Rogue One *did* cover the whole issue of the files being far too large to be able to propagate easily, but it was very quick so I'm not surprised so many missed it.  It's sort of the equivalent of the plans being on a 32 TB hard drive.  It takes time to transmit or to copy, and you have to have something to copy them *onto* as well.  If everyone's cell phones^* can only hold 32GB, and your 4G connection is 3MPS, then you are rather limited in how many copies you can make.  Even a distributed download would take both time to set up and bandwidth to send across.

^*AnDroids, of course

[The Old Hack 2,448]

24 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

^*AnDroids, of course

Bah, nothing will make me quit using my iPH1-5!

[hkmaly 490]

22 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Yes, Rogue One *did* cover the whole issue of the files being far too large to be able to propagate easily, but it was very quick so I'm not surprised so many missed it.  It's sort of the equivalent of the plans being on a 32 TB hard drive.  It takes time to transmit or to copy, and you have to have something to copy them *onto* as well.  If everyone's cell phones^* can only hold 32GB, and your 4G connection is 3MPS, then you are rather limited in how many copies you can make.  Even a distributed download would take both time to set up and bandwidth to send across.

Hmmm ... considering it's plans for battlestation sized as small moon, it is actually quite believable that it's bigger than common devices ... presumably, at no part of construction anyone even needed to have full copy of plans on single device.

... in fact, maybe the issue with the exhaust port would be addresses more securely if the plans would fit on single device.

Still, you should consider connecting the phone by USB or WiFi.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

Just now, hkmaly said:

Hmmm ... considering it's plans for battlestation sized as small moon, it is actually quite believable that it's bigger than common devices ... presumably, at no part of construction anyone even needed to have full copy of plans on single device.

... in fact, maybe the issue with the exhaust port would be addresses more securely if the plans would fit on single device.

Still, you should consider connecting the phone by USB or WiFi.

Actually Star Wars rather correctly foresaw that computers would eventually become much smaller and faster. Compare it to the Traveller roleplaying game, which still had shipboard computers take up a massive amount of space on technology levels far beyond the one we even now have. Or Star Trek:TOS which had communicators far larger and more clunky than even a modern smartphone.

[CritterKeeper 1,102]

1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

Still, you should consider connecting the phone by USB or WiFi.

Even with a USB 3.0, it would take a long time to copy a file that big.  Plus, I suspect that media large enough to hold it all is hard to come by.  How often do you see a 32TB drive for sale to the general public, let alone how many people have one lying around ready to copy files onto at the drop of a hat?  This was likely some sort of special media used only by archives and central information warehouses, not ships or backwater planets.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

4 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Even with a USB 3.0, it would take a long time to copy a file that big.  Plus, I suspect that media large enough to hold it all is hard to come by.  How often do you see a 32TB drive for sale to the general public, let alone how many people have one lying around ready to copy files onto at the drop of a hat?  This was likely some sort of special media used only by archives and central information warehouses, not ships or backwater planets.

That would also explain why Leia's old blockade runner didn't have a few extra drives that size lying about.

[hkmaly 490]

19 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Actually Star Wars rather correctly foresaw that computers would eventually become much smaller and faster. Compare it to the Traveller roleplaying game, which still had shipboard computers take up a massive amount of space on technology levels far beyond the one we even now have. Or Star Trek:TOS which had communicators far larger and more clunky than even a modern smartphone.

Star Trek: TOS communicators can reach orbit. Which smartphone can do that?

Main computers on ship ARE likely to take a big amount of space, because they will have big capacity AND redundancy for reliability. Of course they wouldn't be only computers available on ship.

19 minutes ago, CritterKeeper said:

Even with a USB 3.0, it would take a long time to copy a file that big.  Plus, I suspect that media large enough to hold it all is hard to come by.  How often do you see a 32TB drive for sale to the general public, let alone how many people have one lying around ready to copy files onto at the drop of a hat?  This was likely some sort of special media used only by archives and central information warehouses, not ships or backwater planets.

Yes ; 32TB disks tend to have better interfaces than USB 3.0. Like SAS. And they seem to be in the "if you need to ask for price, you can't afford it" area.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

5 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

Star Trek: TOS communicators can reach orbit. Which smartphone can do that?

Any. I regularly call from Denmark to a friend of mine in the US on my smartphone. Unless you propose that it is sending its signal through the Earth's crust, it is presumably being bounced off orbiting satellites. But even if you argue that doesn't count, there are models extant that can do that. A mountaineer in the Everest area called his wife in Australia that way. The phone was expensive and the minute rate ruinous, but it could nonetheless do it.

[Pharaoh RutinTutin 1,586]

The big difference is that Federation communicators could contact the Starship in orbit, and any other Federation communicator on the planet without a surface network of transmitters and receivers or a constellation of support satellites.

Unless, as the Starship breaks warp, it launches a network of nearly invisible micro satellites for communications and sensors.

[Don Edwards 548]

42 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Any. I regularly call from Denmark to a friend of mine in the US on my smartphone. Unless you propose that it is sending its signal through the Earth's crust, it is presumably being bounced off orbiting satellites. But even if you argue that doesn't count, there are models extant that can do that. A mountaineer in the Everest area called his wife in Australia that way. The phone was expensive and the minute rate ruinous, but it could nonetheless do it.

Cell phones that can reach orbit are uncommon and the service is frightfully expensive.

Cell phones that can reach the nearest cell tower which is hooked into a network including both satellite links and undersea cables... those are rather more common and affordable.

[The Old Hack 2,448]

 

22 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

The big difference is that Federation communicators could contact the Starship in orbit, and any other Federation communicator on the planet without a surface network of transmitters and receivers or a constellation of support satellites.

Unless, as the Starship breaks warp, it launches a network of nearly invisible micro satellites for communications and sensors.

Big talk from the Pharaoh who had pyramids built to serve as cell towers for his network of obelisks.

[hkmaly 490]

2 hours ago, The Old Hack said:

2 hours ago, hkmaly said:

Star Trek: TOS communicators can reach orbit. Which smartphone can do that?

Any. I regularly call from Denmark to a friend of mine in the US on my smartphone. Unless you propose that it is sending its signal through the Earth's crust, it is presumably being bounced off orbiting satellites. But even if you argue that doesn't count, there are models extant that can do that. A mountaineer in the Everest area called his wife in Australia that way. The phone was expensive and the minute rate ruinous, but it could nonetheless do it.

1 hour ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

The big difference is that Federation communicators could contact the Starship in orbit, and any other Federation communicator on the planet without a surface network of transmitters and receivers or a constellation of support satellites.

Unless, as the Starship breaks warp, it launches a network of nearly invisible micro satellites for communications and sensors.

I think doing it would break Primary directive. And note that one of those networks would need to be installed by HMS Bounty in 1986. I'm pretty sure StarTrek communicators can reach orbit on it's own. Also, they usually transmit on subspace frequencies, not radio, which explains the range.

(Also, Roddenberry knew that the communicators are likely unnecessarily big)

1 hour ago, Don Edwards said:

Cell phones that can reach orbit are uncommon and the service is frightfully expensive.

Satellite phones exists, but they are generally called satellite phones and not cell phones (which would actually be wrong unless they are dual) nor smart phones. And they tend to be bigger (although, not so much, nowadays ...).

 

[The Old Hack 2,448]

1 minute ago, hkmaly said:

Satellite phones exists, but they are generally called satellite phones and not cell phones (which would actually be wrong unless they are dual) nor smart phones. And they tend to be bigger (although, not so much, nowadays ...).

Still much smaller than the clunky devices used in TOS.