Bug

[eschatonic]

Blame any errors herein on the not-an-aop (it won't let me read what I've written) but:  thanks, Tylik, for putting it into words- a golf star from Bear, yes! I, too, have a feeling that the big is more internal disruption... I've been thinking along the lines of the anomaly resembling, not a parasite, but a cancer- disruption of integrity of pattern? The software analogy is good.
?speaking of parasites, even if I maintain that the anomaly is not- anyone know the (un)likelyhood of getting a tapeworm in midwest USA? And would it show up on an ultrasound?

If some has eaten uncooked fish (or cold processed pickled fish) it is possible.
http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/volunteer/janfeb06/raw.html
There are also other sorts.

I don't have a good answer for the ultrasound question.  Yes, it might very well show up on an ultrasound, but I don't know for sure.  Quite a few other things show up on an ultrasound pointed in the right direction, so... *sigh*

"quite a few things"??  sounds like there's a story here ...

[kayjayoh]

I've been puzzling over the logistics of the faraday cage. I mean, she can still see the television? What's it made out of? How fine a mesh? Because I can't think of anything conductive enough that's clear, right off... (Ooo, oo! I mean, one of the guys in my lab works with conductive diamond. But... um, I don't think it works that way. That'd be so cool, though.) I've always like the mesh faraday cages best, myself, though there's the whole wavelength limitation thing. (My rig has a faraday cage made out of heavy copper foil, complete, of course, with verdigris splashes where salt water has hit it.)

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but isn't a Faraday Cage, ya know, a cage? And therefore see-throughable? I was visualising a meshy enclosure, such as this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tesla1000/148653427/

[txanne]

"quite a few things"??  sounds like there's a story here ...

It sounds like an SU story, is what it sounds like!

[tylik]

Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but isn't a Faraday Cage, ya know, a cage? And therefore see-throughable? I was visualising a meshy enclosure, such as this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tesla1000/148653427/

Mm. Cages can be faraday cages, but not all faraday cages involve meshwork.

Basically, the wavelengths blocked are proportional to the holes in the mesh (I'm blanking on the precise relationship - it's about 1/2 one way or another, and I think that you need holes twice the size of the wavelength if you want it to pass through reliably.) So, radio frequency has wavelength of about 1mm to tens of kilometers, IIRC. And the higher frequencies, with the smaller wavelengths, are used *heavily*. So it's gotta be a pretty fine mesh.

Would pictures help?

It's effectiveness is also related to the conductivity of the material. Which makes the transparent aluminum question even more involved (well, and hysterically funny - I hope I have a chance to mention this to the chem e guys) - aluminum isn't as conductive as copper, say, but it's not equally conductive in all states. I've only run into references to conductive transparent in nanomaterials, but it's not really my area.

[eschatonic]

Here's a picture of some copper mesh used to make a faraday cage.  No specs were included, so I don't know what frequencies it would block, but it might give the rest of us some ideas about mesh size.
http://preparednesspro.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/faraday-cage-mesh-close-up.jpg

...this photo is from an article about a civilization-destroying EMP pulse. Info on faraday cages seems to be evenly distributed between Look What I Made For Science Class and Tinfoil Hat Required.

[tylik]

That's pretty much exactly the mesh on the chem e rig (which I think I might arrange to inherit... and then mount full spectrum lights above.)

[miminnehaha]

Somewhere between Look What I Made for Science Class and Tinfoil Hat Required... My fandom has a quasi-location.

[tylik]

Just for amusement value (and because the new phone* has a surprisingly awesome camera) a couple of faraday cages - though open on one side in these cases.

My Rig:

http://pics.livejournal.com/tylik/pic/0001g5yx

Don't you want to come work with me?

The "Chem E" Rig:

http://pics.livejournal.com/tylik/pic/0001hqxe

Hm... actually, this isn't nearly as nice as I'd thought, looking more closely at it. Still might be reworking just for the light advantages, though.

And, just so you really can get a feel for the lab, bonus: Some more hi-tech equipment

http://pics.livejournal.com/tylik/pic/0001khe3

^{* When I was in Seattle, some of the bits I'd painstakingly soldered on to my disintegrating old phone came loose. Again. So, while I was trying to find a hot-air rework station so I could do the repairs (and it turned out that a hacker space about three blocks from where I was staying had one to rent for cheap - Yay, Metrix!) a friend offerred me an unlocked Android Dev Phone one. ('cause he works at Google, and they'd just given everyone the Nexus one. Still, I have the best friends.) Except it turns out he'd accepted an ota update, and it wasn't fully unlocked anymore. Um, but I've fixed that, and completely rebuilt the software, and now it's all open source, too. Whee. It's odd - I love the new phone, it is most awesome, and now that I've flattened and rebuilt it it's mine. But it's software mine, not hardware mine, and it's currently the only such device I own that I haven't cracked the case on. Hmmm....}

[miminnehaha]

Tylik: Transparent aluminum.

this is completely irrelevant, but I thought you were upgrading her gold star.  (snorting)- February!

[tylik]

Oh, oh, oh!

Okay, I would probably do a lot for a transparent aluminum star.

[ebony14]

Wrenching ourselves back onto topic briefly and considering Hafs indentification of the Anomaly as a "bug" in her internal code, perhaps it could be fixed with a "security patch" or a "rewrite" of the buggy code. Working from the computer tech angle, the Bug would've showed up during a software upgrade (i.e., Hafs breakthrough during Season One). So, following the mythology, could it be fixed? What would the effect? Since the Bug seems pretty well meshed with Hafidha's active personality, I suspect that it might not be fixable without major changes to what makes her Hafidha, with a worst-case scenario being something like a lobotomy, without the messy surgery. Moreover, since the software that's buggy is her, she doesn't have perspective to remove it, unless you could convince her brain to develop its own security patch or antivirus equivalent (Ever try to install an antivirus or anti-malware software on an already-infected computer? Not easy.).

Hafidha's problem is that she's the only one who can do what she does. If there was another beta out there, or someone with that kind of perspective on the human "software," then she might have a chance. When a virus gets introduced to a computer system, there are dozens of computer specialists who deal with that sort of thing with tools available to kill the damn thing. Hafs is the equivalent of the only workstation linked to a hostile Internet.

Although ... given that we have an episode called "Wireless Girl" coming up, there might be another like her out there. Who knows? (Well, the PTBs, obviously, but you know what I mean.)

[Edmund Schweppe]

Wrenching ourselves back onto topic briefly and considering Hafs indentification of the Anomaly as a "bug" in her internal code, perhaps it could be fixed with a "security patch" or a "rewrite" of the buggy code. Working from the computer tech angle, the Bug would've showed up during a software upgrade (i.e., Hafs breakthrough during Season One).

Frankly, I strongly doubt that the stressor was her breakthrough. I think the likely bet was Erik-the-Notaboy's death.

(I shall be mightily irked with Hafidha if it turns out she caught a virus from some skanky porn site. She, of all people, should have known better.)

So, following the mythology, could it be fixed? What would the effect? Since the Bug seems pretty well meshed with Hafidha's active personality, I suspect that it might not be fixable without major changes to what makes her Hafidha, with a worst-case scenario being something like a lobotomy, without the messy surgery. Moreover, since the software that's buggy is her, she doesn't have perspective to remove it, unless you could convince her brain to develop its own security patch or antivirus equivalent (Ever try to install an antivirus or anti-malware software on an already-infected computer? Not easy.).

Hafidha's problem is that she's the only one who can do what she does. If there was another beta out there, or someone with that kind of perspective on the human "software," then she might have a chance. When a virus gets introduced to a computer system, there are dozens of computer specialists who deal with that sort of thing with tools available to kill the damn thing. Hafs is the equivalent of the only workstation linked to a hostile Internet.

Not to mention that there are also lots of different chunks of hardware one can use to test software patches prior to release. Unlike the one and only Hafidha.

I fear that Hafidha is going to have to teach herself how to uninstall - or at least work around - her Bug. And that ain't gonna be easy.

Although ... given that we have an episode called "Wireless Girl" coming up, there might be another like her out there. Who knows? (Well, the PTBs, obviously, but you know what I mean.)

I'm guessing that "Wireless Girl" is the episode in which Hafidha resolves the Bug one way or the other. Which makes me go "Waaah!" at the thought that we don't get to see it until the April after next.

[CJ]

If the thing/entity/? that Hafidha is calling Bug operates according to her mythology, it should be possible to remove it. Difficult, potentially fatal, but theoretically possible. We know that the way the anomability manifests is tied to the individual's mythology, and limited by that mythology. Which can change when the individual's mythology changes. But is it possible to get rid of the anomaly via the individual's mythology?

Eddie's mythology was that his left hand was the thing doing the damage, that only his left hand was super-strong. Nobody appears to think that he's not a gamma anymore because he cut that hand off. But what does Eddie think? And how does that manifest? Is the anomaly trying to find another way to manifest? Trying to force Eddie's mythology to shift?

That sort of thing seems like it might be a clue towards the nature of the anomaly itself.

[DavidG]

've been intrigued a bit by the choice appellation regarding the Bug. Because people have pretty much universally adopted the model that Hafs is trapped in her head with the Bug, and refer to them as separate entities.

Which may very well be accurate.

But... Hafs is a geek. Bug could be like a bug in the code, or a bug in a design. Maybe the bug isn't something that moved in with her. Maybe the bug is made out of her. (By whatever agency.)

Hafs is more than a geek, she's a hacker in the original, MIT, sense. Her mythology has to develop out of that, out of her. In the past couple of years the border between Hafs and her computers and the 'net in general have been eroding. She's become massively parallel, multiple processes going on at any one time, only some of them apparent to anyone talking to her meat interface*. We can't separate the concepts of Hafs and computer; AI may be the best parallel we have, but it's an intelligence that's migrated to become a fusion of neurons and machine, rather than starting solely in the machine. When viewed within that mythology, Bug is effectively a daemon, an independent process within her brain, that's running at sufficiently high priority and firewalled in such a way that she can't shut it down and it can occasionally shut her out. Where this starts to get interesting is in wondering whether the origin of Bug comes from an outside agency, or is an emergent property of her own system -- was she virused, or did she evolve**. The positive here is that her own mythology should provide for OS upgrades and new security software, so it's possible that Bug could eventually find itself (herself?) overwritten in a way that may not be possible with other Gammas.

*There's a viable classic cyberpunk analogy here, with the erosion of humanity as the borders between meat and machine become less and less distinct, but I don't think she's really started to relocate into the hardware, yet -- it's still an annex rather than home. OTOH I'm not sure that cutting her off from that wouldn't be a trauma equivalent to losing limbs. Her suicide attempts may be, at least in part, an aspect of the grieving process as much as they are an aspect of Bug trying to reach out and hurt someone. 

** And this raises the potential of the Anomaly being a cyberspace artefact rather than a physical one, it's not as if you can get far from a power source, a wifi signal or a cellphone tower in the CONUS....

[DavidG]

I've been puzzling over the logistics of the faraday cage. I mean, she can still see the television? What's it made out of? How fine a mesh? Because I can't think of anything conductive enough that's clear, right off...

AIUI, the cockpit canopies of stealth aircraft are turned into RF reflectors*, and therefore effectively Faraday cages, by an ultrathin** gold coating. So there's no need to presume a mesh, just a coating on the outside.

* because a cockpit contains all sorts of horribly unstealthy corner reflectors.

** low numbers of atoms in thickness.