That warning goes into effect in 1.5 hours. As opposed to last fucking night.
That's when the interceptor's target drone lands, not launches. Although I guess technically it is when the interceptor launches.
I suppose that last night is not enough time to boost around the moon and swing back for an extremely high incoming velocity target drone. Maybe a demo of targeting something deorbiting from geosync?
US missiles go over the north pole for targeting and range purposes due to the magnetic fields there.
Traditionally, we used to send our military to Russia on a semi-regular basis by going thru Poland, but in this situation the shortest great circle path to the Soviet Motherland happens to be over the north pole. Has very little to do with magnetic fields, other than ICBMs don't use compasses.
I'm wondering if it was an attempted terror attack where the launch was intended to head toward the California coastline but something happened on the launch, whether by accident or intent that caused it to launch out to sea.
This kind of thing is usually carefully planned out in advance... if that were the case, by this time congress would magically already unanimously (Except Feingold) voted yes on a 1000 page bill with a cutesy name giving away more of our freedoms. Not seeing any congressional action, so I'm no thinking this is another false flag operation.
If Cameron came up with the idea and had someone build it for him, I'd say you could argue he invented it.
He may not have been the one doing the technical details, but if it's his concept developed on his dime... well, my past employers own the works I did for them, so why not in this case?
My guess is its one of those situations where Cameron invented it, until Autocad and friends open their decades of patent portfolios for enhanced animated architectural walkthrus and smash them, uh, then I guess it turns out those engineers invented it instead.
Great, just what I never wanted, automated ShakeyCam.
Note from the CAD industry this is decades old. Is the actual story that AutoCad's patent finally expired so movie folks can use it legally in their software, or something like that?
Sheep jokes are NZ not UK. Almost at opposite points of the planet. UK jokes are supposed to be all about the irony, which Americans don't understand and think is something only blacksmiths and steelworkers use.
Why a cell phone? Why not just a usb dongle + software?
Almost certainly so they (govt, etc) can track down people with positive results. At some point in the device is a microcontroller pin where OK = H and infected = L (maybe open collector from multiple sensors who knows). The app on the phone merely reads binary 0 or 1 and then promptly, probably literally, phones home to report. You could probably find that pin on the embedded microcontroller, feed in +5 and hook up an LED if you want privacy.
Given the UK attitude toward cameras being the miracle cure for all social ills, I figure the other use is to snap a candid pic of the newly positive, for like a reality show or something.
One can easily imagine why given the ridiculously baroque and counter-intuitive system you've just described.
Its perfectly reasonable from a green perspective. The fear is "angry employee" goes home in August on Friday and sets the thermo to 50 on the way out to F the company thats Fing him/her. Another way to think about it, is the victims are forced by programming to raise the thermo in the summer and lower it in the winter. For a certain mixture of greenie and control freak its pretty much a dream come true.
A quite reasonable expectation with any thermostat is that when you set the temperature on it, that is the temperature the system will reach and maintain. A perfectly reasonable conclusion from that assumption is that the system will attempt to attain the initial temperature relatively quickly without "overshooting", and thus a larger delta will bring the temperature down quicker.
99% of HVAC simply does not work that way. You don't need a PID controller with overshoot control because the systems are typically designed to be profoundly overdamped, generally by having huge thermal mass. There are numerous industrial process controls that require some control system theory... HVAC is not one of them. If your HVAC system is underdamped and requires advanced PLCs and PID controllers to prevent oscillation, you've paid your HVAC guy for waaaaaay too much capacity.
If the interface to the air conditioner is "short circuit means on" and "open circuit means off", the delta inside the thermo can not possibly even theoretically matter as regards "bring the temperature down quicker"
While I think the lessons here are valuable, as far as the "practical student" goes, the vast majority of assignments are one-time throw-away.
Most work assignments by quantity are also one-time throw-away. However, most time spent is on the big eternal monster systems.
Might not be completely out of line to give them a mix of little "import this very raw data into a SQL database" and big "Lets spend an entire semester building a complete inventory system"
I've also seen thermostats that, while they don't directly control the system, do alter the way the system cycles. I believe it's some kind of 'intelligent' system that realizes if Department A wants 70F and Department B (next door, open air) wants 90F, it's a waste of energy doing them separately and just pushes out 80F.
I worked at a facility where a thermostat set above seventy-something is in air conditioning mode and set below that is heating mode. And I worked with morons whom alternated it at extremes and then couldn't figure out why the HVAC didn't work. I get to work and its about 50 in the cubes... cow orker says "I'm freezing so I set it to 85"... "Well, don't you think 85 is kind of high for the airconditioner?" I turn it down to 70 and we warm right up. Same deal in the summer. Its 90 in the cubes because some clown set it to 60 placing us in heating mode, and god knows its well above 60 so nothing happens. I crank it up to 75 and we're soon chilling. And the amazing part is these people NEVER LEARNED. Ever. I would imagine they're still all screwed up.
I'm amazed how many people think HVAC is strictly proportional and the thermostat tells the machinery how hard to work. That technology exists but is rare and expensive and you almost certainly don't have it.
Heh... so I'm either depending on "magic", which won't work because magic doesn't exist,
Well, it inherently limits the usefulness of the discussion. My imagination is different than your imagination doesn't really accomplish anything.
I'm using a method that generates toxic waste, and therefore it won't work because I'll have disposal problems.
Ah the key to our misunderstanding. Its the inputs that are toxic and they will be output, somewhere. You can't accept tons of lead and heavy metals and strange organic compounds at the intake, and not expect some expense to prove that the plastic baby's nuks at the output are not full of lead. That lead has to go somewhere, and costs of material handling and storage are not eliminated by working/wishing on the disassembly and refining process. In fact, industrial experience shows that the most expensive part of being in the lead chemistry business isn't raw materials or process energy but in safety systems, compliance, cleanup, documentation, lawsuits by anyone tangentially related whom ever gets cancer, etc. You just don't want to get into the business of handling lead if you can possibly avoid it.
You know the very old claim that supercomputers turn a processing problem into an I/O problem? A magic solution to recycling laptops is merely going to create an "insurmountable" new materials handling and environmental cleanup problem...
You can also end up with the anti-nuclear fuel reprocessing rules... The danger being a cheap and popular technology could result in fools dumping excess purified organometallics into the river. You or I would never do it, but some fool would. Thus we are not allowed to reprocess nuclear reactor fuel in the USA, and possibly laptop recyclers would be banned for similar reasons.
Just because you can't imagine how to do something doesn't mean it won't work.
I would disagree in that is usually the case. Many people agree with me on faith healing, astrology, and almost everyone agrees that 99% of human religions must be wrong, etc. I don't see how to make a machine that violates (insert any law of thermodynamics or physics here) and oddly enough that means it won't work.
Specifically I was thinking of maybe using the nanoparticle sorting technologies that have been developed in chip size for materials analysis, or maybe a centrifuge based sorting process with the waste liquified. Maybe even building macro scale robotic sorting devices to separate waste at multiple scales.
OK interesting but that refining process is only a tiny slice of the overall system of a company that ate old laptops and crapped raw materials and cash. It would also be quite handy for primary inputs not just recycling. Imagine how handy it would be to remove the sulfur or mercury or uranium in coal going to a power plant...
Also, there's nothing wrong with using a lot of energy, just like there's nothing inherently wrong with spending a lot of money, if the result is a net gain. If we remove more garbage (solid, liquid, and gas) from the world than we add, we're moving in the right direction.
Be careful to keep complete system costs in mind. Which is far from me claiming its impossible. It is, however, possible to end up recycling 10 grams of mercury from alkaline batteries, by burning ten tons of coal at the power plant, thus releasing 100 grams of mercury into the air, net loss by recycling of 90 grams. Agree with you that one anecdote does not disprove an entire generalized industry, but it most definitely proves there exists at least one minefield with at least one mine in it, and probably many more. Also it can be inherently wrong if there is something "better" to be done with the energy or cash, perhaps R+D to economically eliminate the entire polluting process?
You had me going till there. A "real" hackers collective would have a guy with a lathe and a milling machine and a dremel grinder and you'd go home with a homemade bit made out of an old piece of rebar. And a set of homemade straight slot metric brass screws to use instead of the trilobes.
Just for the record, the screws have a tri-tip notch. It's sort of like a Phillips but with one of the legs missing. The notches don't extend all the way to the ends of the screw, so the screwdriver has to be an exact fit.
My guess is a wiha number 71952, about $7 but if you're paying list price you're doin it wrong.
Or you can go to the apple websites and pay $50, your choice.
A bit of time with a digital dial caliper and some google would verify the exact size. Or you could purchase a large assortment kit of numerous "security bits" and become either the terror of the town, the hero of the wannabe hacker collective, or quite possibly both.
What I'm actually suggesting is a technology that isn't developed yet...
aka Magic. I feel if you're depending on magical thinking to make it work, you're better off with a more versatile unicorn like a Mr Fusion to provide infinite free energy, and pushing the waste into existing well developed refining technology using that free energy.
Interesting... you're assuming a specific method of recycling then proceeding to poke holes in what you believe I'm suggesting. This is an excellent example of a "straw man" argument.
No, I was providing the best currently available real world technology to meet your goal, and then poking holes in it. If I knew magical thinking was part of the business plan I'd probably go full star trek technobabble instead.
Yes, it'll take energy. Just about everything does:)
Unless you accomplish a miracle of 100% recycling and sell all the parts at a profit, you'll have some manner of concentrated semi-toxic waste to dispose of, perhaps at greater expense than just dumping it all, in bulk, into the sun or a volcano or something. The EPA and OSHA costs of a big pile of lead and lead contaminated "stuff" cannot just be waved away, nor the energy costs of continuous Q+A to make sure you're recycled plastic for kids toys isn't full of lead.
Its easily possible to get a test tube or lab scale process that "works" but still have an overall system failure due to other economic costs.
Its the expensive indium they're trying to recycle, unless they are complete idiots. By expensive, I mean a couple bucks per gram. At a rate of a couple grams per screen. So, a dumpster full of dead LCDs has maybe "thousands of dollars" worth of Indium in it, more or less. The hard part is separating it from thousands of pounds of polymerized dinosaur and plate glass without spending more than thousands of dollars of labor, energy, and capital expense..
I have yet to find a screwdriver that will fit those damn screws. Maybe it's time to rob a Genius Bar?
Geeze dude hit a (real) hardware store before committing larceny. I believe you're describing a T6 variant, possibly a TS6 or TR6 but certainly a TX6 which looks like a TS with the pins shaped like a TR but it only has 5 pins. Somebody living a mac lifestyle can probably purchase some tools. It'll set you back about as much as a really good cheeseburger, and probably come in handy elsewhere in the future.
Either that or google will find you the exact answer.
Note by "real hardware store" I mean the neighborhood place staffed by crabby elderly semi-retired craftsmen, not a big box store with minimum wage morons whom barely know what a hammer is.
You mean that laptop shoppers want a laptop in which every component is sized to meet the maximum likely size of any possible compatible device, plus extra space for a subcase and connectors? Really? Laptop shoppers?
I don't think you understand laptop shoppers. Well in excess of 99% of laptop sales are:
1) The hot saleswoman convinced the head of IT to buy quantity one thousand of her mfgr / brand / model despite him not even getting a date. Or if no saleswoman, there were box seats professional sports tickets involved.
Or
2) My mom wants to spend $500 on a laptop. Go to Best Buy and take the $499.99 laptop off the shelf. Mission accomplished.
.. build a machine that's capable of disassembling laptops (or other electronic waste) into its component materials for recycling.
Depends how you define "component materials" and "recycling". There are innumerable levels not just binary yes no. I can't see reusing much above the molecular level, so you're talking about grinding to a fine powder and using the powder as kind of a "laptop ore" to be refined, which takes boatloads of energy. Worth it for rare earths, not so much for polymerized dinosaur, and by weight most of it will be polymerized dinosaur. The other problem is disposal of mixed "waste". Contaminated silicon is not too useful at a chip foundry, so first idea is dump it on a beach, oh except for the lead solder content. Maybe this is how Chinese plastic kids toys get filled with lead? So the plastic will be useless commercially, may as well burn it (which in a bonfire in a backyard is a dumb idea, but in a properly designed incinerator is perfectly safe, guess which solution is cheaper?)
or did feeding animals their own ground up con-specifics break some new health and sanitary regulation?
You get around that by adding the ground up chicken parts to the cow feed, and the ground up cow parts to the chicken feed. Insert sheep (oops NZ joke) or whatever.
What was the previous use? My guess is they mixed it in with the chicken feed to fatten up the next batch. They'll need a new source of oil. Maybe corn oil?
I would think that while you could easily receive the signal, transmitting back to the tower would be a problem since TV antennas were designed to be receive only.
Or do they plan to do a satellite-TV type thing where upstream is a modem and downstream is the wireless? Downloading family pictures takes 2 minutes, uploading 6 hours.
Probably upload via phone modem...
Ham radio guys know you can transmit a couple watts thru a typical TV antenna installation. Issues: 1) The 75 ohm to 300 ohm balun won't survive more than a couple watts. Low power on the HT should be fine. Use 300 ohm twinlead and you can shove a hundred watts thru a typical TV antenna. 2) Terrible gain per pound or per sq foot of wind load. All that aluminum is for wideband gain as opposed to narrow band gain. You'll be very displeased with the performance compared to a "real ham radio antenna" 3) No inline booster amps for obvious reasons.
Biggest problem is legal, at least in the US, no unlicensed intentional radiators at any power level allowed in the TV bands... Going to take FCC rulings, maybe congressional bills. Probably just as bad in Australia.
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That warning goes into effect in 1.5 hours. As opposed to last fucking night.
That's when the interceptor's target drone lands, not launches. Although I guess technically it is when the interceptor launches.
I suppose that last night is not enough time to boost around the moon and swing back for an extremely high incoming velocity target drone. Maybe a demo of targeting something deorbiting from geosync?
Cruise ship flare sizes are getting out of hand...
I'll teach those somali pirates a lesson or two... Turn up the dial-a-yield on the next one...
US missiles go over the north pole for targeting and range purposes due to the magnetic fields there.
Traditionally, we used to send our military to Russia on a semi-regular basis by going thru Poland, but in this situation the shortest great circle path to the Soviet Motherland happens to be over the north pole. Has very little to do with magnetic fields, other than ICBMs don't use compasses.
I'm wondering if it was an attempted terror attack where the launch was intended to head toward the California coastline but something happened on the launch, whether by accident or intent that caused it to launch out to sea.
This kind of thing is usually carefully planned out in advance... if that were the case, by this time congress would magically already unanimously (Except Feingold) voted yes on a 1000 page bill with a cutesy name giving away more of our freedoms. Not seeing any congressional action, so I'm no thinking this is another false flag operation.
If Cameron came up with the idea and had someone build it for him, I'd say you could argue he invented it.
He may not have been the one doing the technical details, but if it's his concept developed on his dime ... well, my past employers own the works I did for them, so why not in this case?
My guess is its one of those situations where Cameron invented it, until Autocad and friends open their decades of patent portfolios for enhanced animated architectural walkthrus and smash them, uh, then I guess it turns out those engineers invented it instead.
Great, just what I never wanted, automated ShakeyCam.
Note from the CAD industry this is decades old. Is the actual story that AutoCad's patent finally expired so movie folks can use it legally in their software, or something like that?
Sheep jokes are NZ not UK. Almost at opposite points of the planet.
UK jokes are supposed to be all about the irony, which Americans don't understand and think is something only blacksmiths and steelworkers use.
Why a cell phone? Why not just a usb dongle + software?
Almost certainly so they (govt, etc) can track down people with positive results. At some point in the device is a microcontroller pin where OK = H and infected = L (maybe open collector from multiple sensors who knows). The app on the phone merely reads binary 0 or 1 and then promptly, probably literally, phones home to report. You could probably find that pin on the embedded microcontroller, feed in +5 and hook up an LED if you want privacy.
Given the UK attitude toward cameras being the miracle cure for all social ills, I figure the other use is to snap a candid pic of the newly positive, for like a reality show or something.
One can easily imagine why given the ridiculously baroque and counter-intuitive system you've just described.
Its perfectly reasonable from a green perspective. The fear is "angry employee" goes home in August on Friday and sets the thermo to 50 on the way out to F the company thats Fing him/her. Another way to think about it, is the victims are forced by programming to raise the thermo in the summer and lower it in the winter. For a certain mixture of greenie and control freak its pretty much a dream come true.
A quite reasonable expectation with any thermostat is that when you set the temperature on it, that is the temperature the system will reach and maintain. A perfectly reasonable conclusion from that assumption is that the system will attempt to attain the initial temperature relatively quickly without "overshooting", and thus a larger delta will bring the temperature down quicker.
99% of HVAC simply does not work that way. You don't need a PID controller with overshoot control because the systems are typically designed to be profoundly overdamped, generally by having huge thermal mass. There are numerous industrial process controls that require some control system theory... HVAC is not one of them. If your HVAC system is underdamped and requires advanced PLCs and PID controllers to prevent oscillation, you've paid your HVAC guy for waaaaaay too much capacity.
If the interface to the air conditioner is "short circuit means on" and "open circuit means off", the delta inside the thermo can not possibly even theoretically matter as regards "bring the temperature down quicker"
Project organization, including version control, bug trackers, and individual roles within a project
You'll read many more interesting examples of the above in the linux kernel, than say, yet another one week in-class project.
While I think the lessons here are valuable, as far as the "practical student" goes, the vast majority of assignments are one-time throw-away.
Most work assignments by quantity are also one-time throw-away. However, most time spent is on the big eternal monster systems.
Might not be completely out of line to give them a mix of little "import this very raw data into a SQL database" and big "Lets spend an entire semester building a complete inventory system"
Using and administration are two very different things
Not so much with git. Just do your final git pull at the due time (start of class that day or whatever)
The prof can also git pull at their leisure to see what if anything the students are trying to do.
And it makes cheating accusations much more fun when there is a timestamped record.
I've also seen thermostats that, while they don't directly control the system, do alter the way the system cycles. I believe it's some kind of 'intelligent' system that realizes if Department A wants 70F and Department B (next door, open air) wants 90F, it's a waste of energy doing them separately and just pushes out 80F.
I worked at a facility where a thermostat set above seventy-something is in air conditioning mode and set below that is heating mode. And I worked with morons whom alternated it at extremes and then couldn't figure out why the HVAC didn't work. I get to work and its about 50 in the cubes ... cow orker says "I'm freezing so I set it to 85" ... "Well, don't you think 85 is kind of high for the airconditioner?" I turn it down to 70 and we warm right up. Same deal in the summer. Its 90 in the cubes because some clown set it to 60 placing us in heating mode, and god knows its well above 60 so nothing happens. I crank it up to 75 and we're soon chilling. And the amazing part is these people NEVER LEARNED. Ever. I would imagine they're still all screwed up.
I'm amazed how many people think HVAC is strictly proportional and the thermostat tells the machinery how hard to work. That technology exists but is rare and expensive and you almost certainly don't have it.
Heh... so I'm either depending on "magic", which won't work because magic doesn't exist,
Well, it inherently limits the usefulness of the discussion. My imagination is different than your imagination doesn't really accomplish anything.
I'm using a method that generates toxic waste, and therefore it won't work because I'll have disposal problems.
Ah the key to our misunderstanding. Its the inputs that are toxic and they will be output, somewhere. You can't accept tons of lead and heavy metals and strange organic compounds at the intake, and not expect some expense to prove that the plastic baby's nuks at the output are not full of lead. That lead has to go somewhere, and costs of material handling and storage are not eliminated by working/wishing on the disassembly and refining process. In fact, industrial experience shows that the most expensive part of being in the lead chemistry business isn't raw materials or process energy but in safety systems, compliance, cleanup, documentation, lawsuits by anyone tangentially related whom ever gets cancer, etc. You just don't want to get into the business of handling lead if you can possibly avoid it.
You know the very old claim that supercomputers turn a processing problem into an I/O problem? A magic solution to recycling laptops is merely going to create an "insurmountable" new materials handling and environmental cleanup problem...
You can also end up with the anti-nuclear fuel reprocessing rules... The danger being a cheap and popular technology could result in fools dumping excess purified organometallics into the river. You or I would never do it, but some fool would. Thus we are not allowed to reprocess nuclear reactor fuel in the USA, and possibly laptop recyclers would be banned for similar reasons.
Just because you can't imagine how to do something doesn't mean it won't work.
I would disagree in that is usually the case. Many people agree with me on faith healing, astrology, and almost everyone agrees that 99% of human religions must be wrong, etc. I don't see how to make a machine that violates (insert any law of thermodynamics or physics here) and oddly enough that means it won't work.
Specifically I was thinking of maybe using the nanoparticle sorting technologies that have been developed in chip size for materials analysis, or maybe a centrifuge based sorting process with the waste liquified. Maybe even building macro scale robotic sorting devices to separate waste at multiple scales.
OK interesting but that refining process is only a tiny slice of the overall system of a company that ate old laptops and crapped raw materials and cash. It would also be quite handy for primary inputs not just recycling. Imagine how handy it would be to remove the sulfur or mercury or uranium in coal going to a power plant...
Also, there's nothing wrong with using a lot of energy, just like there's nothing inherently wrong with spending a lot of money, if the result is a net gain. If we remove more garbage (solid, liquid, and gas) from the world than we add, we're moving in the right direction.
Be careful to keep complete system costs in mind. Which is far from me claiming its impossible. It is, however, possible to end up recycling 10 grams of mercury from alkaline batteries, by burning ten tons of coal at the power plant, thus releasing 100 grams of mercury into the air, net loss by recycling of 90 grams. Agree with you that one anecdote does not disprove an entire generalized industry, but it most definitely proves there exists at least one minefield with at least one mine in it, and probably many more. Also it can be inherently wrong if there is something "better" to be done with the energy or cash, perhaps R+D to economically eliminate the entire polluting process?
my local hacker's collective
You had me going till there. A "real" hackers collective would have a guy with a lathe and a milling machine and a dremel grinder and you'd go home with a homemade bit made out of an old piece of rebar. And a set of homemade straight slot metric brass screws to use instead of the trilobes.
Just for the record, the screws have a tri-tip notch. It's sort of like a Phillips but with one of the legs missing. The notches don't extend all the way to the ends of the screw, so the screwdriver has to be an exact fit.
My guess is a wiha number 71952, about $7 but if you're paying list price you're doin it wrong.
http://www.wihatools.com/200seri/284_TW_and_TS.htm
Or you can go to the apple websites and pay $50, your choice.
A bit of time with a digital dial caliper and some google would verify the exact size. Or you could purchase a large assortment kit of numerous "security bits" and become either the terror of the town, the hero of the wannabe hacker collective, or quite possibly both.
Is that the Wiha $6 screwdriver with a roughly 500% markup?
What I'm actually suggesting is a technology that isn't developed yet...
aka Magic. I feel if you're depending on magical thinking to make it work, you're better off with a more versatile unicorn like a Mr Fusion to provide infinite free energy, and pushing the waste into existing well developed refining technology using that free energy.
Interesting... you're assuming a specific method of recycling then proceeding to poke holes in what you believe I'm suggesting. This is an excellent example of a "straw man" argument.
No, I was providing the best currently available real world technology to meet your goal, and then poking holes in it. If I knew magical thinking was part of the business plan I'd probably go full star trek technobabble instead.
Yes, it'll take energy. Just about everything does :)
Unless you accomplish a miracle of 100% recycling and sell all the parts at a profit, you'll have some manner of concentrated semi-toxic waste to dispose of, perhaps at greater expense than just dumping it all, in bulk, into the sun or a volcano or something. The EPA and OSHA costs of a big pile of lead and lead contaminated "stuff" cannot just be waved away, nor the energy costs of continuous Q+A to make sure you're recycled plastic for kids toys isn't full of lead.
Its easily possible to get a test tube or lab scale process that "works" but still have an overall system failure due to other economic costs.
Its the expensive indium they're trying to recycle, unless they are complete idiots. By expensive, I mean a couple bucks per gram. At a rate of a couple grams per screen. So, a dumpster full of dead LCDs has maybe "thousands of dollars" worth of Indium in it, more or less. The hard part is separating it from thousands of pounds of polymerized dinosaur and plate glass without spending more than thousands of dollars of labor, energy, and capital expense..
The battery is attached with anti-tamper screws!
I have yet to find a screwdriver that will fit those damn screws. Maybe it's time to rob a Genius Bar?
Geeze dude hit a (real) hardware store before committing larceny. I believe you're describing a T6 variant, possibly a TS6 or TR6 but certainly a TX6 which looks like a TS with the pins shaped like a TR but it only has 5 pins. Somebody living a mac lifestyle can probably purchase some tools. It'll set you back about as much as a really good cheeseburger, and probably come in handy elsewhere in the future.
Either that or google will find you the exact answer.
Note by "real hardware store" I mean the neighborhood place staffed by crabby elderly semi-retired craftsmen, not a big box store with minimum wage morons whom barely know what a hammer is.
You mean that laptop shoppers want a laptop in which every component is sized to meet the maximum likely size of any possible compatible device, plus extra space for a subcase and connectors? Really? Laptop shoppers?
I don't think you understand laptop shoppers. Well in excess of 99% of laptop sales are:
1) The hot saleswoman convinced the head of IT to buy quantity one thousand of her mfgr / brand / model despite him not even getting a date. Or if no saleswoman, there were box seats professional sports tickets involved.
Or
2) My mom wants to spend $500 on a laptop. Go to Best Buy and take the $499.99 laptop off the shelf. Mission accomplished.
.. build a machine that's capable of disassembling laptops (or other electronic waste) into its component materials for recycling.
Depends how you define "component materials" and "recycling". There are innumerable levels not just binary yes no. I can't see reusing much above the molecular level, so you're talking about grinding to a fine powder and using the powder as kind of a "laptop ore" to be refined, which takes boatloads of energy. Worth it for rare earths, not so much for polymerized dinosaur, and by weight most of it will be polymerized dinosaur. The other problem is disposal of mixed "waste". Contaminated silicon is not too useful at a chip foundry, so first idea is dump it on a beach, oh except for the lead solder content. Maybe this is how Chinese plastic kids toys get filled with lead? So the plastic will be useless commercially, may as well burn it (which in a bonfire in a backyard is a dumb idea, but in a properly designed incinerator is perfectly safe, guess which solution is cheaper?)
Maybe this place in Louisiana is way out in the middle of nowhere, so they won't have to worry so much about the neighbors complaining.
Have you ever smelled Louisiana? Not some kind of weird ethnic joke, but a comment on the unique bouquet of oil refineries and swamps?
or did feeding animals their own ground up con-specifics break some new health and sanitary regulation?
You get around that by adding the ground up chicken parts to the cow feed, and the ground up cow parts to the chicken feed. Insert sheep (oops NZ joke) or whatever.
What was the previous use?
My guess is they mixed it in with the chicken feed to fatten up the next batch. They'll need a new source of oil. Maybe corn oil?
I would think that while you could easily receive the signal, transmitting back to the tower would be a problem since TV antennas were designed to be receive only.
Or do they plan to do a satellite-TV type thing where upstream is a modem and downstream is the wireless? Downloading family pictures takes 2 minutes, uploading 6 hours.
Probably upload via phone modem...
Ham radio guys know you can transmit a couple watts thru a typical TV antenna installation.
Issues:
1) The 75 ohm to 300 ohm balun won't survive more than a couple watts. Low power on the HT should be fine. Use 300 ohm twinlead and you can shove a hundred watts thru a typical TV antenna.
2) Terrible gain per pound or per sq foot of wind load. All that aluminum is for wideband gain as opposed to narrow band gain. You'll be very displeased with the performance compared to a "real ham radio antenna"
3) No inline booster amps for obvious reasons.
Biggest problem is legal, at least in the US, no unlicensed intentional radiators at any power level allowed in the TV bands... Going to take FCC rulings, maybe congressional bills. Probably just as bad in Australia.