The Atlantic article seems way off in dismissing the implications of leaks.
Wikileaks chief Julian Assange, after all, felt comfortable taking credit for the Egyptian revolution; how good can his understanding of world events, and the actors shaping them, really be?
The leaked assessment that the military would side with the people of Egypt instead of murdering them was a critical one.
I'm sorry, donated equipment only reduces acquisition cost. What about SUPPORT costs?
There's no way that $2700 per student is justified. Someone that's projecting costs that high cannot be trusted to find an efficient solution. If they go with either Macs or linux machines, most of the usual support costs (malware issues) are gone. They can pick and choose from free or low cost machines, and use only those that support their core OS and apps. And they don't need IT loading the machines. Volunteers can do it. And there are plenty of businesses that would be happy to take a write off, when contributing a number of identical machines. Many that bog down under all the antivirus C@%& do just fine under Linux. Saying it can't be done is an unacceptable answer. It must be done. Some areas have done pretty well, with most of their support from only instructors and students when using Macs. Let IT deal with the clogged printers. Many could probably get bulk buyings used early Intel-based Macbooks (that don't run 10.7) for 1/10th that per head cost, from businesses upgrading. At $2700 a head they could be giving out cars and have people carpool. That amount is absurdly high. They could use few or no computers at all and have smaller classes and do other things. Some of the people that went to school with no computers seem to have come out better educated. Sure they're useful. But students don't need all the worlds answers, they need strong fundamentals and critical thinking. Too much of the instant reward push a button and have something now exposure is bad for developing minds that are willing to spend some time and work a while to achieve some goals. People spend a great deal of time on computers, but how productive is it really? Many might see a boost in some aspects of their lives if they spent less time. It's a costly mixed blessing.
The speaker can simply block their ears. The gun works by sending the speaker's audio back to them with a delay.
Ahhh yes... people that listen to themselves delayed tends to slow down to nothing and stop. It messes up people on call-in talk radio, and some in radio too. People in broadcasting often listen to themselves as heard on the air in headphones and there many be a significant delay when net latency and satellite links are in the loop. They learn to cope, but it isn't easy. Even phase flippers can drive a person nuts. Voice is rich in even harmonics due to a lack of symmetry in the waveform which has a spikier character in one direction. In a.m. broadcasting some audio processing gear senses the stronger peaks and on the fly inverts the signal to make the higher level modulate the a.m. carrier up to 125% modulation. The signal can't go below nothing when the audio is reducing the r.f. envelope, but there's no limit other than an arbitrary regulation in the other direction. Anyway, an announcer hears a combination of his voice directly and what comes through the headphones, and the combination is awful when the phases don't agree. It jumping back and forth is torture for them. But if they listen to unprocessed audio, they don't have as good a feel for the mix so they usually endure. And people thought only the audience was tortured by radio...
Remember "What if you had no lips from which to speak?"? Seems like they had those beat in The Matrix. They surely would be a tempting thing to use before elections. Mute some of the nonsense and lies. And do away with paid political ads. Raising money for those fuels corruption. Controlling fundraising has failed miserably. Cut the major avenue for spending instead. Stations should provide some free balanced public affairs programming time to inform the public. They can decide how much. The licenses should carry an obligation to act in the public interest. Protect free speech, not paid speech.
$2700 and change per student seems a little high for a tech budget...
I don't see any reason why they couldn't be doing this with free recycled computers. It's not that uncommon for some systems only a couple of years old to get dumped with nothing more than malware causing trouble. Recycle and put OSS to work. Get students involved, and when going through computers to use, take some that are not quite up to spec and set them up to handy out to needy students or local poor people. Surely there are also some talented parents willing to volunteer time and help. They can do more than sell cupcakes and cookies to help schools. And upgraded amplifiers? Get a local college and local high school electronics classes to partner in designing and assembling some. If they have any faith at all in the future of the students they're supposedly teach, they should help them to help themselves. Teach students that something can still be made in America. Have multiple groups of them come up with competing designs, then merge the best ideas for the final product. And what of the unemployed in the region? Surely some of them have skills that could be used to help. Raw components are dirt cheap. Give students a thirt for learning and building things. From a pile of old PC power supplies, VCRs, and boards out of old c.r.t. monitors students could make their own amplifiers and all sorts of projects to have fun with at home and in optional shop-type classes or off-hours activity. Give them something fun to do, and there'll likely be less gang and drug activity too. Think of how much money that could save. I smell contractor pork. And electronics imported from elsewhere. Government must become more efficient. $2700 per student is obscene. They could give every student a new MacBook, run servers, and give them all free fiber optic at home for less than that. Which of course is not necessary to a good education. Teach students by good example, how to manage spending. It sounds like some bureaucrats need to go back to school and learn a few things, or end up as part of the lunch program. Every body is good for something.
They should innovate their way out of this. There are other ways to shift traffic, incentives to use or support a WiFi traffic path for others, and some advancing picking of video/music so it can be downloaded during traffic dips or via WiFi etc. It's simple, cheap to do, and customers can be compensated in some way for doing something. Then it's a win for all involved.
If regulatory agencies wont help, some should sue AT&T over the continuing unjustified price bumps even for slower grade DSL. It looks like a conspiracy to make it less viable for customers to get video programming from other providers. And at the same time, the shift away from reliable copper phone services may leave some areas very vulnerable if an extended emergency hits. Boxes around town with batteries (powering optical to copper converters), and techs hundreds of miles away, can mean serious widespread downtime over a large area in an extended disaster.
Considering MSFT's stock being up 20% this year - a lot of people think you are wrong.
Looks like MS is up to where it was two years ago, wow! And Apple.... Well at least MS is no longer lower than two years ago. Markets reflect moods. One cannot fairly judge a companies planned changes based on stock history. Some have felt Microsoft needs to ditch the old or make some radical changes. It looks like they're trying. The risk with a big change is higher than doing little, but it offers chances for new life instead of giving in and watching slow decay (well maybe not as slow as it seemed a few years ago). Time will tell whether what is in the works now is good for them and their customers.
Following big changes, it seems like they often need a second release to make a bunch of things right. Obviously they'll be trying hard not to have another ME or Vista with the growing risk of losing the installed base. If they get something that works well and is pretty secure, maybe they can start doing more frequent releases of things people value (instead of blunder packs and security patches). The more frequent release model seems to work well for others.
Not that the risk is terribly high with modern building standards, but the combined risk of earthquake, tsunami, unexpected taxes, or some hostile whacko or government doing something seems far higher in California. Not to mention the greater danger of employees taking the day off to lay in the sun.
Perhaps the equivalent of sound could be heard by picking up modulation to light, magnetic fields, or some other energy. Could an EMP in space cause audible vibration of polar molecules in the atmosphere? I'm guessing yes, at least if the frequency spectrum of the EMP has a strong low-frequency component. The magnetic component may even cause measurable sound/vibration in the Earth. Has anyone tried to measure such things from major solar flares? I don't know that I'd go so far, but a few taking a bigger leap even think it is possible to generate earthquakes.
I think it is possible for non-acoustic energy to transmit something that ends up being perceived as sound at a destination separated by vacuum.
For instance, one of my robots sends out three channels of live video
Of course an obvious (?) use of this would be to stream 3D video back to a 3D TV or any device that has a fast enough display to support shutter-glasses and navigate with the better depth perspective. Finally a use for those 3D televisions, and something to push processing power for video compression and ATSC encoding. Yes, it'd be fun to see the option of it putting out an actual broadcast-compatible signal too, so a tv could pick up video directly. Let the neighbors watch too. Sure, there are plenty of problems (size, cpu power and power consumption, FCC limitations, coordinating frequencies to avoid causing interference , signal-adaptive tv receiver circuits that don't like rapid changes...). A few good challenges help push the state of the art. Who knows, it might even result in digital TVs that are less affected by unstable broadcast signals when the wind blows nearby trees around.
It's a throwback to the old days of 23-channel CB radio. There were basically gaps after every 4th channel, with those frequencies being used for things like radio control of toys and garage doors. I feel sorry for anyone who had a garage door opener on those frequencies. Besides interference from splatter and overload from strong signals, the congestion of CB led some to venture off into frequencies they shouldn't have been on. Eventually, being unusable for anything else, those channels became part of the expanded 40 channel CB. For control there wasn't latency, but there certainly was interference. Even worse than momentary loss if signal, the interference would sometimes be interpreted as incorrect signals. There was no error detection or correction with the simple technology.
I'm not sure what could be done to make things work better now. Maybe some redundancy using infra-red, ultra-sonic, white-space TV, 2.4 GHz, and 5.7 GHz all at once would help? That would make size and power consumption issues even more challenging though.
With the RC toy using Linux and WiFi, there isn't any reason for the story to focus on Android. I could see people just as easily using iThings or even PC based tablets. An iPad with video streamed back to it would be pretty cool actually.
I.T. is great, but I'd like to see some interest in raw electronics fostered too. I've wondered if some of what's considered obsolete or broken might be useful might be taken apart and used for educational or hobby purposes on a very low budget. For instance old PC power supplies usually contain some decent high voltage bipolar or MOSFET power transistors, a couple of big fairly high voltage electrolytic capacitors, various diodes, a heat sink, a fan, and other parts. Circuit boards from old monitors and television sets contain quite a few parts an experimenter might do some things with. Old VCRs have a transformer some can use. I once saw a swept-frequency spectrum analyzer built using the voltage controlled tuner module. Even dead household CFL lamps generally have a couple of small high voltage power transistors. I think it would be healthy for people to develop an interest in electronics, not just computers or programming. Turning people loose with some educational materials and sources of free parts would encourage people to be creative and experiment. Free parts can be used to build audio amplifiers and other things that experimenters might enjoy. While it is true that many components are available for very low prices from Asia, using recycled parts avoids having what little money the poor have leave their local economies. Sure, some old electronics is best ground up for extracting useful metals, but there's no reason that some useful parts shouldn't be pulled out first. Perhaps in other areas, it might even be worth encouraging the unemployed or those in some institutions to be a part of using recycled components and education that uses some of them as a resource. Being creative some ways of using these things can be found even when a commercial recycler wouldn't find it cost effective to pay people to pick parts. Of course precautions have to be taken, so that vulnerable people are not exposed to excessive risk from toxic materials or potentially imploding c.r.t.s. And people should know what they're doing before dealing with high voltages. A historic example of people that were generally creative and good at finding ways to recycle (call some cheap if you like) is ham radio operators that built projects. Who would guess that a transformer from a microwave oven could power a large transmitting tube (some of the tubes themselves being recycled from broadcast service)? Or that some of those PC power supply MOSFETs could develop significant power in low frequency transmitters? Some examples can be seen for free in back issues of Ham Radio magazine and others downloadable from archive.org http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Ham%20Radio%20magazine
Of course some of the PCs can be part of that too, speedy and alive again once infected OSes are wiped and OSS put in their place. Certainly seeing what low cost systems and OSS could do was in part the drive that led to the Ubuntu distribution. For some uses Pentium IIIs may be a better choice than P4s, the later often having much higher energy requirements. Over time for a heavily used system the difference in energy cost may be substantial, and we shouldn't forget the cost extends to environmental concerns too.
I hope this all isn't going to be used for any sort of process control. If a malicious signal can spoof a temperature or pressure sensor, things could go horribly wrong. It is the same issue that one must be aware of when designing with wireless interfaces to PLCs.
The sponsors of a newscast long ago are to be punished now for funding what actually was legitimate news?
If you feel that some kind of action involving sponsors is appropriate, you might have better luck telling them you use and like their product but would rather see them switch to other networks because (and tell them why in reasonable terms). Punishing them when they did nothing wrong and couldn't see what NBC (under a different ownership mix no less) might do later just isn't reasonable. If you think there's a problem with NBC, tell the network, your local affiliate (who in some cases might consider a switch or at least feedback to the network), and maybe the FCC. Whether it be over this, not liking the Comcast merger, or not liking Fear Factor and Biggest Loser over sci-fi, perhaps the vote that matters is the one you make with the remote control. Then perhaps you could tell sponsors why you won't see their ads on NBC. Tell Romney to advertise elsewhere?
Also consider contacting sponsors, affiliates, networks, and others and telling them what you like when they do something right. Maybe then they'll do more of it. If you see something you like, tell your friends. Reward positive behavior
Consider encouraging the FCC to ban paid political ads, instead having stations free to choose how much time they provide in the form of public affairs programming (which they must do in a balanced way). Clearly matters have gone from bad to worse as far as controlling corporate campaign contributions goes. At this point, focusing on how the money can be spent may be more productive in fighting corruptive influence.
It is ironic that with the huge windfalls broadcasters have received from political ads over the years, they quibble over something so small. As for Tom Brokaw, put a Anonymous-type mask on him? (that would be a fun to see on youtube)
What's the story behind the story here? Why was that website defaced? Did the person defacing it have some message of importance or was is just the action of a competitor or someone bitter for personal reasons?
The mass media often focus on unimportant stories and provide too little detail on those that do matter. Shouldn't we try to focus on getting the bigger picture and more depth?
Since Google relates to this story is an opportunity to bring up another deeper issue of importance. Sometimes finding out what is going on in the world requires digging deeper than what the commercial giants publish. Following a story globally is helped by the ability to translate pages or paragraphs, do searches in foreign languages, and more. In the spirit of being good not evil, Google tools helping with that is certainly appreciated. For democracy to function effectively we must be educated and informed. We certainly have a better chance at sane global policies, interaction, understanding and peace with the help of tools that work well with other languages. So it concerns me that Google has broken access to tools using its translation services. The non-commercial (free) third party OS X Text Translator version 1.2 widget ( http://sites.google.com/site/jobmlys/ ), which right on its face gives "Powered by Google" credit, no longer works. It was more powerful and provided much more understandable results than what Apple bundles and I found it invaluable in getting a deeper understanding of many things going on in the last year or so.
Google if you are listening, instead of effectively killing such tools, work to enhance them and what new ones can do. For instance imagine how useful it could be to combine your translation ability with OCR that worked on photos from the net, PDFs, and captures from video. Whether it be for understanding what's in the news, what some individual says in that youtube message, or reading a photo of vacuum tube specs in Russian to make an audio amp with surplus parts, your tools can be REALLY appreciated in helping with deeper understanding. Doing so would promote global understanding and go a long ways, with me at least, in feeling that Google is good not evil. Maybe one day you'll provide speech (audio) search/translation tools too. I think the world can be a more stable and positive place if we have deeper understanding and are better connected. Please help!!!
Hmmm, well this could be the start of something big. Companies could pick who to own by financing their educations, who to move to the front lines, and who is best suited as an organ donor. Companies could also aid only those who agree with their agendas. Combined with some genetic engineering, there's great opportunity for corporate optimizations here... or a script for a sci-fi movie/series??
(I release any interest I have in this idea for free use by any filmmaker not connected with Comcast)
I think one of the reasons CB had as big of a share as it did, was the relative lack of other options. There were no cell phones. (Even long distance phone calls were expensive) Radiotelephones were extremely expensive to use, and ham radio required passing a test involving regulations and technology (and Morse code at that time). Of course the ways people interact now are more diverse.
It's ironic that efforts to throttle/censor expression or unrest may very well fuel feelings of dissent. Having a government of the people, by the people, for the people is a very precious thing. The more we deviate from that, the more we're asking for trouble.
Solutions? Well it seems many of those with the wealth need to be pouring some back more back in ways that help the future. And by that I don't mean a focus on their getting a still bigger piece of the piece, but fueling the grass roots of innovation and opportunity. Instead of venture-capital opportunists taking advantage of people with ideas, we need vast numbers of no-strings infusions. It may mean bringing back near Reagan era tax rates (they DID love the guy, right??? Why not accept his tax rates?), but giving credit at better than a 1:1 ratio for relatively small (individually) no-strings infusions. Fuel settings that produce ideas and developing them. Whether it be small grants for things similar to some college senior projects (do it in high school and summer camps too), or community hacker houses (places where people can visit/live to work on projects, exchange ideas). Some really low budget things can be done too. Give kids a supervised setting to take apart electronics recyclables and make things from the parts. Can they make stereos, small ham transmitters, solar energy converting do-dads from the parts in old PC power supplies? Engineer things that can create opportunities in economically depressed areas, give people work even doing piecemeal (perhaps at home) work that's part of another project. It's great that Bill Gates is doing things for world health, but we need others helping to fuel other needs WITHOUT STRINGS. When things are driven solely by profit motive they can go horribly wrong. Look what taking off the ownership restrictions on broadcast outlets has done. (cut the financial strings that fuel corruption, ban broadcasters from running PAID political ads, have them provide only limited fairly dispensed free public affairs time as part of license terms)
Don't suppress peoples expressions of dissent, but work at fixing the root problems.
Nuclear submarine reactors aren't cooled with seawater.
Power plants aren't either, not directly. There's a heat exchanger in-between. The actual reactor coolant has to be ultra-pure not only to reduce corrosion, but to avoid buildup of isotopes that would develop from the impurities and form deposits in the pipes at locations that would increase exposure to plant workers. Of course buildup is also a problem for things like pumps and valves.
One of the very disturbing things found in Japan when other reactors got a closer look was a plant where a significant amount of seawater did get into the reactor coolant. It's shocking that such a thing had previously been undetected and has serious safety implications as it points to hidden corrosion or other damage. If a heat exchanger was rusted through or something they should have known about the corrosion long before it caused leakage of tons of water.
As for sodium in solution being quick to absorb and transport dangerous material, other questions come to mind. How severe are the implications for underground waste storage in ancient salt beds/caves? With global climate change can we count on those places remaining dry for 10,000 years???
I remember when the Fukushima event was still making headlines people were freaking out because radiation was making it's way to the U.S. I was a little worried myself, but since I work for an air purification company one of the data-crunchers there was able to explain now negligible the impact actually was.
I think your friend was half right. Ground-level exposure in the U.S. from inhaling air was low. But when water vapor condenses around particles in the atmosphere, the levels in rainfall can be quite high. The dispersion isn't uniform. Depending on where the higher concentration air currents were and when/where rain fell, overall average can be low while some areas become hot spots. The rain falls on the grass, the cows eat, and then we eat or drink. Most of the significant exposure that people in Sweden got from Chernobyl was found to have been through rainfall that fell in a single day. I knew people that died later (one more reached his end just this month). Some other places had it much worse. The primary exposure pathway here was not through breathing the air.
A California university, not far from the coast (hilly area that got some significant spring rainfall) has pasture-fed dairy cows that had both i-131 and cesium in the milk. The i-131 dropped off, but at the time they stopped (publicly at least) with monthly testing, there was cesium showing. Those results were not among those I could find on the EPA site. The levels were also above that allowed by drinking water standards, but are allowed for milk. The looser standard for milk is apparently based on exposure for a shorter time and on lower consumption. It wasn't comforting to realize that my consumption was eight times the amount they based the exposure estimates on. It's not something to panic over, but statistics over decades will no-doubt reveal some impact. I'm more concerned about any impact on women and children than myself (being an old fossil at this point).
Slashdot Mirror
The Atlantic article seems way off in dismissing the implications of leaks.
Wikileaks chief Julian Assange, after all, felt comfortable taking credit for the Egyptian revolution; how good can his understanding of world events, and the actors shaping them, really be?
The leaked assessment that the military would side with the people of Egypt instead of murdering them was a critical one.
Perhaps the incompetence is a carefully engineered image to make people think there's nothing insidious to be concerned about?
they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight.
Doesn't the public largely have that perception of government already? That would seem to make them fit right in.
I'm sorry, donated equipment only reduces acquisition cost. What about SUPPORT costs?
There's no way that $2700 per student is justified. Someone that's projecting costs that high cannot be trusted to find an efficient solution. If they go with either Macs or linux machines, most of the usual support costs (malware issues) are gone. They can pick and choose from free or low cost machines, and use only those that support their core OS and apps. And they don't need IT loading the machines. Volunteers can do it. And there are plenty of businesses that would be happy to take a write off, when contributing a number of identical machines. Many that bog down under all the antivirus C@%& do just fine under Linux. Saying it can't be done is an unacceptable answer. It must be done. Some areas have done pretty well, with most of their support from only instructors and students when using Macs. Let IT deal with the clogged printers. Many could probably get bulk buyings used early Intel-based Macbooks (that don't run 10.7) for 1/10th that per head cost, from businesses upgrading. At $2700 a head they could be giving out cars and have people carpool. That amount is absurdly high. They could use few or no computers at all and have smaller classes and do other things. Some of the people that went to school with no computers seem to have come out better educated. Sure they're useful. But students don't need all the worlds answers, they need strong fundamentals and critical thinking. Too much of the instant reward push a button and have something now exposure is bad for developing minds that are willing to spend some time and work a while to achieve some goals. People spend a great deal of time on computers, but how productive is it really? Many might see a boost in some aspects of their lives if they spent less time. It's a costly mixed blessing.
The speaker can simply block their ears. The gun works by sending the speaker's audio back to them with a delay.
Ahhh yes... people that listen to themselves delayed tends to slow down to nothing and stop. It messes up people on call-in talk radio, and some in radio too. People in broadcasting often listen to themselves as heard on the air in headphones and there many be a significant delay when net latency and satellite links are in the loop. They learn to cope, but it isn't easy. Even phase flippers can drive a person nuts. Voice is rich in even harmonics due to a lack of symmetry in the waveform which has a spikier character in one direction. In a.m. broadcasting some audio processing gear senses the stronger peaks and on the fly inverts the signal to make the higher level modulate the a.m. carrier up to 125% modulation. The signal can't go below nothing when the audio is reducing the r.f. envelope, but there's no limit other than an arbitrary regulation in the other direction. Anyway, an announcer hears a combination of his voice directly and what comes through the headphones, and the combination is awful when the phases don't agree. It jumping back and forth is torture for them. But if they listen to unprocessed audio, they don't have as good a feel for the mix so they usually endure.
And people thought only the audience was tortured by radio...
Remember "What if you had no lips from which to speak?"? Seems like they had those beat in The Matrix. They surely would be a tempting thing to use before elections. Mute some of the nonsense and lies. And do away with paid political ads. Raising money for those fuels corruption. Controlling fundraising has failed miserably. Cut the major avenue for spending instead. Stations should provide some free balanced public affairs programming time to inform the public. They can decide how much. The licenses should carry an obligation to act in the public interest. Protect free speech, not paid speech.
$2700 and change per student seems a little high for a tech budget...
I don't see any reason why they couldn't be doing this with free recycled computers. It's not that uncommon for some systems only a couple of years old to get dumped with nothing more than malware causing trouble. Recycle and put OSS to work. Get students involved, and when going through computers to use, take some that are not quite up to spec and set them up to handy out to needy students or local poor people. Surely there are also some talented parents willing to volunteer time and help. They can do more than sell cupcakes and cookies to help schools. And upgraded amplifiers? Get a local college and local high school electronics classes to partner in designing and assembling some. If they have any faith at all in the future of the students they're supposedly teach, they should help them to help themselves. Teach students that something can still be made in America. Have multiple groups of them come up with competing designs, then merge the best ideas for the final product. And what of the unemployed in the region? Surely some of them have skills that could be used to help. Raw components are dirt cheap. Give students a thirt for learning and building things. From a pile of old PC power supplies, VCRs, and boards out of old c.r.t. monitors students could make their own amplifiers and all sorts of projects to have fun with at home and in optional shop-type classes or off-hours activity. Give them something fun to do, and there'll likely be less gang and drug activity too. Think of how much money that could save.
I smell contractor pork. And electronics imported from elsewhere. Government must become more efficient. $2700 per student is obscene. They could give every student a new MacBook, run servers, and give them all free fiber optic at home for less than that. Which of course is not necessary to a good education. Teach students by good example, how to manage spending. It sounds like some bureaucrats need to go back to school and learn a few things, or end up as part of the lunch program. Every body is good for something.
What do ya wanna bet that if it was an issue at Scroogle, they wouldn't be allowed to talk about it?
They should innovate their way out of this. There are other ways to shift traffic, incentives to use or support a WiFi traffic path for others, and some advancing picking of video/music so it can be downloaded during traffic dips or via WiFi etc.
It's simple, cheap to do, and customers can be compensated in some way for doing something. Then it's a win for all involved.
If regulatory agencies wont help, some should sue AT&T over the continuing unjustified price bumps even for slower grade DSL. It looks like a conspiracy to make it less viable for customers to get video programming from other providers. And at the same time, the shift away from reliable copper phone services may leave some areas very vulnerable if an extended emergency hits. Boxes around town with batteries (powering optical to copper converters), and techs hundreds of miles away, can mean serious widespread downtime over a large area in an extended disaster.
Considering MSFT's stock being up 20% this year - a lot of people think you are wrong.
Looks like MS is up to where it was two years ago, wow! And Apple.... Well at least MS is no longer lower than two years ago. Markets reflect moods. One cannot fairly judge a companies planned changes based on stock history. Some have felt Microsoft needs to ditch the old or make some radical changes. It looks like they're trying. The risk with a big change is higher than doing little, but it offers chances for new life instead of giving in and watching slow decay (well maybe not as slow as it seemed a few years ago). Time will tell whether what is in the works now is good for them and their customers.
Following big changes, it seems like they often need a second release to make a bunch of things right. Obviously they'll be trying hard not to have another ME or Vista with the growing risk of losing the installed base. If they get something that works well and is pretty secure, maybe they can start doing more frequent releases of things people value (instead of blunder packs and security patches). The more frequent release model seems to work well for others.
Not that the risk is terribly high with modern building standards, but the combined risk of earthquake, tsunami, unexpected taxes, or some hostile whacko or government doing something seems far higher in California. Not to mention the greater danger of employees taking the day off to lay in the sun.
Didn't he used to be named Bob? I think I saw him in a PC once.
You're not making any sounds.
Perhaps the equivalent of sound could be heard by picking up modulation to light, magnetic fields, or some other energy. Could an EMP in space cause audible vibration of polar molecules in the atmosphere? I'm guessing yes, at least if the frequency spectrum of the EMP has a strong low-frequency component. The magnetic component may even cause measurable sound/vibration in the Earth. Has anyone tried to measure such things from major solar flares? I don't know that I'd go so far, but a few taking a bigger leap even think it is possible to generate earthquakes.
I think it is possible for non-acoustic energy to transmit something that ends up being perceived as sound at a destination separated by vacuum.
For instance, one of my robots sends out three channels of live video
Of course an obvious (?) use of this would be to stream 3D video back to a 3D TV or any device that has a fast enough display to support shutter-glasses and navigate with the better depth perspective. Finally a use for those 3D televisions, and something to push processing power for video compression and ATSC encoding. Yes, it'd be fun to see the option of it putting out an actual broadcast-compatible signal too, so a tv could pick up video directly. Let the neighbors watch too. Sure, there are plenty of problems (size, cpu power and power consumption, FCC limitations, coordinating frequencies to avoid causing interference , signal-adaptive tv receiver circuits that don't like rapid changes...). A few good challenges help push the state of the art. Who knows, it might even result in digital TVs that are less affected by unstable broadcast signals when the wind blows nearby trees around.
It's a throwback to the old days of 23-channel CB radio. There were basically gaps after every 4th channel, with those frequencies being used for things like radio control of toys and garage doors. I feel sorry for anyone who had a garage door opener on those frequencies. Besides interference from splatter and overload from strong signals, the congestion of CB led some to venture off into frequencies they shouldn't have been on. Eventually, being unusable for anything else, those channels became part of the expanded 40 channel CB. For control there wasn't latency, but there certainly was interference. Even worse than momentary loss if signal, the interference would sometimes be interpreted as incorrect signals. There was no error detection or correction with the simple technology.
I'm not sure what could be done to make things work better now. Maybe some redundancy using infra-red, ultra-sonic, white-space TV, 2.4 GHz, and 5.7 GHz all at once would help? That would make size and power consumption issues even more challenging though.
With the RC toy using Linux and WiFi, there isn't any reason for the story to focus on Android. I could see people just as easily using iThings or even PC based tablets. An iPad with video streamed back to it would be pretty cool actually.
Put a little camera on it and an arm that I can control from my Xoom and watch out!
It's a conspiracy to nab cookies from the kitchen I tell you!
I.T. is great, but I'd like to see some interest in raw electronics fostered too. I've wondered if some of what's considered obsolete or broken might be useful might be taken apart and used for educational or hobby purposes on a very low budget. For instance old PC power supplies usually contain some decent high voltage bipolar or MOSFET power transistors, a couple of big fairly high voltage electrolytic capacitors, various diodes, a heat sink, a fan, and other parts. Circuit boards from old monitors and television sets contain quite a few parts an experimenter might do some things with. Old VCRs have a transformer some can use. I once saw a swept-frequency spectrum analyzer built using the voltage controlled tuner module. Even dead household CFL lamps generally have a couple of small high voltage power transistors. I think it would be healthy for people to develop an interest in electronics, not just computers or programming. Turning people loose with some educational materials and sources of free parts would encourage people to be creative and experiment. Free parts can be used to build audio amplifiers and other things that experimenters might enjoy. While it is true that many components are available for very low prices from Asia, using recycled parts avoids having what little money the poor have leave their local economies. Sure, some old electronics is best ground up for extracting useful metals, but there's no reason that some useful parts shouldn't be pulled out first. Perhaps in other areas, it might even be worth encouraging the unemployed or those in some institutions to be a part of using recycled components and education that uses some of them as a resource. Being creative some ways of using these things can be found even when a commercial recycler wouldn't find it cost effective to pay people to pick parts. Of course precautions have to be taken, so that vulnerable people are not exposed to excessive risk from toxic materials or potentially imploding c.r.t.s. And people should know what they're doing before dealing with high voltages. A historic example of people that were generally creative and good at finding ways to recycle (call some cheap if you like) is ham radio operators that built projects. Who would guess that a transformer from a microwave oven could power a large transmitting tube (some of the tubes themselves being recycled from broadcast service)? Or that some of those PC power supply MOSFETs could develop significant power in low frequency transmitters? Some examples can be seen for free in back issues of Ham Radio magazine and others downloadable from archive.org http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=Ham%20Radio%20magazine
Of course some of the PCs can be part of that too, speedy and alive again once infected OSes are wiped and OSS put in their place. Certainly seeing what low cost systems and OSS could do was in part the drive that led to the Ubuntu distribution. For some uses Pentium IIIs may be a better choice than P4s, the later often having much higher energy requirements. Over time for a heavily used system the difference in energy cost may be substantial, and we shouldn't forget the cost extends to environmental concerns too.
I hope this all isn't going to be used for any sort of process control. If a malicious signal can spoof a temperature or pressure sensor, things could go horribly wrong. It is the same issue that one must be aware of when designing with wireless interfaces to PLCs.
The sponsors of a newscast long ago are to be punished now for funding what actually was legitimate news?
If you feel that some kind of action involving sponsors is appropriate, you might have better luck telling them you use and like their product but would rather see them switch to other networks because (and tell them why in reasonable terms).
Punishing them when they did nothing wrong and couldn't see what NBC (under a different ownership mix no less) might do later just isn't reasonable. If you think there's a problem with NBC, tell the network, your local affiliate (who in some cases might consider a switch or at least feedback to the network), and maybe the FCC. Whether it be over this, not liking the Comcast merger, or not liking Fear Factor and Biggest Loser over sci-fi, perhaps the vote that matters is the one you make with the remote control. Then perhaps you could tell sponsors why you won't see their ads on NBC. Tell Romney to advertise elsewhere?
Also consider contacting sponsors, affiliates, networks, and others and telling them what you like when they do something right. Maybe then they'll do more of it.
If you see something you like, tell your friends. Reward positive behavior
Consider encouraging the FCC to ban paid political ads, instead having stations free to choose how much time they provide in the form of public affairs programming (which they must do in a balanced way). Clearly matters have gone from bad to worse as far as controlling corporate campaign contributions goes. At this point, focusing on how the money can be spent may be more productive in fighting corruptive influence.
It is ironic that with the huge windfalls broadcasters have received from political ads over the years, they quibble over something so small. As for Tom Brokaw, put a Anonymous-type mask on him? (that would be a fun to see on youtube)
Those with Flash disabled wanting to download with the Firefox DownloadHelper extension to watch the mp4 in VLC may prefer this format of the URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cuNkI7pzLM
What's the story behind the story here? Why was that website defaced? Did the person defacing it have some message of importance or was is just the action of a competitor or someone bitter for personal reasons?
The mass media often focus on unimportant stories and provide too little detail on those that do matter. Shouldn't we try to focus on getting the bigger picture and more depth?
Since Google relates to this story is an opportunity to bring up another deeper issue of importance. Sometimes finding out what is going on in the world requires digging deeper than what the commercial giants publish. Following a story globally is helped by the ability to translate pages or paragraphs, do searches in foreign languages, and more. In the spirit of being good not evil, Google tools helping with that is certainly appreciated. For democracy to function effectively we must be educated and informed. We certainly have a better chance at sane global policies, interaction, understanding and peace with the help of tools that work well with other languages. So it concerns me that Google has broken access to tools using its translation services. The non-commercial (free) third party OS X Text Translator version 1.2 widget ( http://sites.google.com/site/jobmlys/ ), which right on its face gives "Powered by Google" credit, no longer works. It was more powerful and provided much more understandable results than what Apple bundles and I found it invaluable in getting a deeper understanding of many things going on in the last year or so.
Google if you are listening, instead of effectively killing such tools, work to enhance them and what new ones can do. For instance imagine how useful it could be to combine your translation ability with OCR that worked on photos from the net, PDFs, and captures from video. Whether it be for understanding what's in the news, what some individual says in that youtube message, or reading a photo of vacuum tube specs in Russian to make an audio amp with surplus parts, your tools can be REALLY appreciated in helping with deeper understanding. Doing so would promote global understanding and go a long ways, with me at least, in feeling that Google is good not evil. Maybe one day you'll provide speech (audio) search/translation tools too. I think the world can be a more stable and positive place if we have deeper understanding and are better connected. Please help!!!
Hmmm, well this could be the start of something big. Companies could pick who to own by financing their educations, who to move to the front lines, and who is best suited as an organ donor. Companies could also aid only those who agree with their agendas. Combined with some genetic engineering, there's great opportunity for corporate optimizations here... or a script for a sci-fi movie/series??
(I release any interest I have in this idea for free use by any filmmaker not connected with Comcast)
I think one of the reasons CB had as big of a share as it did, was the relative lack of other options. There were no cell phones. (Even long distance phone calls were expensive) Radiotelephones were extremely expensive to use, and ham radio required passing a test involving regulations and technology (and Morse code at that time). Of course the ways people interact now are more diverse.
It's ironic that efforts to throttle/censor expression or unrest may very well fuel feelings of dissent. Having a government of the people, by the people, for the people is a very precious thing. The more we deviate from that, the more we're asking for trouble.
Solutions? Well it seems many of those with the wealth need to be pouring some back more back in ways that help the future. And by that I don't mean a focus on their getting a still bigger piece of the piece, but fueling the grass roots of innovation and opportunity. Instead of venture-capital opportunists taking advantage of people with ideas, we need vast numbers of no-strings infusions. It may mean bringing back near Reagan era tax rates (they DID love the guy, right??? Why not accept his tax rates?), but giving credit at better than a 1:1 ratio for relatively small (individually) no-strings infusions. Fuel settings that produce ideas and developing them. Whether it be small grants for things similar to some college senior projects (do it in high school and summer camps too), or community hacker houses (places where people can visit/live to work on projects, exchange ideas). Some really low budget things can be done too. Give kids a supervised setting to take apart electronics recyclables and make things from the parts. Can they make stereos, small ham transmitters, solar energy converting do-dads from the parts in old PC power supplies? Engineer things that can create opportunities in economically depressed areas, give people work even doing piecemeal (perhaps at home) work that's part of another project. It's great that Bill Gates is doing things for world health, but we need others helping to fuel other needs WITHOUT STRINGS. When things are driven solely by profit motive they can go horribly wrong. Look what taking off the ownership restrictions on broadcast outlets has done. (cut the financial strings that fuel corruption, ban broadcasters from running PAID political ads, have them provide only limited fairly dispensed free public affairs time as part of license terms)
Don't suppress peoples expressions of dissent, but work at fixing the root problems.
The water is especially bad in Texas, enough that some of the water pipe is too radioactive to recycle.
http://www.khou.com/home/-I-Team-Texas-drinking-water-makes-pipes-and-plumbing-radioactive-122108194.html
Nuclear submarine reactors aren't cooled with seawater.
Power plants aren't either, not directly. There's a heat exchanger in-between. The actual reactor coolant has to be ultra-pure not only to reduce corrosion, but to avoid buildup of isotopes that would develop from the impurities and form deposits in the pipes at locations that would increase exposure to plant workers. Of course buildup is also a problem for things like pumps and valves.
One of the very disturbing things found in Japan when other reactors got a closer look was a plant where a significant amount of seawater did get into the reactor coolant. It's shocking that such a thing had previously been undetected and has serious safety implications as it points to hidden corrosion or other damage. If a heat exchanger was rusted through or something they should have known about the corrosion long before it caused leakage of tons of water.
As for sodium in solution being quick to absorb and transport dangerous material, other questions come to mind. How severe are the implications for underground waste storage in ancient salt beds/caves? With global climate change can we count on those places remaining dry for 10,000 years???
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Waste_Isolation_Pilot_Plant
I remember when the Fukushima event was still making headlines people were freaking out because radiation was making it's way to the U.S. I was a little worried myself, but since I work for an air purification company one of the data-crunchers there was able to explain now negligible the impact actually was.
I think your friend was half right. Ground-level exposure in the U.S. from inhaling air was low. But when water vapor condenses around particles in the atmosphere, the levels in rainfall can be quite high. The dispersion isn't uniform. Depending on where the higher concentration air currents were and when/where rain fell, overall average can be low while some areas become hot spots. The rain falls on the grass, the cows eat, and then we eat or drink. Most of the significant exposure that people in Sweden got from Chernobyl was found to have been through rainfall that fell in a single day. I knew people that died later (one more reached his end just this month). Some other places had it much worse.
The primary exposure pathway here was not through breathing the air.
A California university, not far from the coast (hilly area that got some significant spring rainfall) has pasture-fed dairy cows that had both i-131 and cesium in the milk. The i-131 dropped off, but at the time they stopped (publicly at least) with monthly testing, there was cesium showing. Those results were not among those I could find on the EPA site. The levels were also above that allowed by drinking water standards, but are allowed for milk. The looser standard for milk is apparently based on exposure for a shorter time and on lower consumption. It wasn't comforting to realize that my consumption was eight times the amount they based the exposure estimates on. It's not something to panic over, but statistics over decades will no-doubt reveal some impact. I'm more concerned about any impact on women and children than myself (being an old fossil at this point).