[TML] [Merchant Shipping] Some ideas I came up with to make merchant shipping more interesing

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 4/17/08 3:10 AM, "Tom B" <kaladorn at gmail.com> wrote:

> But the people bent on doing damage have not gone away. If the option was
> easy to use, they'd still use it. In other parts of the world, they've used
> suicide bombings many times, even as better and better counter tactics are
> in place. Why? Because it works well enough.
> 
> Since I have not seen a North American repeat of the 9/11 style of airborne
> attack, I must conclude that either a) things have got harder to accomplish
> (for the variety of reasons I cited) or b) they've created a perception in
> the attacker's minds that things have gotten harder to accomplish (thus
> effectively achieving the same thing in the same ways as in point a).
> 
> Or would you care to suggest these foes would abandon a perfectly viable and
> easy tactic if it was still such? That fails the test of logic.

I would say they know we claim to be watching planes closer.  Whether
effective watching or not, there are other easy ways to attack that they
know we aren't watching (and essentially can't).  And if you want to make a
big splash, you don't just repeat the same thing a bit bigger.  People
realize now, more than before, that flying is inherently risky.  But how
many have really thought about other means we could be attacked.

For that matter, option c: why do they even *need* to attack again.  The
population is *already* terrorized.  Our own government has been making sure
of that.  Without any further attacks by them, we are already dismantling
our own Constitution, under the claim of Security, and with the complicity
of all 3 branches of govt. and a significant fraction of the population.

They wanted to change our society?  Looks like they succeeded.

> Can you tell me where in the canon they discuss licensing requirements? They
> discuss what skill levels a ship requires in places, but I am unaware
> (unless it is somewhere in GT) of anyplace they've explicitly discussed
> licensing criteria for spacefaring professionals.

I can't recall anything explicit either.  But it's there implicitly.  Any
yahoo with the required stats and a good enlistment roll can get the
training.  Once you muster out, you are allowed to fly ships.

> And oddly, you can make converts, but you can just as easily make double
> agents. It's a risky business.

I don't know about "just as easily".  And zealotry is hard to fake in the
face of close scrutiny.

>> Nice idea, but it requires that info to be spread to all systems, and done
>> so faster than spacers travel around.  And any digital signature assigned
>> could be duplicated, especially if it is on record at every spaceport.
> 
> Depending on your Imperial commerce model, that's not at all surprising. The
> cargo tables from various sources seem to suggest shipping records is a
> perfectly valid use of tonnage. If so, you can get a lot of records in a ton
> if they are electronic.

Records, yes.  But the records need to get there before the persons records.
If they both com in on the same ship, that's a bit suspect.  And we recently
discussed shortcomings of the X-boat system.  :)

> And yes, every digital system can be hacked. Eventually. And until they
> release the next version. And yet, for all that, our society is persisting
> with electronic-laden passports, RFID tags on everything in site, cellular
> phone systems that can be abused, and cash cards and credit cards that are
> using insufficiently strong crypto. I'm not quite sure why the Imperium
> would be that different. But for all that there are these risks in the
> modern day, we still function as a society, occasionally catch e-crooks, and
> manage to handle the failings. That doesn't seem to stop us coming up with
> new and doomed-to-some-sort-of-failure systems regularly.
> 
> If you can believe in any form of interstellar commerce and credit and in
> superconducting power storage and conjectural power plants, I'm not sure why
> you can't conceive of crypto strong enough to make this sort of scheme work?
> It doesn't seem like any more of a leap. I think it could work in the
> absence of crypto of that strength, but certainly that crypto is no more
> unlikely than many other common assumptions.

Actually, based on certain mathematical things, I *do* believe the
encryption is not likely to make a huge leap.

>> (Yes, I'm cynical.  I had a Top Secret clearance in the US Army, in
>> Berlin's
>> comm center.  I know what happens even in "secure" facilities.)
> 
> And Top Secret clearances aren't all that uncommon. <whistles...> :0)

I know, and it wasn't meant as bragging.  But at the facility I worked at
(see links below), every bag, book, etc. was supposed to be examined at
entry and exit for stuff you shouldn't be carrying in or out.  For 9 months,
I walked in and out of the facility with a book in my cargo pocket, and
never once stopped to have them check it.  That means I could have carried
in or out *anything* in my cargo pockets, and nobody would have known.
There are a lot of secret things that would fit there.

Also, I was there at the start of Desert Storm.  The facility sits on top of
a wooded hill in the middle of Berlin.  The woods around are a public German
park.  Anybody who want to could have crept up through the woods to the
fence, which only had, maybe, 5 yards of clear ground outside.  That had
some of us supplementing the gate guards.  There was 1 American MP and 1
German civilian.  The German carried a pistol, but there was no evidence of
ammo.  He might have had a magazine in a pocket.  They started putting 2 of
us at a time out there, wearing kevlar vest and carrying an M16.  Unloaded,
with 1 mags of 10 rounds in out LBE belts.

Surveiling us would have been easy with the woods, and 1 guys could have
taken out the 4 of us before we knew what was happening (especially if he
started with the real MP).  And this was where all significant American,
British, and French communications encryption and transmission occurred.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teufelsberg>
<http://www.ccc.de/teufelsberg/>