What do you mean? I got one of these, and then bought a 500 watt lamp that simulates sunlight. I pointed the lamp at the table. Problem solved. I get almost 10w of charging power, which is plenty to charge my phone.
Now I just need to figure out why my electric bill went up by $60 a month. Must be that new electric toothbrush.
I may get whooshed on this, but I'm assuming you are not making some form of obtuse joke.
The conventional therapy is Viagra (as mentioned in the previous sentence of the summary).
Since the spider venom works in a different way than Viagra does, I'm assuming the point here is that a drug based on the spider venom might work on some patients that do not respond to Viagra. So if Viagra doesn't get Mr. Johnson ready for some action, ask your doctor if Spideyagra is right for you (insert list of possible side effects)!
There's a significant difference between "number dead" and "number confirmed dead". The actual number who have died is unknown, so most outlets report the numbers that are known to be dead.
That means that the number will (sadly) climb much higher. With 1,300 miles of shoreline affected by the tsunami, I expect we won't be talking in the hundreds for very long, unfortunately.
I don't know how things work in Oz, but a lot of libraries in the US have formed "Friends of the Library" groups that manage and help fund things like this (or anything the local government is unwilling or unable to fund). Our local library has one, and it offers things like free passes to local museums and places of interest, kids' art programs, juried art and photography exhibits, teen programs, reading and story times, etc. All run and managed by volunteers, all supported by voluntary membership fees and donations and proceeds from things like sales of community-donated used books and modest entry fees into the art/photography shows.
The "Friends" are partners with the library, and do the sorts of things that the library lacks a budget and personnel to handle. Everything is paid for by the members of the community who wish to participate, and everything can be enjoyed by everyone whether they pay in or not. Enough people cough up $20 (or in a lot of cases a LOT more) a year that the Friends group in our community is doing quite well, and has programs going on constantly.
Good libraries seek relevance in all things, and are relevant in so many things other than books. Don't limit your mission.
Sure, it's hard work, but who else is going to do it? The schools? They're already mired in political and religious wrangling. They're trying to play the role of parent and teacher. They're already the subject of unfunded mandates that conflict with their mission. They're already burdened with parental indifference, community budget-cutting, and federal mandates for unrealistic performance in things that aren't actually helping kids love to learn.
The kind of people who are attracted to the library are, by and large, the kind of people who want to get involved. Build this. They will come. Work with your "Friends of the Library" group (if you have one, and if you don't, FORM ONE NOW) to drive initiatives like this.
Don't ask your community's government for the resources to handle this, ask your fellow citizens directly. There are plenty of us who stand ready to help our libraries, because we recognize them for what they are - not dusty rooms full of books, not free-use computers, not distributors of free access to museums and local places of interest, not arts and crafts centers, not meeting spaces, not community builders, but all of these things, and so very much more.
Plutarch once said, “the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” Go light a few fires today.
I believe the article is trying to say that the cost of ALM is coming down while the cost of materials and transportation continues to rise. So, at some point (probably soon), the savings in materials will exceed the cost of the ALM equipment, at least for certain products.
Especially when you start talking about having generalized ALM equipment more local to you that can make whatever you need, instead of making it and shipping it great distances which costs in both energy and damage losses, not to mention turnaround times.
The difference is even greater when you want something as customizable as a bicycle, where it takes someone with specialized knowledge and tools to build one out of a bunch of different parts from a bunch of different places and get one built out and tuned for you. A bicycle is a near-perfect example of something that currently takes a long time to procure, and/or involves middlemen who have to deal with excess stock in one part or shortages in another or damage-in-transit. You tell any serious cyclist they can get an efficient bike that weighs 2/3 what their current bike weighs in an hour down at the local copy shop, they'll pay a premium for that. Tell them it can be made to their exact size and body shape, and they'll start throwing money at you in large wads.
There will always be a place for traditional manufacturing, of course, but I think as the cost of materials creeps up and ALM and 3D printer technologies get cheaper and more available and more automated, you'll find first niche products, then more common products, being created this way.
Of course, once you put all the responders onto an encrypted channels in the 700MHz range, amateur radio will no longer be able to help
I'm not a HAM enthusiast, but I know my fair share, and rest assured that availability of long-range communications is ALWAYS helpful.
Even if everyone in all emergency services has the same band of 700mhz radios and can talk to each other (unlikely, since they'll all be from different lowest-bidder manufacturers), it's often impractical due to the sheer volume of personnel. Having people who know how to communicate quickly and efficiently is important. Having people at the disaster site where shit's going down is important. Having people who can maintain equipment in addition to using it is important.
Keep a couple of HAM sets and someone who has a clue about them at your emergency center, and you can get field reports from places your officers can't go. You can talk to each other if and when your official encrypted channels are overloaded. You can get messages out to not only other departments, but other continents. You can coordinate with the general populace (at least to some extent) because just about everyone's got someone less than a mile away who has a HAM radio.
Plus, you've got some people who can build and maintain their own radios. Not many first-responder personnel are going to be very useful if they drop their radio into a puddle, but more than a few advanced HAMsters can probably rig something up with baling twine and bubblegum to keep the lines open to some extent (exaggeration, of course, but they've probably got enough spare parts to whip you up an extra radio, or keep a half dozen radios running).
I don't see anything claiming that this is a new technology. Only that the technology has developed to the point where its utility is not limited to prototyping, and it's becoming viable for full-on manufacturing.
My commuter bike is configured this way. It has nothing to do with racing, and everything to do with efficiency.
Still, for a "cruiser" bike, you simply make the stem shorter. It's not like you need molds for every possible shape. Measure the rider, and feed the measurements into the computer, and they can come pick up their custom-made bike in an hour, made to their exact specifications.
My only real concern is wearability. The kevlar belt will do OK, no doubt, but what about the crank and other moving parts? What happens when they wear out? Or do you just grind the whole bike (except the wheels) back to powder and make a new one (in which case, awesome recyclability, no pun intended).
Don't the codes get associated with some sort of account somewhere? Could Microsoft not simply look for accounts with some arbitrarily reasonable amount of points on them, then query the purchasing/issuing database to see which of those accounts got most of their credit in short order in 160-point increments then drain those accounts?
Or just simply look for any issuance of points using these promo codes to any accounts, and make sure that credit is only given for ONE promo code per account, and remove all other credits but the first one issued to each account?
It's probably non-trivial, but would cost them far less than, say, a million bucks.
Either that or they just allow the hackers their little victory and consider it a lesson in predictability in promotional codes. After all, Microsoft really hasn't "lost" $1.2 million in cash. Take the department that is running that promo and tell them they lost $1.2M in next years' budget.
They ask people to turn off their electronic devices.
Sorry, did you have an equally affordable and practical solution you posted in white-on-white text that the rest of us missed?
New consumer electronics comes out every couple of years. Protecting the multi-million-dollar aircraft from your shiny new $200 iBauble would cost the aviation industry millions or maybe even billions of dollars a year that you'll see added to your ticket cost.
4 options, you choose:
1. Your airline ticket prices increase by a factor of ten, and all aircraft and ground equipment are retrofitted with new gear every time a frequency is given up to general use by our congresscritters. Eventually we'll run completely out of desirable spectrum and this will be impossible, but in the meantime we can keep moving aviation, GPS, and infrastructure services out of the way of consumer electronics for a while, at increasing cost and decreasing utility.
2. The FCC does its job and stops giving out so much spectrum for use when the use of the spectrum could possibly interfere with existing systems. Of course, that means WiMax, Bluetooth, WiFi, 3G, EDGE, and GSM would not have come to pass and we'd be back on Analog TV and Analog cellular towers with precious few channels available. So their job might not be what we really want them to do after all.
3. The FCC bakes the cost of upgrades to existing systems into the licensing cost of the spectrum that's being released, so if you get WiMax you have to pay any nearby frequency-holders to vacate their territory. This is basically financially equivalent to #2, because no one is going to want the WiMax frequencies if it means they have to orbit billions of dollars worth of satellites to replace the current flock of GPS birds.
4. When a new technology is introduced that is incompatible with existing technologies only under specific circumstances, the users of the new technology are required not to use their tech in a way that interferes with the old stuff. As in, turn off your radio when on the plane. Cheap, easy, effective, expeditious, and practical.
Is it 100%? No, it isn't. But it's what we got for now, and as long as people follow the rules they can have their spectrum when it's safe to do so. So you're pretty safe from anything but short-term accidental and deliberate interference.
As to deliberate interference, any time you use Radio Frequency (and I fail to see why this is such a hard thing for people to understand), it's subject to interference. Find the frequency, transmit 1 megawatt of noise over that frequency, "game over, man!". If you want to fuck with a plane from the ground, send out a strong signal in the aviation band covering the whole thing. The information is public knowledge. There's no way to protect from it.
That's why wireless systems are NEVER used as the only way a plane works, and when they are implemented they tend to have first wireless then non-wireless backups, and if the backups to the backups to the backups fail, the pilot has clear procedures to follow, even if he's flying blind with no electrics or electronics at all (that's why many systems work on vacuum/pressure fed by the plane moving, if the plane stops moving then losing track of where you are is your smallest worry - because wherever you are, you're not going anywhere else)
I would like to see Canonical buy out GNOME and do those things that the AC above suggested
Don't get me wrong, I love Canonical. I use Mint, which is one of the "respins" of Ubuntu. Canonical has contributed a lot to the Linux world, and I value those contributions greatly.
Ubuntu doesn't like Gnome 3 Shell, so they want to write their own Shell over the underlying Gnome 3 infrastructure. That does not mean that the Gnome team's goals are not equally worthy or without merit. Having Canonical "buy out" the Gnome team because they want their own shell would be a great loss to the choice that makes the Linux community so vibrant (and, of course, occasionally confusing to the uninitiated).
Ubuntu has the resources to just do the things they want to their own shell, while leaving Gnome Shell alone to pursue its own (possibly incompatible) goals. They're both based on Gnome 3 anyway, so I bet a lot of the features are going to turn out to be portable between the two once any hurt feelings pass and the two project teams start looking at each others' work.
Canonical contributes a lot back, and they do great work. That doesn't mean the rest of the upstream community should be FORCED into accepting their changes. That's not how OSS works.
And they cant upgrade them? When new emission laws are introduced affecting cars we're expected to alter our vehicles.
Reality check: Every emissions law that's come out has held each car to the standard for the year in which it was built, along with an allowance for wear-and-tear. I've owned older cars in three states where emission controls came in, and never had to do a blessed thing to any of my cars except one that needed a slight tune-up (that ended up saving me gasoline). So let's stop the humaniform constructions out of wheat chaff, please?
Replacing the instrumentation on an aircraft is not a trivial matter. In small planes, it can be tens of thousands of dollars. In a commercial plane, I'm thinking hundreds of thousands.
If you think airfare is expensive now, think about what it would cost if a government mandate came down to change out all the electronics in every plane every 5 years when a new consumer technology comes out that might interfere with it. It would be a massive investment, then when the next gewgaw comes out that uses a possibly-interfering system, they'd have to go through it all over again.
WiMax might be a problem with GPS, so, what, you expect the aviation industry to build out a new navigation system? No. It's only a problem if the transmission is inside or very near the plane (or at very high power), because it is not orthogonal to GPS frequencies and might interfere. So carriers have to tell people they can't use WiMax on a plane, the government needs to recall the frequencies it sold near the GPS band, or new GPS birds need to be orbited. Which one is easiest?
Spectrum is precious, everyone wants some, and we all gotta share it. That means we can't afford to completely stop all wireless transmissions just because one industry (aviation) needs clear comms. So aviation has to adapt to an ever-changing and ever-narrowing amount of available wireless spectrum. In the meantime, since the communications landscape shifts constantly, they have to do their best to control interference.
Even your "single-engine hobbyist-killers" have zero dependence on high tech hardware to fly a plane safely. If you're flying VFR (clear view, etc), then a map and your eyeballs are all you really need. Well, those and the map-reading skills you had to demonstrate to a certified FAA instructor within the last two years or you wouldn't be flying.
Instrument conditions might get a bit dicey, but you've got a map of the area and know what general area you're in when you lose all the fancy gizmos and gewgaws, so you start dead-reckoning terrain avoidance, fire up the DME or VOR gear, figure out precisely where you are, and set course for somewhere with fewer things sticking into the sky. If all of that is dead, you'll always have a compass/DG, airspeed indicator, and altimeter. Climb up to well above any local obstructions, and head in the general direction of somewhere the weather isn't so bad.
But, yeah, the real problem is that of congestion. Fortunately, there are always backup plans on top of backup plans, and the chances of two aircraft attempting to occupy the same airspace are very slim, even if all communications died simultaneously to all aircraft along with every aircraft's internal electronic navigation systems, even in Instrument conditions. Obviously it would impact air travel pretty badly, and a lot of people would be staying on the ground or flying to airports they didn't really want to go to, but it's very unlikely it'd kill anyone.
Right, but the problem is that when most airplanes that are flying today were designed (and in many cases even built) when we were all using analog cell phones and WiFi didn't exist.
So, while I admire your vision, it's hard to design hardware that accommodates for things that don't yet exist.
GPS receivers break, their batteries die, they are subject to interference. I use them all the time, but I also have a paper map in the trunk.
The difference between the spoken directions (lowest tech) and the GPS is that if the GPS breaks I have no idea where I'm going from there, and probably can't find my way back because I've been focusing on a GPS screen and not viewable landmarks. In your example, if I've driven five sees and I haven't encountered a barn, I can backtrack about three sees and look more carefully for a barn. And if the barn is torn down, chances are I can try the two or three roads at the second see and start looking for the next landmark.
Right, you'll note that I said it was a ridiculous thing to say. But it was an exaggerated claim based on verified observations on Gliese 581g.
Instead, the original AC was attempting to relate the quote made about Gliese 581g (a planet that had been observed, the observations verified, and remains the most likely current candidate for a life-supporting exoplanet) to an observational error that led to KOI 326.01 being an interesting candidate for a couple of weeks until the error was discovered.
Allow me to re-quote the original post I was responding to:
No. It is an epic failure. The fail is that a scientist went out and said he is "100% sure life exists on this planet". It raised a lot of eyebrows on Slashdot. It made headlines.
Now when the opposite news comes out, it just makes scientists look stupid.
The fail is rushing to conclusions before double checks have taken place.
The problem with that assertion is that no scientist ever made the claim about KOI 326.01, so the fail on KOI 326.01 wasn't as "epic" as the original AC post claimed.
That was what I was originally stating, then other ACs pulled out stories that show a scientist making that claim.
The problem is, the claim was made about Gliese 581g, not KOI 326.01. Gliese 581g is still a viable candidate for exoplanetary life, and the observations were well-verified about Gliese 581g before that statement was uttered. It's still an unfounded assumption (for example, someone else might observe another planet too near by, or discover some other attribute of the star that pulls it out of the candidates list), but one based on clear verified observations from more than one institution.
The brouhaha about KOI 326.01 is that someone crossreferenced the observation against an inaccurate stellar catalog and it made an interesting line in a spreadsheet. It made the news, then someone noticed the error in the catalog and corrected it, and the spreadsheet line became uninteresting again. No one ever stated that KOI 326.01 was a life-bearing planet, only that it was an interesting candidate (and when the verification process began, the error was discovered).
See the other thread. G518g is still a viable candidate for exoplanetary life. A pretty tenuous claim to be saying that there's a 100% chance the planet supports life, but at least one that is still compatible with the observations months after it was uttered.
100% chance for life means that there is a 100% chance that the planet is capable of supporting life. This is compatible with (obviously tenuous) observation. Which means it's a silly thing to say without prefacing it with "if the observations are true", but at least the current evidence appears to support it.
100% chance of life means there is a 100% chance that life exists. That's a clearly ridiculous thing to say, since it's not at all supported by any observation.
Now, referring to the G581g claim, "100% chance FOR life" and "100% chance OF life" are two very different assertions. It was still pretty hyperbolic, and of course future observation will almost certainly make Vogt regret those words later, but G581g is still voted the "Most Likely To Be Like Earth" at the moment. The calculations were checked before such assertions were made (unlike KOI 326.01, which broke based on an interesting anomaly in a spreadsheet that turned out to have bad data which was discovered and corrected within a couple of weeks.
So assuming you're the same Anonymous Coward who made the assertion that the claims on KOI 326.01 went from "100% certain there is life there" to "oopsie, wrong star!" you're conflating the two for obvious comic effect. Which is OK, but don't be surprised when the non-anonymous adults call you on such claims from time to time.
The fail is that a scientist went out and said he is "100% sure life exists on this planet".
Really? Who said the scientists said that?
You should stop reading news from that outlet immediately, because it's bullshit that makes the Weekly World News headlines like "Space Whelk Poised to Consume Earth" and "Woman's Varicose Veins used as Treasure Map" seem like responsible journalism.
Though none of these sources are really heavily scientific, they don't dumb "planet found with Earth-like dimensions that's probably in a temperate zone between the freezing and boiling point of water" to "scientist claims 100% knowledge that life exists on a specific exoplanet". You might want to consider them as at least superior news sources to whatever you are currently using.
All bad science begins with "A scientist says it, therefore I believe it".
No, that's not called "science", that's called "religion".
Intractable belief in something without evidence, or even in direct contradiction of known evidence, is known as religion. This is the philosophical opposite to science.
Slashdot Mirror
What do you mean? I got one of these, and then bought a 500 watt lamp that simulates sunlight. I pointed the lamp at the table. Problem solved. I get almost 10w of charging power, which is plenty to charge my phone.
Now I just need to figure out why my electric bill went up by $60 a month. Must be that new electric toothbrush.
I may get whooshed on this, but I'm assuming you are not making some form of obtuse joke.
The conventional therapy is Viagra (as mentioned in the previous sentence of the summary).
Since the spider venom works in a different way than Viagra does, I'm assuming the point here is that a drug based on the spider venom might work on some patients that do not respond to Viagra. So if Viagra doesn't get Mr. Johnson ready for some action, ask your doctor if Spideyagra is right for you (insert list of possible side effects)!
There's a significant difference between "number dead" and "number confirmed dead". The actual number who have died is unknown, so most outlets report the numbers that are known to be dead.
That means that the number will (sadly) climb much higher. With 1,300 miles of shoreline affected by the tsunami, I expect we won't be talking in the hundreds for very long, unfortunately.
I don't know how things work in Oz, but a lot of libraries in the US have formed "Friends of the Library" groups that manage and help fund things like this (or anything the local government is unwilling or unable to fund). Our local library has one, and it offers things like free passes to local museums and places of interest, kids' art programs, juried art and photography exhibits, teen programs, reading and story times, etc. All run and managed by volunteers, all supported by voluntary membership fees and donations and proceeds from things like sales of community-donated used books and modest entry fees into the art/photography shows.
The "Friends" are partners with the library, and do the sorts of things that the library lacks a budget and personnel to handle. Everything is paid for by the members of the community who wish to participate, and everything can be enjoyed by everyone whether they pay in or not. Enough people cough up $20 (or in a lot of cases a LOT more) a year that the Friends group in our community is doing quite well, and has programs going on constantly.
Good libraries seek relevance in all things, and are relevant in so many things other than books. Don't limit your mission.
Sure, it's hard work, but who else is going to do it? The schools? They're already mired in political and religious wrangling. They're trying to play the role of parent and teacher. They're already the subject of unfunded mandates that conflict with their mission. They're already burdened with parental indifference, community budget-cutting, and federal mandates for unrealistic performance in things that aren't actually helping kids love to learn.
The kind of people who are attracted to the library are, by and large, the kind of people who want to get involved. Build this. They will come. Work with your "Friends of the Library" group (if you have one, and if you don't, FORM ONE NOW) to drive initiatives like this.
Don't ask your community's government for the resources to handle this, ask your fellow citizens directly. There are plenty of us who stand ready to help our libraries, because we recognize them for what they are - not dusty rooms full of books, not free-use computers, not distributors of free access to museums and local places of interest, not arts and crafts centers, not meeting spaces, not community builders, but all of these things, and so very much more.
Plutarch once said, “the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” Go light a few fires today.
I believe the article is trying to say that the cost of ALM is coming down while the cost of materials and transportation continues to rise. So, at some point (probably soon), the savings in materials will exceed the cost of the ALM equipment, at least for certain products.
Especially when you start talking about having generalized ALM equipment more local to you that can make whatever you need, instead of making it and shipping it great distances which costs in both energy and damage losses, not to mention turnaround times.
The difference is even greater when you want something as customizable as a bicycle, where it takes someone with specialized knowledge and tools to build one out of a bunch of different parts from a bunch of different places and get one built out and tuned for you. A bicycle is a near-perfect example of something that currently takes a long time to procure, and/or involves middlemen who have to deal with excess stock in one part or shortages in another or damage-in-transit. You tell any serious cyclist they can get an efficient bike that weighs 2/3 what their current bike weighs in an hour down at the local copy shop, they'll pay a premium for that. Tell them it can be made to their exact size and body shape, and they'll start throwing money at you in large wads.
There will always be a place for traditional manufacturing, of course, but I think as the cost of materials creeps up and ALM and 3D printer technologies get cheaper and more available and more automated, you'll find first niche products, then more common products, being created this way.
And what if a person willing to give you a blowjob isn't immediately nearby? A HAM operator can help find one for you and give them directions.
Of course, once you put all the responders onto an encrypted channels in the 700MHz range, amateur radio will no longer be able to help
I'm not a HAM enthusiast, but I know my fair share, and rest assured that availability of long-range communications is ALWAYS helpful.
Even if everyone in all emergency services has the same band of 700mhz radios and can talk to each other (unlikely, since they'll all be from different lowest-bidder manufacturers), it's often impractical due to the sheer volume of personnel. Having people who know how to communicate quickly and efficiently is important. Having people at the disaster site where shit's going down is important. Having people who can maintain equipment in addition to using it is important.
Keep a couple of HAM sets and someone who has a clue about them at your emergency center, and you can get field reports from places your officers can't go. You can talk to each other if and when your official encrypted channels are overloaded. You can get messages out to not only other departments, but other continents. You can coordinate with the general populace (at least to some extent) because just about everyone's got someone less than a mile away who has a HAM radio.
Plus, you've got some people who can build and maintain their own radios. Not many first-responder personnel are going to be very useful if they drop their radio into a puddle, but more than a few advanced HAMsters can probably rig something up with baling twine and bubblegum to keep the lines open to some extent (exaggeration, of course, but they've probably got enough spare parts to whip you up an extra radio, or keep a half dozen radios running).
I don't see anything claiming that this is a new technology. Only that the technology has developed to the point where its utility is not limited to prototyping, and it's becoming viable for full-on manufacturing.
My commuter bike is configured this way. It has nothing to do with racing, and everything to do with efficiency.
Still, for a "cruiser" bike, you simply make the stem shorter. It's not like you need molds for every possible shape. Measure the rider, and feed the measurements into the computer, and they can come pick up their custom-made bike in an hour, made to their exact specifications.
My only real concern is wearability. The kevlar belt will do OK, no doubt, but what about the crank and other moving parts? What happens when they wear out? Or do you just grind the whole bike (except the wheels) back to powder and make a new one (in which case, awesome recyclability, no pun intended).
why do you cower behind a chosen underwear based pseudonym? what are you afraid of?
Perhaps he meant a striped, horse-like animal, and he has a lisp, you insensitive clod.
Don't the codes get associated with some sort of account somewhere? Could Microsoft not simply look for accounts with some arbitrarily reasonable amount of points on them, then query the purchasing/issuing database to see which of those accounts got most of their credit in short order in 160-point increments then drain those accounts?
Or just simply look for any issuance of points using these promo codes to any accounts, and make sure that credit is only given for ONE promo code per account, and remove all other credits but the first one issued to each account?
It's probably non-trivial, but would cost them far less than, say, a million bucks.
Either that or they just allow the hackers their little victory and consider it a lesson in predictability in promotional codes. After all, Microsoft really hasn't "lost" $1.2 million in cash. Take the department that is running that promo and tell them they lost $1.2M in next years' budget.
They ask people to turn off their electronic devices.
Sorry, did you have an equally affordable and practical solution you posted in white-on-white text that the rest of us missed?
New consumer electronics comes out every couple of years. Protecting the multi-million-dollar aircraft from your shiny new $200 iBauble would cost the aviation industry millions or maybe even billions of dollars a year that you'll see added to your ticket cost.
4 options, you choose:
1. Your airline ticket prices increase by a factor of ten, and all aircraft and ground equipment are retrofitted with new gear every time a frequency is given up to general use by our congresscritters. Eventually we'll run completely out of desirable spectrum and this will be impossible, but in the meantime we can keep moving aviation, GPS, and infrastructure services out of the way of consumer electronics for a while, at increasing cost and decreasing utility.
2. The FCC does its job and stops giving out so much spectrum for use when the use of the spectrum could possibly interfere with existing systems. Of course, that means WiMax, Bluetooth, WiFi, 3G, EDGE, and GSM would not have come to pass and we'd be back on Analog TV and Analog cellular towers with precious few channels available. So their job might not be what we really want them to do after all.
3. The FCC bakes the cost of upgrades to existing systems into the licensing cost of the spectrum that's being released, so if you get WiMax you have to pay any nearby frequency-holders to vacate their territory. This is basically financially equivalent to #2, because no one is going to want the WiMax frequencies if it means they have to orbit billions of dollars worth of satellites to replace the current flock of GPS birds.
4. When a new technology is introduced that is incompatible with existing technologies only under specific circumstances, the users of the new technology are required not to use their tech in a way that interferes with the old stuff. As in, turn off your radio when on the plane. Cheap, easy, effective, expeditious, and practical.
Is it 100%? No, it isn't. But it's what we got for now, and as long as people follow the rules they can have their spectrum when it's safe to do so. So you're pretty safe from anything but short-term accidental and deliberate interference.
As to deliberate interference, any time you use Radio Frequency (and I fail to see why this is such a hard thing for people to understand), it's subject to interference. Find the frequency, transmit 1 megawatt of noise over that frequency, "game over, man!". If you want to fuck with a plane from the ground, send out a strong signal in the aviation band covering the whole thing. The information is public knowledge. There's no way to protect from it.
That's why wireless systems are NEVER used as the only way a plane works, and when they are implemented they tend to have first wireless then non-wireless backups, and if the backups to the backups to the backups fail, the pilot has clear procedures to follow, even if he's flying blind with no electrics or electronics at all (that's why many systems work on vacuum/pressure fed by the plane moving, if the plane stops moving then losing track of where you are is your smallest worry - because wherever you are, you're not going anywhere else)
I would like to see Canonical buy out GNOME and do those things that the AC above suggested
Don't get me wrong, I love Canonical. I use Mint, which is one of the "respins" of Ubuntu. Canonical has contributed a lot to the Linux world, and I value those contributions greatly.
Ubuntu doesn't like Gnome 3 Shell, so they want to write their own Shell over the underlying Gnome 3 infrastructure. That does not mean that the Gnome team's goals are not equally worthy or without merit. Having Canonical "buy out" the Gnome team because they want their own shell would be a great loss to the choice that makes the Linux community so vibrant (and, of course, occasionally confusing to the uninitiated).
Ubuntu has the resources to just do the things they want to their own shell, while leaving Gnome Shell alone to pursue its own (possibly incompatible) goals. They're both based on Gnome 3 anyway, so I bet a lot of the features are going to turn out to be portable between the two once any hurt feelings pass and the two project teams start looking at each others' work.
Canonical contributes a lot back, and they do great work. That doesn't mean the rest of the upstream community should be FORCED into accepting their changes. That's not how OSS works.
And they cant upgrade them? When new emission laws are introduced affecting cars we're expected to alter our vehicles.
Reality check: Every emissions law that's come out has held each car to the standard for the year in which it was built, along with an allowance for wear-and-tear. I've owned older cars in three states where emission controls came in, and never had to do a blessed thing to any of my cars except one that needed a slight tune-up (that ended up saving me gasoline). So let's stop the humaniform constructions out of wheat chaff, please?
Replacing the instrumentation on an aircraft is not a trivial matter. In small planes, it can be tens of thousands of dollars. In a commercial plane, I'm thinking hundreds of thousands.
If you think airfare is expensive now, think about what it would cost if a government mandate came down to change out all the electronics in every plane every 5 years when a new consumer technology comes out that might interfere with it. It would be a massive investment, then when the next gewgaw comes out that uses a possibly-interfering system, they'd have to go through it all over again.
WiMax might be a problem with GPS, so, what, you expect the aviation industry to build out a new navigation system? No. It's only a problem if the transmission is inside or very near the plane (or at very high power), because it is not orthogonal to GPS frequencies and might interfere. So carriers have to tell people they can't use WiMax on a plane, the government needs to recall the frequencies it sold near the GPS band, or new GPS birds need to be orbited. Which one is easiest?
Spectrum is precious, everyone wants some, and we all gotta share it. That means we can't afford to completely stop all wireless transmissions just because one industry (aviation) needs clear comms. So aviation has to adapt to an ever-changing and ever-narrowing amount of available wireless spectrum. In the meantime, since the communications landscape shifts constantly, they have to do their best to control interference.
Even your "single-engine hobbyist-killers" have zero dependence on high tech hardware to fly a plane safely. If you're flying VFR (clear view, etc), then a map and your eyeballs are all you really need. Well, those and the map-reading skills you had to demonstrate to a certified FAA instructor within the last two years or you wouldn't be flying.
Instrument conditions might get a bit dicey, but you've got a map of the area and know what general area you're in when you lose all the fancy gizmos and gewgaws, so you start dead-reckoning terrain avoidance, fire up the DME or VOR gear, figure out precisely where you are, and set course for somewhere with fewer things sticking into the sky. If all of that is dead, you'll always have a compass/DG, airspeed indicator, and altimeter. Climb up to well above any local obstructions, and head in the general direction of somewhere the weather isn't so bad.
But, yeah, the real problem is that of congestion. Fortunately, there are always backup plans on top of backup plans, and the chances of two aircraft attempting to occupy the same airspace are very slim, even if all communications died simultaneously to all aircraft along with every aircraft's internal electronic navigation systems, even in Instrument conditions. Obviously it would impact air travel pretty badly, and a lot of people would be staying on the ground or flying to airports they didn't really want to go to, but it's very unlikely it'd kill anyone.
Right, but the problem is that when most airplanes that are flying today were designed (and in many cases even built) when we were all using analog cell phones and WiFi didn't exist.
So, while I admire your vision, it's hard to design hardware that accommodates for things that don't yet exist.
GPS receivers break, their batteries die, they are subject to interference. I use them all the time, but I also have a paper map in the trunk.
The difference between the spoken directions (lowest tech) and the GPS is that if the GPS breaks I have no idea where I'm going from there, and probably can't find my way back because I've been focusing on a GPS screen and not viewable landmarks. In your example, if I've driven five sees and I haven't encountered a barn, I can backtrack about three sees and look more carefully for a barn. And if the barn is torn down, chances are I can try the two or three roads at the second see and start looking for the next landmark.
The problem is, you can only print food that fits in CUPS.
(snare drum)
Right, you'll note that I said it was a ridiculous thing to say. But it was an exaggerated claim based on verified observations on Gliese 581g.
Instead, the original AC was attempting to relate the quote made about Gliese 581g (a planet that had been observed, the observations verified, and remains the most likely current candidate for a life-supporting exoplanet) to an observational error that led to KOI 326.01 being an interesting candidate for a couple of weeks until the error was discovered.
Allow me to re-quote the original post I was responding to:
No. It is an epic failure. The fail is that a scientist went out and said he is "100% sure life exists on this planet". It raised a lot of eyebrows on Slashdot. It made headlines.
Now when the opposite news comes out, it just makes scientists look stupid.
The fail is rushing to conclusions before double checks have taken place.
The problem with that assertion is that no scientist ever made the claim about KOI 326.01, so the fail on KOI 326.01 wasn't as "epic" as the original AC post claimed.
That was what I was originally stating, then other ACs pulled out stories that show a scientist making that claim.
The problem is, the claim was made about Gliese 581g, not KOI 326.01. Gliese 581g is still a viable candidate for exoplanetary life, and the observations were well-verified about Gliese 581g before that statement was uttered. It's still an unfounded assumption (for example, someone else might observe another planet too near by, or discover some other attribute of the star that pulls it out of the candidates list), but one based on clear verified observations from more than one institution.
The brouhaha about KOI 326.01 is that someone crossreferenced the observation against an inaccurate stellar catalog and it made an interesting line in a spreadsheet. It made the news, then someone noticed the error in the catalog and corrected it, and the spreadsheet line became uninteresting again. No one ever stated that KOI 326.01 was a life-bearing planet, only that it was an interesting candidate (and when the verification process began, the error was discovered).
See the other thread. G518g is still a viable candidate for exoplanetary life. A pretty tenuous claim to be saying that there's a 100% chance the planet supports life, but at least one that is still compatible with the observations months after it was uttered.
100% chance for life means that there is a 100% chance that the planet is capable of supporting life. This is compatible with (obviously tenuous) observation. Which means it's a silly thing to say without prefacing it with "if the observations are true", but at least the current evidence appears to support it.
100% chance of life means there is a 100% chance that life exists. That's a clearly ridiculous thing to say, since it's not at all supported by any observation.
That'd be.. about Gliese 581g. Not KOI 326.01.
Now, referring to the G581g claim, "100% chance FOR life" and "100% chance OF life" are two very different assertions. It was still pretty hyperbolic, and of course future observation will almost certainly make Vogt regret those words later, but G581g is still voted the "Most Likely To Be Like Earth" at the moment. The calculations were checked before such assertions were made (unlike KOI 326.01, which broke based on an interesting anomaly in a spreadsheet that turned out to have bad data which was discovered and corrected within a couple of weeks.
So assuming you're the same Anonymous Coward who made the assertion that the claims on KOI 326.01 went from "100% certain there is life there" to "oopsie, wrong star!" you're conflating the two for obvious comic effect. Which is OK, but don't be surprised when the non-anonymous adults call you on such claims from time to time.
The fail is that a scientist went out and said he is "100% sure life exists on this planet".
Really? Who said the scientists said that?
You should stop reading news from that outlet immediately, because it's bullshit that makes the Weekly World News headlines like "Space Whelk Poised to Consume Earth" and "Woman's Varicose Veins used as Treasure Map" seem like responsible journalism.
Though none of these sources are really heavily scientific, they don't dumb "planet found with Earth-like dimensions that's probably in a temperate zone between the freezing and boiling point of water" to "scientist claims 100% knowledge that life exists on a specific exoplanet". You might want to consider them as at least superior news sources to whatever you are currently using.
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/02/practical-and-religious-implic.html
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/02/19/6087627-planet-probe-spots-hot-prospects
Greetings, Pot! Great description of kettle.
All bad science begins with "A scientist says it, therefore I believe it".
No, that's not called "science", that's called "religion".
Intractable belief in something without evidence, or even in direct contradiction of known evidence, is known as religion. This is the philosophical opposite to science.