Night landings are, by their nature, more difficult and more dangerous than daytime landings. Assuming visual conditions, nearly everything is dependent upon being able to continuously see runway lights. About 10 minutes prior to landing, the standard procedure is to dim everything in the cockpit to it's lowest setting. The goal of this is to make sure the pilot's eyes are dilated as much as possible to see the runway lights and land safely.
About 5 years ago, I was landing at Chicago Dupage airport. About 1 mile from the runway threshold and about 500 ft above the ground, I was repeatedly hit by a bright red laser. Immediately after the first bright flash from the laser, I felt like I'd just walked from daylight into a dark room. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see any instruments (Remember, they're all dimmed as low as possible) and the runway lights were suddenly very dim. After the second and third time, I couldn't see the runway lights anymore. My only choice was to add power, pull up and hope that I was still flying straight. I overflew most of the airport and remember finally getting good vision back about the time I was over the subdivision north of the airport. That subdivision is about 3 miles from where it all started. I turned over the subdivision and landed on a perpendicular runway.
I then released a torrent of profanities and considered all of the most painful ways to kill someone if I could ever find the #@(#*$@(#*$@(*##$(@* that hit me with that laser.
I'm all for higher penalties for this crap. It's probably already killed people. We don't know for sure because plane crash victims don't tend to be very talkative.
The App bubble has already popped. The only people that make money writing apps are contractors building them for companies that insist they need an app (even though they probably don't...), employees at companies like that drawing a salary, and the 1 in a million that comes up with the ugly meter. Eventually the marketing departments will realize that "Billy Bob's horse feed insurance" doesn't need a mobile app and all of that will dry up pretty quickly.
If you want to have a long career in development, learn databases. You don't necessarily want to be a DBA since they tend to get tied to a platform and their fortunes rise and fall with it (Foxpro anyone?). But, learn how to manipulate information. There will always be someone willing to pay you to manage their data. Maybe through an application, maybe through an app, maybe through a web interface.
At the end of the day, most of the decent paying technology gigs come from managing information for someone.
I got into this business in the early 90's and was told that by a friend of my father's who had been programming since the 60's. It's the best business advice anyone has ever given me.
Interestingly enough, my new employer's (Stateside again) largest market is mainland China. On several occasions, my ability to speak/read/write has proven handy. Mostly for collecting money and reading documents. But, it's a nice break from code-monkeying.
Until you have a decent level of proficiency, reading books in Chinese is VERY difficult. Chinese dictionaries are almost unapproachable until you have a middle school level ability. Tablets improve the situation quite a bit, if you learn how to write, but it's still not much fun.
Background: I lived in China for two years doing engineering work. I was in a small town in the middle of no-where and almost entirely cut-off from English speakers. I studied like crazy and by the time I left could do anything I needed to in Chinese.
It was a very hard road though. Not for the feint of heart.
I used overplay.net's commercial OpenVPN. There's several competing services specifically tailored to bypassing the great firewall. Overplay in particular has a huge list of servers in different countries. Occasionally one would get blocked, but one of the others would always work.
Best $10/month I spent while I was there.
Regarding the locals laws, etc.. it's a definite gray area. The laws don't say you're not allowed to post or view certain things. The laws just say that the government is allowed to "normalize" (filter/censor).
I used a VPN for years and registered for my internet account using my passport. They knew who I was and could obviously see the VPN traffic. I never heard a word from anybody about it.
This guy nailed it. I was in the tech business over there, but only because I came over with an existing business.
Going over there and trying to start from scratch? Forget it. If you do manage to find something, you'll do well to make 8k rmb/month. But, you'll probably never find anything.
Best bet is to teach english. You'll be hard pressed to get work doing much else unless you've already got connections.
I moved to China two years ago with no background in the language at all.
Total, 100% immersion + whatever training material I could get my hands on.
Now, I'm pretty fluent. But, 3 months in? Forget it. I couldn't even talk to a taxi driver with any consistency. Forget ordering food from a normal menu. Picture menu or nothing.
Most Americans don't even know the difference between immigrant and emigrant. I fall into the latter category, but have stopped using that word. It doesn't help that they sound almost identical.
Of course they did.. they were embarrassed by western news reporting it first and had to. Plus, Foxconn isn't a mainland company and they ALWAYS like a chance to bash on the Taiwanese.
They would NEVER tell you about the real suicide rate in mainland china. Or any other thing negative about Chinese society.
I wouldn't ever want to demean someones death, but, the suicides at Foxconn were statistically insignificant. Compared to the suicide rate among the general population here, they aren't out of line and are actually an improvement.
Think of a city you know in the US with 200,000 people. I'll wager you every week you can find an obituary in the newspaper for a suicide.
That's a much higher rate then the few at Foxconn city. Perhaps all US cities should have nets as well?
My wife just showed up with lunch and I asked her specifically about this. (she's native born Chinese) Basically, she said that people work there because they can make more money than they can anywhere else.
In theory they could unionize, but what would it get them? Most likely a chance to get fired and replaced with 200,000 other farm kids that are quite happy to take the wages Foxconn is willing to offer.
Unions only work when there is a limited supply of workers. That isn't a problem right now in China. Eventually (10-20 years I estimate) it might be, and then unionizing makes sense. Until then, there's no point.
Can you imagine all those workers going on strike? I would wager they would all be replaced within a week, everything would go back to normal and the western world would never even notice.
I've resisted posting on these threads because I don't want to start a war. However, I think it's finally time that I spoke up.
Firstly, I live in China, speak Mandarin and Cantonese and build electronics among other things over here.
I think this isn't a bad thing in concept, but everyone needs to get a little perspective on the issue. The educated workers, engineers and the like, are pretty well taken care of. They make middle class (for the region) wages, get weekends off and generally put in a comparable number of productive hours to US engineers.
The factory workers, which are the ones that everyone seems to worry about also have it pretty good. They get company provided housing (no, the housing isn't up to western standards, but it's significantly better then where they grew up, I PROMISE). They also get company provided food (No, it isn't Ruth's Chris, but it isn't bad.. I frequently eat in the factory when I don't want to take the time to go out).
Everyone is trying to apply western working standards to the workers over here. While I think it's great in principle, consideration has to be taken for cultural and lifestyle differences. Most of the people that are working in those factories came from a life of subsistence farming. They are also migrant workers. Their families live back in Henan, Hunan, Dongbei, etc... Most of them grew up in a single concrete room. They're quite lucky if their parents house had a flushable toilet.
Making a thousand or two thousand RMB per month, having a decent bed to sleep in and 3 meals a day is a significant upgrade.
With all of that said, I'm also a firm believer in giving them the opportunity for more. Everybody should have the chance to enjoy western working standards. But, it needs to be done in a patient manner. Expecting Apple to leverage Foxconn to give $10/hr and carpeted apartments to 200,000 workers is way out of proportion. Not only would it be prohibitively expensive, but it would screw up Foxconn's competitiveness.
Remember, Iphones aren't the only thing made in Foxconn city. Hundreds of other electronics manufacturers make things there. If Foxconn doesn't stay competitive in Shenzhen, somebody will open a factory in Vietnam where they don't even have to feed their staff and pretty soon all of those people in SZ that everyone was so worried about will be out of work and back to subsistence farming.
Let me repeat... I'm not opposed to this. A little external influence to help them move up the economic ladder is certainly not a bad thing. Neither are all the good intentions. What is a bad thing is expecting too much to happen too fast. China has advanced at it's own pace QUITE effectively in a single generation. We all need to bear that in mind.
They have a long ways to go, but they've come a HELL OF A LONG WAYS from hole-in-the-ground toilets that don't flush.
I'd say, we should all give Apple and Foxconn some credit for the 200,000 migrant children of farmers that now can feed their families back home and raise their children in better conditions then what they grew up in. Isn't that the "American Dream"? Giving more to your children then you had?
I'll promise that the airport was there BEFORE some developer bought the farmland and built your subdivision full of McMansions on it. He got a spanking deal on the land because it's near an airport and you didn't do your homework.
How about, instead of chastising the airport and pilots for your mistakes, DO YOUR HOMEWORK THE NEXT TIME YOU BUY A HOUSE.
To answer your direct question, yes, there is a rule. However, it does not apply during approach and landing, which is what you are talking about.
I apologize in advance for the tone of this message, but I used to fly out of an airport in exactly this situation. There were hundreds of home owners constantly complaining/picketing/etc. I have 0 sympathy for them. They knew the airport was there when they bought the house. You are in the same boat.
"And don't give me the "radio interference" crap - there's no evidence at all to support this and it's routinely ignored by anybody in the industry"
I love how technology types tend to think they know everything about every piece of technology because they can use VB.
Aside from being a geek and occasional programmer, I'm also a pilot. I've also personally encountered navigational interference from a cellular phone. I think that qualifies as "evidence at all to support this". You can also refer to the link posted below that gives detailed accounts of specific interference on scheduled airline flights.
Seriously, airplanes are not computers. The rules are not meant to be broken. The rules are intended to be as minimally invasive as possible while still protecting against all potential issues. Note: This statement does NOT apply to TSA rules. They are maximally invasive and minimally effective. I'm only speaking to FAA rules regarding flight safety.
The real issue in this case is that some devices can/do cause interference and others don't. But, on a commercial airliner with hundreds of passengers that might each be carrying a potentially interfering device, the rule is that everybody has to turn them off and safely store them. Of course, the issue of a laptop being a potential projectile during a rough take-off/landing is also a concern. Short of having flight crews carry around an FCC manual and an RF meter to test every single device that a passenger might want to use, I think the current situation is a reasonable compromise.
So, basically, you'll never get what you want. The FAA and the airlines are in the business of protecting and delivering passengers respectively. They are not in the "allow some random passenger to use whatever device he wants that can potentially screw up the airplane at any time" business. If you want that level of service, charter a Gulfstream. Small, private aircraft can and do provide that level of service. If some electronic device is screwing with navigation, it's very easy to know who's device it is and have them turn it off. That's not easy on a commercial airliner.
As for the article topic, I would LOVE to have this available and would happily pay probably as much as $20 to use it on a cross-country or international flight. Being able to accomplish something with otherwise wasted time is always a win.
There's a whole assortment of options, but I've had good luck with both google talk and QQ. Granted, QQ is mostly used by Chinese, but it works well in the western world and is available (english version) for windows, macos, linux and EVERY mobile phone ever made that supports any kind of data service.
Awww, pathetic little leftist so sad to read the truth.
So, you start off by insulting your opponent? It's not even a correct insult. I'm actually a card-carrying libertarian. I'm also intelligent enough that I realize that all of these issues are multi-dimensional and require real research. The talking heads aren't nearly enough.
What, do you think Hussein wasn't a vile dictator? The fact that the US supported him at one point in time is immaterial to the point that he was a vile dictator.
We put him in power. Actually, to be precise, the Reagan administration put him in power. That's most certainly relevant. We either knew he was crazy and didn't care, or we didn't and are covering up our mistakes. In any case, it's very relevant.
Most all Iraqis would agree with my characterization, so much so that many call him a "Jew" (even though he was himself an ardent Jew-hater, antisemitism is so ingrained in the culture that anyone who is hated becomes derogatorily referred to as "Jew").
Irrelevant. We put him in there via treachery and then we had to get rid of him when he stopped being our puppet. We shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place.
You can guarantee I wouldn't want to live without them? You're foolish if you really think you can make such a guarantee. I would gladly sign on to a national referendum abolishing all federal entitlements for those not near retirement age if I could.
LOL. Seriously, LOL. That means, you'd basically abolish nothing. I assume you also wouldn't touch medicaid. Or, do you believe that because a child is born to poor parents, they deserve to die from diarrhea or some other trivially manageable disease? In any case, the only program you'd end up eliminating is the food stamp program. Food stamps (of which, 76% got to households with children... should we starve the poor children too while we're at it?) only cost $28.6B per year. That number is a rounding error in the federal budget.
I don't believe in intergenerational theft, and I don't believe in government authorized pyramid schemes. My generation is getting raped by these failing Socialist schemes, which we have to pay into but won't get any benefit from. Worse, if we don't massively change course from the record-setting, enormous Obama deficits, the country will shortly end up in the same situation as Greece is in currently. Is that really what you want? Do you have any concept of the destructiveness of the debt we continue to run up? Do you know what debt service means? I sincerely doubt you do.
I don't believe in pyramid schemes either. But, I don't see you making any proposals to fix it. For the record, it's not a pyramid scheme. It IS pay as you go. When it was created, they didn't anticipate your grandparents having nearly as many children as they did. Furthermore, our parents generation reduced their own taxes (greedy bastards) and stole, "borrowed", from the fund. Now, they expect us to pick up the tab. Well, shit.. what do we do with that? We either throw it all away, which we'll never be able to do. Even you said "for those not near retirement age". Does that mean that I get to pay into it for the next 20 years and never collect? Screw that. Pay the thing up to where it needs to be and move on. You won't get rid of it, but you won't pay for it either.
1. Yes, I'm on a computer on the Internet, but I don't know what the FCC or the DOE have to do with either. The DoD developed the forerunner to the Internet, which took off in academia and then was embraced by the free market. I appreciate the US government's contributions to the creation/maintenance of the Internet, but like I've indicated I have no problems with justified defense programs and research; since the Internet came from defense research originally, I don't have a beef with government having spent on it. 2. The federal
That's not a contrarian opinion. It's nothing but a collection of the usual bile.
"vile dictator named Saddam Hussein"
You do remember that we CREATED him? We (the US) put him in power and provided the weapons he used to fight against Iran, against his own people and eventually against us.
I'm all for deficit reduction,et al.. But I really wonder when these self-declared "conservatives" will wake up and realize that all the preaching in the world isn't going to change anything. You can rail against "entitlement" programs and bureaucracies until you're blue in the face, but I guarantee you wouldn't want to live without them. Might I point out that the money we spent on Iraq is enough to permanently fix social security?
I assume you're not old enough for Social Security, but I bet your parents are and claimed it. Since you're using your computer and posting to a website, you've benefited from the FCC and the DoEnergy. If you drove on any US highway or ridden on an airplane, you've benefited from the DOT. I assume you were educated in the US,probably attended college and probably used at least some amount of student loans to pay for it. You can thank the DoEducation for that.
If you really want to change something, why don't you take the time to actually learn what all of these agencies do. Instead of being spoon fed by Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, take the time to do the research. Then, you can make some intelligent arguments about how to improve the system. For all the rhetoric, the "conservative" movement is nothing more then the same old crap in a different wrapper. Reagan raided SS and filled it with bonds to finance his deficit spending. The Bush's both wanted to raid it entirely and give it to their wall-street buddies in the form of "private accounts." The only people that would have benefited from that are the investment bankers. I think we've given them enough handouts already.
So, back to my original point: Unless you have a better proposal that's well thought-out and actually implementable, you have no standing.
If all you can say is that we should do away with all of it, you've only demonstrated your own ignorance.
I live in a place that HAS high speed trains (south China). I also drive. The train is great for a trip to Guangzhuo (80km) or Shenzhen (72km). Driving to either of those places is a pain in the butt and the train is pretty cheap (about $8).
There are places that they work. I've also spent a fair amount of time in Japan. The high speed trains there also work great.
All of the previous posts about suburbia are correct, but you have to look at the big picture. Not everyone lives in suburbia. I'm not an advocate of forcing people to abandon the suburban life, but there is a third option. South China has huge sprawling megalopolis type cities with a smattering of high speed rail connecting them. Overall, it's pretty efficient. Most people, when looking for a residence here, specifically ask how close it is to the train station.
With all of that being said, it will probably NEVER work in the US.
Below is right about the bleach, but there are other concerns as well.
Ever been poked accidentally by a barber? Now, what happens if they draw blood (even a drop is enough) and you're HIV positive? It's a reasonable question to ask.
Or, simple things like hair lice or other vermin that could be infesting you.
Some of it is obviously marketing driven (hair cut count, family members, etc..), but the other stuff is not as sinister as it might first appear.
G forces are directly related to how tightly and how fast a maneuver is performed. It's simply a matter of knowing what your limits are and not exceeding them. That's a pretty recurrent theme in all things aviation.
Slashdot Mirror
Night landings are, by their nature, more difficult and more dangerous than daytime landings. Assuming visual conditions, nearly everything is dependent upon being able to continuously see runway lights. About 10 minutes prior to landing, the standard procedure is to dim everything in the cockpit to it's lowest setting. The goal of this is to make sure the pilot's eyes are dilated as much as possible to see the runway lights and land safely.
About 5 years ago, I was landing at Chicago Dupage airport. About 1 mile from the runway threshold and about 500 ft above the ground, I was repeatedly hit by a bright red laser. Immediately after the first bright flash from the laser, I felt like I'd just walked from daylight into a dark room. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see any instruments (Remember, they're all dimmed as low as possible) and the runway lights were suddenly very dim. After the second and third time, I couldn't see the runway lights anymore. My only choice was to add power, pull up and hope that I was still flying straight. I overflew most of the airport and remember finally getting good vision back about the time I was over the subdivision north of the airport. That subdivision is about 3 miles from where it all started. I turned over the subdivision and landed on a perpendicular runway.
I then released a torrent of profanities and considered all of the most painful ways to kill someone if I could ever find the #@(#*$@(#*$@(*##$(@* that hit me with that laser.
I'm all for higher penalties for this crap. It's probably already killed people. We don't know for sure because plane crash victims don't tend to be very talkative.
The App bubble has already popped. The only people that make money writing apps are contractors building them for companies that insist they need an app (even though they probably don't...), employees at companies like that drawing a salary, and the 1 in a million that comes up with the ugly meter. Eventually the marketing departments will realize that "Billy Bob's horse feed insurance" doesn't need a mobile app and all of that will dry up pretty quickly.
If you want to have a long career in development, learn databases. You don't necessarily want to be a DBA since they tend to get tied to a platform and their fortunes rise and fall with it (Foxpro anyone?). But, learn how to manipulate information. There will always be someone willing to pay you to manage their data. Maybe through an application, maybe through an app, maybe through a web interface.
At the end of the day, most of the decent paying technology gigs come from managing information for someone.
I got into this business in the early 90's and was told that by a friend of my father's who had been programming since the 60's. It's the best business advice anyone has ever given me.
Interestingly enough, my new employer's (Stateside again) largest market is mainland China. On several occasions, my ability to speak/read/write has proven handy. Mostly for collecting money and reading documents. But, it's a nice break from code-monkeying.
Until you have a decent level of proficiency, reading books in Chinese is VERY difficult. Chinese dictionaries are almost unapproachable until you have a middle school level ability. Tablets improve the situation quite a bit, if you learn how to write, but it's still not much fun.
Background:
I lived in China for two years doing engineering work. I was in a small town in the middle of no-where and almost entirely cut-off from English speakers. I studied like crazy and by the time I left could do anything I needed to in Chinese.
It was a very hard road though. Not for the feint of heart.
I used overplay.net's commercial OpenVPN. There's several competing services specifically tailored to bypassing the great firewall. Overplay in particular has a huge list of servers in different countries. Occasionally one would get blocked, but one of the others would always work.
Best $10/month I spent while I was there.
Regarding the locals laws, etc.. it's a definite gray area. The laws don't say you're not allowed to post or view certain things. The laws just say that the government is allowed to "normalize" (filter/censor).
I used a VPN for years and registered for my internet account using my passport. They knew who I was and could obviously see the VPN traffic. I never heard a word from anybody about it.
This guy nailed it. I was in the tech business over there, but only because I came over with an existing business.
Going over there and trying to start from scratch? Forget it. If you do manage to find something, you'll do well to make 8k rmb/month. But, you'll probably never find anything.
Best bet is to teach english. You'll be hard pressed to get work doing much else unless you've already got connections.
I moved to China two years ago with no background in the language at all.
Total, 100% immersion + whatever training material I could get my hands on.
Now, I'm pretty fluent. But, 3 months in? Forget it. I couldn't even talk to a taxi driver with any consistency. Forget ordering food from a normal menu. Picture menu or nothing.
Most Americans don't even know the difference between immigrant and emigrant. I fall into the latter category, but have stopped using that word. It doesn't help that they sound almost identical.
I prefer expat now.
"At what point will we acknowledge that the disparity of wealth here in the USA is encouraging a wealth disparity throughout the entire 3rd world?"
I'd never really looked at it that way. VERY interesting.. You've given me food for thought for a while.
"They have a long ways to go. So keep pushing to make working conditions even better."
Absolutely.
Of course they did.. they were embarrassed by western news reporting it first and had to. Plus, Foxconn isn't a mainland company and they ALWAYS like a chance to bash on the Taiwanese.
They would NEVER tell you about the real suicide rate in mainland china. Or any other thing negative about Chinese society.
Absolutely. All I'm advocating is some patience in the process. I hope one day they can all enjoy the benefits that American factory workers receive.
Oh, wait... the only benefit is 6 months of unemployment checks and a foreclosure notice.
I wouldn't ever want to demean someones death, but, the suicides at Foxconn were statistically insignificant. Compared to the suicide rate among the general population here, they aren't out of line and are actually an improvement.
Think of a city you know in the US with 200,000 people. I'll wager you every week you can find an obituary in the newspaper for a suicide.
That's a much higher rate then the few at Foxconn city. Perhaps all US cities should have nets as well?
My wife just showed up with lunch and I asked her specifically about this. (she's native born Chinese) Basically, she said that people work there because they can make more money than they can anywhere else.
In theory they could unionize, but what would it get them? Most likely a chance to get fired and replaced with 200,000 other farm kids that are quite happy to take the wages Foxconn is willing to offer.
Unions only work when there is a limited supply of workers. That isn't a problem right now in China. Eventually (10-20 years I estimate) it might be, and then unionizing makes sense. Until then, there's no point.
Can you imagine all those workers going on strike? I would wager they would all be replaced within a week, everything would go back to normal and the western world would never even notice.
I've resisted posting on these threads because I don't want to start a war. However, I think it's finally time that I spoke up.
Firstly, I live in China, speak Mandarin and Cantonese and build electronics among other things over here.
I think this isn't a bad thing in concept, but everyone needs to get a little perspective on the issue. The educated workers, engineers and the like, are pretty well taken care of. They make middle class (for the region) wages, get weekends off and generally put in a comparable number of productive hours to US engineers.
The factory workers, which are the ones that everyone seems to worry about also have it pretty good. They get company provided housing (no, the housing isn't up to western standards, but it's significantly better then where they grew up, I PROMISE). They also get company provided food (No, it isn't Ruth's Chris, but it isn't bad.. I frequently eat in the factory when I don't want to take the time to go out).
Everyone is trying to apply western working standards to the workers over here. While I think it's great in principle, consideration has to be taken for cultural and lifestyle differences. Most of the people that are working in those factories came from a life of subsistence farming. They are also migrant workers. Their families live back in Henan, Hunan, Dongbei, etc... Most of them grew up in a single concrete room. They're quite lucky if their parents house had a flushable toilet.
Making a thousand or two thousand RMB per month, having a decent bed to sleep in and 3 meals a day is a significant upgrade.
With all of that said, I'm also a firm believer in giving them the opportunity for more. Everybody should have the chance to enjoy western working standards. But, it needs to be done in a patient manner. Expecting Apple to leverage Foxconn to give $10/hr and carpeted apartments to 200,000 workers is way out of proportion. Not only would it be prohibitively expensive, but it would screw up Foxconn's competitiveness.
Remember, Iphones aren't the only thing made in Foxconn city. Hundreds of other electronics manufacturers make things there. If Foxconn doesn't stay competitive in Shenzhen, somebody will open a factory in Vietnam where they don't even have to feed their staff and pretty soon all of those people in SZ that everyone was so worried about will be out of work and back to subsistence farming.
Let me repeat... I'm not opposed to this. A little external influence to help them move up the economic ladder is certainly not a bad thing. Neither are all the good intentions. What is a bad thing is expecting too much to happen too fast. China has advanced at it's own pace QUITE effectively in a single generation. We all need to bear that in mind.
They have a long ways to go, but they've come a HELL OF A LONG WAYS from hole-in-the-ground toilets that don't flush.
I'd say, we should all give Apple and Foxconn some credit for the 200,000 migrant children of farmers that now can feed their families back home and raise their children in better conditions then what they grew up in. Isn't that the "American Dream"? Giving more to your children then you had?
Here's a better idea:
I'll promise that the airport was there BEFORE some developer bought the farmland and built your subdivision full of McMansions on it. He got a spanking deal on the land because it's near an airport and you didn't do your homework.
How about, instead of chastising the airport and pilots for your mistakes, DO YOUR HOMEWORK THE NEXT TIME YOU BUY A HOUSE.
To answer your direct question, yes, there is a rule. However, it does not apply during approach and landing, which is what you are talking about.
I apologize in advance for the tone of this message, but I used to fly out of an airport in exactly this situation. There were hundreds of home owners constantly complaining/picketing/etc. I have 0 sympathy for them. They knew the airport was there when they bought the house. You are in the same boat.
"And don't give me the "radio interference" crap - there's no evidence at all to support this and it's routinely ignored by anybody in the industry"
I love how technology types tend to think they know everything about every piece of technology because they can use VB.
Aside from being a geek and occasional programmer, I'm also a pilot. I've also personally encountered navigational interference from a cellular phone. I think that qualifies as "evidence at all to support this". You can also refer to the link posted below that gives detailed accounts of specific interference on scheduled airline flights.
Seriously, airplanes are not computers. The rules are not meant to be broken. The rules are intended to be as minimally invasive as possible while still protecting against all potential issues. Note: This statement does NOT apply to TSA rules. They are maximally invasive and minimally effective. I'm only speaking to FAA rules regarding flight safety.
The real issue in this case is that some devices can/do cause interference and others don't. But, on a commercial airliner with hundreds of passengers that might each be carrying a potentially interfering device, the rule is that everybody has to turn them off and safely store them. Of course, the issue of a laptop being a potential projectile during a rough take-off/landing is also a concern. Short of having flight crews carry around an FCC manual and an RF meter to test every single device that a passenger might want to use, I think the current situation is a reasonable compromise.
So, basically, you'll never get what you want. The FAA and the airlines are in the business of protecting and delivering passengers respectively. They are not in the "allow some random passenger to use whatever device he wants that can potentially screw up the airplane at any time" business. If you want that level of service, charter a Gulfstream. Small, private aircraft can and do provide that level of service. If some electronic device is screwing with navigation, it's very easy to know who's device it is and have them turn it off. That's not easy on a commercial airliner.
As for the article topic, I would LOVE to have this available and would happily pay probably as much as $20 to use it on a cross-country or international flight. Being able to accomplish something with otherwise wasted time is always a win.
There's a whole assortment of options, but I've had good luck with both google talk and QQ. Granted, QQ is mostly used by Chinese, but it works well in the western world and is available (english version) for windows, macos, linux and EVERY mobile phone ever made that supports any kind of data service.
Awww, pathetic little leftist so sad to read the truth.
So, you start off by insulting your opponent? It's not even a correct insult. I'm actually a card-carrying libertarian. I'm also intelligent enough that I realize that all of these issues are multi-dimensional and require real research. The talking heads aren't nearly enough.
What, do you think Hussein wasn't a vile dictator? The fact that the US supported him at one point in time is immaterial to the point that he was a vile dictator.
We put him in power. Actually, to be precise, the Reagan administration put him in power. That's most certainly relevant. We either knew he was crazy and didn't care, or we didn't and are covering up our mistakes. In any case, it's very relevant.
Most all Iraqis would agree with my characterization, so much so that many call him a "Jew" (even though he was himself an ardent Jew-hater, antisemitism is so ingrained in the culture that anyone who is hated becomes derogatorily referred to as "Jew").
Irrelevant. We put him in there via treachery and then we had to get rid of him when he stopped being our puppet. We shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place.
You can guarantee I wouldn't want to live without them? You're foolish if you really think you can make such a guarantee. I would gladly sign on to a national referendum abolishing all federal entitlements for those not near retirement age if I could.
LOL. Seriously, LOL. That means, you'd basically abolish nothing. I assume you also wouldn't touch medicaid. Or, do you believe that because a child is born to poor parents, they deserve to die from diarrhea or some other trivially manageable disease? In any case, the only program you'd end up eliminating is the food stamp program. Food stamps (of which, 76% got to households with children... should we starve the poor children too while we're at it?) only cost $28.6B per year. That number is a rounding error in the federal budget.
I don't believe in intergenerational theft, and I don't believe in government authorized pyramid schemes. My generation is getting raped by these failing Socialist schemes, which we have to pay into but won't get any benefit from. Worse, if we don't massively change course from the record-setting, enormous Obama deficits, the country will shortly end up in the same situation as Greece is in currently. Is that really what you want? Do you have any concept of the destructiveness of the debt we continue to run up? Do you know what debt service means? I sincerely doubt you do.
I don't believe in pyramid schemes either. But, I don't see you making any proposals to fix it. For the record, it's not a pyramid scheme. It IS pay as you go. When it was created, they didn't anticipate your grandparents having nearly as many children as they did. Furthermore, our parents generation reduced their own taxes (greedy bastards) and stole, "borrowed", from the fund. Now, they expect us to pick up the tab. Well, shit.. what do we do with that? We either throw it all away, which we'll never be able to do. Even you said "for those not near retirement age". Does that mean that I get to pay into it for the next 20 years and never collect? Screw that. Pay the thing up to where it needs to be and move on. You won't get rid of it, but you won't pay for it either.
1. Yes, I'm on a computer on the Internet, but I don't know what the FCC or the DOE have to do with either. The DoD developed the forerunner to the Internet, which took off in academia and then was embraced by the free market. I appreciate the US government's contributions to the creation/maintenance of the Internet, but like I've indicated I have no problems with justified defense programs and research; since the Internet came from defense research originally, I don't have a beef with government having spent on it. 2. The federal
That's not a contrarian opinion. It's nothing but a collection of the usual bile.
"vile dictator named Saddam Hussein"
You do remember that we CREATED him? We (the US) put him in power and provided the weapons he used to fight against Iran, against his own people and eventually against us.
I'm all for deficit reduction,et al.. But I really wonder when these self-declared "conservatives" will wake up and realize that all the preaching in the world isn't going to change anything. You can rail against "entitlement" programs and bureaucracies until you're blue in the face, but I guarantee you wouldn't want to live without them. Might I point out that the money we spent on Iraq is enough to permanently fix social security?
I assume you're not old enough for Social Security, but I bet your parents are and claimed it. Since you're using your computer and posting to a website, you've benefited from the FCC and the DoEnergy. If you drove on any US highway or ridden on an airplane, you've benefited from the DOT. I assume you were educated in the US,probably attended college and probably used at least some amount of student loans to pay for it. You can thank the DoEducation for that.
If you really want to change something, why don't you take the time to actually learn what all of these agencies do. Instead of being spoon fed by Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, take the time to do the research. Then, you can make some intelligent arguments about how to improve the system. For all the rhetoric, the "conservative" movement is nothing more then the same old crap in a different wrapper. Reagan raided SS and filled it with bonds to finance his deficit spending. The Bush's both wanted to raid it entirely and give it to their wall-street buddies in the form of "private accounts." The only people that would have benefited from that are the investment bankers. I think we've given them enough handouts already.
So, back to my original point: Unless you have a better proposal that's well thought-out and actually implementable, you have no standing.
If all you can say is that we should do away with all of it, you've only demonstrated your own ignorance.
I live in a place that HAS high speed trains (south China). I also drive. The train is great for a trip to Guangzhuo (80km) or Shenzhen (72km). Driving to either of those places is a pain in the butt and the train is pretty cheap (about $8).
There are places that they work. I've also spent a fair amount of time in Japan. The high speed trains there also work great.
All of the previous posts about suburbia are correct, but you have to look at the big picture. Not everyone lives in suburbia. I'm not an advocate of forcing people to abandon the suburban life, but there is a third option. South China has huge sprawling megalopolis type cities with a smattering of high speed rail connecting them. Overall, it's pretty efficient. Most people, when looking for a residence here, specifically ask how close it is to the train station.
With all of that being said, it will probably NEVER work in the US.
Not only do they limit access to internet cafes, but to a whole assortment of other "entertainment“ venues.
Even video arcades (places quite strongly associated with children) are age restricted here.
This has nothing to do with the usual "evil China" banter about censorship, et al. and everything to do with conservative "family" values.
China is so conservative, it makes Ronald Reagan look like a communist. (Note: I live in mainland China)
How about lower 6 digit?
Consider yourself confirmed
Below is right about the bleach, but there are other concerns as well.
Ever been poked accidentally by a barber? Now, what happens if they draw blood (even a drop is enough) and you're HIV positive? It's a reasonable question to ask.
Or, simple things like hair lice or other vermin that could be infesting you.
Some of it is obviously marketing driven (hair cut count, family members, etc..), but the other stuff is not as sinister as it might first appear.
G forces are directly related to how tightly and how fast a maneuver is performed. It's simply a matter of knowing what your limits are and not exceeding them. That's a pretty recurrent theme in all things aviation.