I'm a SAP consultant and have "cleaned-up" several data sets over the years. I'm lucky in that all of my customers are running it on Unix with DB2.
I wrote a series of PHP scripts that go through everything and present inside a somewhat simplified web interface. I also use Crystal Reports to provide "cleaner" copies.
But, at the end of the day, it's more of a brute-force exercise then anything. Providing a simpler interface then R/3 is the first step, but you have to have users that are willing to use. What I've done in the past is to set up the interface and then send out a mass email telling everyone that they have to spend at least an hour every day going over the history for their department.
It usually takes about 6 months, but it's really beautiful thing when it's done.
My situation is similar to yours. I bought and tested several off the shelf solutions and was continuously disappointed.
My solution was an off the shelf AMD PC filled with HDD's and linux software raid.
It's MUCH Faster (90MB/Sec) then any of the NAS solutions I tested.
With Christmas specials abounding right now, HDD's are cheap. Use independent controllers for each port and a reasonable CPU. Also make sure that the GIGe interface is PCI-E.
I used to be the lead programmer for a Big Company (tm). We'd just completed a several year project to build and roll out an in-house ERP system. It was mid-October.
I decided we needed a little fun break. I whipped up a quick piece of code that recolored all the application screens in orange and black. Through it on the update server.
When everyone logged in on Halloween, they were greeted with orange and black screens. Everybody laughed. Even the PHB thought it was pretty funny.
If your work is so serious that you can't have a little fun, it's probably time to find a new job.
It's also easy to write prospective presidents and urge them to not appoint this position.
Civil damages require civil remediation. The governments job is to issue patents and copyrights, and provide a court system to litigate them within. Without regard to what I might think of the RIAA's tactics, they are at least using the system somewhat as intended. Civil damage, civil remedy.
Let's tell our leaders to be exactly what we think of these shenanigans.
But, I can tell from your message that you have a high level of contamination in your home drinking water. It's already affecting your speech. I'm from the Federated Department of Drinking Water Security. (Flashes badge that is a perfect knock-off) You have nothing to fear though, for a nominal fee, I can provide you with a water security solution that will keep your faucet from broadcasting it's location to the evil germs and heavy metals that are lurking just outside.
It's quite simple. Gaming in general (both PC and console) has evolved quite a bit in the past couple generations. I can't say that there won't be any new innovations, but I can say with certainty that almost everything has been tried at least once.
With that in mind, there are a number of gimmicks that game studios use when producing games. IMHO, the worst are the following:
1: Adding artificially hard/non-linear barriers to progression. The most recent splinter cell game is a great example of this. While the previous ones were quite linear and relatively free of frustrating gaps, "Double Agent" had several things that seemed as if they were put in there just for the sake of taking up the playerâ(TM)s time. Don't take a 7 hour game and try to stretch it to 12 with garbage.
(2 and 3 are somewhat similar and several games are offenders of both. They are, however, separate problems)
2: Using flashy pre-rendered cut scenes to advance major story points or game play. Part of me misses the age of cartridge consoles. With only 64Mbit to play with, these kind of antics were basically impossible. In todayâ(TM)s age of double sided DVD's and even BD-ROM discs, a game could conceivably have hours of cut-scenes. If I wanted to watch cut scenes (no matter how well animated) I'd rent a movie. If they take up more then 50% of the time spent playing, I generally skip them or have a beer/sandwich. Consequently, I miss out anything that's contained in them that is important or significant to the game
3: Trying to make up for poorly designed or un-engaging game play with flashy/unique/overly high-quality graphics. Thanks to the availability of substantial hardware resources in the current generation of consoles (excluding the WII, of course), it's quite easy to fill a game with high polygon count skinned, boned models wrapped in super detailed textures, multiple light sources and hand perfected pixel shaders. It might look really spectacular, but that doesn't really mean anything if it's not any fun. Once again, if I wanted to look at something rendered absolutely perfectly, I'd watch a Pixar movie.
4: Having a selection of difficulty levels that has little effect on the game. 15 years ago, Doom offered 5 different skill levels. While the playerâ(TM)s choice didn't massively change the game, it did incrementally increase the difficulty. The monsters were harder to kill, more populous and while health packs had less effect, more ammo was spawned. I would hope that modern games could do better then that. Doom ran fine at 33Mhz. Modern consoles have roughly 10,200 MHz at their disposal. There is no excuse for difficulty levels to do nothing more then spawn more or harder to kill Napâ(TM)s.
Finally, the biggest and most annoying thing about the current generation of video games:
5. Today's game producers tend to front load their game's content. I've never found a published statistic, but my estimation is that only about 40% of games purchased are ever fully completed by their purchasers. The player either tires of the game before the end, or gets another game to play before they finish. Since most games today are part of a series and are expected to remain viable for use in future sequels/ newer consoles, the game companies cheat on the content. They put, in my estimation, 75% of the best content in the first 50% of the game. The hardcore gamers and series fans will always buy the next sequel. They're hoping that by front-loading the best content, the semi-casual player that only finished half of the previous title in the series will have liked it enough to buy the new one when it comes out. While I understand their logic, I'd really like to get more for my money. 8-10 hours from a game that costs $50-60. That's between $5-7.50 per hour. I don't know what everyone elseâ(TM)s thoughts are, but I think that minimum wag
I'm a programmer. I have experience writing games for several different platforms.
A good friend of mine is a 3d artist. He came to me a few months ago with an idea for a game. We pooled our cash, bought the necessary equipment and are making a go of it.
I can tell you that it's not an easy road, but, if you really want to see your game get built, and potentially make some money from it, you'll have to build it yourself.
On the bright side though, there are many opportunities once you have a viable product. We're still a while from release, but our playable proof of concept was good enough to negotiate a publishing contract. Once we had that, raising money was easy.
I had several "consumer" grade routers before finally finding the Dlink gamer lounge.
I've never been happier. I've had it for almost 2 years and I never have to reset it. The wireless always works, the gigabit is nice and the "Gamefuel" QOS is fairly effective.
The $100+ linksys routers aren't much improved over their $50 brethren, but the $100+ Dlink most certainly is.
Set up a simple box running Plesk. It automates most of the tasks of handling users, billing and maintenance. It also allows them to mange their own accounts.
I have to say that the parent is right on the mark.
Nobody wanted to see Oberweis elected, save a few gerrymandering conservative incumbents.
In all seriousness though, Foster is a heck of a nice guy. He's a scientist at heart and the kind of political outsider that is nice to see as my representative.
It took me a bit to figure out what was going on here, but it's all explained by the most basic rule of electronics.
V=IR, or resolved for our particular case, V/R = I
Once he "shorts" the coils, and closes the loop, the voltage drops 0. The resistance is also 0, or functionally close enough, because there's a piece of copper wire connecting the ends of the coil.
So, 0/0 (Bottom 0 is infinitesimally greater then 0 so the division is legal) ~= 0
I ~= 0, so there is no current flowing and no resistance presented to the motor which is why it accelerates.
Without the "short" in there, the meter itself is providing the load. Normally, a meter wouldn't be enough load to appreciably slow a generator, but this is a special case.
His generator is so grossly inefficient that any electrical load at all is enough to affect it's speed.
I can't believe they need somebody from MIT to figure this one out. I took basic electronics back in high school, slept through most of it and figured this out in less then 10 minutes.
Note: For the EE's in the crowd, I know that I should have used V = ZI and RMS values for Voltage/Amperage and impedance instead of resistance. I figured more people would remember V=IR though.
". Based on your analysis of the Chinese character, it sounds like your average Chinese is willing to step over the bodies of his comrades, so to speak, it will allow him to get ahead."
That's EXACTLY how it works. They'll slit each others throats here for 10RMB. (About $1.25)
I said it once in this thread, I'll say it again. China is very simple. Money isn't a thing, it's THE thing.
I'm in China right now and I can say with authority that you're wrong. For the record, I'm an American born Caucasian currently in Shenzhen province.
The Chinese are better capitalists then any American ever dreamed of being.
They might not openly admit it, but they LOVE capitalism.
"Money talks and bullshit walks" Nowhere in the world is that more true then in China. They might call themselves communists, but that's a load of crap. Money is the only thing that matters on this side of the pond.
While your concepts on fascism are interesting, it's not that complicated here. China is a very simple place. Dogs eat dogs and then they pick their teeth with the bones. If you're not ruthless enough to eat another dog, they'll come chomping at your tail.
As for the original topic, there is SOME validity to it, but it's not as rampant as the article makes it sound. Google is definitely slower in China then it is in Hong Kong. (Hong Kong, while part of China techcnically operates under it's own separate government). They don't block it or redirect it though, it's just much slower.
Mind you, I'd never let something like this get out on the floor.
However, it is VERY difficult to test machines with real currency. The levels of security, just at a slot machine company are enough to make you want to scream. Everything you do that involves real money has to be checked, rechecked and then checked some more.
That is, unless you want to put your own money into the machine. I was never one to carry a stack of hundred dollar bills in my pocket just to test company owned machines.
Once you're on the floor of the casino, it's absolutely ridiculous. In most jurisdictions, just touching a machine (with a gaming license and an ID badge, mind you) requires calling security, waiting for them to reposition a camera on you and waiting for an armed guard.
Accessing any of the parts of the machine that are close to the money (most have an additional strong box around the currency acceptor, with seperate keys for everything), normally requires at least 2 guards and a floor person. It's nearly impossible to do any real testing of a machine on the floor.
I'll concede that the bill acceptors should have been checked LONG before the machines ever got the casino. That was a terrifically stupid mistake. But, not one that would have been easily discovered on the casino floor.
Finally, regarding liability. Because of an NDA, I can't mention who I used to work for. But, we did release a machine once that had a paytable bug. The average slot machine has several millions of possible draws. Our test lab was basically a casino floor, with oscillators rigged up to push the play button as fast as the machine could spin. We filled them up with large amounts ($100k+) of cash and left them spinning 24/7. We'd tested this release, on the whole lab, for several weeks. Unfortunately, we didn't ever hit the right section of the play sequence to trigger this bug. The particular bug was related to progressive payouts (those huge spinning dollar amounts above the machines). On our machine, there was only one combination that would award the progressive. Giving it about a 1/2,000,000 payout chance. The bug occured after a progressive hit and made future progressive wins more likely. We had one large casino call us after a particularly busy week. Our average was 1 progressive per month in this facility. They'd paid out 19 of them in a week. Additionally, our play volume was quite a bit higher then normal. After further examination, they found out that the people that had hit the progressives were related. We weren't ever sure if the people realized our paytable was borked or if they just thought they were lucky.
In the end, the casino paid the people and took it out of my former employer's hide.
I think that Johnny Law is just blowing some smoke to get his name in the paper. I can promise you who will end up paying for this mistake.
I posted this to the original article as well, but I felt the slashdot community might derive some value from it as well. The interference issue is a VERY real one. I can't emphasize this enough. It's easy to debate this issue on the ground, but try debating it 2 miles above the ground when your only lifeline is a thin needle on a panel that is controlled by a radio transmitter on the ground. I have a personal experience with cellphone nav interaction. I've also watched the mythbusters episode. Everyone here knows that mythbusters, while entertaining, is not entirely scientific. I certainly am not willing to stake my life on the thoroughness of their conclusions.
Without further prefacing, here is my original post:
You mention in your article that "Many headsets used by private pilots come with jacks for using them with cell phones. The manufacturers say they're for use on the ground only. But many private pilots use them in the air without incident."
I fall into this category. However, I've also seen the dangers of airborne cell phone use. I carry a Nextel branded Blackberry. From my experience, it's not a very good phone to use on board an aircraft. About every 20 minutes or so, the phone goes into a signal frenzy. It's as if it finds multiple strong towers to connect to and is unable to choose. This results in a barrage of beeps and lights while it tries to figure out what's going on.
Furthermore, the risks of interference are very real. When I'm using the phone, I never notice the interference. I recently let someone else use my phone and was very surprised. My headset (flight radio headset) emitted a horrible scratching noise. I was totally unable to hear anything on the radio. I quickly looked at my VOR (radio navigation, NOT a gps) , and noticed that it was off coarse as well. Now, had I not been certain that I was on the right course, I might have well thought I was off course and corrected in an ultimately wrong direction.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with VOR technology, but it's the primary aviation navigational aid. GPS is wonderful, but it's still not the primary navigation mechanism. GPS is considered a "non-precision" navigation tool. VOR and ILS are still the primary mechanisms and they are dependent upon terrestrial radio transmissions. This is where the cellphone interference comes into play. Most cell phones operate in the 800mhz range. I'll save you a lesson in radio technology by simply stating that they can often have harmonic emissions in the same bands as used for aircraft navigation.
While you state that countless numbers of phones are left on during flights, this is not particularly dangerous. A phone ranging a tower is only actively transmitting for a very short period of time every 20 minutes or so at regular speeds. A phone that is in active use is a source of radio emissions that is in VERY close proximity to the aircraft communications and navigation antennas and is operating on a frequency that can have interfering harmonics. I have personal experience with the reactions a nav needle can have to a cellphone.
Imagine if the weather was bad (instrument meteorological conditions or IMC) and you were trying to land a large passenger airliner using nothing but a small needle on the panel to align with the runway. Then, a passenger starts talking to their uncle Bill about his bypass surgery and that needle jumps even 10 degrees off position. Now, instead of aligning with a runway, you're aligning with a corn field.
To answer your thoughts about shielding, that's not a viable solution. You would either have to shield the passenger cabin from radio emissions or shield the comm/nav antennas from it. In either case, the shielding to protect them from each other would seriously impair their usefulness. A passenger cabin shielded from RF emissions wouldn't allow your cell signal to get out, thereby negating the purpose. Shielding the comm/nav antennas sounds like a good idea until you realize that oftentimes nav aids and aircraft controllers a
Slashdot Mirror
That's an airplane designed to fly on a single engine.
The parent is referring to a multi-engine design that is capable of flying for extended periods of time on a single engine.
Also, he got the acronym wrong.
ETOPS: Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim
I'm a SAP consultant and have "cleaned-up" several data sets over the years. I'm lucky in that all of my customers are running it on Unix with DB2.
I wrote a series of PHP scripts that go through everything and present inside a somewhat simplified web interface. I also use Crystal Reports to provide "cleaner" copies.
But, at the end of the day, it's more of a brute-force exercise then anything. Providing a simpler interface then R/3 is the first step, but you have to have users that are willing to use. What I've done in the past is to set up the interface and then send out a mass email telling everyone that they have to spend at least an hour every day going over the history for their department.
It usually takes about 6 months, but it's really beautiful thing when it's done.
My situation is similar to yours. I bought and tested several off the shelf solutions and was continuously disappointed.
My solution was an off the shelf AMD PC filled with HDD's and linux software raid.
It's MUCH Faster (90MB/Sec) then any of the NAS solutions I tested.
With Christmas specials abounding right now, HDD's are cheap. Use independent controllers for each port and a reasonable CPU. Also make sure that the GIGe interface is PCI-E.
I used to be the lead programmer for a Big Company (tm). We'd just completed a several year project to build and roll out an in-house ERP system. It was mid-October.
I decided we needed a little fun break. I whipped up a quick piece of code that recolored all the application screens in orange and black. Through it on the update server.
When everyone logged in on Halloween, they were greeted with orange and black screens. Everybody laughed. Even the PHB thought it was pretty funny.
If your work is so serious that you can't have a little fun, it's probably time to find a new job.
It's also easy to write prospective presidents and urge them to not appoint this position.
Civil damages require civil remediation. The governments job is to issue patents and copyrights, and provide a court system to litigate them within. Without regard to what I might think of the RIAA's tactics, they are at least using the system somewhat as intended. Civil damage, civil remedy.
Let's tell our leaders to be exactly what we think of these shenanigans.
You're right!
But, I can tell from your message that you have a high level of contamination in your home drinking water. It's already affecting your speech. I'm from the Federated Department of Drinking Water Security. (Flashes badge that is a perfect knock-off) You have nothing to fear though, for a nominal fee, I can provide you with a water security solution that will keep your faucet from broadcasting it's location to the evil germs and heavy metals that are lurking just outside.
Take it from a well traveled American...
That's just as much of a stereotype as saying that all French people stink.
Kind of gets annoying after a while.
It's quite simple. Gaming in general (both PC and console) has evolved quite a bit in the past couple generations. I can't say that there won't be any new innovations, but I can say with certainty that almost everything has been tried at least once.
With that in mind, there are a number of gimmicks that game studios use when producing games. IMHO, the worst are the following:
1: Adding artificially hard/non-linear barriers to progression. The most recent splinter cell game is a great example of this. While the previous ones were quite linear and relatively free of frustrating gaps, "Double Agent" had several things that seemed as if they were put in there just for the sake of taking up the playerâ(TM)s time. Don't take a 7 hour game and try to stretch it to 12 with garbage.
(2 and 3 are somewhat similar and several games are offenders of both. They are, however, separate problems)
2: Using flashy pre-rendered cut scenes to advance major story points or game play. Part of me misses the age of cartridge consoles. With only 64Mbit to play with, these kind of antics were basically impossible. In todayâ(TM)s age of double sided DVD's and even BD-ROM discs, a game could conceivably have hours of cut-scenes. If I wanted to watch cut scenes (no matter how well animated) I'd rent a movie. If they take up more then 50% of the time spent playing, I generally skip them or have a beer/sandwich. Consequently, I miss out anything that's contained in them that is important or significant to the game
3: Trying to make up for poorly designed or un-engaging game play with flashy/unique/overly high-quality graphics. Thanks to the availability of substantial hardware resources in the current generation of consoles (excluding the WII, of course), it's quite easy to fill a game with high polygon count skinned, boned models wrapped in super detailed textures, multiple light sources and hand perfected pixel shaders. It might look really spectacular, but that doesn't really mean anything if it's not any fun. Once again, if I wanted to look at something rendered absolutely perfectly, I'd watch a Pixar movie.
4: Having a selection of difficulty levels that has little effect on the game. 15 years ago, Doom offered 5 different skill levels. While the playerâ(TM)s choice didn't massively change the game, it did incrementally increase the difficulty. The monsters were harder to kill, more populous and while health packs had less effect, more ammo was spawned. I would hope that modern games could do better then that. Doom ran fine at 33Mhz. Modern consoles have roughly 10,200 MHz at their disposal. There is no excuse for difficulty levels to do nothing more then spawn more or harder to kill Napâ(TM)s.
Finally, the biggest and most annoying thing about the current generation of video games:
5. Today's game producers tend to front load their game's content. I've never found a published statistic, but my estimation is that only about 40% of games purchased are ever fully completed by their purchasers. The player either tires of the game before the end, or gets another game to play before they finish. Since most games today are part of a series and are expected to remain viable for use in future sequels/ newer consoles, the game companies cheat on the content. They put, in my estimation, 75% of the best content in the first 50% of the game. The hardcore gamers and series fans will always buy the next sequel. They're hoping that by front-loading the best content, the semi-casual player that only finished half of the previous title in the series will have liked it enough to buy the new one when it comes out. While I understand their logic, I'd really like to get more for my money. 8-10 hours from a game that costs $50-60. That's between $5-7.50 per hour. I don't know what everyone elseâ(TM)s thoughts are, but I think that minimum wag
I really wish I had mod points right now..
I'm a programmer. I have experience writing games for several different platforms.
A good friend of mine is a 3d artist. He came to me a few months ago with an idea for a game. We pooled our cash, bought the necessary equipment and are making a go of it.
I can tell you that it's not an easy road, but, if you really want to see your game get built, and potentially make some money from it, you'll have to build it yourself.
On the bright side though, there are many opportunities once you have a viable product. We're still a while from release, but our playable proof of concept was good enough to negotiate a publishing contract. Once we had that, raising money was easy.
No mercury = huge improvement
I had several "consumer" grade routers before finally finding the Dlink gamer lounge.
I've never been happier. I've had it for almost 2 years and I never have to reset it. The wireless always works, the gigabit is nice and the "Gamefuel" QOS is fairly effective.
The $100+ linksys routers aren't much improved over their $50 brethren, but the $100+ Dlink most certainly is.
I'll echo all the praise for Screen, it really is a great tool. That brings me to the reason that most of us know about it.
It was the best way to set up egg-drop bots back in the old days.
Fair enough. As long as you have that perspective, you're safe.
Ask a lawyer, not slashdot.
1. Don't
But, if you insist..
Set up a simple box running Plesk. It automates most of the tasks of handling users, billing and maintenance. It also allows them to mange their own accounts.
Quick, simple
I have to say that the parent is right on the mark.
Nobody wanted to see Oberweis elected, save a few gerrymandering conservative incumbents.
In all seriousness though, Foster is a heck of a nice guy. He's a scientist at heart and the kind of political outsider that is nice to see as my representative.
Even though medicine and IT aren't obviously related, I've garnered a lot of wonderful problem solving theory from Dr. House.
Rule #1: Patients lie
It only affects the desktop systems. Interesting to see vulnerabilities finally start cropping up in the panacea virtualization techs.
But, this isn't a very big deal.
It took me a bit to figure out what was going on here, but it's all explained by the most basic rule of electronics.
V=IR, or resolved for our particular case, V/R = I
Once he "shorts" the coils, and closes the loop, the voltage drops 0.
The resistance is also 0, or functionally close enough, because there's a piece of copper wire connecting the ends of the coil.
So, 0/0 (Bottom 0 is infinitesimally greater then 0 so the division is legal) ~= 0
I ~= 0, so there is no current flowing and no resistance presented to the motor which is why it accelerates.
Without the "short" in there, the meter itself is providing the load.
Normally, a meter wouldn't be enough load to appreciably slow a generator, but this is a special case.
His generator is so grossly inefficient that any electrical load at all is enough to affect it's speed.
I can't believe they need somebody from MIT to figure this one out. I took basic electronics back in high school, slept through most of it and figured this out in less then 10 minutes.
Note: For the EE's in the crowd, I know that I should have used V = ZI and RMS values for Voltage/Amperage and impedance instead of resistance. I figured more people would remember V=IR though.
". Based on your analysis of the Chinese character, it sounds like your average Chinese is willing to step over the bodies of his comrades, so to speak, it will allow him to get ahead."
That's EXACTLY how it works. They'll slit each others throats here for 10RMB. (About $1.25)
I said it once in this thread, I'll say it again. China is very simple. Money isn't a thing, it's THE thing.
I'm in China right now and I can say with authority that you're wrong.
For the record, I'm an American born Caucasian currently in Shenzhen province.
The Chinese are better capitalists then any American ever dreamed of being.
They might not openly admit it, but they LOVE capitalism.
"Money talks and bullshit walks" Nowhere in the world is that more true then in China.
They might call themselves communists, but that's a load of crap. Money is the only thing that matters on this side of the pond.
While your concepts on fascism are interesting, it's not that complicated here. China is a very simple place. Dogs eat dogs and then they pick their teeth with the bones. If you're not ruthless enough to eat another dog, they'll come chomping at your tail.
As for the original topic, there is SOME validity to it, but it's not as rampant as the article makes it sound. Google is definitely slower in China then it is in Hong Kong. (Hong Kong, while part of China techcnically operates under it's own separate government). They don't block it or redirect it though, it's just much slower.
Mod this up..
As an alternative, mail it to your attorney.
A sealed envelope and a postmark will suffice as evidence in any US court.
Mind you, I'd never let something like this get out on the floor.
However, it is VERY difficult to test machines with real currency.
The levels of security, just at a slot machine company are enough to make you want to scream.
Everything you do that involves real money has to be checked, rechecked and then checked some more.
That is, unless you want to put your own money into the machine. I was never one to carry a stack of hundred dollar bills in my pocket just to test company owned machines.
Once you're on the floor of the casino, it's absolutely ridiculous. In most jurisdictions, just touching a machine (with a gaming license and an ID badge, mind you) requires calling security, waiting for them to reposition a camera on you and waiting for an armed guard.
Accessing any of the parts of the machine that are close to the money (most have an additional strong box around the currency acceptor, with seperate keys for everything), normally requires at least 2 guards and a floor person. It's nearly impossible to do any real testing of a machine on the floor.
I'll concede that the bill acceptors should have been checked LONG before the machines ever got the casino. That was a terrifically stupid mistake. But, not one that would have been easily discovered on the casino floor.
Finally, regarding liability. Because of an NDA, I can't mention who I used to work for. But, we did release a machine once that had a paytable bug. The average slot machine has several millions of possible draws. Our test lab was basically a casino floor, with oscillators rigged up to push the play button as fast as the machine could spin. We filled them up with large amounts ($100k+) of cash and left them spinning 24/7. We'd tested this release, on the whole lab, for several weeks. Unfortunately, we didn't ever hit the right section of the play sequence to trigger this bug. The particular bug was related to progressive payouts (those huge spinning dollar amounts above the machines). On our machine, there was only one combination that would award the progressive. Giving it about a 1/2,000,000 payout chance. The bug occured after a progressive hit and made future progressive wins more likely. We had one large casino call us after a particularly busy week. Our average was 1 progressive per month in this facility. They'd paid out 19 of them in a week. Additionally, our play volume was quite a bit higher then normal. After further examination, they found out that the people that had hit the progressives were related. We weren't ever sure if the people realized our paytable was borked or if they just thought they were lucky.
In the end, the casino paid the people and took it out of my former employer's hide.
I think that Johnny Law is just blowing some smoke to get his name in the paper. I can promise you who will end up paying for this mistake.
I posted this to the original article as well, but I felt the slashdot community might derive some value from it as well. The interference issue is a VERY real one. I can't emphasize this enough. It's easy to debate this issue on the ground, but try debating it 2 miles above the ground when your only lifeline is a thin needle on a panel that is controlled by a radio transmitter on the ground. I have a personal experience with cellphone nav interaction. I've also watched the mythbusters episode. Everyone here knows that mythbusters, while entertaining, is not entirely scientific. I certainly am not willing to stake my life on the thoroughness of their conclusions.
Without further prefacing, here is my original post:
You mention in your article that "Many headsets used by private pilots come with jacks for using them with cell phones. The manufacturers say they're for use on the ground only. But many private pilots use them in the air without incident."
I fall into this category. However, I've also seen the dangers of airborne cell phone use. I carry a Nextel branded Blackberry. From my experience, it's not a very good phone to use on board an aircraft. About every 20 minutes or so, the phone goes into a signal frenzy. It's as if it finds multiple strong towers to connect to and is unable to choose. This results in a barrage of beeps and lights while it tries to figure out what's going on.
Furthermore, the risks of interference are very real. When I'm using the phone, I never notice the interference. I recently let someone else use my phone and was very surprised. My headset (flight radio headset) emitted a horrible scratching noise. I was totally unable to hear anything on the radio. I quickly looked at my VOR (radio navigation, NOT a gps) , and noticed that it was off coarse as well. Now, had I not been certain that I was on the right course, I might have well thought I was off course and corrected in an ultimately wrong direction.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with VOR technology, but it's the primary aviation navigational aid. GPS is wonderful, but it's still not the primary navigation mechanism. GPS is considered a "non-precision" navigation tool. VOR and ILS are still the primary mechanisms and they are dependent upon terrestrial radio transmissions. This is where the cellphone interference comes into play. Most cell phones operate in the 800mhz range. I'll save you a lesson in radio technology by simply stating that they can often have harmonic emissions in the same bands as used for aircraft navigation.
While you state that countless numbers of phones are left on during flights, this is not particularly dangerous. A phone ranging a tower is only actively transmitting for a very short period of time every 20 minutes or so at regular speeds. A phone that is in active use is a source of radio emissions that is in VERY close proximity to the aircraft communications and navigation antennas and is operating on a frequency that can have interfering harmonics. I have personal experience with the reactions a nav needle can have to a cellphone.
Imagine if the weather was bad (instrument meteorological conditions or IMC) and you were trying to land a large passenger airliner using nothing but a small needle on the panel to align with the runway. Then, a passenger starts talking to their uncle Bill about his bypass surgery and that needle jumps even 10 degrees off position. Now, instead of aligning with a runway, you're aligning with a corn field.
To answer your thoughts about shielding, that's not a viable solution. You would either have to shield the passenger cabin from radio emissions or shield the comm/nav antennas from it. In either case, the shielding to protect them from each other would seriously impair their usefulness. A passenger cabin shielded from RF emissions wouldn't allow your cell signal to get out, thereby negating the purpose. Shielding the comm/nav antennas sounds like a good idea until you realize that oftentimes nav aids and aircraft controllers a