It's a lot of reading, but the EMP commission report seems to be the most thorough review of the possible impacts of EMP.
I read "One Second After" which paints the end-of-the-world scenario that the OP posits, and then I read the EMP Commission report. My impression was that the actual impact would be awful, but not as bad as the book proposes. The premise of "One Second After" is that almost everything is totally destroyed... all electronics, power, telecommunications, and modern transportation. In reality, only a subset would be affected. For example, from the EMP Commission report:
an EMP attack would disrupt or damage a functionally significant fraction of the electronic circuits in the Nation’s civilian telecommunications systems in the geographic region exposed to EMP.
Note that it didn't say *all* telecommunications would be damaged. In fact, it later says that there will still be enough surviving infrastructure to overload the circuits from people making calls. Even just a few operational phone lines would go a long way to facilitating emergency response across communities.
However, the report rightly notes that all our infrastructure is interrelated and damage in one infrastructure area can impact others. Notably:
The Commission has concluded that the electrical system within the NERC region so disrupted will collapse with near certainty. [...] This loss is very large geographically and restoration is very likely to be beyond short-term emergency backup generators and batteries.
Which means even the parts of the telecommunications infrastructure that survive would be without power to keep it going.
EMP may not send us back to the dark ages, but it is a very serious threat. Also keep in mind that the report was written in 2008, and our dependence on electronics has only increased since then.
You can sort through the 100's of responses and attempt to summarize, or you can just buy this e-book from GigaOm. I'm not affiliated with the author, but I do like GigaOm, and their Cord Cutter series has been really good
To answer the question, the best way to watch TV is AT&T's U-Verse: nice responsive UI, good channel selection, whole home DVR. But if you want the best bang for the buck, here's what I did:
- Roku with Netflix. Added Amazon for one-off purchases. Also have a Hulu Plus subscription, but haven't found it useful yet. - Antenna for over the air -- better HD than cable and quite a few channels. Surprisingly, this little antennae worked really well for me:
This may seem funny, but there is more truth to this than you think... just not the way you expect:
1) There was an actual company that wanted to charge gamers for special network routes that would get you lower ping times. You know what happened to them? No one wanted the product and they shut down. The free market at work.
2) A very similar scenario to what you describe can happen if net neutrality is taken to the extreme... without the ability to tamp down some of the most extreme consumers of bandwidth, you will likely see bandwidth caps and tiering come into play. Sure, it won't be site-specific, but I hope you like paying by the bit.
Bill Snyder writes a long post, with meticulous footnotes, criticizing certain AT&T ads, but not once does he link to the actual AT&T ads! Where are the ads so we can judge for ourselves?
I read the article and was amazed at the great use of technology, that we could beam video and aircraft commands across the world to do surveillance and attacks. But then I saw a special on PBS last night where our ground troops can't even talk with the Afghans. The interpreter didn't speak good english, and his face was blurred out -- no doubt due to fear for his life and his family's safety. So, I wondered, why can't we use the same UAV technology to facilitate better translation?
Simply, give ground troops a video camera, mic, and speaker. Video and audio would be relayed to a translator sitting anywhere in the world. The translator could translate from Afghan to english, speaking into the troops' earpiece. English to Afghan would be broadcast over the speaker the troop carries. It's not nearly as personal, but I'd bet we'd get better and more translators. They can work anywhere and don't have to fear being shot or their family being threatened.
It's pretty special that there's tons of people out there just waiting around to make money off of this kind of thing.
I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but it actually is pretty special that these drug companies had the profit motivation to develop a drug like this. You have to ask yourself if these drugs would've been developed under a socialized drug development system. Would government researchers have been funded to develop these drugs? I can imagine that politicians would have found "better" things to spend taxpayer money on than the "remote" chance of a pandemic flu.
"Interesting" is the right moderation here... As in "Interesting that someone would be so close-minded as to require prospective employees to be on a social networking site." I realize this is Slashdot, but if you'd step away from your computer for a little bit, you'd realize there are plenty of ways to socialize without being on a social network. Such as, I dunno, hanging out with your friends, belonging to your local church, volunteering with civic organizations, participating in a local sports league, etc. In fact those in-person activities are a better indication of someone's ability to get along with co-workers than being on Facebook.
A collecting agency would divvy up the money according to artists' popularity on P2P sites, just as ASCAP and BMI pay songwriters for broadcasts and live performances of their work.
Would you consider that a hack or stealing? He's obviously circumventing the security of the system by using stolen credentials. Yet, isn't this a "publicly accessible URL"?
Item #1: a Symbol CS1504 handheld barcode scanner (around $100). No significant instructions included or software beyond drivers, and it comes in a plain brown box. You must not be old enough. Slashdotters remember the best free handheld barcode scanner was the CueCat. Radio Shack gave it away for free in some dot-com mania over scanning catalog entries and bringing up web pages. That is, until somone reverse engineered the barcode encoding and realized they could scan any barcode.
This is the only commment that gets it. With apologies to Sun, the network will be the computer -- or in this case the communications company's network will be your media hub -- not the home office PC.
Even more than the price comparison, the big deal here is that Apple has gotten a big content provider to agree to a different distribution method than broadcast TV. Up until now, you were lucky to get the content providers to agree to video-on-demand for cable subscribers (only HBO and a few other cable outlets signed up). If ABC is going to offer shows for sale via Internet download, this could be a watershed event.
OK, I know it's bad form to respond to my own post, but reading more about this "survey" really raises my ire about the willingness of the media to report junk surveys. This survey was all over the local news yesterday, mostly because my state (Missouri) was the chief time waster. Even the governor had to respond to the media saying that we Missourians aren't a bunch of lazy workers.
But then if you look at the "methodology" of this survey (see bottom), you'll see there wasn't a shred of science in this. Not only was the audience surveyed limited to AOL users, Survey.com users, and HR professionals, but the "data was analyzed by Salary.com's team of Certified Compensation Professionals." What the hell is a "Certified Compensation Professional" and what do they know about statistics and surveys?
The media needs to be a little more responsible in writing news stories based on something as weak as an online survey that had no scientific sampling or margin of error associated with it. If anything this proves that reporters are the lazy workers here.
This article is a fine example of why most blogging is not journalism. As many posters have noted, it is common practice in many countries to ask for your destination while in the country. They've also noted that the policy is usually customs-related, not airline-related.
Any decent journalist would have done research and discovered these facts. The journalist probably would have also contacted American Airlines, the TSA, and US Customs for comment.
As it is, this "article" is simply a one-sided rant.
But neither Verizon or SBC will be specific thus far about what they'll offer right out of the starting gate.
Hmmm... perhaps the reporter didn't go to the SBC homepage and click "Project Lightspeed". Lots of information there, including a nifty flash demo of what they are planning for IP television service.
I would love to see a study comparing how english is read to how chinese is read by native speakers
Actually, a closely releated study was published today in Nature saying "that a different area of the brain is affected in dyslexic Chinese children who read the character-based language than in Western youngsters who use an alphabet language."
The story summary is incorrect. Direct from Google, there will be "a total offering of 19,605,052 shares." 14.1 million is just the part that Google is selling. The rest is coming from existing shareholders that are looking to cash some of their shares in. The story I submitted at least got that part right:(
Here's more of what Google sent to registered bidders:
Please be advised that the prospectus for the offering of Google's Class A
common stock has been amended to change the estimated offering price range
and the number of shares to be sold in the offering. The offering price
is now expected to be between $85 and $95 per share. As originally
planned, Google expects to sell 14,142,135 shares of Class A common stock
in the offering. However, in view of this new price range, the selling
shareholders are reducing the shares they expect to sell to 5,462,917
shares, yielding a total offering of 19,605,052 shares. In addition, the
selling shareholders have granted the underwriters the right to purchase
up to an additional 2,940,757 shares of Class A common stock at the
initial public offering price to cover over-allotments.
- Airship means an engine-driven lighter-than-air aircraft that can be steered.
- Balloon means a lighter-than-air aircraft that is not engine driven, and that sustains flight through the use of either gas buoyancy or an airborne heater.
Slashdot Mirror
... unlike thermostats, there is really currently nothing like it
How about Birdi, which has quite a few more features than Nest Protect:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/birdi
They were on stage with AT&T last week, and AT&T has a big investment in home automation (Digital Life).
It's a lot of reading, but the EMP commission report seems to be the most thorough review of the possible impacts of EMP.
I read "One Second After" which paints the end-of-the-world scenario that the OP posits, and then I read the EMP Commission report. My impression was that the actual impact would be awful, but not as bad as the book proposes. The premise of "One Second After" is that almost everything is totally destroyed... all electronics, power, telecommunications, and modern transportation. In reality, only a subset would be affected. For example, from the EMP Commission report:
Note that it didn't say *all* telecommunications would be damaged. In fact, it later says that there will still be enough surviving infrastructure to overload the circuits from people making calls. Even just a few operational phone lines would go a long way to facilitating emergency response across communities.
However, the report rightly notes that all our infrastructure is interrelated and damage in one infrastructure area can impact others. Notably:
Which means even the parts of the telecommunications infrastructure that survive would be without power to keep it going.
EMP may not send us back to the dark ages, but it is a very serious threat. Also keep in mind that the report was written in 2008, and our dependence on electronics has only increased since then.
You can sort through the 100's of responses and attempt to summarize, or you can just buy this e-book from GigaOm. I'm not affiliated with the author, but I do like GigaOm, and their Cord Cutter series has been really good
Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable
Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable (link with referral code if so inclined)
To answer the question, the best way to watch TV is AT&T's U-Verse: nice responsive UI, good channel selection, whole home DVR. But if you want the best bang for the buck, here's what I did:
- Roku with Netflix. Added Amazon for one-off purchases. Also have a Hulu Plus subscription, but haven't found it useful yet.
- Antenna for over the air -- better HD than cable and quite a few channels. Surprisingly, this little antennae worked really well for me:
Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna
Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna (link with referral code if so inclined)
Those comments were frightening... particularly the one from CarHauler...
This may seem funny, but there is more truth to this than you think... just not the way you expect:
1) There was an actual company that wanted to charge gamers for special network routes that would get you lower ping times. You know what happened to them? No one wanted the product and they shut down. The free market at work.
2) A very similar scenario to what you describe can happen if net neutrality is taken to the extreme... without the ability to tamp down some of the most extreme consumers of bandwidth, you will likely see bandwidth caps and tiering come into play. Sure, it won't be site-specific, but I hope you like paying by the bit.
Bill Snyder writes a long post, with meticulous footnotes, criticizing certain AT&T ads, but not once does he link to the actual AT&T ads! Where are the ads so we can judge for ourselves?
have not read TFA but anything the teleco's HATE must not be all that bad...
Hmmm... commenter doesn't RTFA and makes judgment based on previous bias, and gets moderated +5 Insightful? Wow.
I read the article and was amazed at the great use of technology, that we could beam video and aircraft commands across the world to do surveillance and attacks. But then I saw a special on PBS last night where our ground troops can't even talk with the Afghans. The interpreter didn't speak good english, and his face was blurred out -- no doubt due to fear for his life and his family's safety. So, I wondered, why can't we use the same UAV technology to facilitate better translation?
Simply, give ground troops a video camera, mic, and speaker. Video and audio would be relayed to a translator sitting anywhere in the world. The translator could translate from Afghan to english, speaking into the troops' earpiece. English to Afghan would be broadcast over the speaker the troop carries. It's not nearly as personal, but I'd bet we'd get better and more translators. They can work anywhere and don't have to fear being shot or their family being threatened.
It's pretty special that there's tons of people out there just waiting around to make money off of this kind of thing.
I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but it actually is pretty special that these drug companies had the profit motivation to develop a drug like this. You have to ask yourself if these drugs would've been developed under a socialized drug development system. Would government researchers have been funded to develop these drugs? I can imagine that politicians would have found "better" things to spend taxpayer money on than the "remote" chance of a pandemic flu.
"Interesting" is the right moderation here... As in "Interesting that someone would be so close-minded as to require prospective employees to be on a social networking site." I realize this is Slashdot, but if you'd step away from your computer for a little bit, you'd realize there are plenty of ways to socialize without being on a social network. Such as, I dunno, hanging out with your friends, belonging to your local church, volunteering with civic organizations, participating in a local sports league, etc. In fact those in-person activities are a better indication of someone's ability to get along with co-workers than being on Facebook.
From TFA:
Maybe you need to re-read the definition of prior art.
World of Warcraft release date: November 23, 2004 (source)
Ragnarok release date: August 31, 2002 (source)
Priston Tale release date: 2001 (source)
Patent Application date: August 1, 2000
I just hope no one moderates the parent post as "Informative".
This is the only commment that gets it. With apologies to Sun, the network will be the computer -- or in this case the communications company's network will be your media hub -- not the home office PC.
Wish I had my mod points today.
Even more than the price comparison, the big deal here is that Apple has gotten a big content provider to agree to a different distribution method than broadcast TV. Up until now, you were lucky to get the content providers to agree to video-on-demand for cable subscribers (only HBO and a few other cable outlets signed up). If ABC is going to offer shows for sale via Internet download, this could be a watershed event.
OK, I know it's bad form to respond to my own post, but reading more about this "survey" really raises my ire about the willingness of the media to report junk surveys. This survey was all over the local news yesterday, mostly because my state (Missouri) was the chief time waster. Even the governor had to respond to the media saying that we Missourians aren't a bunch of lazy workers.
But then if you look at the "methodology" of this survey (see bottom), you'll see there wasn't a shred of science in this. Not only was the audience surveyed limited to AOL users, Survey.com users, and HR professionals, but the "data was analyzed by Salary.com's team of Certified Compensation Professionals." What the hell is a "Certified Compensation Professional" and what do they know about statistics and surveys?
The media needs to be a little more responsible in writing news stories based on something as weak as an online survey that had no scientific sampling or margin of error associated with it. If anything this proves that reporters are the lazy workers here.
If you want the truth behind this "survey", just look at the who participated in the survey:
"Populations surveyed included AOL users, Salary.com Salary Wizard users and corporate human resource professionals."
This article is a fine example of why most blogging is not journalism. As many posters have noted, it is common practice in many countries to ask for your destination while in the country. They've also noted that the policy is usually customs-related, not airline-related.
Any decent journalist would have done research and discovered these facts. The journalist probably would have also contacted American Airlines, the TSA, and US Customs for comment.
As it is, this "article" is simply a one-sided rant.
But neither Verizon or SBC will be specific thus far about what they'll offer right out of the starting gate.
Hmmm... perhaps the reporter didn't go to the SBC homepage and click "Project Lightspeed". Lots of information there, including a nifty flash demo of what they are planning for IP television service.
Actually, a closely releated study was published today in Nature saying "that a different area of the brain is affected in dyslexic Chinese children who read the character-based language than in Western youngsters who use an alphabet language."
More information in this Globe and Mail article and from Nature itself.
Here's more of what Google sent to registered bidders:
Please be advised that the prospectus for the offering of Google's Class A common stock has been amended to change the estimated offering price range and the number of shares to be sold in the offering. The offering price is now expected to be between $85 and $95 per share. As originally planned, Google expects to sell 14,142,135 shares of Class A common stock in the offering. However, in view of this new price range, the selling shareholders are reducing the shares they expect to sell to 5,462,917 shares, yielding a total offering of 19,605,052 shares. In addition, the selling shareholders have granted the underwriters the right to purchase up to an additional 2,940,757 shares of Class A common stock at the initial public offering price to cover over-allotments.
From the Federal Aviation Regulations:
- Airship means an engine-driven lighter-than-air aircraft that can be steered.
- Balloon means a lighter-than-air aircraft that is not engine driven, and that sustains flight through the use of either gas buoyancy or an airborne heater.
Unfortunately, they don't define blimp.