So Verizon didn't come through with shining colors, but at least the Rediculous Industry Assoc. of America to a hit too.
Keep in mind that that was the trial judge that stated that, not the appelate judges. It was the trial judge's original ruling that was overruled on appeal.
If I want to get HD channels over cable, what do I need? I need an HDTV monitor and a HD cable box to decode the signal, which my cable company will be happy to charge me monthly for.
If I want to get HD channels over DirecTV, then I need to buy an HD converter (about $500), and then plug it into my HDTV monitor.
What the FCC wants to do is to get rid of the 'monitor' part. It doesn't matter where you get your HDTV signal from, it's the same process to convert it from digital bits into a picture. They are mandating that all new televisions come with the built-in ability to decode HDTV signals, so that the $500 DirecTV box will drop to $50, the $9 surcharge on your cable bill for an HD reciever will go away, and yes, so that you don't have to buy a $500 OTA reciever to get HDTV from an antenna.
Note, BTW, that they are just legislating the receiver and decoding, if someone wants, they can just downconvert it a standard defination TV. It's a moot point though, because anyone that experiences HDTV on a daily basis like I do realize that the change to HDTV is going to be like the change from black and white to color was. Sure, they'll be some holdouts, but once you live with HDTV daily, going back to standard defination TV becomes almost painful.
It would be pretty easy to find out, the US (and presumably Russia) both have satellites in orbit that can detect any major missle or rocket launch within seconds, and I'm sure that once it's in low earth orbit that Norad, SDC, and a host of other tracking sites could easily see it.
However, China has no reason to fake this. It's pretty clear that they've been wanting this for a while, and trying to fake it would be disasterous.
As far as the exaust, they use a different fuel than the shuttle uses, it's hydrogen peroxide based I believe, and it was chosen in large part due to it's less toxic exaust plume. It wouldn't surprise me if it burned a lot cleaner than the mix we use.
At NCR, for the IT Services helpdesk, we used Remedy (http://www.remedy.com/solutions/servicemgmt/css.h tml), which intergrated phone, web, and voicemail requests, problems, and questions. Takes a bit of setup to use and to create taskable teams, but it's a very comprehensive and powerful program for tracking basically all requests and problems from a help desk perspective.
It's not really hard to use either, it's a fairly low learning curve, and can tie easily into existing knowledgebases (a Lotus Notes DB, for instance)
That's not entirely accurate.
I have a 2003 Prius. The Prius, due to the lighter load placed on the gas engine, only requires maintenance/oil changes every 7,500 miles, and the first 5 are covered by the warranty.
So, at 12k a year x 10 years, a normal car will have to get its oil changed 40 times, and a Prius will only need 16, and only pay for 11. That's an extra 29 oil changes to pay for.
Let's do the math:
I paid $20,000 for my Prius. I'll save $2,000 on my taxes this year, so that's $18,000.
18,000 + gas ((12,000 miles a year \ 45 MPG * $1.50 a gallon) * 10 years) + oil changes (11 * $50 (rough guess)) = $22,500
Let's take your example of random_car_b that's $4,000 less than a Prius
$16,000 + gas ((12,000 miles a year \ 23 MPG * $1.50 a gallon) * 10 years) + oil changes (40 * $50) = $25,826
I'm replying to this comment up here instead of the dozen or so I see lower down because people will probably see this one first. =)
There IS a cost to OpenOffice, and it's a steep one. In my company, they are thousands and thousands of PC's and Laptops, and tens of thousands of employees marrily plunking away with MS Office. They know the application. They are comfortable with it. They are lots of people around them that can answer questions about it, and they are literally millions of docoments created with it that *work*.
Now, if you try to deploy OpenOffice, chaos on an immense scale would result - Documents would be screwy, people would be lost and confused, and productivity would drop like a rock. Morale would drop since people couldn't do their jobs, and god help us if people couldn't access the terabytes of mail stored in Outlook.pst files. When you add up the lost productivity and support and training costs, it would easily be in the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
Free software is free for folks like you and me, but in the hands of the barely-computer literate, the costs can be enormous.
I work for the help desk of a company that supports 30,000 windows PC's, and while we have never officially deployed or distributed Office 2000, we do have a few users that have it installed. We got an advisory from our backline support that this problem is discussed in a technical article Microsoft provided to its partners.
The partner-level article is 816642 - You Cannot Register Office 2000 After You Change the System Date. The link is https://premier.microsoft.com/premier/library/defa ult.aspx?path=/premier/kb/en-us/816/6/42.ASP?KBID= 816642 , but if you don't have premium support, you can't view it, and I can't find a mirror of it via Google.
The cause? Well, the issue appears related to the "End of life" code written into the product, which is what that article discusses. Apparently, Microsoft coded Office 2000 to 'expire' and to need to be reativated at some point, but apparently there's a glitch in that code that causes it to happen over and over again.
The reason is that in free-flight, they arbitrarily choose a direction to be 'up' to function as the Z-axis in whatever coordinate/sector/grid system they use. Typically this would be perpendicular to whatever the plane is of your galaxy, so in our case here in the Milky Way, x and y would be across the galactic disc, and Z would be a line going through the core. Totally arbitrary, but helpful to allow humans to 'visualize' their position in the galaxy while warping from place to place.
So, to keep things in relative perspective, I assume the computers in the ships are more than happy to 'auto-level' the ship so that it appears that you're in level flight. Plus, I guess it keeps the less-intelligent folks sitting on their couches that don't understand spatial relationships from hurting their fragile little minds. =)
SciFi is also replaying their original 3-part miniseries of Dune during the day today, so if you haven't had a chance to catch it, start the Tivo a bit earlier and snag it as well
1) Clear flyable weather. While you can detect the thermal blooms of launch, you can't rely on that for tracking, thus the need for a ranging laser. Will this work if you've got 5-10k ft of cloud cover to visually confirm the target? How about minor-major turbulance?
The system uses 2 tracking lasers to compensate for up to 500 miles of atmospheric distortion, and since the platform will be flying at 40,000 feet (well above 99.99% of weather systems) and it will only take seconds for an ICBM-class missle to reach that altitute, cloud cover and the minimal amout of turbulance are non-factors.
2) Total aerial supremancy. As with AWACS, you'll need to dominate the skies to the point where SAMs are not making the plane suddenly jink and miss the shot at the wrong time.
SAM's have a limited range, and if anything would be more concerned about strike fighters that are bombing them, not to mention the fact that I'm certian we'll have a sufficent number of EA-6B Prowlers in the air jamming and scrambling the SAM's to avoid long range radar-tracked launches. The ICBM's, in the case of North Korea, would need to rapidly head out over the pacific to reash the US, giving us plenty of controllable airspace to park a 747.
3) Target overload. If there are a "lot" of thermal blooms, how long will it take to determine which one is shooting the real missle? Which is just an fire/explosion on the ground? Recall that Iraq is tasked with destroying 100+ short-range ballistic missles. How do you tell a 200km range missle with a nuke vs. a 50km one with conventional explosives. You have 20 shots to figure it out.
Trajectory tells you all you need to know. A short range weapon will have a much lower track than a long range missle, which will need much higher altitude in order to reach its intended target. A basic knowledge of the opponents ballistic missle capability and a few seconds of tracking data is typically sufficent to provide a fairly accurate track and intended destination for the weapon. Additionally, stationary ground-based heat 'plumes' don't move, and would be easily detected as just that, a ground fire.
4) Equipment. How long to reload between shots? Fast enough to take a second shot? What sort of stress does this put on the plane and the internal equipment? If you do miss, can you still track the missed target?
A good question. Since the reaction that powers the laser is chemical based, it would be interesting to know what the regeneration time is. Stress on the plane should be minimal (there's no real signifigent 'moving parts' to the weapon to induce stress), and it maintains enough reactants for 20 shots.
5) Limited range. From the description it can cover a few hundred square miles. Say 400 square miles or an area of 20 miles by 20 miles. Expand that by constantly flying large fig-8s and you got maybe an area of 3000 sq. miles covered for about five minutes every hour. Lots of luck tracking down the right five minutes of launch...
Generally, if we know an opponent has intercontanental capability, we have a fairly good idea what track a missle would need to take to reach us. In the case of a massive country like the USSR, such a weapon is virtually meaningless, but in a small country like North Korea, it should be simple to cover their launch trajectory.
Slashdot Mirror
So Verizon didn't come through with shining colors, but at least the Rediculous Industry Assoc. of America to a hit too.
Keep in mind that that was the trial judge that stated that, not the appelate judges. It was the trial judge's original ruling that was overruled on appeal.
You're missing the point.
If I want to get HD channels over cable, what do I need? I need an HDTV monitor and a HD cable box to decode the signal, which my cable company will be happy to charge me monthly for.
If I want to get HD channels over DirecTV, then I need to buy an HD converter (about $500), and then plug it into my HDTV monitor.
What the FCC wants to do is to get rid of the 'monitor' part. It doesn't matter where you get your HDTV signal from, it's the same process to convert it from digital bits into a picture. They are mandating that all new televisions come with the built-in ability to decode HDTV signals, so that the $500 DirecTV box will drop to $50, the $9 surcharge on your cable bill for an HD reciever will go away, and yes, so that you don't have to buy a $500 OTA reciever to get HDTV from an antenna.
Note, BTW, that they are just legislating the receiver and decoding, if someone wants, they can just downconvert it a standard defination TV. It's a moot point though, because anyone that experiences HDTV on a daily basis like I do realize that the change to HDTV is going to be like the change from black and white to color was. Sure, they'll be some holdouts, but once you live with HDTV daily, going back to standard defination TV becomes almost painful.
It would be pretty easy to find out, the US (and presumably Russia) both have satellites in orbit that can detect any major missle or rocket launch within seconds, and I'm sure that once it's in low earth orbit that Norad, SDC, and a host of other tracking sites could easily see it.
However, China has no reason to fake this. It's pretty clear that they've been wanting this for a while, and trying to fake it would be disasterous.
As far as the exaust, they use a different fuel than the shuttle uses, it's hydrogen peroxide based I believe, and it was chosen in large part due to it's less toxic exaust plume. It wouldn't surprise me if it burned a lot cleaner than the mix we use.
At NCR, for the IT Services helpdesk, we used Remedy (http://www.remedy.com/solutions/servicemgmt/css.h tml), which intergrated phone, web, and voicemail requests, problems, and questions. Takes a bit of setup to use and to create taskable teams, but it's a very comprehensive and powerful program for tracking basically all requests and problems from a help desk perspective.
It's not really hard to use either, it's a fairly low learning curve, and can tie easily into existing knowledgebases (a Lotus Notes DB, for instance)
That's not entirely accurate. I have a 2003 Prius. The Prius, due to the lighter load placed on the gas engine, only requires maintenance/oil changes every 7,500 miles, and the first 5 are covered by the warranty. So, at 12k a year x 10 years, a normal car will have to get its oil changed 40 times, and a Prius will only need 16, and only pay for 11. That's an extra 29 oil changes to pay for. Let's do the math: I paid $20,000 for my Prius. I'll save $2,000 on my taxes this year, so that's $18,000. 18,000 + gas ((12,000 miles a year \ 45 MPG * $1.50 a gallon) * 10 years) + oil changes (11 * $50 (rough guess)) = $22,500 Let's take your example of random_car_b that's $4,000 less than a Prius $16,000 + gas ((12,000 miles a year \ 23 MPG * $1.50 a gallon) * 10 years) + oil changes (40 * $50) = $25,826
I'm replying to this comment up here instead of the dozen or so I see lower down because people will probably see this one first. =)
.pst files. When you add up the lost productivity and support and training costs, it would easily be in the tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.
There IS a cost to OpenOffice, and it's a steep one. In my company, they are thousands and thousands of PC's and Laptops, and tens of thousands of employees marrily plunking away with MS Office. They know the application. They are comfortable with it. They are lots of people around them that can answer questions about it, and they are literally millions of docoments created with it that *work*.
Now, if you try to deploy OpenOffice, chaos on an immense scale would result - Documents would be screwy, people would be lost and confused, and productivity would drop like a rock. Morale would drop since people couldn't do their jobs, and god help us if people couldn't access the terabytes of mail stored in Outlook
Free software is free for folks like you and me, but in the hands of the barely-computer literate, the costs can be enormous.
I work for the help desk of a company that supports 30,000 windows PC's, and while we have never officially deployed or distributed Office 2000, we do have a few users that have it installed. We got an advisory from our backline support that this problem is discussed in a technical article Microsoft provided to its partners. The partner-level article is 816642 - You Cannot Register Office 2000 After You Change the System Date. The link is https://premier.microsoft.com/premier/library/defa ult.aspx?path=/premier/kb/en-us/816/6/42.ASP?KBID= 816642 , but if you don't have premium support, you can't view it, and I can't find a mirror of it via Google.
The cause? Well, the issue appears related to the "End of life" code written into the product, which is what that article discusses. Apparently, Microsoft coded Office 2000 to 'expire' and to need to be reativated at some point, but apparently there's a glitch in that code that causes it to happen over and over again.
The reason is that in free-flight, they arbitrarily choose a direction to be 'up' to function as the Z-axis in whatever coordinate/sector/grid system they use. Typically this would be perpendicular to whatever the plane is of your galaxy, so in our case here in the Milky Way, x and y would be across the galactic disc, and Z would be a line going through the core. Totally arbitrary, but helpful to allow humans to 'visualize' their position in the galaxy while warping from place to place. So, to keep things in relative perspective, I assume the computers in the ships are more than happy to 'auto-level' the ship so that it appears that you're in level flight. Plus, I guess it keeps the less-intelligent folks sitting on their couches that don't understand spatial relationships from hurting their fragile little minds. =)
SciFi is also replaying their original 3-part miniseries of Dune during the day today, so if you haven't had a chance to catch it, start the Tivo a bit earlier and snag it as well
1) Clear flyable weather. While you can detect the thermal blooms of launch, you can't rely on that for tracking, thus the need for a ranging laser. Will this work if you've got 5-10k ft of cloud cover to visually confirm the target? How about minor-major turbulance?
The system uses 2 tracking lasers to compensate for up to 500 miles of atmospheric distortion, and since the platform will be flying at 40,000 feet (well above 99.99% of weather systems) and it will only take seconds for an ICBM-class missle to reach that altitute, cloud cover and the minimal amout of turbulance are non-factors.
2) Total aerial supremancy. As with AWACS, you'll need to dominate the skies to the point where SAMs are not making the plane suddenly jink and miss the shot at the wrong time.
SAM's have a limited range, and if anything would be more concerned about strike fighters that are bombing them, not to mention the fact that I'm certian we'll have a sufficent number of EA-6B Prowlers in the air jamming and scrambling the SAM's to avoid long range radar-tracked launches. The ICBM's, in the case of North Korea, would need to rapidly head out over the pacific to reash the US, giving us plenty of controllable airspace to park a 747.
3) Target overload. If there are a "lot" of thermal blooms, how long will it take to determine which one is shooting the real missle? Which is just an fire/explosion on the ground? Recall that Iraq is tasked with destroying 100+ short-range ballistic missles. How do you tell a 200km range missle with a nuke vs. a 50km one with conventional explosives. You have 20 shots to figure it out.
Trajectory tells you all you need to know. A short range weapon will have a much lower track than a long range missle, which will need much higher altitude in order to reach its intended target. A basic knowledge of the opponents ballistic missle capability and a few seconds of tracking data is typically sufficent to provide a fairly accurate track and intended destination for the weapon. Additionally, stationary ground-based heat 'plumes' don't move, and would be easily detected as just that, a ground fire.
4) Equipment. How long to reload between shots? Fast enough to take a second shot? What sort of stress does this put on the plane and the internal equipment? If you do miss, can you still track the missed target?
A good question. Since the reaction that powers the laser is chemical based, it would be interesting to know what the regeneration time is. Stress on the plane should be minimal (there's no real signifigent 'moving parts' to the weapon to induce stress), and it maintains enough reactants for 20 shots.
5) Limited range. From the description it can cover a few hundred square miles. Say 400 square miles or an area of 20 miles by 20 miles. Expand that by constantly flying large fig-8s and you got maybe an area of 3000 sq. miles covered for about five minutes every hour. Lots of luck tracking down the right five minutes of launch...
Generally, if we know an opponent has intercontanental capability, we have a fairly good idea what track a missle would need to take to reach us. In the case of a massive country like the USSR, such a weapon is virtually meaningless, but in a small country like North Korea, it should be simple to cover their launch trajectory.