Hats off to the folks who put this together. I was in high school the last
time we saw any closeup pictures of Mercury. Every time we send probes to other
panets we find out really cool stuff. Messenger should be no exception.
If we can't go there ourselves, we can send robots. Robots are cool.:-)
The article doesn't say how many gears this little car has...
RTFA. It has a continuously variable transmission.
There is nothing new about teeny tiny city cars: the Japanese have been
doing them for decades.
The kei car I want is one of the newest, Mitsubishi's
ultra-cool
i.
I believe that in addition to AFLT, the Qualcomm chipset used in the Kindle has GPSOne/AGPS built in.
AGPS uses the AFLT to ask the towers to download almanac data to fast-start an actual GPS satellite receiver, or process the fragments received by the satelite to narrow down the location to the same resolution as a standalone GPS, without the startup time and delays.
They all do. gpsOne uses a number of methods to determine location.
If the network can tell the GPS approximately
where it is with AFLT, it makes it a lot easier for the GPS to figure out exactly where
it is. They work together; it's all part of the same solution. When you program the GPS chipset you
tell it what kind of fix you want: AFLT, listen to satellites and do the number crunching locally
("MS-Based"), or listen to satellites and send the data to a remote server for processing ("MS-Assisted").
I've done this in Brew, though I've seen J2ME code to talk to the GPS as well.
The result is extremely robust, like being able to get a location fix from
deep inside a parkade, or get a fix when the device is hiding in a storage
area inside the vehicle or in a fenderwell (you can imagine who might be interested
in that). I've done drive tests
with a device in my car's trunk, and with devices hidden in all sorts of places
in my van.
Do a search for "AFLT". They estimate the travel time from multiple cell towers (easy with CDMA)
and work from there.
They call it triangulation, though it's a lot closer to
hyperbolic navigation.
...location technology that uses the Kindle's CDMA networking to pinpoint its position
All current CDMA chipsets have location capability, due to E911 requirements for cellphones.
They go through all sorts of gyrations to get a fix quickly when starting the GPS
from cold (can't leave it running all the time or it would kill the battery), and to get a fix in "difficult" environments like urban canyons. They get a rough
location by triangulating on cell towers, determine available satellites, doppler
and code phase estimates, then tell the GPS what it should be listening for. Instead of taking several
minutes from a cold start, they get a fix in a second or two.
When you get a cellphone the service agreement will say that you agree to be located if you
call 911 (read it, it's there). Any other location must be initiated by you, or with your permission,
due to privacy issues. I did software for dedicated CDMA location devices and users got a special
service agreement from Sprint. It said if you buy and use this thing, you are agreeing to be located.
Seriously, though, we're seeing a lot of this:
the notion that any funny stuff, be it
computer software, electronic goodies, chemistry, what have you, is a priori
for bad purposes. Somehow due process has gotten lost in the shuffle,
the user is apparently guilty until proven
innocent, and must be dealt with accordingly.
What we need is Plain English legislation, generally. If a law, contract, or other
legal document cannot be understood by a person of average intelligence and reasonable education, it is null and void.
As Linux is supposed to be a reimplementation of Unix its lack of a new design paradigm is not surprising.
It is worrying that at the application layer, the most popular (or at least most common) designs are re-implementations of some really crap Windows applications.
Then the fact that most software is still written in C/C++ should cause a tear or two.
The Unix way of doing things is extremely powerful. It's not the only way, but I haven't seen too many
alternatives.
I too am dismayed at the efforts of the Linux community to clone Windows. Right down to the icons. Ugh! Let's innovate, people!
The only problem is the manufacturers don't sell them in North America,
and protectionist import laws (both Canada and the U.S., alas)
make it impossible to privately import them.
I'd love to take a
Mitsubishi i for a test drive. I guess my
privately imported
Mitsubishi Delica will have to do for now.
It says it's a Star Wagon on the back, just the ticket for carrying around telescopes.:-)
I suspect the legal situation is indeed similar to being out in the woods shooting.
You know what you are doing is hazardous, so you must take precautions. You must know
what you're doing, must be doing appropriate things with your toys, and you must take
care to make sure you don't hit anybody. This
is the difference between criminal negligence and an accident.
In the current climate, especially in the USA, stuff like this tends to always be viewed as criminal
negligence (or worse). It's always on a guilty-until-proven-innocent basis, too.
In one of those "Oh, sh**!" moments, it just occured to me that one of the local dark sky
sites is on an approach to the international airport (YVR), and adjacent to a regional airport (YDT).
My laser pointer is a new acquisition, so I haven't had occasion to take it
to Boundary Bay. I will be very careful if I do.
...laura who always looks carefully for aircraft before pressing the button, no matter where she is
So, what if these people were using it 'as advertised', to point to sky objects, and this pilot flew INTO their beam? Is that still a chargeable crime? Do they have to prove intent of these people trying to shine it at the helicopter to cause damage or pain to the pilot?
That's the problem. Green lasers are powerful, and they are very bright (intrinsically,
plus the sensitivity of our eyes to green). If you misuse them, you can
hurt somebody with them. What else is new?
I own one myself, and use it as a pointer for astronomy. It works really well.
I am careful where I point it.
I am careful who I allow to use it.
If I deliberately pointed it at an aircraft to try to distract the pilot, that
would indeed be A Bad Thing.
If an aircraft accidently happened to wander in to the path when I was showing
somebody where M31 or Comet 17P/Holmes was, is it a crime? I don't think so.
The Concorde could also cruise supersonic, though it needed
afterburners to accelerate to supersonic speed. What I have read in the
past is that turbojets run out of breath at about Mach 3. But those words
were written a while ago, and there may be developments
that cannot yet be published.
Secrecy issues aside (e.g. SR-71 top speed, U-2 ceiling, etc.), is there
a need for a fighter to go much faster than about Mach 2? If there was,
fighters would indeed be designed to go faster. If radar can't see them
(low, stealthy), and humans can't hear them coming (supersonic, though Mach 1.1 would do),
how much faster do they need to be?
Actually I can't remember writing a paper where wikipedia would have been of any use as a source given how it provides so little in-depth information.
CLICK!
There is a great deal of information on the internet, but it's all a surface gloss of "knowledge",
and there is very little depth on anything, anywhere.
Even the science-oriented part of Yahoo Answers is a joke. You don't learn by bombarding
"experts" with questions. You learn by hitting the books (or suitable analogues - I'm not a total
Luddite...:-) and figuring things out. You need the background, how things fit together and
relate to each other, before you can use the information provided by experts - assuming
the experts really are experts, and are dispensing real information, not bullshit.
...laura who has typed a few bullshit answers in to Yahoo Answers herself
Who is stupid enough to go to Youtube for authoritative information about anything?
The general feeling I see in other forums is that the Internet represents
the sum total of all human knowledge, and if it's on the Internet, it's gospel.
The issue with all electronic media is the ease of
duplication. That's what all the DRM stuff is trying to address, and making such a mess
of everything in the process.
This is nothing new: there was never any physical impediment to sitting down
with a paper book and a Xerox machine, or even writing it out by hand. But
it was laborious and time-consuming, sufficiently so that few people bothered.
It was easier and cheaper to just buy a copy of the book.
So how you you do it? If I'm going to sit down and write a book
I expect to be compensated for my efforts. How can you ensure the author's rights
to fair compensation in a world where files are so easy to duplicate? It's
clear that there is a business model issue here, so how would you fix it?
If everyone started using whatever frequency they wanted to, few of the frequencies would be useful. What if you were using a service and some other service came in and overpowered it, because they had more money for better transmitters or whatever? You would want to go to the government and say, "they can't do that, I was using first!" In a way claiming that you "own" the frequency in that location. This way the same thing happens (the rich and powerful companies get to use the spectrum) but the government also gets money. It's a win-win for everyone but you and me!
This is the function of radio licensing. Organizations get a license for whatever it is they want to use
radio for (communications? broadcasting?), are assigned a frequency to use, and they use it. Subject to sharing requirements (which vary - think AM radio
at night vs. UHF TV), that frequency is theirs, and nobody else can use it.
My employers do wireless data, for example, and we have several frequencies
in the 900 MHz area
that we are licensed to use for over-the-air testing. These frequencies are ours, and if anybody
else tries to use them, they're in trouble. Due to the characteristics of these frequencies,
while our frequency is ours in greater
Vancouver, it could be assigned to others in other areas.
Some services are assigned ranges of frequencies, and sort out the sharing among themselves.
Ham radio is a good example of this. Wifi networking is another.
The auction nonsense is new. Somebody figured the FCC could make a quick buck. The fad
caught on, and lots of other countries are making similar quick bucks.
Slashdot Mirror
In Soviet Russia Slashdot reads YOU!
1. Submit story to Slashdot
2. ???
3. Profit!
Seriously, I have a variety of toys to play with. Techie stuff, like GPSs and little embedded Linux computers.
...laura
Not only is it Insightful, it's also Underrated. :-)
Do we need -1 Mods on Crack?
:-)
...laura
Hats off to the folks who put this together. I was in high school the last time we saw any closeup pictures of Mercury. Every time we send probes to other panets we find out really cool stuff. Messenger should be no exception.
If we can't go there ourselves, we can send robots. Robots are cool. :-)
...laura
Then drop the Anonymous Coward bullshit and show your (virtual) face. What's your problem? Afraid a girl's going to beat you up?
Suggesting that people actually read the referenced articles is standard around Slashdot. You must be new here too.
...laura
Wow. You're either new here, or on the rag.
RTFA. It has a continuously variable transmission.
There is nothing new about teeny tiny city cars: the Japanese have been doing them for decades. The kei car I want is one of the newest, Mitsubishi's ultra-cool i.
...laura
They all do. gpsOne uses a number of methods to determine location.
If the network can tell the GPS approximately where it is with AFLT, it makes it a lot easier for the GPS to figure out exactly where it is. They work together; it's all part of the same solution. When you program the GPS chipset you tell it what kind of fix you want: AFLT, listen to satellites and do the number crunching locally ("MS-Based"), or listen to satellites and send the data to a remote server for processing ("MS-Assisted"). I've done this in Brew, though I've seen J2ME code to talk to the GPS as well.
The result is extremely robust, like being able to get a location fix from deep inside a parkade, or get a fix when the device is hiding in a storage area inside the vehicle or in a fenderwell (you can imagine who might be interested in that). I've done drive tests with a device in my car's trunk, and with devices hidden in all sorts of places in my van.
...laura
Do a search for "AFLT". They estimate the travel time from multiple cell towers (easy with CDMA) and work from there. They call it triangulation, though it's a lot closer to hyperbolic navigation.
...laura
All current CDMA chipsets have location capability, due to E911 requirements for cellphones. They go through all sorts of gyrations to get a fix quickly when starting the GPS from cold (can't leave it running all the time or it would kill the battery), and to get a fix in "difficult" environments like urban canyons. They get a rough location by triangulating on cell towers, determine available satellites, doppler and code phase estimates, then tell the GPS what it should be listening for. Instead of taking several minutes from a cold start, they get a fix in a second or two.
When you get a cellphone the service agreement will say that you agree to be located if you call 911 (read it, it's there). Any other location must be initiated by you, or with your permission, due to privacy issues. I did software for dedicated CDMA location devices and users got a special service agreement from Sprint. It said if you buy and use this thing, you are agreeing to be located.
It's pretty slick.
...laura
No, I'm me.
Curiously, I have a clone, who looks so much like me that people can't tell us apart. Her name is not Laura. That would be too weird.
...laura H
That just doesn't seem funny any more... :-(
Seriously, though, we're seeing a lot of this: the notion that any funny stuff, be it computer software, electronic goodies, chemistry, what have you, is a priori for bad purposes. Somehow due process has gotten lost in the shuffle, the user is apparently guilty until proven innocent, and must be dealt with accordingly.
Tragic.
...laura
While the TCP/IP protocol suite was largely developed by DARPA, much of what the Internet is today (WWW) started at CERN in Switzerland.
So there.
...laura
What we need is Plain English legislation, generally. If a law, contract, or other legal document cannot be understood by a person of average intelligence and reasonable education, it is null and void.
Yeah, I know the lawyers would hate it. Tough.
...laura
Then the fact that most software is still written in C/C++ should cause a tear or two.
The Unix way of doing things is extremely powerful. It's not the only way, but I haven't seen too many alternatives.
I too am dismayed at the efforts of the Linux community to clone Windows. Right down to the icons. Ugh! Let's innovate, people!
...laura
Fuel efficient cars are available, right now.
The only problem is the manufacturers don't sell them in North America, and protectionist import laws (both Canada and the U.S., alas) make it impossible to privately import them.
I'd love to take a Mitsubishi i for a test drive. I guess my privately imported Mitsubishi Delica will have to do for now. It says it's a Star Wagon on the back, just the ticket for carrying around telescopes. :-)
...laura
I suspect the legal situation is indeed similar to being out in the woods shooting. You know what you are doing is hazardous, so you must take precautions. You must know what you're doing, must be doing appropriate things with your toys, and you must take care to make sure you don't hit anybody. This is the difference between criminal negligence and an accident.
In the current climate, especially in the USA, stuff like this tends to always be viewed as criminal negligence (or worse). It's always on a guilty-until-proven-innocent basis, too.
In one of those "Oh, sh**!" moments, it just occured to me that one of the local dark sky sites is on an approach to the international airport (YVR), and adjacent to a regional airport (YDT). My laser pointer is a new acquisition, so I haven't had occasion to take it to Boundary Bay. I will be very careful if I do.
...laura who always looks carefully for aircraft before pressing the button, no matter where she is
That's the problem. Green lasers are powerful, and they are very bright (intrinsically, plus the sensitivity of our eyes to green). If you misuse them, you can hurt somebody with them. What else is new?
I own one myself, and use it as a pointer for astronomy. It works really well. I am careful where I point it. I am careful who I allow to use it.
If I deliberately pointed it at an aircraft to try to distract the pilot, that would indeed be A Bad Thing.
If an aircraft accidently happened to wander in to the path when I was showing somebody where M31 or Comet 17P/Holmes was, is it a crime? I don't think so.
...laura
Then there is that idiotic Your Opinion Matters popup that keeps coming up. I'm not sure they want to know what I think!
...laura
Just imagine what will happen when Python turns 20...
...laura
The Concorde could also cruise supersonic, though it needed afterburners to accelerate to supersonic speed. What I have read in the past is that turbojets run out of breath at about Mach 3. But those words were written a while ago, and there may be developments that cannot yet be published.
Secrecy issues aside (e.g. SR-71 top speed, U-2 ceiling, etc.), is there a need for a fighter to go much faster than about Mach 2? If there was, fighters would indeed be designed to go faster. If radar can't see them (low, stealthy), and humans can't hear them coming (supersonic, though Mach 1.1 would do), how much faster do they need to be?
...laura
CLICK!
There is a great deal of information on the internet, but it's all a surface gloss of "knowledge", and there is very little depth on anything, anywhere.
Even the science-oriented part of Yahoo Answers is a joke. You don't learn by bombarding "experts" with questions. You learn by hitting the books (or suitable analogues - I'm not a total Luddite... :-) and figuring things out. You need the background, how things fit together and
relate to each other, before you can use the information provided by experts - assuming
the experts really are experts, and are dispensing real information, not bullshit.
...laura who has typed a few bullshit answers in to Yahoo Answers herself
The general feeling I see in other forums is that the Internet represents the sum total of all human knowledge, and if it's on the Internet, it's gospel.
The first is nonsense. The second is scary.
...laura
For the record: I have three primary beefs with DRM:
I can think of lots more. But these three will do for a start.
...laura
The issue with all electronic media is the ease of duplication. That's what all the DRM stuff is trying to address, and making such a mess of everything in the process.
This is nothing new: there was never any physical impediment to sitting down with a paper book and a Xerox machine, or even writing it out by hand. But it was laborious and time-consuming, sufficiently so that few people bothered. It was easier and cheaper to just buy a copy of the book.
So how you you do it? If I'm going to sit down and write a book I expect to be compensated for my efforts. How can you ensure the author's rights to fair compensation in a world where files are so easy to duplicate? It's clear that there is a business model issue here, so how would you fix it?
...laura
This is the function of radio licensing. Organizations get a license for whatever it is they want to use radio for (communications? broadcasting?), are assigned a frequency to use, and they use it. Subject to sharing requirements (which vary - think AM radio at night vs. UHF TV), that frequency is theirs, and nobody else can use it. My employers do wireless data, for example, and we have several frequencies in the 900 MHz area that we are licensed to use for over-the-air testing. These frequencies are ours, and if anybody else tries to use them, they're in trouble. Due to the characteristics of these frequencies, while our frequency is ours in greater Vancouver, it could be assigned to others in other areas.
Some services are assigned ranges of frequencies, and sort out the sharing among themselves. Ham radio is a good example of this. Wifi networking is another.
The auction nonsense is new. Somebody figured the FCC could make a quick buck. The fad caught on, and lots of other countries are making similar quick bucks.
...laura