From: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Subject: Skunk Works Digest V5 #579 Reply-To: skunk-works-digest@mail.orst.edu Errors-To: skunk-works-digest-owner@mail.orst.edu Precedence: bulk Skunk Works Digest Saturday, 23 December 1995 Volume 05 : Number 579 In this issue: Santa Re:Hughes demonstrates new compact ASARS-2 processor Re: Re:Hughes demonstrates new compact ASARS-2 processor Risks Digest - The Sequel airshow Re: Help with Family Tree Re:Hughes demonstrates new compact ASARS-2 processor Schedule locations ? See the end of the digest for information on subscribing to the skunk-works or skunk-works-digest mailing lists and on how to retrieve back issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: SBinkley@atitech.ca (Scott Binkley) Date: 22 Dec 95 09:41:59 EST Subject: Santa Does Santa exist??????? - -No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are roughly 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified. While most of these are insects, and germs, this does not rule out flying reindeer. - -There are two billion children in the world. But since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle most non-christian children, that reduces the workload to about 15 per cent of the total (roughly 378 million children). At a rate of, say, 3.5 children per household, thats 91.8 million homes. - -Santa haas 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west. Thats 822.6 visits per second. For each eligible house, Santa has 1/1000 of a second to park the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, put presents under the tree, eat the snacks, kiss mommy when availible, back up the chimney, and move on. Assuming each one of these stops are evenly distrubuted around the earth, we are talking about .78 miles per house-a total trip of 75.5 million miles. This means that Santas sliegh moves at 650 miles per second, or 3000 times the speed of sound. The fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves a mere 27.4 miles per second. Assuming each child gets nothing more than a medium sized lego set (two pounds), the sliegh is carrying more than 321,300 tons, not counting the overweight Santa. Conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting flying reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, Santa would need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload (not counting the sleigh), to 353,430 tons, or 4 times the weight of the Queen Elizibeth II ocean liner. 353,000 tons, travilling at 650 miles per second creates enormouse air resistance, which would heat the reindeer to incandescence in the same fashion as spacecraft or meteors entering the atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second EACH. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantly, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating a deafening sonic boom. The entire team would be vaporised in 4.26 thousanths of a second. Santa, meanwhile will be subjected to centifugal forces of 17,500.06 gravities. A Santa of 250 pounds (underestimated) would be pinned to the back of his chair by a fore of 4,315,015 pounds. If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now. BAH HUMBAG ------------------------------ From: ConsLaw@aol.com Date: Fri, 22 Dec 1995 10:20:48 -0500 Subject: Re:Hughes demonstrates new compact ASARS-2 processor Andreas Gehrs-Pahl posted a press release concerning the new Hughes Synthetic aperture Radar System (ASARS-2). The press release said the 95 lb. unit was based on the Intel i860 processor. The i860 was an off-the-shelf state-of-the-art RISC processor about 5 years ago, but unless they've updated the chip more than I'm aware, it is at least 5 years behind the curve. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the i860 a 100 million FLOP (Floating point operation)/second class machine. (Roughly the same as a Pentium or Power PC 601) From a Byte magazine a couple of months back, the latest DEC Alpha, MIPS, and others are running about 700 M FLOP/sec. A year or so ago, Texas instruments was touting a signal processing chip called the MVP with 4 independent RISC signal processors controlled by an on-chip RISC CPU. They were quoting incredible numbers for this chip, though I can't recall exactly what they were. It seems like off-the-shelf technology has exploded to the point where the lead that big money gives the US DOD in electronics is not as significant as it once was. It would not be surprising for any country with one gifted software engineer to come up with a radar system better than anything in the US inventory. Stealth - what stealth? - -Conslaw ------------------------------ From: Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com Date: Fri, 22 Dec 1995 09:03:43 PST Subject: Re: Re:Hughes demonstrates new compact ASARS-2 processor When I was with UFO Systems (circa 1992) they were using the i860 and i960 microprocessors for on the fly image compression and decompression. Chuck PS - I`m off till 1/2/96 - if you want to contact me use the home address csmith9@vivanet.com, thanks. ------------------------------ From: fmarkus@pipeline.com (Frank Markus) Date: Fri, 22 Dec 1995 13:09:22 -0500 Subject: Risks Digest - The Sequel RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Thursday 21 December 1995 Volume 17 : Issue 57 FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks) ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Dec 1995 10:14:42 -0500 (EST) From: iw@all.net (Information Warfare Mailing List) Subject: Re: Naval Battleship takeover - I don't think so. (Long, RISKS-17.55) I thought RISKS readers might be interested in this moderator's note from the IW mailing list, responding to the earlier message in RISKS-17.55. Moderator's Note: Subject: Navy hacked by Air Force I talked to some people I know about the purported IW attack on a battleship by the Air Force, and I thought I would help debunk this story, which my contacts tell me is "wildly inaccurate", but looking at a few facts. Let's start with the title: > War of the microchips: the day a hacker seized control of a US battleship No!!! There are NO active US battleships!!! And there weren't any last September. ... > BY SIMPLY dialing the Internet and entering some well-judged keystrokes, > a young US air force captain opened a potentially devastating new era in > warfare in a secret experiment conducted late last September. His > target was no less than gaining unauthorised control of the US Navy's > Atlantic Fleet. According to my sources this was not "SIMPLY dialing the Internet and entering some well-judged keystrokes". It was a controlled experiment with participation of both Navy and Air Force, and involved a great deal of planning by a large number of people. It was performed using DoD owned and properly keyed cryptographic devices designed to be allowed to communicate with the systems being attacked. > He was armed with nothing other than a shop-bought computer and modem. > He had no special insider knowledge but was known to be a computer > whizzkid, just like the people the Pentagon most want to keep out. 100% wrong - he was an insider, he had a great deal of assistance, he had cryptographic devices and keys, and he had special insider knowledge. If he was a Navy captain, he could not have been all that young. Whizzkids are usually considered teenagers. Anyone know of any teenaged Navy captains? > A few clicks and whirrs were the only signs of activity. And then a > seemingly simple e-mail message entered the target ship's computer > system. ... > targeted ships surrendered control as the codes buried in the e-mail > message multiplied inside the ships' computers. A whole naval battle > group was, in effect, being run down a phone-line. Fortunately, this Not quite. This was not an e-mail sent from some Internet site and e-mail messages did not multiply inside the ships' computers. Furthermore, the total bandwidth of a phone line is nowhere near enough to "run" a naval battle group, or probably even a naval kitchen for that matter. > The exact method of entry remains a classified secret. The first really true part of the story. - ------------------------------ RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Thursday 21 December 1995 Volume 17 : Issue 57 FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks) ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Dec 1995 10:14:42 -0500 (EST) From: iw@all.net (Information Warfare Mailing List) Subject: Re: Naval Battleship takeover - I don't think so. (Long, RISKS-17.55) I thought RISKS readers might be interested in this moderator's note from the IW mailing list, responding to the earlier message in RISKS-17.55. Moderator's Note: Subject: Navy hacked by Air Force I talked to some people I know about the purported IW attack on a battleship by the Air Force, and I thought I would help debunk this story, which my contacts tell me is "wildly inaccurate", but looking at a few facts. Let's start with the title: > War of the microchips: the day a hacker seized control of a US battleship No!!! There are NO active US battleships!!! And there weren't any last September. ... > BY SIMPLY dialing the Internet and entering some well-judged keystrokes, > a young US air force captain opened a potentially devastating new era in > warfare in a secret experiment conducted late last September. His > target was no less than gaining unauthorised control of the US Navy's > Atlantic Fleet. According to my sources this was not "SIMPLY dialing the Internet and entering some well-judged keystrokes". It was a controlled experiment with participation of both Navy and Air Force, and involved a great deal of planning by a large number of people. It was performed using DoD owned and properly keyed cryptographic devices designed to be allowed to communicate with the systems being attacked. > He was armed with nothing other than a shop-bought computer and modem. > He had no special insider knowledge but was known to be a computer > whizzkid, just like the people the Pentagon most want to keep out. 100% wrong - he was an insider, he had a great deal of assistance, he had cryptographic devices and keys, and he had special insider knowledge. If he was a Navy captain, he could not have been all that young. Whizzkids are usually considered teenagers. Anyone know of any teenaged Navy captains? > A few clicks and whirrs were the only signs of activity. And then a > seemingly simple e-mail message entered the target ship's computer > system. ... > targeted ships surrendered control as the codes buried in the e-mail > message multiplied inside the ships' computers. A whole naval battle > group was, in effect, being run down a phone-line. Fortunately, this Not quite. This was not an e-mail sent from some Internet site and e-mail messages did not multiply inside the ships' computers. Furthermore, the total bandwidth of a phone line is nowhere near enough to "run" a naval battle group, or probably even a naval kitchen for that matter. > The exact method of entry remains a classified secret. The first really true part of the story. - ------------------------------ ------------------------------ From: Wei-Jen Su Date: Fri, 22 Dec 1995 14:49:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: airshow Does anyone know where in the internet address I can get the information about airshow in Nort-East zone for 1996??? Or it is still too early to ask... May the Force be with you Su Wei-Jen E-mail: wsu02@barney.poly.edu ------------------------------ From: Mary Shafer Date: Fri, 22 Dec 1995 16:57:35 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Help with Family Tree It cost me 25,000 dollars to buy three 1.4-hour VISTA flights (I pay for the fuel, as usual), so I'd say your figures are as screwed up as the rest of your message. Lockheed Martin Fort Worth supports the VISTA, not MacAir. I was in a meeting with the LMFW manager for VISTA last week. The NT-33 costs the same as the VISTA, actually. I've shelled out enough for it over the years to know. On the other hand, the Lear 25 is a bargain, costing only about 6,700 dollars a flight, with programming and reporting extra, of course. And the Lear 24 is only 3,700 dollars for a 1.5-hr syllabus flight. Regards, Mary Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR shafer@ursa-major.spdcc.com URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html Some days it don't come easy/And some days it don't come hard Some days it don't come at all/And these are the days that never end.... On Mon, 18 Dec 1995 Charles_E._Smith.wbst200@xerox.com wrote: > Yep, > and it gets sillier as time goes on. Example: > The VISTA program is supported by MD, not GD! The use of the Viper > for this research role, when it is obviously the non-optimum choice > stems from USAF intervention. The original ask for the program was > the F18. Besides the blatently obvious advantages for a RSS platform, > it is a more modern design and a little more representative of modern > fighter aircraft. ( Yes, the 18 was designed "in parallel" with the F16, > but it was sent back to design after GD won the contract. Given the > political climate of the day, GD was a shoe anyway. But- the Hornet > was so impressive it was given a new life. Not bad for the A/C that > "lost" the competition!) > Well, the Hornet would have made a wonderful choice, no doubt, but > enter the USAF. Slightly embarassed already about Viper vs. Hornet > issues, they said "WE are the sponsoring agency, YOU WILL USE a > USAF aircraft.) Great! Give us an F15. Nope, too expensive. > > The long and short of all this is you get MD supporting a GD research > plane! > > Now, the taxpayers have mucho dinero into a inflight simulator that- > to date- won`t simulate an F16!!! > > If you really need an answer, the NT33 still works better. > The lastest I`ve seen with the VISTA is a SIMULINK application that is being > designed to help set the gains on the MIMO system. Until they get > such a system in place, its still trial and error to get the flying qualities you > want. Pretty expensive with an F16. It costs about $33K an hour to > operate the VISTA, and the pilots get $2K an hour. > > Chuck > > BTW...........Buffalo Bills, AFC East Champions! ------------------------------ From: larry@ichips.intel.com Date: Fri, 22 Dec 1995 16:40:51 -0800 Subject: Re:Hughes demonstrates new compact ASARS-2 processor ConsLaw@aol.com writes >Andreas Gehrs-Pahl posted a press release concerning the new Hughes Synthetic >aperture Radar System (ASARS-2). The press release said the 95 lb. unit was >based on the Intel i860 processor. The i860 was an off-the-shelf >state-of-the-art RISC processor about 5 years ago, but unless they've updated >the chip more than I'm aware, it is at least 5 years behind the curve. Balancing microarchitecture improvements for performance like register renaming, speculative execution, out of order execution, as well as in-package cache hierarchies, and deep pipelining to take advantage of high clock rates, is where it's all at today. About 1991, we (Intel) decided not to upgrade i860 because Intel chose to focus attention on its Intel Architecture line (ie: referred to by some as X86). The i960 family was also retained and improved for embedded control (indeed, it won the role in the Lockheed ATF as main avionics processor (I think it won a big role in the Comanche as well)). Since then, the usage of these new microarchitecture techniques has improved the Intel Architecture's performance sp much (as measured in Pentium (R) Pro ie: P6) that we can now use it in place of the i860 in new massively parallel processor designs like the new DOE 9000 node machine that is being built (although if you're massively parallel enough, you don't really need high performance per node (human body), it is the custom these days (NCUBE (custom), CRAY (DEC Alpha), Intel (Pentium (R) Pro), ... to use very fast processors per node)). So to answer your question, yes, modern processor implementations are finding their way into the most recent government sponsored applications. >It seems like off-the-shelf technology has exploded to the point where the >lead that big money gives the US DOD in electronics is not as significant as >it once was. Yes. This was recognized back at the beginning of the ATF program. I think that program was the first one where it was pointed out that DoD processor technology was way behind where U.S. commercial technology was. Dod then changed the rules to allow commercial processors into the bidding. I personally think this is GREAT! Chuck Smith writes: >When I was with UFO Systems (circa 1992) they were using the i860 and >i960 microprocessors for on the fly image compression and decompression. Great! I wrote a lot of the microcode in i960! We also have a lot of the old i860 guys here too! Larry ------------------------------ From: JOHN SZALAY Date: Fri, 22 Dec 95 21:25:39 EST Subject: Schedule locations ? > Subj: airshow > > Does anyone know where in the internet address I can get the > information about airshow in Nort-East zone for 1996??? > Or it is still too early to ask... > > Su Wei-Jen > E-mail: wsu02@barney.poly.edu >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> I believe that Andrew Toppan maintains a complete list of the air show schedules, as soon as they become available. at http://www.wpi.edu/~elmer ..................................................................... This is the only one I have seen so far...... 1996 Air Force Thunderbirds schedule ===================================================== March 16-17 Robins Open House Robins AFB GA March 23-24 Florida Int'l Airshow Punta Gorda FL March 30-31 Phoenix 500 Air Races & Fly-in Williams Gateway, Mesa AZ April 6-7 Easter Weekend Vacation April 13-14 MacDill Airfest MacDill AFB FL April 20-21 Azalia Festival Airshow Wilmington NC April 27 Shawfest '96 Shaw AFB SC April 28 Open House Barksdale AFB May 4-5 Sertoma Cajun Air Festival Lafayette LA May 11 Airshow Mountain Home AFB UT May 12 Big Sky Day Malmstrom AFB MT May 18-19 Open House McConnell AFB KS May 25-26 Four Corners Great Western Airshow Durango CO May 29 1996 Graduation USAF Academy CO June 1-2 London Int'l Airshow London, Ontario, Canada June 8 Airshow Latrobe PA June 15 - July 15 European Deployment July 19 Olympic Opening Ceremony Atlanta GA July 24 Airshow Cheyenne WY July 27-28 Festival of Flight Kansas City MO August 4-5 Open House Westover ARB MA August 17 Airshow '96 Kingsport TN August 18 Open House Little Rock AFB AR August 24-25 Airshow Redmond OR August 31-September 2 Sky Parade Jackson MS September 7-8 Northern Illinois Skyfest Rockford IL September 14 Pacific Northwest Int'l Airshow Everett WA September 15 Aerospace Day Fairchild AFB WA September 21-22 Open House McGuire AFB NJ September 28-29 New York State Int'l Airshow Horseheads NY October 6 Open House Kirtland AFB NM October 7 Air Power Expo '96 Cannon AFB NM October 12-13 Int'l Airshow '96 Fort Worth TX October 19 Open House Altus AFB OK October 20 Open House Vance AFB OK October 26-27 Air Expo '96 Travis AFB CA November 2-3 Louisiana National Airshow Lake Charles LA November 9 Miami Airshow Homestead AFB FL November 10 Open House Pope AFB NC This is the approved schedule. It is subject to revision between now until the final show of the season is flown. We will endeavor to place updates as quickly as they occur. The Thunderbirds thank you. -FKS- ------------------------------ End of Skunk Works Digest V5 #579 ********************************* To subscribe to skunk-works-digest, send the command: subscribe skunk-works-digest in the body of a message to "majordomo@mail.orst.edu". If you want to subscribe something other than the account the mail is coming from, such as a local redistribution list, then append that address to the "subscribe" command; for example, to subscribe "local-skunk-works": subscribe skunk-works-digest local-skunk-works@your.domain.net To unsubscribe, send mail to the same address, with the command: unsubscribe skunk-works-digest in the body. 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