Just because warheads have tended to win over armor in the past doen't necessarily mean that it will remain so in the electronic/information realm. (As an example, economies of scale have traditionally favored giant companies, but for the first time in history small companies and voluntary groups are able to be more efficient than large corporations and compete happily with them on the net.) Other than hardening your machines against magnetic pulse, and backing up data onto optical media (CDROMs) I don't see much that you can do. But rest assured that if EMPing people's equipment becomes a popular naughty-type pasttime, it will only be a passing phenomenon. Any idiot who did such a thing is effectively putting up a giant (electromagnetic) sign over his head when he uses it, that would enable people to pinpoint him instantly. And you can expect that there would only be a few fringe twits that would defend his use of such a thing. Basically he would be locked up and made an example of. The only totally safe solution is to move to optical computing. :-) Best wishes, - Miriam At 09:02 14/09/99 -0400, Dan Ritter wrote: >At 12:08 PM 19990914 +0200, KPJ wrote: >>If the radio pulse is large enough it can pass through a thin tin foil. > >If the pulse is large enough it can *arc* through your tin foil. > >This discussion is essentially silly. In the battle between armor and >warheads, warheads have always won. > >Let's look at what you're concerned about: >1. loss of function, temporary and permanent >2. loss of data, temporary and permanent > >For (1), there's nothing to be done short which fits into the wearable >size/weight requirements. All we can hope for is that the hardware is either >insured or cheap (or both). > >For (2), the solution is simple. Backup early and often and offsite. E.G. >do your backups over your wireless link; use a Coda-style filesystem; dump >complete backups whenever you have a physical proximity to a trusted >computer or encrypted high-speed network link to same. > >The one sensible idea to come out of this is "leave the computer at home, >do your work through speech recognition and synthesis over a cellphone". >How many years away from this are we? My guess is 5ish. > >-dsr- > >-- >Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of >"subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" to>Wear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of. -- Subcription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" to
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