The problem is basic physics. An unintentional emitter that is a stone's throw away from the navigation and communication antennas can easily jam a 500-watt ground based transmitter that is 50 miles away.
Since radio follows an inverse square law you might have to knock the ground station up to several kW to get through the interference. In which case anything close to the transmitter now has to deal with too much signal strength.
Before the age of microprocessors, there were problems with the unintentional radiation from the local oscillators in passenger-carried FM broadcast receivers jamming the radio equipment on aircraft.
It looks like the lessons havn't been learned. Such problems should have been discovered at the prototype stage of the consumer device...
There is a genuine reason not to use cellphones in aircraft, though: cellphone networks are carefully designed to avoid frequency conflicts between towers with the phone being at ground level. Put a phone at 30,000 feet, and it "sees" multiple cells on each frequency - which apparently can upset the phone network.
Of course, the airlines don't like you using phones (other than their $5/min "skyphones", of course) or anything else interactive, because it stops you buying expensive drinks (on domestic flights), duty free (on international flights) etc. How "convenient" that United just found a "safety" reason to stop you doing anything that doesn't involve paying them more money, huh?
The thing is that if you can connect a "skyphone" to the telephone network you could just as easily install a pico cell in the aircraft and have any phones roam onto that. (with the handset on its lowest power setting.) That way you can still charge whatever price you like for the calls, including incomming, but don't have to maintain what in some cases amounts to a large PBX.
UWB means Ultra Wide Band.
It sends data at very low power across a very wide range of frequencies, avoiding all of the used frequencies, or even just many of them would kind of defeat the objective.
One of the effects this has is to jam anything on the same waveband which does not use quite powerful signals. Really you should only use it where nothing else makes use of that band.
ehm, there is very little difference between taking a laptop with you in the cabin and putting it in you're luggage. The only between the cabin and the luggage is a very thin floor.
I suspect this is more a "will it come out the other end in one piece" type issue. Both rough handling of and theft from checked checked bagage are not unknown.
While these things are rare currently, as time goes on, UWB devices will only grow in #s. It does suck that this is the approach they're going with for now (I'm sure there has to be some sort of screening technology) but I do see their concerns.
The problem with UWB is that the interference is on the same frequencies as the wanted signals. The only way around this would be to up the power of the wanted signals. Which is in some cases impossible, e.g. GPS and in other cases rather dangerous, e.g. radar.
And somehow I don't think that "going after" the users works well either...
The whole "war on drugs" is simply a rehash of prohibition. A classic example of failure to learn history's lessons.
I had this realization the other day when I got a speeding ticket... The reason why I speed is because I don't think that it is wrong.
Even though speeding (and taking certain drugs) can be highly dangerous to both you and third parties. Pirating movies dosn't even have that level of risk.
The drug war continues not because it's cheap to imprison millions of people (at the last count it was over 1M from what I remember), but because ordinary voting Americans are prepared to stand for it. They're prepared to see violence and punishment meeted out on non-violent drugs offenders, for whatever reason. Couple the lack of outrage (and indeed the active public support) to the number of fingers in pies and you have a policy that will not disappear any time soon.
Nor does there appear to be charismatic figure like Ghandi or King leading a protest.
Re:Uh, hello, you're wrong....what about WWII?
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Aside from Pearl Harbor which was perpetuated on a U.S. territory, Japan also threatened the borders of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. More than 6,000 military personnel were on the Aleutian Islands to repel Japanese forces.
Please read about history before you attempt to profess it.
If you read a little more history you'd discover that the US fleet had no business being there in the first place.
Re:OT: Source for your version of Gettysburg?
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I notice it differers slightly from the "Nicolay Draft", which omits "under God". Is the addition of "under God" a more modern artifact?
Most likely, considering that the US government started rubber stamping "god" onto anything they could as part of the "cold war".
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
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"It's not like Saddam has initated two wars of aggression or anything."
We encouraged both of those actions. We also provided them with weapons, intelligence and money during their war against iran.
Part of the reason for Iraq attacking Iran was in response for Iran having captured territory from Iraq a few years before. Something Iran probably wouldn't have done had it not been ruled by a US backed tyrant at the time.
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
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Iraq never did anything to us? So the attempted assassination of George H. W. Bush isn't doing anything to us? There are also several bits of evidence connecting Iraq to the 9/11 attacks (Iraqi intelligence meeting with Mohommad Atta is one)
If that's "evidence" then best put the CIA and Mossad on the "to bomb" list.
Constantly moving anti-aircraft guns/missles into the no-fly zones (UN mandated) to target US/allied aircraft.
Iraq has every right to shoot down foreign military aircraft in it's airspace.
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
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"Give consistent moral support Israel's efforts to wipe out Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al Aksa Martyr's. "
How would that be different then what we do now?
Maybe "moral support" means no more money and weapons"
We don't even object or raise a fuss when the Israeli govt kills or tortures american citizens who are arabs.
Only arabs? AFAIK the crew of the USS Liberty wern't arabs. Compare how the US reacted to that attack to when the USS Cole was bombed.
Imagine of some other countries military killed or tortured white christian american citizens. As things stand now Sharon tells Dubya what he is going to do and dubya says "yes sir how much money do you need".
Tell's Dubya what he, Sharon, is going to do or what he, Bush, is going to do?
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
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It is a pissy, imperialistic way to act, and America cannot function both as a Republic and an Empire. Choose one, or you fail miserably at both.
Thing is the US has managed to juggle both for quite a while. What has changed is the US applying preasure against the US civilian population.
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
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and where do you want this war to occur? against who? we don't even really know if it was that bin laden fool. sure we like to think we do, but he never out and out said he did it.
More to the point where's the evidence? All we have is some wacky conspiracy theory that some Saudi exile, living in a cave in the middle of nowhere, somehow got some people who could hardly fly anything to crash planes into buildings. Where those buildings were in a first world country which has spent goodness knows what on an air defence system which just didn't work. If you tried to use this as a plot for a novel it would be laughed at. Some of the unofficial conspiracy theories simply make more sense.
there is no proof it was orchestrated by him. and besides, what nation does he associate himself with. kind of hard to fight a war against a phantom.
You can fight a war against an organisation, even a single person. But the basic issue of lack of evidence remains.
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
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According to the American Heritage dictionary, war is: "A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties"
Thus you can have a war between a "terrorist organisation" and a nation state.
Having a 'war' means that there will be a winner and there will be an end. You cannot have a war on terrorism, nor a war on drugs, nor a war on any ideas. These 'wars' cannot be won, and therefore are not, in fact, wars.
Especially when you have the supposedly anti-terrorist side using terrorism as part of their "war on terroism" and your supposedly anti-drug side involved in drug distribution. How soon before someone trys a "war on war". Another example, though it isn't called that, is the "war on (IP) piracy".
Heh... Worked for our airlines, right? (Okay, well the airlines LOOK more secure, I'll give them that.)
It's rather easier to make something look secure than it is to actually make it secure. There are some reports that airline security is now actually less secure than it was last year.
That is one of the things that the attack on the World Trade Center was supposed by the attackers to do. They assumed that destroying the records of the brokerages and investment banks would cause complete chaos in the US financial markets.
Since we still don't actually know who carried out the attack, conspiracy theories including the officially endorsed one aside, it's kind of hard to guess at the motives.
How likely do you think it is that people who have never heard of off-site backups would be able to crack Wall Street's computers?
If someone were to make this kind of attack they would want to remain unnoticed for quite a while.
Microsoft still views Linux as a widget, as a product in direct
competition with their own products.
Microsoft views software as a widget. Their whole business model is based around assuming that software behaves like a widget. So it's hardly suprising that they should view Linux that way.
then we'll only need Argentina and Brazil, and
then we'll have a continent! Excepting Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Surinam and French Guiana. Brazil is interesting, since it is should theoretically be amongst the richest countries on the planet, if not the richest.
Good move, for a country with some economic (as well as political) issues. Possibly aside from pragmatic issues, there's a less willingness to go along with businesses from that giant to the north, after Bush's administration so heartily embraced the results of a coup d'etat against Chavez. Oh, how red our faces be, when he returned to office the next day. (Though it's anyone's guess how he'll fair in the next elections as economic and unemployement problems persist)
He now has a ready made excuse for any problems with the economy. Being at war or a state similar to war tends to help incumbent heads of state win elections.
Perhaps it's just an iconoclastic move, perhaps Microsoft will join american predecessors and back their own coup to get back in. Heck, fruit companies did it, right?
The first to do it were sugar companies, since Venezuela has oil, it might well be a candidate to become questionable state number 3 in the USA.
Remember, only TERRORISTS from TERRORIST NATIONS use open source software.
Therefore, Venezuela must be a TERRORIST NATION. Bush will be instituting a regime change there in favour of a more Microsoft friendly government any day now.
Venezuela was already on Bush's "hit list" anyway. Indeed they are fairly unique in managing to survive such at attempt at subverting their government recently. Anyway the US appears to have its full with neighbouring Colombia:)
Has that argument been tried in other states, like California?
"Why should we send our money to *gasp* Redmond when we can get an equally capable system for substantially less?"
California is at least in the same part of the world as Microsoft. Maybe a better example would be Florida...
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The problem is basic physics. An unintentional emitter that is a stone's throw away from the navigation and communication antennas can easily jam a 500-watt ground based transmitter that is 50 miles away.
Since radio follows an inverse square law you might have to knock the ground station up to several kW to get through the interference. In which case anything close to the transmitter now has to deal with too much signal strength.
Before the age of microprocessors, there were problems with the unintentional radiation from the local oscillators in passenger-carried FM broadcast receivers jamming the radio equipment on aircraft.
It looks like the lessons havn't been learned. Such problems should have been discovered at the prototype stage of the consumer device...
There is a genuine reason not to use cellphones in aircraft, though: cellphone networks are carefully designed to avoid frequency conflicts between towers with the phone being at ground level. Put a phone at 30,000 feet, and it "sees" multiple cells on each frequency - which apparently can upset the phone network.
Of course, the airlines don't like you using phones (other than their $5/min "skyphones", of course) or anything else interactive, because it stops you buying expensive drinks (on domestic flights), duty free (on international flights) etc. How "convenient" that United just found a "safety" reason to stop you doing anything that doesn't involve paying them more money, huh?
The thing is that if you can connect a "skyphone" to the telephone network you could just as easily install a pico cell in the aircraft and have any phones roam onto that. (with the handset on its lowest power setting.)
That way you can still charge whatever price you like for the calls, including incomming, but don't have to maintain what in some cases amounts to a large PBX.
UWB means Ultra Wide Band.
It sends data at very low power across a very wide range of frequencies, avoiding all of the used frequencies, or even just many of them would kind of defeat the objective.
One of the effects this has is to jam anything on the same waveband which does not use quite powerful signals. Really you should only use it where nothing else makes use of that band.
ehm, there is very little difference between taking a laptop with you in the cabin and putting it in you're luggage. The only between the cabin and the luggage is a very thin floor.
I suspect this is more a "will it come out the other end in one piece" type issue. Both rough handling of and theft from checked checked bagage are not unknown.
While these things are rare currently, as time goes on, UWB devices will only grow in #s. It does suck that this is the approach they're going with for now (I'm sure there has to be some sort of screening technology) but I do see their concerns.
The problem with UWB is that the interference is on the same frequencies as the wanted signals. The only way around this would be to up the power of the wanted signals. Which is in some cases impossible, e.g. GPS and in other cases rather dangerous, e.g. radar.
Gotta agree with simply cosmic on this: What are the odds of having a finished movie ready for release four months ahead of schedule? Not a chance.
Depends, there is certification, dubbing/subtitling, mastering of DVDs and VHS, etc.
And somehow I don't think that "going after" the users works well either...
The whole "war on drugs" is simply a rehash of prohibition. A classic example of failure to learn history's lessons.
I had this realization the other day when I got a speeding ticket... The reason why I speed is because I don't think that it is wrong.
Even though speeding (and taking certain drugs) can be highly dangerous to both you and third parties. Pirating movies dosn't even have that level of risk.
The drug war continues not because it's cheap to imprison millions of people (at the last count it was over 1M from what I remember), but because ordinary voting Americans are prepared to stand for it. They're prepared to see violence and punishment meeted out on non-violent drugs offenders, for whatever reason. Couple the lack of outrage (and indeed the active public support) to the number of fingers in pies and you have a policy that will not disappear any time soon.
Nor does there appear to be charismatic figure like Ghandi or King leading a protest.
Aside from Pearl Harbor which was perpetuated on a U.S. territory, Japan also threatened the borders of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. More than 6,000 military personnel were on the Aleutian Islands to repel Japanese forces.
Please read about history before you attempt to profess it.
If you read a little more history you'd discover that the US fleet had no business being there in the first place.
I notice it differers slightly from the "Nicolay Draft", which omits "under God". Is the addition of "under God" a more modern artifact?
Most likely, considering that the US government started rubber stamping "god" onto anything they could as part of the "cold war".
"It's not like Saddam has initated two wars of aggression or anything."
We encouraged both of those actions. We also provided them with weapons, intelligence and money during their war against iran.
Part of the reason for Iraq attacking Iran was in response for Iran having captured territory from Iraq a few years before. Something Iran probably wouldn't have done had it not been ruled by a US backed tyrant at the time.
Iraq never did anything to us? So the attempted assassination of George H. W. Bush isn't doing anything to us? There are also several bits of evidence connecting Iraq to the 9/11 attacks (Iraqi intelligence meeting with Mohommad Atta is one)
If that's "evidence" then best put the CIA and Mossad on the "to bomb" list.
Constantly moving anti-aircraft guns/missles into the no-fly zones (UN mandated) to target US/allied aircraft.
Iraq has every right to shoot down foreign military aircraft in it's airspace.
"Give consistent moral support Israel's efforts to wipe out Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Al Aksa Martyr's. "
How would that be different then what we do now?
Maybe "moral support" means no more money and weapons"
We don't even object or raise a fuss when the Israeli govt kills or tortures american citizens who are arabs.
Only arabs? AFAIK the crew of the USS Liberty wern't arabs. Compare how the US reacted to that attack to when the USS Cole was bombed.
Imagine of some other countries military killed or tortured white christian american citizens. As things stand now Sharon tells Dubya what he is going to do and dubya says "yes sir how much money do you need".
Tell's Dubya what he, Sharon, is going to do or what he, Bush, is going to do?
It is a pissy, imperialistic way to act, and America cannot function both as a Republic and an Empire. Choose one, or you fail miserably at both.
Thing is the US has managed to juggle both for quite a while.
What has changed is the US applying preasure against the US civilian population.
and where do you want this war to occur? against who? we don't even really know if it was that bin laden fool. sure we like to think we do, but he never out and out said he did it.
More to the point where's the evidence? All we have is some wacky conspiracy theory that some Saudi exile, living in a cave in the middle of nowhere, somehow got some people who could hardly fly anything to crash planes into buildings. Where those buildings were in a first world country which has spent goodness knows what on an air defence system which just didn't work. If you tried to use this as a plot for a novel it would be laughed at.
Some of the unofficial conspiracy theories simply make more sense.
there is no proof it was orchestrated by him. and besides, what nation does he associate himself with. kind of hard to fight a war against a phantom.
You can fight a war against an organisation, even a single person. But the basic issue of lack of evidence remains.
According to the American Heritage dictionary, war is: "A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties"
Thus you can have a war between a "terrorist organisation" and a nation state.
Having a 'war' means that there will be a winner and there will be an end. You cannot have a war on terrorism, nor a war on drugs, nor a war on any ideas. These 'wars' cannot be won, and therefore are not, in fact, wars.
Especially when you have the supposedly anti-terrorist side using terrorism as part of their "war on terroism" and your supposedly anti-drug side involved in drug distribution. How soon before someone trys a "war on war". Another example, though it isn't called that, is the "war on (IP) piracy".
E-terrorism! Please, take my first amendment rights away so we can fight off this plague!
Is there enough left of that part of the US Constitution to be taken away.
Heh... Worked for our airlines, right? (Okay, well the airlines LOOK more secure, I'll give them that.)
It's rather easier to make something look secure than it is to actually make it secure. There are some reports that airline security is now actually less secure than it was last year.
That is one of the things that the attack on the World Trade Center was supposed by the attackers to do. They assumed that destroying the records of the brokerages and investment banks would cause complete chaos in the US financial markets.
Since we still don't actually know who carried out the attack, conspiracy theories including the officially endorsed one aside, it's kind of hard to guess at the motives.
How likely do you think it is that people who have never heard of off-site backups would be able to crack Wall Street's computers?
If someone were to make this kind of attack they would want to remain unnoticed for quite a while.
Microsoft still views Linux as a widget, as a product in direct competition with their own products.
Microsoft views software as a widget. Their whole business model is based around assuming that software behaves like a widget. So it's hardly suprising that they should view Linux that way.
The real issue of VMS as a platform is the overhead associated with process creation, now partly circumvented with threads.
Which is an issue NT inherited... Hence all the fuss made comparing NT and Linux thread handling.
then we'll only need Argentina and Brazil, and then we'll have a continent!
Excepting Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Surinam and French Guiana.
Brazil is interesting, since it is should theoretically be amongst the richest countries on the planet, if not the richest.
Good move, for a country with some economic (as well as political) issues. Possibly aside from pragmatic issues, there's a less willingness to go along with businesses from that giant to the north, after Bush's administration so heartily embraced the results of a coup d'etat against Chavez. Oh, how red our faces be, when he returned to office the next day. (Though it's anyone's guess how he'll fair in the next elections as economic and unemployement problems persist)
He now has a ready made excuse for any problems with the economy. Being at war or a state similar to war tends to help incumbent heads of state win elections.
Perhaps it's just an iconoclastic move, perhaps Microsoft will join american predecessors and back their own coup to get back in. Heck, fruit companies did it, right?
The first to do it were sugar companies, since Venezuela has oil, it might well be a candidate to become questionable state number 3 in the USA.
Remember, only TERRORISTS from TERRORIST NATIONS use open source software.
:)
Therefore, Venezuela must be a TERRORIST NATION. Bush will be instituting a regime change there in favour of a more Microsoft friendly government any day now.
Venezuela was already on Bush's "hit list" anyway. Indeed they are fairly unique in managing to survive such at attempt at subverting their government recently. Anyway the US appears to have its full with neighbouring Colombia
Has that argument been tried in other states, like California?
"Why should we send our money to *gasp* Redmond when we can get an equally capable system for substantially less?"
California is at least in the same part of the world as Microsoft. Maybe a better example would be Florida...