Spoiler!!... Mycroft and UH

kzt wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:Now if someone gets a brainstorm and starts recording raw data, and there happens to be a spider drive operating in the vicinity, that signal should pop out to any competent analysis. And they'll be able to detect it at longer distances than the MAlign can because they've got more sensitive detectors.

When will that occur? When the plot requires it, of course.

The issue is that I suspect that pretty much nobody is in fact competent at looking at raw data. There is just too damn much volume and noise. It's like doing raw log analysis of traffic at google. 'Hmm, I get 3.7 million https connections per second. Which one do I want to start with?'

And then again, who really wants to listen to FM103 when she's 235 miles away from the 225 mile radius transmitter.

pappilon wrote:

Peregrinator wrote:Of course, but unless I have read things wrong, the MAlign's Silver Bullet seems to be able to detect the grav pulses that allow those sensors to communicate with one another.

Even the SLN can detect the grav wave pulses from Ghost Rider. Neither side can make sense of the pulses but the gravitic detectors can, indeed hear/feel/whatever them.

Oh, I don't expect the MA to be able to make sense of the grav pulses, but they've shown that they can destroy the FTL comms. It's not out of the question that MAlign ships could deploy a series of Silver Bullets to counteract any Ghost Rider platforms the Manties might deploy.

Peregrinator wrote:Of course, but unless I have read things wrong, the MAlign's Silver Bullet seems to be able to detect the grav pulses that allow those sensors to communicate with one another.

pappilon wrote:Even the SLN can detect the grav wave pulses from Ghost Rider. Neither side can make sense of the pulses but the gravitic detectors can, indeed hear/feel/whatever them.

Peregrinator wrote:Oh, I don't expect the MA to be able to make sense of the grav pulses, but they've shown that they can destroy the FTL comms. It's not out of the question that MAlign ships could deploy a series of Silver Bullets to counteract any Ghost Rider platforms the Manties might deploy.

The only reason the Silver Bullets worked was because the Mycroft platforms where stationary and the bullets had sat in the system for weeks analyzing the FTL pulses to determine the locations. It's more or less a weapon you can only use once in a particular setting since it was specifically designed to target the current setup of Moriarty within a contrived scenario.

Trying to target the much smaller and heavily stealthed Ghost Rider platforms that move around is near impossible and a pointless exercise in absurdum.

Essentially the Silver Bullets are scenario specific glass cannons.

runsforcelery wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:It isn't the FTL comm's grav pulses that intersect with the Spider Drive, it is the faint ripples along the Alpha (or next higher hyper-band) where they intersect. FTL comm receivers are sensitive enough to detect and decode those ripples, and IMHO, Spider Drive should manifest as "static" on FTL comms.

Actually, I expect that they should be filtered out in the process of cleaning up the signal.

Eyup. [/quote]

Which begs the question: how good were the gravitrics in MAlign's almost-as-good-as-the-Manties sensors that had so much trouble spotting spider drives.

kzt wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:Now if someone gets a brainstorm and starts recording raw data, and there happens to be a spider drive operating in the vicinity, that signal should pop out to any competent analysis. And they'll be able to detect it at longer distances than the MAlign can because they've got more sensitive detectors.

When will that occur? When the plot requires it, of course.

The issue is that I suspect that pretty much nobody is in fact competent at looking at raw data. There is just too damn much volume and noise. It's like doing raw log analysis of traffic at google. 'Hmm, I get 3.7 million https connections per second. Which one do I want to start with?'

Who looks at raw data? Astronomers and Information Security specialists, to name two I happen to know of off the top of my head. And both of these are in tsunami-sized lots.

Seriously, the issue isn't the raw data. The issue is capturing the raw data from an incident where there is a spider drive in action.

JohnRoth wrote:
Who looks at raw data? Astronomers and Information Security specialists, to name two I happen to know of off the top of my head. And both of these are in tsunami-sized lots.

Seriously, the issue isn't the raw data. The issue is capturing the raw data from an incident where there is a spider drive in action.

So, I guess the questions are (1) does the computer "AI" filter out all that noise before CIC gets to hear it, or are the Grav Techs filtering it out to refine the data on their own (Is all that raw data coming in being recorded and archived or just dumped after 72 hrs or some other arbitrary time limit?

2) Do the techs or somebody at ONI ever play Security specialist or astronomer and spend days listening to static? I mean RFC Himself says things are actually goin gon in the Honorverse that are so commonplace its just not commented on.

But again there was some comment about Hemphill going over everything available. Still bgs the question is that info available?

pappilon wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:
Who looks at raw data? Astronomers and Information Security specialists, to name two I happen to know of off the top of my head. And both of these are in tsunami-sized lots.

Seriously, the issue isn't the raw data. The issue is capturing the raw data from an incident where there is a spider drive in action.

So, I guess the questions are (1) does the computer "AI" filter out all that noise before CIC gets to hear it, or are the Grav Techs filtering it out to refine the data on their own (Is all that raw data coming in being recorded and archived or just dumped after 72 hrs or some other arbitrary time limit?

2) Do the techs or somebody at ONI ever play Security specialist or astronomer and spend days listening to static? I mean RFC Himself says things are actually goin gon in the Honorverse that are so commonplace its just not commented on.

But again there was some comment about Hemphill going over everything available. Still bgs the question is that info available?

Nobody uses the good old Eyeball Mark I to look at that data unless they're either bored out of their minds for something to do or they're doing manual checks on some piece of equipment - and even then, it would be rare.

"Raw data" is generally digitized the same way music is digitized, and it's analyzed using a lot of different pattern spotting programs.

The filters that are looking for wedge signatures and the filters that are looking for FTL communications will discard anything that doesn't fit their criteria. Generic pattern analyzers will find the Spider Drive signature - if it's there.

Joat42 wrote:The only reason the Silver Bullets worked was because the Mycroft platforms where stationary and the bullets had sat in the system for weeks analyzing the FTL pulses to determine the locations. It's more or less a weapon you can only use once in a particular setting since it was specifically designed to target the current setup of Moriarty within a contrived scenario.

Trying to target the much smaller and heavily stealthed Ghost Rider platforms that move around is near impossible and a pointless exercise in absurdum.

Essentially the Silver Bullets are scenario specific glass cannons.

Well the Silver Bullet deployed at Beowulf was kind of thrown together - I imagine the MAlign can do much better if they spend time and energy on the project.

As far as "impossible" and "absurd" is concerned, one might posit the same thing about the spider drive.

JohnRoth wrote:
Nobody uses the good old Eyeball Mark I to look at that data unless they're either bored out of their minds for something to do or they're doing manual checks on some piece of equipment - and even then, it would be rare.

"Raw data" is generally digitized the same way music is digitized, and it's analyzed using a lot of different pattern spotting programs.

The filters that are looking for wedge signatures and the filters that are looking for FTL communications will discard anything that doesn't fit their criteria. Generic pattern analyzers will find the Spider Drive signature - if it's there.

The Hunt for Red October wrote:The computer would be confused and identify it as a geologic anamoly

So how does the computer actually do what it does with "extraneous" data if there is no macro sifting through this stuff that does not fit its logic constraints? Is it actually saved as raw data or sifted out and just dumped?

Sounds like some bored tech running targeting solutions on all the freighters in orbit around Kornati would have to be listening to data coming in from all the ghost rider platforms for like a month before the actual SLN attack.

pappilon wrote:

The Hunt for Red October wrote:The computer would be confused and identify it as a geologic anamoly

So how does the computer actually do what it does with "extraneous" data if there is no macro sifting through this stuff that does not fit its logic constraints? Is it actually saved as raw data or sifted out and just dumped?

Sounds like some bored tech running targeting solutions on all the freighters in orbit around Kornati would have to be listening to data coming in from all the ghost rider platforms for like a month before the actual SLN attack.

With us, we store everything for a while, until it gets overwritten. We maintain at least year of log data but more like 30 days of raw data (all packets). Because raw data is huge.