No one, least of all me, likes a "nanny law" - and hoo boy is this one the daddy of all nanny laws - but if people are going to continue to expect the law to somehow work to protect them from ne'er-do-wells, this is about the best possible law that could actually work.
If we want the laws to protect people, then they need to be written so as to offer that protection. The one and only way to prevent someone from using or snooping your WLAN (short of turning it off or containing all of the signal it emits) is to encrypt all traffic on it. Passing laws against using an unencrypted network will not actually protect anyone - it will simply give them a false sense of security.
So, if a law is needed, this is the easiest, most effective law that actually affords the protection it promises to the people who need it.
I wish we didn't need a law, but the alternative to a law is personal responsibility for ones own security, and one only has to follow the discussion boards for one or two WiFi privacy discussions to see that many people don't WANT to take responsibility for their own security, and feel that the government should somehow do it for them, when that's clearly impossible.
For conferences, restaurants, or other people who want their accounts used, the answer is really simple - secure them with a short, easy-to-type key that is printed on a card or sign that's clearly visible to all patrons or attendees.
They have absolutely no fucking clue if what they transmit across there WiFi is secure or not. They assume it is, but as long as the website opens up they are blissful and ignorant to it. I'd be willing to bet that a huge majority of majority of people are in this boat
Blissful ignorance is not protection from theft of data. Someone taught them to operate a key lock on a door, and they probably hired someone to install that lock at some point or bought a house with it installed.
Let's ignore the legality of Google's actions here (because what they did is perfectly legal - signals sent on an unlicensed frequency into a public space have no expectation of privacy).
Legal or no, it is technically possible (no, trivial) for anyone to record any data sent over that network. Passing a law against it doesn't change the underlying laws of physics that make it possible. So, completely ignoring any relatively benign recording from Google, you need to strike fear into your parent's hearts that other people with far worse motivations than Google can and will record those signals and use them for a lot more evil than Google dreams of in its worst nightmares.
This is where "locked door" analogies fall apart.
I lock my doors, but not to protect my shit, but to protect me. The time it takes to break through the front door of my house is precious time I can use to call 911 and load the shotgun. The fact that the front door is broken when I get home tells me that I don't want to go inside unarmed, because the thief might still be in there. It also makes it harder for someone to come in to my house with the intent to steal or do me harm. The door and the lock are there to make the shooting (if it comes to that) justifiable, and to demonstrate to my insurance company that I tried to protect my stuff when I make my claim.
WiFi risks are different. Someone can use the connection to do illegal things, which your parents might or might not be held liable for as the account holders. They need to protect themselves from that. They also need to protect themselves from people recording the signals (which is legal) but then using them for other-than-legal purposes.
Your parents need to lock their WiFi to protect themselves. No law can do that for them. But, like having a locksmith install a lock, this is something they can hire someone to do.
It's not expensive or hard to do. I've locked a half-dozen networks for co-workers. My price is a 6-pack of decent quality brew if they bring the router in to me (I take it home, get it configured, and bring it back the next day).
That is bullshit. You'd get exactly what happened while you were recording.
Theoretically, this COULD include the person's browser history if they happen to be copying it from one computer to another while you were recording, I suppose. But the same could be said of their Quicken files, their music files, or their email if they happened to be copying it over the wireless while you were recording. You can't magically reach in and get their browser history unless they have it on an open network share and you copied it from there.
But Google only passively recorded. They'd only get what the person is sending and receiving while they were recording. Given that Google is driving by, that ain't gonna be much.
This is a very commonly-used analogy, which (no offense) does not change the fact that it's utterly and completely flawed.
If you are running a router, and it is broadcasting signals that leave your property, you've lost any expectation of control over those signals. You are now broadcasting signals in a public space, and if someone else hears them, they are under no legal obligation to cover their ears and shout "LA LA LA LA!!" so they can't hear them. Similarly, if you go on your front porch and shout your credit card number, you can't sue or arrest someone for writing it down. If you want some level of protection, encrypt the signals. People can still (legally) record them, but you make it unlikely in the extreme that anyone can do anything wrong with them.
In the US, FCC regulations are quite clear on this matter. If you broadcast on an unlicensed frequency, the frequency is not exclusively your property just because you happen to be using it at the time. If you want exclusive access to a frequency, spend the money and get a license to a frequency, then use a frequency you have an exclusive license to. Anyone else who uses that frequency without a license is breaking the law. But 802.11a, b, g, and n are all unlicensed bands. You can't tell someone else to not listen on them, any more than you can tell everyone else on the train not to listen to your shouted cell phone conversation, or yell at everyone else on a CB frequency to get off it because it's yours. If you use a public resource, you have to accept that other people have access to it. That whole "sharing" thing you hopefully learned in kinnygarden really does apply here.
"Sharing" does not mean that you need to allow anyone else access to the resources behind that signal, but it means that if you want to protect those resources that's your job, not the job of society around you.
A better set of analogies for different network configurations is as follows:
- ANY STATUS, provided the signal does not reach public space: You've left the stuff in your house. Locked or no, anyone who comes to even look at something is at least trespassing. Other laws may also apply, but trespassing is sufficient to state that it's illegal AND unethical. In this case, Google couldn't record your signal without violating your private property, but that also means you've set things up so the signal stops where your property line does.
All other scenarios assume that the radio signal from your router reaches some form of public space.
- OPEN, SSID Broadcast: You took all your belongings, put them in the middle of the street, and installed a blinking neon light above them that says "FREE SHIT, COME TAKE IT, PLEASE!!!" No laws are broken if someone helps themselves to a couch (connects and uses your connection to access the Internet).
- OPEN, SSID not broadcast: You took all your belongings, put them in the middle of the street, but installed a sign saying "please do not take". Laws may or may not be actually broken, but taking a couch would be (at least) very rude. But someone could photograph the couch (what Google is doing with the WiFi data).
- SECURE (WPA/WEP), signal reaches public space: You've put your stuff out on the street with clear signs that people should not take it. Anyone who takes it may or may not be breaking the law (depending on local codes), but is certainly acting inappropriately. However, people can still take pictures of the stuff (analogous to recording the signal and use the unencrypted parts like the SSID and MAC address of the router).
An OPEN router with SSID broadcasting is, by design and definition, a public resource when the signal it emits reaches a public space. It could easily be used unintentionally - my laptop automatically selects the strongest signal and it's very hard to keep it from doing so. It's impossible to differentiate between an open/SSID-on network that the owner wants you to use and one
That's one thing that a lot of people don't think about. Anything, and I mean ANYTHING that is wireless is unsafe unless it is encrypted.
Anything that is wired is unsafe unless you check the connections, too. It's pretty trivial to throw a sniffer inline, let it sit there for a few days, and gather it up later. So if you're going to do something on one of those conference room machines where security is extremely vital, don't forget to take a quick peek at the back of the computer for any odd-looking add-ons between the keyboard and the computer.
Paranoid? You betcha! It won't be MY name on the report when a company I work for has a breach.
Oh, you had to go and post the URL didn't you? Damn you! I bought a severely beat-up used set of 10-40's from another pilot many years ago, and they work great, but I keep lusting after a shiny new set.
Actually, David Clarks might be a good solution. They use a pretty standard set of plugs that look "somewhat" similar to what a lot of commercial call center phones use.
But a lot of call center headsets are already similar in noise reduction capabilities, and already built specifically to interface with call center gear, and are probably a little cheaper than a good David Clark headset.
Note to self - see if I can get my DC rigged in to my office phone. Coolest, headset, ever.:)
My wife and I do have three cars. I sat down one day and figured out that the depreciation and expenses on her car worked out to almost exactly what it saved in fuel by not driving a truck that met our needs daily, so we went with two high-efficiency cars for daily driving, and a truck for the times we need a truck (snowplowing, hauling, etc).
Probably would have been cheaper to just hire a "plow guy" for the plowing and rent a truck, but the driveway is 1/4 mile and the lowest estimate was over $100 per storm, and plow guys show up when they show up, and my job has this thing about me not making it in just because the plow guy was late - they don't like to pay me.
Plus a couple of friends frequently borrow the truck and kick in a full tank of gas or a few bucks for maintenance, so it's saved at least two other people from having to buy and maintain trucks.
But, yeah, not a practical solution for everyone, certainly. Maintaining a third vehicle ain't cheap, it's just marginally cheaper in my case than not doing so.
A pack of ~$27,000 in monopoly money sells for about $4. Let's say you can buy them in bulk for $2 per pack. You'd still need over 55 million packs, which is still $110 million.
I loved Addotta's work. Continuous bad puns to silly music.
"...He said I'd blown a seal. I said, 'fix the damn thing and leave my personal life out of it, OK, pal?'..."
That and "Life in the Slaw Lane" were brilliant. It's too bad I can't find my old cassettes of Kip Addotta, he had a lot of other funny songs, though none of them half as funny as "Wet Dream" or "Slaw Lane".
Doctor Demento and Larry Glick were staples of my youth.
You use the camera facing away from you on your own phone to show YOU where you are going. That way, you don't have to take your eyes off the screen for a second.:)
True, but personally I've really never feed the burning need to print from anywhere outside my local network. To me, having it as part of the LAN only is a nice security feature.:)
Granted, but most HP printers with an Ethernet port already run a small HTTP server that you can use to submit documents to. I have my printer driver installed on my main Linux box, but for the other machines in the house I simply point my web browser to the printer and use the "upload document to print" feature. It supports all image formats I've thrown at it, most office-type document formats, PDF, etc.
Sending an email has its advantages, but telling the printer to print the document using a web browser is also very nice.
And since it's on my LAN, only, I can secure it pretty well.
We had the same issue. My wife wanted a smart-ish phone but didn't want a data plan. We originally bought a Blackberry Pearl for her, but it didn't have WiFi so (while it's a very nice phone) there's little you can do to make it smart.
We thought about an iPhone, but the need to buy a data plan was, well, ouch.
A few months ago, I went out and got an unlocked Nokia 5800. Front and back cameras, WiFi, a 3Mpix camera that takes good photos, USB mass storage support (no specific software needed to load songs, pictures, and ringtones to and from it), and it came with an 8GB MicroSD chip. It's a Symbian phone so there's no lack of apps. $240 unlocked.
Since it's an unlocked phone, my wife uses our home WiFi for data (Facebook, checking the weather, syncing address books, email, etc), and just uses it as a GSM phone and camera when away from home. It runs an app that does her grocery shopping list and a few other functions just fine offline, and all of the data syncs when she gets into WiFi range.
Someday, we might get a data plan for it (it qualifies for the AT&T $15 data plan), but she hasn't really found a need for it.
It's a touchscreen with accelerometers similar to the iPhone, but it's a resistive touchscreen (not capacitave) which means it's a tad less responsive but you can use a stylus with it (one is built in) which improves typing accuracy quite a lot. Some people prefer the iPhone screen, but I like the resistive ones more. You can put a screen protector on them, for one...
I'm not saying it's as good as an iPhone for everyone. For some, it's not as good. Screen is smaller and resistive, it's thicker and heavier, and it uses Symbian and not the iPhone OS.
For us, it's better than an iPhone. We can load more apps that we actually want on it, the battery and memory can be replaced, and we don't need to be locked into AT&T or a data plan to use it.
Oh, and OviMaps, the free unlimited turn-by-turn voice navigation with the ability to load map data on to the MicroSD and use the built-in GPS (all with no monthly fees, no data connectivity, and no TeleNav subscription) is very nice. It's a full-blown GPS unit, and that's just a "bonus extra" we didn't even know we were getting.
Don't get me wrong, "Messiah" is an awesome song, but I don't think I'd want 64GB of just George Handel's work. I think I'd want just a bit more variety.
Simple solution. The phone has two cameras (one front, one back), so you use the front camera to send your image to the other person, and the back camera to take a video feed of what's going on in front of you and display it as an overlay/popup window down in the corner of the screen next to the picture of the person you're nattering on with.
That way you can stare at the screen and still see what is in front of you.
I call it a "front view mirror". Patent, of course, pending.
But self-buttering toast that lands butter-side UP when dropped, every time, meaning they have developed a small anti-Murphian field that envelops each slice of toast.
Next, this Anti-Murphian field will be generated on a larger scale and will be developed as an active defense, meaning that anything that can go right will go wright.
However, the device will be immediately outlawed and everyone involved in the project killed once Kim Jong-Il realizes that if he ever got in the vicinity of an anti-Murphian field he would be instantly deposed or killed.
A propeller is not the same thing as a flat surface. The rotation means that any point in the propeller is moving, in a way, faster than the item it is pushing along. Hence why a prop can move faster than the air around it, but still gain power from the same air.
It's tough to explain the mechanics of it as text, so the only way to try is to basically say that the prop is not a flat surface the wind pushes directly against, the prop is an angled surface that the wind exerts lateral force on to rotate it. The prop can move MANY times the speed of the air pushing it and still not be subject to wind resistance that would slow it down.
The ratio is based on the angle of the prop. Many aircraft use variable-pitch props, for example, so they can run the engine at a fixed RPM.
The actual dynamics are somewhat more complex than the article implies. The wheels keep the vehicle running in a given direction, allowing the rotational forces to be harnessed (rather like the centerboard/keel and rudder in a sailboat).
For sailors: By using a propeller rather than a sail, the "sail" this boat is using is simulating a continuous optimal downwind tack (the propeller blades are at a tack angle to the wind)
For cyclists: The wind is being turned into rotational force like the cranks on a bicycle. Since they now have rotational force, they can use gearing to take maximum advantage of that force.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree.
No one, least of all me, likes a "nanny law" - and hoo boy is this one the daddy of all nanny laws - but if people are going to continue to expect the law to somehow work to protect them from ne'er-do-wells, this is about the best possible law that could actually work.
If we want the laws to protect people, then they need to be written so as to offer that protection. The one and only way to prevent someone from using or snooping your WLAN (short of turning it off or containing all of the signal it emits) is to encrypt all traffic on it. Passing laws against using an unencrypted network will not actually protect anyone - it will simply give them a false sense of security.
So, if a law is needed, this is the easiest, most effective law that actually affords the protection it promises to the people who need it.
I wish we didn't need a law, but the alternative to a law is personal responsibility for ones own security, and one only has to follow the discussion boards for one or two WiFi privacy discussions to see that many people don't WANT to take responsibility for their own security, and feel that the government should somehow do it for them, when that's clearly impossible.
For conferences, restaurants, or other people who want their accounts used, the answer is really simple - secure them with a short, easy-to-type key that is printed on a card or sign that's clearly visible to all patrons or attendees.
They have absolutely no fucking clue if what they transmit across there WiFi is secure or not. They assume it is, but as long as the website opens up they are blissful and ignorant to it. I'd be willing to bet that a huge majority of majority of people are in this boat
Blissful ignorance is not protection from theft of data. Someone taught them to operate a key lock on a door, and they probably hired someone to install that lock at some point or bought a house with it installed.
Let's ignore the legality of Google's actions here (because what they did is perfectly legal - signals sent on an unlicensed frequency into a public space have no expectation of privacy).
Legal or no, it is technically possible (no, trivial) for anyone to record any data sent over that network. Passing a law against it doesn't change the underlying laws of physics that make it possible. So, completely ignoring any relatively benign recording from Google, you need to strike fear into your parent's hearts that other people with far worse motivations than Google can and will record those signals and use them for a lot more evil than Google dreams of in its worst nightmares.
This is where "locked door" analogies fall apart.
I lock my doors, but not to protect my shit, but to protect me. The time it takes to break through the front door of my house is precious time I can use to call 911 and load the shotgun. The fact that the front door is broken when I get home tells me that I don't want to go inside unarmed, because the thief might still be in there. It also makes it harder for someone to come in to my house with the intent to steal or do me harm. The door and the lock are there to make the shooting (if it comes to that) justifiable, and to demonstrate to my insurance company that I tried to protect my stuff when I make my claim.
WiFi risks are different. Someone can use the connection to do illegal things, which your parents might or might not be held liable for as the account holders. They need to protect themselves from that. They also need to protect themselves from people recording the signals (which is legal) but then using them for other-than-legal purposes.
Your parents need to lock their WiFi to protect themselves. No law can do that for them. But, like having a locksmith install a lock, this is something they can hire someone to do.
It's not expensive or hard to do. I've locked a half-dozen networks for co-workers. My price is a 6-pack of decent quality brew if they bring the router in to me (I take it home, get it configured, and bring it back the next day).
That is bullshit. You'd get exactly what happened while you were recording.
Theoretically, this COULD include the person's browser history if they happen to be copying it from one computer to another while you were recording, I suppose. But the same could be said of their Quicken files, their music files, or their email if they happened to be copying it over the wireless while you were recording. You can't magically reach in and get their browser history unless they have it on an open network share and you copied it from there.
But Google only passively recorded. They'd only get what the person is sending and receiving while they were recording. Given that Google is driving by, that ain't gonna be much.
This is a very commonly-used analogy, which (no offense) does not change the fact that it's utterly and completely flawed.
If you are running a router, and it is broadcasting signals that leave your property, you've lost any expectation of control over those signals. You are now broadcasting signals in a public space, and if someone else hears them, they are under no legal obligation to cover their ears and shout "LA LA LA LA!!" so they can't hear them. Similarly, if you go on your front porch and shout your credit card number, you can't sue or arrest someone for writing it down. If you want some level of protection, encrypt the signals. People can still (legally) record them, but you make it unlikely in the extreme that anyone can do anything wrong with them.
In the US, FCC regulations are quite clear on this matter. If you broadcast on an unlicensed frequency, the frequency is not exclusively your property just because you happen to be using it at the time. If you want exclusive access to a frequency, spend the money and get a license to a frequency, then use a frequency you have an exclusive license to. Anyone else who uses that frequency without a license is breaking the law. But 802.11a, b, g, and n are all unlicensed bands. You can't tell someone else to not listen on them, any more than you can tell everyone else on the train not to listen to your shouted cell phone conversation, or yell at everyone else on a CB frequency to get off it because it's yours. If you use a public resource, you have to accept that other people have access to it. That whole "sharing" thing you hopefully learned in kinnygarden really does apply here.
"Sharing" does not mean that you need to allow anyone else access to the resources behind that signal, but it means that if you want to protect those resources that's your job, not the job of society around you.
A better set of analogies for different network configurations is as follows:
- ANY STATUS, provided the signal does not reach public space: You've left the stuff in your house. Locked or no, anyone who comes to even look at something is at least trespassing. Other laws may also apply, but trespassing is sufficient to state that it's illegal AND unethical. In this case, Google couldn't record your signal without violating your private property, but that also means you've set things up so the signal stops where your property line does.
All other scenarios assume that the radio signal from your router reaches some form of public space.
- OPEN, SSID Broadcast: You took all your belongings, put them in the middle of the street, and installed a blinking neon light above them that says "FREE SHIT, COME TAKE IT, PLEASE!!!" No laws are broken if someone helps themselves to a couch (connects and uses your connection to access the Internet).
- OPEN, SSID not broadcast: You took all your belongings, put them in the middle of the street, but installed a sign saying "please do not take". Laws may or may not be actually broken, but taking a couch would be (at least) very rude. But someone could photograph the couch (what Google is doing with the WiFi data).
- SECURE (WPA/WEP), signal reaches public space: You've put your stuff out on the street with clear signs that people should not take it. Anyone who takes it may or may not be breaking the law (depending on local codes), but is certainly acting inappropriately. However, people can still take pictures of the stuff (analogous to recording the signal and use the unencrypted parts like the SSID and MAC address of the router).
An OPEN router with SSID broadcasting is, by design and definition, a public resource when the signal it emits reaches a public space. It could easily be used unintentionally - my laptop automatically selects the strongest signal and it's very hard to keep it from doing so. It's impossible to differentiate between an open/SSID-on network that the owner wants you to use and one
Good for you! Seriously, no sarcasm intended.
That's one thing that a lot of people don't think about. Anything, and I mean ANYTHING that is wireless is unsafe unless it is encrypted.
Anything that is wired is unsafe unless you check the connections, too. It's pretty trivial to throw a sniffer inline, let it sit there for a few days, and gather it up later. So if you're going to do something on one of those conference room machines where security is extremely vital, don't forget to take a quick peek at the back of the computer for any odd-looking add-ons between the keyboard and the computer.
Paranoid? You betcha! It won't be MY name on the report when a company I work for has a breach.
Apple seems to be employing a similar technique lately. :)
Oh, you had to go and post the URL didn't you? Damn you! I bought a severely beat-up used set of 10-40's from another pilot many years ago, and they work great, but I keep lusting after a shiny new set.
Now you've made me drool all over myself again.
Daaaaaamn Yooouuu! :)
Actually, David Clarks might be a good solution. They use a pretty standard set of plugs that look "somewhat" similar to what a lot of commercial call center phones use.
But a lot of call center headsets are already similar in noise reduction capabilities, and already built specifically to interface with call center gear, and are probably a little cheaper than a good David Clark headset.
Note to self - see if I can get my DC rigged in to my office phone. Coolest, headset, ever. :)
My wife and I do have three cars. I sat down one day and figured out that the depreciation and expenses on her car worked out to almost exactly what it saved in fuel by not driving a truck that met our needs daily, so we went with two high-efficiency cars for daily driving, and a truck for the times we need a truck (snowplowing, hauling, etc).
Probably would have been cheaper to just hire a "plow guy" for the plowing and rent a truck, but the driveway is 1/4 mile and the lowest estimate was over $100 per storm, and plow guys show up when they show up, and my job has this thing about me not making it in just because the plow guy was late - they don't like to pay me.
Plus a couple of friends frequently borrow the truck and kick in a full tank of gas or a few bucks for maintenance, so it's saved at least two other people from having to buy and maintain trucks.
But, yeah, not a practical solution for everyone, certainly. Maintaining a third vehicle ain't cheap, it's just marginally cheaper in my case than not doing so.
As they say, "your mileage may vary". :)
Still too much.
A pack of ~$27,000 in monopoly money sells for about $4. Let's say you can buy them in bulk for $2 per pack. You'd still need over 55 million packs, which is still $110 million.
I'd pay in pennies.
But at least you get paid, right?
Oh, wait...
I loved Addotta's work. Continuous bad puns to silly music.
"...He said I'd blown a seal. I said, 'fix the damn thing and leave my personal life out of it, OK, pal?'..."
That and "Life in the Slaw Lane" were brilliant. It's too bad I can't find my old cassettes of Kip Addotta, he had a lot of other funny songs, though none of them half as funny as "Wet Dream" or "Slaw Lane".
Doctor Demento and Larry Glick were staples of my youth.
No, I wasn't being clear.
You use the camera facing away from you on your own phone to show YOU where you are going. That way, you don't have to take your eyes off the screen for a second. :)
True, but personally I've really never feed the burning need to print from anywhere outside my local network. To me, having it as part of the LAN only is a nice security feature. :)
Granted, but most HP printers with an Ethernet port already run a small HTTP server that you can use to submit documents to. I have my printer driver installed on my main Linux box, but for the other machines in the house I simply point my web browser to the printer and use the "upload document to print" feature. It supports all image formats I've thrown at it, most office-type document formats, PDF, etc.
Sending an email has its advantages, but telling the printer to print the document using a web browser is also very nice.
And since it's on my LAN, only, I can secure it pretty well.
We had the same issue. My wife wanted a smart-ish phone but didn't want a data plan. We originally bought a Blackberry Pearl for her, but it didn't have WiFi so (while it's a very nice phone) there's little you can do to make it smart.
We thought about an iPhone, but the need to buy a data plan was, well, ouch.
A few months ago, I went out and got an unlocked Nokia 5800. Front and back cameras, WiFi, a 3Mpix camera that takes good photos, USB mass storage support (no specific software needed to load songs, pictures, and ringtones to and from it), and it came with an 8GB MicroSD chip. It's a Symbian phone so there's no lack of apps. $240 unlocked.
Since it's an unlocked phone, my wife uses our home WiFi for data (Facebook, checking the weather, syncing address books, email, etc), and just uses it as a GSM phone and camera when away from home. It runs an app that does her grocery shopping list and a few other functions just fine offline, and all of the data syncs when she gets into WiFi range.
Someday, we might get a data plan for it (it qualifies for the AT&T $15 data plan), but she hasn't really found a need for it.
It's a touchscreen with accelerometers similar to the iPhone, but it's a resistive touchscreen (not capacitave) which means it's a tad less responsive but you can use a stylus with it (one is built in) which improves typing accuracy quite a lot. Some people prefer the iPhone screen, but I like the resistive ones more. You can put a screen protector on them, for one...
I'm not saying it's as good as an iPhone for everyone. For some, it's not as good. Screen is smaller and resistive, it's thicker and heavier, and it uses Symbian and not the iPhone OS.
For us, it's better than an iPhone. We can load more apps that we actually want on it, the battery and memory can be replaced, and we don't need to be locked into AT&T or a data plan to use it.
Oh, and OviMaps, the free unlimited turn-by-turn voice navigation with the ability to load map data on to the MicroSD and use the built-in GPS (all with no monthly fees, no data connectivity, and no TeleNav subscription) is very nice. It's a full-blown GPS unit, and that's just a "bonus extra" we didn't even know we were getting.
can handel 64GB cards.
Don't get me wrong, "Messiah" is an awesome song, but I don't think I'd want 64GB of just George Handel's work. I think I'd want just a bit more variety.
To each his own. :)
Simple solution. The phone has two cameras (one front, one back), so you use the front camera to send your image to the other person, and the back camera to take a video feed of what's going on in front of you and display it as an overlay/popup window down in the corner of the screen next to the picture of the person you're nattering on with.
That way you can stare at the screen and still see what is in front of you.
I call it a "front view mirror". Patent, of course, pending.
Folks have been wondering why they would put such a seem on the phone, and it appears the reason is due to usability, rather than style.
Yes, that wood seam two bee the case.
... and how is it solving a contest?
grep/wright/right. Odd typo, that. Obviously my personal anti-Murphian field failed miserably.
But self-buttering toast that lands butter-side UP when dropped, every time, meaning they have developed a small anti-Murphian field that envelops each slice of toast.
Next, this Anti-Murphian field will be generated on a larger scale and will be developed as an active defense, meaning that anything that can go right will go wright.
However, the device will be immediately outlawed and everyone involved in the project killed once Kim Jong-Il realizes that if he ever got in the vicinity of an anti-Murphian field he would be instantly deposed or killed.
Call the phone company and request 5-10 of them, so you have spares just in case.
A propeller is not the same thing as a flat surface. The rotation means that any point in the propeller is moving, in a way, faster than the item it is pushing along. Hence why a prop can move faster than the air around it, but still gain power from the same air.
It's tough to explain the mechanics of it as text, so the only way to try is to basically say that the prop is not a flat surface the wind pushes directly against, the prop is an angled surface that the wind exerts lateral force on to rotate it. The prop can move MANY times the speed of the air pushing it and still not be subject to wind resistance that would slow it down.
The ratio is based on the angle of the prop. Many aircraft use variable-pitch props, for example, so they can run the engine at a fixed RPM.
The actual dynamics are somewhat more complex than the article implies. The wheels keep the vehicle running in a given direction, allowing the rotational forces to be harnessed (rather like the centerboard/keel and rudder in a sailboat).
For sailors: By using a propeller rather than a sail, the "sail" this boat is using is simulating a continuous optimal downwind tack (the propeller blades are at a tack angle to the wind)
For cyclists: The wind is being turned into rotational force like the cranks on a bicycle. Since they now have rotational force, they can use gearing to take maximum advantage of that force.
Does that make it clearer?