When I lived in the United States, one of our contractors was arrested and sent to prison for industrial espionage (I think the charges were probably mail fraud and the like). He was trying to sell our source code to a competitor, the competitor called the feds, and the feds set up a sting operation while the competitor "played along" as if it were going to pay him for our source code.
They arrested two of our people (both contractors), one was quickly let off though because it turned out he had been duped by his "friend" into lending him a mailbox for a supposedly innocent purpose (the mailbox was to be where the payment would be delivered). I don't remember what was handed down to the guilty person in the end other than it involved some jail time.
Here is the actual federal regulation (for airline operations, 14 CFR 121 para 306). As you see it is all about suspected interference and nothing to do with passengers paying attention:
Section 121.306: Portable electronic devices.
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate, nor may any operator or pilot in command of an aircraft allow the operation of, any portable electronic device on any U.S.-registered civil aircraft operating under this part.
(b) Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to-
(1) Portable voice recorders; (2) Hearing aids; (3) Heart pacemakers; (4) Electric shavers; or (5) Any other portable electronic device that the part 119 certificate holder has determined will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used.
(c) The determination required by paragraph (b)(5) of this section shall be made by that part 119 certificate holder operating the particular device to be used.
It also applies to non-airline operations, too, see 14 CFR 91.21:
Section 91.21: portable electronic devices.
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate, nor may any operator or pilot in command of an aircraft allow the operation of, any portable electronic device on any of the following U.S.-registered civil aircraft:
(1) Aircraft operated by a holder of an air carrier operating certificate or an operating certificate; or (2) Any other aircraft while it is operated under IFR.
(b) Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to- (1) Portable voice recorders; (2) Hearing aids; (3) Heart pacemakers; (4) Electric shavers; or (5) Any other portable electronic device that the operator of the aircraft has determined will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used.
(c) In the case of an aircraft operated by a holder of an air carrier operating certificate or an operating certificate, the determination required by paragraph (b)(5) of this section shall be made by that operator of the aircraft on which the particular device is to be used. In the case of other aircraft, the determination may be made by the pilot in command or other operator of the aircraft.
If you depend on proprietary languages and proprietary frameworks, then you've only got yourself to blame when the vendor decides to discontinue support. It's not like it hasn't happened before, for example VB6.
A few years ago I was flying (privately, in a light aircraft). I was flying with a friend on a trip, and it was to be his first real instrument approach (in the rain, at night). I was at the time instrument current.
And it was a good job too. Seconds after ATC cleared us for the approach, his wife called and his phone went off. Immediately, all audio was obliterated by "bip b b bip b b bip b b bip b b bip BRRRRRRRR" (if you own a GSM phone, you'll know the sound if you've ever left it near your car radio, or any audio equipment). If ATC had called at that moment to tell us to do something else, we wouldn't have heard a thing over that noise. Fortunately he could hand over to me and I could continue the approach while he dug his phone out and switched it off.
At the very least it was highly distracting, at the worst, ATC might have wanted to tell us something important and we'd have missed it.
It'll also bite them to call the tablet OS "Windows 8" if there is also a PC OS called "Windows 8".
What Apple did which was smart marketing, was not to use the "OS X" brand for the tablet/phone, even though iOS is indeed based on OS X. They called it something completely different, so customers will never think "Oh, my iPad runs OS X, therefore I can run $RANDOM_MAC_APP on my iPad!"
What will happen is people will buy ARM-based Windows 8 tablets and find most applications for Windows 8 won't actually run because they are Intel binaries (and most apps for Windows aren't.NET so.NET won't save them). So the early adopters will voice their disappointment that their Windows 8 tablet doesn't run most Windows apps. Now if Microsoft didn't insist on calling their tablet and phone OS "Windows", they could break this association and set different expectations.
You can certainly get a Sinclair Spectrum online (but not with this board), with the Spectranet, which is an ethernet board designed for it. You'll even be able to buy a Spectranet soon.
The Spectranet provides the Speccy with a BSD-like socket library, and a host of ROM-based modules (it has 128K of NOR flash that gets mapped into the lower 16K), such as filesystem modules, modules that snapshot memory over the network etc. (as well as the more mundane stuff like the DHCP client).
I thought QQ was short for "quick quit" (from a MUD) and changed to mean leave effectively without saying "gg" in Starcraft, essentially rage quitting.
Incidentally glhf was used in Starcraft 1 so the reference is well known by people over 25. I'm 39 and having played SC1 back in the 90s (and now SC2) have known exactly what glhf means for well over a decade.
Believe it or not, there is more than one Linux user, and the Linux users who wanted it to be easier are not necessarily the same ones who complain about it being made easy.
It is entirely normal when you have a large group that some members of the group want one thing, and some others want a different thing.
...The embarrassing thing is that Facebook, a site for doing social things that isn't about tech is available over IPv6, but Slashdot, which is all about tech still is not available over IPv6.
$30 in 1978 dollars is $103 in 2011 dollars, so in reality you're paying significantly LESS than what he was if you're paying $86/hr.
The costs of new aircraft have increased at greater than the rate of inflation (a 172K in 1969 cost about $13,000 - or $86,000 in 2011 dollars, a modern C172 is significantly more even after you take into account the much higher equipment level a modern C172 has). But even then $13,000 was significantly more expensive than a car unless you're talking of a high end luxury Mercedes Benz. In the 1960s the planes available for "little more than the cost of a car" would be older, used aircraft - just like today.
A lot of the increase in costs for making planes came from the removal of certain tax breaks, IIRC. Also we can probably blame liability lawyers, too. Cessna actually restarted production because of the limitation put in to how long they were liable for an airframe to 18 years, instead of forever as it was before. (Cessna were getting sued when pilots did things like run out of fuel, or fly VFR into IMC and other things not remotely their fault).
If you think it's expensive in the US, then you should come over here some time. I spend $86/hr in *fuel alone* in my own aircraft, and it's only got an O-320 engine! Then I have to pay for insurance, oil, maintenance, repairs on top of that!
Also probably pointless: if you're bringing along a device capable of streaming, then surely you will have preloaded it with what you want to watch during the flight, rather than gambling on there being something worth watching in the in-flight entertainment library?
That's what I did on my last flight, although I knew there would be a reasonable selection on the Delta transatlantic flight, I just preloaded my laptop with stuff I knew I'd like to watch.
The resources required are tiny. A cheap second hand computer (even a giveaway) and some kind of compiler or language is all you need. You can even get a full blown IDE with "intellisense" like features for nothing; Netbeans will run (albeit slowly) on older hardware. Find a second hand book store and you won't even need an internet connection to learn. If you have an internet connection, again most of the resources to learn a language and how to code are free.
Kids tend to be cash poor but time rich, so time is generally not the issue. Motivation maybe.
Google: why not develop something useful, like general purpose plant recognition, for example - so I can take a photo of a plant I want to identify and find information on? Or a building? Or other objects? Useful things, not yet more celebrity obsession...
1. People DO talk about methane, a lot. 2. The problem with CO2 isn't it's absolute strength as a greenhouse gas, but the very large quantities emitted AND the stability in the atmosphere of CO2 (methane, by contrast, does not last very long at all compared to CO2, it doesn't accumulate like CO2).
My worry as an RC enthusiast (I have three RC helicopters) is when our increasingly paranoid governments see this sort of thing, they are going to start legislating the RC hobby into oblivion because of "fears of terrorists". It really wouldn't be that hard to automate my T-Rex 600, the parts can be bought from Sparkfun Electronics, and governments will fear that an ordinary citizen can build a drone from off-the-shelf RC parts and electronics.
All of a sudden we're treated as "terrorists" and another avenue of harmless pleasure is closed off or made so awkward (for instance, you need a background check to buy RC parts) that it will destroy the hobby.
It's not that "consumers" (how I hate that word) don't understand it, it's that it's...well... not good value.
The 3D effect works, but it's kind of "meh", doubly so when you consider this is a hand held gaming console, and a screen that only works if your head is exactly the right distance away and within 5 degrees of the right angle just won't work for something that's moving around a bit as you play a game. Essentially, a lot of money for a feature that is an epic fail in usability stakes.
A friend of mine (now sadly deceased after a road accident) was a fellow aviation enthusiast, and indeed at the time owned a slightly scruffy Twin Comanche (a light twin engined aircraft). Just as you can buy touch up paint for cars, you can for planes too, and there are online stores that sell the stuff.
So he ordered the stuff he needed, and because he wasn't in it was delivered to the apartment office, where he picked it up.
Two days later the FBI came knocking on the door. The apartment manager had reported him as a possible terrorist because he had bought some stuff from an avaition store. He said the FBI when they showed up were very apologetic and almost embarrassed because someone buying paint is so obviously not being suspicious, but they had to come and check him out anyway!
In which case why take two photos with such a precise timestamp on them?
Certainly in other countries, the two photos form an important part of the evidence to back up the radar. They even paint lines on the road to make it easy to measure how far you travelled in the timestamped time. I'm extremely skeptical that this camera is different, given that it takes two photographs and puts such a fine grained timestamp on them. In all probability, the radar is probably not well calibrated.
I don't really agree with this (except in so much that SC2 is a fairly conservative follow-up). I happen to find SC2 multiplayer awesome, I enjoy the competition even though I'm dreadful at it (struggling not to be demoted back to bronze). I think the game itself is well designed and is a lot of *fun* (otherwise I wouldn't play it).
I also enjoy seeing the pro-gaming aspect of it, some of the TSL games last weekend were awesome.
I think Blizzard have designed a good game here, not only do people like me who just play casually find it a lot of fun, but also the pro-gamers like it too. It's an achievement that the game is easy enough to pick up for a casual but deep enough for the pro.
I think you can use different units in certain custom game maps in an online game (the units from the campaign). Custom SC2 games seem to have quite a bit of latitude in what the game designer puts in.
I still don't see the problem. At point C, they have only *observed* that Alice has not left yet when actually, she has. So while point C might observe that Alice has not left, when they use their FTL phone to call her, they find the call goes unanswered because she's actually heading beyond point B, it's just at point C you merely can't see that yet. That they haven't observed her leaving doesn't mean she hasn't actually left already.
Slashdot Mirror
When I lived in the United States, one of our contractors was arrested and sent to prison for industrial espionage (I think the charges were probably mail fraud and the like). He was trying to sell our source code to a competitor, the competitor called the feds, and the feds set up a sting operation while the competitor "played along" as if it were going to pay him for our source code.
They arrested two of our people (both contractors), one was quickly let off though because it turned out he had been duped by his "friend" into lending him a mailbox for a supposedly innocent purpose (the mailbox was to be where the payment would be delivered). I don't remember what was handed down to the guilty person in the end other than it involved some jail time.
A speaker and a small 8 bit microcontroller-based sound generator in the handle, and a couple of accelerometers to detect it being waved around.
You heard wrong.
Here is the actual federal regulation (for airline operations, 14 CFR 121 para 306). As you see it is all about suspected interference and nothing to do with passengers paying attention:
Section 121.306: Portable electronic devices.
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate, nor may any operator or pilot in command of an aircraft allow the operation of, any portable electronic device on any U.S.-registered civil aircraft operating under this part.
(b) Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to-
(1) Portable voice recorders;
(2) Hearing aids;
(3) Heart pacemakers;
(4) Electric shavers; or
(5) Any other portable electronic device that the part 119 certificate holder has determined will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used.
(c) The determination required by paragraph (b)(5) of this section shall be made by that part 119 certificate holder operating the particular device to be used.
It also applies to non-airline operations, too, see 14 CFR 91.21:
Section 91.21: portable electronic devices.
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate, nor may any operator or pilot in command of an aircraft allow the operation of, any portable electronic device on any of the following U.S.-registered civil aircraft:
(1) Aircraft operated by a holder of an air carrier operating certificate or an operating certificate; or
(2) Any other aircraft while it is operated under IFR.
(b) Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to-
(1) Portable voice recorders;
(2) Hearing aids;
(3) Heart pacemakers;
(4) Electric shavers; or
(5) Any other portable electronic device that the operator of the aircraft has determined will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used.
(c) In the case of an aircraft operated by a holder of an air carrier operating certificate or an operating certificate, the determination required by paragraph (b)(5) of this section shall be made by that operator of the aircraft on which the particular device is to be used. In the case of other aircraft, the determination may be made by the pilot in command or other operator of the aircraft.
If you depend on proprietary languages and proprietary frameworks, then you've only got yourself to blame when the vendor decides to discontinue support. It's not like it hasn't happened before, for example VB6.
Went into debt, not dept (which is short for department).
Radio interference from cell phones is real.
A few years ago I was flying (privately, in a light aircraft). I was flying with a friend on a trip, and it was to be his first real instrument approach (in the rain, at night). I was at the time instrument current.
And it was a good job too. Seconds after ATC cleared us for the approach, his wife called and his phone went off. Immediately, all audio was obliterated by "bip b b bip b b bip b b bip b b bip BRRRRRRRR" (if you own a GSM phone, you'll know the sound if you've ever left it near your car radio, or any audio equipment). If ATC had called at that moment to tell us to do something else, we wouldn't have heard a thing over that noise. Fortunately he could hand over to me and I could continue the approach while he dug his phone out and switched it off.
At the very least it was highly distracting, at the worst, ATC might have wanted to tell us something important and we'd have missed it.
It'll also bite them to call the tablet OS "Windows 8" if there is also a PC OS called "Windows 8".
What Apple did which was smart marketing, was not to use the "OS X" brand for the tablet/phone, even though iOS is indeed based on OS X. They called it something completely different, so customers will never think "Oh, my iPad runs OS X, therefore I can run $RANDOM_MAC_APP on my iPad!"
What will happen is people will buy ARM-based Windows 8 tablets and find most applications for Windows 8 won't actually run because they are Intel binaries (and most apps for Windows aren't .NET so .NET won't save them). So the early adopters will voice their disappointment that their Windows 8 tablet doesn't run most Windows apps. Now if Microsoft didn't insist on calling their tablet and phone OS "Windows", they could break this association and set different expectations.
Problem is those scripting tools are all closed source and proprietary. At least the ones that ship with the Mac are cross platform and libre.
You can certainly get a Sinclair Spectrum online (but not with this board), with the Spectranet, which is an ethernet board designed for it. You'll even be able to buy a Spectranet soon.
The Spectranet provides the Speccy with a BSD-like socket library, and a host of ROM-based modules (it has 128K of NOR flash that gets mapped into the lower 16K), such as filesystem modules, modules that snapshot memory over the network etc. (as well as the more mundane stuff like the DHCP client).
A couple of quick demos:
Streaming video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooi9rpx6ECM
Twitter client - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ECnN7jdgA4&feature=related
Some (incomplete) technical information: http://spectrum.alioth.net/doc
I thought QQ was short for "quick quit" (from a MUD) and changed to mean leave effectively without saying "gg" in Starcraft, essentially rage quitting.
Incidentally glhf was used in Starcraft 1 so the reference is well known by people over 25. I'm 39 and having played SC1 back in the 90s (and now SC2) have known exactly what glhf means for well over a decade.
Believe it or not, there is more than one Linux user, and the Linux users who wanted it to be easier are not necessarily the same ones who complain about it being made easy.
It is entirely normal when you have a large group that some members of the group want one thing, and some others want a different thing.
...The embarrassing thing is that Facebook, a site for doing social things that isn't about tech is available over IPv6, but Slashdot, which is all about tech still is not available over IPv6.
You forgot inflation ...
$30 in 1978 dollars is $103 in 2011 dollars, so in reality you're paying significantly LESS than what he was if you're paying $86/hr.
The costs of new aircraft have increased at greater than the rate of inflation (a 172K in 1969 cost about $13,000 - or $86,000 in 2011 dollars, a modern C172 is significantly more even after you take into account the much higher equipment level a modern C172 has). But even then $13,000 was significantly more expensive than a car unless you're talking of a high end luxury Mercedes Benz. In the 1960s the planes available for "little more than the cost of a car" would be older, used aircraft - just like today.
A lot of the increase in costs for making planes came from the removal of certain tax breaks, IIRC. Also we can probably blame liability lawyers, too. Cessna actually restarted production because of the limitation put in to how long they were liable for an airframe to 18 years, instead of forever as it was before. (Cessna were getting sued when pilots did things like run out of fuel, or fly VFR into IMC and other things not remotely their fault).
If you think it's expensive in the US, then you should come over here some time. I spend $86/hr in *fuel alone* in my own aircraft, and it's only got an O-320 engine! Then I have to pay for insurance, oil, maintenance, repairs on top of that!
Also probably pointless: if you're bringing along a device capable of streaming, then surely you will have preloaded it with what you want to watch during the flight, rather than gambling on there being something worth watching in the in-flight entertainment library?
That's what I did on my last flight, although I knew there would be a reasonable selection on the Delta transatlantic flight, I just preloaded my laptop with stuff I knew I'd like to watch.
The resources required are tiny. A cheap second hand computer (even a giveaway) and some kind of compiler or language is all you need. You can even get a full blown IDE with "intellisense" like features for nothing; Netbeans will run (albeit slowly) on older hardware. Find a second hand book store and you won't even need an internet connection to learn. If you have an internet connection, again most of the resources to learn a language and how to code are free.
Kids tend to be cash poor but time rich, so time is generally not the issue. Motivation maybe.
Sigh. More celeb obsession.
Google: why not develop something useful, like general purpose plant recognition, for example - so I can take a photo of a plant I want to identify and find information on? Or a building? Or other objects? Useful things, not yet more celebrity obsession...
1. People DO talk about methane, a lot.
2. The problem with CO2 isn't it's absolute strength as a greenhouse gas, but the very large quantities emitted AND the stability in the atmosphere of CO2 (methane, by contrast, does not last very long at all compared to CO2, it doesn't accumulate like CO2).
My worry as an RC enthusiast (I have three RC helicopters) is when our increasingly paranoid governments see this sort of thing, they are going to start legislating the RC hobby into oblivion because of "fears of terrorists". It really wouldn't be that hard to automate my T-Rex 600, the parts can be bought from Sparkfun Electronics, and governments will fear that an ordinary citizen can build a drone from off-the-shelf RC parts and electronics.
All of a sudden we're treated as "terrorists" and another avenue of harmless pleasure is closed off or made so awkward (for instance, you need a background check to buy RC parts) that it will destroy the hobby.
I think we are talking gorillas of the 800lb kind, not guerrillas of the Afganistani warlord type...
It's not that "consumers" (how I hate that word) don't understand it, it's that it's ...well... not good value.
The 3D effect works, but it's kind of "meh", doubly so when you consider this is a hand held gaming console, and a screen that only works if your head is exactly the right distance away and within 5 degrees of the right angle just won't work for something that's moving around a bit as you play a game. Essentially, a lot of money for a feature that is an epic fail in usability stakes.
A friend of mine (now sadly deceased after a road accident) was a fellow aviation enthusiast, and indeed at the time owned a slightly scruffy Twin Comanche (a light twin engined aircraft). Just as you can buy touch up paint for cars, you can for planes too, and there are online stores that sell the stuff.
So he ordered the stuff he needed, and because he wasn't in it was delivered to the apartment office, where he picked it up.
Two days later the FBI came knocking on the door. The apartment manager had reported him as a possible terrorist because he had bought some stuff from an avaition store. He said the FBI when they showed up were very apologetic and almost embarrassed because someone buying paint is so obviously not being suspicious, but they had to come and check him out anyway!
In which case why take two photos with such a precise timestamp on them?
Certainly in other countries, the two photos form an important part of the evidence to back up the radar. They even paint lines on the road to make it easy to measure how far you travelled in the timestamped time. I'm extremely skeptical that this camera is different, given that it takes two photographs and puts such a fine grained timestamp on them. In all probability, the radar is probably not well calibrated.
I don't really agree with this (except in so much that SC2 is a fairly conservative follow-up). I happen to find SC2 multiplayer awesome, I enjoy the competition even though I'm dreadful at it (struggling not to be demoted back to bronze). I think the game itself is well designed and is a lot of *fun* (otherwise I wouldn't play it).
I also enjoy seeing the pro-gaming aspect of it, some of the TSL games last weekend were awesome.
I think Blizzard have designed a good game here, not only do people like me who just play casually find it a lot of fun, but also the pro-gamers like it too. It's an achievement that the game is easy enough to pick up for a casual but deep enough for the pro.
I think you can use different units in certain custom game maps in an online game (the units from the campaign). Custom SC2 games seem to have quite a bit of latitude in what the game designer puts in.
I still don't see the problem. At point C, they have only *observed* that Alice has not left yet when actually, she has. So while point C might observe that Alice has not left, when they use their FTL phone to call her, they find the call goes unanswered because she's actually heading beyond point B, it's just at point C you merely can't see that yet. That they haven't observed her leaving doesn't mean she hasn't actually left already.