It probably will be. It's mounted over the airbag and is mounted in such a way that it'll probably impact the driver edge-on, which means the first thing it encounters will be soft tissue, the narrow profile at impact ensures a clean entry into the soft tissue, and the precious glass screen will probably not be the area of initial impact. If it's a clean headshot, the unit might be slightly banged up from passing through the skull, but it's unlikely to have been seriously damaged even so. With any luck at all, the unit will simply pass through the cranium and land safely in the back seat, so you don't need to actually watch the life leave the driver's eyes as you thank them for the loot. You can just mumble some vague thanks, it's the polite thing to do.
About your only real risk is moisture damage from the blood and brains that will no doubt be covering the unit. Get to it quickly and use the person's shirt or the car's upholstery to wipe the worst of it off, and it should be good to go!
True, but is this a worse risk than the knitting needles my 8-year-old uses while knitting to pass the time on our long drives, or the books she reads, or the sets of sharpened pencils, or any of the other activities she has? Anything loose in a car that is either pointy or heavy can become a deadly projectile in an accident. And, yet, we still keep loose items in cars. I don't see the iPad as any more risky than a hardcover copy of McClosky's "One Morning In Maine". It weighs about the same and has the same basic shape.
In fact, from a safety perspective, my daughter's seat area is FULL of loose objects on any long drive, so she can have several activities handy to keep her busy. On the other hand, an iPad would probably provide her many hours of entertainment for the risk of a single loose object, and she'd probably be happy enough with an iPod that weighs just a few ounces.
But I'll stick with the creative activities for her, even so.
If I recall correctly, the health indexes this summer in Boston (I live in Maine, and we had many of the same issues here) were linked to high ozone and a heat wave. However, we never got out of the "Unhealthy" range, and if I remember we only spent a couple of days in the "Unhealthy" range (151-200) and I don't think we got near the high end of that scale. We did have a generous handful of "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups" (101-150) days. I'm not aware of ANY US incidents where we ever broke 200, and certainly not anywhere near that in Boston or surrounds this summer.
China considers anything under 250 to be "Moderately Polluted". Beijing starts canceling outdoor games warnings at 240. In other words, at the scale way beyond where the US is recommending everyone stay indoors and buy tarps and duct tape, Beijing is talking about maybe curtailing a few of the most exerting outdoor activities.
The scale the embassy is using ends at 500, or "Hazardous", because no one ever designed the scale with a pollutant level beyond 500 in real air in mind (though Maylasia has the dubious honor of having the highest-ever recorded index at 839 in 2007).
They need a new classification to describe something worse than "Hazardous". I'm thinking "soy sauce" would be good. Or "good luck finding oxygen in this shit". Or maybe just "At least we aren't in Maylasia".
You know what pisses me off the most at airports? Not hightened security, but the lack of electric outlets and free (or cheap) wifi. That aggravates me to no end.
Hey, at over a million bucks a line plus 4 employees due to federal security mandates, there's no money left for the airport authorities to put in public electrical outlets or offer free WiFi. If you want entertainment, sit somewhere you can watch the theater your billions of dollars of tax and airline dollars are paying for - security theater.
A cat and a dog are both fed, housed, kept warm, and loved.
The dog looks at all of this and, in acknowledgment of the fact that all that unimaginable power is applied to making him comfortable, decides that the owners must be gods and he must worship them.
The cat looks at all of this and, in acknowledgment of the fact that all that unimaginable power is applied to making him comfortable, decides that he must be a god and the owners are worshiping him.
1. You're assuming that the 911 dispatcher isn't going to treat this like the last 50 accidental calls with hangup he's received in the last 2 hours. The dispatcher is going to try and call back. So you'd better be damned fast turning your phone off or silencing it.
2. You're assuming your cell phone can send any sort of location data with the call, other than the nearest tower which might be a half mile away or more. If you're inside the bank, the GPS is obviously useless. So the dispatcher knows someone within a one-mile radius called and is not answering the reply call, so even if he assumes you have a real problem, but he has no idea exactly where you are. Your phone might triangulate a little better eventually once he's contacted the phone company and asked for current triangulation data, or maybe not.
3. You're assuming that the dispatcher can tell at all what is going on based on a hangup even if he can figure out it's a real call and where you are. He might send an ambulance where what you need is an armed response, or vice versa. More likely he's going to send a beat cop out to "check the area and look for anything suspicious", and the beat cop is going to give the area a cursory drive-through.
If you really want to do something like this, make the call, turn your handset volume down, and hide the phone somewhere that it can hear what is going on. That way, the dispatcher can hear the inside of the bank and can probably at least figure some clue of what's going on and maybe even figure out where if you mention it ("Here at the 5th street branch of key bank, we're told to cooperate with robbers, so just tell me what you want me to do") but that's risky. It might be a useful continuous feed of information, but you run the risk of the phone losing signal or being discovered.
But, even so, compare that to a text. "3 armed robbers key bank maple ave" or "armed intruder 123 anywhere st, i am hiding in basement". You've sent enough information so the dispatchers know exactly where you are and what sort of response they have to send. You've fed them lots of valuable information and you haven't had to say a word.
Who says you're not interacting? It's not like texting can't possibly be two-way. Every text message is sent with the reply-to phone number. If there's not enough information, the dispatcher can reply if necessary. When enough information is received, the dispatcher can reply with "help is on the way". You know your message has been received.
Other than the oft-mentioned "because you could be overheard", there's another good reason to use text as opposed to voice. If you are in an area of very marginal signal and/or have very low batteries, a text message uses the minimum tower time to send the data. You only need a few seconds of very minimal signal to send a text message. Establishing a voice call and maintaining it through even a brief conversation requires a stable signal for at least a good handful of seconds. Sending a text only requires a single handshake signal with the tower.
If I was somewhere that signal was impossible but I knew of an area nearby that had signal, I could even pre-type the message with all the details I need to send and set it up for delivery, then get the phone to somewhere signal is available. Even if the phone is destroyed in the process, as long as it passes through an area of even marginal signal for a few seconds on the way to its demise, the message stands a solid chance of getting through. Think of that terrible flick "panic room", for example. She could get signal by sliding her phone down that tube, but couldn't use the phone when it was down the tube. Type text message, hit SEND, slide phone down tube, message sent.
It's not ideal, and I'm not saying these are going to be common cases, and certainly a call is better in 99% of circumstances (especially if the phone sends GPS location to 911 on a call, since it generally won't on a text). But it certainly seems like a nice backup option to have.
And let's not forget impairments. I have several friends who are deaf who carry cell phones. Their phones are on "no voice" plans, because voice is useless to them - they use text for mobile communications. If they had an emergency, texting is what they'd want to do anyway, since they'd have no way of knowing their message went through unless they received a reply text. If "911" put them on hold, they'd have no way of knowing it, and they'd be talking to a recording thinking their message was going through.
I've heard that argument and I can't refute it. I don't know the science well enough. I have objections to backscatter machines for many other reasons, not the least of which is their status as yet another gewgaw to waste millions of dollars on for security theater.
What I was refuting was GP's apparent point that cosmic radiation is not increased when flying. It most certainly is. I don't know whether it represents more or less of a radiation exposure risk than backscatter or milliwave machines, but it's an increased dosage of a form of radiation we know is dangerous. Not a huge increase, but an increase nonetheless.
Backscatter machines, by the way, are supposed to give a maximum dosage of about.005 millirems of radiation, or somewhere between 1/1000 to 1/300 of the radiation received from a cross-country flight, with most manufacturers claiming a much lower number. This is assuming they are adjusted properly and have been maintained properly, so there are risks of poorly-maintained or operated machines. But let's take double the approved maximum (0.010 mrem) as a number, or 1/500 to 1/150.
As I understand it, you absorb far more than 1% of cosmic radiation you are exposed to, so even if your body absorbed 100% of the backscatter radiation it was exposed to, the dosage would appear to be significantly higher for the flight.
But I'm not a radiation scientist, so I could be talking complete bullshit except for the numbers, which come from authoritative sources.
This is also true at Bangor International Airport in Maine (USA). The airport is so small they only have two gates, so they only have one security line. You only go through security just before you board, so you can arrive in the gate area 15 minutes before your flight and still get on your plane easily. If you aren't checking luggage and have checked in to your flight online, it's literally a walk from parking straight to security. I will occasionally drive the extra hour to get to Bangor (I live closer to Portland) because I more than make up for that hour in not having to worry about possible delays in security causing me to miss my flight.
However, such a system scales poorly, especially if you want X-ray machines for handheld luggage and backscatter machines for nekkid scanning and metal detectors. That's probably around a million dollars for each line you want to offer people, plus at least four trained officers (X-ray operator, backscatter operator, groper, and metal detector operator/guy who directs you to the groping station) and an airport with 20 gates realistically needs fewer than 5 lines. Put a full scan system at each gate, and you're talking about a really, really significant increase to the costs. It's cheaper to put one set of lines somewhere near the entrance to the flight area and declare anything beyond that a "safe zone".
The machines at Bangor sit idle for at least 45 minutes out of every hour. That system is only used there because, well, there's only the need for one scanning station. The TSA officers apparently work in some of the shops at the airport or take a lot of breaks or something because when no flights are active, they are nowhere to be found. It's wonderfully convenient, but expensive as hell. It's like having your own dedicated modem in the days of dial-up. It's far cheaper to pool the resources at the airport level and keep each machine operating at full capacity most of the time, and of course it's even cheaper to do what they do - not have enough lines to accommodate their peak traffic (another valid analogy from the old dial-up days).
Of course, such a system as they have in Bangor is very secure and far less inconvenient. It'd be damned near impossible to smuggle anything into Bangor's "secure zone" because the only thing in there is a few chairs, a ticket scanning station, and a door. All of it is glass-enclosed so you can clearly see passengers preparing to board from anywhere in the common area, but it's solidly sealed and there are no businesses and restaurants and hordes of employees and supplies and food being carted in there daily as in most airports (where if you really wanted to, you'd get a job with a restaurant and arrange to smuggle stuff in with the food and supplies shipments). It's less inconvenient because every passenger in line is there for a specific flight, so if you get held up in security you at least won't miss your flight. The attendants can see you in the security line and won't close the doors until the security line shuts down, which ordinarily happens about 5 minutes before boarding closes. If you get in line more than 5 minutes before your flight is set to take off, it's TSA's problem to get you processed before the flight takes off.
But it's all security theatre since the airlines armored the doors anyway, so the only thing you can do is take down an plane, and planes are not a terribly desirable target for the effort involved.
Oh you mean the ozone that protects everyone here on earth is suddenly gone when flying?
No, the ozone isn't gone, but you are flying partly outside of its protection. At ground level, the entire atmosphere offers you maximum protection from cosmic radiation. The higher you go, the more you'll get, and aircraft aluminum has little to no shielding effect.
The "ozone layer" is not something like a Star Trek shield that offers 100% protection from everything until it suddenly vanishes. Protection from cosmic radiation is offered because the Earth has a very thick atmosphere and most (not all) cosmic radiation is absorbed into that atmosphere at various levels. While it is true that the actual ozone layer offers a lot of the protection, the rest of the atmosphere plays a significant role, and the higher up you go the more your exposure to radiation.
Fortunately, even at 50,000 feet, it's not a massive megadose of radiation, but if you fly a whole lot (like, say, a pilot), it's something you need to be aware of.
I have heard lots of people saying that but absolutely no science to back that statement up.
According to the EPA, radiation exposure on a cross-country flight is 2-5 millirem(1). The World Health Organization agrees with that number (2). The FAA has a web page dedicated to the levels of exposure for their pilots (3). NASA is even more concerned about the radiation exposure on polar flights, where protection is even weaker (4).
If you mistrust scientists and want to see the science for yourself, carry a radiation dosimeter on your next flight (provided you buy one that measures in millirem or lower) and test it for yourself.
Depends on your scale and/or materials choice. You could build a series of medium-sized boats loosely linked together so they could ride waves as a flexible "mat", yet the width of the "mat" would prevent any of the boats from capsizing. If you got caught in a severe storm, it might be a rough ride, but you'd be better off than your landlocked brethren as long as you built it pretty solidly.
Or you could build one massively huge rigid ship that would be big enough to simply ignore any waves under 100 feet high, if you have the materials. Built it massively wide and long, or even make it a circular shape with something along the edges to break up moderate-sized waves (a series of partial breakwaters, for example, akin to a barrier reef), and it'll be pretty immune to capsizing.
And, of course, it's not an island, it's a ship. A ship floating on water, not fixed to a given location like an island (unless you want it that way, in which case the tropics would be a poor choice). Give it some maneuverability and it can just, you know, maneuver. Leave the tropical zone during storm season, or move out of a storm's way (or at least try to avoid the worst of it) if one is nearby. You don't have to control the weather, just head to where the weather is nicer.
It gets worse. You can't have a patch cable longer than 3 inches per new regulations. They have to check you for illegally-long patch cables, and the "new grope" isn't going to cut it, nor is the Play{boy|girl} Scanner. I'd suggest bringing your own disposable gloves, just in case budget cuts are dictating too-aggressive recycling.
And, no, you can't have more than three ounces of liquid, remember? "The number of the counting shall be three and three shall be the number of the counting, thou mayest not proceedest to four. Five is right out."
The good news is you can probably hollow out a laptop battery and remove all that perfectly legal explosive Thermite-like Lithium-Ion stuff and replace it with illegal contraband Mountain Dew. But think of the CHILDREN, man!
So the accepted method of dealing with letters such as these of filing them in the trash is justified.
It all depends. A second or third letter might prompt your ISP to cut your connection, so if you've received one of these letters "in error" (1) it's probably best to contact your ISP immediately and ensure that they know you did nothing, and have them check your usage logs to make sure there's no evidence your connection might have been used, in case it was without your consent. Might also help to change your WiFi password and make sure you're running WPA2/AES as a precaution.
If you actually are pirating materials, then please do go ahead and throw the letter away. In fact, you should return it with a death threat just to be sure they are aware of your contempt for them. I hate the current state of copyright law as much as pirates do, but I also see pirates as part of the problem and not part of the solution. So, please, be as blatantly self-righteous about it as possible. The more actual pirates we can kick off the Internet, the more likely it is that the grown-ups can have rational discussions about reasonable copyright laws and reasonable enforcement.
(1) I use the term "in error" loosely since knowingly sending letters to people who have obviously not engaged in piracy is pretty far from an "error"
I wonder what it feels like to get hit by a pixel.
Depends on the resolution, and of course the refresh rate which determines velocity. Set a 24" monitor to 1x1 resolution with a 100MHz refresh rate, and it hurts like hell. Set it ag 32,700 x 27,000, not so much, unless you get hit by all of the pixels or the pixel you are hit by is at a very high refresh rate.
AT&T does this with their "MicroCell", which costs about $150.
And, yeah, it sucks that they are basically loading the call data onto your Internet connection. On the other hand, most repeaters cost in the $200-300 range for good, working ones (I use a Z-Boost at the moment). So if it works for you, it's cheaper than a repeater and you don't have to run an antenna outside. So it's not all bad.
There's also a service for about $20 a month that gives you unlimited minutes as long as those minutes are on your MicroCell. Again, this should technically be free or at least a crapload cheaper since it's your bandwidth you are using. On the other hand, it's fairly competitive with getting, say, a Vonage line to supplement your cell phone, and you get the bonus of one phone number without the complexity of a Google Voice account.
My Z-Boost is starting to act up a bit, and I'm pondering the purchase of a MicroCell.
I have a Wilson unit that has a magnetic antenna that fits on the roof and a very small antenna that goes inside the car. There's no need to put the phone in a special spot, the unit basically ensures that any cell phone located inside the car gets signal as long as there's enough signal reaching the outside antenna.
Mine is very old, but is basically an earlier model of this:
It's an expensive little bugger and installing it is no treat, but It ensures that the inside of my house is well-covered with signal, and allowed me to drop my last non-cell telephone line. It paid for itself pretty quickly.
Or Norton Security Suite, which is available for free for Comcast subscribers?
OK, so it's not mandatory, but at least it's free, and you gave me the opening to mention it for any Comcast users who might not be running current AntiVirus to save money (or might be wasting money buying a Norton subscription when a FREE one is readily available to them).
No more excuses, my fellow Comcasters, it's FREE (*).
(*) "FREE" means "included with your overpriced, overthrottled Comcast connection". But you're dropping the big bucks on your craptastic connection anyway, you might as well take full advantage of the stuff they want to throw at you as part of it. Say what you will about Norton, but it's a shitload better than nothing, which is what most people are currently using. So if you know someone on Comcast who is running unprotected, send them this link and tell them to install it. Now.
Most ISPs offer some form of free or discounted AntiVirus.
Very true, but GP wasn't talking about being "arrested for breaking the law", he was talking about "being sued for emotional damage" or being sued for "pushing sugary drinks to those who lack the willpower to say "no"".
Sadly, you don't have to violate an actual law to be sued. You only have to be found responsible for harm done to someone else, and that harm can be as a result of perfectly legal actions.
In fact, the fact I can be sued for doing something legal makes me sad. I should sue the ambulance-chasers for destroying my quality of life.
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I built mine from very small stones.
It probably will be. It's mounted over the airbag and is mounted in such a way that it'll probably impact the driver edge-on, which means the first thing it encounters will be soft tissue, the narrow profile at impact ensures a clean entry into the soft tissue, and the precious glass screen will probably not be the area of initial impact. If it's a clean headshot, the unit might be slightly banged up from passing through the skull, but it's unlikely to have been seriously damaged even so. With any luck at all, the unit will simply pass through the cranium and land safely in the back seat, so you don't need to actually watch the life leave the driver's eyes as you thank them for the loot. You can just mumble some vague thanks, it's the polite thing to do.
About your only real risk is moisture damage from the blood and brains that will no doubt be covering the unit. Get to it quickly and use the person's shirt or the car's upholstery to wipe the worst of it off, and it should be good to go!
True, but is this a worse risk than the knitting needles my 8-year-old uses while knitting to pass the time on our long drives, or the books she reads, or the sets of sharpened pencils, or any of the other activities she has? Anything loose in a car that is either pointy or heavy can become a deadly projectile in an accident. And, yet, we still keep loose items in cars. I don't see the iPad as any more risky than a hardcover copy of McClosky's "One Morning In Maine". It weighs about the same and has the same basic shape.
In fact, from a safety perspective, my daughter's seat area is FULL of loose objects on any long drive, so she can have several activities handy to keep her busy. On the other hand, an iPad would probably provide her many hours of entertainment for the risk of a single loose object, and she'd probably be happy enough with an iPod that weighs just a few ounces.
But I'll stick with the creative activities for her, even so.
In two decades, we'll be selling them air.
http://www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=aqibasics.aqi#unh
If I recall correctly, the health indexes this summer in Boston (I live in Maine, and we had many of the same issues here) were linked to high ozone and a heat wave. However, we never got out of the "Unhealthy" range, and if I remember we only spent a couple of days in the "Unhealthy" range (151-200) and I don't think we got near the high end of that scale. We did have a generous handful of "Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups" (101-150) days. I'm not aware of ANY US incidents where we ever broke 200, and certainly not anywhere near that in Boston or surrounds this summer.
China considers anything under 250 to be "Moderately Polluted". Beijing starts canceling outdoor games warnings at 240. In other words, at the scale way beyond where the US is recommending everyone stay indoors and buy tarps and duct tape, Beijing is talking about maybe curtailing a few of the most exerting outdoor activities.
The scale the embassy is using ends at 500, or "Hazardous", because no one ever designed the scale with a pollutant level beyond 500 in real air in mind (though Maylasia has the dubious honor of having the highest-ever recorded index at 839 in 2007).
They need a new classification to describe something worse than "Hazardous". I'm thinking "soy sauce" would be good. Or "good luck finding oxygen in this shit". Or maybe just "At least we aren't in Maylasia".
You know what pisses me off the most at airports? Not hightened security, but the lack of electric outlets and free (or cheap) wifi. That aggravates me to no end.
Hey, at over a million bucks a line plus 4 employees due to federal security mandates, there's no money left for the airport authorities to put in public electrical outlets or offer free WiFi. If you want entertainment, sit somewhere you can watch the theater your billions of dollars of tax and airline dollars are paying for - security theater.
Good one.
A cat and a dog are both fed, housed, kept warm, and loved.
The dog looks at all of this and, in acknowledgment of the fact that all that unimaginable power is applied to making him comfortable, decides that the owners must be gods and he must worship them.
The cat looks at all of this and, in acknowledgment of the fact that all that unimaginable power is applied to making him comfortable, decides that he must be a god and the owners are worshiping him.
OK, then you have to make a few assumptions:
1. You're assuming that the 911 dispatcher isn't going to treat this like the last 50 accidental calls with hangup he's received in the last 2 hours. The dispatcher is going to try and call back. So you'd better be damned fast turning your phone off or silencing it.
2. You're assuming your cell phone can send any sort of location data with the call, other than the nearest tower which might be a half mile away or more. If you're inside the bank, the GPS is obviously useless. So the dispatcher knows someone within a one-mile radius called and is not answering the reply call, so even if he assumes you have a real problem, but he has no idea exactly where you are. Your phone might triangulate a little better eventually once he's contacted the phone company and asked for current triangulation data, or maybe not.
3. You're assuming that the dispatcher can tell at all what is going on based on a hangup even if he can figure out it's a real call and where you are. He might send an ambulance where what you need is an armed response, or vice versa. More likely he's going to send a beat cop out to "check the area and look for anything suspicious", and the beat cop is going to give the area a cursory drive-through.
If you really want to do something like this, make the call, turn your handset volume down, and hide the phone somewhere that it can hear what is going on. That way, the dispatcher can hear the inside of the bank and can probably at least figure some clue of what's going on and maybe even figure out where if you mention it ("Here at the 5th street branch of key bank, we're told to cooperate with robbers, so just tell me what you want me to do") but that's risky. It might be a useful continuous feed of information, but you run the risk of the phone losing signal or being discovered.
But, even so, compare that to a text. "3 armed robbers key bank maple ave" or "armed intruder 123 anywhere st, i am hiding in basement". You've sent enough information so the dispatchers know exactly where you are and what sort of response they have to send. You've fed them lots of valuable information and you haven't had to say a word.
Who says you're not interacting? It's not like texting can't possibly be two-way. Every text message is sent with the reply-to phone number. If there's not enough information, the dispatcher can reply if necessary. When enough information is received, the dispatcher can reply with "help is on the way". You know your message has been received.
Other than the oft-mentioned "because you could be overheard", there's another good reason to use text as opposed to voice. If you are in an area of very marginal signal and/or have very low batteries, a text message uses the minimum tower time to send the data. You only need a few seconds of very minimal signal to send a text message. Establishing a voice call and maintaining it through even a brief conversation requires a stable signal for at least a good handful of seconds. Sending a text only requires a single handshake signal with the tower.
If I was somewhere that signal was impossible but I knew of an area nearby that had signal, I could even pre-type the message with all the details I need to send and set it up for delivery, then get the phone to somewhere signal is available. Even if the phone is destroyed in the process, as long as it passes through an area of even marginal signal for a few seconds on the way to its demise, the message stands a solid chance of getting through. Think of that terrible flick "panic room", for example. She could get signal by sliding her phone down that tube, but couldn't use the phone when it was down the tube. Type text message, hit SEND, slide phone down tube, message sent.
It's not ideal, and I'm not saying these are going to be common cases, and certainly a call is better in 99% of circumstances (especially if the phone sends GPS location to 911 on a call, since it generally won't on a text). But it certainly seems like a nice backup option to have.
And let's not forget impairments. I have several friends who are deaf who carry cell phones. Their phones are on "no voice" plans, because voice is useless to them - they use text for mobile communications. If they had an emergency, texting is what they'd want to do anyway, since they'd have no way of knowing their message went through unless they received a reply text. If "911" put them on hold, they'd have no way of knowing it, and they'd be talking to a recording thinking their message was going through.
I've heard that argument and I can't refute it. I don't know the science well enough. I have objections to backscatter machines for many other reasons, not the least of which is their status as yet another gewgaw to waste millions of dollars on for security theater.
What I was refuting was GP's apparent point that cosmic radiation is not increased when flying. It most certainly is. I don't know whether it represents more or less of a radiation exposure risk than backscatter or milliwave machines, but it's an increased dosage of a form of radiation we know is dangerous. Not a huge increase, but an increase nonetheless.
Backscatter machines, by the way, are supposed to give a maximum dosage of about .005 millirems of radiation, or somewhere between 1/1000 to 1/300 of the radiation received from a cross-country flight, with most manufacturers claiming a much lower number. This is assuming they are adjusted properly and have been maintained properly, so there are risks of poorly-maintained or operated machines. But let's take double the approved maximum (0.010 mrem) as a number, or 1/500 to 1/150.
As I understand it, you absorb far more than 1% of cosmic radiation you are exposed to, so even if your body absorbed 100% of the backscatter radiation it was exposed to, the dosage would appear to be significantly higher for the flight.
But I'm not a radiation scientist, so I could be talking complete bullshit except for the numbers, which come from authoritative sources.
This is also true at Bangor International Airport in Maine (USA). The airport is so small they only have two gates, so they only have one security line. You only go through security just before you board, so you can arrive in the gate area 15 minutes before your flight and still get on your plane easily. If you aren't checking luggage and have checked in to your flight online, it's literally a walk from parking straight to security. I will occasionally drive the extra hour to get to Bangor (I live closer to Portland) because I more than make up for that hour in not having to worry about possible delays in security causing me to miss my flight.
However, such a system scales poorly, especially if you want X-ray machines for handheld luggage and backscatter machines for nekkid scanning and metal detectors. That's probably around a million dollars for each line you want to offer people, plus at least four trained officers (X-ray operator, backscatter operator, groper, and metal detector operator/guy who directs you to the groping station) and an airport with 20 gates realistically needs fewer than 5 lines. Put a full scan system at each gate, and you're talking about a really, really significant increase to the costs. It's cheaper to put one set of lines somewhere near the entrance to the flight area and declare anything beyond that a "safe zone".
The machines at Bangor sit idle for at least 45 minutes out of every hour. That system is only used there because, well, there's only the need for one scanning station. The TSA officers apparently work in some of the shops at the airport or take a lot of breaks or something because when no flights are active, they are nowhere to be found. It's wonderfully convenient, but expensive as hell. It's like having your own dedicated modem in the days of dial-up. It's far cheaper to pool the resources at the airport level and keep each machine operating at full capacity most of the time, and of course it's even cheaper to do what they do - not have enough lines to accommodate their peak traffic (another valid analogy from the old dial-up days).
Of course, such a system as they have in Bangor is very secure and far less inconvenient. It'd be damned near impossible to smuggle anything into Bangor's "secure zone" because the only thing in there is a few chairs, a ticket scanning station, and a door. All of it is glass-enclosed so you can clearly see passengers preparing to board from anywhere in the common area, but it's solidly sealed and there are no businesses and restaurants and hordes of employees and supplies and food being carted in there daily as in most airports (where if you really wanted to, you'd get a job with a restaurant and arrange to smuggle stuff in with the food and supplies shipments). It's less inconvenient because every passenger in line is there for a specific flight, so if you get held up in security you at least won't miss your flight. The attendants can see you in the security line and won't close the doors until the security line shuts down, which ordinarily happens about 5 minutes before boarding closes. If you get in line more than 5 minutes before your flight is set to take off, it's TSA's problem to get you processed before the flight takes off.
But it's all security theatre since the airlines armored the doors anyway, so the only thing you can do is take down an plane, and planes are not a terribly desirable target for the effort involved.
Oh you mean the ozone that protects everyone here on earth is suddenly gone when flying?
No, the ozone isn't gone, but you are flying partly outside of its protection. At ground level, the entire atmosphere offers you maximum protection from cosmic radiation. The higher you go, the more you'll get, and aircraft aluminum has little to no shielding effect.
The "ozone layer" is not something like a Star Trek shield that offers 100% protection from everything until it suddenly vanishes. Protection from cosmic radiation is offered because the Earth has a very thick atmosphere and most (not all) cosmic radiation is absorbed into that atmosphere at various levels. While it is true that the actual ozone layer offers a lot of the protection, the rest of the atmosphere plays a significant role, and the higher up you go the more your exposure to radiation.
Fortunately, even at 50,000 feet, it's not a massive megadose of radiation, but if you fly a whole lot (like, say, a pilot), it's something you need to be aware of.
I have heard lots of people saying that but absolutely no science to back that statement up.
According to the EPA, radiation exposure on a cross-country flight is 2-5 millirem(1). The World Health Organization agrees with that number (2). The FAA has a web page dedicated to the levels of exposure for their pilots (3). NASA is even more concerned about the radiation exposure on polar flights, where protection is even weaker (4).
(1): http://www.epa.gov/radtown/cosmic.html
(2): http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/env/cosmic/en/
(3): http://www.faa.gov/data_research/research/med_humanfacs/aeromedical/radiobiology/reports/
(4): http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/AGU-NAIRAS.html
If you mistrust scientists and want to see the science for yourself, carry a radiation dosimeter on your next flight (provided you buy one that measures in millirem or lower) and test it for yourself.
Reminds me of one of the classic "Mainer" lines.
"What's the death rate around here?"
"Oh, 'bout one to a person, like you'd expect."
Depends on your scale and/or materials choice. You could build a series of medium-sized boats loosely linked together so they could ride waves as a flexible "mat", yet the width of the "mat" would prevent any of the boats from capsizing. If you got caught in a severe storm, it might be a rough ride, but you'd be better off than your landlocked brethren as long as you built it pretty solidly.
Or you could build one massively huge rigid ship that would be big enough to simply ignore any waves under 100 feet high, if you have the materials. Built it massively wide and long, or even make it a circular shape with something along the edges to break up moderate-sized waves (a series of partial breakwaters, for example, akin to a barrier reef), and it'll be pretty immune to capsizing.
And, of course, it's not an island, it's a ship. A ship floating on water, not fixed to a given location like an island (unless you want it that way, in which case the tropics would be a poor choice). Give it some maneuverability and it can just, you know, maneuver. Leave the tropical zone during storm season, or move out of a storm's way (or at least try to avoid the worst of it) if one is nearby. You don't have to control the weather, just head to where the weather is nicer.
It gets worse. You can't have a patch cable longer than 3 inches per new regulations. They have to check you for illegally-long patch cables, and the "new grope" isn't going to cut it, nor is the Play{boy|girl} Scanner. I'd suggest bringing your own disposable gloves, just in case budget cuts are dictating too-aggressive recycling.
And, no, you can't have more than three ounces of liquid, remember? "The number of the counting shall be three and three shall be the number of the counting, thou mayest not proceedest to four. Five is right out."
The good news is you can probably hollow out a laptop battery and remove all that perfectly legal explosive Thermite-like Lithium-Ion stuff and replace it with illegal contraband Mountain Dew. But think of the CHILDREN, man!
So the accepted method of dealing with letters such as these of filing them in the trash is justified.
It all depends. A second or third letter might prompt your ISP to cut your connection, so if you've received one of these letters "in error" (1) it's probably best to contact your ISP immediately and ensure that they know you did nothing, and have them check your usage logs to make sure there's no evidence your connection might have been used, in case it was without your consent. Might also help to change your WiFi password and make sure you're running WPA2/AES as a precaution.
If you actually are pirating materials, then please do go ahead and throw the letter away. In fact, you should return it with a death threat just to be sure they are aware of your contempt for them. I hate the current state of copyright law as much as pirates do, but I also see pirates as part of the problem and not part of the solution. So, please, be as blatantly self-righteous about it as possible. The more actual pirates we can kick off the Internet, the more likely it is that the grown-ups can have rational discussions about reasonable copyright laws and reasonable enforcement.
(1) I use the term "in error" loosely since knowingly sending letters to people who have obviously not engaged in piracy is pretty far from an "error"
Do pixels travel at the speed of light?
Depends on your refresh rate.
I wonder what it feels like to get hit by a pixel.
Depends on the resolution, and of course the refresh rate which determines velocity. Set a 24" monitor to 1x1 resolution with a 100MHz refresh rate, and it hurts like hell. Set it ag 32,700 x 27,000, not so much, unless you get hit by all of the pixels or the pixel you are hit by is at a very high refresh rate.
Are they larger or smaller than a photon?
Larger, silly, they're made of pixel dust.
AT&T does this with their "MicroCell", which costs about $150.
And, yeah, it sucks that they are basically loading the call data onto your Internet connection. On the other hand, most repeaters cost in the $200-300 range for good, working ones (I use a Z-Boost at the moment). So if it works for you, it's cheaper than a repeater and you don't have to run an antenna outside. So it's not all bad.
There's also a service for about $20 a month that gives you unlimited minutes as long as those minutes are on your MicroCell. Again, this should technically be free or at least a crapload cheaper since it's your bandwidth you are using. On the other hand, it's fairly competitive with getting, say, a Vonage line to supplement your cell phone, and you get the bonus of one phone number without the complexity of a Google Voice account.
My Z-Boost is starting to act up a bit, and I'm pondering the purchase of a MicroCell.
I have a Wilson unit that has a magnetic antenna that fits on the roof and a very small antenna that goes inside the car. There's no need to put the phone in a special spot, the unit basically ensures that any cell phone located inside the car gets signal as long as there's enough signal reaching the outside antenna.
Mine is very old, but is basically an earlier model of this:
http://www.amazon.com/Wilson-Electronics-801232-Mini-Mobile-Booster/dp/B001DTZ2AA/ref=sr_1_12?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1290106181&sr=1-12
For home, I have aluminum siding and a metal roof, so I had to install a ZyXel Z-Boost unit.
http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Extenders-zBoost-YX545-Booster/dp/B003VOW5WI/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1290106292&sr=1-2-fkmr0
It's an expensive little bugger and installing it is no treat, but It ensures that the inside of my house is well-covered with signal, and allowed me to drop my last non-cell telephone line. It paid for itself pretty quickly.
I, for one, welcome the impending delivery of marshmallows in the form of my new tasty s'moverlord.
Or Norton Security Suite, which is available for free for Comcast subscribers?
OK, so it's not mandatory, but at least it's free, and you gave me the opening to mention it for any Comcast users who might not be running current AntiVirus to save money (or might be wasting money buying a Norton subscription when a FREE one is readily available to them).
No more excuses, my fellow Comcasters, it's FREE (*).
http://security.comcast.net/norton/resi/?cid=NET_33_258
(*) "FREE" means "included with your overpriced, overthrottled Comcast connection". But you're dropping the big bucks on your craptastic connection anyway, you might as well take full advantage of the stuff they want to throw at you as part of it. Say what you will about Norton, but it's a shitload better than nothing, which is what most people are currently using. So if you know someone on Comcast who is running unprotected, send them this link and tell them to install it. Now.
Most ISPs offer some form of free or discounted AntiVirus.
"Meme over, man! Meme over!"
Very true, but GP wasn't talking about being "arrested for breaking the law", he was talking about "being sued for emotional damage" or being sued for "pushing sugary drinks to those who lack the willpower to say "no"".
Sadly, you don't have to violate an actual law to be sued. You only have to be found responsible for harm done to someone else, and that harm can be as a result of perfectly legal actions.
In fact, the fact I can be sued for doing something legal makes me sad. I should sue the ambulance-chasers for destroying my quality of life.
I'll volunteer if he promises NEVER to do that.
Only if you have Elton John do a "candle in the wind" re-re-re-remake too.