The problem is that you seem incapable civilly stating that you shop for groceries online and that it's the best thing since sliced bread. You seem incapable of not adding insults against anyone who still likes to shop at the store for a host of valid reasons. That might be why some people suggest you might wont more social interaction because, quite frankly, you really fucking suck at it.
Man, oh man, do I wish I had mod points. *high five*
But so many of the luddites responding in this thread cite reasons entirely unrelated to "I'm scared they'll deliver me inedible food!". They cite a bunch of things that I am kind of surprised to hear guys say. It sounds that, to them, shopping for food (and clothes?) is a grand sensory social experience. I mean, really you guys.. some of you sound like you're prattling on about some glorious wine tasting. It's just food! It's shit you shove in your gut so you don't keel over and die. So you can go do OTHER stuff.
You're quite pompous on this subject...
It's interesting that you're utilizing the immense amount of time you save by, you know, not interacting with other humans in person, to condescend to them over the Internet.
We're not luddites because we go to the grocery store... we just do things differently than you do.
For me, the grocery shopping experience doesn't transcend all consciousness or anything... it's just faster. I did Webvan back in the day, thought it was neat, but then discovered it was faster to just go to the store and get what I needed.
For example, I find it far faster to walk into the store with a generic item in mind, say "tea," and then choose from the varieties available to me, presented in super-ultra-high-definition full-color clarity, all arranged (hopefully) neatly on a shelf rather than surfing through page after page of teas trying to remember what I fancied four pages ago, comparing them in the cart, and finally settling on one. Sure, I could do this once online and then save it for future reference, but sometimes I want to toss a little variety in there, and then I'm back to surfing for a selection.
Sure, you've got to deal with the occasional annoying person or bratty child, but I have to do that anyway in pretty much everything I do that isn't in my own home, so I might as well be productive while I'm at it. Besides, every now and then you meet someone interesting while waiting in a line, or perusing teas, or whatever.
Really? Open a bank account without one. Get a job without one. Rent an apartment without one.
Many places require an SSN for credit check and ID check because, in theory, that number is unique to you. Granted, the law says they can't, but they do it anyway.
It's actually against Federal law to use your SSN solely for identification purposes.
Your bank wants your SSN for tax purposes (to report earned interest) and your apartment complex wants your SSN for a credit check. You can, in fact, rent ANY apartment without giving your SSN, but you will likely be required to make a huge deposit prior to moving in.
Your employer wants your SSN for both tax and citizenship confirmation, but you can (and I have, several times) be employed without disclosing your SSN.
The only true "national ID" in the United States is a passport.
If civil aviation is to depend on these, then a charge should be levied on airlines using the technology so the poor old taxpayer in the US can get some of his money back.
Because civil aircraft are the only vehicles that get any use out of it, right?
Are we going to tax your in-car GPS because you're using it?
GPS is a broadcast-based system. Anyone in range can use it and that's the beauty of the system.
I didn't see it in the article but are there any checks on the data supplied by the transponders ? Could you feed in false GPS data and make your aircraft disappear from where it is and put it somewhere else ? Is there crypto in this system or is everything just trusted ?
There is no crypto and the data is trusted. There is data integrity checking, but it's more to rescue bits in the stream than verify its all true.
There are receiving stations on the ground and each one knows its physical position. False data is eliminated by a common-sense method: if you're saying you're 300 miles away but I'm receiving you right here, you must be making that up. It also allows the system to determine if a target's movement correlates with its reported position data.
In some ways, it makes it easier to spot anomalies. Anomalous aircraft in the current system are simply ignored.
So.. instead of using radar to measure where aircraft are, you trust the aircraft to tell you where it is? Real reassuring.
We already do. The aircraft has equipment in it that informs ATC of what aircraft it is and what altitude it is at. The range to the target is determined by the interval between the query and the answer from the aircraft. The azimuth is determined by radar.
Without the equipment in the aircraft to assist in this process, the returns on the radar screen are weak and unreliable.
The FAA has been trying to upgrade the ATC for nearly two decades and is roughly seven years behind schedule from the original plan's timetable not the one they just changed to make themselves not look like total asses. The FAA has FAILED miserably and it is all of us who suffering. From longer ground delays at our nation's largest airports to few flights in smaller communities due to unnecessarily constricted airspace - the FAA's making it more difficult for all of us to fly.
I can't say I'm an FAA fan, but you've got this all wrong. The majority of the delays you're dealing with are related to how the airlines operate: lots of airplanes, very few airports. It's the airlines that choose to not go to smaller community airports versus there being some sort of restrictive airspace keeping them out.
The airlines are keeping their costs lower by making you go to them instead of them coming to you. This is why some people have to drive over three hours to the "nearest" airport when, in reality, there's probably one less than 30 minutes away that the airlines don't serve.
I would suggest everyone read Michael Boyd of Boyd Aviation, an aviation consulting firm, that has been highly critical of the FAA and over a decade ago brought the idea of "Free Flight" to Congress but since that time has been ignored. Boyd has his pulse on the aviation world better then anyone I know and writes a column each Monday.
Free flight is in use over the Pacific on flights to/from Hawaii. It was determined that it was too difficult to maintain separation over the continental US without some sort of surveillance method. This is why ADS-B was developed.
In the case of national security, controllers are monitoring the radar 24-7, for suspicious radar tracks.
No they're not. Controllers get anomalous "primary returns" all the time. They give aircraft guidance to avoid these anomalies but there's no effort made to determine if they're "suspicious." Primary returns can be caused by anything from sailboats in a harbor to mylar balloons floating around.
ADS-b requires that each aircraft have equipment that receives a signal from the the ground radio, adds its unique id(to identify itself) and other info like altitude. Many things can go wrong.
I think you've got it backwards: in the current transponder system, the aircraft is painted by radar and simultaneously receives, via a collocated antenna, an inquiry from the ground and responds with a four digit code (mode A), an altitude (mode C), and a unique identifier (mode S). Mode S capable transponders can also spontaneously announce themselves (called a 'squit') even without receiving an inquiry from the ground.
ADS-B expands on mode S by providing position and intent information. In other words, instead of radar being used to extrapolate position, the aircraft simply tells the ground equipment where it is, what altitude it's at, and what its intentions are.
However, to think we're not reliant on cooperation on the part of the aircraft right now is to simply misunderstand how it works.
The aircraft must have the equipment. It must be working. It must be on. It must be calibrated. The altimeter in the aircraft must be set.
Believe it or not, this is already true. In order for the return on the radar display to provide meaningful flight information as well as not be a "primary return," a transponder is required in the aircraft, it has to be calibrated, and it has to be turned on. Any pilot in the sky can simply turn their transponder off and pretty much disappear from the scope.
What about international flights, will we require them to equip? In this case of national security, a pilot would only have to turn off or disable the ADS-b to evade detection.
International flights would likely continue to use the current system: transponder-assisted radar. As I said before, simply turning the transponder off makes an aircraft disappear from the radar scope.
You also have to question the FAA's costs for this system. Is it just for their piece of the puzzle or will they pay for the equipment in each and every aircraft? That $40B could easily double. ADS-b does have value however. In portions of the country like Alaska were terrain blocks radar coverage, ADS-b is proven to provide aircraft and controllers with the information they need for safety.
The FAA will not cover the costs of new equipment. That will be borne by the operators/owners of the aircraft. In the case of airlines, that means the cost goes to you, the consumer.
No - it is not smaller aircraft in the sky that is the problem. It is the number of aircraft trying to use the limited number of runways at the major US airports (out of the 10,000 total airports in the US). This includes large and small aircraft. Actually, the use of smaller planes opens up the possibility of using airports that aren't utilized right now, and reducing traffic at the major airports.
Small aircraft are a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of flights at the airports used by major airlines. Last time you were on a commercial airline flight, how many small airplanes did you see out there with you?
No. That's the whole point of software-defined radio (SDR)... you have a general purpose receiver or transmitter/receiver, and the software defines what frequency it listens and/or radiates at.
The whole point of an SDR is to send/receive using arbitrary protocols and emission types. The radio still has to interface with an antenna and matching circuitry somewhere and that's where the restriction could be placed.
Let's say Verizon decides to raise the rates on the FiOS service by 800%. What are you going to do then?
Your first instinct would be to switch providers, but you can't do that because you don't have infrastructure the competitors can use going to your house.
The million dollar question was asked earlier: is Verizon obligated to wholesale access to the fiber to competitors? If the answer to that question is yes, then this is much ado about nothing... go buy a battery and plug your FiOS stuff into it. If the answer is no, then this is a new monopoly forming and it's pretty underhanded (and typical) for Verizon to lock competitors out.
Again, emphasis added. FCC is not saying that OSS is inherently less secure. They are saying that it's their policy to make it difficult to modify a radio such that it violates FCC rules. That's all. It might even be possible, given the stipulation above, to do this with OSS. Of course you might run into the 'tivoization' clause of GPLv3 in so doing...
I don't think you'd run into tivoization at all since radio equipment has inherent, physical limits. You simply make the circuitry unable to resonate at certain frequencies and you could prevent transmission and/or reception.
This obviously doesn't stop an enterprising hacker, but none of the current impediments do, either.
'll mention again a point you have chosen again to ignore. When you are standing in the United States and are about to board a vehicle for the purposes of travelling internationally, the government can arbitrarily choose to search you, your belongings, and examine the data on your electronic devices--your cell phone, hard drives, etc.--if they feel it is necessary, and they can do so without a warrant. Your international mail, both into and out of the country, can be (and regularly IS) examined, and it is done without a warrant. Shipments of goods coming into and leaving the country are searched and inspected by the government, and it is done without a warrant. By what calculus, then, can you consistently say that inspecting the data transmitted in international phone calls is unconstitutional, despite the unchallenged constitutionality of those things I mentioned? And don't respond with cliched platitudes... give a thoughtful answer.
Because you have a reasonable expectation of privacy during a phone call. You seem to want to say that we have a right to (or reasonable expectation of) privacy but only if we're speaking to another person within the United States. How am I to know if the caller is in the United States or not? I have privacy there. It's none of the government's business what anyone is saying to me, regardless of where they might live, period.
If the precedent had been such that international phone calls were regularly listened to and that's how the legislation was written, this conversation would be different. However, that's not the case. A method was created for specifically this situation using a court and warrant. Unilaterally deciding, in secret, that you or your branch are exempt from this legislation is simply wrong and a slap in the face of the people. Why should we have elected representatives if one man or woman can simply decide they're not subject to the laws written and passed by that same legislature?
Shipping something overseas and calling someone overseas are fundamentally different. You just can't call a phone call "data" and say it should be handled as if I was carrying a laptop onto a boat headed for France. If you do, well, then what exactly is not data? Where does it stop?
I understand concern about balancing rights with "getting the bad guys"... but I don't perceive any good will on your part or slashdotters in general with respect to the "balance" part. Once you remove the knee-jerk paranoia, I don't see any legitimate threat to liberties here and I don't see anything that is above and beyond that which is already accepted as constitutional.
I wont argue that this particular issue is not a dire, immediate threat to our liberties. However, we must vigorously defend our freedoms and rights whenever they are impeded, even by a little bit. The Grand Canyon was formed by very slow erosion over a very long time... I refuse to see the same happen to my civil liberties.
To summarize: the government has no right to know what I am doing, talking to, or interacting with at any given time unless there is evidence, vetted by a court, that indicates that information would be useful to prosecute me or others. Period, end of story.
No one man or woman should be able to make that decision unilaterally. The layers are there for a reason and should not be bypassed. If anything they should be strengthened to make sure they can't be avoided by simply filling each layer with a loyalist.
Merely asserting that "one end of the call originates or terminates on US soil and therefore offers the caller or callee a right to privacy" doesn't make it true... you're entitled to simply make up anything you want, but don't expect it to carry weight.
Have you even read the Constitution? I'm not making this up, my friend: anyone who has taken elementary school classes on U.S. History and Government knows this stuff. Maybe you were absent that day?
And it requires a remarkable stretch of the imagination to contrive some reason for which a person would have an "reasonable expectation of privacy" when on an international phone call with a representative from a terror-sponsoring group in Saudi Arabia. That's just silly.
You can't selectively grant rights. You either have them or you don't. As awful as it might sound to you, yes they do have a reasonable expectation of privacy and a right to the protection of that privacy. Who is on the call is irrelevant. Lady Justice is blind... that's why she's wearing the blindfold.
You can't say, "you have a right to your privacy unless you're a bad person." It just doesn't work that way, nor should it. Instead, you have an inalienable right to privacy unless revoked by due process.
What you seem to be ignoring in this equation is that there's a process by which you can have a secret court grant a warrant to listen to these calls. This process is defined in law and was created for precisely this purpose.
If this organization is so obviously associated with terrorists, why not just get a warrant? I'll tell you why: because that would require evidence.
What's really ridiculous is you want people to believe (and/or you honestly believe) that it's too significant a burden to submit evidence to a secret court on your side to obtain a warrant. How flimsy does your evidence have to be before you're afraid to take it to your own damn court?
Before you hurt yourself coming up with a response: this administration is taking us in one direction and that is a full police state. They want to monitor any communication, via any medium, placed by anyone, to anywhere, at any time, for any reason. That's completely contrary to the principles our country was founded on. You might catch more "bad guys" that way, but at what cost? How long will it be until the government uses this power to quench debate about its actions or silence critics?
Read the book "1984" and see if you like the world presented there.
I'm all for getting the "bad guys," but it has to be balanced with the preservation of our rights and freedoms, which is precisely what makes the United States a target in the first place. If we release our freedoms to the government in the name of "protection," then the terrorists have won and we have lost what we fought numerous wars and sacrificed countless lives for over 200 years to protect.
This, to me, is a perfect example of legitimate use of warrantless wiretaps. Just as you don't need a warrant to search someone's person, belongings, or data when they board an international flight departing or arriving on US soil, you shouldn't need a warrant to search their data (phone call) as it leaves the country--particularly during what has been acknowledged by the US Supreme Court to be a time of war. Domestic surveillance still should be--and IS--subject to FISA.
There is no such thing as a legitimate warrant-less wiretap. Wiretaps require warrants... that's how the law is written. There is even a special, secret court that handles these things that has been completely bypassed. Even if you interpreted everything as loosely as possible, one end of the call originates or terminates on US soil and therefore offers the caller or callee a right to privacy (among other things).
"A time of war" also does not give the government special rights and privileges over the people. In the United States, the people control the government, not the other way around.
BTW, your international mail can legally be searched as well, as can cargo entering the country--in fact, many Bush administration critics harp on the fact that we don't search ENOUGH of other peoples belongings as they enter the country via harbors, etc.
Time for you to brush up on "implied consent" and "reasonable expectation of privacy." Comparing a cargo container to a phone call is also reaching quite a bit. Searching property entering or exiting the country is fundamentally different from listening in on phone calls without oversight. I'm surprised you can't see the difference.
I think that people pretending to see constitutional problems with this are either uneducated or are intentionally ignoring some obvious and fundamental aspects of it.
I think you've forgotten (or are conveniently ignoring) the reason the United States was formed in the first place. Look it up... you might be surprised.
From a consumer standpoint OSS is good, but for government agencies, private industry, rich art collectors, etc. They'll want something unique and something only the owner and the creator will know how it works.
Security through obscurity never works.
Using your own analogy, your house lock uses technology that is well known and public. The key contains the secret only you and the lock know.
If house locks were like what this article is about, you'd have a key and a lock but no idea how the innards work and no way of finding out. How do you know the method is secure if you can't examine it?
When a wing flexes upwards, by simple geometry, the lift goes down.
I didn't say all flexing was a good thing, I just pointed out that flexing isn't a bad thing, either, which you seem to imply in the parent post. Also, "simple geometry" oversimplifies lift dynamics through a fluid as to be almost laughable. The lift vector may or may not move in a negative way depending on the flex of a wing.
When you move an aileron on a flexible wing, the wing flexes as to decrease the angle of deflection. This was first significant on the B-47, where at high speeds the ailerons became ineffective.
If the wing can flex in all three dimensions, yes, that would be true. The overall lift would decrease as the wing flexed to offset the force caused by the aileron. However, the wing can be stiffened as needed in these areas to offset it. The engineers at Boeing aren't idiots.
Engines are initially mounted at the best angle. Any flexing can only make a decrease in bestness.
Engines have a large envelope of "bestness" because aircraft operate at a lot of different angles of attack to the relative wind. Obviously, if you had unlimited flexing, you could point the engine in a direction that would be contrary to the most efficient operation (like backwards), but I don't think Boeing would design a wing with such ridiculous amounts of flexing.
Coal dust is nothing like carbon fiber or carbon dust. Just because coal is carbon doesn't mean it's pure carbon. Plus, *any* significant amount of inhaling *any* dust will give you "black lung." That doesn't mean carbon is toxic.
Asbestos is a carcinogen and that's why it causes cancer, not because it's a fiber.
Also, carbon composites are not nanotubes... that's a totally different carbon animal. Even so, inhaling one won't kill you.
You seem to be confusing "toxic" with anything that might kill you... inhaling 100% nitrogen will kill you, but nitrogen itself isn't toxic. Inhaling a lot of carbon dust is bad for you, but that doesn't make it toxic.
Everyone seems to forget that all life as we know it is based on, you guessed it: carbon.
Carbon *can* be a vehicle for toxic stuff getting into your system, but the fiber/powder itself is not.
I can't comment on how toxic a carbon laminate is... I guess it would depend on how toxic the resin/binding agent was. I do know they make snowboards and skis out of the stuff and don't seem too overly concerned about sanding/grinding them as needed, which would release a ton of dust into the air.
Engineering ethics usually dictates that where human life is involved, you place a safety factor of atleast 2.5 to 3. It has nothing to do with maximums and what is allowed. It is however possible that at 150% loading, the stress on the wing is 3 times as much which will satisfy the ethical guideline. I am not sure that is the case though - which is why I ask.
Everyone keeps saying 150%, but no one has mentioned what the baseline is... the regulations state the airframe must tolerate 150% of the maximum load requirements.
For aircraft in the "normal" category, that's 3.8 sustained positive Gs and -0.8 sustained negative Gs.
So, the aircraft's overall load tolerance must be 5.7 positive Gs and 1.2 negative Gs, both for three seconds. That's quite a bit, if you think about it.
Engineering ethics aside, aircraft are a constant trade-off between structural strength and weight. Airplanes are all about payload. A 2.5 - 3.0 safety margin would make a 747 so massive it wouldn't be cost effective to fly (at current ticket prices).
Slashdot Mirror
If the power's out, isn't interference from power lines moot?
No, because the power isn't out everywhere.
If you're sending, presumably someone else is receiving, and if they can't hear you, well, you're boned.
...describes my employer pretty accurately.
The problem is that you seem incapable civilly stating that you shop for groceries online and that it's the best thing since sliced bread. You seem incapable of not adding insults against anyone who still likes to shop at the store for a host of valid reasons. That might be why some people suggest you might wont more social interaction because, quite frankly, you really fucking suck at it.
Man, oh man, do I wish I had mod points. *high five*
But so many of the luddites responding in this thread cite reasons entirely unrelated to "I'm scared they'll deliver me inedible food!". They cite a bunch of things that I am kind of surprised to hear guys say. It sounds that, to them, shopping for food (and clothes?) is a grand sensory social experience. I mean, really you guys.. some of you sound like you're prattling on about some glorious wine tasting. It's just food! It's shit you shove in your gut so you don't keel over and die. So you can go do OTHER stuff.
You're quite pompous on this subject...
It's interesting that you're utilizing the immense amount of time you save by, you know, not interacting with other humans in person, to condescend to them over the Internet.
We're not luddites because we go to the grocery store... we just do things differently than you do.
For me, the grocery shopping experience doesn't transcend all consciousness or anything... it's just faster. I did Webvan back in the day, thought it was neat, but then discovered it was faster to just go to the store and get what I needed.
For example, I find it far faster to walk into the store with a generic item in mind, say "tea," and then choose from the varieties available to me, presented in super-ultra-high-definition full-color clarity, all arranged (hopefully) neatly on a shelf rather than surfing through page after page of teas trying to remember what I fancied four pages ago, comparing them in the cart, and finally settling on one. Sure, I could do this once online and then save it for future reference, but sometimes I want to toss a little variety in there, and then I'm back to surfing for a selection.
Sure, you've got to deal with the occasional annoying person or bratty child, but I have to do that anyway in pretty much everything I do that isn't in my own home, so I might as well be productive while I'm at it. Besides, every now and then you meet someone interesting while waiting in a line, or perusing teas, or whatever.
Everybody seems to be flaming this plan. Look on the positive side. You can download your shopping list. So you get a few ads for this convenience.
Where's the added convenience in this? I've been doing this with a pad of paper, a magnet, and a pen for years... on my refrigerator, no less.
As an added bonus, I can detach the list from the refrigerator and take it with me... to as many different stores as I'd like.
The best part: it's totally ad free!
Really?
Open a bank account without one. Get a job without one. Rent an apartment without one.
Many places require an SSN for credit check and ID check because, in theory, that number is unique to you. Granted, the law says they can't, but they do it anyway.
It's actually against Federal law to use your SSN solely for identification purposes.
Your bank wants your SSN for tax purposes (to report earned interest) and your apartment complex wants your SSN for a credit check. You can, in fact, rent ANY apartment without giving your SSN, but you will likely be required to make a huge deposit prior to moving in.
Your employer wants your SSN for both tax and citizenship confirmation, but you can (and I have, several times) be employed without disclosing your SSN.
The only true "national ID" in the United States is a passport.
If civil aviation is to depend on these, then a charge should be levied on airlines using the technology so the poor old taxpayer in the US can get some of his money back.
Because civil aircraft are the only vehicles that get any use out of it, right?
Are we going to tax your in-car GPS because you're using it?
GPS is a broadcast-based system. Anyone in range can use it and that's the beauty of the system.
I didn't see it in the article but are there any checks on the data supplied by the transponders ? Could you feed in false GPS data and make your aircraft disappear from where it is and put it somewhere else ? Is there crypto in this system or is everything just trusted ?
There is no crypto and the data is trusted. There is data integrity checking, but it's more to rescue bits in the stream than verify its all true.
There are receiving stations on the ground and each one knows its physical position. False data is eliminated by a common-sense method: if you're saying you're 300 miles away but I'm receiving you right here, you must be making that up. It also allows the system to determine if a target's movement correlates with its reported position data.
In some ways, it makes it easier to spot anomalies. Anomalous aircraft in the current system are simply ignored.
So.. instead of using radar to measure where aircraft are, you trust the aircraft to tell you where it is? Real reassuring.
We already do. The aircraft has equipment in it that informs ATC of what aircraft it is and what altitude it is at. The range to the target is determined by the interval between the query and the answer from the aircraft. The azimuth is determined by radar.
Without the equipment in the aircraft to assist in this process, the returns on the radar screen are weak and unreliable.
The FAA has been trying to upgrade the ATC for nearly two decades and is roughly seven years behind schedule from the original plan's timetable not the one they just changed to make themselves not look like total asses. The FAA has FAILED miserably and it is all of us who suffering. From longer ground delays at our nation's largest airports to few flights in smaller communities due to unnecessarily constricted airspace - the FAA's making it more difficult for all of us to fly.
I can't say I'm an FAA fan, but you've got this all wrong. The majority of the delays you're dealing with are related to how the airlines operate: lots of airplanes, very few airports. It's the airlines that choose to not go to smaller community airports versus there being some sort of restrictive airspace keeping them out.
The airlines are keeping their costs lower by making you go to them instead of them coming to you. This is why some people have to drive over three hours to the "nearest" airport when, in reality, there's probably one less than 30 minutes away that the airlines don't serve.
I would suggest everyone read Michael Boyd of Boyd Aviation, an aviation consulting firm, that has been highly critical of the FAA and over a decade ago brought the idea of "Free Flight" to Congress but since that time has been ignored. Boyd has his pulse on the aviation world better then anyone I know and writes a column each Monday.
Free flight is in use over the Pacific on flights to/from Hawaii. It was determined that it was too difficult to maintain separation over the continental US without some sort of surveillance method. This is why ADS-B was developed.
In the case of national security, controllers are monitoring the radar 24-7, for suspicious radar tracks.
No they're not. Controllers get anomalous "primary returns" all the time. They give aircraft guidance to avoid these anomalies but there's no effort made to determine if they're "suspicious." Primary returns can be caused by anything from sailboats in a harbor to mylar balloons floating around.
ADS-b requires that each aircraft have equipment that receives a signal from the the ground radio, adds its unique id(to identify itself) and other info like altitude. Many things can go wrong.
I think you've got it backwards: in the current transponder system, the aircraft is painted by radar and simultaneously receives, via a collocated antenna, an inquiry from the ground and responds with a four digit code (mode A), an altitude (mode C), and a unique identifier (mode S). Mode S capable transponders can also spontaneously announce themselves (called a 'squit') even without receiving an inquiry from the ground.
ADS-B expands on mode S by providing position and intent information. In other words, instead of radar being used to extrapolate position, the aircraft simply tells the ground equipment where it is, what altitude it's at, and what its intentions are.
However, to think we're not reliant on cooperation on the part of the aircraft right now is to simply misunderstand how it works.
The aircraft must have the equipment. It must be working. It must be on. It must be calibrated. The altimeter in the aircraft must be set.
Believe it or not, this is already true. In order for the return on the radar display to provide meaningful flight information as well as not be a "primary return," a transponder is required in the aircraft, it has to be calibrated, and it has to be turned on. Any pilot in the sky can simply turn their transponder off and pretty much disappear from the scope.
What about international flights, will we require them to equip? In this case of national security, a pilot would only have to turn off or disable the ADS-b to evade detection.
International flights would likely continue to use the current system: transponder-assisted radar. As I said before, simply turning the transponder off makes an aircraft disappear from the radar scope.
You also have to question the FAA's costs for this system. Is it just for their piece of the puzzle or will they pay for the equipment in each and every aircraft? That $40B could easily double. ADS-b does have value however. In portions of the country like Alaska were terrain blocks radar coverage, ADS-b is proven to provide aircraft and controllers with the information they need for safety.
The FAA will not cover the costs of new equipment. That will be borne by the operators/owners of the aircraft. In the case of airlines, that means the cost goes to you, the consumer.
No - it is not smaller aircraft in the sky that is the problem. It is the number of aircraft trying to use the limited number of runways at the major US airports (out of the 10,000 total airports in the US). This includes large and small aircraft. Actually, the use of smaller planes opens up the possibility of using airports that aren't utilized right now, and reducing traffic at the major airports.
Small aircraft are a tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of flights at the airports used by major airlines. Last time you were on a commercial airline flight, how many small airplanes did you see out there with you?
It's shocking, simply shocking, that Microsoft's hardware products follow the same methodology as their software products: ship it now, fix it later.
No. That's the whole point of software-defined radio (SDR) ... you have a general purpose receiver or transmitter/receiver, and the software defines what frequency it listens and/or radiates at.
The whole point of an SDR is to send/receive using arbitrary protocols and emission types. The radio still has to interface with an antenna and matching circuitry somewhere and that's where the restriction could be placed.
So whats the story getting whipped up about?
Let's say Verizon decides to raise the rates on the FiOS service by 800%. What are you going to do then?
Your first instinct would be to switch providers, but you can't do that because you don't have infrastructure the competitors can use going to your house.
The million dollar question was asked earlier: is Verizon obligated to wholesale access to the fiber to competitors? If the answer to that question is yes, then this is much ado about nothing... go buy a battery and plug your FiOS stuff into it. If the answer is no, then this is a new monopoly forming and it's pretty underhanded (and typical) for Verizon to lock competitors out.
Again, emphasis added. FCC is not saying that OSS is inherently less secure. They are saying that it's their policy to make it difficult to modify a radio such that it violates FCC rules. That's all. It might even be possible, given the stipulation above, to do this with OSS. Of course you might run into the 'tivoization' clause of GPLv3 in so doing ...
I don't think you'd run into tivoization at all since radio equipment has inherent, physical limits. You simply make the circuitry unable to resonate at certain frequencies and you could prevent transmission and/or reception.
This obviously doesn't stop an enterprising hacker, but none of the current impediments do, either.
'll mention again a point you have chosen again to ignore. When you are standing in the United States and are about to board a vehicle for the purposes of travelling internationally, the government can arbitrarily choose to search you, your belongings, and examine the data on your electronic devices--your cell phone, hard drives, etc.--if they feel it is necessary, and they can do so without a warrant. Your international mail, both into and out of the country, can be (and regularly IS) examined, and it is done without a warrant. Shipments of goods coming into and leaving the country are searched and inspected by the government, and it is done without a warrant. By what calculus, then, can you consistently say that inspecting the data transmitted in international phone calls is unconstitutional, despite the unchallenged constitutionality of those things I mentioned? And don't respond with cliched platitudes... give a thoughtful answer.
Because you have a reasonable expectation of privacy during a phone call. You seem to want to say that we have a right to (or reasonable expectation of) privacy but only if we're speaking to another person within the United States. How am I to know if the caller is in the United States or not? I have privacy there. It's none of the government's business what anyone is saying to me, regardless of where they might live, period.
If the precedent had been such that international phone calls were regularly listened to and that's how the legislation was written, this conversation would be different. However, that's not the case. A method was created for specifically this situation using a court and warrant. Unilaterally deciding, in secret, that you or your branch are exempt from this legislation is simply wrong and a slap in the face of the people. Why should we have elected representatives if one man or woman can simply decide they're not subject to the laws written and passed by that same legislature?
Shipping something overseas and calling someone overseas are fundamentally different. You just can't call a phone call "data" and say it should be handled as if I was carrying a laptop onto a boat headed for France. If you do, well, then what exactly is not data? Where does it stop?
I understand concern about balancing rights with "getting the bad guys"... but I don't perceive any good will on your part or slashdotters in general with respect to the "balance" part. Once you remove the knee-jerk paranoia, I don't see any legitimate threat to liberties here and I don't see anything that is above and beyond that which is already accepted as constitutional.
I wont argue that this particular issue is not a dire, immediate threat to our liberties. However, we must vigorously defend our freedoms and rights whenever they are impeded, even by a little bit. The Grand Canyon was formed by very slow erosion over a very long time... I refuse to see the same happen to my civil liberties.
To summarize: the government has no right to know what I am doing, talking to, or interacting with at any given time unless there is evidence, vetted by a court, that indicates that information would be useful to prosecute me or others. Period, end of story.
No one man or woman should be able to make that decision unilaterally. The layers are there for a reason and should not be bypassed. If anything they should be strengthened to make sure they can't be avoided by simply filling each layer with a loyalist.
Merely asserting that "one end of the call originates or terminates on US soil and therefore offers the caller or callee a right to privacy" doesn't make it true... you're entitled to simply make up anything you want, but don't expect it to carry weight.
Have you even read the Constitution? I'm not making this up, my friend: anyone who has taken elementary school classes on U.S. History and Government knows this stuff. Maybe you were absent that day?
And it requires a remarkable stretch of the imagination to contrive some reason for which a person would have an "reasonable expectation of privacy" when on an international phone call with a representative from a terror-sponsoring group in Saudi Arabia. That's just silly.
You can't selectively grant rights. You either have them or you don't. As awful as it might sound to you, yes they do have a reasonable expectation of privacy and a right to the protection of that privacy. Who is on the call is irrelevant. Lady Justice is blind... that's why she's wearing the blindfold.
You can't say, "you have a right to your privacy unless you're a bad person." It just doesn't work that way, nor should it. Instead, you have an inalienable right to privacy unless revoked by due process.
What you seem to be ignoring in this equation is that there's a process by which you can have a secret court grant a warrant to listen to these calls. This process is defined in law and was created for precisely this purpose.
If this organization is so obviously associated with terrorists, why not just get a warrant? I'll tell you why: because that would require evidence.
What's really ridiculous is you want people to believe (and/or you honestly believe) that it's too significant a burden to submit evidence to a secret court on your side to obtain a warrant. How flimsy does your evidence have to be before you're afraid to take it to your own damn court?
Before you hurt yourself coming up with a response: this administration is taking us in one direction and that is a full police state. They want to monitor any communication, via any medium, placed by anyone, to anywhere, at any time, for any reason. That's completely contrary to the principles our country was founded on. You might catch more "bad guys" that way, but at what cost? How long will it be until the government uses this power to quench debate about its actions or silence critics?
Read the book "1984" and see if you like the world presented there.
I'm all for getting the "bad guys," but it has to be balanced with the preservation of our rights and freedoms, which is precisely what makes the United States a target in the first place. If we release our freedoms to the government in the name of "protection," then the terrorists have won and we have lost what we fought numerous wars and sacrificed countless lives for over 200 years to protect.
This, to me, is a perfect example of legitimate use of warrantless wiretaps. Just as you don't need a warrant to search someone's person, belongings, or data when they board an international flight departing or arriving on US soil, you shouldn't need a warrant to search their data (phone call) as it leaves the country--particularly during what has been acknowledged by the US Supreme Court to be a time of war. Domestic surveillance still should be--and IS--subject to FISA.
There is no such thing as a legitimate warrant-less wiretap. Wiretaps require warrants... that's how the law is written. There is even a special, secret court that handles these things that has been completely bypassed. Even if you interpreted everything as loosely as possible, one end of the call originates or terminates on US soil and therefore offers the caller or callee a right to privacy (among other things).
"A time of war" also does not give the government special rights and privileges over the people. In the United States, the people control the government, not the other way around.
BTW, your international mail can legally be searched as well, as can cargo entering the country--in fact, many Bush administration critics harp on the fact that we don't search ENOUGH of other peoples belongings as they enter the country via harbors, etc.
Time for you to brush up on "implied consent" and "reasonable expectation of privacy." Comparing a cargo container to a phone call is also reaching quite a bit. Searching property entering or exiting the country is fundamentally different from listening in on phone calls without oversight. I'm surprised you can't see the difference.
I think that people pretending to see constitutional problems with this are either uneducated or are intentionally ignoring some obvious and fundamental aspects of it.
I think you've forgotten (or are conveniently ignoring) the reason the United States was formed in the first place. Look it up... you might be surprised.
From a consumer standpoint OSS is good, but for government agencies, private industry, rich art collectors, etc. They'll want something unique and something only the owner and the creator will know how it works.
Security through obscurity never works.
Using your own analogy, your house lock uses technology that is well known and public. The key contains the secret only you and the lock know.
If house locks were like what this article is about, you'd have a key and a lock but no idea how the innards work and no way of finding out. How do you know the method is secure if you can't examine it?
When a wing flexes upwards, by simple geometry, the lift goes down.
I didn't say all flexing was a good thing, I just pointed out that flexing isn't a bad thing, either, which you seem to imply in the parent post. Also, "simple geometry" oversimplifies lift dynamics through a fluid as to be almost laughable. The lift vector may or may not move in a negative way depending on the flex of a wing.
When you move an aileron on a flexible wing, the wing flexes as to decrease the angle of deflection. This was first significant on the B-47, where at high speeds the ailerons became ineffective.
If the wing can flex in all three dimensions, yes, that would be true. The overall lift would decrease as the wing flexed to offset the force caused by the aileron. However, the wing can be stiffened as needed in these areas to offset it. The engineers at Boeing aren't idiots.
Engines are initially mounted at the best angle. Any flexing can only make a decrease in bestness.
Engines have a large envelope of "bestness" because aircraft operate at a lot of different angles of attack to the relative wind. Obviously, if you had unlimited flexing, you could point the engine in a direction that would be contrary to the most efficient operation (like backwards), but I don't think Boeing would design a wing with such ridiculous amounts of flexing.
...the music industry's preference to shoot itself in the head continues!
Coal dust is nothing like carbon fiber or carbon dust. Just because coal is carbon doesn't mean it's pure carbon. Plus, *any* significant amount of inhaling *any* dust will give you "black lung." That doesn't mean carbon is toxic.
Asbestos is a carcinogen and that's why it causes cancer, not because it's a fiber.
Also, carbon composites are not nanotubes... that's a totally different carbon animal. Even so, inhaling one won't kill you.
You seem to be confusing "toxic" with anything that might kill you... inhaling 100% nitrogen will kill you, but nitrogen itself isn't toxic. Inhaling a lot of carbon dust is bad for you, but that doesn't make it toxic.
Everyone seems to forget that all life as we know it is based on, you guessed it: carbon.
There's nothing toxic about carbon fiber or dust.
Carbon *can* be a vehicle for toxic stuff getting into your system, but the fiber/powder itself is not.
I can't comment on how toxic a carbon laminate is... I guess it would depend on how toxic the resin/binding agent was. I do know they make snowboards and skis out of the stuff and don't seem too overly concerned about sanding/grinding them as needed, which would release a ton of dust into the air.
Engineering ethics usually dictates that where human life is involved, you place a safety factor of atleast 2.5 to 3. It has nothing to do with maximums and what is allowed. It is however possible that at 150% loading, the stress on the wing is 3 times as much which will satisfy the ethical guideline. I am not sure that is the case though - which is why I ask.
Everyone keeps saying 150%, but no one has mentioned what the baseline is... the regulations state the airframe must tolerate 150% of the maximum load requirements.
For aircraft in the "normal" category, that's 3.8 sustained positive Gs and -0.8 sustained negative Gs.
So, the aircraft's overall load tolerance must be 5.7 positive Gs and 1.2 negative Gs, both for three seconds. That's quite a bit, if you think about it.
Engineering ethics aside, aircraft are a constant trade-off between structural strength and weight. Airplanes are all about payload. A 2.5 - 3.0 safety margin would make a 747 so massive it wouldn't be cost effective to fly (at current ticket prices).