Thank yoy, Anonymous Cow-herd, for your comments on the ham electronics market. Yes, many ham radios seem to have cheap parts in them and expensive price tags, but like you say, the companies are barely making money. Hams are notoriously cheap. They also love their old radios. And now, the only segment that is large, which is UHF/VHF HTs, is being invaded by cheap chinese stuff. That's going to hurt the japanese manufacturers quite a bit.
And yes, crappy SDR sucks. Even the expensive USRP doesn't have high enough resolution for many tasks, though I am hoping that the USRp N210 is better. I hope to afford one some day. What's amazing to me is that no one has cloned the USRP and offered it for less money - the plans are right there, open source. What does that say? That even though the price of the USRP is high that there's not a lot of profit in it for Matt Ettus.
One of the most important aspects of the 'Open Source' movement is that projects only die by neglect. No person, committee, or corporation can kill a project by mere decree once source code has been made Open Source. So, if there are enough people who want to stay with Mozilla 3.6, they should band together, and fork it. Yes, with a lack of technical competence and knowledge of this specific code, this may be difficult. But, perhaps those who do not have the skills or time to keep the code up-to-date as far as critical things like security patches, could HIRE some programmers with the skill do do the work. Yes, imagine PAYING for software? Some people seem to forget that programmers have bills to pay, too. So, MOZ36-fans, form a forum, raise money on kickstarter, find some programmers, and PAY them. Or bake them cookies. Something.
There are so many problems and impracticalities with a space elevator that I believe we are better off looking at other technologies such as a Launch Loop. It has some serious issues of its own, but not the number or scale that the Space Elevator has. Nonetheless, I wish Obayashi success.
I hadn't heard the limit of 1. I know they have only made the B so far. I am ok with that. No, a PIC won't do, perhaps an Atmel or something similar. But I am not ready to roll with my projects quite yet, so the delay in getting my R-PI is just annoying to my curiosity and doesn't delay and projects (yet).
I think of this as an advanced arduino and a bit more. NOT as a replacement for a PC. I think it should be the basis for 'doing cool things' - by kids or adults. I expect lots of hardware add-ons will be made, and many of these made for resale. I plan on ordering two model Bs at launch, and then model As as needed. There's lots of projects I have in mind for them. I don't think I am alone in wanting to use these for "cool stuff" - I don't think these are meant to be a replacement for the OLPC.
I like the model A because it gives me the option to not pay for what I am not going to use. In some cases, the datacomm will be via radio (wifi, hf ham) and so an ethernet board would be a waste. In other cases, I will be using littlle ram, 128mb should be plenty. I'd hope that model C, or some other model sometime soon, will be one aimed at very low cost ($15? $18?), while still providing an open architecture...and not some faster one with more ram and more USB ports. I'd like to see a model, be it this same model C I describe above, made to consume very little power, and have a wide operating temperature range, so that I can use it in remote locations for sensor networks. What also might be fun, though I am not considering this very practical, is one with a single ISA slot, so I can play with some old industrial controller boards I have lying around. or hey, maybe an S-100 bus!
...has just hired its first left-handed Lithuanian. Get over the gender and racial/ethnic background issues! They're not important! You're just going to get Robyn labeled as the 'token female'. It's disgusting!
I am sure I am not the only person who wishes that we had a search engine for all of the things banned by other search engines. I am glad to see that heretical.com is still up, in spite of all of the attempts to have it shut.
Regarding the weight of nuclear reactors - I don't know exactly what 'a lot' means, in terms of weight, to WindBourne. I can mention that newer designs of nuclear (fission) power plants are smaller. The steam turbine will be replaced by a helium turbine. One of the advantages of space (when away from stars) is that heat loss due to radiation is high, so cooling is easier, so the difference in gas pressure between helium heated by a fission reaction and that at the other end of the turbine, cool be radiation to space, is high, allowing a higher efficiency.
The problem is, this is still complex. Perhaps a better approach is to use advanced RTG (radioisotope thermal generator) concepts. These have been very inefficient so far, but new developments such as the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Stirling_Radioisotope_Generator) show promise. These, however, are still way too small and inefficient to replace the heated hydrogen which WindBourne suggests. So, I agree with WindBourne....as the technology currently exists. However, I wonder if it may be possible to not bother with the hydrogen at all, and simply use the high-energy neutrons (or Alpha, or Beta, particles) as the reaction mass. What I don't know is if the energy of the decay particles are high enough (in comparison to those from fission) to efficiently propel a spacecraft, especially at higher velocities. I recall that the exhaust velocity needs to be approximately equivalent to the velocity of the spacecraft in order to be efficiently utilized, however, I don't know what frame of reference this refers to. Also, because the spacecraft will have different velocities as it accelerates, the velocity of the exhaust would ideally be variable, and I don't see how that's possible when using decay particles.
Anyone who has any knowledge of space travel knows the issues raised in the referenced article. If you didn't care about space, you wouldn't read the article. Please, can we have reference to more scientific articles which advance the knowledge of geeks (that's what slashdot is for, remember)? I feel dumber just for having read that article.
Maybe there are some geniuses out there who could do it, but learning to be a COMPETENT and valuable programmer takes more than a year. More than two years. There's a reason why it pays a lot - because it is HARD and requires SKILL and KNOWLEDGE. Maybe some factory could turn out a number of stumbling oafs in a year, who would make things worse by not knowing sound programming practices, but this is a BAD thing. We have enough problems with people, particularly those from China and India, faking credentials in order to get programming jobs (but I must say there are also a lot of talented programmers from those countries). We don't need more people dumped on the market with lots of dubious credentials and little skill.
People need to have fundamentals which make them valuable thinkers, such as basic skills in communications (English, or whatever the language is of the country in which they reside), mathematics, physics, reason, logic. Then they can attempt engineering (I suggest we need more mechanical engineers in the world), metallurgy (sorely underrated), biology, etc.
Not everyone needs a doctorate! I'd rather have a handful of competent BS or BA people than an incompetent doctor! I know that's not the style these days, but it's how I'd run things.
Sometimes I think I belong in the 19th century America, with individual discovery and exploitation of the principles getting one ahead (in spite of Edison). Alas, steampunk style does not guarantee success...
It used to be that firewalls and filters would search out malicious connections attempting spam or attacks and drop them. But in Soviet China, it's the opposite. So disguise any connections to Falun Gong website as spam or worse, and they GFW will be sure to let it through.
I live in Boston. I ride the T fairly often, but haven't seen these TSA stops yet. I will ignore them when I see them, and probably get arrested. Then you can bail me out. Pretty please.
Yes, I am in agreement. People at NASA are not, on the whole, stupid, though unfortunately NASA can be made to look stupid because of the political and economic conditions it has to work under. Often people point out the oft-repeated fable about NASA spending millions of dollars to develop a space pen whereas the Soviets just used pencils. It's a lot more complicated than that, see Snopes http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp for an explanation. Too often slashdotters, and Americans in general, scoff at professionals and give undue credit to 'common sense'. Replies to this article, regarding windshield-wipers, are a good example. But luckily there are some replies to the replies which are intelligent.
That being said, I would assume that they'd use an RTG (radioisotope thermal generator) if the projected lifetime of the rest of the mars rover called for it. Of course, maybe they were restrained by the anti-nuke sentiment which has infected so much of our culture.
In any case, the Mas rover has been extraordinarily successful. Now, I wish we could do as well with Venus.
Perhaps what is unclear to many is what comes along with being a common carrier. In the US, Common Carriers get (some) immunity from antitrust law. They are also able to acquire property rights by eminent domain. In exchange, they have an obligation to serve every person. That is not to say that the customers do not have to pay, but rather that the common carrier does not have the freedom to pick which customers it serves, whereas other businesses can (unless their denial of service is due to a reason covered under anti-discrimination law). Rates and policies of a common carrier are heavily regulated by governments. Common carriers are created by legislation, enacted where economic forces of the era require a controlled market in order for the service to be feasible. Common carriers have been in defense, transportation and communication, such as AT&T and USPS. In many countries, these functions become part of the government. In some ways, it can be argued that government itself is a common carrier, and that common carriers are governments.
ISPs which are not communications companies are not common carriers. Where it gets tricky is situations where a common carrier owns an ISP but claims it is a separate business and therefore not subject to the rules of common carriage. This is plainly not true in many areas where telephone companies are the only broadband available, via DSL. In other cases, there is a duopoly of broadband, through The Phone Company and The Cable Company, which rely on their Common Carrier status in related, but separate niches in order to provide services which compete. In my opinion, these are still the result of their Common Carrier status so they should be treated as such until there is a way to facilitate true competition (again) in the ISP market.
I am not a lawyer, and don't have a degree in economics or government, but I have studied all three fields at a prestigious university. I do not consider myself an expert, but rather, thoughtful and informed.
OK, so android is crap in lots of ways. What bothers me the most is the ever increasing incompatibilities between the older versions and the newer ones, and of course all of the vendor customizations. But what about the actual kernel mods? Are they any good? Some of them, perhaps a great number, are going to be used only by android and perhaps one or two other projects. But some may not be. Some people here are saying "don't take the patches just because they come from Google" - well, ok, not google specifically no matter how much of a fanboy you are. But there is something to be said for code which has been developed by a team of highly skilled people and tested on millions of installed devices. It could be from Microsoft for all I care. If the change are good, take them. Consider the big picture: what we have here is a developing fork which we want to head off. So, what should happen is that 1) Linux(s) agrees to seriously investigate merging some of the Android patches, and (2) Google agrees to start using a Linux3 kernel (starting with the version incorporating Google changes). Google should apply their patches to this Linux3 kernel, including the patches which were not accepted into the mainline kernel. Google should NOT be forced to commit to using whichever kernel is considered modern and safe by everyone else but they should be ENCOURAGED to stay reasonably up to date, i.e. not more than a year behind the current releases.
However, even moving to a Linux3 kernel can inadvertently cause bloat which may make future versions of Android even less usable on older phones (like my G1) than they are now. So, consider where the value is in upgrading Android's kernel to Linux3. I don't have enough knowledge on this, so I will have to depend on some experts to make this decision. I hope these experts don't get paid or praised based upon how many new phones are sold...
Why is this here? What geek appeal does this have? Remember when we used to talk about things like beowulf clusters of things, or that BSD was dying, or the SCO vs Linux lawsuit? Why is this here and why is Kim Song Ils death worthy of note here? Do slashdot editors think that we read nothing else? Or is it just a slow news days in the tech geek world?
The problem with this idea is that some of the most important parts of the reactor, that which contain neutrons, have a fixed wall thickness. This leads to an inescapable problem, and why we could never have a nuclear powered wristwatch (however, it is possible to have a low-power, long-lived radioisotopic heater (RTG) such as those used in deep-space probes. These can generate small amounts of electricity as well). This is not to say that the idea of a nuclear reactor on a railroad boxcar in infeasible (though it may be infeasible for other reasons).
I see the economic rationale for this, and would like to think that nuclear power plants can be built on a production line. Perhaps less of a production of an automobile and more like the production center of a large aircraft, but still, there would be great benefit. I only hope that whoever does this has the sense to use liquid fuel.
Yeah, kinda senile then. Hopefully only temporarily. Blame the cough medicine, I've been fighting the flu. What should I expect. Well, the good thing about Slashdot is not the average quality of comments, but those very few from people who are actually in the know about a given topic. Yes, I know, a needle in the haystack.
I've read more about the Phobos-Grunt and it seems as though there is only a small chance that it can be salvaged. I can still hope. Though I am no fan of the Russian or Chinese governments, I strongly support space exploration by any country and hope that global co-operation is available to the Russians for their efforts.
It would be nice if someone had something intelligent to say about this. All I've got is questions, but perhaps I haven't read all the relevant dox. 1) Was the Perth station able to locate the probe? Is its current trajectory now known? If so, does this mean communication can be restored, and perhaps it can be recovered? I mean, the mission recovered, not bringing the spacecraft back down to Earth.
This is a dumb idea, maybe even worse than SOPA. Internet access isn't really that important, and adding all sorts of non-important things to 'inalienable rights' really detracts from the rights that ARE important. Just because a bunch of you are connected to the net so much that you would have withdrawal symptoms doesn't mean the Internet is special, and more than a telephone or television. Some people would probably be better off disconnected for a while: it would enable them to rejoin 'real life'. But, no worry, I have no doubt that this plan will be a miserable failure. However, it would be far better to petition for some law that brings due process to IP infringement issues, and certifies that media companies have no special rights in enforcement of collection of royalties (i.e. no free money from black CD sales like Canada or Internet tax for media companies like in France).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I am ready to move there, if they'll take me. NS or PEI I'd like. Now, le tme in! I am smart and have a degree from a good college!
Thank yoy, Anonymous Cow-herd, for your comments on the ham electronics market. Yes, many ham radios seem to have cheap parts in them and expensive price tags, but like you say, the companies are barely making money. Hams are notoriously cheap. They also love their old radios. And now, the only segment that is large, which is UHF/VHF HTs, is being invaded by cheap chinese stuff. That's going to hurt the japanese manufacturers quite a bit.
And yes, crappy SDR sucks. Even the expensive USRP doesn't have high enough resolution for many tasks, though I am hoping that the USRp N210 is better. I hope to afford one some day. What's amazing to me is that no one has cloned the USRP and offered it for less money - the plans are right there, open source. What does that say? That even though the price of the USRP is high that there's not a lot of profit in it for Matt Ettus.
There I was, working at Radio Shack, and the customer says "No, I wanted a WIRELESS USB hub!". So I ripped out all the cables and gave it to him.
yeah, that's what I came to post: it seems to be a violation of Shannon's Law. But, then again, the Chinese are known for violating all kinds of laws.
Or maybe he just popularized it? I don't know. But I get annoyed with these clowns attached to my e-mail messages.
One of the most important aspects of the 'Open Source' movement is that projects only die by neglect. No person, committee, or corporation can kill a project by mere decree once source code has been made Open Source. So, if there are enough people who want to stay with Mozilla 3.6, they should band together, and fork it. Yes, with a lack of technical competence and knowledge of this specific code, this may be difficult. But, perhaps those who do not have the skills or time to keep the code up-to-date as far as critical things like security patches, could HIRE some programmers with the skill do do the work. Yes, imagine PAYING for software? Some people seem to forget that programmers have bills to pay, too. So, MOZ36-fans, form a forum, raise money on kickstarter, find some programmers, and PAY them. Or bake them cookies. Something.
There are so many problems and impracticalities with a space elevator that I believe we are better off looking at other technologies such as a Launch Loop. It has some serious issues of its own, but not the number or scale that the Space Elevator has. Nonetheless, I wish Obayashi success.
I hadn't heard the limit of 1. I know they have only made the B so far. I am ok with that. No, a PIC won't do, perhaps an Atmel or something similar. But I am not ready to roll with my projects quite yet, so the delay in getting my R-PI is just annoying to my curiosity and doesn't delay and projects (yet).
yes, and SDR is good, but I'd like one that is a TRX, and is cheaper. Perhaps a digital radio operating in MW low HF only (to save costs).
I think of this as an advanced arduino and a bit more. NOT as a replacement for a PC. I think it should be the basis for 'doing cool things' - by kids or adults. I expect lots of hardware add-ons will be made, and many of these made for resale. I plan on ordering two model Bs at launch, and then model As as needed. There's lots of projects I have in mind for them. I don't think I am alone in wanting to use these for "cool stuff" - I don't think these are meant to be a replacement for the OLPC.
I like the model A because it gives me the option to not pay for what I am not going to use. In some cases, the datacomm will be via radio (wifi, hf ham) and so an ethernet board would be a waste. In other cases, I will be using littlle ram, 128mb should be plenty. I'd hope that model C, or some other model sometime soon, will be one aimed at very low cost ($15? $18?), while still providing an open architecture...and not some faster one with more ram and more USB ports. I'd like to see a model, be it this same model C I describe above, made to consume very little power, and have a wide operating temperature range, so that I can use it in remote locations for sensor networks. What also might be fun, though I am not considering this very practical, is one with a single ISA slot, so I can play with some old industrial controller boards I have lying around. or hey, maybe an S-100 bus!
...has just hired its first left-handed Lithuanian. Get over the gender and racial/ethnic background issues! They're not important! You're just going to get Robyn labeled as the 'token female'. It's disgusting!
I am sure I am not the only person who wishes that we had a search engine for all of the things banned by other search engines. I am glad to see that heretical.com is still up, in spite of all of the attempts to have it shut.
Regarding the weight of nuclear reactors - I don't know exactly what 'a lot' means, in terms of weight, to WindBourne. I can mention that newer designs of nuclear (fission) power plants are smaller. The steam turbine will be replaced by a helium turbine. One of the advantages of space (when away from stars) is that heat loss due to radiation is high, so cooling is easier, so the difference in gas pressure between helium heated by a fission reaction and that at the other end of the turbine, cool be radiation to space, is high, allowing a higher efficiency.
The problem is, this is still complex. Perhaps a better approach is to use advanced RTG (radioisotope thermal generator) concepts. These have been very inefficient so far, but new developments such as the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Stirling_Radioisotope_Generator) show promise. These, however, are still way too small and inefficient to replace the heated hydrogen which WindBourne suggests. So, I agree with WindBourne....as the technology currently exists. However, I wonder if it may be possible to not bother with the hydrogen at all, and simply use the high-energy neutrons (or Alpha, or Beta, particles) as the reaction mass. What I don't know is if the energy of the decay particles are high enough (in comparison to those from fission) to efficiently propel a spacecraft, especially at higher velocities. I recall that the exhaust velocity needs to be approximately equivalent to the velocity of the spacecraft in order to be efficiently utilized, however, I don't know what frame of reference this refers to. Also, because the spacecraft will have different velocities as it accelerates, the velocity of the exhaust would ideally be variable, and I don't see how that's possible when using decay particles.
Anyone who has any knowledge of space travel knows the issues raised in the referenced article. If you didn't care about space, you wouldn't read the article. Please, can we have reference to more scientific articles which advance the knowledge of geeks (that's what slashdot is for, remember)? I feel dumber just for having read that article.
Maybe there are some geniuses out there who could do it, but learning to be a COMPETENT and valuable programmer takes more than a year. More than two years. There's a reason why it pays a lot - because it is HARD and requires SKILL and KNOWLEDGE. Maybe some factory could turn out a number of stumbling oafs in a year, who would make things worse by not knowing sound programming practices, but this is a BAD thing. We have enough problems with people, particularly those from China and India, faking credentials in order to get programming jobs (but I must say there are also a lot of talented programmers from those countries). We don't need more people dumped on the market with lots of dubious credentials and little skill.
People need to have fundamentals which make them valuable thinkers, such as basic skills in communications (English, or whatever the language is of the country in which they reside), mathematics, physics, reason, logic. Then they can attempt engineering (I suggest we need more mechanical engineers in the world), metallurgy (sorely underrated), biology, etc.
Not everyone needs a doctorate! I'd rather have a handful of competent BS or BA people than an incompetent doctor! I know that's not the style these days, but it's how I'd run things.
Sometimes I think I belong in the 19th century America, with individual discovery and exploitation of the principles getting one ahead (in spite of Edison). Alas, steampunk style does not guarantee success...
It used to be that firewalls and filters would search out malicious connections attempting spam or attacks and drop them. But in Soviet China, it's the opposite. So disguise any connections to Falun Gong website as spam or worse, and they GFW will be sure to let it through.
I live in Boston. I ride the T fairly often, but haven't seen these TSA stops yet. I will ignore them when I see them, and probably get arrested. Then you can bail me out. Pretty please.
Yes, I am in agreement. People at NASA are not, on the whole, stupid, though unfortunately NASA can be made to look stupid because of the political and economic conditions it has to work under. Often people point out the oft-repeated fable about NASA spending millions of dollars to develop a space pen whereas the Soviets just used pencils. It's a lot more complicated than that, see Snopes http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp for an explanation. Too often slashdotters, and Americans in general, scoff at professionals and give undue credit to 'common sense'. Replies to this article, regarding windshield-wipers, are a good example. But luckily there are some replies to the replies which are intelligent.
That being said, I would assume that they'd use an RTG (radioisotope thermal generator) if the projected lifetime of the rest of the mars rover called for it. Of course, maybe they were restrained by the anti-nuke sentiment which has infected so much of our culture.
In any case, the Mas rover has been extraordinarily successful. Now, I wish we could do as well with Venus.
Perhaps what is unclear to many is what comes along with being a common carrier. In the US, Common Carriers get (some) immunity from antitrust law. They are also able to acquire property rights by eminent domain. In exchange, they have an obligation to serve every person. That is not to say that the customers do not have to pay, but rather that the common carrier does not have the freedom to pick which customers it serves, whereas other businesses can (unless their denial of service is due to a reason covered under anti-discrimination law). Rates and policies of a common carrier are heavily regulated by governments. Common carriers are created by legislation, enacted where economic forces of the era require a controlled market in order for the service to be feasible. Common carriers have been in defense, transportation and communication, such as AT&T and USPS. In many countries, these functions become part of the government. In some ways, it can be argued that government itself is a common carrier, and that common carriers are governments.
ISPs which are not communications companies are not common carriers. Where it gets tricky is situations where a common carrier owns an ISP but claims it is a separate business and therefore not subject to the rules of common carriage. This is plainly not true in many areas where telephone companies are the only broadband available, via DSL. In other cases, there is a duopoly of broadband, through The Phone Company and The Cable Company, which rely on their Common Carrier status in related, but separate niches in order to provide services which compete. In my opinion, these are still the result of their Common Carrier status so they should be treated as such until there is a way to facilitate true competition (again) in the ISP market.
I am not a lawyer, and don't have a degree in economics or government, but I have studied all three fields at a prestigious university. I do not consider myself an expert, but rather, thoughtful and informed.
OK, so android is crap in lots of ways. What bothers me the most is the ever increasing incompatibilities between the older versions and the newer ones, and of course all of the vendor customizations. But what about the actual kernel mods? Are they any good? Some of them, perhaps a great number, are going to be used only by android and perhaps one or two other projects. But some may not be. Some people here are saying "don't take the patches just because they come from Google" - well, ok, not google specifically no matter how much of a fanboy you are. But there is something to be said for code which has been developed by a team of highly skilled people and tested on millions of installed devices. It could be from Microsoft for all I care. If the change are good, take them. Consider the big picture: what we have here is a developing fork which we want to head off. So, what should happen is that 1) Linux(s) agrees to seriously investigate merging some of the Android patches, and (2) Google agrees to start using a Linux3 kernel (starting with the version incorporating Google changes). Google should apply their patches to this Linux3 kernel, including the patches which were not accepted into the mainline kernel. Google should NOT be forced to commit to using whichever kernel is considered modern and safe by everyone else but they should be ENCOURAGED to stay reasonably up to date, i.e. not more than a year behind the current releases.
However, even moving to a Linux3 kernel can inadvertently cause bloat which may make future versions of Android even less usable on older phones (like my G1) than they are now. So, consider where the value is in upgrading Android's kernel to Linux3. I don't have enough knowledge on this, so I will have to depend on some experts to make this decision. I hope these experts don't get paid or praised based upon how many new phones are sold...
Why is this here? What geek appeal does this have? Remember when we used to talk about things like beowulf clusters of things, or that BSD was dying, or the SCO vs Linux lawsuit? Why is this here and why is Kim Song Ils death worthy of note here? Do slashdot editors think that we read nothing else? Or is it just a slow news days in the tech geek world?
The problem with this idea is that some of the most important parts of the reactor, that which contain neutrons, have a fixed wall thickness. This leads to an inescapable problem, and why we could never have a nuclear powered wristwatch (however, it is possible to have a low-power, long-lived radioisotopic heater (RTG) such as those used in deep-space probes. These can generate small amounts of electricity as well). This is not to say that the idea of a nuclear reactor on a railroad boxcar in infeasible (though it may be infeasible for other reasons).
I see the economic rationale for this, and would like to think that nuclear power plants can be built on a production line. Perhaps less of a production of an automobile and more like the production center of a large aircraft, but still, there would be great benefit. I only hope that whoever does this has the sense to use liquid fuel.
Yeah, kinda senile then. Hopefully only temporarily. Blame the cough medicine, I've been fighting the flu. What should I expect. Well, the good thing about Slashdot is not the average quality of comments, but those very few from people who are actually in the know about a given topic. Yes, I know, a needle in the haystack.
I've read more about the Phobos-Grunt and it seems as though there is only a small chance that it can be salvaged. I can still hope. Though I am no fan of the Russian or Chinese governments, I strongly support space exploration by any country and hope that global co-operation is available to the Russians for their efforts.
It would be nice if someone had something intelligent to say about this. All I've got is questions, but perhaps I haven't read all the relevant dox. 1) Was the Perth station able to locate the probe? Is its current trajectory now known? If so, does this mean communication can be restored, and perhaps it can be recovered? I mean, the mission recovered, not bringing the spacecraft back down to Earth.
This is a dumb idea, maybe even worse than SOPA. Internet access isn't really that important, and adding all sorts of non-important things to 'inalienable rights' really detracts from the rights that ARE important. Just because a bunch of you are connected to the net so much that you would have withdrawal symptoms doesn't mean the Internet is special, and more than a telephone or television. Some people would probably be better off disconnected for a while: it would enable them to rejoin 'real life'. But, no worry, I have no doubt that this plan will be a miserable failure. However, it would be far better to petition for some law that brings due process to IP infringement issues, and certifies that media companies have no special rights in enforcement of collection of royalties (i.e. no free money from black CD sales like Canada or Internet tax for media companies like in France).