...after the last Iridium-related post, I wondered why the hell anyone would acquire iridium and all the liability of deorbiting the satellites.
It turns out the big winner in this whole ordeal is Boeing. While Iridium Satellite LLC may have picked up the constellation (and associated liability), Boeing has "volunteered" to run Mission Control, at a cost of nearly $10M/month.
For those keeping score at home, that means the Plane-manufacturer-turned-information-company will, in a few months, have much more sunk into Iridium than the company that owns it. To Boeing's benefit, though, they could just give up on the whole deal, and not have to pay the expense of burning the things up.
In this light, this DoD contract looks like it'll be a boon for Boeing; afterall, they could always just step down at the end of the Gov't contract...
It seems Boeing was pretty insightful in their analysis of the potential win here... Now as to why Iridium Satellite LLC or the US Government are keeping this thing afloat, I'll leave that up to someone else to explain.
...and this is "stepping all over someone's IP" how?
Companies have been building bipedal robots for years. The MIT Leg Lab has done a bunch.
What your comparison shows is merely that there are some pretty established ways of building humanoid robots: motors, communication, memory, and a pretty well publicized pathfinding algorithm.
Crying about stolen IP at this story is about the same as accusing Porsche of stealing Ford's IP about using four wheels to support an automobile.
They convinced the public that it absolutely had to have a feature that was nearly worthless and then forced the competitors to license it. From a purely business standpoint, isn't that about as un-slipup-ish as it comes?
I'd rate the metallic pink and blue bunny suit marketing campaign a bit more embarrassing.
I'm sorry. I'm beta testing a new M$ browser, and it keeps giving me the following error:
The page you are trying to access has not been
approved by Microsoft. To protect you,
your browser has been configured not to
display it.
I'm a little worried they're trying to control what I'm seeing. Could someone send me a summary of the article so I can read it?
Oh, wait... Outlook has been bouncing messages.
Could someone just print out this page and mail it to me?
Re:Iridium can be rescued, but it won't work.
on
Iridium Saved?
·
· Score: 1
Interestingly enough, I used Iridium on an ascent of Everest (no kidding), and it didn't work. Too many hills in the way.
From the summit, one climber was able to call Mom, but 45 minutes of subsequent calls failed... including one to the CEO of Motorola.
I wonder who those bankers are...
on
Iridium Saved?
·
· Score: 4
It absolutely baffles me who would finance this buyout. Unless they have some magic powers, or some secret agenda, they should be in for a ride.
In early 1999, I visited Motorola and spoke to some of their engineers. One of them laughingly referred to the Iridium (or "Satellite Series Phone") division as the place where "old engineers go to die." I didn't exactly understand what he meant until I actually used the equipment.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea, I, personally, believe there is some (albeit limited) market for direct-to-satellite communication, but it's only as good as the implementation. Has anyone else actually used iridium? It's miserable!
Besides being big and clunky, there are fundamental problems that haven't been addressed.
Satellite handoff is still shaky; in areas where as little as 10% of the sky is occluded (the world ain't flat... most of you have hills or buildings blocking some part of the sky), you can miss handoff. Some of the pass times for the satellites are about 2 minutes... I had a phone at my disposal for about six weeks, and it was rare that I was able to make a call longer than 30seconds. Usually I'd get through "I'm using Iridium, so if I get cut off..."
It seems the handset designers failed to build in any multipath rejection. Even when the signal quality was high, calls routinely had an echo or ended up garbled. I'm no expert on the topic, but one of my friends who designs GPS equipment says that MPR is pretty-much a straightforward process that was clearly ignored.
Service is subject to the hiccups of the "local" telephone service. For political reasons, Iridium put one terrestrial downlink on each continent. As part of their licensing agreements with all of the countries, calls have to be routed through the nearest downlink. Calls go up, they come right back down. I was in the Himalaya and my calls went up and down... to India! More than once, disturbances of the land lines in India blacked out central Asia for hours on end.
Iridium won't do data, at least not well. Each sattellite connection has a maximum of 2400 baud... and only if you route through the US downlink (which, if you were paying attention, means that you have to be in North America). Once upon a time, a long time ago, the Mot engineers were trying to build a data module to allow multiple connections and load balancing, but I don't think it ever materialized.
And the economic challenges:
Globalstar, a competitor is on the verge of closing its doors from lack of clients. How does dividing a client base of essentially zero generate revenue?
Back when Iridium first declared bankruptcy, the original loaning institutions feared that they may have to pay more to deorbit the satellites. It sent the debt price for Iridium LLC to nothing. Not only did investors go to $#!^, the banks were now liable for the costs of keeping the birds up or bringing them down. Whoever bought it must have assumed those liabilities...
The constellation reqires maintenence. Even if they don't have any (or much) initial cost left to recoup, the satellites have a 5-15 year lifespan. Starting in about 2003, they're going to have to start replacing birds if they have any chance of maintaining service.
It seems to me that Iridiums "assets" are inferior, expensive equipment, with a limited lifespan and big price tag. What do they have of real value? Military contracts and communication licenses with almost every nation. The real question: do those assets offset the liability assumed by the constellation. It will be interesting to see what Iridium Satellite LLC will do with the contracts.
Keep watching/. My bet is that we see another "Iridium Crashes" headline soon.
On another note, the (already suffering) Globalstar (GSTRF) didn't change on this news.
Isn't this exactly why new TLDs are being created, that.com,.org,.net don't adequtely cover the full information space, and that they're pretty much useless now as a means of determining content?
I think health information would be fine content for a.health site. Marketing hoopla and unsubstantiated information could be ruled out (as in no Bob dole talking about E.D.).
Think about it with "diet suppliments" in the US. There are plenty of substances that claim to help you burn fat or put on muscle that all kinds of people SWEAR work, but most of them say "these claims not investigated by the FDA." It doesn't mean they don't work. It just means the FDA hasn't qualified the claim.
If the WHO is going to do some kind of effort to set forth a qualification scheme, more power to them! At least you could then go to a.health site and know that it was approved by the WHO.
If you don't trust the WHO or you think it's evil, great, ignore the approval. There's nothing that says you have to think that a.gov site has any kind of legislative authority over you, or that a.edu has any business teaching the masses, but for lots of people, those qualifications are significant and give the viewer some kind of trust in the information on those pages.
Quite frankly,.com,.org and.net mean nothing to me, other than "we were lucky enough to find a domain we could buy."
...and it sure would be nice to know that.sex and.xxx domains really will be qualified smut, not just the head of some high profile actress cut-and-pasted onto another body.
Home Stereo lacking DTS?
Do you still have a Tube TV?
Is there a "windows" key on your keyboard?!
DON'T JUST SIT THERE!
Call Uncle Vinny's Discount Computer Disposal for all your Disposal Needs!
We'll take all your unused computer equiment, VCRs, DVD Players and home stereos (working order only, please) for the low, LOW price of $14.99 (shipping not included, taxes may apply).
We'll get rid of that out-of-date P3-500 so you don't have to!
*Uncle Vinny takes no knowledge of what open-source operating system or pr0nographic DVDs may be used on your disposed of junk, but don't you worry! it won't be traceable to you! Call 1-800-COMP-U-GON and wait for the black van at the end of your block!
Re:voting from the comfort of your own home -bad
on
eLection '04
·
· Score: 1
The coercion you speak of, I think, is important to address, but (I think), not nearly as likely or insidious as a couple of other problems:
Primarily: allowing people to log in and vote from home creates a situation that further favors the affluent and educated. I don't know what the current statistics are, but I do know that internet penetration into low-income regions is much less than that of middle-to-upper class neighborhoods. We already have a situation in this country where the "economically challenged" and less educated (often the same group) turn out in lower numbers than those with money or schooling; allowing online vote-from-home would further widen this gap, a direct conflict with the ideals of the system.
Second, (and probably somewhat contrary to my first point), I, personally am unconvinced that we want to make it easy for _everyone_ to vote. I do NOT believe it should be difficult to vote, and I certainly oppose anything that makes it harder for any group to vote than for another, but I do think that voting should be proactive, not just something you can do by firing up your WebTV and clicking on "unresearched politician #2."
The current system of requiring voters to either file for an absentee ballot or go to a polling place to vote requires that the voter demostrate some desire to do so.
As a result, (I believe) what you get with the current system, is a voting constituency that cares enough about the issues (or candidates) to vote, is much more likely to have researched their issues, and, in all likelihood, votes in a manner representative of whatever neighborhood/demographic/group you want to pile them in.
If voting took no effort, I think you'd get a whole lot more of the "vote for the best looking candidate" or "whichever tag line sounds more promising," and that could completely nullify the actual issues.
TV has "dumbed down" the political process for the least common denominator already... if we increase the effect of the LCD anymore, won't that just make it more of a popularity contest and make political positioning mean absolutely nothing?
Maybe I just don't have enough faith in the average constituent. Damn Jerry Springer!
Yes, SA was turned off toward the beginning of the year. No, not all GPS devices have the same accuracy.
The accuracy of the GPS system itself, based on a few samples of a stationary receiver, puts you within about a meter of your "actual" location (lat+lon; altitude is much less accurate).
The error in such a measurement can be further reduced by taking multiple measurements over time. The more readings and the longer the time, the more accurate the measurement.
To put it more "relevantly," stationary objects are much easier to locate than mobile ones, and the faster you move, the less accurate the measurement of your location.
Unfortunately for most handheld receivers it's not very reasonable to expect them to be stationary. From a handheld, you can reasonably expect to get 1-5m of accuracy, which is more than enough for most people. Strap the same receiver to a cruise missile, and you'll be lucky to detonate it in the same desert as the deep underground, must-be-within-a-meter-to-destroy enemy bunker you're trying to blow up.
Consequently, GPS is really only used as a starting position for most high-accuracy systems. High-velocity mobile systems (including in-car navigation) use GPS to determine position when vehicle is stationary, and a combination of GPS, instrumentation and intertial nav to keep track of the position of the vehicle.
Stationary measurements and networked slowly-moving mobile devices (handhelds, ships, etc.) use differential GPS (DGPS) whereby a trusted, known point receiver tracks the same satellite information as the mobile unit. The stationary unit can then determine the error in the satellite signals and use this data to correct the error seen by the mobile units.
PLUS, you can track many more than 4 satellites, and reduce your error more, but that's a whole different post....
Slashdot Mirror
It turns out the big winner in this whole ordeal is Boeing. While Iridium Satellite LLC may have picked up the constellation (and associated liability), Boeing has "volunteered" to run Mission Control, at a cost of nearly $10M/month.
For those keeping score at home, that means the Plane-manufacturer-turned-information-company will, in a few months, have much more sunk into Iridium than the company that owns it. To Boeing's benefit, though, they could just give up on the whole deal, and not have to pay the expense of burning the things up.
In this light, this DoD contract looks like it'll be a boon for Boeing; afterall, they could always just step down at the end of the Gov't contract...
It seems Boeing was pretty insightful in their analysis of the potential win here... Now as to why Iridium Satellite LLC or the US Government are keeping this thing afloat, I'll leave that up to someone else to explain.
Companies have been building bipedal robots for years. The MIT Leg Lab has done a bunch.
What your comparison shows is merely that there are some pretty established ways of building humanoid robots: motors, communication, memory, and a pretty well publicized pathfinding algorithm.
Crying about stolen IP at this story is about the same as accusing Porsche of stealing Ford's IP about using four wheels to support an automobile.
From a purely business standpoint, isn't that about as un-slipup-ish as it comes?
I'd rate the metallic pink and blue bunny suit marketing campaign a bit more embarrassing.
Don't let anything float off into space! It will help them build the Sinistar faster!
In effect, isn't this saying "we haven't found anything useful in all these terrabytes, want a copy?"
If the same approach was used with /., would it mean copying all the flamewars and troll posts? How much of a waste is that?
I'll keep reading at -1, looking for meaning, and let you know what I find.
The page you are trying to access has not been approved by Microsoft. To protect you, your browser has been configured not to display it.
I'm a little worried they're trying to control what I'm seeing. Could someone send me a summary of the article so I can read it?
Oh, wait... Outlook has been bouncing messages.
Could someone just print out this page and mail it to me?
From the summit, one climber was able to call Mom, but 45 minutes of subsequent calls failed... including one to the CEO of Motorola.
In early 1999, I visited Motorola and spoke to some of their engineers. One of them laughingly referred to the Iridium (or "Satellite Series Phone") division as the place where "old engineers go to die." I didn't exactly understand what he meant until I actually used the equipment.
Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea, I, personally, believe there is some (albeit limited) market for direct-to-satellite communication, but it's only as good as the implementation. Has anyone else actually used iridium? It's miserable!
Besides being big and clunky, there are fundamental problems that haven't been addressed.
- Satellite handoff is still shaky; in areas where as little as 10% of the sky is occluded (the world ain't flat... most of you have hills or buildings blocking some part of the sky), you can miss handoff. Some of the pass times for the satellites are about 2 minutes... I had a phone at my disposal for about six weeks, and it was rare that I was able to make a call longer than 30seconds. Usually I'd get through "I'm using Iridium, so if I get cut off..."
- It seems the handset designers failed to build in any multipath rejection. Even when the signal quality was high, calls routinely had an echo or ended up garbled. I'm no expert on the topic, but one of my friends who designs GPS equipment says that MPR is pretty-much a straightforward process that was clearly ignored.
- Service is subject to the hiccups of the "local" telephone service. For political reasons, Iridium put one terrestrial downlink on each continent. As part of their licensing agreements with all of the countries, calls have to be routed through the nearest downlink. Calls go up, they come right back down. I was in the Himalaya and my calls went up and down... to India! More than once, disturbances of the land lines in India blacked out central Asia for hours on end.
- Iridium won't do data, at least not well. Each sattellite connection has a maximum of 2400 baud... and only if you route through the US downlink (which, if you were paying attention, means that you have to be in North America). Once upon a time, a long time ago, the Mot engineers were trying to build a data module to allow multiple connections and load balancing, but I don't think it ever materialized.
And the economic challenges:- Globalstar, a competitor is on the verge of closing its doors from lack of clients. How does dividing a client base of essentially zero generate revenue?
- Back when Iridium first declared bankruptcy, the original loaning institutions feared that they may have to pay more to deorbit the satellites. It sent the debt price for Iridium LLC to nothing. Not only did investors go to $#!^, the banks were now liable for the costs of keeping the birds up or bringing them down. Whoever bought it must have assumed those liabilities...
- The constellation reqires maintenence. Even if they don't have any (or much) initial cost left to recoup, the satellites have a 5-15 year lifespan. Starting in about 2003, they're going to have to start replacing birds if they have any chance of maintaining service.
It seems to me that Iridiums "assets" are inferior, expensive equipment, with a limited lifespan and big price tag. What do they have of real value? Military contracts and communication licenses with almost every nation. The real question: do those assets offset the liability assumed by the constellation. It will be interesting to see what Iridium Satellite LLC will do with the contracts.Keep watching /. My bet is that we see another "Iridium Crashes" headline soon.
On another note, the (already suffering) Globalstar (GSTRF) didn't change on this news.
Nobody seems to care about this one.
I launched a pc-104 with a wireless modem and solar cells, streaming Elton John's "Rocket Man."
I got a cease-and-desist order from the RIAA branch on Mars, but Iridium went belly up before I could fight the jurisdictional issues in court.
- KDE forms league similar to Hall of Justice
- Linux does "wonder twin powers activate...form of PalmOS
- Bizarro Herbert gets his world Backwards
- WHO wants to regulate information about potential dangers of radioactive spider bites
Is it Saturday already?I think health information would be fine content for a .health site. Marketing hoopla and unsubstantiated information could be ruled out (as in no Bob dole talking about E.D.).
Think about it with "diet suppliments" in the US. There are plenty of substances that claim to help you burn fat or put on muscle that all kinds of people SWEAR work, but most of them say "these claims not investigated by the FDA." It doesn't mean they don't work. It just means the FDA hasn't qualified the claim.
If the WHO is going to do some kind of effort to set forth a qualification scheme, more power to them! At least you could then go to a .health site and know that it was approved by the WHO.
If you don't trust the WHO or you think it's evil, great, ignore the approval. There's nothing that says you have to think that a .gov site has any kind of legislative authority over you, or that a .edu has any business teaching the masses, but for lots of people, those qualifications are significant and give the viewer some kind of trust in the information on those pages.
Quite frankly, .com, .org and .net mean nothing to me, other than "we were lucky enough to find a domain we could buy."
...and it sure would be nice to know that .sex and .xxx domains really will be qualified smut, not just the head of some high profile actress cut-and-pasted onto another body.
Do you still have a Tube TV?
Is there a "windows" key on your keyboard?!
DON'T JUST SIT THERE! Call Uncle Vinny's Discount Computer Disposal for all your Disposal Needs!
We'll take all your unused computer equiment, VCRs, DVD Players and home stereos (working order only, please) for the low, LOW price of $14.99 (shipping not included, taxes may apply).
We'll get rid of that out-of-date P3-500 so you don't have to!
*Uncle Vinny takes no knowledge of what open-source operating system or pr0nographic DVDs may be used on your disposed of junk, but don't you worry! it won't be traceable to you! Call 1-800-COMP-U-GON and wait for the black van at the end of your block!
Primarily: allowing people to log in and vote from home creates a situation that further favors the affluent and educated. I don't know what the current statistics are, but I do know that internet penetration into low-income regions is much less than that of middle-to-upper class neighborhoods. We already have a situation in this country where the "economically challenged" and less educated (often the same group) turn out in lower numbers than those with money or schooling; allowing online vote-from-home would further widen this gap, a direct conflict with the ideals of the system.
Second, (and probably somewhat contrary to my first point), I, personally am unconvinced that we want to make it easy for _everyone_ to vote. I do NOT believe it should be difficult to vote, and I certainly oppose anything that makes it harder for any group to vote than for another, but I do think that voting should be proactive, not just something you can do by firing up your WebTV and clicking on "unresearched politician #2."
The current system of requiring voters to either file for an absentee ballot or go to a polling place to vote requires that the voter demostrate some desire to do so.
As a result, (I believe) what you get with the current system, is a voting constituency that cares enough about the issues (or candidates) to vote, is much more likely to have researched their issues, and, in all likelihood, votes in a manner representative of whatever neighborhood/demographic/group you want to pile them in.
If voting took no effort, I think you'd get a whole lot more of the "vote for the best looking candidate" or "whichever tag line sounds more promising," and that could completely nullify the actual issues.
TV has "dumbed down" the political process for the least common denominator already... if we increase the effect of the LCD anymore, won't that just make it more of a popularity contest and make political positioning mean absolutely nothing?
Maybe I just don't have enough faith in the average constituent. Damn Jerry Springer!
Yes, SA was turned off toward the beginning of the year. No, not all GPS devices have the same accuracy.
The accuracy of the GPS system itself, based on a few samples of a stationary receiver, puts you within about a meter of your "actual" location (lat+lon; altitude is much less accurate).
The error in such a measurement can be further reduced by taking multiple measurements over time. The more readings and the longer the time, the more accurate the measurement.
To put it more "relevantly," stationary objects are much easier to locate than mobile ones, and the faster you move, the less accurate the measurement of your location. Unfortunately for most handheld receivers it's not very reasonable to expect them to be stationary. From a handheld, you can reasonably expect to get 1-5m of accuracy, which is more than enough for most people. Strap the same receiver to a cruise missile, and you'll be lucky to detonate it in the same desert as the deep underground, must-be-within-a-meter-to-destroy enemy bunker you're trying to blow up.
Consequently, GPS is really only used as a starting position for most high-accuracy systems. High-velocity mobile systems (including in-car navigation) use GPS to determine position when vehicle is stationary, and a combination of GPS, instrumentation and intertial nav to keep track of the position of the vehicle. Stationary measurements and networked slowly-moving mobile devices (handhelds, ships, etc.) use differential GPS (DGPS) whereby a trusted, known point receiver tracks the same satellite information as the mobile unit. The stationary unit can then determine the error in the satellite signals and use this data to correct the error seen by the mobile units.
PLUS, you can track many more than 4 satellites, and reduce your error more, but that's a whole different post....