Dump your backup data to hex (Intel format should do...) and have it inscribed on a solid titanium monument (by laser...) embedded in the bedrock of a geographically stable area. Don't forget checksums.
Expensive, but should work for a long time, and you won't forget where you put it...
You are absolutely correct. Law enforcement in the US cannot use evidence obtained in such a manner in court.
But they don't have to. What they need is information (comings, goings, who is in, who is out, etc.) that lead them to evidence that they can present in court. Or even better, prevention of crime by having a few well-placed conversations or police presences. Saves paperwork, time, money, and heartbreak.
You have to give law enforcement its due in this country. They probably prevent more than they catch, and do it on little enough.
This may be so for places that are rural in nature, but in any large town you can bet that payphones are monitored, one way or another. It depends on where the payphone is located:
Court houses, jails, bars, schools, YMCAs, hotels, government buildings, and points of transit, plus stand-alone payphones in those "special" parts of town.
In other words, phones where interesting conversations might take place. The local whorehouse phone (pay or not) is always monitored, but I have never seen a order on a public phone in a library.
Find a couple of older 386 laptops and strip the dc converter/regulator boards out of them, wire the outputs in parallel, and mount appropriately.
This should get you by, although if your PC has a large power draw you may need more than two. If you don't have spare laptops laying around you can find similar circuits available from Marlin P. Jones or All electronics.
Whatever you try, don't use those cheapy seventy dollar inverter critters from the local Rat Shack. They make enough interference that some laptops and handheld radios cease to function near them.
You would hope thay have something else on their minds. With the assumption that this is going to remain in the aircraft:
1. Your insurance company would probably appreciate it if you checked all the avionics for interference while this stuff is turned on and functioning. While I cannot think of anything in a normal aircraft that would have hassles with 2.4 Gig, one never knows.
2. If you are in a fairly rural setting, you could try just about any vendors 802.11b equipment and laptop PCs. Use external antenna with reflectors to get as much power as possible into the area that the plane will be in. Remember that most omni antenna are designed to produce a toroidal volume (normally you want the power concentrated in a circular plane near the ground) so you may have to use a custom antenna here.
3. Use laptop PCs as before, but use multiple cell phone channels to get your signal back. Use software to distribute packets among the six to eight channels you are going to need.;)
4. AMSAT or InMarSat M can be had for aircraft. Expensive, but gets you 64K both way over most of the US. Use laptops as before.
If you are really geeky and have the know-how, and you can adequately predict where the plane is going to be, you might want to consider 802.11b with narrow beam antenna and active tracking. The plane might have to hold on station for a few minutes whilst comms links lock up alignment and tracking. The best way to do this is by having a search program divide the look area into quarters, measure signal strengths, take strongest quarter, divide again, measure signal, repeat until adequate.
and find an old Omega brand 19 inch rack or equivalent. Lots of these critters can be had for just hauling away, or you might have to pay thirty or forty bucks for one.
These come in different sizes, and are hard to modify as far as height, so pass on any that are too big. Be sure to get the side panels.
Some of these (especially the OD Green ones) come with a (caution: heavy) power supply in the bottom, usually twenty-four or forty-eight volts, but regulators to move this down to PC voltages are not too expensive.
The sliding rails for these are available new, and the best thing I've seen is to put a standard two rack unit shelf on the rails, and then just lay the motherboard and componets out on top of it with appropriate spacers. Not terribly pretty, but much cheaper than rack-mount cases, especially if labor is not a factor.
...I hire them every so often. It's funny to read their resumes and watch them squirm whilst sitting in front of the desk;)
Honestly, get real-world experience just as soon as you can. You should have started before you got into college. Finish the masters if you feel like hanging around, but I have seen it make little difference in the actual job market. Get the PhD., though if you are rich and can afford a research job.
That being said, you MUST get the experience. Even in a pure research environment it helps to understand what outside factors and demands exist.
where's Richard Nixon when you need him? Say what you want, but he did smooth out relations with China for a good long time.
Aside from that, I suspect that, as in other incidents of this nature, neither side is telling the whole truth. Maybe we should both apologize and go home.
Buying and selling on-line is exactly the same as off-line.
My "loyalty discount" cards are all filled out to "Donald A. Duck" (apologies to Roy Disney). Doesn't faze the clerk at the checkout counter one bit, and keeps all that firestarter out of my mailbox.
You can probably guess what kind of email address I hand out to on-line merchants. And which phone number (apologies to whoever owns it).
Of course, as far as on-line merchants know I'm in my thirties, have tons of disposable income, thoroughly married, and own three houses. It must be true. I filled out the check boxes on the HTML form.
Marketing departments fear this stuff. When you are standing in front of the checkout counter, the nice person there can see that you are not a sixty-two year-old left-handed eskimo short-order cook, but on-line, how do you tell?
When I started to learn about exreme programming, I thought that I would be whisked away to the land of Jolt and all night production sessions. I was not.
Last time somebody started expounding on extreme programming, I closed my eyes and listened. Where I was whisked to was the land of Engineering Management 410, with a grey-haired old codger at the front of the room berating us about our project plans. It was also slightly reminescent of a Project Scheduling and Cost Control seminar.
This appears to me to be a simple application of the resource-time-quality triangle, coupled with some basics ripped out of Rapid Protoype Delivery methods and the old "Egoless Programming" scheme.
Just think. It only took thirty years to get popular in microcomputer-land while the rest of us have been using it (where appropriate and possible) for years...
As much as Americam egotism hates to admit, other folks on the planet have expertise in spaceflight. Some more than we.
Perhaps it represents a change in status for NASA that they don't want. With the advent of what is essentially chartered service, perhaps NASA views themselves as less worthy. After all, for years they were at the forefront of what was popularly known as science (yes, I know that a large part of it was actually engineering...) and maybe they fear that in allowing passengers they will eventually be regarded as "airline pilots" and "support crew" rather than an august scientific body.
I think it is about time to separate the truly scientific parts of NASA away from the engineering pieces, commercialise the latter and get on with life. I think that the good folks in NASA management ought to realise that throughout the course of history, it was never the groundbreakers and explorers who wound up owning the resources, but those who commercialised the resources and transport.
If you don't believe me, look around at all the bank and university admin. buildings, and see who's names are on them.
That which RF folks call "line of site" is a constantly shifting and variable thing. At microwave frequencies many different facets of physics come into play.
For example, where I'm located there is a ring of mountains directly in front of a satellite (Telstar IV). There is no line of site. Yet, I can get decent reception in some parts of town because the mountains form a knife edge and the resulting diffraction pattern alters the signal strengths in some spots.
In other places I have turned dish antenna at ninety degrees to the normal signal path because the reflections off a group of office buildings were stronger.
The only practical way to know is to get the guy with the field strength meter to come and see. Remember, higher is usually better, so now maybe there's a reason to get that apartment on the top of the building.
They're right! That looks just like Uncle Fred!
on
New Human Ancestor?
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· Score: 2
The one on my Mother's side, from way back. They must have gotten his picture on a good day.
Internet appliances were supposed to be the next heavy market for consumer electronics. One wonders if 3COM dropped theirs on top VP of market development...
In the USA, FCC and FTC regulations require a publicly displayed message to contain some clear link to the financial sources that created it. In the case of advertisements, the product shown is benefitting and is clearly (assuming the marketing folks have done their job) identified. On more vauge topics such as religion or politics the creator is required to be announced, "this message paid for by the committee to reelect..."
Penalties for this sort of thing may be severe. Now, IANAL, but it occurs to me that movie producers and studios may have deeper than average pockets, and that if you could set some law students to tracking these things down, gathering evidence, and then present it to a law firm, you might be able to find grounds for damages or a class action lawsuit.
It's the American dream in action. Besides, who believes anything they read on the internet, anyways?
This has lots of uses
on
Chip Chiller
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· Score: 2
Consider creating a "cell modifier" with one of these. A fluid channel is etched into the wafer, cells float by and are examined by some means (size, imaging, fluorescence, etc.) "bad" cells are frozen in spot by tiny thermolectric cooler and destroyed by electrical current or heat. Now make thousand of them on a wafer. put multiple wafers together. Now you have a device that can filter enough fluid to be useful in treating patients. Maybe you don't even happen to make channels, you just create spots on the wafer and immerse the working surface, and let brownian motion work it out.
Many Ethernet adapters allow the setting of MAC adresses. Some of them (see antique example above) don't even come with a MAC address. They are completely software based, and change MAC addresses after they get booted.
I can tell you all about stuff like this, having worked with it for some time.
Mesh-routed networks are reliable as long as there are no "evil" (misrouting, misrepresenting) nodes within the network. The one thing that brings them to thier knees is a duplicate node address or mangled routing information transfers. This was not a problem for the military, after all, they had control of the manufacturing process (being the only customer) and relied on other means of radio security (spread spectrum, interrupted carrier, etc.) These things will get hacked (the first few I saw installed disappeared off the rooftops after about a week) and there isn't going to be much you can do about it.
Second, what happens when everybody in a neighborhood has one of these things? Spread spectrum is a wonderful thing, but it relies on the time vs. frequency graph being relatively sparse. Putting a bunch of them in a small area is the absolute worst thing you can do to a spread spectrum radio. Case in point: Local electric utility installs 900 MHZ spread radios on every electric meter in a subdivision. Runs a truck through subdivision to key the spread transmitters and read meters. Not only did they have to drive truck at one mph in order to get all the meters (effective throughput rate of like four baud) but folk's cordless phones are hosed, and the local fire department emergency radio LAN goes down at same time. Eventually fixed, but shows the need to properly engineer such things. Who will coordinate and provide this?
Third is safety. Consider what happens when folks start stretching these things out to the limits (array antennas, etc) in order to cover rural or sparse suburban areas. They are bolting a microwave transmitter up to the side of the house and then instead of allowing the microwave energy to radiate normally, they concentrate it. toward the nearest town. Not much will happen to the owners, I grant you. I just don't want to be a member of the group that is blasting stumps in the field next door. Granted, the power is low, and so is the chance, but the potential for damage is high. Why do you think the road crew has the "no cellphones/two-way radios" signs?
I think the concept is a real good one, but I fear the implementations need improving. I have toyed with a high-powered infrared sort of thing like this (effective even through snow at shorter distances)and using a sort of crypto "buddy" system to eliminate misbehaving nodes (all routing information is held crypto from the user, and a node has to authenticate itself to one or more other nodes to get the current keys. If neigboring nodes detect misbehavior, they refuse to route or accept that node's traffic. Not perfect, but I'm working on it.
Just after I resigned an engineering job. When it gets up to a few days, I'll start to worry.
The real answer is to keep up and stay profitable. Businesses love profitable. Don't think of them as employers, think of them as folks who will let you use their capital and resources to make both of you money. Everybody works for themselves, and always has. The business has needs and resources. You have needs and resources. These resources may interlock (you need money, they need code...)
Slashdot Mirror
Expensive, but should work for a long time, and you won't forget where you put it...
But they don't have to. What they need is information (comings, goings, who is in, who is out, etc.) that lead them to evidence that they can present in court. Or even better, prevention of crime by having a few well-placed conversations or police presences. Saves paperwork, time, money, and heartbreak.
You have to give law enforcement its due in this country. They probably prevent more than they catch, and do it on little enough.
www.elcotel.com, or your local Graybar office.
Court houses, jails, bars, schools, YMCAs, hotels, government buildings, and points of transit, plus stand-alone payphones in those "special" parts of town.
In other words, phones where interesting conversations might take place. The local whorehouse phone (pay or not) is always monitored, but I have never seen a order on a public phone in a library.
Find a couple of older 386 laptops and strip the dc converter/regulator boards out of them, wire the outputs in parallel, and mount appropriately.
This should get you by, although if your PC has a large power draw you may need more than two. If you don't have spare laptops laying around you can find similar circuits available from Marlin P. Jones or All electronics.
Whatever you try, don't use those cheapy seventy dollar inverter critters from the local Rat Shack. They make enough interference that some laptops and handheld radios cease to function near them.
Or maybe the mylar metallic print wallpaper from the seventies will make a return. :(
Since it detects motion, one wonders how well it does with differentiation, what happens with large dogs, kinetic sculpture, mobiles, etc.
1. Your insurance company would probably appreciate it if you checked all the avionics for interference while this stuff is turned on and functioning. While I cannot think of anything in a normal aircraft that would have hassles with 2.4 Gig, one never knows.
2. If you are in a fairly rural setting, you could try just about any vendors 802.11b equipment and laptop PCs. Use external antenna with reflectors to get as much power as possible into the area that the plane will be in. Remember that most omni antenna are designed to produce a toroidal volume (normally you want the power concentrated in a circular plane near the ground) so you may have to use a custom antenna here.
3. Use laptop PCs as before, but use multiple cell phone channels to get your signal back. Use software to distribute packets among the six to eight channels you are going to need. ;)
4. AMSAT or InMarSat M can be had for aircraft. Expensive, but gets you 64K both way over most of the US. Use laptops as before.
If you are really geeky and have the know-how, and you can adequately predict where the plane is going to be, you might want to consider 802.11b with narrow beam antenna and active tracking. The plane might have to hold on station for a few minutes whilst comms links lock up alignment and tracking. The best way to do this is by having a search program divide the look area into quarters, measure signal strengths, take strongest quarter, divide again, measure signal, repeat until adequate.
These come in different sizes, and are hard to modify as far as height, so pass on any that are too big. Be sure to get the side panels.
Some of these (especially the OD Green ones) come with a (caution: heavy) power supply in the bottom, usually twenty-four or forty-eight volts, but regulators to move this down to PC voltages are not too expensive.
The sliding rails for these are available new, and the best thing I've seen is to put a standard two rack unit shelf on the rails, and then just lay the motherboard and componets out on top of it with appropriate spacers. Not terribly pretty, but much cheaper than rack-mount cases, especially if labor is not a factor.
Honestly, get real-world experience just as soon as you can. You should have started before you got into college. Finish the masters if you feel like hanging around, but I have seen it make little difference in the actual job market. Get the PhD., though if you are rich and can afford a research job.
That being said, you MUST get the experience. Even in a pure research environment it helps to understand what outside factors and demands exist.
Aside from that, I suspect that, as in other incidents of this nature, neither side is telling the whole truth. Maybe we should both apologize and go home.
Especially when played in "conservation of momentum" mode.
This is the sort of writing I find in government reports. It is part of the reason that I cannot read an entire Jon Katz article.
And go back to establishing docking attitude with the space station.
My "loyalty discount" cards are all filled out to "Donald A. Duck" (apologies to Roy Disney). Doesn't faze the clerk at the checkout counter one bit, and keeps all that firestarter out of my mailbox.
You can probably guess what kind of email address I hand out to on-line merchants. And which phone number (apologies to whoever owns it).
Of course, as far as on-line merchants know I'm in my thirties, have tons of disposable income, thoroughly married, and own three houses. It must be true. I filled out the check boxes on the HTML form.
Marketing departments fear this stuff. When you are standing in front of the checkout counter, the nice person there can see that you are not a sixty-two year-old left-handed eskimo short-order cook, but on-line, how do you tell?
Last time somebody started expounding on extreme programming, I closed my eyes and listened. Where I was whisked to was the land of Engineering Management 410, with a grey-haired old codger at the front of the room berating us about our project plans. It was also slightly reminescent of a Project Scheduling and Cost Control seminar.
This appears to me to be a simple application of the resource-time-quality triangle, coupled with some basics ripped out of Rapid Protoype Delivery methods and the old "Egoless Programming" scheme.
Just think. It only took thirty years to get popular in microcomputer-land while the rest of us have been using it (where appropriate and possible) for years...
Perhaps it represents a change in status for NASA that they don't want. With the advent of what is essentially chartered service, perhaps NASA views themselves as less worthy. After all, for years they were at the forefront of what was popularly known as science (yes, I know that a large part of it was actually engineering...) and maybe they fear that in allowing passengers they will eventually be regarded as "airline pilots" and "support crew" rather than an august scientific body.
I think it is about time to separate the truly scientific parts of NASA away from the engineering pieces, commercialise the latter and get on with life. I think that the good folks in NASA management ought to realise that throughout the course of history, it was never the groundbreakers and explorers who wound up owning the resources, but those who commercialised the resources and transport.
If you don't believe me, look around at all the bank and university admin. buildings, and see who's names are on them.
For example, where I'm located there is a ring of mountains directly in front of a satellite (Telstar IV). There is no line of site. Yet, I can get decent reception in some parts of town because the mountains form a knife edge and the resulting diffraction pattern alters the signal strengths in some spots.
In other places I have turned dish antenna at ninety degrees to the normal signal path because the reflections off a group of office buildings were stronger.
The only practical way to know is to get the guy with the field strength meter to come and see. Remember, higher is usually better, so now maybe there's a reason to get that apartment on the top of the building.
The one on my Mother's side, from way back. They must have gotten his picture on a good day.
Internet appliances were supposed to be the next heavy market for consumer electronics. One wonders if 3COM dropped theirs on top VP of market development...
Penalties for this sort of thing may be severe. Now, IANAL, but it occurs to me that movie producers and studios may have deeper than average pockets, and that if you could set some law students to tracking these things down, gathering evidence, and then present it to a law firm, you might be able to find grounds for damages or a class action lawsuit.
It's the American dream in action. Besides, who believes anything they read on the internet, anyways?
Best to just download search results with a spider and hit them with grep, if you've got the time. [sigh].
Many Ethernet adapters allow the setting of MAC adresses. Some of them (see antique example above) don't even come with a MAC address. They are completely software based, and change MAC addresses after they get booted.
Mesh-routed networks are reliable as long as there are no "evil" (misrouting, misrepresenting) nodes within the network. The one thing that brings them to thier knees is a duplicate node address or mangled routing information transfers. This was not a problem for the military, after all, they had control of the manufacturing process (being the only customer) and relied on other means of radio security (spread spectrum, interrupted carrier, etc.) These things will get hacked (the first few I saw installed disappeared off the rooftops after about a week) and there isn't going to be much you can do about it.
Second, what happens when everybody in a neighborhood has one of these things? Spread spectrum is a wonderful thing, but it relies on the time vs. frequency graph being relatively sparse. Putting a bunch of them in a small area is the absolute worst thing you can do to a spread spectrum radio. Case in point: Local electric utility installs 900 MHZ spread radios on every electric meter in a subdivision. Runs a truck through subdivision to key the spread transmitters and read meters. Not only did they have to drive truck at one mph in order to get all the meters (effective throughput rate of like four baud) but folk's cordless phones are hosed, and the local fire department emergency radio LAN goes down at same time. Eventually fixed, but shows the need to properly engineer such things. Who will coordinate and provide this?
Third is safety. Consider what happens when folks start stretching these things out to the limits (array antennas, etc) in order to cover rural or sparse suburban areas. They are bolting a microwave transmitter up to the side of the house and then instead of allowing the microwave energy to radiate normally, they concentrate it. toward the nearest town. Not much will happen to the owners, I grant you. I just don't want to be a member of the group that is blasting stumps in the field next door. Granted, the power is low, and so is the chance, but the potential for damage is high. Why do you think the road crew has the "no cellphones/two-way radios" signs?
I think the concept is a real good one, but I fear the implementations need improving. I have toyed with a high-powered infrared sort of thing like this (effective even through snow at shorter distances)and using a sort of crypto "buddy" system to eliminate misbehaving nodes (all routing information is held crypto from the user, and a node has to authenticate itself to one or more other nodes to get the current keys. If neigboring nodes detect misbehavior, they refuse to route or accept that node's traffic. Not perfect, but I'm working on it.
The real answer is to keep up and stay profitable. Businesses love profitable. Don't think of them as employers, think of them as folks who will let you use their capital and resources to make both of you money. Everybody works for themselves, and always has. The business has needs and resources. You have needs and resources. These resources may interlock (you need money, they need code...)