They need to get a medical exclusion from the penalty
In just a few years we'll have more pages of "medical exclusions and taxation" than we do IRS regulations for income taxes. We'll have replaced a costly insurance paperwork nightmare with a medical exclusion one.
Oh, Im sorry, I wasn't aware you wanted a detailed medical paper written up in a fucking Slashdot comment
Accuracy and civility are all that are required. And I'm sorry you consider corrections to your claims to be "nit picking". There are people reading these things that might think you were serious and you'd be hindering any real progress they could be making. But since all they need to do is "put less" in the "piehole", it's clear you don't really care about all those lazy folks. You just want a forum so you can insult them.
Next time I converse with you I will be sure to have my comment published in a medical journal and peer reviewed before posting it here.
So this will the last we hear of you, then? You'll fail the peer review if you keep up the insulting tone about how easy it is for all the lazy people to lose weight, if only they'd do it the way you tell them to. And we'll just ignore the long term effects of starvation level dieting -- the body is so busy trying to save energy that once you hit your goal and start to eat again that it will pack every calorie it can back into fat to protect you. No need for bedside manner or any effort to help people stay in compliance, even though that's a major part of any real medical discussion these days.
Of course you don't really mean you'll go to the effort of publishing. You don't go to the effort of reading anything, so why would you do even more?
Heaven's no. Your wife is a doctor so you know best... well, you didn't say doctor of what. If she's telling people to diet the way you want them to, I pray she's not a doctor of medicine with actual living, breathing patients to care for.
Its not rocket science. Your body needs X number of calories to *maintain*, consume less than that and it will burn fat.
Consume less than that by the amount you are proposing and your body will go into starvation mode. It will drop the number calories it takes to "maintain", and it will burn muscle along with fat. Burning muscle is one way that the basal metabolic rate is lowered by the body that is now trying to conserve every bit of energy it can.
Yes, truly, modern doctors have figured out that it isn't as simple as "eat less", because they know that the body will actually fight you when you try to lose weight.
My wifes a doctor, and she completely agrees with me - consume fewer calories than your body needs to maintain itself and you will lose weight.
If your wife tells her patients to go on the crash diets you claim she agrees with you about, then I pity her patients. They're going to yo-yo for the rest of their lives and be miserable for half of the time. She really needs to pay attention to the literature and not preach 1930s-era dieting mantras.
If you want to misconstrue my point, you are going to have to do better than that.
Your point ignores current medical knowledge about metabolism, and contains no bedside manner at all. I don't have to misconstrue it to know it is wrong, it's what you are repeatedly saying.
If it were as simple as "eat 1000 calories a day" for everyone to be thin and happy and healthy, there wouldn't be an obesity problem. At some point you reach your goal weight and you can't get by with 1000 calories a day anymore. What do people do then? You've given them no other information.
the fine will be reduced to zero if this is the first year they showed in a 'Hazard' category and make a marked improvement.
So they get dinged the second year if they don't remove the "hazard" despite their best efforts, right? "This year you showed up as 'obese'. You got rid of half of that weight in a controlled, lasting manner, but this year are still obese. Pay up, sucker!" Or is it better to have people yo-yoing their diets, crashing to get under the "hazard limit" and then picking it all back up, plus some?
And, pray tell, what do you do with the people who have gained weight because of the medication you've put them on to keep them alive? I heard a fascinating lecture on weight loss 101 (search for the podcast "Darthmouth Hitchcock Medical Lectures") that reported a patient who was put on a certain medication that gained 30 pounds in one month with no other changes in lifestyle. "Woopsies, we gave you a drug with known weight gain issues and now you are obese. Pay us more!"
You know, people are all about health care being a basic human right and we must have single payer to make sure that happens, and then immediately start thinking of ways to keep people from getting healthcare that is their basic human right.
Restrict yourself calorie wise to a 1000 calories a day and you will lose weight, even if you just lay in bed all day.
People simply don't want to do it.
Yeah, because many times they have to go to WORK every day so they can pay to have a house with that bed in it. I wonder, if NHS is using weight as a tool to ration care because of the cost, will they pay the dole for someone to take nine months off work so they can "lay in bed all day" while choosing your fantastically successful weight loss program?
I've found that the people who propose such radical diet methods and call others lazy because they cannot stick to them to be medically challenged (i.e. not doctors) as well as socially so. I know what my doctor would say were I to tell him I'm taking nine months off work to eat almost nothing and lay in bed all day. He'd tell me I'm doing it wrong. He'd got the license. Do you?
Walking is great for improving your health in general, but for the sole purpose of losing weight, it's way less effective than just putting less into that pie hole.
Given your use of derogatory language here, I'm guessing you have no real medical information to share and have not read any of the literature regarding reduced calorie intake and the response of the body to it.
Hint: your body is a miser. It evolved to survive shortages. It knows how to reduce use of calories when calories aren't available for input. And second hint: it is easier for the body to make up a calorie intake deficit by burning muscle instead of fat, a tactic that also reduces the resting metabolic rate and means fewer calories are required.
If only it were as easy as "putting less" into the system. It's not a zero sum game, except in the very very long run.
Totally, because spending two grand on a computer and expecting it to actually work as advertised is quite pretentious.
I didn't say anything about expecting a computer to "actually work", I spoke only to the nonsense about claiming that such a trivial problem would "lay the computer out".
As for 'as advertised', when is the last time you saw an advertisement that said that the space bar only emits one space? You're playing a bit of the same hyperbole game that the blogger who complains about his computer being "laid out" for such a trivial thing is.
So the chain of causality is: Congress made it a crime to violate any regulation made by the FAA. The FAA made it a violation to operate any portable electronic device not approved by the Air Carrier. At least one Air Carrier prohibits the use of any device that transmits or receive.
I've not debated you on whether the use of radios on aircraft is illegal. YOU SAID that that "airplane mode" is required by law to disable GPS. I asked you for a cite for THAT CLAIM. So far, all you have done is ignore what you said and prove something completely different.
"Airplane mode is required to disable GPS in order to make the device compliant with the approval for at least one US carrier.
There is NO LAW THAT REQUIRES THIS. "Airplane mode" is a setting on a cellphone. No law mentions this setting. It could do anything that the author of that bit of code wants it to do. There is no mandate that it turns GPS off. And since you now seem to quote the laws, you would notice that GPS is not the system that must be disabled for all modes of flight except while the aircraft is on the ground, and that the aircraft operator or pilot in command has NO authority to approve while in flight. That's the cell system.
Did you catch that detail? It isn't FAA regulations that say you cannot use a cellphone to make calls while in flight. It is FCC regulations. The airline operators do not have authority to exempt you from FCC regulations. To be blunt, the laws you quote for "airplane mode" don't apply to the cell radios anyway.
There is also no law that mandates that cellphone manufacturers make their equipment in a way that an aircraft operator CAN allow them to be used in flight for other purposes. Nobody says that your cellphone must be made in a way that United can say "you can turn it on and play games".
Or, to put it another way, if you shipped a phone in which GPS was not disabled by Airplane Mode, then United passengers would be forced to either GPS off manually when entering Airplane Mode (or turn the phone entirely off) or else be in criminal and civil violation of the law.
Now you have a better idea of the truth. The law does not mandate that "airplane mode" disable anything because the law does not once mention "airplane mode", and the law does not indirectly cover "airplane mode" because there are other ways of turning GPS off. In fact, I almost NEVER have the GPS in my tablet turned on, and that setting has nothing to do with "airplane mode". I can enable "airplane mode" and then disable it, and the GPS won't suddenly pop on, and I can have the GPS on when "airplane mode" is on, so claiming that there is some law that you cannot cite mandating GPS control via "airplane mode" is just ridiculous.
The law you cite also does not mandate that there BE a way to turn off any or all of the radio systems in your cellphone either independently or en masse. The law doesn't even require that you be able to turn the phone off at all. The law says who gets to decide if and when it can be used during a flight. If you have a phone that cannot be turned off, you can't carry it onto the airplane. The law says nothing to make that an unacceptable solution to how you obey it.
Face it, "airplane mode" is a convenient way to do something; there is no legal requirement as to what that something is. The only legal requirements are that the electronics in the phone be off when you are told to turn them off. How they get to that state is up to the manufacturers.
Finally, I think it's ridiculous to claim that the GPS isn't a radio within the meaning of the United policy.
Oh for heaven's sake. Since you didn't bother quoting a single word of who you are replying to, I can only assume you are arguing with someone else here.
United Airlines (just to pick one) prohibits all radio receivers and transmitters.
Well, that web page says that, but that web page is demonstrably wrong. In fact, that page contradicts itself! By ignoring what else it says and cherry picking that one statement from a list you become wrong, too.
First, they also say that pagers can be used at any time. A pager is a receiver. Strike one. Second, they say that you can use cellular services when the flight attendants say you can. Strike two. Third, United is going the absolutely stupid path of removing in-seat entertainment services from much of its fleet, replacing it with Wi-Fi services. Wi-Fi is... both a transmitter and a receiver. Strike three.
Nothing better than an information page that contradicts itself, huh?
Hold on," I said. "If a single piece of dust lays the whole computer out, don't you think that's kind of a problem?"
No, the problem is in buying an Apple product in the first place.
No, I think the bigger problem is a tech blogger who thinks that a space bar that spaces twice is "lay[ing] the whole computer out". Learn the sequence "space backspace" and you'll be fine. Or just live with double spaces and let the word processor you are using fix them for you.
Turning off GPS wouldn't make any sense at all. GPS is passive and doesn't transmit.
You are wrong. GPS is an active circuit. While it does not intentionally emit RF signals, EVERY electronic device that operates at RF frequencies emits some. That includes your laptop computer and your GPS.
There are no direct sampling receivers for GPS, which means there are none that directly digitize the incoming GPS radio signal without converting it to an intermediate frequency. That conversion requires a local oscillator, and if it is a dual or triple conversion receiver that means there are two or three local oscillators. Every one of the local oscillators can be radiated and cause interference.
Further, even if the receiver is direct digital sampling, the computer circuitry that converts that sampling into data uses at least one and more likely two or three clock circuits for the digital processing units. Those clocks, too, can radiate.
I've already told the anecdote about the GPS in my car that covers a local 2M repeater. I have others about "receivers" that have caused interference. One was a TV/DVD combo that put out a signal on 121.5MHz that was so strong the SARSAT could pick it up. Another was a receiver for 121.5MHz that blocked us from hearing a channel that New York ATC was talking to us on.
So no, "receiver" does not mean "no RF emissions."
Beware, though. There are a lot of people who don't know anything about tech,
You said, "which is required by law", then pointed to an FAA regulation, which is not the same thing.
Actually, 47CFR91.21 is a law. It is not just an FAA regulation, it is a law in a section of the code that is allocated to the FAA.
And on top of that, it references that it's a carrier decision, making that a fairly worthless thing to point to without fully examining carrier restrictions.
Until recently, the carriers opted on the side of safety and did not allow use of personal electronic devices (PED). I've actually had the waitresses, I mean stewardsesses, I mean flight attendants tell me to turn off my noise cancelling headphones because they saw the little red light on them. This ignores the fact that those headphones operate only at audio frequencies (no RF interference) and allow the passenger the ability to actually hear and understand the cabin announcements (like the safety briefing). So, I covered the red light with a bit of tape and they left me alone after that.
Now they allow small devices during all phases, and larger devices (like laptops) above 10,000', but still no cellphone service. Some are putting in local cells, but I've not come across that yet.
The problem is, the law he referenced does NOT say what he claims it does. It does not mandate that "airplane mode" disable the GPS. It says nothing about "airplane mode".
Your bolding for the United statement also missed the previous word, which is radio. Nowhere on the United page does it cover GPS,
GPS is radio. How do you think the signals get from the satellites to your cellphone?
that doesn't overlap with any of the more common definitions of radio being shortwave, AM, FM, etc.
I'm sorry, but "radio" does not mean just "shortwave, AM, FM". It means "radio". And in 91.21 terms, it doesn't say "radio", it says "electronic devices". The REASON behind "electronic devices" is based on RF interference from radios.
I'll also point out that although the frequencies that GPS are transmitted on doesn't mean the receiver cannot generate interference on many frequencies in many bands. I have a GPS installed under the backseat of my car that I cannot use because it emits interference right on top of a local amateur 2m repeater channel, making that channel useless.
FAA regulation 91.21, which punts it to the airlines:-)
Wrong. 47CFR91.21 says nothing about airplane mode on a cellphone disabling GPS, it talks in very broad terms about the use of all electronic devices on board an aircraft. That would include the use of the cellphone for any purpose. Try again. There was a very specific claim: "[ Or thought about Airplane Mode, which is required by law to disable GPS. ]" What regulation mandates that airplane mode on a cellphone disable GPS?
Wait, so you entered Airplane Mode (which disables all the radios) and then you clicked a button saying "Enable GPS" and you are shocked that . . . GPS is enabled?!
I did not say shocked. I was surprised that a mode which appears to put the cellphone in a state that would comply with 47CFR91.21 does not actually do so. And it is confusing when activating any of the cellphone radios does not turn airplane mode off. If "airplane mode" means anything at all, and if it turns all radios off when it is enabled, then it should not be possible to have any of the radios on when airplane mode is on.
This seems like crystal clear UI to me, but YMMV.
The UI seems clear to me, too. Airplane mode turns the radios off. If airplane mode is ON, then the radios are OFF. But they aren't necessarily off. So what does airplane mode mean, then?
I regularly use gps on planes, after switching my phone to airplane mode, then switching the gps back on.... but obviously, unless expressly allowed, one shouldn't be doing that on a plane.
The same rules that prohibit use of bluetooth and wifi on an airplane unless expressly permitted by the operator also prohibit GPS. Things that transmit are obvious, but GPS receivers have oscillators in them that can leak. The potential for interference is much smaller than for WiFi, but the laws don't differentiate.
[ Or thought about Airplane Mode, which is required by law to disable GPS. ]
I, too, thought "airplane mode" was the be-all, end-all of turning radio systems off. One of the most amazing discoveries I made was when I was in airplane mode and touched the GPS widget to turn GPS on. I assumed, airplane mode means no GPS. And then the GPS turned on.
I've since done the same with WiFi and bluetooth. But mobile data won't turn back on.
Can you please cite the law? I expect it only applies to mobile data and the cell modem, since there is a federal law against using cellphones (in cellphone mode) while in flight. There is no blanket prohibition against GPS.
No, actually, it isn't. That is an idiotic extrapolation.
Are you claiming that zero exposure is not the broadest safety margin possible? How can you get better than that? If ten ppm will kill you, and 5 ppm will make you turn green, then isn't 0 ppm much better than any other number? But thanks for pointing out that it's idiotic. Now look up the phrase "reductio ad absurdum".
Not to the agencies that are using the UAS. A few million dollars is a large part of their budget.
And defeatism is hardly the correct attitude
You've never worked with a government agency, I see.
when there is a clearly identifiable problem with an achievable, remedial solution.
Except there is no clearly identifiably problem. The agencies that use DJI, for example, aren't using them for military purposes. If DJI decides to ground their aircraft tomorrow, it's not a huge deal. Nobody dies because they couldn't perform a military support mission. A day's work in the field is delayed. It happens. They buy a different UAS and move on. They spend a hell of a lot less money buying a new UAS than "a few million dollars".
But DJI is sending all their data back to China! Big deal. The Chinese are going to learn alot from a beach survey.
Now, the UAS that HAVE military missions, those are already non-COTS in many cases, and they don't have the "clearly identifiable problem".
Agencies provide funding for all kinds of projects.
Yes, they do. Projects that fall within the scope of their charter. "Make a community gravitate" isn't it.
It is clearly in the USA's interest to not use software produced by an adversary
In the places where it is not in their interest they don't. Where it doesn't matter they aren't going to spend a "few million dollars" on the hope that someone will come up with a solution to a problem that isn't important to them.
Budgets are getting cut regularly. Adding a few million dollars for an on-spec hope that a solution to a non-problem is produced isn't going to pass muster. That's not defeatist, that realist.
He's literally arguing that the risk is more acceptable than the first responders being given radiation hazmat gear to protect them during the response
No, yet again, that's not what is being said. He said that you have to BALANCE THE RISKS vs. the benefits. There is a risk that a hazmat suit can cause the wearer to overheat -- a risk that anyone who has ever worn the old military MOPP suits is well aware of. You need to balance that risk against the radiation risks. He's not saying "don't wear hazmat suits even if there is radiation".
For your comparison, it would be like arguing firefighters shouldn't wear a heavy fire coats
You're the one who came up with the "don't wear" statement.
The summary says "it COULD lead to Trump's administration..." (emphasis mine), not "is IS leading to...". This whole thing is a scare piece political hatchet attempt by Trump haters, making up their own fantasy world of what Trump "could" do and then forging full steam ahead as if he was doing it just to kill them personally.
The suggested guidelines for what first responders could be exposed to were increased. That's not removing exposure levels for the general population, and it's not changing what industry is allowed to release. It's not the end of the world as we know it, and you aren't going to glow in the dark because evil Trump is poisoning your air.
He's arguing that it is an acceptable risk in an emergency situation. That's quite different than just "okay", and it is quite dishonest to try to equate the two.
If I said that it is an acceptable risk for a firefighter to enter a burning building in search of trapped people, would you then try claiming I said it was okay for everyone to run into burning buildings? Yes, that's what you just did here, so I expect you would.
In any case, this is just an attempt to boost industries that pollute a lot in a variety of ways, by cutting their costs.
This has nothing to do with the levels emitted by anything, it's a statement about the levels acceptable for FIRST RESPONDERS in EMERGENCY SITUATIONS.
In other words, IF there is a leak or accident, which because it is a leak or accident is already outside the regulated levels or it wouldn't be an issue, THEN what levels will we allow first responders to work in while they are dealing with the emergency.
Note that "cleanup" is not a first response. "Rescuing trapped people" is a first response. "Turning off the leak" is a first response. Cleanup is a long-term activity that doesn't have the emergency aspect that a first response requires.
And since it is an emergency, it is quite reasonable that the levels might be higher than for long-term exposures.
Essentially, the debate is about keeping as broad a safety margin as possible.
No, actually, it isn't. "As broad a safety margin as possible" is an argument for zero. Zero lead, zero radiation, zero everything bad. Smaller is better, because smaller is a bigger safety margin. When you argue for "as broad a safety margin as possible", any number greater than 0 is too big.
The real argument is about what level has acceptable levels of danger. That level may not have as broad a safety margin as is possible, but it is safe enough.
Of course, the standard "argument" when someone wants to try to embarrass those who understand the concept of "safe enough" is that "they're trying to kill the children with lead!" or whatever the contaminant is. Obama institutes ridiculous low levels because his true constituency loves it; anyone who puts them back to realistic values is killing the planet yada yada yada.
That's the point...there are more drones involved than what are being discussed here that would be affected by such a blanket requirement.
There are, but they aren't the topic of this discussion. And those "other drones" are very much larger, and capable of much larger payloads. They are not going to have an issue with a few ounces for an ADS-B OUT transmitter or the power drain from it.
Again, there are more than DJI drones involved here, including home-builts without any restrictions whatsoever except the builder's ability & budget.
I'm sorry, but there is still the 400 foot flight limit imposed by class of UAS and operator privileges. You claim no restrictions, which is patently absurd.
That 7 watts is transmitter output power, not consumed power. Even with a very efficient final power amplifier, it's going to need at least 10-11 watts or more, and that's for *just* the final transmitter output stage, not including signal generation and driver stages for the final amplifier stage. That's a serious amount of power drain for a small drone and will seriously reduce flight endurance and performance.
I guess you are ignoring all of the electrical budget discussion already posted. In my budget, I assumed just 50% efficiency, and that means 14 watts, not just 10-11W, and still managed to show that it would be an unmeasurable effect on a typical (DJI Phantom 3 Pro) UAS. I ignored the control electronics because those would be a trivial amount of the power requirement. Your cellphone has more processing power than what it necessary for an ADS-B OUT, and it will run for a very long time on a very small battery.
Please stop waving your hands and stomping your feet about a "7 watt radio" and actually look at the system.
At lower altitudes ground clutter has even more of an effect as the signal 'horizon' is that much nearer for the aircraft as well as the UAV.
You are worried about ground clutter when the UAS will be us where the 200 knot speed limit doesn't apply. That's not "at lower altitudes". Please look up 14CFR91.117 and learn. I am off by 50 knots -- the limit is 250 knots below 10,000 AGL. Ten thousand feet. But still, there is a 200 knot limit below 2500 feet (two thousand five hundred) within 4 nm of an airport and under any Class B airspace.
To find a jet going at "jet speeds" you need to be up 10,000 AGL -- which a DJI isn't going to be. Ever.
And they won't be below 500' unless they are departing or landing at an airport nearby, so they MUST be going less than 200 knots there. If your UAS is up where you can find a jet, it won't be in ground clutter anymore, it will be free and clear of the ground.
A 7 watt transmitter will draw effectively the same amount of power regardless of physical size.
That's right. It will draw an average of less than 50mA if it is the size of an elephant or the more realistic size of a pack of cigarettes. I have 5W radios that contain GPS and will transmit their position via APRS that fit in my pocket. Very small. Very light. I have an 8 W radio sitting on my desk here, and it's not very much bigger than a 5W radio. Most of the size of those radios is user interface -- speaker, dials, etc. Remove the speaker, make the "dial" on/off, and you can reduce the size of the radio even smaller.
Why do you think that a radio that weighs just a few ounces and consumes, over the course of a 20 minute flight, about 20mAH, will be an issue for any UAS that would be regulated by any proposed rule?
As to your link, I thought you said that a full 7-watt ADS-B-out transmitter was "easily accommodated"? Which is it?
You didn't look at the link, did you? You just want to blow smoke. The ADS-B OUT radio I linked to would be trivial to reduce in size and install almost anywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
FAR does not say that the Air Carrier has to have logical rules.
I pointed out that your representation of what they say was incorrect. Whether it is logical or not is your argument, not mine.
They need to get a medical exclusion from the penalty
In just a few years we'll have more pages of "medical exclusions and taxation" than we do IRS regulations for income taxes. We'll have replaced a costly insurance paperwork nightmare with a medical exclusion one.
Oh, Im sorry, I wasn't aware you wanted a detailed medical paper written up in a fucking Slashdot comment
Accuracy and civility are all that are required. And I'm sorry you consider corrections to your claims to be "nit picking". There are people reading these things that might think you were serious and you'd be hindering any real progress they could be making. But since all they need to do is "put less" in the "piehole", it's clear you don't really care about all those lazy folks. You just want a forum so you can insult them.
Next time I converse with you I will be sure to have my comment published in a medical journal and peer reviewed before posting it here.
So this will the last we hear of you, then? You'll fail the peer review if you keep up the insulting tone about how easy it is for all the lazy people to lose weight, if only they'd do it the way you tell them to. And we'll just ignore the long term effects of starvation level dieting -- the body is so busy trying to save energy that once you hit your goal and start to eat again that it will pack every calorie it can back into fat to protect you. No need for bedside manner or any effort to help people stay in compliance, even though that's a major part of any real medical discussion these days.
Of course you don't really mean you'll go to the effort of publishing. You don't go to the effort of reading anything, so why would you do even more? Heaven's no. Your wife is a doctor so you know best ... well, you didn't say doctor of what. If she's telling people to diet the way you want them to, I pray she's not a doctor of medicine with actual living, breathing patients to care for.
Its not rocket science. Your body needs X number of calories to *maintain*, consume less than that and it will burn fat.
Consume less than that by the amount you are proposing and your body will go into starvation mode. It will drop the number calories it takes to "maintain", and it will burn muscle along with fat. Burning muscle is one way that the basal metabolic rate is lowered by the body that is now trying to conserve every bit of energy it can.
Yes, truly, modern doctors have figured out that it isn't as simple as "eat less", because they know that the body will actually fight you when you try to lose weight.
My wifes a doctor, and she completely agrees with me - consume fewer calories than your body needs to maintain itself and you will lose weight.
If your wife tells her patients to go on the crash diets you claim she agrees with you about, then I pity her patients. They're going to yo-yo for the rest of their lives and be miserable for half of the time. She really needs to pay attention to the literature and not preach 1930s-era dieting mantras.
If you want to misconstrue my point, you are going to have to do better than that.
Your point ignores current medical knowledge about metabolism, and contains no bedside manner at all. I don't have to misconstrue it to know it is wrong, it's what you are repeatedly saying.
If it were as simple as "eat 1000 calories a day" for everyone to be thin and happy and healthy, there wouldn't be an obesity problem. At some point you reach your goal weight and you can't get by with 1000 calories a day anymore. What do people do then? You've given them no other information.
the fine will be reduced to zero if this is the first year they showed in a 'Hazard' category and make a marked improvement.
So they get dinged the second year if they don't remove the "hazard" despite their best efforts, right? "This year you showed up as 'obese'. You got rid of half of that weight in a controlled, lasting manner, but this year are still obese. Pay up, sucker!" Or is it better to have people yo-yoing their diets, crashing to get under the "hazard limit" and then picking it all back up, plus some?
And, pray tell, what do you do with the people who have gained weight because of the medication you've put them on to keep them alive? I heard a fascinating lecture on weight loss 101 (search for the podcast "Darthmouth Hitchcock Medical Lectures") that reported a patient who was put on a certain medication that gained 30 pounds in one month with no other changes in lifestyle. "Woopsies, we gave you a drug with known weight gain issues and now you are obese. Pay us more!"
You know, people are all about health care being a basic human right and we must have single payer to make sure that happens, and then immediately start thinking of ways to keep people from getting healthcare that is their basic human right.
Restrict yourself calorie wise to a 1000 calories a day and you will lose weight, even if you just lay in bed all day. People simply don't want to do it.
Yeah, because many times they have to go to WORK every day so they can pay to have a house with that bed in it. I wonder, if NHS is using weight as a tool to ration care because of the cost, will they pay the dole for someone to take nine months off work so they can "lay in bed all day" while choosing your fantastically successful weight loss program?
I've found that the people who propose such radical diet methods and call others lazy because they cannot stick to them to be medically challenged (i.e. not doctors) as well as socially so. I know what my doctor would say were I to tell him I'm taking nine months off work to eat almost nothing and lay in bed all day. He'd tell me I'm doing it wrong. He'd got the license. Do you?
Walking is great for improving your health in general, but for the sole purpose of losing weight, it's way less effective than just putting less into that pie hole.
Given your use of derogatory language here, I'm guessing you have no real medical information to share and have not read any of the literature regarding reduced calorie intake and the response of the body to it.
Hint: your body is a miser. It evolved to survive shortages. It knows how to reduce use of calories when calories aren't available for input. And second hint: it is easier for the body to make up a calorie intake deficit by burning muscle instead of fat, a tactic that also reduces the resting metabolic rate and means fewer calories are required.
If only it were as easy as "putting less" into the system. It's not a zero sum game, except in the very very long run.
Totally, because spending two grand on a computer and expecting it to actually work as advertised is quite pretentious.
I didn't say anything about expecting a computer to "actually work", I spoke only to the nonsense about claiming that such a trivial problem would "lay the computer out".
As for 'as advertised', when is the last time you saw an advertisement that said that the space bar only emits one space? You're playing a bit of the same hyperbole game that the blogger who complains about his computer being "laid out" for such a trivial thing is.
So the chain of causality is: Congress made it a crime to violate any regulation made by the FAA. The FAA made it a violation to operate any portable electronic device not approved by the Air Carrier. At least one Air Carrier prohibits the use of any device that transmits or receive.
I've not debated you on whether the use of radios on aircraft is illegal. YOU SAID that that "airplane mode" is required by law to disable GPS. I asked you for a cite for THAT CLAIM. So far, all you have done is ignore what you said and prove something completely different.
"Airplane mode is required to disable GPS in order to make the device compliant with the approval for at least one US carrier.
There is NO LAW THAT REQUIRES THIS. "Airplane mode" is a setting on a cellphone. No law mentions this setting. It could do anything that the author of that bit of code wants it to do. There is no mandate that it turns GPS off. And since you now seem to quote the laws, you would notice that GPS is not the system that must be disabled for all modes of flight except while the aircraft is on the ground, and that the aircraft operator or pilot in command has NO authority to approve while in flight. That's the cell system.
Did you catch that detail? It isn't FAA regulations that say you cannot use a cellphone to make calls while in flight. It is FCC regulations. The airline operators do not have authority to exempt you from FCC regulations. To be blunt, the laws you quote for "airplane mode" don't apply to the cell radios anyway.
There is also no law that mandates that cellphone manufacturers make their equipment in a way that an aircraft operator CAN allow them to be used in flight for other purposes. Nobody says that your cellphone must be made in a way that United can say "you can turn it on and play games".
Or, to put it another way, if you shipped a phone in which GPS was not disabled by Airplane Mode, then United passengers would be forced to either GPS off manually when entering Airplane Mode (or turn the phone entirely off) or else be in criminal and civil violation of the law.
Now you have a better idea of the truth. The law does not mandate that "airplane mode" disable anything because the law does not once mention "airplane mode", and the law does not indirectly cover "airplane mode" because there are other ways of turning GPS off. In fact, I almost NEVER have the GPS in my tablet turned on, and that setting has nothing to do with "airplane mode". I can enable "airplane mode" and then disable it, and the GPS won't suddenly pop on, and I can have the GPS on when "airplane mode" is on, so claiming that there is some law that you cannot cite mandating GPS control via "airplane mode" is just ridiculous.
The law you cite also does not mandate that there BE a way to turn off any or all of the radio systems in your cellphone either independently or en masse. The law doesn't even require that you be able to turn the phone off at all. The law says who gets to decide if and when it can be used during a flight. If you have a phone that cannot be turned off, you can't carry it onto the airplane. The law says nothing to make that an unacceptable solution to how you obey it.
Face it, "airplane mode" is a convenient way to do something; there is no legal requirement as to what that something is. The only legal requirements are that the electronics in the phone be off when you are told to turn them off. How they get to that state is up to the manufacturers.
Finally, I think it's ridiculous to claim that the GPS isn't a radio within the meaning of the United policy.
Oh for heaven's sake. Since you didn't bother quoting a single word of who you are replying to, I can only assume you are arguing with someone else here.
United Airlines (just to pick one) prohibits all radio receivers and transmitters.
Well, that web page says that, but that web page is demonstrably wrong. In fact, that page contradicts itself! By ignoring what else it says and cherry picking that one statement from a list you become wrong, too.
First, they also say that pagers can be used at any time. A pager is a receiver. Strike one. Second, they say that you can use cellular services when the flight attendants say you can. Strike two. Third, United is going the absolutely stupid path of removing in-seat entertainment services from much of its fleet, replacing it with Wi-Fi services. Wi-Fi is ... both a transmitter and a receiver. Strike three.
Nothing better than an information page that contradicts itself, huh?
Hold on," I said. "If a single piece of dust lays the whole computer out, don't you think that's kind of a problem?"
No, the problem is in buying an Apple product in the first place.
No, I think the bigger problem is a tech blogger who thinks that a space bar that spaces twice is "lay[ing] the whole computer out". Learn the sequence "space backspace" and you'll be fine. Or just live with double spaces and let the word processor you are using fix them for you.
Turning off GPS wouldn't make any sense at all. GPS is passive and doesn't transmit.
You are wrong. GPS is an active circuit. While it does not intentionally emit RF signals, EVERY electronic device that operates at RF frequencies emits some. That includes your laptop computer and your GPS.
There are no direct sampling receivers for GPS, which means there are none that directly digitize the incoming GPS radio signal without converting it to an intermediate frequency. That conversion requires a local oscillator, and if it is a dual or triple conversion receiver that means there are two or three local oscillators. Every one of the local oscillators can be radiated and cause interference.
Further, even if the receiver is direct digital sampling, the computer circuitry that converts that sampling into data uses at least one and more likely two or three clock circuits for the digital processing units. Those clocks, too, can radiate.
I've already told the anecdote about the GPS in my car that covers a local 2M repeater. I have others about "receivers" that have caused interference. One was a TV/DVD combo that put out a signal on 121.5MHz that was so strong the SARSAT could pick it up. Another was a receiver for 121.5MHz that blocked us from hearing a channel that New York ATC was talking to us on.
So no, "receiver" does not mean "no RF emissions."
Beware, though. There are a lot of people who don't know anything about tech,
The irony of this statement is pegging the meter.
You said, "which is required by law", then pointed to an FAA regulation, which is not the same thing.
Actually, 47CFR91.21 is a law. It is not just an FAA regulation, it is a law in a section of the code that is allocated to the FAA.
And on top of that, it references that it's a carrier decision, making that a fairly worthless thing to point to without fully examining carrier restrictions.
Until recently, the carriers opted on the side of safety and did not allow use of personal electronic devices (PED). I've actually had the waitresses, I mean stewardsesses, I mean flight attendants tell me to turn off my noise cancelling headphones because they saw the little red light on them. This ignores the fact that those headphones operate only at audio frequencies (no RF interference) and allow the passenger the ability to actually hear and understand the cabin announcements (like the safety briefing). So, I covered the red light with a bit of tape and they left me alone after that.
Now they allow small devices during all phases, and larger devices (like laptops) above 10,000', but still no cellphone service. Some are putting in local cells, but I've not come across that yet.
The problem is, the law he referenced does NOT say what he claims it does. It does not mandate that "airplane mode" disable the GPS. It says nothing about "airplane mode".
Your bolding for the United statement also missed the previous word, which is radio. Nowhere on the United page does it cover GPS,
GPS is radio. How do you think the signals get from the satellites to your cellphone?
that doesn't overlap with any of the more common definitions of radio being shortwave, AM, FM, etc.
I'm sorry, but "radio" does not mean just "shortwave, AM, FM". It means "radio". And in 91.21 terms, it doesn't say "radio", it says "electronic devices". The REASON behind "electronic devices" is based on RF interference from radios.
I'll also point out that although the frequencies that GPS are transmitted on doesn't mean the receiver cannot generate interference on many frequencies in many bands. I have a GPS installed under the backseat of my car that I cannot use because it emits interference right on top of a local amateur 2m repeater channel, making that channel useless.
FAA regulation 91.21, which punts it to the airlines :-)
Wrong. 47CFR91.21 says nothing about airplane mode on a cellphone disabling GPS, it talks in very broad terms about the use of all electronic devices on board an aircraft. That would include the use of the cellphone for any purpose. Try again. There was a very specific claim: "[ Or thought about Airplane Mode, which is required by law to disable GPS. ]" What regulation mandates that airplane mode on a cellphone disable GPS?
Wait, so you entered Airplane Mode (which disables all the radios) and then you clicked a button saying "Enable GPS" and you are shocked that . . . GPS is enabled?!
I did not say shocked. I was surprised that a mode which appears to put the cellphone in a state that would comply with 47CFR91.21 does not actually do so. And it is confusing when activating any of the cellphone radios does not turn airplane mode off. If "airplane mode" means anything at all, and if it turns all radios off when it is enabled, then it should not be possible to have any of the radios on when airplane mode is on.
This seems like crystal clear UI to me, but YMMV.
The UI seems clear to me, too. Airplane mode turns the radios off. If airplane mode is ON, then the radios are OFF. But they aren't necessarily off. So what does airplane mode mean, then?
I regularly use gps on planes, after switching my phone to airplane mode, then switching the gps back on. ... but obviously, unless expressly allowed, one shouldn't be doing that on a plane.
The same rules that prohibit use of bluetooth and wifi on an airplane unless expressly permitted by the operator also prohibit GPS. Things that transmit are obvious, but GPS receivers have oscillators in them that can leak. The potential for interference is much smaller than for WiFi, but the laws don't differentiate.
If they intentionally disable it of course they can do that but then they should be exposed to liability in the event something goes wrong.
They're already exposed to liability when something goes wrong.
[ Or thought about Airplane Mode, which is required by law to disable GPS. ]
I, too, thought "airplane mode" was the be-all, end-all of turning radio systems off. One of the most amazing discoveries I made was when I was in airplane mode and touched the GPS widget to turn GPS on. I assumed, airplane mode means no GPS. And then the GPS turned on.
I've since done the same with WiFi and bluetooth. But mobile data won't turn back on.
Can you please cite the law? I expect it only applies to mobile data and the cell modem, since there is a federal law against using cellphones (in cellphone mode) while in flight. There is no blanket prohibition against GPS.
No, actually, it isn't. That is an idiotic extrapolation.
Are you claiming that zero exposure is not the broadest safety margin possible? How can you get better than that? If ten ppm will kill you, and 5 ppm will make you turn green, then isn't 0 ppm much better than any other number? But thanks for pointing out that it's idiotic. Now look up the phrase "reductio ad absurdum".
It's still a tiny amount of money
Not to the agencies that are using the UAS. A few million dollars is a large part of their budget.
And defeatism is hardly the correct attitude
You've never worked with a government agency, I see.
when there is a clearly identifiable problem with an achievable, remedial solution.
Except there is no clearly identifiably problem. The agencies that use DJI, for example, aren't using them for military purposes. If DJI decides to ground their aircraft tomorrow, it's not a huge deal. Nobody dies because they couldn't perform a military support mission. A day's work in the field is delayed. It happens. They buy a different UAS and move on. They spend a hell of a lot less money buying a new UAS than "a few million dollars".
But DJI is sending all their data back to China! Big deal. The Chinese are going to learn alot from a beach survey.
Now, the UAS that HAVE military missions, those are already non-COTS in many cases, and they don't have the "clearly identifiable problem".
Agencies provide funding for all kinds of projects.
Yes, they do. Projects that fall within the scope of their charter. "Make a community gravitate" isn't it.
It is clearly in the USA's interest to not use software produced by an adversary
In the places where it is not in their interest they don't. Where it doesn't matter they aren't going to spend a "few million dollars" on the hope that someone will come up with a solution to a problem that isn't important to them.
Budgets are getting cut regularly. Adding a few million dollars for an on-spec hope that a solution to a non-problem is produced isn't going to pass muster. That's not defeatist, that realist.
He's literally arguing that the risk is more acceptable than the first responders being given radiation hazmat gear to protect them during the response
No, yet again, that's not what is being said. He said that you have to BALANCE THE RISKS vs. the benefits. There is a risk that a hazmat suit can cause the wearer to overheat -- a risk that anyone who has ever worn the old military MOPP suits is well aware of. You need to balance that risk against the radiation risks. He's not saying "don't wear hazmat suits even if there is radiation".
For your comparison, it would be like arguing firefighters shouldn't wear a heavy fire coats
You're the one who came up with the "don't wear" statement.
Well considering this is Trump's EPA doing it,
The summary says "it COULD lead to Trump's administration..." (emphasis mine), not "is IS leading to...". This whole thing is a scare piece political hatchet attempt by Trump haters, making up their own fantasy world of what Trump "could" do and then forging full steam ahead as if he was doing it just to kill them personally.
The suggested guidelines for what first responders could be exposed to were increased. That's not removing exposure levels for the general population, and it's not changing what industry is allowed to release. It's not the end of the world as we know it, and you aren't going to glow in the dark because evil Trump is poisoning your air.
You're arguing that it's okay.
He's arguing that it is an acceptable risk in an emergency situation. That's quite different than just "okay", and it is quite dishonest to try to equate the two.
If I said that it is an acceptable risk for a firefighter to enter a burning building in search of trapped people, would you then try claiming I said it was okay for everyone to run into burning buildings? Yes, that's what you just did here, so I expect you would.
In any case, this is just an attempt to boost industries that pollute a lot in a variety of ways, by cutting their costs.
This has nothing to do with the levels emitted by anything, it's a statement about the levels acceptable for FIRST RESPONDERS in EMERGENCY SITUATIONS.
In other words, IF there is a leak or accident, which because it is a leak or accident is already outside the regulated levels or it wouldn't be an issue, THEN what levels will we allow first responders to work in while they are dealing with the emergency.
Note that "cleanup" is not a first response. "Rescuing trapped people" is a first response. "Turning off the leak" is a first response. Cleanup is a long-term activity that doesn't have the emergency aspect that a first response requires.
And since it is an emergency, it is quite reasonable that the levels might be higher than for long-term exposures.
Essentially, the debate is about keeping as broad a safety margin as possible.
No, actually, it isn't. "As broad a safety margin as possible" is an argument for zero. Zero lead, zero radiation, zero everything bad. Smaller is better, because smaller is a bigger safety margin. When you argue for "as broad a safety margin as possible", any number greater than 0 is too big.
The real argument is about what level has acceptable levels of danger. That level may not have as broad a safety margin as is possible, but it is safe enough.
Of course, the standard "argument" when someone wants to try to embarrass those who understand the concept of "safe enough" is that "they're trying to kill the children with lead!" or whatever the contaminant is. Obama institutes ridiculous low levels because his true constituency loves it; anyone who puts them back to realistic values is killing the planet yada yada yada.
That's the point...there are more drones involved than what are being discussed here that would be affected by such a blanket requirement.
There are, but they aren't the topic of this discussion. And those "other drones" are very much larger, and capable of much larger payloads. They are not going to have an issue with a few ounces for an ADS-B OUT transmitter or the power drain from it.
Again, there are more than DJI drones involved here, including home-builts without any restrictions whatsoever except the builder's ability & budget.
I'm sorry, but there is still the 400 foot flight limit imposed by class of UAS and operator privileges. You claim no restrictions, which is patently absurd.
That 7 watts is transmitter output power, not consumed power. Even with a very efficient final power amplifier, it's going to need at least 10-11 watts or more, and that's for *just* the final transmitter output stage, not including signal generation and driver stages for the final amplifier stage. That's a serious amount of power drain for a small drone and will seriously reduce flight endurance and performance.
I guess you are ignoring all of the electrical budget discussion already posted. In my budget, I assumed just 50% efficiency, and that means 14 watts, not just 10-11W, and still managed to show that it would be an unmeasurable effect on a typical (DJI Phantom 3 Pro) UAS. I ignored the control electronics because those would be a trivial amount of the power requirement. Your cellphone has more processing power than what it necessary for an ADS-B OUT, and it will run for a very long time on a very small battery.
Please stop waving your hands and stomping your feet about a "7 watt radio" and actually look at the system.
At lower altitudes ground clutter has even more of an effect as the signal 'horizon' is that much nearer for the aircraft as well as the UAV.
You are worried about ground clutter when the UAS will be us where the 200 knot speed limit doesn't apply. That's not "at lower altitudes". Please look up 14CFR91.117 and learn. I am off by 50 knots -- the limit is 250 knots below 10,000 AGL. Ten thousand feet. But still, there is a 200 knot limit below 2500 feet (two thousand five hundred) within 4 nm of an airport and under any Class B airspace.
To find a jet going at "jet speeds" you need to be up 10,000 AGL -- which a DJI isn't going to be. Ever.
And they won't be below 500' unless they are departing or landing at an airport nearby, so they MUST be going less than 200 knots there. If your UAS is up where you can find a jet, it won't be in ground clutter anymore, it will be free and clear of the ground.
A 7 watt transmitter will draw effectively the same amount of power regardless of physical size.
That's right. It will draw an average of less than 50mA if it is the size of an elephant or the more realistic size of a pack of cigarettes. I have 5W radios that contain GPS and will transmit their position via APRS that fit in my pocket. Very small. Very light. I have an 8 W radio sitting on my desk here, and it's not very much bigger than a 5W radio. Most of the size of those radios is user interface -- speaker, dials, etc. Remove the speaker, make the "dial" on/off, and you can reduce the size of the radio even smaller.
Why do you think that a radio that weighs just a few ounces and consumes, over the course of a 20 minute flight, about 20mAH, will be an issue for any UAS that would be regulated by any proposed rule?
As to your link, I thought you said that a full 7-watt ADS-B-out transmitter was "easily accommodated"? Which is it?
You didn't look at the link, did you? You just want to blow smoke. The ADS-B OUT radio I linked to would be trivial to reduce in size and install almost anywhere.
Or we could, you know, *not* go apesh