What disturbs me the most is that the government claims to have this evidence, but declares that it is "classified" or a "threat to national security" and so we can't see it. The detainee can't see it. The detainee's council can't see it. In the case of Combatant Status Review Tribunals, sometimes the officers presiding over the tribunal aren't even allowed to see it! How the hell is any decision supposed to be made in that kind of atmosphere? "He's dangerous, trust us.."
Speaking of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals.. Since being enacted (after the previous SCOTUS case, Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld), they have reviewed a large majority of the detainees to determine their status. So far, 38 of them have been outright cleared as not being enemy combatants after all, and several of those have been released.
That is 38 wrongfully-detained, innocent people that, until the admin was literally forced to do otherwise with them, were going to be held indefinitely--without review, without trial, without anything.
Bear that in mind the next time someone questions whether there should be any judicial review over detainments, instead of just trusting Shrub & Co. that they've got "real bad people".
I was looking for someone to have said this. I second it.
My father's in a similar situation: buried in the woods off a dirt road, with satellite as his only option (the phone system's so old out there, he can't even get caller ID. No, seriously). He's on Hughes as well, and used to have the satellite-down, phone-up, but no more. It did require hardware installation of a second dish, which cost some money ($300 I think) but that's a damn far cry from $10k.
The speeds are quite acceptable, and I think these days they now get better than 64kbps up. I've used SSH and even VPN access from his place when I've needed to, and it's functioned well enough.
My first thought on seeing the picture was "Wow, looks just like a Combine soldier". Which could be a joke you laughingly shrug off, but at the same time is rather disturbing. An inhuman occupying force. Think about it.
Just thought I might share, in regards to SCADA on Linux. Open Systems International, Inc. has a very nice SCADA system (aimed largely at electrical utilities but it can work for other SCADA applications) which is aimed at being as platform-agnostic as possible. Their software currently runs on AIX, HP-UX, Windows, and Linux as well as some others. This is done through platform-specific compiles of the software packages, but the software itself is the same across platforms, with the same APIs and interfaces and database formats, and is interchangable or can be used mixed-OS.
They also make a Remote Terminal Unit (RTU, a very common device in the electrical industry; it's the little computer that reads all the equipment at a substation and transmits it back to the utility) called OSIRIS, which is a Linux-based embedded device.
There's definitely Linux in the SCADA industry; it just doesn't get a lot of press.
The book has also been turned into movies several times by various independent film makers. There's about five versions out there. The current "big ones" in my opinion would be Flatland the Film by Ladd Ehlinger Jr., which is out and available. Low budget, but decent CG, and voice actors are.. okay.
The other one, which is still being produced and not yet out (due this fall) is Flantland the Movie, done by a studio with a much bigger budget, and with professional actors like Martin Sheen, Joe Estevez, and Michael York. Considerably more polished.
> I am sure that there are more but I can't think of any.
Hell, there are microbes that live and thrive in the heart of nuclear reactors, surviving both the heat and the radiation with ease. They'd be just the type to find a hot planet ultra-close to the sun a paradise..
> bearing in mind that my HDTV doesn't support 1080p over HDMI, only over component
This is off-topic but wow, I seriously have to ask. What brand/model TV do you have? I have never heard of a TV that supports 1080p only on the analog component signal and not the HDMI. I have heard of the opposite though, where a TV will only do 1080p on HDMI, but limits the component input to 1080i. I'd be very curious to know your TV!
I can't speak for the article/summary and where in the world they're mixing their info, but I can say that I use the Cisco VPN client through my Airport Extreme base station (11g, not this new 11n model) without a single issue. I never had to fiddle with anything nor did I ever have any trouble using it.
> Also, cablecos are not yet required to offer CableCards yet. The FCC's plug and play rule that covered it does not take effect until July. So if your cableco currently does not want to offer CableCards, you're SOL.
> I'm not sure what the ownership rules are for CableCards, but from what I've seen it appears they are still the property of the cableco and you still pay a monthly fee for them (you just don't have a big, hot running box to keep around).
Actually, just FYI. The FCC has required cable companies to offer CableCards since July of 2005; they must provide them and cannot deny you them. This new ruling today affects set-top boxes, wholly separate thing.
The ownership rules are that the CableCards belong to the cable companies. You rent them just like you rent a cable box now, except that the FCC has also capped the rate at around $2/mo. That sure beats a cable box which, depending on the company, can be anywhere from $5 to $20/mo to rent.
As someone who works in the electrical power industry I can say, yeah, we have wireless sensors already. Hell, we have wired sensors too, because there's all these big frickin' wires already running all over the place anyway, don'tcha know!
>...One of the many implications for the developing nanotech sensors is their ability to pinpoint the exact location of a power outage...
Uh.. we also have such technology already, and in fact it's quite old. The same signal reflectors that are in a LAN cable tester and tell you the length of a cable, are used on an industrial scale to tell you where the end of a power line is. Program the monitor with "this line is 9,374 feet long" and it sees "8,124 feet long" then it can, in fact, tell you exactly where the break is, right down to the foot! Now, these industrial grade units are highly expensive (partly by their shear power and range, because I'm grossly underestimating; line lengths can reach over 20 continuous miles), so it MIGHT be news if these little "nano" buggers are cheap and plentiful but can still do the job.
Virtually every piece of equipment we have on the line has remote monitoring capability. Now, whether the power companies are USING it is another matter, because of cost and infrastructure and such. My own company has substations we have no remote monitoring on, just because they were deemed low priority enough to not spend money on enabling it. So needing to send crew door-to-door to find a downed line or a damaged power box is just not necessary (though barring major disasters, it can be cheaper than installing all that remote monitoring equipment).
The one thing I do see in the "additional details" article is the idea of using these things, because they're so small, to monitor every single home and business on the grid. That's something we don't currently do, mostly for cost reasons. We can see a neighborhood is down, but not a house. THAT would be news worthy I suppose. Otherwise, I see nothing in this article that is new, just "we've made it smaller!" and they therefore tacked the "nano" buzzword onto it and acted like it was the first time anyone ever created such a device.
> This was all described in a show about aviation disasters on the Discovery Channel. Maybe somebody else can provide more details.
It's actually interesting that this came up. I literally just watched that particular show today, not five hours ago. The show is on the National Geographic Channel, and is titled "Air Emergency". It's an hour-long series of various air disasters.
The one about the broken propeller and the shredded engine is specifically titled "One Wing Flight", which as I said was the one I just watched. You pretty much have the details right: the shredded engine created extreme drag and had the plane wanting to whip to the left and roll over. The pilot and co-pilot did manage to crash the plane on its belly in a field, where it was subsequently ripped in half during the crash.
All passengers survived the crash and, more amazingly, only a few were even seriously injured. As you stated, the jet fuel which ignited due to sparks from the plane's electrical system was what caused major injury and death. Of the 29 people on board, 10 died as a result of the fire (including the pilot himself, who suffered a head injury and never woke up), and 13 more suffered severe burns. Some as much as 92% burn injury.
Only six people got away with minor injuries, and they were all the ones that got out of the plane before the fire began.
No, I didn't get either of those. I guess I half-win, then.:P The domains were much more important to me than the relatively small amount of money I lost, though. For me this is still a good outcome.
Considering I'd all but exhausted all the other options, yes, getting it out on Slashdot was actually an intentional plan. It also worked, though not with JD itself.
On calling again, I was able to talk with eNom's Transfers and Registration Manager, whom actually connected my story as related over the phone, to this article. Imagine that! I was provided EPP codes, and my.com domains were unlocked, including the expired one. Under eNom's system, an expired domain that is not in hold or lock, can be transferred. Thus, provided these transfers go through, I get everything back.
Jump Domain doesn't get their credibility back, but I still win. Hah.
The state of New York has a law stating the minimum age as 18, and is the only state in the U.S. where an 18-year-old can rent a car without some kind of contract or government license (government employees at 18 or older can rent a car in any state).
For everywhere else, the minimum age is actually 21 years old. Most rental companies enforce 25 because of the insurance premiums (25 is when the official "drop" is), but they don't have to. There are several companies that will rent to 21 and over. Enterprise Rent-a-Car comes to mind immediately, because they advertise that fact in many markets where it's appropriate (like here locally, where the Enterprise location is just a mile or two from a University). They simply charge extra (to cover the insurance premium) if you're under 25.
You're kidding, right? I mean, what do you define as the size of the "average cell phone"? Small enough to need the label "May be a choking hazard" perhaps?
TFA says the phone is 128 x 69.5 x 19mm (5.0 x 2.7 x 0.7in). That's pretty damn small, and there are numerous phones on the market the same size or bigger. As reference, I have a Nokia 3650 phone, at 5.1 x 2.24 x 1.0in. It fits quite well in a pocket or on a belt clip. The smartphone is 'round-about the same size, and even manages to be thinner! It is, admittedly, over two whole ounces heavier than my phone, not that I've ever found the 3650 anything but light.
Personally, I don't want a cell phone so small I have to worry about losing it in my ear canal, or has buttons so tiny I need a toothpick to press them. Just my two wooden nickels..
> Furthermore, I don't see why every single vehicle should not be manufactured with this feature. After all, a car is a lethal weapon just like a gun and guns have serial numbers.
Well, aside from another reply already pointing out that cars are not *designed* as weapons or killing machines, here's another thought:
Guns have serial numbers, sure. What does that serial number do, exactly? Does it tell you the last time the gun was discharged? How the gun was being handled at the time of discharge? That the person who actually owns the gun was the one holding it? How about whether it went off accidentally or was purposely fired? Or that it even fired correctly?
A gun's serial number can be used to trace the gun's owner, where they bought it from, where that place bought it from, who manufactured it, etc. That's.. about all it can do though. It certainly doesn't relate to a black box.
And anyway, cars have serial numbers too. They're called VIN Numbers and they do pretty much the exact same thing as a gun's serial number.
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals.. Since being enacted (after the previous SCOTUS case, Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld), they have reviewed a large majority of the detainees to determine their status. So far, 38 of them have been outright cleared as not being enemy combatants after all, and several of those have been released.
That is 38 wrongfully-detained, innocent people that, until the admin was literally forced to do otherwise with them, were going to be held indefinitely--without review, without trial, without anything.
Bear that in mind the next time someone questions whether there should be any judicial review over detainments, instead of just trusting Shrub & Co. that they've got "real bad people".
Hell, not even just corporate environments. I'd be happy to simply be able to read/write my own Boot Camp partition from within OS X!
I was looking for someone to have said this. I second it.
My father's in a similar situation: buried in the woods off a dirt road, with satellite as his only option (the phone system's so old out there, he can't even get caller ID. No, seriously). He's on Hughes as well, and used to have the satellite-down, phone-up, but no more. It did require hardware installation of a second dish, which cost some money ($300 I think) but that's a damn far cry from $10k.
The speeds are quite acceptable, and I think these days they now get better than 64kbps up. I've used SSH and even VPN access from his place when I've needed to, and it's functioned well enough.
My first thought on seeing the picture was "Wow, looks just like a Combine soldier". Which could be a joke you laughingly shrug off, but at the same time is rather disturbing. An inhuman occupying force. Think about it.
Just thought I might share, in regards to SCADA on Linux. Open Systems International, Inc. has a very nice SCADA system (aimed largely at electrical utilities but it can work for other SCADA applications) which is aimed at being as platform-agnostic as possible. Their software currently runs on AIX, HP-UX, Windows, and Linux as well as some others. This is done through platform-specific compiles of the software packages, but the software itself is the same across platforms, with the same APIs and interfaces and database formats, and is interchangable or can be used mixed-OS.
They also make a Remote Terminal Unit (RTU, a very common device in the electrical industry; it's the little computer that reads all the equipment at a substation and transmits it back to the utility) called OSIRIS, which is a Linux-based embedded device.
There's definitely Linux in the SCADA industry; it just doesn't get a lot of press.
The book has also been turned into movies several times by various independent film makers. There's about five versions out there. The current "big ones" in my opinion would be Flatland the Film by Ladd Ehlinger Jr., which is out and available. Low budget, but decent CG, and voice actors are.. okay.
The other one, which is still being produced and not yet out (due this fall) is Flantland the Movie, done by a studio with a much bigger budget, and with professional actors like Martin Sheen, Joe Estevez, and Michael York. Considerably more polished.
> I am sure that there are more but I can't think of any.
Hell, there are microbes that live and thrive in the heart of nuclear reactors, surviving both the heat and the radiation with ease. They'd be just the type to find a hot planet ultra-close to the sun a paradise..
Perhaps a better use of sans.. TheWorld-Sans.MS :)
On the other hand, just think of the opposite direction: using your sense of sight to feel things.
Imagine the boon to the porn industry!
> bearing in mind that my HDTV doesn't support 1080p over HDMI, only over component
This is off-topic but wow, I seriously have to ask. What brand/model TV do you have? I have never heard of a TV that supports 1080p only on the analog component signal and not the HDMI. I have heard of the opposite though, where a TV will only do 1080p on HDMI, but limits the component input to 1080i. I'd be very curious to know your TV!
I can't speak for the article/summary and where in the world they're mixing their info, but I can say that I use the Cisco VPN client through my Airport Extreme base station (11g, not this new 11n model) without a single issue. I never had to fiddle with anything nor did I ever have any trouble using it.
> Also, cablecos are not yet required to offer CableCards yet. The FCC's plug and play rule that covered it does not take effect until July. So if your cableco currently does not want to offer CableCards, you're SOL.
> I'm not sure what the ownership rules are for CableCards, but from what I've seen it appears they are still the property of the cableco and you still pay a monthly fee for them (you just don't have a big, hot running box to keep around).
Actually, just FYI. The FCC has required cable companies to offer CableCards since July of 2005; they must provide them and cannot deny you them. This new ruling today affects set-top boxes, wholly separate thing.
The ownership rules are that the CableCards belong to the cable companies. You rent them just like you rent a cable box now, except that the FCC has also capped the rate at around $2/mo. That sure beats a cable box which, depending on the company, can be anywhere from $5 to $20/mo to rent.
As someone who works in the electrical power industry I can say, yeah, we have wireless sensors already. Hell, we have wired sensors too, because there's all these big frickin' wires already running all over the place anyway, don'tcha know!
...One of the many implications for the developing nanotech sensors is their ability to pinpoint the exact location of a power outage...
>
Uh.. we also have such technology already, and in fact it's quite old. The same signal reflectors that are in a LAN cable tester and tell you the length of a cable, are used on an industrial scale to tell you where the end of a power line is. Program the monitor with "this line is 9,374 feet long" and it sees "8,124 feet long" then it can, in fact, tell you exactly where the break is, right down to the foot! Now, these industrial grade units are highly expensive (partly by their shear power and range, because I'm grossly underestimating; line lengths can reach over 20 continuous miles), so it MIGHT be news if these little "nano" buggers are cheap and plentiful but can still do the job.
Virtually every piece of equipment we have on the line has remote monitoring capability. Now, whether the power companies are USING it is another matter, because of cost and infrastructure and such. My own company has substations we have no remote monitoring on, just because they were deemed low priority enough to not spend money on enabling it. So needing to send crew door-to-door to find a downed line or a damaged power box is just not necessary (though barring major disasters, it can be cheaper than installing all that remote monitoring equipment).
The one thing I do see in the "additional details" article is the idea of using these things, because they're so small, to monitor every single home and business on the grid. That's something we don't currently do, mostly for cost reasons. We can see a neighborhood is down, but not a house. THAT would be news worthy I suppose. Otherwise, I see nothing in this article that is new, just "we've made it smaller!" and they therefore tacked the "nano" buzzword onto it and acted like it was the first time anyone ever created such a device.
> This was all described in a show about aviation disasters on the Discovery Channel. Maybe somebody else can provide more details.
It's actually interesting that this came up. I literally just watched that particular show today, not five hours ago. The show is on the National Geographic Channel, and is titled "Air Emergency". It's an hour-long series of various air disasters.
The one about the broken propeller and the shredded engine is specifically titled "One Wing Flight", which as I said was the one I just watched. You pretty much have the details right: the shredded engine created extreme drag and had the plane wanting to whip to the left and roll over. The pilot and co-pilot did manage to crash the plane on its belly in a field, where it was subsequently ripped in half during the crash.
All passengers survived the crash and, more amazingly, only a few were even seriously injured. As you stated, the jet fuel which ignited due to sparks from the plane's electrical system was what caused major injury and death. Of the 29 people on board, 10 died as a result of the fire (including the pilot himself, who suffered a head injury and never woke up), and 13 more suffered severe burns. Some as much as 92% burn injury.
Only six people got away with minor injuries, and they were all the ones that got out of the plane before the fire began.
I keep hearing that it's actually just a drop box, at some place like Mailboxes, Etc. or whatnot. I'd be curious to know if it really is.
No, I didn't get either of those. I guess I half-win, then. :P The domains were much more important to me than the relatively small amount of money I lost, though. For me this is still a good outcome.
Considering I'd all but exhausted all the other options, yes, getting it out on Slashdot was actually an intentional plan. It also worked, though not with JD itself.
.com domains were unlocked, including the expired one. Under eNom's system, an expired domain that is not in hold or lock, can be transferred. Thus, provided these transfers go through, I get everything back.
On calling again, I was able to talk with eNom's Transfers and Registration Manager, whom actually connected my story as related over the phone, to this article. Imagine that! I was provided EPP codes, and my
Jump Domain doesn't get their credibility back, but I still win. Hah.
It's off-topic, but just to mention:
The state of New York has a law stating the minimum age as 18, and is the only state in the U.S. where an 18-year-old can rent a car without some kind of contract or government license (government employees at 18 or older can rent a car in any state).
For everywhere else, the minimum age is actually 21 years old. Most rental companies enforce 25 because of the insurance premiums (25 is when the official "drop" is), but they don't have to. There are several companies that will rent to 21 and over. Enterprise Rent-a-Car comes to mind immediately, because they advertise that fact in many markets where it's appropriate (like here locally, where the Enterprise location is just a mile or two from a University). They simply charge extra (to cover the insurance premium) if you're under 25.
You're kidding, right? I mean, what do you define as the size of the "average cell phone"? Small enough to need the label "May be a choking hazard" perhaps?
TFA says the phone is 128 x 69.5 x 19mm (5.0 x 2.7 x 0.7in). That's pretty damn small, and there are numerous phones on the market the same size or bigger. As reference, I have a Nokia 3650 phone, at 5.1 x 2.24 x 1.0in. It fits quite well in a pocket or on a belt clip. The smartphone is 'round-about the same size, and even manages to be thinner! It is, admittedly, over two whole ounces heavier than my phone, not that I've ever found the 3650 anything but light.
Personally, I don't want a cell phone so small I have to worry about losing it in my ear canal, or has buttons so tiny I need a toothpick to press them. Just my two wooden nickels..
> Furthermore, I don't see why every single vehicle should not be manufactured with this feature. After all, a car is a lethal weapon just like a gun and guns have serial numbers.
Well, aside from another reply already pointing out that cars are not *designed* as weapons or killing machines, here's another thought:
Guns have serial numbers, sure. What does that serial number do, exactly? Does it tell you the last time the gun was discharged? How the gun was being handled at the time of discharge? That the person who actually owns the gun was the one holding it? How about whether it went off accidentally or was purposely fired? Or that it even fired correctly?
A gun's serial number can be used to trace the gun's owner, where they bought it from, where that place bought it from, who manufactured it, etc. That's.. about all it can do though. It certainly doesn't relate to a black box.
And anyway, cars have serial numbers too. They're called VIN Numbers and they do pretty much the exact same thing as a gun's serial number.