...the media is going to be all hyped up about how the 'daring' astronauts 'managed' to land despite the 'problem' with the heatshield...
Don't get me wrong, I do think the astronauts are pretty brave, but I also refuse to believe that NASA would let them land if they thought it was remoptly possible that the shuttle would burn up on reentry this time around. The whole freaking mission has been hyped up - now move on and build the CEV please. The shuttle is just too expensive to maintain.
Thats odd, because tests done back in the day got you a intact and fully functional Mercury and Apollo capsule that could survive an unpowered fall from 200,000 feet back to an arbitrary spot in the Atlantic Ocean
(and yes, they did tests on that exact scenario - abort at max q (dynamic pressure))
Where the heck do you get that from? EVERY shuttle accident was caused by a problem from those boosters. From 'O' Rings to insulation. They were not shuttle poblems, but booster problems.
Challenger blew up because someone at NASA decided to ignore the fact that the guys who had designed the solid fuel boosters told them not to launch in the cold weather - and the boosters was redesigned afterwards to allow for even better margins. Operating any sort of equipment outside the design envelope is asking for trouble. Please explain how human error, probaly caused by polical preasure, renders the actuall design of the solid fuel boosters into 'crap'?
Colombia burnt up on re-entry because the heat shield was damaged by falling foam from the external fuel tank. I don't see quite how this relate to the solid fuel boosters, even if it does show that mounting your payload on the side of your rocket isn't the brightest idea NASA have come up with.
My conclusion still stands: Using the relativly cheap, reusable and allready manratedsolid fuel boosters to launch a reusable/recyclable capsule sounds like the best idea NASA had in a long time - and on budget too.
The solid rocket boosters used for the shuttle today is reliable, reasonable safe (as safe as anything can be in space I guess) and not at least very cheap for the power they deliver.
A capsule, in the mould of Apollo or Soyuz, is cheap(ish), can be made reusable (I would assume - allthought it might be cheaper to make them recyclable) and has a proven track record.
A rescue rocket mounted on top of a capsule is simple and has a proven trackrecord (IFAIK, one russian capsule was saved by it).
I think it's a brilliant idea; it's not old - it's refined. Take the best we got today and make it better, as opposed to inventing the Wheel Mk. II.
I forgot to turn on my cellphone this morning, and missed a call from someone dear to me. Still, reading this makes me realise that somewhere out there, someone is feeling even worse over forgetting to turn something on.
...consumers will win once the US dollar rises over Euro.
That isn't likely to happen anytime soon... and if it do, they will jack up the prices in Europe, because "the ink cost more to import"... And once the dollar slips under the euro again, the new, higher price will remain.
Sorry HP, but my next printer will not have your badge on it.
...when you can't sleep and raid the fridge every night;)
Seriosly thought, What worries me the most isn't that they have started eating of the reserves - because thats why you have reserves - but that it took so long for people to notice.
...that the loudest arguments will not be over how old these remains are, but there they came from, and if they are indian (native american) or not in origin...
Rather, you americans stop posting here and write to your representatives - in the mean time we who are lucky enought to live somewhere else can post here and have a good laught at how silly your system works at times...
Seriously thought, try to tell your politicans to fix this.. because the US was based on some great ideas and principles, but lately they have been falling aside in the pursuit of the corporate state.
..or could it be that iTunes somehow makes sure you have a iPod before it lets you use it? I honestly don't know myself, but it would explain why this wont work with them. If they think in the same way a lot of IM-companies thinks, anything coming from another client (or in this case, piece of hardware) is evil and will cut into your profit - and must logicaly be stopped.
One thing I do know however is that the iPod itself is overhyped. I had the opertunity to play with one a while back, and (at least to me) it's not worth the extra premium they charge for it compared to other digital music players. But then, thats my point of view =).
I would personally be quite pissed that just to watch a movie, I would be out of touch for three hours.
Just as I - and a lot of other people - would be very pissed if you spend part of the movie we have payed to watch forcing us to listen to your jabbering. Please do not feel offended if I rip the phone out of your hand and crush it under my heel*. Because, you know, it could be your face instead...
Seriously though; if you can't organise your life in a way so that you can be unavilable for a few hours, then you should either do something about your life (get another job) or at the very least stay away from places where people expect you to be quiet so they can pay attention to something.
*) Actually saw that happen in a theatre - a very annoying teenager who couldn't take a hint, couldn't take a stronger hint the next time it rang, and didn't have a cellphone anymore the third time...
Impact on the dialers? Hardly. Cutting into the flow of money to the scammers? Maybe a little bit. Preventing a lot of unfortunate, computer-illiterate irishmen from raking up giant telephone bills? Sure thing.
And as far as I can understand the article, thats what it's all about - not to stop the scammers per se, but to prevent people from falling itno their trap. And as such, this is a Good Thing (tm) as far as I'm concerned.
You could try to educate Joe Avrage (or Ola Dunk, as we call him), but even if you should manage that - and it ain't gonna be easy - it's all in wain when their spouse, stipid kid or geratic grandmother just 'borrows' the PC for a bit and clicks on something they shouldn't have clicked on... back to square one. Blocking whole nations like this may seem extrem, but it works. If you have a legitimate reason to call there, simply call the telco and ask them to put that number on the whitelist.
A simular sceme - allthought user-initiated - are in place in Norway. You can ask that your phone shouldn't be allowed to call abroad, except to numbers you spesifificly designates. Or you can tell TeleNor (the biggest telco in Norway) that your phone isn 't supposed to call abroad, unless you dieal a spesific code first. I had to have a collegue set that one up, since his wife was (still is, despite countless attempts at teaching her) in the habit of clicking 'yes' to everything on screen...
...On the other hand, the romanization of Chinese is interesting.
Damn.. you had to get me started reading that and following links, did you =)? Still, I found this page after following a few doozen links, and the funny thing is that I wrote most of it... weird how seeminly unrelated subjects can somehow connect isn't it?
Son't you mean "when workplaces did start using RFID..."?
Some places have already done so in Europe - to make sure the empolyees don't "forget" to punch out when they leave for lunch, or even worse (at least from the employees point of view) forget to punch back in when they return.
Raises questions? Sure it does - how can you be sure they don't monitor restbreaks and whatnot as well. Makes life simpler? Sure it does - as long as you remember your card.
..if you don't like the idea of being tagged and tracked - well, don't go to that park that tag and track you. Problem solved.
Off course, if the US goverment (or any other evil organisation/entity of your choice) started doing this, allowing you to be "found in real time", you might have a reason to scream up about "civil liberties" and whatnot.. but as long as it's private company doing it on their own property you have nothing to say in the matter - except to vote with your dollars and feet. Besides, I like the idea to find the kids when it's time to leave - spendt way to much time tracking down a kid that didn't want to be found because he didn't want to leave one time.
The Delta IV comes in between 3.51% (Delta IV Large) and 3.45% (Delta IV Medium).
As for my comment on the echomonics of scale - a bigger rocket will have a better ratio because less weight (realtivly speaking) will be used for the strukture and equipment - leaving more for the payload.
...If you go to the trouble of sending 100 tonnes to orbit, you should get more bang for your buck than a measley 10%.
A throw-weight of 10% would be fantaastic... (yes, I know you're refering to what's left up there - but it was that line which set me looking for info on payloads vs launchweight).
- The Saturn V had a take off weight of 3,038,500 kg and could deliver 118,000 kg to LEO - or put differently, a whopping 3.88% of the weight would be payload.
- The shuttlesystem weights in at 2,029,633 kg (or about 2/3rds of the Saturn V) and can deliver 27,850 kg to 24,400 kg to LEO (used to be more, but was redisgned after the Challenger accident). This puts the shuttle at a measly 1.37% to 1.20% payload left in orbit.
- The Atlas IIAS had a typical take off weight of 234,000 kg and was capabel of putting 8,610 kg in LEO. A respecable 3.68%, but still below the Saturn V.
- The Atlas V, which will replace the Atlass IIAS, weights 546,700 kg at lift off, manages 12,500 kg to LEO, which in turns means that just 2.29% of the mass is payload.
- The Titan II, well known for launching the Gemini spacecraft into orbit, weighted in at 154,000 kg and lifted 3,100 kg to LEO - or 2.01%.
- The Titan 4, designed to lift 'shuttle sized payloads', weights in at a respectable 886,420 kg, but manages 'only' 17,700 kg to LEO, or about 1.99%.
- Going tothe russian side, the Soyuz 11A511U2 (for many a year the mainstay of the manned spaceprogram in the Soviet Union), weighted in at 297,800 kg and lifted 7,050 kg to LEO. This places it, with 2.36%, in the same league as american boosters.
- ESA uses the large, 777,000 kg Ariane 5 EC-A, capabel of placing 16,000 kg in LEO. At a ratio of 2.06% this is no better or worse than most other launchers.
In short, the Saturn V was a vastly superior rocket - simply because of the economics of scale.
Ah, but if we can say with more certanty how they didn't evolve, that tells us more about how they did evolve.
As an analogy, lets say someone tells you that a friend of you drives a car that is either yellow, white or gray. A while later, you are told that the car your friend is driving is not yellow. While you still are not certain if it's white or gray, you have ruled out that it might be yellow - thus advancing your knowledge a certain degree.
By eliminating some of the options, we home in on the plausible truth of how the solar system came into beeing.
Just to clarefy - the mission that are talked about is an ESA mission.. y'know, those guys that ain't NASA, nor russkies or from Red China? Anyway, thats really beside the point here.
I judge from your comment, you seem to think that learning about space for the sake of knowledge is not worth it... well, the other option is to learn about space with an eye to make money out of it. It has quite often been proposed that it ought to be possible to mine astroids for raw materials to use in space (build spacestations, spaceships and whatnot in space) or on earth. In order to do this, we need a better understanding on how an astroid is put together - thus this mission.
As for the NASA mission briefly mentioned, thats a completly different mission; it seeks to learn more about comets and how they are made up. While less than ideal for mining, this is important also - not just for the pure science (a concept I think you may find hard to understand) but because we one day may need to alter the orbit / blow up a comet that are on a collisioncourse with earth. If we don't know how it is put together, we're in a worse situation to do just that.
Absolute right to free speach? Jupp, got that, it's in the norwegian constitution (and has been there since it was written.. no need for an anmendment;), ref 100). I'm not quite sure what you mean by the next, but if you mean you got the right to disagree... sure - as long as you don't attempt to take their right to speak free away. We do 'give more' to the state compared to the US in taxes and whatnot, but then we get much more back (free national healthcare, free pension for the retired, free schools and all that... stuff we think that the state should provide and a lot of americans I've talked to think the state should keep away from). It's hard to talk about "how federal" the goverment is, as well as "balance of controll" between national and local goverment, seeing as how we're not a federation in the way the US are.. we're a "free, independent, indivisible and inalienable Realm." (ref 1 in the 'wegian constitution, as found here).
Yes, we still have a state church, and it works for us. Thats not the same as to say membership is forced onto you thought... and if you decide to join another church or religion, that church / religious society gets the same part of your taxes as the statecurch would get if you been a member there. It's all audited y'know, which is why a handfull of muslim religious societyes found themself in big shit after 'massaging' the membershipnumbers... had to pay back a heap of ill gotten cash;).
I'm not saying we're better than the US... there are a lot of things here I would like to change, but overall I feel I'm more free here. For instance, take the relativly uniqe consept of "allmannaretten" - "all mens right" - which allows me to travel whereever I would like, as long as I a) don't step on plowed land, b) closes gates and wickets, c)don't chop down living trees and d) camp at least 500' away from houses. If I want to pick berries, they are free for the taking. Collect dry wood of the ground to make a campfire? Go right ahead. Swim in the lake? Well, maybe not so smart if you're in the nude, but don a set of swimtrunks and go right ahead. Next, try the same in the US and see how long it takes before the landowner wants a word with you;).
While I don't agree with your conclusion (in most respects, based on my intimate knowledge of life in the US thanks to my american wife and in-laws, I am more free here in Norway), I do realise that there is a huge difference between everyday life and what the media reports... but thats why I made a point of pointing it out in the first place;)
I wish I could say that last sentence was funny... but it's frankly plain scary. I mean, it's reasonable to assume that if the FBI had wanted, there are other laws they could have used to obtain the same information (maybe there is something in the laws on copyright, for starters?), right? It's like shooting bluetits with cannons...
It's things like this that makes me happy I decided against trying to emigrate to the US. Seeing how things _apper_to_be_ right now, I imagine there would be twentyfive FBI-officers tasked with keeping an eye on me in case I happened to mention that there are things in the US that could be changed for the better... as well as half a dozen RIAA / MPAA employes attempting to gain access to my harddrive to see if I got any mp3s stored on it.
And for the homour impared.. I'm trying to be funny about a serious issue here.
Simple explanation on directionfinding by radio
on
Cheap Cell-Phone Detector
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I often make the mistake of assuming people know what I know... in this cause, how most modern ADF (Automatic Direction Finding) equipment work in aircraft... Mea culpa =)
A coiled antenna - also know as a directionloop - recives the signal strongest when the 'open end' of the coil points towards the transmitter. If you have two coiled antennas, one orientated dead ahead (in relation to you) and the other pointing left-right (ie: being 90 degrees apart), it is reasonable easy to use the difference in signal strenght to figure out the direction the source of the radiotransmitter - in this case the mobile phone.
Three points (or antennas) would be needed if you want a fix on the radiotransmitter (mobile phone) and not just the direction.
...a great way to find my cellphone those times when I put it on silent ringing and then forgets where I put it down:) (don't laught - it happens more often than I like to admidt). Now, if they could also find a way to indicate not just how far away the mobile phone is, but also in what direction... shouldn't be hard - either a directionloop, or two antennas 90 degress apart.
Slashdot Mirror
...the media is going to be all hyped up about how the 'daring' astronauts 'managed' to land despite the 'problem' with the heatshield...
Don't get me wrong, I do think the astronauts are pretty brave, but I also refuse to believe that NASA would let them land if they thought it was remoptly possible that the shuttle would burn up on reentry this time around. The whole freaking mission has been hyped up - now move on and build the CEV please. The shuttle is just too expensive to maintain.
Thats odd, because tests done back in the day got you a intact and fully functional Mercury and Apollo capsule that could survive an unpowered fall from 200,000 feet back to an arbitrary spot in the Atlantic Ocean
(and yes, they did tests on that exact scenario - abort at max q (dynamic pressure))
Where the heck do you get that from? EVERY shuttle accident was caused by a problem from those boosters. From 'O' Rings to insulation. They were not shuttle poblems, but booster problems.
Challenger blew up because someone at NASA decided to ignore the fact that the guys who had designed the solid fuel boosters told them not to launch in the cold weather - and the boosters was redesigned afterwards to allow for even better margins. Operating any sort of equipment outside the design envelope is asking for trouble. Please explain how human error, probaly caused by polical preasure, renders the actuall design of the solid fuel boosters into 'crap'?
Colombia burnt up on re-entry because the heat shield was damaged by falling foam from the external fuel tank. I don't see quite how this relate to the solid fuel boosters, even if it does show that mounting your payload on the side of your rocket isn't the brightest idea NASA have come up with.
My conclusion still stands: Using the relativly cheap, reusable and allready manrated solid fuel boosters to launch a reusable/recyclable capsule sounds like the best idea NASA had in a long time - and on budget too.
The solid rocket boosters used for the shuttle today is reliable, reasonable safe (as safe as anything can be in space I guess) and not at least very cheap for the power they deliver. A capsule, in the mould of Apollo or Soyuz, is cheap(ish), can be made reusable (I would assume - allthought it might be cheaper to make them recyclable) and has a proven track record. A rescue rocket mounted on top of a capsule is simple and has a proven trackrecord (IFAIK, one russian capsule was saved by it). I think it's a brilliant idea; it's not old - it's refined. Take the best we got today and make it better, as opposed to inventing the Wheel Mk. II.
I forgot to turn on my cellphone this morning, and missed a call from someone dear to me. Still, reading this makes me realise that somewhere out there, someone is feeling even worse over forgetting to turn something on.
That isn't likely to happen anytime soon... and if it do, they will jack up the prices in Europe, because "the ink cost more to import"... And once the dollar slips under the euro again, the new, higher price will remain.
Sorry HP, but my next printer will not have your badge on it.
...when you can't sleep and raid the fridge every night ;)
Seriosly thought, What worries me the most isn't that they have started eating of the reserves - because thats why you have reserves - but that it took so long for people to notice.
...that the loudest arguments will not be over how old these remains are, but there they came from, and if they are indian (native american) or not in origin...
Rather, you americans stop posting here and write to your representatives - in the mean time we who are lucky enought to live somewhere else can post here and have a good laught at how silly your system works at times...
Seriously thought, try to tell your politicans to fix this.. because the US was based on some great ideas and principles, but lately they have been falling aside in the pursuit of the corporate state.
..or could it be that iTunes somehow makes sure you have a iPod before it lets you use it? I honestly don't know myself, but it would explain why this wont work with them. If they think in the same way a lot of IM-companies thinks, anything coming from another client (or in this case, piece of hardware) is evil and will cut into your profit - and must logicaly be stopped.
One thing I do know however is that the iPod itself is overhyped. I had the opertunity to play with one a while back, and (at least to me) it's not worth the extra premium they charge for it compared to other digital music players. But then, thats my point of view =).
I would personally be quite pissed that just to watch a movie, I would be out of touch for three hours.
Just as I - and a lot of other people - would be very pissed if you spend part of the movie we have payed to watch forcing us to listen to your jabbering. Please do not feel offended if I rip the phone out of your hand and crush it under my heel*. Because, you know, it could be your face instead...
Seriously though; if you can't organise your life in a way so that you can be unavilable for a few hours, then you should either do something about your life (get another job) or at the very least stay away from places where people expect you to be quiet so they can pay attention to something.
*) Actually saw that happen in a theatre - a very annoying teenager who couldn't take a hint, couldn't take a stronger hint the next time it rang, and didn't have a cellphone anymore the third time...
Impact on the dialers? Hardly. Cutting into the flow of money to the scammers? Maybe a little bit. Preventing a lot of unfortunate, computer-illiterate irishmen from raking up giant telephone bills? Sure thing.
And as far as I can understand the article, thats what it's all about - not to stop the scammers per se, but to prevent people from falling itno their trap. And as such, this is a Good Thing (tm) as far as I'm concerned.
You could try to educate Joe Avrage (or Ola Dunk, as we call him), but even if you should manage that - and it ain't gonna be easy - it's all in wain when their spouse, stipid kid or geratic grandmother just 'borrows' the PC for a bit and clicks on something they shouldn't have clicked on... back to square one. Blocking whole nations like this may seem extrem, but it works. If you have a legitimate reason to call there, simply call the telco and ask them to put that number on the whitelist.
A simular sceme - allthought user-initiated - are in place in Norway. You can ask that your phone shouldn't be allowed to call abroad, except to numbers you spesifificly designates. Or you can tell TeleNor (the biggest telco in Norway) that your phone isn 't supposed to call abroad, unless you dieal a spesific code first. I had to have a collegue set that one up, since his wife was (still is, despite countless attempts at teaching her) in the habit of clicking 'yes' to everything on screen...
Damn.. you had to get me started reading that and following links, did you =)? Still, I found this page after following a few doozen links, and the funny thing is that I wrote most of it... weird how seeminly unrelated subjects can somehow connect isn't it?
Son't you mean "when workplaces did start using RFID..."?
Some places have already done so in Europe - to make sure the empolyees don't "forget" to punch out when they leave for lunch, or even worse (at least from the employees point of view) forget to punch back in when they return.
Raises questions? Sure it does - how can you be sure they don't monitor restbreaks and whatnot as well. Makes life simpler? Sure it does - as long as you remember your card.
..if you don't like the idea of being tagged and tracked - well, don't go to that park that tag and track you. Problem solved.
Off course, if the US goverment (or any other evil organisation/entity of your choice) started doing this, allowing you to be "found in real time", you might have a reason to scream up about "civil liberties" and whatnot.. but as long as it's private company doing it on their own property you have nothing to say in the matter - except to vote with your dollars and feet. Besides, I like the idea to find the kids when it's time to leave - spendt way to much time tracking down a kid that didn't want to be found because he didn't want to leave one time.
The Delta IV comes in between 3.51% (Delta IV Large) and 3.45% (Delta IV Medium).
As for my comment on the echomonics of scale - a bigger rocket will have a better ratio because less weight (realtivly speaking) will be used for the strukture and equipment - leaving more for the payload.
A throw-weight of 10% would be fantaastic... (yes, I know you're refering to what's left up there - but it was that line which set me looking for info on payloads vs launchweight).
- The Saturn V had a take off weight of 3,038,500 kg and could deliver 118,000 kg to LEO - or put differently, a whopping 3.88% of the weight would be payload.
- The shuttlesystem weights in at 2,029,633 kg (or about 2/3rds of the Saturn V) and can deliver 27,850 kg to 24,400 kg to LEO (used to be more, but was redisgned after the Challenger accident). This puts the shuttle at a measly 1.37% to 1.20% payload left in orbit.
- The Atlas IIAS had a typical take off weight of 234,000 kg and was capabel of putting 8,610 kg in LEO. A respecable 3.68%, but still below the Saturn V.
- The Atlas V, which will replace the Atlass IIAS, weights 546,700 kg at lift off, manages 12,500 kg to LEO, which in turns means that just 2.29% of the mass is payload.
- The Titan II, well known for launching the Gemini spacecraft into orbit, weighted in at 154,000 kg and lifted 3,100 kg to LEO - or 2.01%.
- The Titan 4, designed to lift 'shuttle sized payloads', weights in at a respectable 886,420 kg, but manages 'only' 17,700 kg to LEO, or about 1.99%.
- Going tothe russian side, the Soyuz 11A511U2 (for many a year the mainstay of the manned spaceprogram in the Soviet Union), weighted in at 297,800 kg and lifted 7,050 kg to LEO. This places it, with 2.36%, in the same league as american boosters.
- ESA uses the large, 777,000 kg Ariane 5 EC-A, capabel of placing 16,000 kg in LEO. At a ratio of 2.06% this is no better or worse than most other launchers.
In short, the Saturn V was a vastly superior rocket - simply because of the economics of scale.
Cost of all the chips and stuff that makes up an über-1337 computer - 1000$
Cost of fancy cabinet w/ window to artisticly put all your wireless chips in - 200$
The look on your face as your motehr fires up her old vacuum cleaner, blanketing the area with RF-noise - priceless.
Ah, but if we can say with more certanty how they didn't evolve, that tells us more about how they did evolve.
As an analogy, lets say someone tells you that a friend of you drives a car that is either yellow, white or gray. A while later, you are told that the car your friend is driving is not yellow. While you still are not certain if it's white or gray, you have ruled out that it might be yellow - thus advancing your knowledge a certain degree.
By eliminating some of the options, we home in on the plausible truth of how the solar system came into beeing.
Just to clarefy - the mission that are talked about is an ESA mission.. y'know, those guys that ain't NASA, nor russkies or from Red China? Anyway, thats really beside the point here.
I judge from your comment, you seem to think that learning about space for the sake of knowledge is not worth it... well, the other option is to learn about space with an eye to make money out of it. It has quite often been proposed that it ought to be possible to mine astroids for raw materials to use in space (build spacestations, spaceships and whatnot in space) or on earth. In order to do this, we need a better understanding on how an astroid is put together - thus this mission.
As for the NASA mission briefly mentioned, thats a completly different mission; it seeks to learn more about comets and how they are made up. While less than ideal for mining, this is important also - not just for the pure science (a concept I think you may find hard to understand) but because we one day may need to alter the orbit / blow up a comet that are on a collisioncourse with earth. If we don't know how it is put together, we're in a worse situation to do just that.
Absolute right to free speach? Jupp, got that, it's in the norwegian constitution (and has been there since it was written.. no need for an anmendment ;), ref 100). I'm not quite sure what you mean by the next, but if you mean you got the right to disagree... sure - as long as you don't attempt to take their right to speak free away. We do 'give more' to the state compared to the US in taxes and whatnot, but then we get much more back (free national healthcare, free pension for the retired, free schools and all that... stuff we think that the state should provide and a lot of americans I've talked to think the state should keep away from). It's hard to talk about "how federal" the goverment is, as well as "balance of controll" between national and local goverment, seeing as how we're not a federation in the way the US are.. we're a "free, independent, indivisible and inalienable Realm." (ref 1 in the 'wegian constitution, as found here).
Yes, we still have a state church, and it works for us. Thats not the same as to say membership is forced onto you thought... and if you decide to join another church or religion, that church / religious society gets the same part of your taxes as the statecurch would get if you been a member there. It's all audited y'know, which is why a handfull of muslim religious societyes found themself in big shit after 'massaging' the membershipnumbers... had to pay back a heap of ill gotten cash ;).
I'm not saying we're better than the US... there are a lot of things here I would like to change, but overall I feel I'm more free here. For instance, take the relativly uniqe consept of "allmannaretten" - "all mens right" - which allows me to travel whereever I would like, as long as I a) don't step on plowed land, b) closes gates and wickets, c)don't chop down living trees and d) camp at least 500' away from houses. If I want to pick berries, they are free for the taking. Collect dry wood of the ground to make a campfire? Go right ahead. Swim in the lake? Well, maybe not so smart if you're in the nude, but don a set of swimtrunks and go right ahead. Next, try the same in the US and see how long it takes before the landowner wants a word with you ;).
While I don't agree with your conclusion (in most respects, based on my intimate knowledge of life in the US thanks to my american wife and in-laws, I am more free here in Norway), I do realise that there is a huge difference between everyday life and what the media reports... but thats why I made a point of pointing it out in the first place ;)
...is it no evil that can't be done in it's name?
I wish I could say that last sentence was funny... but it's frankly plain scary. I mean, it's reasonable to assume that if the FBI had wanted, there are other laws they could have used to obtain the same information (maybe there is something in the laws on copyright, for starters?), right? It's like shooting bluetits with cannons...
It's things like this that makes me happy I decided against trying to emigrate to the US. Seeing how things _apper_to_be_ right now, I imagine there would be twentyfive FBI-officers tasked with keeping an eye on me in case I happened to mention that there are things in the US that could be changed for the better... as well as half a dozen RIAA / MPAA employes attempting to gain access to my harddrive to see if I got any mp3s stored on it.
And for the homour impared.. I'm trying to be funny about a serious issue here.
I often make the mistake of assuming people know what I know... in this cause, how most modern ADF (Automatic Direction Finding) equipment work in aircraft... Mea culpa =)
A coiled antenna - also know as a directionloop - recives the signal strongest when the 'open end' of the coil points towards the transmitter. If you have two coiled antennas, one orientated dead ahead (in relation to you) and the other pointing left-right (ie: being 90 degrees apart), it is reasonable easy to use the difference in signal strenght to figure out the direction the source of the radiotransmitter - in this case the mobile phone.
Three points (or antennas) would be needed if you want a fix on the radiotransmitter (mobile phone) and not just the direction.
...a great way to find my cellphone those times when I put it on silent ringing and then forgets where I put it down :) (don't laught - it happens more often than I like to admidt). Now, if they could also find a way to indicate not just how far away the mobile phone is, but also in what direction... shouldn't be hard - either a directionloop, or two antennas 90 degress apart.