except that this isn't a failure of winter to be cold enough, or long enough, because those criteria have been met in those location despite "global warming" (or at least they haven't been any worse than "pre global warming"). It is instead a failure of forest management, specifically the fact that any time a fire starts in a forest we humans rush to put it out. Forest fires are a necessary and natural part of the forest eco-system. They eliminate problems such as this, and renew the forests, they happen naturally on a reasonably frequent basis.
In fact the usual solution to pine beetle infestations is forest fires. Done now as controlled burns, but it provides the same role that a traditional forest fire would in eliminating the pest and renewing the forest.
Not every issue on earth is caused by "global warming", there are many that actually are legitimately caused by humans.
that link sells you filters, but doesn't tell you how to replace them.
When I tried, I couldn't find anything useful in the first 5 pages on bing. Google gave me the answer 7 links down on the 2nd page (not perfect, but ahead of bing)
(and why on earth did I just waste that much time wading through results for this... I don't own a frigidaire, or for that matter any refrigerator that has a water dispenser!)
recently I've found neither very good. I find that bing seems to return so few results on most of my queries as to have no useful information at all, and google returns thousands, but 90% or more are spam or other useless information, making finding the actually useful ones a painful process.
Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I seem to think that google is getting significantly worse, even than it was a year or two ago. (to be clear, I'm not really blaming google for making a poor search engine, but more for the scum of the earth figuring out how to game google's system to get their pages that nobody wants to view to appear in the top listings on every google search)
A Windows app cannot register to handle Ctrl+Alt+Del.
While true when Windows NT first added that feature many years ago, it hasn't been true for well over a decade (in fact I seem to remember reading that people had found ways to do that within weeks of MS adding that feature), somehow though MS kept the ctrl-alt-del long after it stopped working as a security feature.
You can trap ANY key combination on a PC to do anything you want, Windows won't (effectively) stop you.
the first 2 problems I had on picking up an ipod for the first time were discovering that despite the labels on the 4 points of the circle on the front of the device, the circle itself was a control as well, a completely unlabelled one.
Worse yet, the area in the middle of it, again completely blank, was a button.
That's not intuitive in any way.
At least with the iphone/ipad you assume that the 1 button does something useful.
As a technician who is constantly in people's houses trying to connect whatever "gadget du-jour" to their new wifi internet connection, I want to be able to pick up any device made by any company, and fumble my way through the settings to get it hooked up. Weird gestures, unlabelled buttons, and other tricks that you have to know before using a device make this difficult. Maybe using an ipod is FAMILIAR to you. But it is a long way from intuitive.
when even Jobs couldn't wave his hand and make the PR problem go away, it was obvious that it wasn't really about the antenna.
So. because a technical problem couldn't be solved by more PR, it becomes obvious that the technical problem doesn't exist?
I'll admit that I don't know how much of an issue this really is, but your statement that Jobs couldn't wave his hand and make the PR problem go away, only causes me to think that it is because of a REAL problem, one thing PR can't fix is when the product actually has a real issue. If he HAD managed to make it go away by "waving his hand" that would be more likely to indicate that it wasn't about the antenna.
I have been using connectbot on my milestone to SSH in to my server for maintenance on the go for a few weeks, and so far it's a god-send, however I do miss actual number buttons on the keyboard. My girlfriend just got an LG Shine Plus, although it has a slightly smaller screen and a less powerful processor, it does have what is quite likely a better keyboard. Another good contender would be the HTC Desire Z (the Z model has a physical keyboard whereas the other models don't)
It does however depend on what else you want to do on a device, The Nokia N-series devices have pretty decent keyboards and SSH capability, but obviously lack the Android Market and all it's pretty/fun/useful apps. there are other choices as well.
I bet they're on salary to be honest, so they don't care either way, but by it being known that you can patent basically anything, they make sure that people try to patent EVERYTHING, meaning more work for them, meaning less chance of the office downsizing and letting any of them go... plus it's easier to stamp "approved" than to actually do research needed to reject something. and government bureaucrats are not known to put in more effort than the minimum they can get away with...
This is the problem. The banks claim that if a PIN transaction goes through, then it can not be fraudulent as you must have given out your PIN. the problem being what this student is exposing, that PIN transactions don't require the CORRECT PIN as the PIN is verified against the card itself, and not against the bank. meaning a fraudulent card, or fraudulent terminal, can report a correct PIN even when an incorrect PIN was entered.
Basically if someone does this to you, you as the end user are screwed. The bank will refuse liability as "you must have given out your PIN", and if you push the issue, the bank is likely to charge you with fraud yourself (it has happened several times!)
This is the real reason for chip and PIN, it shifts the liability from the bank to the consumer, without shifting the security.
And how is NOT having a bomb going to stop them from threatening the exact same thing?
If they don't have one, the pilots still have no way of knowing this and must act as if the bomb existed either way. (now wether the pilots decide that means they should open the door or not is a different question, but in either case they can't know wether the culprit actually has a bomb, or only a button and a wire to under their coat)
I don't think anyone is naive enough to believe that the current security measures are absolutely 100% effective, so nobody can take the risk in the air.
But if it is easier to make copies, is it not easier too for the creator to distribute their work? in which case they may need "more protection" but obviously for a shorter time.
The stated goal of copyright is to enhance the public domain, if 7 years was enough when it took months or years to distribute your works, shouldn't 2-3 years be plenty when you can distribute your works to the entire world in seconds?
Except the purpose of copyright law has NEVER been to protect the creator, I believe it explicitly states so in the US constitution.
The purpose of copyright law was to enhance the public domain by convincing creators to create.
The theory being that nobody would create anything if they didn't know they could profit from it (which is funny, because for thousands of years people did just that!)
This is why copyright has a term attached to it, long enough to allow the creator to earn some money, and encourage them to do it again.
Problem being, if they are still earning money on something decades after they are dead... why would they need to continue to create?
If you want to fix copyright law, forget about business vs private, forget about commercial vs non-commercial. Fix copyright term. It was originally 7 years in a time when distribution took months to years. being that distribution can now be done instantaneously, copyright should be down to 2-3 years by now.
This would bring copyright back to it's original purpose, supporting the public domain.
while this is actually irrelevant to this particular issue, as it's obviously not a cell phone, a quick explanation of some of those "walkie-talkie" phones. specifically some of the iDen phones, some of the models can in fact talk direct from one to the other in the absence of a cell tower, and yet still route the conversation through a cell tower when available.
I've seen some of these phones in use by TELUS's "safety net" group (speciallizing in disaster communications), for example during a hurricane in the US a few years ago, while all communication was out, they shipped a couple of crates of these phones along with the first responding emergency workers coming from Canada to help, they then sent one of their SatCOLTs (Satellite Cellular On Light Truck) down to provide a cell tower. The phones worked properly between each other over short range, and once the truck got there the phones immediately picked up on it and were able to connect to the rest of the world. Rather a cool technology really.
Speaking as someone who works with buried copper lines on a daily basis, it doesn't work that way.
The ground is very good at holding on to the wire, you will not be getting 1 km of wire that way, you'll be getting less than 2 m (assuming you dug up at least 1 of those 2m before attaching it to your truck). The wire snaps a long time before you get any length out of it. I have frequently spliced lines pulled by track-hoes, bobcats, or other machinery, and they never manage to even get enough slack pulled out of the ground to splice it back together.
most of these copper thefts are overhead lines, because you can get longer chunks that way, usually 1 or 2 spans (the length between telephone poles) I don't know what that would fetch you at a scrap dealer (though I wouldn't expect it to be all that much, especially for the effort involved).
My point is that while receiving something would be proof of something, the lack of receiving something (or the lack of noticing such a transmission) does not prove anything.
Life may be as similar to us as the people next door, or so different that face to face we would insist it is not life at all. Any attempt at detecting it is valiant and noble, but assuming it can't be different is just arrogant.
I should have been clearer, satellites are ONE of the reasons, other reasons include: - cost - risk tolerance - increased use of unmanned drones - increased use of missiles - increased focus on wars against slow moving targets with little or now aircraft of their own
but all of them are political, not technological.
Or are you trying to tell me that somehow what we did just a few decades ago is now physically impossible?
The point is that we are slowing aircraft down, not because we can't figure out how to make them faster, but because we've lost the political desire to have the high speed aircraft. this doesn't apply to space technologies in the same way because the political pressures are different (I'm not saying we DO have the political will to do it, only that the slowing of modern aircraft is completely irrelevant to the discussion of newer faster technologies)
This still assumes that you know how to at least receive the signal.
Imagine a culture that never invented radio, they transmit everything wired or visually. that wouldn't preclude a highly advanced civilization, it just wouldn't necessarily be detectable from our vantage point.
And that's only one of an infinite number of ways we could be wrong.
As long as we only look for life that conforms to what we know on earth, we'll never know what other forms it can take.
Jet speeds currently are not restricted by technological limitations, but political ones.
Nobody is building a supersonic passenger jet, not because it's impossible, but because no country will let you fly it over their airspace.
The high speed military jets aren't being built anymore because they've been superseded by satellite reconnaissance.
This has nothing to do with technology stopping us, it's all because of a lack of use for the technology. Space travel is a different problem with different political issues (mainly funding) however to state that because we've stopped increasing the speed of jets that we're not able to build faster spacecraft seems a little ridiculous. in fact one of the reasons we've stopped improving the speed of the military jets is precisely BECAUSE of advances in space flight!
Why 1G? seriously, it's what we're used to, but there's nothing to say that we couldn't adapt relatively quickly to slightly more. 1.5G would probably be quite workable, but would substantially decrease the amount of time required to reach the speed of light.
Of course as for "only" way... all I can say is, "for now". I can't believe how arrogant people are right now that they truly believe that humans know enough now to forever rule out not only faster than light travel, but also any other way to shortcut the distance. I think we should all know by now how many amazing leaps of knowledge and technology have happened since humans first picked up a stone or stick as a tool, and should know that believing that we will NEVER do better than we can right now is arrogant in the most extreme.
when people's connections are slow, they switch providers (because providers all advertise based on how fast their network is (of course without ever giving out numbers)) what makes people call and complain is if you cut off their service.
This is what ISPs used to do, it's too bad they don't anymore.
What happened to the good old days of ISPs where if your computer was being a menace the ISP phoned you, and if you still didn't fix it they cut off your internet access until you did?
So now with this knowledge behind us, we are facing exactly the same thing again with radio waves instead of electricity. All the people who can't conceive of how RF energy works are swearing that we'll all die if we use a cell phone, and much of the public seems to be buying it.
A generation from now radio waves will be common place enough that people don't worry about their cell phone killing them, but some new technology will come about and make everyone paranoid again.
Oh for a bit of science education of the masses...
Because the media companies want to have their cake and eat it too.... Recorded media is considered licensed and not sold whenever you try to transfer ownership, modify it, or copy it for personal use, however it Magically becomes physical property sold instead of licensed if you loose or break it... because letting it sit in either one of the categories entirely would remove a possible revenue stream.
If they said that all you ever bought was a license to use the media, then you'd have the ability to keep the recording even after loosing the physical copy, you'd be able to get another virtual copy for free because you already paid the license. If they said that all you ever bought was a physical item, then you'd have the ability to make a backup copy, modify the original, sell it to friends etc.
The entertainment industry knows better than to allow either case, and have bought the appropriate laws to make it so.
Slashdot Mirror
except that this isn't a failure of winter to be cold enough, or long enough, because those criteria have been met in those location despite "global warming" (or at least they haven't been any worse than "pre global warming"). It is instead a failure of forest management, specifically the fact that any time a fire starts in a forest we humans rush to put it out. Forest fires are a necessary and natural part of the forest eco-system. They eliminate problems such as this, and renew the forests, they happen naturally on a reasonably frequent basis.
In fact the usual solution to pine beetle infestations is forest fires. Done now as controlled burns, but it provides the same role that a traditional forest fire would in eliminating the pest and renewing the forest.
Not every issue on earth is caused by "global warming", there are many that actually are legitimately caused by humans.
that link sells you filters, but doesn't tell you how to replace them.
When I tried, I couldn't find anything useful in the first 5 pages on bing.
Google gave me the answer 7 links down on the 2nd page (not perfect, but ahead of bing)
(and why on earth did I just waste that much time wading through results for this... I don't own a frigidaire, or for that matter any refrigerator that has a water dispenser!)
recently I've found neither very good. I find that bing seems to return so few results on most of my queries as to have no useful information at all, and google returns thousands, but 90% or more are spam or other useless information, making finding the actually useful ones a painful process.
Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I seem to think that google is getting significantly worse, even than it was a year or two ago. (to be clear, I'm not really blaming google for making a poor search engine, but more for the scum of the earth figuring out how to game google's system to get their pages that nobody wants to view to appear in the top listings on every google search)
A Windows app cannot register to handle Ctrl+Alt+Del.
While true when Windows NT first added that feature many years ago, it hasn't been true for well over a decade (in fact I seem to remember reading that people had found ways to do that within weeks of MS adding that feature), somehow though MS kept the ctrl-alt-del long after it stopped working as a security feature.
You can trap ANY key combination on a PC to do anything you want, Windows won't (effectively) stop you.
the first 2 problems I had on picking up an ipod for the first time were discovering that despite the labels on the 4 points of the circle on the front of the device, the circle itself was a control as well, a completely unlabelled one.
Worse yet, the area in the middle of it, again completely blank, was a button.
That's not intuitive in any way.
At least with the iphone/ipad you assume that the 1 button does something useful.
As a technician who is constantly in people's houses trying to connect whatever "gadget du-jour" to their new wifi internet connection, I want to be able to pick up any device made by any company, and fumble my way through the settings to get it hooked up. Weird gestures, unlabelled buttons, and other tricks that you have to know before using a device make this difficult. Maybe using an ipod is FAMILIAR to you. But it is a long way from intuitive.
when even Jobs couldn't wave his hand and make the PR problem go away, it was obvious that it wasn't really about the antenna.
So. because a technical problem couldn't be solved by more PR, it becomes obvious that the technical problem doesn't exist?
I'll admit that I don't know how much of an issue this really is, but your statement that Jobs couldn't wave his hand and make the PR problem go away, only causes me to think that it is because of a REAL problem, one thing PR can't fix is when the product actually has a real issue. If he HAD managed to make it go away by "waving his hand" that would be more likely to indicate that it wasn't about the antenna.
I have been using connectbot on my milestone to SSH in to my server for maintenance on the go for a few weeks, and so far it's a god-send, however I do miss actual number buttons on the keyboard. My girlfriend just got an LG Shine Plus, although it has a slightly smaller screen and a less powerful processor, it does have what is quite likely a better keyboard. Another good contender would be the HTC Desire Z (the Z model has a physical keyboard whereas the other models don't)
It does however depend on what else you want to do on a device, The Nokia N-series devices have pretty decent keyboards and SSH capability, but obviously lack the Android Market and all it's pretty/fun/useful apps. there are other choices as well.
I bet they're on salary to be honest, so they don't care either way, but by it being known that you can patent basically anything, they make sure that people try to patent EVERYTHING, meaning more work for them, meaning less chance of the office downsizing and letting any of them go... plus it's easier to stamp "approved" than to actually do research needed to reject something. and government bureaucrats are not known to put in more effort than the minimum they can get away with...
This is the problem. The banks claim that if a PIN transaction goes through, then it can not be fraudulent as you must have given out your PIN. the problem being what this student is exposing, that PIN transactions don't require the CORRECT PIN as the PIN is verified against the card itself, and not against the bank. meaning a fraudulent card, or fraudulent terminal, can report a correct PIN even when an incorrect PIN was entered.
Basically if someone does this to you, you as the end user are screwed. The bank will refuse liability as "you must have given out your PIN", and if you push the issue, the bank is likely to charge you with fraud yourself (it has happened several times!)
This is the real reason for chip and PIN, it shifts the liability from the bank to the consumer, without shifting the security.
apart from the people making a fortune selling the machines... who doesn't hate them already???
And how is NOT having a bomb going to stop them from threatening the exact same thing?
If they don't have one, the pilots still have no way of knowing this and must act as if the bomb existed either way. (now wether the pilots decide that means they should open the door or not is a different question, but in either case they can't know wether the culprit actually has a bomb, or only a button and a wire to under their coat)
I don't think anyone is naive enough to believe that the current security measures are absolutely 100% effective, so nobody can take the risk in the air.
But if it is easier to make copies, is it not easier too for the creator to distribute their work? in which case they may need "more protection" but obviously for a shorter time.
The stated goal of copyright is to enhance the public domain, if 7 years was enough when it took months or years to distribute your works, shouldn't 2-3 years be plenty when you can distribute your works to the entire world in seconds?
Except the purpose of copyright law has NEVER been to protect the creator, I believe it explicitly states so in the US constitution.
The purpose of copyright law was to enhance the public domain by convincing creators to create.
The theory being that nobody would create anything if they didn't know they could profit from it (which is funny, because for thousands of years people did just that!)
This is why copyright has a term attached to it, long enough to allow the creator to earn some money, and encourage them to do it again.
Problem being, if they are still earning money on something decades after they are dead... why would they need to continue to create?
If you want to fix copyright law, forget about business vs private, forget about commercial vs non-commercial. Fix copyright term.
It was originally 7 years in a time when distribution took months to years. being that distribution can now be done instantaneously, copyright should be down to 2-3 years by now.
This would bring copyright back to it's original purpose, supporting the public domain.
and if there were no cell towers back then, what makes you think the iridium satellite constelation was up and working?
while this is actually irrelevant to this particular issue, as it's obviously not a cell phone, a quick explanation of some of those "walkie-talkie" phones.
specifically some of the iDen phones, some of the models can in fact talk direct from one to the other in the absence of a cell tower, and yet still route the conversation through a cell tower when available.
I've seen some of these phones in use by TELUS's "safety net" group (speciallizing in disaster communications), for example during a hurricane in the US a few years ago, while all communication was out, they shipped a couple of crates of these phones along with the first responding emergency workers coming from Canada to help, they then sent one of their SatCOLTs (Satellite Cellular On Light Truck) down to provide a cell tower. The phones worked properly between each other over short range, and once the truck got there the phones immediately picked up on it and were able to connect to the rest of the world. Rather a cool technology really.
Speaking as someone who works with buried copper lines on a daily basis, it doesn't work that way.
The ground is very good at holding on to the wire, you will not be getting 1 km of wire that way, you'll be getting less than 2 m (assuming you dug up at least 1 of those 2m before attaching it to your truck). The wire snaps a long time before you get any length out of it. I have frequently spliced lines pulled by track-hoes, bobcats, or other machinery, and they never manage to even get enough slack pulled out of the ground to splice it back together.
most of these copper thefts are overhead lines, because you can get longer chunks that way, usually 1 or 2 spans (the length between telephone poles) I don't know what that would fetch you at a scrap dealer (though I wouldn't expect it to be all that much, especially for the effort involved).
My point is that while receiving something would be proof of something, the lack of receiving something (or the lack of noticing such a transmission) does not prove anything.
Life may be as similar to us as the people next door, or so different that face to face we would insist it is not life at all. Any attempt at detecting it is valiant and noble, but assuming it can't be different is just arrogant.
I should have been clearer, satellites are ONE of the reasons, other reasons include:
- cost
- risk tolerance
- increased use of unmanned drones
- increased use of missiles
- increased focus on wars against slow moving targets with little or now aircraft of their own
but all of them are political, not technological.
Or are you trying to tell me that somehow what we did just a few decades ago is now physically impossible?
The point is that we are slowing aircraft down, not because we can't figure out how to make them faster, but because we've lost the political desire to have the high speed aircraft. this doesn't apply to space technologies in the same way because the political pressures are different (I'm not saying we DO have the political will to do it, only that the slowing of modern aircraft is completely irrelevant to the discussion of newer faster technologies)
This still assumes that you know how to at least receive the signal.
Imagine a culture that never invented radio, they transmit everything wired or visually. that wouldn't preclude a highly advanced civilization, it just wouldn't necessarily be detectable from our vantage point.
And that's only one of an infinite number of ways we could be wrong.
As long as we only look for life that conforms to what we know on earth, we'll never know what other forms it can take.
Jet speeds currently are not restricted by technological limitations, but political ones.
Nobody is building a supersonic passenger jet, not because it's impossible, but because no country will let you fly it over their airspace.
The high speed military jets aren't being built anymore because they've been superseded by satellite reconnaissance.
This has nothing to do with technology stopping us, it's all because of a lack of use for the technology. Space travel is a different problem with different political issues (mainly funding) however to state that because we've stopped increasing the speed of jets that we're not able to build faster spacecraft seems a little ridiculous. in fact one of the reasons we've stopped improving the speed of the military jets is precisely BECAUSE of advances in space flight!
Why 1G? seriously, it's what we're used to, but there's nothing to say that we couldn't adapt relatively quickly to slightly more. 1.5G would probably be quite workable, but would substantially decrease the amount of time required to reach the speed of light.
Of course as for "only" way... all I can say is, "for now". I can't believe how arrogant people are right now that they truly believe that humans know enough now to forever rule out not only faster than light travel, but also any other way to shortcut the distance. I think we should all know by now how many amazing leaps of knowledge and technology have happened since humans first picked up a stone or stick as a tool, and should know that believing that we will NEVER do better than we can right now is arrogant in the most extreme.
when people's connections are slow, they switch providers (because providers all advertise based on how fast their network is (of course without ever giving out numbers))
what makes people call and complain is if you cut off their service.
This is what ISPs used to do, it's too bad they don't anymore.
What happened to the good old days of ISPs where if your computer was being a menace the ISP phoned you, and if you still didn't fix it they cut off your internet access until you did?
It worked. and it worked well.
So now with this knowledge behind us, we are facing exactly the same thing again with radio waves instead of electricity.
All the people who can't conceive of how RF energy works are swearing that we'll all die if we use a cell phone, and much of the public seems to be buying it.
A generation from now radio waves will be common place enough that people don't worry about their cell phone killing them, but some new technology will come about and make everyone paranoid again.
Oh for a bit of science education of the masses...
Because the media companies want to have their cake and eat it too....
Recorded media is considered licensed and not sold whenever you try to transfer ownership, modify it, or copy it for personal use, however it Magically becomes physical property sold instead of licensed if you loose or break it... because letting it sit in either one of the categories entirely would remove a possible revenue stream.
If they said that all you ever bought was a license to use the media, then you'd have the ability to keep the recording even after loosing the physical copy, you'd be able to get another virtual copy for free because you already paid the license.
If they said that all you ever bought was a physical item, then you'd have the ability to make a backup copy, modify the original, sell it to friends etc.
The entertainment industry knows better than to allow either case, and have bought the appropriate laws to make it so.