| From: | Thomas Frost <frost@******.UMD.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Camera advancements, orbital bombardment |
| Date: | Fri, 3 Dec 1993 09:49:53 -0500 |
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Two ideas I had recently, thought I'd throw them out there.
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Content-Description: Panoramic security cameras
This is based on something I saw on a computer-graphics special on
PBS. You take an ordinary CCD camera but put a panoramic lens on it,
so it's seeing just about an entire hemisphere of view. You use
computer processing at the viewing end to select a section of the view
and map it to an ordinary monitor.
What you end up with, essentially, is a camera that can be moved,
panned, zoomed, etc. pretty much instantaneously. There's no moving
parts, just the processing, which (running on the hardware of the
mid-21st century) is blazingly fast.
Other advantages: you can split the signal and process it two or more
different ways, giving you two virtual cameras in one spot; there's no
way to tell if the camera is looking at you or not; and the camera
isn't any more expensive (in fact, given that there's no moving parts,
it's probably cheaper), although the end processor might be a tad
pricey, or maybe not.
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Content-Description: corporate orbital bombardment?
How far are corporations allowed to go in protecting their turf? I
can envision orbiting platforms with hundreds of crowbar-sized
projectiles with minimal guidance systems, programmed to home in on a
particular laser signature. These things would be launched and
deorbited on command and impact the ground maybe forty minutes later
at a few miles per second, homing in on a laser light signal provided
by some rent-a-cop's "paint gun". (This was the late "Project Thor"
in the SDI projects; see "Footfall" by Niven and Pournelle for a good
description of the effects.)
It's probably a bit more than the governments would let the zaibatsus
have (or the zaibatsus would let each other have), but would
governments have it? Would a corp have it clandestinely?
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Spoken: Thomas (Frost) | "The rats eat the cats,
Smart: frost@******.umd.edu | the cats eat the rats,
Not smart: umiacs!frost | and we get the skins for free!"
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