Breakaways and the Military Industrial Complex-Oh My! Eisenhower's Farewell Address-1961

a reply to: Bedlam

I would have figured even 20 years ago we would have had something more advanced than the Space Shuttle.

I mean, spaceships are just submarines in space after all

a reply to: engineercutout

Your asked:

If truthful in his warnings, was he correct? Is the Military Industrial Complex out of control? Have they acquired unwarranted influence, as he warned? Were the social-technological elites that he warned of really a threat to progress as he warned, or was he chasing smoke monsters? Have these social-technological elites succeeded in subverting progress, or are we chasing smoke monsters? Was/is there a secret space program, and what about technology in general? Is it suppressed?

Yes, he was correct. The MIC may be out of control in that it has undue influence over policy makers to pursue aims necessary to its continued profit. (I'll summarize later)

The social-technological elites are at the same time masters of progress, and regulators of that progress and will be the controllers of whatever progress they see fit to promote. They are the "elites" that operate behind the scenes to manipulate both political and policy outcomes. They have co-opted the media and what had been more or less free and fair elections. They're tentacles reach deep into everything, from the chip set in your new refrigerator that reports back to them data on your usage, the chip set in your car that tells them where it is, where you drive and how fast you go, to the chip set that monitors your Face Book account that resides in the NSA.

I believe there's been a secret space program in place since 1946. Is technology suppressed? Obviously some is.

One of the things I believe that Eisenhower had become aware of is the fragmentation of the US government into various black box departments over which the President, and Congress have no control over whatsoever. These black budget/black box "agencies" are, in fact the "shadow government". I've seen one report to the effect that Eisenhower knew he'd lost control of some of these agencies and actually threatened some operation that if they didn't cough up information, he'd lead the Army in to seize a base. (I can't recall which one).

Today, INMHO, the "Cheney/Bush/Kissinger/Rockefeller" group on one side and the Clinton/Jordan/Ford Foundation group on the other side are all Council of Foreign Relations controlled political operatives that are basically stooges for the Elites "Shadow Government".

Watch CNN, "they report...they decide".

a reply to: Bedlam

You mean like if things go wrong in mid voyage they suddenly are subject to insane inertial loads and end up a pile of goop. Or irradiated by massive gamma ray exposure.

Also, not sure if what I saw is capable of extra atmospheric travel. But I still hold to my statement that every engineer working on whatever I saw should get if they haven't already a 1 million dollar bonus or more. It was that impressive to me.

originally posted by: MystikMushroom
a reply to: Bedlam

I would have figured even 20 years ago we would have had something more advanced than the Space Shuttle.

I mean, spaceships are just submarines in space after all

Well, why waste a lot of time on it? It's just for show.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Bedlam

You mean like if things go wrong in mid voyage they suddenly are subject to insane inertial loads and end up a pile of goop. Or irradiated by massive gamma ray exposure.

Shear from time rate gradients. It'll turn you into borscht every time.

a reply to: Bedlam

They could at least make the inside of the ISS look less ghetto. I built "spaceships" in my back yard with left over electrical parts that looked neater/tighter as a kid. The thing looks like it's going to fall apart at any minute.

a reply to: Bedlam

time gradients to which force???? Sounds framedragged

a reply to: MystikMushroom

The Mir was a lot worse by the looks of it. It took nards of steel to stay up in that thing.

The design specs for Mir were awful - the power supply in Mir was all over the place and just butt-awful in terms of noise, dropouts and transients, the interfaces were lousy and overall it was a pita to design for. We did a processor blade for STS that had to meet both specs. In the STS they were using it for *ahem* "ground imagery processing and storage", and we had to include some really nifty hardware high speed floating point stuff from Harris to assist in image munching (IIRC, this was before Intel added SIMD to the Pentium).

In the Mir, at first it was supposed to be part of the data recording system, but after they ran the thing through tests, they couldn't kill it with anything within the spec, so they ported the Mir control system to it and were running the Mir off of our board, at least until the State department found out they were running "single point of failure" systems using our spy camera processor ground image server, which wasn't supposed to be used in mission critical service - that's a whole other level of MSFC quals that we hadn't had to deal with. I guess they were worried we'd kill a bunch of Roosians and wreck their expensive toy so they threw a hissy fit.

The Rooskis were VERY happy with it, as it was about 10 times better than what they had and they hadn't had a single event during the time they'd been running with it, not to mention it being a lot faster, and asked if they could waive the quals, were told no and that was that. Then they came to us and tried to get some under the table but we were told 'oh hell no', so we didn't.

And hopefully Jim O doesn't know about the ground image server program or this was TMI.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Bedlam

time gradients to which force???? Sounds framedragged

Why do you think you see "heat monkeys" under old UFOs hovering at ground level?

a reply to: Bedlam

Sorta don't know what a heat monkey is. IS that like the shimmering mirage effect underneath the UFO's. Where they sorta look slightly warped?

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Bedlam

Sorta don't know what a heat monkey is. IS that like the shimmering mirage effect underneath the UFO's. Where they sorta look slightly warped?

Sorry, it's an Appalachianism. Yes. The ripply mirage thing you see over hot tarmac at the right angle.

eta: ha - found an old discussion regarding 'what do you call that' - linky

a reply to: Bedlam

Cool thread. I learned something just there. SO these heat monkeys. Caused by optical warping of light...ie a mirage. now what is warping this light. Heat? Gravity? Frame dragged EM?

Can't talk about it, that's cool too. IM me if ya think I've bitten the woo shrooms and am way off base trippn.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
now what is warping this light.

Unstable time rate differentials. It's not good to be close underneath early era UFOs.

a reply to: Bedlam

missing time in the observer? Still what force is being time offset by the doohickey inside the machine is the enigma. wonder if you can make a deneuralizer with the tech and then use it on your girlfriend every time you say something you know you will regret.

a reply to: Bedlam

Ungh. I'm reminded of that movie...was it "Armageddon" or "Deep Impact" where they had to pick up the Russian off of MIR and he had to beat the space station with a wrench to get it working again while mumbling, "Russian space station..."

a reply to: Bedlam

As a proud holder of a gagged patent or three, you're not going to be seeing this as the generic joe schmo inventor at the house. If you'd like, I can go into detail but if you google ats for gagged patent bedlam you'll find where I spoke about it in years gone by. Generally, the quickest way to buy a patent gag is to design a component for a nuclear weapon or a process that produces nuclear material, because ALL of those end up gagged under "born secret". The next quickest is to patent a use for a material, process or device that's currently classified. And you see the bulk of the other gagged patents fall under that category. Only about 500 filings a year are gagged for single inventor/small business. And while the stats aren't available for 'why', I'd suspect it's like me, they worked for the sorts of places that tend to give you ideas gagged under those two categories.

I mostly cited this law to point out the framework that would be in place to empower any "homework eating MIB's". If the lone inventor became the target of this law we'd know about it because...well we'd likely never hear about it. If said inventor already had "too much publicity", well then, who knows what measures might be undertaken? Probably nothing too drastic, usually, as there seem to be plenty of control mechanisms built in to the system that could be activated. Whether Ogle or Tucker were threats to someone or not, SEC intervention did keep them from reaching the marketplace.

That's a lobby war thing. Unfortunately, Ford, Chevrolet, Nissan et al have more bribe money than Mr Musk. But no one's "suppressing his invention", they're making him play the game the way they do, and he doesn't want to. He's free to make all the electric cars he wants as long as he has dealerships.

Your reply strikes to the heart of the subject matter: "we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." Looks like with Tesla, the "game" is structured to benefit the big boys and squeeze out new entrants to the marketplace. Captive public policy, anyone?

And if you peel away the movie parts, I think you're going to find that Tucker was a bit of a fraud.


Looks like he od'd to me.

You can dismiss my anecdotes if you like, but it won't change the fact that these types of things happen. As I said earlier, stuff gets stepped on. You've asked me who and how, and so I've provided a few examples. I really could go on and on citing examples, but I'll hold off for now.

Which sort of creative use? Back to gags, or are you unhappy that you have to demonstrate a working model if it's "over unity"?

It helps if what you're trying to patent works. So many that whine about this are blatantly trying to patent over-unity/perpetual motion machines and can't pony up a demo. However, a lot of them weasel word their patents enough to get a patent issued, but it's still total bs, patent or no. Which is why you don't see them build examples. Hell, if they could get it to work in the first place, they wouldn't have to obfuscate it.

Hold on there, not so fast!(gently tugs briefly on brake lever) I'm driving this choo-choo and we're not turning onto the woo-woo track for at least another three miles. Need your woo fix?(blows whistle: WOO WOOOOOH!!!) There. I know, I know, sharks with frickin' laser beams. We'll get there, just be patient, but not until I make my point that this is a real-life occurence. Actual companies actually use the patent laws creatively, I'm not talking about the Invention Secrecy Act or "over-unity" devices. Here's one paper on it:

Better, Faster, Cheaper - Later: What Happens When Technologies Are Suppressed

To what extent is it possible to see tell-tale signs of suppression? Some of the fingerprints may include: refusals to license, creation of patent pools and patent "thickets," takeovers of competitors, and the filing of baseless suits for patent infringement. These are not necessarily predictors of suppression, but they often coexist along with nonused patents. Inventions may be suppressed as a result of sound business judgment' or for anticompetitive reasons-to gain a monopoly, fix prices, or otherwise restrain trade. In this paper, we are concerned with patented technologies that have been suppressed by the owner or licensee in order to stifle competition.

We focus specifically on the intentional nonuse and nondiffusion of patented technologies. All nonuse is intentional, but when it is combined with a refusal to license for anticompetitive reasons, the result is suppression. How does this occur? Suppression may result from a "fencing" patent on an improvement to the product of a competitor and held in nonuse to restrict him to an inferior technology or to more effectively compete when the basic patent expires. Suppression may also result from obtaining patents on close substitutes, which achieve the same result as an existing innovation, thereby "blocking" competitors from development. Exclusive license agreements may also lead to suppression.

The study of technology suppression is particularly challenging because management science and strategic R&D literature do not readily acknowledge its existence. Moreover, the courts have been unwilling to view patent suppression as unlawful. Two additional factors complicate the understanding and resolution of technology suppression: (1)a characterization of patents as a form of private property rather than a publicly-granted privilege, and (2)a conceptual incompatibility between the purposes behind intellectual property and antitrust law.

This is just a taste. Pharmaceutical companies have developed creative use of the patent laws into one of their own special black arts , and it can get pretty convoluted in the application of such methods, but it's there, and really happening.

ETA: Please link your thread in a reply so that it can be accessed from this thread if you are able, I'd like to give it a look and I'll bet other readers would as well.

originally posted by: engineercutout
a reply to: Bedlam
If the lone inventor became the target of this law we'd know about it because...well we'd likely never hear about it. If said inventor already had "too much publicity", well then, who knows what measures might be undertaken?

Seems a bit hard to prove. 500 lone inventors (or small businesses) "become the target of this law" annually, unless that's changed the last few years. Why have a law if you're just going to assassinate hundreds of people a year for some vague notion that they're now "too dangerous"?

There are lots of other ways to find out what inventors are up to. That's one reason we have the SBIR program.

Looks like with Tesla, the "game" is structured to benefit the big boys and squeeze out new entrants to the marketplace. Captive public policy, anyone?

Or a good idea...I really don't know if I'd want a car with no dealerships in my state.

Here's one paper on it:

To what extent is it possible to see tell-tale signs of suppression? Some of the fingerprints may include: refusals to license, creation of patent pools and patent "thickets," takeovers of competitors, and the filing of baseless suits for patent infringement. These are not necessarily predictors of suppression, but they often coexist along with nonused patents. Inventions may be suppressed as a result of sound business judgment' or for anticompetitive reasons-to gain a monopoly, fix prices, or otherwise restrain trade. In this paper, we are concerned with patented technologies that have been suppressed by the owner or licensee in order to stifle competition.

Have you read this paper you linked? The quote above - they're whinging about a patent holder who doesn't license their patent. Well, it's up to the inventor, eh? Takeovers of competitors - happens all the time. You get companies who buy others just for their patent portfolio. That's the way patents work. The patent holder assigns the rights to the patent to another party. As they say, they're whinging about patented tech that has been "suppressed" by the inventor. Well, it's the inventor's to do with as they please, no?

It's not talking about some evil doer blocking the patent, they're carping about someone patenting something and squatting on it. To which I'd reply - it's theirs to do with as they please, they're the inventor.

ETA: Please link your thread in a reply so that it can be accessed from this thread if you are able, I'd like to give it a look and I'll bet other readers would as well.

Which, the old gag threads?

a reply to: BASSPLYR

Taking Cosmology and reading Bedlam Sci-fi simultaneously certainly throws some words around one's brain. The name did have to come from somewhere

Be prepared for the day when we are all in the military from the day we are born till the day we die, and even in death we may just keep on serving the military.

a reply to: FormOfTheLord

Wait, is that a final fantasy sword?

This is a future I want no part of.