Wow, really? So you got full credit because your calculator solved the problem for you, but they guy that made a stupid mistake but showed he understood the concepts better using his brain got half credit? Glad I wasn't in that class...
My parents bought me an HP-48 because the university said I had to have one. Graduated with honors in Mechanical Engineering, and the ONLY thing I used the HP-48 for was to play tetris. (Yeah, okay there was one math class where we graphed a couple of equations one week to justify having to have a graphing calculator, but I can't say I learned much that week.) Pretty much any exam I went to where calculators were allowed, there was a TA at the door wiping the memory of every calculator that came in to prevent cheating. Didn't want the memory to be wiped? Don't bring the fancy calculator. Phones were not allowed. Period. Too easy to cheat with those, so I don't see the calculator apps working that well for university exams. It sounds like future tests will be online, and a graphing calculator app will be part of the test. The phone app would be useful for learning how to use it before the test I guess.
So, what calculator did I actually use to get through Engineering school? An HP-20s that I won in a math competition in 7th grade. At the time they were $20, and have since been discontinued. It couldn't graph anything, it wasn't RPN, you couldn't program it (it supported very limited macros, a feature I never used, but that's it.) I never really understood the purpose of the graphing calculator. I passed the EIT with that same HP-20s, not even sure they allowed graphing calculators. Need to find the local maxima and minima? That's what calculus is for. Need to find a slope or a tangent, or decide if the equation is asymptotic? Again, that's what math is for. Understanding how to manipulate equations makes you understand the math better. Oh, yeah, I've done the 12-page Diff-EQ problems (that you had to do over three times because you reversed as sign on page 3.) However, if you got through it all, you KNEW it, and you knew what was going on when you plugged a bunch of stuff into a calculator or a computer to AUTOMATE things that you proved you understood by doing them by hand a bunch of times first.
Whatever. This post probably just proves I'm old now... sigh.
Okay, so let's do the math.... T-Mobile has something like 63 million subscribers. Every Tuesday EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM could get a free pizza at Domino's. Even if one half of one percent of the people eligible actually took advantage of the deal, that's still 315,000 free pizzas per week. Domino's only has around 5000 stores in the U.S., so that works out to 63 free pizzas per store, every Tuesday. Since I'm sure the number of free pizzas would not be evenly distributed, There were probably some Domino's locations that did nothing but give out free pizza's all day. How anyone thought that was sustainable I don't know...
As others have pointed out, you might be able to source a cheap computer or even an android stick, but the problem is that if a family can't afford a computer, they also probably can't afford an internet connection. There are still some free options, like juno/netzero, who have plans that give you 10 hours per month (which is enough to email assignments, and watch a few short videos, but little else.) However, these are dial-up services, which means you need a phone line. These days, I'm guessing that most low income families have a cell phone (lots of cheap options there, like Virgin Mobile or Net10 or T-Mobile, with a plan that has a little bit of voice/text and little or no data) and no land-line. There is freedompop, which offers 500GB/month on a free plan, but then you need a device to take advantage of the service (they use the Sprint network) so you'd need a cell phone or a mobile hot spot, and even used, you already well over the $20 limit before you have even purchased a computer. Also, the way freedompop works, they will want to charge you for more data when you get within 100GB of your limit, so they require a credit card to sign up. You can turn off auto-updates so that when you hit 500GB the service simply turns off, rather than charging you, but as the instructor, you might have to put in your own credit card, as you can't assume a low income family has or would be willing to sign up for something like that.
Another option might be to structure the class so that students can type up assignments at home, and then bring in the files on a USB stick or something and print them out or you can copy them when they come to class. This removes the need for an internet connection at home, but now you need something that can easily interact with a USB stick, so that eliminates most cheap tablets and some android sticks.
As far as sourcing cheap computers, you could look into something like freegeek (or something similar in your area, if it exists.) Freegeek is an organization that allows donations of computer equipment and then will teach people how to rebuild a computer from parts. Once you've built the computer, you get to keep it. The 'cost' is the volunteer time. I is probably too much to ask the kids to volunteer themselves, but if there is a similar organization in your area, you could volunteer yourself and collect computers for free that way, or set up a similar program at your school, and get the more affluent families to donate equipment to the school, and then have kids volunteer to rebuild them (with linux, to avoid licensing issues.) However, this is an entire program that requires storage space, management, time, etc. So, that might not be a good option.
Honestly, as other people have mentioned, you might just need to deal with allowing kids (any kid, not just the low income ones) to write their assignments on paper. If your school has a computer lab, you could take class time to allow kids to type up some assignments just so they get some exposure to using a computer and a word processor, but making it a requirement for everyone all the time is just going to disadvantage kids that already have the deck stacked against them.
I used to have that very laptop. So first, let me say:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Okay, that's out of my system.
No, wait...
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Okay, I'm done. Really.
I can speak from direct experience on this one. I installed Redhad 5.0 on a Compaq Contura Aero back in the day (after downloading the entire distro over a 14.4 modem) so I had to solve this problem. Here are the issues:
1. No CD-Rom drive. No internal drive, and no way to connect one externally. 2. No USB ports 3. No built-in ethernet port 4. Only a single 16-bit PCMCIA type II slot (meaning it won't take those double-height PCMCIA hard drives IBM made back in the day.) 5. You are dealing with Dos 6 (probably 6.2) and Windows 3.11, so you don't have a lot of built-in drivers and software for transferring files. Do you have Windows for Workgroups 3.11, or just Windows 3.11? It makes a difference. The 'for Workgroups' version has software for sharing files across a network. The regular version does not.
Options: 1. As other people have stated, your best option is probably an IDE 2.5" to USB adapter. Remove the drive, plug it into the adapter, and plug that into a modern USB-equipped computer. This will give you the fastest, most reliable way to transfer files. 2. If option 1 isn't an option, you could try to find a PCMCIA to compact flash adapter. You will then need to find and install the drivers so that DOS can mount such a drive. I might still have those drivers on a disk somewhere, but it also might depend on the flavor of the adapter. Seems like you had to load a PCMCIA driver, and then a mass-storage driver on top of that, and then possibly a TSR to actually enumerate and mount the drive. I can't remember anymore, but there is some complexity to overcome. Of course, to get the drivers on to the laptop in the first place, you will either need to transfer them via floppy, or get a dial-up internet account somewhere and download them over the internet. (Good luck with the second option -- if you even have a browser already installed, it is probably Netscape 3 or 4, or IE 3 or 4 which might not be able to load whatever page you need to go to in order to download the drivers. FTP might be an option, but then you have to already have an FTP client installed. If you don't, you run into a bigger problem than before, since an FTP client or a web browser is going to be bigger than a set of PCMCIA drivers, and now how to do you get THAT on to the laptop? Transferring the drivers via floppy is probably your best option. You can buy a USB floppy drive that will work on modern computers if none of your other computers have floppy drives anymore. If for some reason a floppy drive isn't an option, then you'll need a null modem cable (more on this later) 3. You could try to find a 16-bit PCMCIA ethernet adapter. (Try ebay.) Again, you'll run into the problem of how to get the drivers installed. Again, floppy is probably your best bet. This will probably only work if you have Windows for Workgroups 3.11. If you have the standard version, you won't have any built-in software for transferring files over a network. You could use FTP or something, but then you need to get the FTP software onto laptop in the first place. Again, you might be able to do this via floppy drive. 4. Get an old parallel-connection ZIP drive off of ebay. You'll again need to install the drivers via floppy. 5. Get a copy of laplink or interlink and a null modem serial cable. You will need to install the laplink/interlink software via floppy, and then you might need to buy and old computer that can still run DOS, since I don't know if you can get a copy of laplink or interlink that can still use a null modem cable on anything other than DOS. A Windows 95/98 machine should work though. I'm sure you could find something on craigslist for not much money. Transferring files over a null modem cable will be SLOW. VERY VERY SLOW. (This is how I had to install RedHat, so believe me, I KNOW.) So, if you ca
I had no idea that the personalization venders send the actual encryption keys to their customers. This is so very very wrong. That's not how you are supposed to do it.
The correct way is to generate the master keys (separate sets of keys for each customer) inside an HSM (hardware security module). The HSM protects the master keys from being stolen. You then split the key into parts, encode those parts on smart cards, and HAND DELIVER those smart cards to the customer (in this case cell phone carriers or banks) with several different people, each with a piece of the key encoded on the smart card, but who do not know the pin to extract that key, and then you restore the master keys into an HSM located at the customer with aid of additional employees who know the pins but don't have the cards until everyone meets in front of the HSM as a group. Once the keys are restored, you erase the smart cards there on the spot. At no time does any one person have access to the master key. At no time is the master key (encrypted or not) ever available on any computer anywhere for any length of time. Never ever ever.
Once both the personalization vender and the customer have a copy of the master keys, you can then derive the keys that you actually write into the SIM cards. Then, the only thing you need to transmit is the meta data used to generate the keys. This information can be sent in the clear over the internet all day long. Without the master key, the information is all but useless. The customer, once they have the meta data and the master key in their HSM, can re-derive the necessary keys whenever they need to, but usually this is not necessary (and not advised) -- all you need to do is perform a handshake with the SIM card by encrypting some data with the key stored in the card, and the information needed to reproduce that encrypted data. The carrier's HSM can then derive the same value inside their HSM to validate the SIM card. The keys, not even the key inside the SIM card is ever transmitted, stored, or is allowed to exist outside the HSM at any time, other than inside the SIM card itself. This would give NSA no opportunity to steal them.
Sending the actual keys written into the SIM cards over the internet? Really? (sigh)
Why limit yourself? Learn both a popular language and a less-popular one. I had the fortune of picking up both Java and COBOL in a previous job, which helped me land my next job, which involved (guess what?) both Java and COBOL (and Perl, and SQL, and XML, and C#, and PHP, and....). Never have I encountered a job where you only need to know one language. All those big banks and manufacturing companies running COBOL? They probably need to make those systems talk to something written in a more modern language like Java, or C#, or PHP, or even Ruby or Python. They are probably even trying to move some of their old legacy systems off on to newer systems, so having an engineer who knows both the legacy technology as well as newer technologies is just what they need. Knowing more than one language and more than one technology also means you don't get stuck when the company re-orgs or you finally decommission the old system or they hit a rough patch and downsize.
What makes a valuable employee isn't someone who is an expert in one thing. A valuable employee is flexible, can teach themselves new things without having to take a class or being asked. A good programmer is good at programing regardless of language. The more you learn, the more valuable you are, and the more options you have finding a job. Once you have experience solving problems with software, picking up a new language isn't really that hard. Yes, you could specialize in something like mainframe COBOL and there will be niche jobs for you in the financial industry for a long time to come, and you might be able to command a hefty salary as well, but do you really want to write COBOL for the foreseeable future?
I just ran into this with my wife's Dell laptop. I tried an aftermarket battery at newegg that had some glowing reviews and some terrible reviews, but was cheap enough (about $35) that I was willing to give it a try. It sort of worked for about a month, and now won't charge at all. So, we wound up buying a replacement direct from Dell for $150. I also recently bought an aftermarket battery for an old Toshiba laptop, but it only lasts about 1.5 hours if I'm lucky. It was $15 from Amazon. I guess you get what you pay for. So, other than paying through the nose for a genuine battery from the manufacturer, I don't know where to get good quality laptop batteries anymore (it used to be you could find decent batteries at various places on line, but all I see is junk now...)
On the other hand, I bought a new battery for my phone (an HTC) and got a battery made by a company called Anker. It works great and have had no problems with it. Bought several more for my wife's and my mother's phones, and they work well too. You can find Anker batteries on Amazon.
If you can un-brick the phone after it has been bricked, I'm sure someone will figure out a way to do this without involving the official channels. Theft might go down for a while, and it might never be as high as it once was, but once someone figures out how to un-brick the phone, steeling a phone will still get you something, even if you have to use it on another network or another country. Think blocking the IMEI is going to do it? There are already methods of changing or spoofing IMEI codes on lots of phones. This will stop casual theft, but like most locks, it won't deter determined thieves.
I, too, think that the $6 billion figure for the possible size of an iWatch market to be completely fictional. Not going to happen, but I'd really like some of whatever these guys are smoking to come up with a number like that.
As others have already said, a lot of people no longer wear watches because they now carry cell phones. Still others only wear watches as jewelry. Yes, I take the point others have made here that many/most/all Apple products are fashion statements, so you could argue an iWatch would still be jewelry, but in the world of watches, there seems to be generally two categories of "fashion" watches: watches that are "traditional jewelry" meaning that they are gold/silver/titanium, or made from other "traditional" jewelry materials, and watches that have an interesting/modern design (think the original "Swatch".) An iWatch can't compete against the traditional jewelry market and still have a touch screen. The two designs are pretty orthogonal -- I have a hard time thinking that the watch's function as something pretty/shiny/classic can be shared with something with a usable touch LCD screen and not fail at both. I can see how it might be possible to go after the modern/interesting style of "jewelry" watch with a stylish simple/elegant design -- again, think "Swatch" only with some ipod/iphone features included. (I realize the Swatch group now owns many luxury brands. I'm referring to the primarily plastic modern-looking watches like the original Swatch that came out in the 1980's) Anyway, a modern-styled plastic-case iWatch sounds really workable to me, but will that capture 10% of the market? Not bloody likely. Look at watch sales. Where is all the money being made? At the low-end plastic watches? Nope. The highest sales and margins are in the traditional jewelry-type watches. Something I can't see Apple competing with.
So, if Apple is going for an iWatch, they can't target the high-end jewelry watch market, so that's out. They can't target the low-end quartz or digital watch market, because that is already saturated with low-margin products. Their only hope is to define a new market somewhere in the middle with enough margin to make money. So, what is this watch going to *DO* that will garner more than a yawn from the general population (certain Apple fanboys excepted.)
You've got to do more than tell time. A cheap quartz watch will do that, and do it more stylishly. So, okay, add in an MP3 player, stop watch, and maybe GPS, and other features runners/cyclists might want. Yes, an iPhone/Smartphone can do those things, but they aren't as small/compact/portable. That's really all an iWatch might have going for it. -- size. Target the sports crowd so that you don't have to take your iPhone running with you. Otherwise, the crowd that already stopped wearing watches because they have a smart phone won't give it a second look.
Could they pack the ability to make phone calls into a watch? Maybe. Generally the two things that eat power on a smartphone are wifi and the display. Take out wifi (or turn it off) and make the screen much smaller, and you might be able to shrink a cell phone into a watch. That might make an iWatch attractive. However, the nice thing about having a smartphone is all the other things you can do with it --things that are going to be hard on a watch (texting, web browsing, e-mail, playing games, etc.) So, if you buy an iWatch that can make calls, do you also keep your smartphone? Do you have two cellphone contracts? If that's the case, I'd rather just have one device and use (or not) a regular watch. The trend in smartphone screen size is going bigger, not smaller. So, the iWatch as a cellphone replacement doesn't seem to make sense.
Really, the only market opportunity I can see for an iWatch is as a wearable ipod with more features (like GPS, maybe have it sync with your iPhone calendar to alert you to appointments, etc.) That could actually be kinda cool. Would I buy one? No. Will it grab 10% of the watch market? Um... probably not.
Well, okay, so you you think you might (or might not) need a fighter jet, or maybe a drone, or a cruise missle... Here's why you might (or might not) want these things:
Drones: Drones are good for when you need to maintain a presence above a section of ground to observe what is going on, and if you have an armed drone, they are great for taking out point targets (people, vehicles, small buildings, etc.) They can stay in the air much longer than a manned air craft, and they don't risk a human going into harm's way. Drones are NOT good at carrying a large amount of weapons for taking out larger targets (air bases, power plants, radar stations, bridges, etc.) Some of the larger drones are starting to get this capability, so it is logical to assume that this limitation will go away with some of the larger (and more expensive) drones. However, currently drones do not work well unless you control the air space they are flying in. While man-portable surface to air missiles may not have the range to engage a high-flying drone, they would probably be effective against lower-flying drones. Since most current drones do not have much in the way of stealth or counter-measures, they are vulnerable to any surface to air missile that has the range and altitude to reach them. Even old 1960's vintage SA-2's would have little trouble shooting down most drones. Only when you go to very expensive stealth drones do you gain much chance of surviving air space that is protected by even older, cheaper, less-capable SAM's. However, even with a stealth drone, if the enemy has fighter air craft, you are still in trouble. Once the fighter is close enough to see the drone on radar (stealth only reduces the range at which an air craft can be seen with radar, it does not make it 100% invisible), or the drone can be seen with infrared or visually, the fighter has the advantage. Today's drones are unable to dog fight, and the latency and lack of situational awareness that comes from piloting a drone remotely makes them unable to dog fight effectively, even if a drone were made maneuverable enough to even attempt it (which none currently are.) So, bottom line, drones are useful if you are facing an opponent who does not have fighters, or where their fighters have already been destroyed.
Cruise Missiles: Cruise Missiles are great for hitting fixed targets from long range, like bridges, buildings, military bases, fixed command and control stations, etc. They are not as good at hitting moving targets, as they generally lack the ability to search out and find a mobile target and attack it after they are launched. For the vast majority of cruise missiles, you have to know where the target is when they are launched, and the target can't move while the cruise missile is in flight. This makes cruise missiles largely ineffective against mobile army units (tanks, trucks, infantry, etc.) Army units are the only combatants that can invade territory and hold it, so dealing with them is important. Also, while some cruise missiles can be fired from ground launchers, you can drastically increase the range of cruise missiles if you launch them from a mobile platform like a ship or an air craft. Drones, as of yet, can't carry cruise missiles, so you either need new very large drone, or a manned air craft capable of launching a cruise missile to get enough range to make these weapons effective. The nice thing about a cruise missile is that you can attack well-defended fixed target from a distance without having to risk a human in an air plane, and they are faster and harder to shoot down than a drone.
Conventional Fighter (e.g. a F/A-18E/F Super Hornet) The Super Hornet is a very versatile air craft. It is capable of both air-to-air as well as air-to-surface combat. If you face an enemy that has fighter air craft, the Super Hornet can try to shoot them down at medium range with missiles, and/or at close range with short-range missiles and a gun (e.g. dog fighting.) In the 1960's, the U.S. thought that missiles were the way
Yes, that's the one. However, I don't think you can scale up the costs by a simple price per pound ratio. It is entirely possible to build an airplane for less than $10,000:
If you don't have to put a pilot inside, and using more mass-production techniques, you could probably get the cost down even further. My cousin built a plane in his garage for less that $30,000 that can easily carry 500 pounds (assuming no people on board). It was designed for aerobatics so it traded speed and maneuverability for range, but the concept is the same. The biggest road block to doing something like this before now is the prohibitive cost and complexity of building an autonomous guidance system. That part is getting cheaper and easier all the time.
Heck, this guy: Bruce Simpson built a cruise missile with off the shelf components for $5000, though I think it is too small to carry a reasonable payload.
Phalanx shoots 75 rounds per second. I don't think you can just fire 3-10 rounds per target. These would quickly run out of ammo. GPS can effectively be jammed at ground level. With directional antennas, it is much harder to jam them in the air, as you can filter out any signals at a little above the drone's altitude and below. So, you'd have to be ABOVE the drone to jam GPS signals. This limits the available platforms to electronic warfare aircraft, but with a movable directional antenna, even these signals could be filtered out without much difficulty. There is also more than one GPS system, so you can't just turn it off, or reduce the error correction to make it unusable. Cameras with relatively straight-forward image recognition software would be enough for terminal guidance. The technology for this has existed since the 1980's, and is relatively cheap these days. While not full RPV, it shouldn't be difficult to make the drones able to accept basic directional commands (change navigational way points, confirm target selection, etc.) Using spread-spectrum frequency hopping and limiting the number of times updates are transmitted would make jamming this communication channel extremely difficult. There are open-source software radios that could handle this sort of set up easily at very low cost.
You are correct that the drones would not have any defensive ability. An air craft could easily pick them off with a gun. However, this gun has a high rate of fire and limited ammunition, so each fighter can only shoot down a limited number of drones. Fly lots of drones, and accept losses due to aerial engagements.
Yep and Yep. So don't hide them. Distribute them, so that a single air strike takes out only a fraction of them. Then, build ten times that many out of cardboard and distribute them as well. Turn everything everywhere into a potential target. Short a preemptive nuclear strike, what are you going to hit with your air strike?
The fact of the matter is, a carrier battle group embarks a fixed amount of ordnance. Replenishment at sea is time consuming. If you throw enough stuff at a carrier battle group, at some point it will run out of ammunition. It is simply a numbers game. There is also no reason a drone needs to cost $275,000. About 8 years ago some hobbyists built a balsa wood model aircraft that flew autonomously across the Atlantic with an on-board auto pilot and telemetry for less than $500. That's a 2500-3000nm range, with simple electronics (which are even less expensive and more powerful today) with the ability to receive data and track the location of said drone for less than $500. Scale that up a little, and a VERY cheap, albeit slow and vulnerable cruise missile is entirely possible. A small drone like this doesn't need a dedicated launch facility. I can be produced in a large number of fairly basic distributed shops. There are no obvious fixed targets to hit with tomahawks or laser-guided bombs. No fixed runways to bomb, nothing to take out with a preemptive strike. Put enough of them into the air, and you simply aren't going to shoot them all down. Radar guidance is probably too expensive, so it would be limited to cameras. The carrier group could certainly put up a smoke screen, but how long can it maintain that? It certainly can't launch or recover aircraft while emitting a smoke screen, so at some point it will have to stop before any aircraft already in the air run out of fuel. With a 2500mn range, the drones can simply loiter until any aircraft in the air are out of weapons and out fuel and the carrier has to stop the smoke screen to recover aircraft. At that point any remaining drones can attack. Phalanx weapons have a limited ammunition capacity, and take time to reload. Yes, they would wipe out large numbers of drones easily, but at some point they will be empty and will become useless.
A plan like this probably was not economically or technically feasible 15 years ago. Only with the miniaturization and drastic cost reduction in electronics needed to build the control/guidance system could you even contemplate something like this. I'm not saying it is simple. You'd need thousands, probably tens of thousands of drones or more, costing many millions of dollars, but that's still cheaper than a squadron of 4th generation fighter planes. I don't care how good your defenses are. If I can cause you to expend ammunition, and you have a fixed amount of ammunition at your disposal, and I can build weapons cheaply enough and deploy them fast enough, I can overwhelm you every time.
The Japanese tried this tactic in WWII with the kamikaze attacks. That tactic had some (although limited) success mainly because they could not train enough pilots well enough or fast enough, and you lost your trained pilot with every attack. At the end of the war they still had airplanes, and even fuel (although it was alcohol based because we had long since cut off their supplies of oil.) Remove the pilot from that equation, and you remove the main limitation on the numbers of drones you can produce and field at one time.
So, don't product them all in one place. Cheap wooden airframes could be built in a garage. Engine production would be a bit more difficult to decentralize, but again, a machine shop in the basement of a house is sufficient to built engines. Unless you carpet bomb EVERYTHING, it is going to be hard to shut down production. The Germans did this in WWII with aircraft production, and were able to still build aircraft right up through 1945 in the face of massive bombing. The V1 and V2 were different, because they required fixed launch sites, and unusual materials for the fuel.
The trouble is, the CIWS fires those 1500 rounds at 4,500 rounds per minute, so it can only fire for 20 SECONDS. How many targets can a single CIWS take out before it is out of ammo? 10? If I have 100 cruise missiles flying at your ship, I don't care if you shoot down 10 of them.
It's all a numbers game. Okay, so 3,000 cheap cruise missiles isn't enough? build more. An F-15 carries what, 8 air to air missiles max? Plus the gun, so best case, an F-15 can shoot down, say 12 cruise missiles, assuming they can launch, get to the the intercept, and have enough time to expend all of their stores. An F-22 carries 8 missiles as well, plus a gun (but with less ammunition than an F-15). F-18 can carry maybe 6 missiles, and the same goes for the F-16. So, how many of these do you have in-theater and can get airborne with the fuel, range, and armaments to do the job? So, let's say you have maybe 100 F-15, 50 F-22's, 250 F-16's, and maybe 60 F-18's available. Let's assume you could get a maximum of ~80% of those in the air in time (some would be down for maintenance, others might not be fueled and armed yet, etc.) so, maximum best-case theoretical anti-missile kills would be: 80 F-15's x 12 = 960 40 F-22's x 10 = 400 200 F-16's x 10 = 2000 50 F-18's x 10 = 500 Total: 3860
Now, add in a carrier battle group with maybe 8 AEGIS cruisers/destroyers, each with roughly 70 interceptors. That's another 560 potential kills, plus CIWS, the carrier's sea sparrows, Marines shooting MANPAD's machine guns, whatever. Figure maybe another 100 kills, max.
Final total: about 4500.
Okay, fine. So what if I build 10,000 cheap cruise missiles? Maybe 30% of them fail for some reason (hey, I said they were cheap, we've got to expect some failures.) The US shoots down 4500 of them. That still leaves 2500 you can't shoot down. Maybe their accuracy is pretty bad, and only 5% of those actually hit anything. That's 125 hits with 500 pound war heads on your carrier battle group. I think that would safely take care of it.
So even while the strike is being executed, the US counter-attacks with cruise missiles. At, what, exactly? The cheap cruise missiles I have in mind have wheels and can take off from a road, or any reasonable flat piece of ground. Distribute the cruise missiles to 500 hundred locations around the country, and scatter paper decoy's to another 500 sites. What are you going to target? When you hit a launch site, what have you done? Put a hole in a road? Collapsed an empty building? Big deal. I just blew up a carrier battle group.
If the airframes were simple wood construction, you could have relatively unskilled labor build them in hundreds of small shops distributed throughout the country. The engines would be a little more complicated, but no more complicated than an air-cooled motorcycle engine, and some Asian and Latin American countries produce many thousands of engines a year without the technical advances of a super power. A decent motorcycle might cost $1000 US to manufacture. Let's say my "cruise missile" costs 10 times that: $10,000.
Okay, let's build 10,000 of them: $100 million, in U.S. dollars. That's less than a single F-22, less than four F-15's. With $100 million dollars worth of cheap ordinance, I've taken out an entire carrier battle group, costing BILLIONS of dollars. Let's not stop there. How about we build another 10,000 cruise missiles, and target the airfields where all of your expensive planes (now out of fuel and out of weapons) have to land. Those get launched right after the first wave, so your tomahawks haven't arrived yet to take out the launch sites. The returning fighter planes return to wrecked air fields, the patriot batteries have all been expended, and there are still another 1000 cruise missiles loitering around waiting for your F-22's and F-15's to land on roadways so that they can be destroyed on the ground. Many more billions lost.
Granted, any prolonged fight with the US is generally not a good idea. The US has such a vast military and such massive manufacturing capability that a prolonged war would not be winnable unless you also have vast resources. However, if you are a nation (like North Korea) that doesn't always act rationally, and has far fewer resources, I still think there are reasonable strategies that could produce some pretty impressive results comparatively cheaply. Unless you employ weapons of mass destruction, I think a quantity vs. quality approach is nearly always a viable strategy if you can produce enough quantity cheaply enough.
I've always thought several thousand simple, relatively stupid, cheap "cruise missiles" could pretty easily defeat a carrier battle group. When I say "cruise missiles" I'm talking about pilot-less drones that are really small air craft (could even be built of wood) with a warhead aboard. You wouldn't even need them to be completely autonomous, though a auto-pilot would probably be a good idea. You'd need a satellite up-link to control them (and to diminish the possibility of someone jamming your control signals) but it seems like it wouldn't be very expensive to build a cheap small aircraft (again, wood would be okay) with a simple air-cooled piston engine and a propeller, a remote control system with a simple auto pilot, and, say, a 500-pound free-fall bomb attached. Build many thousands of these for the same cost of a few modern fighter planes, and then fly them en-mass at a target. Sure, the combination of defensive aircraft and anti-missile systems would knock-down the vast majority of your "cruise missiles", but it would only take a small number getting through and dive-bombing the target with a few well-placed bombs to destroy the target. This seems so much less expensive than building a modern air force/navy/etc. I don't understand why other nations haven't tried it.
Why run the cars off the road? I'd rather have a system that tells the other cars they are about to be rammed from behind and causes them to move over. OUT OF MY WAY.
OOO!...and something that prevents people from jumping the gun when they should be yielding right of way. No one seems to understand the rules at 4-way stops anymore.
Go in the order you arrived Yield to the person on your right in the case of a tie. (At least in the U.S.) Take turns. SIMPLE!
Nope -- too many mouth breathers can't figure that out.
What about Fringe? It isn't spaceships and aliens, but I'd call it sci-fi a la X-Files. It's a decent show, and seems to be doing okay in the ratings. There are a number of special effects (again, not spaceships) but it certainly must be more expensive to produce than some reality TV crap. I agree that higher budgets make it harder to make sci fi shows profitable, but it CAN be done. BSG did it, Babylon 5 mostly did it (the 5th season was in doubt, so they kind of wrapped things up in season 4, so that season 5 felt like an afterthought.) X-Files had a long run, and look how long all the Star Trek spin-offs lasted. SG1 went 10 seasons, which is longer than a lot of sitcoms.
Anyway, I think it is certainly possible to make decent, well scripted sci fi programs, even these days. However, very few networks are trying it, and I don't think any network could pull off a full line up of expensive-to-produce sci fi shows and remain profitable as a network. Maybe if syfy turned into a virtual channel, that only released for-pay content on-line (via netflix, hulu, or direct) and just did one or two shows a season, and/or licensed their shows to other networks they could produce some decent sci fi. Will they? Probably not. I expect the "new" model to be what netflix is doing. My guess is that in 20 years there will be very few actual networks anymore. Instead, you'll have a collection of TV studios producing a handful of shows and licensing them individually to online distribution channels. A few TV channels will probably remain, but the only content they will produce is live national/local news programs. Everything else they'll license from some other production company. My 2 cents, anyway... I would hope will result in better quality programing, but in truth we'll still probably have a lot of crap, simply because it is cheap to produce and there is a willing low-brow audience willing to pay for it.
Well, probably that would run afoul of anti-trust as well. However...
If Google did a hostile take over of, say, two of the major labels, and then immediately offered favorable licensing terms to apple, amazon, and microsoft; then apple, amazon, and microsoft might get a clue as to what google was doing, and each of them might buy up a few labels themselves, and reciprocate the licensing deals with google. End result: everyone except the RIAA and the top music execs win, and no anti-trust. As long as there is no collusion or under the table agreement between any of the parties, it could work... I think it would just take someone to set the example of the new business model.
I also liked SGU and will be sorry to see it go. I initially didn't like SG1. Hated the theatrical movie that started it all. I thought the concept of aliens running around with Egyptian head gear was irredeemably stupid. However, it got better, and I started to like it. SGA started out pretty stupidly, too, IMHO. However, it got better for a few seasons, and then things seemed to escalate to such a degree it all became preposterous. Every week the crew was able to accomplish some seriously unbelievable feats with systems and technology that was far more advanced than anyone could comprehend and wrap everything up with a little bow at the end. What I liked about SGU is that humans were back to where things were at the beginning of SG1 -- nothing is easy, they aren't the top dog, nothing makes sense, and progress came through a lot of effort rather than pushing the button on the twinkly machine and presto! problem (galactic race of vampires, race of super powerful god like creatures, unstoppable sentient machines, impending destruction by natural forces of unbelievable power) was solved. Yeah, SGU started slow. Just like SG1 and SGA did, but it was getting really good. I liked the messiness of it all -- the grasp on leadership, survival, the ship, the unknown, peace among the crew, etc. were all tenuous, and added tension to the story. What was it Hitchcock said? Something about suspense isn't having a bomb under the table, but KNOWING there is a bomb under the table? In SGU, everything was a bomb -- the ship, the social order, the ability to survive stranded far from home, any of it could come apart with a moment's notice. The writers could have done more with that, but it is still an important and interesting part of the show, unlike SG1 or SGA. With SGU gone, there is nothing to watch on SyFy anymore. I don't have cable or a dish, and now I'm glad. I think SyFy and Hulu shot themselves in the foot by releasing some episodes the day after they aired on TV, and others 30 days later. It was so inconsistent I gave up and watched several episodes on you tube. I guess with nothing else to watch, I won't need to worry about that anymore. SyFy used to have some really good shows. Farscape? FireFly? BSG? Even the Dune remake was pretty good. (Yeah, I know, some people hated it, but it was more faithful to the book than the version from the 80's.) What has SyFy got left? Wrestling? Ghost Hunter? Really??? Goodbye SyFy. You have nothing to contribute.
Maybe this needs to happen. With the move and more internet-based TV viewing, I think the profit is going to fall out of a lot of shows, and they will get canned. With the reduced number of shows, people will realize they are paying too much for TV, and drop some of the higher-priced cable/dish offerings. This could lead to networks failing, reducing the number of networks. Hopefully that will concentrate viewership on the networks that are left, allowing them to charge more for advertising, and regaining enough income to do high-budget interesting shows again. We can hope....
A friend in college had to do the "egg drop" as a 101 physics class assignment. He lived in a dorm that was 80% engineering students (including me) so he came to ask us for help. We decided the best design was to core halfway to the center of a watermelon, place the egg inside, remove enough material from the core we had extracted to account for the egg, replace the cored section, and tape it shut. Of course we had to test it first. So, at 1 am one frosty January night in Moscow, ID, we dropped the watermelon from the third floor of a building. Upon impact, the watermelon exploding on the sidewalk dissipated most of the energy. The egg came through in one piece, but had a small crack in it. We decided it would have been better to let the watermelon dry out a bit more the next time, to allow the flesh of fruit to compact a little more on impact. We had also failed to account for the little bits of melon that quickly froze to the sidewalk and were immovable for three weeks until we got a day above freezing.
So, the next time you want to ship something UPS, put it inside a watermelon. No ShockWatch sticker needed. If they are too rough on your package, they will get sprayed by watermelon chunks, and it will be obvious something bad happened when your package arrives.
The terrorists need to put their next bomb in a laptop so that the TSA will ban all laptops. This will cause business travelers to stop flying, which will force all of the airlines to go bankrupt. (A high percentage of airline revenue comes from First/Business class seats, which are filled primarily with laptop-toting business travelers.)
Terrorists: 1 Sanity: 0
IIRC the Pan Am Lockerbie bomb was inside a radio in the cargo hold. Why haven't the TSA banned radios yet? At least that bomb WORKED. I'm still amazed we can wear shoes and underwear on flights...
Better yet, park your car outside a government building and then call the police saying there is a suspicious device attached to your car. Hey, you did the right, thing, right? How can they fault you? You didn't put it there, don't know what it is or what it does, so you called the police. I mean really, the thing looks like a transmitter attached to a pipe bomb, what would you think? The resulting traffic jam and media coverage of shutting down part of town while the city's bomb squad recovers an FBI tracking device (or, possibly blows up your car just to be safe) would be pretty embarrassing for the FBI. Would kinda suck to loose the car though.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, really? So you got full credit because your calculator solved the problem for you, but they guy that made a stupid mistake but showed he understood the concepts better using his brain got half credit? Glad I wasn't in that class...
My parents bought me an HP-48 because the university said I had to have one. Graduated with honors in Mechanical Engineering, and the ONLY thing I used the HP-48 for was to play tetris. (Yeah, okay there was one math class where we graphed a couple of equations one week to justify having to have a graphing calculator, but I can't say I learned much that week.) Pretty much any exam I went to where calculators were allowed, there was a TA at the door wiping the memory of every calculator that came in to prevent cheating. Didn't want the memory to be wiped? Don't bring the fancy calculator. Phones were not allowed. Period. Too easy to cheat with those, so I don't see the calculator apps working that well for university exams. It sounds like future tests will be online, and a graphing calculator app will be part of the test. The phone app would be useful for learning how to use it before the test I guess.
So, what calculator did I actually use to get through Engineering school? An HP-20s that I won in a math competition in 7th grade. At the time they were $20, and have since been discontinued. It couldn't graph anything, it wasn't RPN, you couldn't program it (it supported very limited macros, a feature I never used, but that's it.) I never really understood the purpose of the graphing calculator. I passed the EIT with that same HP-20s, not even sure they allowed graphing calculators. Need to find the local maxima and minima? That's what calculus is for. Need to find a slope or a tangent, or decide if the equation is asymptotic? Again, that's what math is for. Understanding how to manipulate equations makes you understand the math better. Oh, yeah, I've done the 12-page Diff-EQ problems (that you had to do over three times because you reversed as sign on page 3.) However, if you got through it all, you KNEW it, and you knew what was going on when you plugged a bunch of stuff into a calculator or a computer to AUTOMATE things that you proved you understood by doing them by hand a bunch of times first.
Whatever. This post probably just proves I'm old now... sigh.
Okay, so let's do the math.... T-Mobile has something like 63 million subscribers. Every Tuesday EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM could get a free pizza at Domino's. Even if one half of one percent of the people eligible actually took advantage of the deal, that's still 315,000 free pizzas per week. Domino's only has around 5000 stores in the U.S., so that works out to 63 free pizzas per store, every Tuesday. Since I'm sure the number of free pizzas would not be evenly distributed, There were probably some Domino's locations that did nothing but give out free pizza's all day. How anyone thought that was sustainable I don't know...
As others have pointed out, you might be able to source a cheap computer or even an android stick, but the problem is that if a family can't afford a computer, they also probably can't afford an internet connection. There are still some free options, like juno/netzero, who have plans that give you 10 hours per month (which is enough to email assignments, and watch a few short videos, but little else.) However, these are dial-up services, which means you need a phone line. These days, I'm guessing that most low income families have a cell phone (lots of cheap options there, like Virgin Mobile or Net10 or T-Mobile, with a plan that has a little bit of voice/text and little or no data) and no land-line. There is freedompop, which offers 500GB/month on a free plan, but then you need a device to take advantage of the service (they use the Sprint network) so you'd need a cell phone or a mobile hot spot, and even used, you already well over the $20 limit before you have even purchased a computer. Also, the way freedompop works, they will want to charge you for more data when you get within 100GB of your limit, so they require a credit card to sign up. You can turn off auto-updates so that when you hit 500GB the service simply turns off, rather than charging you, but as the instructor, you might have to put in your own credit card, as you can't assume a low income family has or would be willing to sign up for something like that.
Another option might be to structure the class so that students can type up assignments at home, and then bring in the files on a USB stick or something and print them out or you can copy them when they come to class. This removes the need for an internet connection at home, but now you need something that can easily interact with a USB stick, so that eliminates most cheap tablets and some android sticks.
As far as sourcing cheap computers, you could look into something like freegeek (or something similar in your area, if it exists.) Freegeek is an organization that allows donations of computer equipment and then will teach people how to rebuild a computer from parts. Once you've built the computer, you get to keep it. The 'cost' is the volunteer time. I is probably too much to ask the kids to volunteer themselves, but if there is a similar organization in your area, you could volunteer yourself and collect computers for free that way, or set up a similar program at your school, and get the more affluent families to donate equipment to the school, and then have kids volunteer to rebuild them (with linux, to avoid licensing issues.) However, this is an entire program that requires storage space, management, time, etc. So, that might not be a good option.
Honestly, as other people have mentioned, you might just need to deal with allowing kids (any kid, not just the low income ones) to write their assignments on paper. If your school has a computer lab, you could take class time to allow kids to type up some assignments just so they get some exposure to using a computer and a word processor, but making it a requirement for everyone all the time is just going to disadvantage kids that already have the deck stacked against them.
I used to have that very laptop. So first, let me say:
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Okay, that's out of my system.
No, wait...
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Okay, I'm done. Really.
I can speak from direct experience on this one. I installed Redhad 5.0 on a Compaq Contura Aero back in the day (after downloading the entire distro over a 14.4 modem) so I had to solve this problem. Here are the issues:
1. No CD-Rom drive. No internal drive, and no way to connect one externally.
2. No USB ports
3. No built-in ethernet port
4. Only a single 16-bit PCMCIA type II slot (meaning it won't take those double-height PCMCIA hard drives IBM made back in the day.)
5. You are dealing with Dos 6 (probably 6.2) and Windows 3.11, so you don't have a lot of built-in drivers and software for transferring files. Do you have Windows for Workgroups 3.11, or just Windows 3.11? It makes a difference. The 'for Workgroups' version has software for sharing files across a network. The regular version does not.
Options:
1. As other people have stated, your best option is probably an IDE 2.5" to USB adapter. Remove the drive, plug it into the adapter, and plug that into a modern USB-equipped computer. This will give you the fastest, most reliable way to transfer files.
2. If option 1 isn't an option, you could try to find a PCMCIA to compact flash adapter. You will then need to find and install the drivers so that DOS can mount such a drive. I might still have those drivers on a disk somewhere, but it also might depend on the flavor of the adapter. Seems like you had to load a PCMCIA driver, and then a mass-storage driver on top of that, and then possibly a TSR to actually enumerate and mount the drive. I can't remember anymore, but there is some complexity to overcome. Of course, to get the drivers on to the laptop in the first place, you will either need to transfer them via floppy, or get a dial-up internet account somewhere and download them over the internet. (Good luck with the second option -- if you even have a browser already installed, it is probably Netscape 3 or 4, or IE 3 or 4 which might not be able to load whatever page you need to go to in order to download the drivers. FTP might be an option, but then you have to already have an FTP client installed. If you don't, you run into a bigger problem than before, since an FTP client or a web browser is going to be bigger than a set of PCMCIA drivers, and now how to do you get THAT on to the laptop? Transferring the drivers via floppy is probably your best option. You can buy a USB floppy drive that will work on modern computers if none of your other computers have floppy drives anymore. If for some reason a floppy drive isn't an option, then you'll need a null modem cable (more on this later)
3. You could try to find a 16-bit PCMCIA ethernet adapter. (Try ebay.) Again, you'll run into the problem of how to get the drivers installed. Again, floppy is probably your best bet. This will probably only work if you have Windows for Workgroups 3.11. If you have the standard version, you won't have any built-in software for transferring files over a network. You could use FTP or something, but then you need to get the FTP software onto laptop in the first place. Again, you might be able to do this via floppy drive.
4. Get an old parallel-connection ZIP drive off of ebay. You'll again need to install the drivers via floppy.
5. Get a copy of laplink or interlink and a null modem serial cable. You will need to install the laplink/interlink software via floppy, and then you might need to buy and old computer that can still run DOS, since I don't know if you can get a copy of laplink or interlink that can still use a null modem cable on anything other than DOS. A Windows 95/98 machine should work though. I'm sure you could find something on craigslist for not much money. Transferring files over a null modem cable will be SLOW. VERY VERY SLOW. (This is how I had to install RedHat, so believe me, I KNOW.) So, if you ca
I had no idea that the personalization venders send the actual encryption keys to their customers. This is so very very wrong. That's not how you are supposed to do it.
The correct way is to generate the master keys (separate sets of keys for each customer) inside an HSM (hardware security module). The HSM protects the master keys from being stolen. You then split the key into parts, encode those parts on smart cards, and HAND DELIVER those smart cards to the customer (in this case cell phone carriers or banks) with several different people, each with a piece of the key encoded on the smart card, but who do not know the pin to extract that key, and then you restore the master keys into an HSM located at the customer with aid of additional employees who know the pins but don't have the cards until everyone meets in front of the HSM as a group. Once the keys are restored, you erase the smart cards there on the spot. At no time does any one person have access to the master key. At no time is the master key (encrypted or not) ever available on any computer anywhere for any length of time. Never ever ever.
Once both the personalization vender and the customer have a copy of the master keys, you can then derive the keys that you actually write into the SIM cards. Then, the only thing you need to transmit is the meta data used to generate the keys. This information can be sent in the clear over the internet all day long. Without the master key, the information is all but useless. The customer, once they have the meta data and the master key in their HSM, can re-derive the necessary keys whenever they need to, but usually this is not necessary (and not advised) -- all you need to do is perform a handshake with the SIM card by encrypting some data with the key stored in the card, and the information needed to reproduce that encrypted data. The carrier's HSM can then derive the same value inside their HSM to validate the SIM card. The keys, not even the key inside the SIM card is ever transmitted, stored, or is allowed to exist outside the HSM at any time, other than inside the SIM card itself. This would give NSA no opportunity to steal them.
Sending the actual keys written into the SIM cards over the internet? Really? (sigh)
Why limit yourself? Learn both a popular language and a less-popular one. I had the fortune of picking up both Java and COBOL in a previous job, which helped me land my next job, which involved (guess what?) both Java and COBOL (and Perl, and SQL, and XML, and C#, and PHP, and....). Never have I encountered a job where you only need to know one language. All those big banks and manufacturing companies running COBOL? They probably need to make those systems talk to something written in a more modern language like Java, or C#, or PHP, or even Ruby or Python. They are probably even trying to move some of their old legacy systems off on to newer systems, so having an engineer who knows both the legacy technology as well as newer technologies is just what they need. Knowing more than one language and more than one technology also means you don't get stuck when the company re-orgs or you finally decommission the old system or they hit a rough patch and downsize.
What makes a valuable employee isn't someone who is an expert in one thing. A valuable employee is flexible, can teach themselves new things without having to take a class or being asked. A good programmer is good at programing regardless of language. The more you learn, the more valuable you are, and the more options you have finding a job. Once you have experience solving problems with software, picking up a new language isn't really that hard. Yes, you could specialize in something like mainframe COBOL and there will be niche jobs for you in the financial industry for a long time to come, and you might be able to command a hefty salary as well, but do you really want to write COBOL for the foreseeable future?
I just ran into this with my wife's Dell laptop. I tried an aftermarket battery at newegg that had some glowing reviews and some terrible reviews, but was cheap enough (about $35) that I was willing to give it a try. It sort of worked for about a month, and now won't charge at all. So, we wound up buying a replacement direct from Dell for $150. I also recently bought an aftermarket battery for an old Toshiba laptop, but it only lasts about 1.5 hours if I'm lucky. It was $15 from Amazon. I guess you get what you pay for. So, other than paying through the nose for a genuine battery from the manufacturer, I don't know where to get good quality laptop batteries anymore (it used to be you could find decent batteries at various places on line, but all I see is junk now...)
On the other hand, I bought a new battery for my phone (an HTC) and got a battery made by a company called Anker. It works great and have had no problems with it. Bought several more for my wife's and my mother's phones, and they work well too. You can find Anker batteries on Amazon.
If you can un-brick the phone after it has been bricked, I'm sure someone will figure out a way to do this without involving the official channels. Theft might go down for a while, and it might never be as high as it once was, but once someone figures out how to un-brick the phone, steeling a phone will still get you something, even if you have to use it on another network or another country. Think blocking the IMEI is going to do it? There are already methods of changing or spoofing IMEI codes on lots of phones. This will stop casual theft, but like most locks, it won't deter determined thieves.
I, too, think that the $6 billion figure for the possible size of an iWatch market to be completely fictional. Not going to happen, but I'd really like some of whatever these guys are smoking to come up with a number like that.
As others have already said, a lot of people no longer wear watches because they now carry cell phones. Still others only wear watches as jewelry. Yes, I take the point others have made here that many/most/all Apple products are fashion statements, so you could argue an iWatch would still be jewelry, but in the world of watches, there seems to be generally two categories of "fashion" watches: watches that are "traditional jewelry" meaning that they are gold/silver/titanium, or made from other "traditional" jewelry materials, and watches that have an interesting/modern design (think the original "Swatch".) An iWatch can't compete against the traditional jewelry market and still have a touch screen. The two designs are pretty orthogonal -- I have a hard time thinking that the watch's function as something pretty/shiny/classic can be shared with something with a usable touch LCD screen and not fail at both. I can see how it might be possible to go after the modern/interesting style of "jewelry" watch with a stylish simple/elegant design -- again, think "Swatch" only with some ipod/iphone features included. (I realize the Swatch group now owns many luxury brands. I'm referring to the primarily plastic modern-looking watches like the original Swatch that came out in the 1980's) Anyway, a modern-styled plastic-case iWatch sounds really workable to me, but will that capture 10% of the market? Not bloody likely. Look at watch sales. Where is all the money being made? At the low-end plastic watches? Nope. The highest sales and margins are in the traditional jewelry-type watches. Something I can't see Apple competing with.
So, if Apple is going for an iWatch, they can't target the high-end jewelry watch market, so that's out. They can't target the low-end quartz or digital watch market, because that is already saturated with low-margin products. Their only hope is to define a new market somewhere in the middle with enough margin to make money. So, what is this watch going to *DO* that will garner more than a yawn from the general population (certain Apple fanboys excepted.)
You've got to do more than tell time. A cheap quartz watch will do that, and do it more stylishly.
So, okay, add in an MP3 player, stop watch, and maybe GPS, and other features runners/cyclists might want.
Yes, an iPhone/Smartphone can do those things, but they aren't as small/compact/portable. That's really all an iWatch might have going for it. -- size. Target the sports crowd so that you don't have to take your iPhone running with you. Otherwise, the crowd that already stopped wearing watches because they have a smart phone won't give it a second look.
Could they pack the ability to make phone calls into a watch? Maybe. Generally the two things that eat power on a smartphone are wifi and the display. Take out wifi (or turn it off) and make the screen much smaller, and you might be able to shrink a cell phone into a watch. That might make an iWatch attractive. However, the nice thing about having a smartphone is all the other things you can do with it --things that are going to be hard on a watch (texting, web browsing, e-mail, playing games, etc.) So, if you buy an iWatch that can make calls, do you also keep your smartphone? Do you have two cellphone contracts? If that's the case, I'd rather just have one device and use (or not) a regular watch. The trend in smartphone screen size is going bigger, not smaller. So, the iWatch as a cellphone replacement doesn't seem to make sense.
Really, the only market opportunity I can see for an iWatch is as a wearable ipod with more features (like GPS, maybe have it sync with your iPhone calendar to alert you to appointments, etc.) That could actually be kinda cool. Would I buy one? No. Will it grab 10% of the watch market? Um... probably not.
Well, okay, so you you think you might (or might not) need a fighter jet, or maybe a drone, or a cruise missle... Here's why you might (or might not) want these things:
Drones:
Drones are good for when you need to maintain a presence above a section of ground to observe what is going on, and if you have an armed drone, they are great for taking out point targets (people, vehicles, small buildings, etc.) They can stay in the air much longer than a manned air craft, and they don't risk a human going into harm's way.
Drones are NOT good at carrying a large amount of weapons for taking out larger targets (air bases, power plants, radar stations, bridges, etc.) Some of the larger drones are starting to get this capability, so it is logical to assume that this limitation will go away with some of the larger (and more expensive) drones. However, currently drones do not work well unless you control the air space they are flying in. While man-portable surface to air missiles may not have the range to engage a high-flying drone, they would probably be effective against lower-flying drones. Since most current drones do not have much in the way of stealth or counter-measures, they are vulnerable to any surface to air missile that has the range and altitude to reach them. Even old 1960's vintage SA-2's would have little trouble shooting down most drones. Only when you go to very expensive stealth drones do you gain much chance of surviving air space that is protected by even older, cheaper, less-capable SAM's. However, even with a stealth drone, if the enemy has fighter air craft, you are still in trouble. Once the fighter is close enough to see the drone on radar (stealth only reduces the range at which an air craft can be seen with radar, it does not make it 100% invisible), or the drone can be seen with infrared or visually, the fighter has the advantage. Today's drones are unable to dog fight, and the latency and lack of situational awareness that comes from piloting a drone remotely makes them unable to dog fight effectively, even if a drone were made maneuverable enough to even attempt it (which none currently are.)
So, bottom line, drones are useful if you are facing an opponent who does not have fighters, or where their fighters have already been destroyed.
Cruise Missiles:
Cruise Missiles are great for hitting fixed targets from long range, like bridges, buildings, military bases, fixed command and control stations, etc. They are not as good at hitting moving targets, as they generally lack the ability to search out and find a mobile target and attack it after they are launched. For the vast majority of cruise missiles, you have to know where the target is when they are launched, and the target can't move while the cruise missile is in flight. This makes cruise missiles largely ineffective against mobile army units (tanks, trucks, infantry, etc.) Army units are the only combatants that can invade territory and hold it, so dealing with them is important. Also, while some cruise missiles can be fired from ground launchers, you can drastically increase the range of cruise missiles if you launch them from a mobile platform like a ship or an air craft. Drones, as of yet, can't carry cruise missiles, so you either need new very large drone, or a manned air craft capable of launching a cruise missile to get enough range to make these weapons effective. The nice thing about a cruise missile is that you can attack well-defended fixed target from a distance without having to risk a human in an air plane, and they are faster and harder to shoot down than a drone.
Conventional Fighter (e.g. a F/A-18E/F Super Hornet)
The Super Hornet is a very versatile air craft. It is capable of both air-to-air as well as air-to-surface combat. If you face an enemy that has fighter air craft, the Super Hornet can try to shoot them down at medium range with missiles, and/or at close range with short-range missiles and a gun (e.g. dog fighting.) In the 1960's, the U.S. thought that missiles were the way
Yes, that's the one. However, I don't think you can scale up the costs by a simple price per pound ratio. It is entirely possible to build an airplane for less than $10,000:
href=http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/ten_grand.html
If you don't have to put a pilot inside, and using more mass-production techniques, you could probably get the cost down even further. My cousin built a plane in his garage for less that $30,000 that can easily carry 500 pounds (assuming no people on board). It was designed for aerobatics so it traded speed and maneuverability for range, but the concept is the same. The biggest road block to doing something like this before now is the prohibitive cost and complexity of building an autonomous guidance system. That part is getting cheaper and easier all the time.
Heck, this guy: Bruce Simpson built a cruise missile with off the shelf components for $5000, though I think it is too small to carry a reasonable payload.
Phalanx shoots 75 rounds per second. I don't think you can just fire 3-10 rounds per target. These would quickly run out of ammo. GPS can effectively be jammed at ground level. With directional antennas, it is much harder to jam them in the air, as you can filter out any signals at a little above the drone's altitude and below. So, you'd have to be ABOVE the drone to jam GPS signals. This limits the available platforms to electronic warfare aircraft, but with a movable directional antenna, even these signals could be filtered out without much difficulty. There is also more than one GPS system, so you can't just turn it off, or reduce the error correction to make it unusable. Cameras with relatively straight-forward image recognition software would be enough for terminal guidance. The technology for this has existed since the 1980's, and is relatively cheap these days. While not full RPV, it shouldn't be difficult to make the drones able to accept basic directional commands (change navigational way points, confirm target selection, etc.) Using spread-spectrum frequency hopping and limiting the number of times updates are transmitted would make jamming this communication channel extremely difficult. There are open-source software radios that could handle this sort of set up easily at very low cost.
You are correct that the drones would not have any defensive ability. An air craft could easily pick them off with a gun. However, this gun has a high rate of fire and limited ammunition, so each fighter can only shoot down a limited number of drones. Fly lots of drones, and accept losses due to aerial engagements.
Yep and Yep. So don't hide them. Distribute them, so that a single air strike takes out only a fraction of them. Then, build ten times that many out of cardboard and distribute them as well. Turn everything everywhere into a potential target. Short a preemptive nuclear strike, what are you going to hit with your air strike?
The fact of the matter is, a carrier battle group embarks a fixed amount of ordnance. Replenishment at sea is time consuming. If you throw enough stuff at a carrier battle group, at some point it will run out of ammunition. It is simply a numbers game. There is also no reason a drone needs to cost $275,000. About 8 years ago some hobbyists built a balsa wood model aircraft that flew autonomously across the Atlantic with an on-board auto pilot and telemetry for less than $500. That's a 2500-3000nm range, with simple electronics (which are even less expensive and more powerful today) with the ability to receive data and track the location of said drone for less than $500. Scale that up a little, and a VERY cheap, albeit slow and vulnerable cruise missile is entirely possible. A small drone like this doesn't need a dedicated launch facility. I can be produced in a large number of fairly basic distributed shops. There are no obvious fixed targets to hit with tomahawks or laser-guided bombs. No fixed runways to bomb, nothing to take out with a preemptive strike. Put enough of them into the air, and you simply aren't going to shoot them all down. Radar guidance is probably too expensive, so it would be limited to cameras. The carrier group could certainly put up a smoke screen, but how long can it maintain that? It certainly can't launch or recover aircraft while emitting a smoke screen, so at some point it will have to stop before any aircraft already in the air run out of fuel. With a 2500mn range, the drones can simply loiter until any aircraft in the air are out of weapons and out fuel and the carrier has to stop the smoke screen to recover aircraft. At that point any remaining drones can attack. Phalanx weapons have a limited ammunition capacity, and take time to reload. Yes, they would wipe out large numbers of drones easily, but at some point they will be empty and will become useless.
A plan like this probably was not economically or technically feasible 15 years ago. Only with the miniaturization and drastic cost reduction in electronics needed to build the control/guidance system could you even contemplate something like this. I'm not saying it is simple. You'd need thousands, probably tens of thousands of drones or more, costing many millions of dollars, but that's still cheaper than a squadron of 4th generation fighter planes. I don't care how good your defenses are. If I can cause you to expend ammunition, and you have a fixed amount of ammunition at your disposal, and I can build weapons cheaply enough and deploy them fast enough, I can overwhelm you every time.
The Japanese tried this tactic in WWII with the kamikaze attacks. That tactic had some (although limited) success mainly because they could not train enough pilots well enough or fast enough, and you lost your trained pilot with every attack. At the end of the war they still had airplanes, and even fuel (although it was alcohol based because we had long since cut off their supplies of oil.) Remove the pilot from that equation, and you remove the main limitation on the numbers of drones you can produce and field at one time.
So, don't product them all in one place. Cheap wooden airframes could be built in a garage. Engine production would be a bit more difficult to decentralize, but again, a machine shop in the basement of a house is sufficient to built engines. Unless you carpet bomb EVERYTHING, it is going to be hard to shut down production. The Germans did this in WWII with aircraft production, and were able to still build aircraft right up through 1945 in the face of massive bombing. The V1 and V2 were different, because they required fixed launch sites, and unusual materials for the fuel.
The trouble is, the CIWS fires those 1500 rounds at 4,500 rounds per minute, so it can only fire for 20 SECONDS. How many targets can a single CIWS take out before it is out of ammo? 10? If I have 100 cruise missiles flying at your ship, I don't care if you shoot down 10 of them.
It's all a numbers game. Okay, so 3,000 cheap cruise missiles isn't enough? build more. An F-15 carries what, 8 air to air missiles max? Plus the gun, so best case, an F-15 can shoot down, say 12 cruise missiles, assuming they can launch, get to the the intercept, and have enough time to expend all of their stores. An F-22 carries 8 missiles as well, plus a gun (but with less ammunition than an F-15). F-18 can carry maybe 6 missiles, and the same goes for the F-16. So, how many of these do you have in-theater and can get airborne with the fuel, range, and armaments to do the job? So, let's say you have maybe 100 F-15, 50 F-22's, 250 F-16's, and maybe 60 F-18's available. Let's assume you could get a maximum of ~80% of those in the air in time (some would be down for maintenance, others might not be fueled and armed yet, etc.) so, maximum best-case theoretical anti-missile kills would be:
80 F-15's x 12 = 960
40 F-22's x 10 = 400
200 F-16's x 10 = 2000
50 F-18's x 10 = 500
Total: 3860
Now, add in a carrier battle group with maybe 8 AEGIS cruisers/destroyers, each with roughly 70 interceptors. That's another 560 potential kills, plus CIWS, the carrier's sea sparrows, Marines shooting MANPAD's machine guns, whatever. Figure maybe another 100 kills, max.
Final total: about 4500.
Okay, fine. So what if I build 10,000 cheap cruise missiles? Maybe 30% of them fail for some reason (hey, I said they were cheap, we've got to expect some failures.) The US shoots down 4500 of them. That still leaves 2500 you can't shoot down. Maybe their accuracy is pretty bad, and only 5% of those actually hit anything. That's 125 hits with 500 pound war heads on your carrier battle group. I think that would safely take care of it.
So even while the strike is being executed, the US counter-attacks with cruise missiles. At, what, exactly? The cheap cruise missiles I have in mind have wheels and can take off from a road, or any reasonable flat piece of ground. Distribute the cruise missiles to 500 hundred locations around the country, and scatter paper decoy's to another 500 sites. What are you going to target? When you hit a launch site, what have you done? Put a hole in a road? Collapsed an empty building? Big deal. I just blew up a carrier battle group.
If the airframes were simple wood construction, you could have relatively unskilled labor build them in hundreds of small shops distributed throughout the country. The engines would be a little more complicated, but no more complicated than an air-cooled motorcycle engine, and some Asian and Latin American countries produce many thousands of engines a year without the technical advances of a super power. A decent motorcycle might cost $1000 US to manufacture. Let's say my "cruise missile" costs 10 times that: $10,000.
Okay, let's build 10,000 of them: $100 million, in U.S. dollars. That's less than a single F-22, less than four F-15's. With $100 million dollars worth of cheap ordinance, I've taken out an entire carrier battle group, costing BILLIONS of dollars. Let's not stop there. How about we build another 10,000 cruise missiles, and target the airfields where all of your expensive planes (now out of fuel and out of weapons) have to land. Those get launched right after the first wave, so your tomahawks haven't arrived yet to take out the launch sites. The returning fighter planes return to wrecked air fields, the patriot batteries have all been expended, and there are still another 1000 cruise missiles loitering around waiting for your F-22's and F-15's to land on roadways so that they can be destroyed on the ground. Many more billions lost.
Granted, any prolonged fight with the US is generally not a good idea. The US has such a vast military and such massive manufacturing capability that a prolonged war would not be winnable unless you also have vast resources. However, if you are a nation (like North Korea) that doesn't always act rationally, and has far fewer resources, I still think there are reasonable strategies that could produce some pretty impressive results comparatively cheaply. Unless you employ weapons of mass destruction, I think a quantity vs. quality approach is nearly always a viable strategy if you can produce enough quantity cheaply enough.
I've always thought several thousand simple, relatively stupid, cheap "cruise missiles" could pretty easily defeat a carrier battle group. When I say "cruise missiles" I'm talking about pilot-less drones that are really small air craft (could even be built of wood) with a warhead aboard. You wouldn't even need them to be completely autonomous, though a auto-pilot would probably be a good idea. You'd need a satellite up-link to control them (and to diminish the possibility of someone jamming your control signals) but it seems like it wouldn't be very expensive to build a cheap small aircraft (again, wood would be okay) with a simple air-cooled piston engine and a propeller, a remote control system with a simple auto pilot, and, say, a 500-pound free-fall bomb attached. Build many thousands of these for the same cost of a few modern fighter planes, and then fly them en-mass at a target. Sure, the combination of defensive aircraft and anti-missile systems would knock-down the vast majority of your "cruise missiles", but it would only take a small number getting through and dive-bombing the target with a few well-placed bombs to destroy the target. This seems so much less expensive than building a modern air force/navy/etc. I don't understand why other nations haven't tried it.
Why run the cars off the road?
I'd rather have a system that tells the other cars they are about to be rammed from behind and causes them to move over.
OUT OF MY WAY.
OOO! ...and something that prevents people from jumping the gun when they should be yielding right of way. No one seems to understand the rules at 4-way stops anymore.
Go in the order you arrived
Yield to the person on your right in the case of a tie. (At least in the U.S.)
Take turns.
SIMPLE!
Nope -- too many mouth breathers can't figure that out.
What about Fringe? It isn't spaceships and aliens, but I'd call it sci-fi a la X-Files. It's a decent show, and seems to be doing okay in the ratings. There are a number of special effects (again, not spaceships) but it certainly must be more expensive to produce than some reality TV crap. I agree that higher budgets make it harder to make sci fi shows profitable, but it CAN be done. BSG did it, Babylon 5 mostly did it (the 5th season was in doubt, so they kind of wrapped things up in season 4, so that season 5 felt like an afterthought.) X-Files had a long run, and look how long all the Star Trek spin-offs lasted. SG1 went 10 seasons, which is longer than a lot of sitcoms.
Anyway, I think it is certainly possible to make decent, well scripted sci fi programs, even these days. However, very few networks are trying it, and I don't think any network could pull off a full line up of expensive-to-produce sci fi shows and remain profitable as a network. Maybe if syfy turned into a virtual channel, that only released for-pay content on-line (via netflix, hulu, or direct) and just did one or two shows a season, and/or licensed their shows to other networks they could produce some decent sci fi. Will they? Probably not. I expect the "new" model to be what netflix is doing. My guess is that in 20 years there will be very few actual networks anymore. Instead, you'll have a collection of TV studios producing a handful of shows and licensing them individually to online distribution channels. A few TV channels will probably remain, but the only content they will produce is live national/local news programs. Everything else they'll license from some other production company. My 2 cents, anyway... I would hope will result in better quality programing, but in truth we'll still probably have a lot of crap, simply because it is cheap to produce and there is a willing low-brow audience willing to pay for it.
Well, probably that would run afoul of anti-trust as well. However...
If Google did a hostile take over of, say, two of the major labels, and then immediately offered favorable licensing terms to apple, amazon, and microsoft; then apple, amazon, and microsoft might get a clue as to what google was doing, and each of them might buy up a few labels themselves, and reciprocate the licensing deals with google. End result: everyone except the RIAA and the top music execs win, and no anti-trust. As long as there is no collusion or under the table agreement between any of the parties, it could work... I think it would just take someone to set the example of the new business model.
I also liked SGU and will be sorry to see it go. I initially didn't like SG1. Hated the theatrical movie that started it all. I thought the concept of aliens running around with Egyptian head gear was irredeemably stupid. However, it got better, and I started to like it. SGA started out pretty stupidly, too, IMHO. However, it got better for a few seasons, and then things seemed to escalate to such a degree it all became preposterous. Every week the crew was able to accomplish some seriously unbelievable feats with systems and technology that was far more advanced than anyone could comprehend and wrap everything up with a little bow at the end. What I liked about SGU is that humans were back to where things were at the beginning of SG1 -- nothing is easy, they aren't the top dog, nothing makes sense, and progress came through a lot of effort rather than pushing the button on the twinkly machine and presto! problem (galactic race of vampires, race of super powerful god like creatures, unstoppable sentient machines, impending destruction by natural forces of unbelievable power) was solved. Yeah, SGU started slow. Just like SG1 and SGA did, but it was getting really good. I liked the messiness of it all -- the grasp on leadership, survival, the ship, the unknown, peace among the crew, etc. were all tenuous, and added tension to the story. What was it Hitchcock said? Something about suspense isn't having a bomb under the table, but KNOWING there is a bomb under the table? In SGU, everything was a bomb -- the ship, the social order, the ability to survive stranded far from home, any of it could come apart with a moment's notice. The writers could have done more with that, but it is still an important and interesting part of the show, unlike SG1 or SGA. With SGU gone, there is nothing to watch on SyFy anymore. I don't have cable or a dish, and now I'm glad. I think SyFy and Hulu shot themselves in the foot by releasing some episodes the day after they aired on TV, and others 30 days later. It was so inconsistent I gave up and watched several episodes on you tube. I guess with nothing else to watch, I won't need to worry about that anymore. SyFy used to have some really good shows. Farscape? FireFly? BSG? Even the Dune remake was pretty good. (Yeah, I know, some people hated it, but it was more faithful to the book than the version from the 80's.) What has SyFy got left? Wrestling? Ghost Hunter? Really??? Goodbye SyFy. You have nothing to contribute.
Maybe this needs to happen. With the move and more internet-based TV viewing, I think the profit is going to fall out of a lot of shows, and they will get canned. With the reduced number of shows, people will realize they are paying too much for TV, and drop some of the higher-priced cable/dish offerings. This could lead to networks failing, reducing the number of networks. Hopefully that will concentrate viewership on the networks that are left, allowing them to charge more for advertising, and regaining enough income to do high-budget interesting shows again. We can hope....
A friend in college had to do the "egg drop" as a 101 physics class assignment. He lived in a dorm that was 80% engineering students (including me) so he came to ask us for help. We decided the best design was to core halfway to the center of a watermelon, place the egg inside, remove enough material from the core we had extracted to account for the egg, replace the cored section, and tape it shut. Of course we had to test it first. So, at 1 am one frosty January night in Moscow, ID, we dropped the watermelon from the third floor of a building. Upon impact, the watermelon exploding on the sidewalk dissipated most of the energy. The egg came through in one piece, but had a small crack in it. We decided it would have been better to let the watermelon dry out a bit more the next time, to allow the flesh of fruit to compact a little more on impact. We had also failed to account for the little bits of melon that quickly froze to the sidewalk and were immovable for three weeks until we got a day above freezing.
So, the next time you want to ship something UPS, put it inside a watermelon. No ShockWatch sticker needed. If they are too rough on your package, they will get sprayed by watermelon chunks, and it will be obvious something bad happened when your package arrives.
The terrorists need to put their next bomb in a laptop so that the TSA will ban all laptops. This will cause business travelers to stop flying, which will force all of the airlines to go bankrupt. (A high percentage of airline revenue comes from First/Business class seats, which are filled primarily with laptop-toting business travelers.)
Terrorists: 1
Sanity: 0
IIRC the Pan Am Lockerbie bomb was inside a radio in the cargo hold. Why haven't the TSA banned radios yet? At least that bomb WORKED.
I'm still amazed we can wear shoes and underwear on flights...
Better yet, park your car outside a government building and then call the police saying there is a suspicious device attached to your car. Hey, you did the right, thing, right? How can they fault you? You didn't put it there, don't know what it is or what it does, so you called the police. I mean really, the thing looks like a transmitter attached to a pipe bomb, what would you think? The resulting traffic jam and media coverage of shutting down part of town while the city's bomb squad recovers an FBI tracking device (or, possibly blows up your car just to be safe) would be pretty embarrassing for the FBI. Would kinda suck to loose the car though.