It seems they've managed to draw a little ridicule over the years without it. Meanwhile, while the sales of many game consoles have been in the toilet, some companies have thought of new ways make the world of trickle-down economics work.
MS might do well to consider some radically different products. Time will tell if anything new gets much traction, but it seems like the employees that had read the old Inside Macintosh developer and Human Interface Guidelines publications dating back to the 80's have left. (In fairness, even Ubuntu seems to have had some interface regressions)
Maybe they can add the commercial operation of prisons to their business. They could bring some jobs to the U.S. while keeping labor costs low, provide training that might help the dysfunctional transition to less troubled lives, and they could keep an eye on those not buying licenses? They could even make the prisons look like gardens.
The problem is how distingishable was most of it from background noise just outside the solar system, or 20 light years away, even if you are trying to focus what comes from here specifically.
With SETI Research, NASA, and others short on funding, it's time that the media industry trade groups pay their sharing to catch those on other planets tuning in with unlicensed televisions.
Beings from afar should be careful what they say in reply too.
So.. Flame is about as related to Angry Birds as Fox News is related to facts then?
Fox ought to be in a pickle with some angry bird attorneys, but given a little more time, Fox may be able to reveal a deeper connection proving beyond any doubt that both sets of developers share some common generic code and have either eaten pickles, had parents that ate pickles, or been closely associated with others who have eaten pickles. It's no wonder so many people, especially talk/comedy show hosts, relish the depth of Fox reporting.
So what else are we going to use? Nothing touches nuclear power in terms of efficiency, cleanliness, and viability right now
Right now? Except for possible willingness to cut consumption quickly, most other changes, even new reactors using existing designs, take substantial time to build.
The viability of various alternatives varies regionally. Being in an active volcanic zone, Japan will likely be able to develop a considerable amount of geothermal power. Some geothermal power is already being generated there from hot springs.
Iceland has plans underway to be completely free of fossil fuel use, without using nuclear at all.
Cancer and birth defects are terrible illnesses, but the radiation levels from Fukushima are so low as to get lost in the background noise of, say, radiation from a nearby kumquat.
Do kumquat trees draw cesium or some other isotope from the soil like sunflowers do? Sunflower seeds often show radiation. They were even testing them in Japan as a possible measure to help clean the soil, but from what I read they didn't remove enough to be useful, and the plants themselves needed special disposal afterwards.
The U.S. levels in the air were low, yes (expect very few cases of lung cancer from that compared to other sources such as decaying radon coming from our soil, building materials, and in water supplies - especially in Texas), but there were much higher concentrations seen in some rainfall. Although not reported on the EPA site, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo had both Iodine-131 and Cesium 134/137 showing up in the milk from the university dairy unit pasture-fed cows. Some places in the U.S. had rainfall testing 1000 times the FDA allowable limit for drinking water. Even the Cal Poly milk was above the amount allowed in drinking water. At least I-131 doesn't last long. They quit showing test results for S.L.O. milk, so it isn't apparent just how much of the cesium present had been directly deposited on the grass the cows ate versus how much was absorbed through the soil. The amounts are not huge, but whatever is left in the soil is going to be there for decades. Average figures tend to hide the fact that there are hot spots, some seen even on the east coast. Most of the radiation that caused cancer in Sweden from Chernobyl is believed to have been the result of what was in rainfall on a particular day.
If you look at cancer reporting in California tabulated over the years and broken out by group, there are a couple of cancers rising significantly particularly in women, and the curves are getting steeper. Yes, the total percentage of the population affected is small, but people are being affected. (The timing of the rises would correlate with Chernobyl as the cause). The fact that there is some radiation from the soil and space (even brief spikes during solar flares), doesn't make radiation any more desirable.
I actually thought the head of the NRC, Chairman Gregory Jaczko, had recently done a reasonable job, but I'd like to know more. Not everyone that has concerns about nuclear power or feels that low-level radiation is still worth minimizing is anti-nuclear. Don't discredit citizens with legitimate concerns, throwing out utter nonsense about threats. Talk about pure FUD...
Republican Congressman Lee Terry of Nebraska had a few things to say, but was exceptionally vague. It's hard to trust much during an election year, especially attacks, but the fact that Jaczko resigned seems to validate that there was an issue. It seems to be a combination of management style and selectively withholding information to get his way. We should demand transparency, even if some of the details require educating people to keep the public calm. He does deserve credit for the U.S. being more on target than what Japanese officials were saying as to the (greater) area that was a high risk place to be. A campaign of lies, denying the consequences of releases, seems a big mistake to me. Only through honestly facing important issues can we hope to effectively manage them.
There's no point in mass fear, the illnesses and deaths are largely spread out over both time and distance and as such pass by mostly without mention. But the deaths are still real.. The people that were alive between 1948 and 1970 (the period of exposure) are/were the primary ones affected. I've known a couple of people that turned out to be from the midwest (one of the harder hit regions from Nevada testing) who had leukemia (they're dead now). Back in the day we didn't know any better. There's a reason we eventually did away with atmospheric testing and have sought to avoid additional contamination. The incident in Japan has left much of the nation much like the U.S. is, with "background" levels elevated. (The U.S. "background" levels are about double what is seen in someplace like Australia. Except for the area hit in WWII, Japan was mostly low too.) Although a small percentage of the population is affected, the U.S. certainly has/will see some additional cancer cases from Chernobyl, the Japanese accident in 1981 (accident very well covered up, a sodium reactor leaked for months with hundred of workers exposed beyond normal limits, and was measurable in the U.S.) and later from the events of last year. Beware of "science" saying that low level radiation is good. It seems that the people doing those studies have also "shown" that mice do better with low level doses of all sorts of other nasties too. Who would have known how wonderful toxins are? (call it science concocted for defense attorneys) Absorbed like calcium, baby-boomers to this day have strontium-90 in their teeth and bones.
Certainly the risk varied considerable, and like fallout from accidents, the hotspots depended on combinations of timing, the wind, rainfall, and what one ate. For Iodine-131 there have been detailed estimates. If you were a female born in the 50's in someplace like Nebraska, and drank a fair amount of goats milk from animals that were pasture fed, the risk was (and for survivors still is) very significant. Risk was less for those drinking less, it wasn't quite as high with cows, and it was lower from animals fed hay indoors. (A lesson from that is to have a couple of months feed hay in reserve to reduce the exposure via milk during the time it takes for I-131 to go through enough half-lives)
It's only for I-131, and then only for the Nevada tests (other sources not included), but have some fun with the risk calculator if you were around back in the day.
The rest can laugh it off I suppose. The Japanese fishermen that can back to Japan with serious radiation exposure from the South Pacific tests did inspire the Godzilla and friends monster movies after all, so something good came of it.
Of course, that is the approach taken by most media these days.
The media in the U.S. provides so little technical detail, it seems useless. How many have reported that all 50 of Japans remaining reactors are currently shut down, or what's gone on towards phasing out reactors in Germany? Shootings, sex scandals, disasters... we get to see that. But where's the depth? How can Democracy function properly if we're not well informed, and half of what we hear is the voice of money talking?
Apple aren't they the scumbags who have ads pulled by the Advertising Standards Authority for being liars?
No. Apple didn't lie about anything. That nonsense was the agency deciding that devices without Flash were somehow not capable accessing the full internet. They might as well have been complaining about Android or Apple browsers not liking something written to work with some non-standard behavior in Internet Explorer 5. Flash may have been popular, but it certainly isn't a protocol that defines the net. Even people that don't use Apple products should be grateful for what Apple has done to move us all towards standards based browsing.
Regardless of what NVIDIA says, it's a pretty good bet that whatever Apple has gone to was picked to improve the user experience. I doubt that anyone is using benchmarks to decide what brand to by. If they see games that take graphics complexity to a new level as a result of new hardware, it'll be the experience that sells them, not a benchmark. A Pentium 4 has more megahertz than an iPad. Oh boy.
No, what I'm talking about is a regulatory change from FCC that would apply to broadcasters, which is a completely different matter from FEC regulations that apply to candidates and supporters. It would not target any specific group. Spending limits would not be affected, they just would spend on radio or tv.
The U.K. and E.U. do a god job with truth in advertising. Why can't the U.S.too? Maybe if we ban paid radio t.v. political ads (stations running only as much non-paid balanced public affairs programming as they choose), we would not have so many elected officials selling influence through those corporate campaign contributions.
And in other news, very high quality Israeli bleached flour has been produced. The full extent to which this allows them to cross borders powdered up and unseen as ghosts has not yet been revealed, further proof of the effectiveness of suppressing leaks.
Actually, when it doesn't involve hearing a bunch of stations at once, the effect of signal combining from multiple paths off the ionosphere can be something of an audio adventure called selective fading. Although I suspect little is written about it, as one of the more unusual parts of the pop culture of a.m. radio I think it deserves a small place in history. (It still happens, No doubt some experienced it when listening to legends such as Wolfman Jack broadcast from outside the U.S. (Unfortunately the stations he was on sometimes had some heavy distortion that certain high power transmitters were prone to) The spectrum modifying aspect of selective fading is emulated by hardware or software flangers as used by musicians. It often gives a very unusual character to (a.m.) shortwave broadcasts, and sometimes a.m. medium wave broadcasts that are hear via skywave or combined ground wave and skywave. If near a powerful directional a.m. but listening closer to a null than a major lobe in the directional pattern, the higher energy power from the antenna system in other directions may come back as unusually strong skywave even at relatively short distances. Since many of the west coast directional a.m.s have to protect inland stations from interference, many are throwing most of the signal out over the ocean at night. In the heyday of A.M. radio then KDAY 1580 KHz Santa Monica (Los Angeles) was well known for intense selective fading effects in many areas relatively close by. I heard that the signal was often more stable in Hawaii at night than in southern California. The selective fades were actually fun to hear, and many imagined that if t.v. signals ever came back from space they would sound that way. (they actually would not, the sound being f.m.) Flanging can be heard in music such as The Letter remake by The Arbors (moldy oldie) and sometimes in sci-fi as a fluctuating long distance communication sound effect, as heard in Silent Running (1971). I think the effect may have actually been more popular in music long ago due to more people hearing it on a.m. radio and finding it captivating. It is a rarely mentioned part of pop culture.
Due to the different path length measured in wavelengths (how far a signal of a specific frequency travels during one complete cycle) resulting in phase differences, the various components of a stations signal spectrum across a channel will see differing many combinations of aiding and cancelling, and those will be constantly changing since the ionosphere does. Although most of the time the ionization density is not high enough to be visible, the unseen reflecting regions have the same changing properties seen when viewing the Aurora Borealis. Except for when the carrier frequency is suppressed too much causing common receivers to distort, the rest of the effect is like a flanger.
Very impressive, though I can't help thinking its a vanity project and broadcasting from a number of smaller towers would be cheaper. I suppose that probably goes for all the world's ultra tall buildings though
Although it is no doubt made to accommodate many transmitters, the most important aspect of it is the height. When it comes to coverage of VHF and UHF signals, height matters more than output power.
With a QAM signal, the ability to have one signal cancel allows for a second, but no more. And QAM really isn't doing anything extraordinary. With AM FM or phase modulation, the sidebands produced are mirror images, redundant. So the signal took twice the needed bandwidth to start with. Even analog t.v. from more than 60 years ago managed to filter off most of the lower sideband at the transmitter. They could have done more, but allowed for slop in simple receivers.
I've studied the links, and it's complete BS. They're getting a weak effect that is fragile and frequency dependent. It only could be demoed using narrow bandwidth, with the help of FM capture effect, and using extra power because of almost completely cancelling the desired signal while nulling the other. It took a laser to even find the spot to use. There is no way it could handle more than two signals, and in the real world it couldn't even be used for that.
Massive amounts of technical nonsense fool people who figure they just don't know enough to understand. Celebrities, ceremony, a gunshot, and "ordinary people" fit right in. The last time I read of a breakthrough tested in that setting it was a perpetual energy machine.
Using right hand and left hand circular would work for more efficiently, not require critical alignment, and tolerate path variations. Even simple cross polarizing would work far better.
Hmmmm, so now we have a way to take those companies that have gobbled up most of the U.S. broadcast frequencies, and have them put all of their operations in one city on just one channel? Sounds great. Let's do it tomorrow.
Actually with that HD radio technology that nobody but them seem to want (proprietary codec and all), we've already got a way to tell them to put everything in one r.f. channel. Maybe we can bring back some locally owned diverse broadcasting to the U.S.
I'm not following this. How does one generate such a signal, and receive it, and if it realy works, why demonstrate with only two signals?
Simple cross polarization people can see with polarized sun glasses. And it's used in LCD displays when a plastic sheet allows light at one polarization, and the liquid crystal can flip its polarization when exposed to a field, the light passing through when it agrees with the filter, blocked when at 90 degrees. If the angles aren't quite right there's bleed through. To make the apparent "dynamic" contrast ratio seem better, many vendors dim the backlight on dark scenes, but the the maximum light output is also reduced. So the improvement is a bit of an illusion a bit like most audio noise reduction systems (the noise comes up when the audio does, some hidden from perception by the louder audio).
Horizontal and vertical antenna fed at once in phase produce what amounts to diagonal. Feed the second one inverted, is is diagonal flipped the other way.. receive antennas don't get signal (it's nulled) right at 90 degrees, but a horizontal or vertical antenna would both pick up diagonal (either way) at once, just weaker. Typical satellite transponders have the full frequency range used with the odd channels at one polarization, the even channels are half a channel higher in frequency, polarized at 90 degress (I forget which one is vertical). The receive polarization has to be correct to null out the other signals. Offsetting the flipped channels just makes things a little more tolerant of being slightly misaligned from 90 degrees isolation, but doesn;t change the principle at all.
If horizontal and vertical are fed 90 degrees out of phase, the polarization rotates. flip the phase 90 degrees the other way it rotates the other way. The advantage of that type of signal is that the antennas can be turned and still get the signal they were intended for. Polarizate flips when bouncing a signal, like off the moon. They call those right hand and left hand circular polarization. And they work well for two signals on the same frequency especially from the same place where the strength is the same. But since reflections can reverse the spin, signals from separate sources that don't experience the same reflections may still interfere because one might get flipped when the other hasn't etc. All that is still about TWO signals on the same channel.
Now to what they're doing in the article? I couldn't envision what's happening (it's early, maybe coffee will help..), but obviously since circular polarization already can do two signals at once, their demo with two signals doesn't prove that they've done something new. So what;s going on, and if it really works, why not demo with more than two signals???
No, I'm not for censorship by any means. Although with some of the ads repeated over and over, the mute on a remote is still handy. But being heard should not be about money. I believe that reform is needed so that broadcasters provide equal-access to candidates and do various balanced interviews and debates with community involvement, as part of their public affairs programming at no charge. Doing away with paid radio/tv political ads would reduce the extent that candidates have to accept money from those expecting favors. Even candidates with the best intentions often need the money from some they're rather not deal with, just to pay for ads. Ending those would put a big dent in the cash cycle that fuels corruption. I have not heard of any other viable approach to addressing the problem. Broadcasters would continue to be able to decide on their own how much public affairs time they make available. If they provide very little or behave badly in general, they should be at a greater risk of people challenging license renewal and perhaps lose the license to another applicant. I think it would be a good idea to bring back the regulation where licensees specify in the license/renewal application what the maximum number of commercial minutes an hour will be, and how much community service time they'll provide per month. Under the old rules, they could exceed the number of ad minutes two weeks per year. That was typical before elections and the December holiday period. When the rule was lifted, we got intense ads all year long, and the dreaded infomercials. Ad time on U.S. television in the 60's was about 9 minutes an hour, now its typically 18 to 20. Competition was supposed to force good behavior, but it didn't work. That's partly because of the lifting of ownership restrictions. At one time the limit was 7/7/7 AM/FM/TV for a single owner nationwide. It became essentially unlimited... thousands. We've all seen what has happened to quality, ad time, the amount of local news, investigative reporting, programming, and exposure for local musicians. Increasing the number of owners, and making a large percentage local owners would increase competition, and the diversity of views represented, better meet local needs, and reduce the amount of duplicated news coverage and canned stories passed off in place of local news. Just as with the banking industry, some rules are needed to protect the public. When the rules come off, greed often takes control and we all suffer.
With the courts giving corporations unlimited spending as some sort of personal free speech right, and campaign reform never amounting to anything, ending the paid media mess appears to be our only hope. It'll put both the public and the candidates on a more level playing field. Of course don't expect the media to even speak of such a reform. People would likely be fired for even mentioning it. But we should. Democracy functioning properly depends on us being equally heard, knowing what is going on, and knowing our candidates. It shouldn't be something that is bought or sold.
I'm not sure, but between this story and the old ones about Apple and Apple records, there's gotta be a pot calling the kettle black on the stove somewhere.
There are inexpensive chips that were intended for things like concert hall effects etc for rear channels in audio systems that could likely be configured to do what was described. Some of the chips used for time compression might be fun, delaying the echo, but it streaming faster at normal pitch once it started. That could allow a time window to insert additional speech. Tourette Syndrome?
I'll would also be fun to do speech recognition, and change certain words, maybe have the delayed audio come back in another gender or strange voice. It could be like mocking someone. A digital heckler. Hmmmm. People might actually buy those. Something handy for the last word in arguments? There might be a product liability issue though, if people were annoyed enough to become abusive.
Even a simple version for the car might be popular, honking back automatically. But if two people have them.... A good twist for sci-fi. All of the Earths' people died off, but the conversations keep echoing. Throw in a smart machine or to. Eliza, where are you? Okay, a neurotic machine.
Slashdot Mirror
There was no mention of specific projects, but Israel has been talking about such activities also.
http://www.iba.org.il/world/?lang=en&entity=847869&type=1
You see, MS is so hip, so ahead of the curve...
Perhaps MS was ahead of the curve when they came up with the iLoo, their internet toilet. It was apparently abandoned because of expected ridicule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ILoo
It seems they've managed to draw a little ridicule over the years without it.
Meanwhile, while the sales of many game consoles have been in the toilet, some companies have thought of new ways make the world of trickle-down economics work.
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2012/05/02/segas-urine-controlled-game-console-toilets-out-now-launch-title-videos-included/
It just might boost beer, soda, or coffee sales at pubs, clubs, and cafes??
Perhaps Starbucks could use the added novelty. They might be threatened if a competitor manages to deliver flavor at lower costs.
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2011/06/13/step-aside-baristas-vending-machine-grinds-beans-and-makes-drink-for-you/
Some apparently do get their ideas in the loo.
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2011/05/23/modern-toilet-restaurant-from-bowel-to-your-bowl/
MS might do well to consider some radically different products. Time will tell if anything new gets much traction, but it seems like the employees that had read the old Inside Macintosh developer and Human Interface Guidelines publications dating back to the 80's have left. (In fairness, even Ubuntu seems to have had some interface regressions)
Maybe they can add the commercial operation of prisons to their business. They could bring some jobs to the U.S. while keeping labor costs low, provide training that might help the dysfunctional transition to less troubled lives, and they could keep an eye on those not buying licenses? They could even make the prisons look like gardens.
The problem is how distingishable was most of it from background noise just outside the solar system, or 20 light years away, even if you are trying to focus what comes from here specifically.
With SETI Research, NASA, and others short on funding, it's time that the media industry trade groups pay their sharing to catch those on other planets tuning in with unlicensed televisions.
Beings from afar should be careful what they say in reply too.
http://www.france24.com/en/20120602-islam-free-speech-turkey-pianist-fazil-say-insulting-religious-values-twitter-muslim
So.. Flame is about as related to Angry Birds as Fox News is related to facts then?
Fox ought to be in a pickle with some angry bird attorneys, but given a little more time, Fox may be able to reveal a deeper connection proving beyond any doubt that both sets of developers share some common generic code and have either eaten pickles, had parents that ate pickles, or been closely associated with others who have eaten pickles. It's no wonder so many people, especially talk/comedy show hosts, relish the depth of Fox reporting.
When it comes to movie theaters, size can be misleading. It's mostly ice.
As a Hulu Plus user myself, I'd love to know how you skip the ads. I've never noticed the option.
Go pee.
So what else are we going to use? Nothing touches nuclear power in terms of efficiency, cleanliness, and viability right now
Right now? Except for possible willingness to cut consumption quickly, most other changes, even new reactors using existing designs, take substantial time to build.
The viability of various alternatives varies regionally. Being in an active volcanic zone, Japan will likely be able to develop a considerable amount of geothermal power. Some geothermal power is already being generated there from hot springs.
Iceland has plans underway to be completely free of fossil fuel use, without using nuclear at all.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_Iceland
I have what I think is a break-through idea for saving energy, but am not sure where to go with it.
Cancer and birth defects are terrible illnesses, but the radiation levels from Fukushima are so low as to get lost in the background noise of, say, radiation from a nearby kumquat.
Do kumquat trees draw cesium or some other isotope from the soil like sunflowers do? Sunflower seeds often show radiation. They were even testing them in Japan as a possible measure to help clean the soil, but from what I read they didn't remove enough to be useful, and the plants themselves needed special disposal afterwards.
The U.S. levels in the air were low, yes (expect very few cases of lung cancer from that compared to other sources such as decaying radon coming from our soil, building materials, and in water supplies - especially in Texas), but there were much higher concentrations seen in some rainfall. Although not reported on the EPA site, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo had both Iodine-131 and Cesium 134/137 showing up in the milk from the university dairy unit pasture-fed cows. Some places in the U.S. had rainfall testing 1000 times the FDA allowable limit for drinking water. Even the Cal Poly milk was above the amount allowed in drinking water. At least I-131 doesn't last long. They quit showing test results for S.L.O. milk, so it isn't apparent just how much of the cesium present had been directly deposited on the grass the cows ate versus how much was absorbed through the soil. The amounts are not huge, but whatever is left in the soil is going to be there for decades. Average figures tend to hide the fact that there are hot spots, some seen even on the east coast. Most of the radiation that caused cancer in Sweden from Chernobyl is believed to have been the result of what was in rainfall on a particular day.
If you look at cancer reporting in California tabulated over the years and broken out by group, there are a couple of cancers rising significantly particularly in women, and the curves are getting steeper. Yes, the total percentage of the population affected is small, but people are being affected. (The timing of the rises would correlate with Chernobyl as the cause). The fact that there is some radiation from the soil and space (even brief spikes during solar flares), doesn't make radiation any more desirable.
I actually thought the head of the NRC, Chairman Gregory Jaczko, had recently done a reasonable job, but I'd like to know more. Not everyone that has concerns about nuclear power or feels that low-level radiation is still worth minimizing is anti-nuclear. Don't discredit citizens with legitimate concerns, throwing out utter nonsense about threats. Talk about pure FUD...
Republican Congressman Lee Terry of Nebraska had a few things to say, but was exceptionally vague. It's hard to trust much during an election year, especially attacks, but the fact that Jaczko resigned seems to validate that there was an issue. It seems to be a combination of management style and selectively withholding information to get his way. We should demand transparency, even if some of the details require educating people to keep the public calm. He does deserve credit for the U.S. being more on target than what Japanese officials were saying as to the (greater) area that was a high risk place to be. A campaign of lies, denying the consequences of releases, seems a big mistake to me. Only through honestly facing important issues can we hope to effectively manage them.
http://leeterry.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1712
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2115375,00.html
There's no point in mass fear, the illnesses and deaths are largely spread out over both time and distance and as such pass by mostly without mention. But the deaths are still real.. The people that were alive between 1948 and 1970 (the period of exposure) are/were the primary ones affected. I've known a couple of people that turned out to be from the midwest (one of the harder hit regions from Nevada testing) who had leukemia (they're dead now). Back in the day we didn't know any better. There's a reason we eventually did away with atmospheric testing and have sought to avoid additional contamination.
The incident in Japan has left much of the nation much like the U.S. is, with "background" levels elevated. (The U.S. "background" levels are about double what is seen in someplace like Australia. Except for the area hit in WWII, Japan was mostly low too.) Although a small percentage of the population is affected, the U.S. certainly has/will see some additional cancer cases from Chernobyl, the Japanese accident in 1981 (accident very well covered up, a sodium reactor leaked for months with hundred of workers exposed beyond normal limits, and was measurable in the U.S.) and later from the events of last year. Beware of "science" saying that low level radiation is good. It seems that the people doing those studies have also "shown" that mice do better with low level doses of all sorts of other nasties too. Who would have known how wonderful toxins are? (call it science concocted for defense attorneys) Absorbed like calcium, baby-boomers to this day have strontium-90 in their teeth and bones.
Certainly the risk varied considerable, and like fallout from accidents, the hotspots depended on combinations of timing, the wind, rainfall, and what one ate. For Iodine-131 there have been detailed estimates. If you were a female born in the 50's in someplace like Nebraska, and drank a fair amount of goats milk from animals that were pasture fed, the risk was (and for survivors still is) very significant. Risk was less for those drinking less, it wasn't quite as high with cows, and it was lower from animals fed hay indoors. (A lesson from that is to have a couple of months feed hay in reserve to reduce the exposure via milk during the time it takes for I-131 to go through enough half-lives)
It's only for I-131, and then only for the Nevada tests (other sources not included), but have some fun with the risk calculator if you were around back in the day.
https://ntsi131.nci.nih.gov/
The rest can laugh it off I suppose. The Japanese fishermen that can back to Japan with serious radiation exposure from the South Pacific tests did inspire the Godzilla and friends monster movies after all, so something good came of it.
Of course, that is the approach taken by most media these days.
The media in the U.S. provides so little technical detail, it seems useless. How many have reported that all 50 of Japans remaining reactors are currently shut down, or what's gone on towards phasing out reactors in Germany? Shootings, sex scandals, disasters... we get to see that. But where's the depth? How can Democracy function properly if we're not well informed, and half of what we hear is the voice of money talking?
Rough out there?
http://www.space.com/14834-solar-storm-blinds-venus-express-spacecraft.html
Considerable background info here:
A Comparison of North American and European Safeguards
http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow/GregerBSE.cfm
Apple aren't they the scumbags who have ads pulled by the Advertising Standards Authority for being liars?
No. Apple didn't lie about anything. That nonsense was the agency deciding that devices without Flash were somehow not capable accessing the full internet. They might as well have been complaining about Android or Apple browsers not liking something written to work with some non-standard behavior in Internet Explorer 5. Flash may have been popular, but it certainly isn't a protocol that defines the net. Even people that don't use Apple products should be grateful for what Apple has done to move us all towards standards based browsing.
Regardless of what NVIDIA says, it's a pretty good bet that whatever Apple has gone to was picked to improve the user experience. I doubt that anyone is using benchmarks to decide what brand to by. If they see games that take graphics complexity to a new level as a result of new hardware, it'll be the experience that sells them, not a benchmark. A Pentium 4 has more megahertz than an iPad. Oh boy.
No, what I'm talking about is a regulatory change from FCC that would apply to broadcasters, which is a completely different matter from FEC regulations that apply to candidates and supporters. It would not target any specific group. Spending limits would not be affected, they just would spend on radio or tv.
The U.K. and E.U. do a god job with truth in advertising. Why can't the U.S.too? Maybe if we ban paid radio t.v. political ads (stations running only as much non-paid balanced public affairs programming as they choose), we would not have so many elected officials selling influence through those corporate campaign contributions.
And in other news, very high quality Israeli bleached flour has been produced. The full extent to which this allows them to cross borders powdered up and unseen as ghosts has not yet been revealed, further proof of the effectiveness of suppressing leaks.
Actually, when it doesn't involve hearing a bunch of stations at once, the effect of signal combining from multiple paths off the ionosphere can be something of an audio adventure called selective fading. Although I suspect little is written about it, as one of the more unusual parts of the pop culture of a.m. radio I think it deserves a small place in history. (It still happens, No doubt some experienced it when listening to legends such as Wolfman Jack broadcast from outside the U.S. (Unfortunately the stations he was on sometimes had some heavy distortion that certain high power transmitters were prone to) The spectrum modifying aspect of selective fading is emulated by hardware or software flangers as used by musicians. It often gives a very unusual character to (a.m.) shortwave broadcasts, and sometimes a.m. medium wave broadcasts that are hear via skywave or combined ground wave and skywave. If near a powerful directional a.m. but listening closer to a null than a major lobe in the directional pattern, the higher energy power from the antenna system in other directions may come back as unusually strong skywave even at relatively short distances. Since many of the west coast directional a.m.s have to protect inland stations from interference, many are throwing most of the signal out over the ocean at night. In the heyday of A.M. radio then KDAY 1580 KHz Santa Monica (Los Angeles) was well known for intense selective fading effects in many areas relatively close by. I heard that the signal was often more stable in Hawaii at night than in southern California. The selective fades were actually fun to hear, and many imagined that if t.v. signals ever came back from space they would sound that way. (they actually would not, the sound being f.m.) Flanging can be heard in music such as The Letter remake by The Arbors (moldy oldie) and sometimes in sci-fi as a fluctuating long distance communication sound effect, as heard in Silent Running (1971). I think the effect may have actually been more popular in music long ago due to more people hearing it on a.m. radio and finding it captivating. It is a rarely mentioned part of pop culture.
Due to the different path length measured in wavelengths (how far a signal of a specific frequency travels during one complete cycle) resulting in phase differences, the various components of a stations signal spectrum across a channel will see differing many combinations of aiding and cancelling, and those will be constantly changing since the ionosphere does. Although most of the time the ionization density is not high enough to be visible, the unseen reflecting regions have the same changing properties seen when viewing the Aurora Borealis. Except for when the carrier frequency is suppressed too much causing common receivers to distort, the rest of the effect is like a flanger.
Very impressive, though I can't help thinking its a vanity project and broadcasting from a number of smaller towers would be cheaper. I suppose that probably goes for all the world's ultra tall buildings though
Although it is no doubt made to accommodate many transmitters, the most important aspect of it is the height. When it comes to coverage of VHF and UHF signals, height matters more than output power.
With a QAM signal, the ability to have one signal cancel allows for a second, but no more. And QAM really isn't doing anything extraordinary. With AM FM or phase modulation, the sidebands produced are mirror images, redundant. So the signal took twice the needed bandwidth to start with. Even analog t.v. from more than 60 years ago managed to filter off most of the lower sideband at the transmitter. They could have done more, but allowed for slop in simple receivers.
I've studied the links, and it's complete BS. They're getting a weak effect that is fragile and frequency dependent. It only could be demoed using narrow bandwidth, with the help of FM capture effect, and using extra power because of almost completely cancelling the desired signal while nulling the other. It took a laser to even find the spot to use. There is no way it could handle more than two signals, and in the real world it couldn't even be used for that.
Massive amounts of technical nonsense fool people who figure they just don't know enough to understand. Celebrities, ceremony, a gunshot, and "ordinary people" fit right in. The last time I read of a breakthrough tested in that setting it was a perpetual energy machine.
Using right hand and left hand circular would work for more efficiently, not require critical alignment, and tolerate path variations. Even simple cross polarizing would work far better.
Hmmmm, so now we have a way to take those companies that have gobbled up most of the U.S. broadcast frequencies, and have them put all of their operations in one city on just one channel? Sounds great. Let's do it tomorrow.
Actually with that HD radio technology that nobody but them seem to want (proprietary codec and all), we've already got a way to tell them to put everything in one r.f. channel. Maybe we can bring back some locally owned diverse broadcasting to the U.S.
http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog/2012/01/the-never-ending-hd-radio-debacle-continues-to-not-end/
I'm not following this. How does one generate such a signal, and receive it, and if it realy works, why demonstrate with only two signals?
Simple cross polarization people can see with polarized sun glasses. And it's used in LCD displays when a plastic sheet allows light at one polarization, and the liquid crystal can flip its polarization when exposed to a field, the light passing through when it agrees with the filter, blocked when at 90 degrees. If the angles aren't quite right there's bleed through. To make the apparent "dynamic" contrast ratio seem better, many vendors dim the backlight on dark scenes, but the the maximum light output is also reduced. So the improvement is a bit of an illusion a bit like most audio noise reduction systems (the noise comes up when the audio does, some hidden from perception by the louder audio).
Horizontal and vertical antenna fed at once in phase produce what amounts to diagonal. Feed the second one inverted, is is diagonal flipped the other way.. receive antennas don't get signal (it's nulled) right at 90 degrees, but a horizontal or vertical antenna would both pick up diagonal (either way) at once, just weaker. Typical satellite transponders have the full frequency range used with the odd channels at one polarization, the even channels are half a channel higher in frequency, polarized at 90 degress (I forget which one is vertical). The receive polarization has to be correct to null out the other signals.
Offsetting the flipped channels just makes things a little more tolerant of being slightly misaligned from 90 degrees isolation, but doesn;t change the principle at all.
If horizontal and vertical are fed 90 degrees out of phase, the polarization rotates. flip the phase 90 degrees the other way it rotates the other way. The advantage of that type of signal is that the antennas can be turned and still get the signal they were intended for. Polarizate flips when bouncing a signal, like off the moon. They call those right hand and left hand circular polarization. And they work well for two signals on the same frequency especially from the same place where the strength is the same. But since reflections can reverse the spin, signals from separate sources that don't experience the same reflections may still interfere because one might get flipped when the other hasn't etc. All that is still about TWO signals on the same channel.
Now to what they're doing in the article? I couldn't envision what's happening (it's early, maybe coffee will help..), but obviously since circular polarization already can do two signals at once, their demo with two signals doesn't prove that they've done something new. So what;s going on, and if it really works, why not demo with more than two signals???
No, I'm not for censorship by any means. Although with some of the ads repeated over and over, the mute on a remote is still handy. But being heard should not be about money. I believe that reform is needed so that broadcasters provide equal-access to candidates and do various balanced interviews and debates with community involvement, as part of their public affairs programming at no charge. Doing away with paid radio/tv political ads would reduce the extent that candidates have to accept money from those expecting favors. Even candidates with the best intentions often need the money from some they're rather not deal with, just to pay for ads. Ending those would put a big dent in the cash cycle that fuels corruption. I have not heard of any other viable approach to addressing the problem. Broadcasters would continue to be able to decide on their own how much public affairs time they make available. If they provide very little or behave badly in general, they should be at a greater risk of people challenging license renewal and perhaps lose the license to another applicant. I think it would be a good idea to bring back the regulation where licensees specify in the license/renewal application what the maximum number of commercial minutes an hour will be, and how much community service time they'll provide per month. Under the old rules, they could exceed the number of ad minutes two weeks per year. That was typical before elections and the December holiday period. When the rule was lifted, we got intense ads all year long, and the dreaded infomercials. Ad time on U.S. television in the 60's was about 9 minutes an hour, now its typically 18 to 20. Competition was supposed to force good behavior, but it didn't work. That's partly because of the lifting of ownership restrictions. At one time the limit was 7/7/7 AM/FM/TV for a single owner nationwide. It became essentially unlimited... thousands. We've all seen what has happened to quality, ad time, the amount of local news, investigative reporting, programming, and exposure for local musicians. Increasing the number of owners, and making a large percentage local owners would increase competition, and the diversity of views represented, better meet local needs, and reduce the amount of duplicated news coverage and canned stories passed off in place of local news. Just as with the banking industry, some rules are needed to protect the public. When the rules come off, greed often takes control and we all suffer.
With the courts giving corporations unlimited spending as some sort of personal free speech right, and campaign reform never amounting to anything, ending the paid media mess appears to be our only hope. It'll put both the public and the candidates on a more level playing field. Of course don't expect the media to even speak of such a reform. People would likely be fired for even mentioning it. But we should. Democracy functioning properly depends on us being equally heard, knowing what is going on, and knowing our candidates. It shouldn't be something that is bought or sold.
The BBC was crediting the embassy releases for being the catalyst before he was even interviewed about it.
I'm not sure, but between this story and the old ones about Apple and Apple records, there's gotta be a pot calling the kettle black on the stove somewhere.
Maybe a car analogy would help.
There are inexpensive chips that were intended for things like concert hall effects etc for rear channels in audio systems that could likely be configured to do what was described. Some of the chips used for time compression might be fun, delaying the echo, but it streaming faster at normal pitch once it started. That could allow a time window to insert additional speech. Tourette Syndrome?
I'll would also be fun to do speech recognition, and change certain words, maybe have the delayed audio come back in another gender or strange voice. It could be like mocking someone. A digital heckler. Hmmmm. People might actually buy those.
Something handy for the last word in arguments? There might be a product liability issue though, if people were annoyed enough to become abusive.
Even a simple version for the car might be popular, honking back automatically. But if two people have them.... A good twist for sci-fi. All of the Earths' people died off, but the conversations keep echoing. Throw in a smart machine or to. Eliza, where are you? Okay, a neurotic machine.