Don't forget the possibility of a media magnate villain modifying the GPS signal so that a British nuclear sub can be diverted from course, kidnapped and made to shoot its rockets at China... So that there is breaking news coming:)
How does a machine that relies on GPS behave when all of a sudden it doesn't know where it is?
A properly engineered machine will gracefully downgrade into a mode that avoids the reliance on GPS. For example, it could use alternative orientation means (dead reckoning or machine vision or whatever), or call for an operator.
Then stop complaining, and roll your own. I hear GLONASS is working in the Antarctic, and the European GPS is right around the corner. Or learn how to use a clock, an astrolabe and a map, it ain't that hard.
The GPS signal is trivially easy to jam if you're close to the jamming device (or in a deep valley), or if it is a really powerful one. If you're close to one (or if you can't see enough of them satellites), all you have to do is look at the map, find one or two landmarks, and proceed on your merry way. If you're close to a really powerful one, it is more likely than not that your government will be providing a fix shortly.
Recovery from a proper bombing of a substation would be far harder on you and will take a lot longer to rebuild;)
It is a lot easier to have some nut drive a truck with a bomb into the local substation and leave half of your town without power than to scramble the same bomb into orbit and nuke a GPS satellite, causing the next available to become offline. It is also a lot easier to hide afterwards if you just send a truck than if you develop and launch a big enough rocket.
Having nuts sabotage a large enough number of substations to cause serious disruption in the US is much harder, but still a lot easier than knocking out enough GPS satellites from orbit.
The only feasible scenario that can kill the GPS is a US war with a power that has both rockets and nukes. The likelihood of such a war is close to zero, from the left hand side.
Not quite. It would be a really good job if it asked me for permission before it activated the remote kill feature, not just send me a notification. Google should not totally forget the OS they developed is running on my device.
It is a replay from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Back then, the government was ridiculously exaggerating the Soviet threat to fuel cash into nuclear weapons. Some estimates say the total amount of nukes produced exceeded a reasonable deterrent 50 or 60 times. The huge pile of money spent on that was, of course, money wasted -- and that doesn't begin to include the infrastructure costs around those warheads.
The "cyber" threat is the history repeating, this time as a farce -- the threat from this "cyber warfare" is significantly smaller than that of a nuclear attack, and this time around the US government is mostly paying with IOUs instead of real money.
But hey, it is the turn of information technology to really profit from the government.
Of course, it was done by mistake. The last thing you want to show your enemy before the real battle begins is your true capabilities. And I saw that the battle is imminent in the news last week. "It could happen in the US" was written in red, flaming letters on video walls across many newsrooms in this country. The end is nigh.
It is an old idea, really, which I believe has grabbed me ever since I tried it first. And for so many years, I'm still doing it this way - one desktop, one app. Maybe you oughta give it a try sometime?
It isn't like all of the NASA vehicles were built in a government-own factory, you know. The whole space shuttle program was built by private corporations too. Uncle Sam only provided the investment, so to speak.
I'm going to say that Steve is one man that relies on many people to come up with a successful product.
I don't follow Apple very closely, but my impression is that Jobs is the only public person in the company that matters. He's the chief salesman. The guy with the hype.The person that is interesting enough to the broad spectrum of media so that they engage in massive brouhaha over even minor stories -- like this one. When he's gone, unless he is replaced by someone who can command similar attention, Apple will lose out.
I'd also venture a guess that only Jobs' charisma and leadership is what makes possible to put and hold the team at Apple's that outputs successful products together, manages investor impatience, etc. etc.
When he's gone, it is anybody's guess what will happen internally. Leadership change is a huge challenge for a corporation. Investors that don't worry about that aren't smart investors.
Seeing, as it is, that I am using Chrome on the mobile appliance I carry around, both Chrome and FFox (ffox being the main) on my notebooks and I have no IE as default browser on the two Windows devices that i still have for business reasons.
First, the Roman Senate most definitely had leaders, and they had amazing powers to manipulate it. It was these powers that allowed it to be subverted eventually by military men like Pompei, Caesar and Crassus, and then be swept aside as Octavian did. And Octavian wasn't even a caesar, just a mere first citizen:)
Second, the Senate was a consultative body, which had no actual power, legislative or otherwise. All it could do was issue advice decrees. Unless those were made into laws by other Roman institutions that actually had legislative powers, Senate proclamations remained just that - proclamations. Of course, the main reason those proclamations had some influence, and were largely implemented as laws once adopted was the fact that the Senate was comprised of the richest, most influential and sick with power Roman citizens.
Third, read some history before you post funny things on slashdot.
Yeah, if main st folks kept all their money in plain, low interest bank accounts, sure, you would be correct.
Unfortunately, investment in non-deposit investments like mutual funds, life insurance, stocks and bonds and a lot of other stuff available to main st. folks aren't insured.
Institutional investments made on behalf of main st. folks like pensions, etc. would not be insured either, and also be at risk.
The problem with your reasoning is that while the government indeed gave them loans at rates below the market, the market was asking for exorbitant rates at the time, based on risk assessment that was not grounded in economic reality but in panic. Kind of like a reverse bubble.
It is quite unlikely that even at those rates there would have been enough money available to stave off the risk of a run. So, you may have ended with a situation that left many more poorer than with the government intervention.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget the possibility of a media magnate villain modifying the GPS signal so that a British nuclear sub can be diverted from course, kidnapped and made to shoot its rockets at China ... So that there is breaking news coming :)
How does a machine that relies on GPS behave when all of a sudden it doesn't know where it is?
A properly engineered machine will gracefully downgrade into a mode that avoids the reliance on GPS. For example, it could use alternative orientation means (dead reckoning or machine vision or whatever), or call for an operator.
A machine without power, on the other hand ....
I'm sure you can see the difference now ;)
Then stop complaining, and roll your own. I hear GLONASS is working in the Antarctic, and the European GPS is right around the corner. Or learn how to use a clock, an astrolabe and a map, it ain't that hard.
Get some sense of perspective.
The GPS signal is trivially easy to jam if you're close to the jamming device (or in a deep valley), or if it is a really powerful one. If you're close to one (or if you can't see enough of them satellites), all you have to do is look at the map, find one or two landmarks, and proceed on your merry way. If you're close to a really powerful one, it is more likely than not that your government will be providing a fix shortly.
Recovery from a proper bombing of a substation would be far harder on you and will take a lot longer to rebuild ;)
It is a lot easier to have some nut drive a truck with a bomb into the local substation and leave half of your town without power than to scramble the same bomb into orbit and nuke a GPS satellite, causing the next available to become offline. It is also a lot easier to hide afterwards if you just send a truck than if you develop and launch a big enough rocket.
Having nuts sabotage a large enough number of substations to cause serious disruption in the US is much harder, but still a lot easier than knocking out enough GPS satellites from orbit.
The only feasible scenario that can kill the GPS is a US war with a power that has both rockets and nukes. The likelihood of such a war is close to zero, from the left hand side.
But it is a good business that pays huge amounts of money to your friends -- without too much oversight.
Not quite. It would be a really good job if it asked me for permission before it activated the remote kill feature, not just send me a notification. Google should not totally forget the OS they developed is running on my device.
It is a replay from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Back then, the government was ridiculously exaggerating the Soviet threat to fuel cash into nuclear weapons. Some estimates say the total amount of nukes produced exceeded a reasonable deterrent 50 or 60 times. The huge pile of money spent on that was, of course, money wasted -- and that doesn't begin to include the infrastructure costs around those warheads.
The "cyber" threat is the history repeating, this time as a farce -- the threat from this "cyber warfare" is significantly smaller than that of a nuclear attack, and this time around the US government is mostly paying with IOUs instead of real money.
But hey, it is the turn of information technology to really profit from the government.
Of course, it was done by mistake. The last thing you want to show your enemy before the real battle begins is your true capabilities. And I saw that the battle is imminent in the news last week. "It could happen in the US" was written in red, flaming letters on video walls across many newsrooms in this country. The end is nigh.
Doth it not maketh the things spinneth faster? Methinks thee scrolls are teh faketh.
It is an old idea, really, which I believe has grabbed me ever since I tried it first. And for so many years, I'm still doing it this way - one desktop, one app. Maybe you oughta give it a try sometime?
It isn't like all of the NASA vehicles were built in a government-own factory, you know. The whole space shuttle program was built by private corporations too. Uncle Sam only provided the investment, so to speak.
I'm going to say that Steve is one man that relies on many people to come up with a successful product.
I don't follow Apple very closely, but my impression is that Jobs is the only public person in the company that matters. He's the chief salesman. The guy with the hype.The person that is interesting enough to the broad spectrum of media so that they engage in massive brouhaha over even minor stories -- like this one. When he's gone, unless he is replaced by someone who can command similar attention, Apple will lose out.
I'd also venture a guess that only Jobs' charisma and leadership is what makes possible to put and hold the team at Apple's that outputs successful products together, manages investor impatience, etc. etc.
When he's gone, it is anybody's guess what will happen internally. Leadership change is a huge challenge for a corporation. Investors that don't worry about that aren't smart investors.
yes, i measure the world by my standards. i am sorry you're not up to that.
Seeing, as it is, that I am using Chrome on the mobile appliance I carry around, both Chrome and FFox (ffox being the main) on my notebooks and I have no IE as default browser on the two Windows devices that i still have for business reasons.
Well, it depends.
The @ symbol, for one, isn't from teh Internets, it has been in use as "at" for much longer in business accounting.
As in
20 apples @ $0.85 = [left as exercise for the reader]
The only difference was they had to cut their standards drafts, blog musings and tweets in stone.
First, the Roman Senate most definitely had leaders, and they had amazing powers to manipulate it. It was these powers that allowed it to be subverted eventually by military men like Pompei, Caesar and Crassus, and then be swept aside as Octavian did. And Octavian wasn't even a caesar, just a mere first citizen :)
Second, the Senate was a consultative body, which had no actual power, legislative or otherwise. All it could do was issue advice decrees. Unless those were made into laws by other Roman institutions that actually had legislative powers, Senate proclamations remained just that - proclamations. Of course, the main reason those proclamations had some influence, and were largely implemented as laws once adopted was the fact that the Senate was comprised of the richest, most influential and sick with power Roman citizens.
Third, read some history before you post funny things on slashdot.
And, apparently, sex in many cases. Just gross.
People are social animals and thrive in groups, because it is usually easier to get shit done with more people together.
Not that us geeks will know anything about it.
Not really, in my country he runs the second-largest telecom. The second and the third to smoke are government ministers.
/ really.
What downtime? You don't seriously think daylight will prevent the said "giant laser" from shooting, do you?
You can't be wronger. The Moon hides the advance of the aliens .
Yeah, if main st folks kept all their money in plain, low interest bank accounts, sure, you would be correct.
Unfortunately, investment in non-deposit investments like mutual funds, life insurance, stocks and bonds and a lot of other stuff available to main st. folks aren't insured.
Institutional investments made on behalf of main st. folks like pensions, etc. would not be insured either, and also be at risk.
The problem with your reasoning is that while the government indeed gave them loans at rates below the market, the market was asking for exorbitant rates at the time, based on risk assessment that was not grounded in economic reality but in panic. Kind of like a reverse bubble.
It is quite unlikely that even at those rates there would have been enough money available to stave off the risk of a run. So, you may have ended with a situation that left many more poorer than with the government intervention.