Where to start? As is unfortunately typical, Tom's crew demonstrates a profound lack of clue. I'll limit myself to one point.
None of the tests was allowed to reach anything resembling steady-state. This is crucial, because the characteristic time to reach steady-state is strongly influenced by the heat capacitance of the system, which is to say, by the volume of water and metal being heated, weighted by the respective heat capacities and conductances between each. The steady-state temperature, which after all is what you care about, is determined by the efficiency of the final-stage of heat-exchange: namely, how quickly heat is pulled out of the water and into the air, as for example assisted by the fan.
A high-school physics student can write down and solve the appropriate differential equations well enough. And even a high-school dropout knows that the steady-state temperature is what matters most. We hope the typical customer is smarter.
a young whippersnapper got hooked on objected-oriented design. He derided all the existing Fortran we had as spaghetti code. To some of us, though, his "object-oriented" code was lasagna code. No overriding structure, code spread out all over the place, a single function scattered over three files. And this was still Fortran; I've seen C++ coders who took six files for a similar, simple function.
Amen. This is the smartest observation of all. May I quote this?
So, if a scruples-challenged marketer SPAMS all of us from 30,000 feet, who has jurisdiction. And you thought anti-SPAM laws were tough to enforce now?:)
ZPO: excellent point. I guess I was more concenred with the terrorist relaying real-time position data to his SAM-weilding buddies on the ground -- a poor man's radar if you like. But maybe its not such a big deal.
Nothing. But I assume -- good grief otherwise -- that Flytecomm does not provide real-time , 3-meter precision. I expect its considerably less precise and somewhat delayed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I sure hope not!
What's to keep a suicidal terrorist from combining a handhelp GPS unit with broadband to reveal the plane's course and location? Maybe this service needs to provide only incoming connections?
The cited article unintentionally reveals an pervasive hidden attitude, which is in fact part of the problem:
This is the last remaining communications medium that allows the small person to participate...
The salient point is that this medium has an unprecedented potential to project any individual's voice. That voice must not be squelched, and the battle begins at home: let us not perpetuate the underestimation of the invidual with carelessly chosen words!
Could the X-raying of electronics be a violation of DMCA? Seems like there might be a lot of copyrighted work in there, right down to the patterning of PCBs. And an X-Ray machine certainly could be used to circumvent a factory sealed case...
Should have gone to L-school
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Where to start? As is unfortunately typical, Tom's crew demonstrates a profound lack of clue. I'll limit myself to one point.
None of the tests was allowed to reach anything resembling steady-state. This is crucial, because the characteristic time to reach steady-state is strongly influenced by the heat capacitance of the system, which is to say, by the volume of water and metal being heated, weighted by the respective heat capacities and conductances between each. The steady-state temperature, which after all is what you care about, is determined by the efficiency of the final-stage of heat-exchange: namely, how quickly heat is pulled out of the water and into the air, as for example assisted by the fan.
A high-school physics student can write down and solve the appropriate differential equations well enough. And even a high-school dropout knows that the steady-state temperature is what matters most. We hope the typical customer is smarter.
So, if a scruples-challenged marketer SPAMS all of us from 30,000 feet, who has jurisdiction. And you thought anti-SPAM laws were tough to enforce now? :)
ZPO: excellent point. I guess I was more concenred with the terrorist relaying real-time position data to his SAM-weilding buddies on the ground -- a poor man's radar if you like. But maybe its not such a big deal.
Nothing. But I assume -- good grief otherwise -- that Flytecomm does not provide real-time , 3-meter precision. I expect its considerably less precise and somewhat delayed. Maybe I'm wrong, but I sure hope not!
What's to keep a suicidal terrorist from combining a handhelp GPS unit with broadband to reveal the plane's course and location? Maybe this service needs to provide only incoming connections?
Could the X-raying of electronics be a violation of DMCA? Seems like there might be a lot of copyrighted work in there, right down to the patterning of PCBs. And an X-Ray machine certainly could be used to circumvent a factory sealed case... Should have gone to L-school