Hmm, half the year it's dark. The other 1/2 of the year the sun is at most 23.5% up on the horizon. With such a low angle of incidence of the radiation coming from the Sun, does the ice cap really reflect that much energy?
It's not dark for half the year unless you're right at the North Pole. But I digress...
You're right, the poles don't get nearly as much sun as the equator. However, snow and ice reflect almost all of the light that does hit them. If the snow and ice melts, we go from almost 100% reflectance to a much smaller value.
Also note that the part of the ice that melts the first will be the part of the ice cap that's the furthest from the pole. This part will get a good deal more light than the pole itself.
Ultimately, you're right -- the effect will be small, at least compared to covering the equator with ice. But not zero. And it'll snowball -- as more and more of the polar ice caps melt, more heat will be collected by the Earth, helping the polar ice caps melt even more...
the floating metal ship should displace more water, than that sunkin ship (not much though.)
Actually, the difference could be quite large. A cube of steel (1 meter x 1 meter x 1 meter) would displace one cubic meter of water as it sank.
Formed into a ship and floating, it would displace enough water to support it's weight. Since steel is about 8x as dense as water, it would displace approximiately 8 cubic meters of water.
(I'm ignoring the density of the air, which is small enough to pretty much ignore this demonstration. And steel is more like 7.85 times as dense as pure water, but the exact figure will depend on which steel, how salty the water is, the temperature, etc. 8 is close enough.)
However, the original poster's point is correct when referring to ice, because the density is generally constant. A steel boat is different -- the density of the steel part is much higher than the density of the part filled with air.
That, and polar bears are mostly water, with a density close to that of water, so really any effect they'd have either standing on the ice or swimming in the water would be minimal.:)
Because it was only recently that someone else tried to trademark "Linux" for themselves.
Is that that really true? I recall hearing about trademark for
Linux dishwashing detergent many years ago. (Though that's an unrelated product, so Linus may not have much say about that.)
Looking through the US Patent and Trademark office, searching for `Linux', I find lots of registrations that involve the name Linux, some going back as far as 1999. For example,
LINUXWORLD CONFERENCE & EXPO.
I wouldn't call 1999 recently...
Ultimately, trademarking anything that might be associated with your business is a common business method of operation. For example, McDonald's
I'm Loving it was almost certainly registered even before the onslaught of commercials started.
As a designer, the best thing I can do when I allow the user to indulge in that fantasy is to show that there are ramifications for those actions. In GTA the more police you attack the harder the game gets, ultimately resulting in capture or death."
To be fair, you may show that there are ramifications, but your ramifications are not very realistic.
In the real world, attacking even one police officer, even in a minor way, is going to do far more than making life more difficult. You're likely to end up captured or dead very shortly -- and in either case, you can't just hit reload.
Granted, GTA is a game and you play by game rules, but by adding ramifications to `bad' actions, you're not really teaching morality or anything else like that. You're just making the game more fun. (Which is a good thing, don't get me wrong.)
nothing kills an RPG like a limiting interface.:-(
To be fair, I don't recall what I didn't like about the interface -- it's been a few years.
I suspect that Planescape has roughly the same interface as BG1, but that BG2 improved it greatly (and again, I forget what the improvements were) and that I got to like them and it grated on my nerves when I went back...
I suppose I'm going to sound like an snob for saying so, but I really don't think you were part of Planescape Torment's target audience. The draw of the game was the characters and the development of the story, along with having the ability to have your actions actually have an impact.
I didn't think that Planescape sucked. It's graphics were as expected at the time it was released, on par with BG1 or so. It's just that it's hard to go back sometimes. (But only sometimes. Some things age better than others. And then there's the whole retro thing...)
Even Morrowind (*some* say it was a good CRPG, so leave me alone) left a ton of room for improvement in the eye candy department
I thought Morrowind was way cool. And the graphics are just fine, even by my standards today. I played it a little a few years back but got distracted, and I've recently started playing it again.
Personally, the best CRPG I've played recently was KOTOR2. It did get a bit weak at the end, but up until then it was great. But it wasn't the graphics... it was the story.
But Planescape, it was hard to go back to. Perhaps it was just me.
Planescape is exactly the sort of game I ought to love -- for example, I thought
Baldur's Gate II was one of the greatest games ever. (BG1 was good too, but BG2 was a good deal better.)
Unfortunately, I went to play Planescape after playing BG2, and BG2 ruined it for me. Yes, I could tell that Planescape looked like fun from the beginning, but BG2's graphics were much better (1024x768 is much better than 640x480, even if BG2 didn't make proper use of it) and the interface was considerably better. I know it shouldn't really matter, but it did.
(Note that BG2 and Planescape had the same general interface -- an isometric view, 2D sprites, etc. BG2 just had it polished a good deal more, as it came out later.)
Neverwinter Nights was sort of fun too, but it never really did it for me like BG2 did. Sure, the graphics were better, but I really missed having a full party, and the story wasn't nearly as good. (Story is very important for games like this.) And the interface never seemed right, though I couldn't really put my finger on it, beyond never really liking those `radial selection things'.
It would be very neat if Planescape came out with either the BG2 or NWN engine (or something newer.) The BG2 engine could probably be done relatively simply, though the artwork might need to be redrawn (or we could just have a larger screen, which would be nice too) and the NWN engine would probably require a complete rewrite. And considering how poorly Planescape sold, I don't see this happening. A pity.
A very small extent. Especially in the face of feminist's "My Body" arguments.
Well, those arguments have a lot of validity to them. It is her body. (And why does that have to be a `feminist' argument? -- even if you don't believe that men and women are equal, you can still believe it's her body.)
But on the other hand, the father should have some say too -- after all, the embryo in there is half his genetic material.
It's not really fair that the man has no say in what happens to their embryo, but that's ultimately the way it works, because it's in her body and she should be the final authority about what happens to it (and by proxy what happens to the embryo inside.)
I don't really have a better solution (short of being able to safely remove the embryo and raise it somewhere else, but that requires technology we don't have yet), but I do feel justified in saying that the father should have some say. If it comes down to it, his say doesn't really count for much if she disagrees and doesn't care what he wants, but hopefully that's the exception rather than the rule.
Of course, your summary isn't really honest either --
The pro-choice crowd was EXTREMELY excited about the ability to destroy more embryos as part of their "proof" that embryos aren't life.
You're painting the pro-choice crowd with an awfully broad brush here. A large number of `pro-choice' people (including myself) don't really like the idea of killing embryos for whatever reason, but are pro-choice because we think it should be up to the mother (and father, though probably to a smaller extent), not the church or the government.
I suspect that there may have been a few pro-choice people who are as you said they are, but I suspect it's a small minority.
if you listen to the argument on the left that there is NO MORAL question
The `left' says there is no moral question? It may be that the `right' is generally `pro-life' and the `left' is generally `pro-choice', but these are hardly hard and fast rules. And I'm not aware of many `pro-choice' people who would claim that there is `NO MORAL question' about abortion (and stem cell research) at all.
'Progress' is one of those words where when somebody overuses it, it's time to look at them closely.
I'd suggest that the odds of having each student in a school have a laptop being a `good thing' (leading to improved learning) are much higher than millions of people starving in the Ukraine being a `good thing'.
Quick summary:
laptops in the classroom -- may help a lot, may help a little, may hurt a little. I suspect it's more `may help a little' than anything else.
Starving people in the Ukraine -- bad any way any normal person looks at it.
Or were you suggesting that I overused the word progress here? Or that the laptops should be sold and the money earned sent to the Ukraine to buy them food? (Good luck getting that one past the school board...)
Is it your position that every police officer must always ticket every person they see exceeding the speed limit or safely rolling through a stop sign instead of coming to a complete and utter stop?
Yet another bad analogy.
The kids are now charged with felonies, and you're mentioning traffic violations? In some states, traffic violations aren't even considered to be crimes, only `infractions' (it depends on the state.)
If a cop sees you speed, nobody's likely to get on his case for giving you a warning or just letting you go, unless you're a celebrity and he stops to have his picture taken with you and it becomes public knowledge.
This case is different. The school district claims that a crime has occurred, and it seems quite likely that the law has been violated in some manner (though I don't think the police should have been involved.) And they're pressing charges.
There's a big difference between a victimless crime like speeding, and a case where you DO have a victim, you DO have evidence, and the victim is actively pushing for the police to take action.
Do you have a shred of authority backing up your position?
Of course not. Just like you.
I would cite to castle rock, _ U.S_ (2005) for the proposition that police have wide discretion not to arrest people.
That case is rather different, and it pertains specifically to restraining orders. Part of the decision reads --
Colorado law has not created a personal entitlement to enforcement of restraining orders. It does not appear that state law truly made such enforcement mandatory.
Considering that Kutztown is in Pennsylvania, I don't think Colorado law really applies anyways.
In any event, the police usually don't know much about computers, and they certainly aren't equipped to judge the merits of a case without even talking to the people accused of the crime. I'd say the police chief's reaction was appropriate, even if the case turns out to have no merit (though I doubt this will happen. Though the DA may very well decide not to prosecute, or the school district may drop the charges.)
If you actually
read the letter, you'd see he even asked the DA for advice, who suggested that charges be filed.
You are mistaken. police officers have wide discretion to not make arrests, especially where as here it seems likely no crime has occurred, or at least the crime they were charged with did not occur.
Well then we disagree about what happened. I think there is sufficient evidence that a law somewhere was violated. I mentioned this as well --
and you look at the situation and find that they did technically do the crime, you don't get to say `no, this is stupid, I won't do it.'
I think the idea that a felony happened is pretty stupid, and that the school district should have just slapped the kids on the wrist or something rather than getting the police involved, but there is enough evidence that a crime did happen that the police need to do their job, since charges are being pressed.
The rest is for the courts and the DA to work out.
The `computer hacking' laws are generally pretty stupid nation wide, and in many cases some very routine things could be considered technically illegal, even though people aren't usually convicted because nobody really considers them to be crimes once they understand it. But in this case, the school district is pushing it, and the police don't have a lot of say in the matter. All they can do is look at the evidence and decide that the school district may have a case, and so they have to do the rest, stupid as it may be.
But hey, go ahead and crucify the police chief if it makes you feel better. I'm sure he deserves it for something else he's done wrong...
Most analogies that attempt to relate some aspect of computers, computer networks, the Internet, computer security, etc. to the `real world' fail miserably.
dougmc's first corollary to dougmc's theorem on computer related analogies :
Few people seem to realize this.
dougmc's second corollary to dougmc's theorem on computer related analogies :
And yet people keep doing it, thinking they're clarifying the situation for the layperson, when instead they're usually presenting a flawed analogy that has a rather strong bias towards the analogy creator's viewpoint.
I never had a laptop in high school and my education was fine.
Ok, this argument won't get you very far. If you want to be a curmudgeon that's fine, but the school district obviously feels that the laptop adds something to the student's education, and perhaps they're even right.
It's called progress. I'm not sure that more computers are really progress, but since I'm not an educator, I don't really get to decide -- that's up to the schools.
Aren't laptops inordinately expensive items to be handing out to every kid in the school? Plus they're easily damaged and so on. Why do they do this?
You are correct. Laptops are fragile, and high school students are hard on things. But the school district probably got a grant from some local business that had to be spent on computers and they decided to go with laptops. To an educator (or an administrator, or a PTA, or a community leader) a classroom with a computer is better than a classroom without, and a classroom with 30 computers is better than either.
(Nevermind that the kids are spending their time playing around with the computers rather than actually doing their work. I know I was...)
I want to encourage them to write to the police chief, asking if they have fired or investigated the officer yet
To be fair, the officers in question probably didn't have a choice, including the police chief. When somebody calls you (a police officer) and says they want to press charges for some crime, and you look at the situation and find that they did technically do the crime, you don't get to say `no, this is stupid, I won't do it.' You fill out the paperwork and arrest the perpetrators or whatever is appropriate.
The school district administration is being a bunch of jerks about this, but the police are just doing their job. The DA might eventually decide not to prosecute the case, but the police officers involved don't have much say in the matter.
Personally, I think the kids should stick their ground and not take any `deals' where they admit their guilt and do community service, especially if these deals include reduced criminal charges. Being kids, the police can't do that much to them, and I suspect that ultimately the entire thing will blow over once the DA and school district realizes that the EFF and ACLU are breathing down their necks and that public opinion is likely to be on the kid's side as well.
But that's just me. I was somewhat of a troublemaker in highschool too, though at least our administration was a little more cool than this.
No, in the US (at least in Texas and Alaska, where I went to school) suspended means `don't come back to school for a week or so' and expelled meant `don't come back, ever'.
Of course, it always seemed ironic to me to suspend a kid for skipping school. And as for expulsion, he just went to another school in the same district, so what did that accomplish? (Answer: he's now somebody else's problem, not this school's.)
You don't understand antenna gain and EIRP.
Discussion closed.
I feel that I understand it fine. I even feel that I've explained it reasonably well, more accurately than you have anyways. I'd accept that maybe I didn't simplify antenna gain enough for the layperson, but that I don't understand the general gist of it? No.
If you really want the discussion to be `closed', then you'll need to point out exactly where I'm wrong in a convincing manner. Citations from subject matter experts are often very helpful.
Another option is to bore me to death or convince me that you're just a troll, so I just stop responding, but in that case the discussion isn't really `closed', just left hanging.
At the moment, the latter option seems much more likely.
Making up quotes and attributing them to me is not very convincing, especially in a medium where it's trivial to go back and see what I really said.
I never said "just 0.25 watts". If you're going to quote me, quote me. Don't just put stuff into quotes and pretend I said it.
making me try to explain that issue to the layman
Making you muddy the water further for the layman, you mean. Your post said the antenna amplified the signal which is flat out wrong. Simplifying things is fine, but you went too far. You may call it nitpicking, I call it being accurate.
your claim about the power being too low is totally irrelevant.
I didn't claim the power was too low.
Before turning down my calculation you should make your own math with two 2.1 dB antennas when compared with two 20 dB antennas and 0.25 W of transmitting power and you will see that with the 2.1 dB antennas you will need close to 1000 Watts of power to have the same effective signal. So what is your point?
I'm not even sure what your point is. A higher gain antenna has higher gain. I don't think you're claiming something different, so... what are you claiming? What is your point? That higher gain antennas work better (when aimed properly) than low antennas? Well, duh!
Line of sight has never been a topic of the discussion
I've mentioned it several times, since it's critically important to the discussion about how far you can send a signal on 2.4 GHz. You really can't discuss the distances possible without mentioning line of sight. So yes, it was a topic of the discussion.
And yes, you are correct that 2.4 GHz signals have been sent thousands of miles, by going through a satellite. I'm not aware of any amateur satellites that do 802.11*, but it's not impossible. I don't think it's really possible to do 802.11* via moon bounce, aurora bounce or meteor trail bounce though -- CW works, SSB might work under ideal conditions (but with bad distortion), but 802.11*? No way. And even the CW guys will use more than 0.250 watts to make those sorts of connections.
Furthermore, I don't think you can run an 11 Mbps link or even the link speed they achieved in this case on HF bands with 5 watts
Considering that a 802.11b signal is 30 MHz in size, larger than even what we usually call the entire HF band, you're probably right. I don't know much about their proprietary system, but the HF bands (especially using skip) really aren't going to work well with any sort of signal that uses many MHz of bandwidth.
about 20dB of gain. That amplifies the 0.25 watts to 25 watts!
Not exactly.
What it does is aim the signal very precisely, but the same amount of signal is still transmitted. A few miles away, if the antenna is pointed right at you, the signal is as strong as if there was a 25 watt transmitter with an isotropic antenna, but ultimately there's still only 0.25 watts.
Let me make that more clear... high gain antennas do not amplify the signal one bit. They just aim it all very precisely in one direction. And as for receiving, they still don't amplify the signal, but they do pick up signal from only that one direction, so the noise floor is much lower than it would be with a lower gain antenna -- and ultimately the noise floor is the limit in if you can receive a signal or not.
When compared with an HF bands signal transmitted by a typical dipole antenna, you would have the equivalent of about 1000 watts of power, assuming a setup like shown in the picture is used at both ends.
A typical dipole has a gain of 2.1 dBi -- 2.1 dB over an antenna (a hypotetical antenna) that raidates equally in all directions. Good HF antennas often do have more gain than dipoles, as they'll use Yagis or other directional antennas. 20 dBi of gain is rare, but possible with a large enough antenna.
When comparing HF to SHF, people often don't take this factor in the calculation.
I'm still not sure what factor you're referring to -- and I'm an extra class amateur radio operator. If you're trying to say that high gain antennas for the 2.4 GHz band are smaller than a similarly high gain antenna for an HF band, you're right. But we're very well aware of that.
What you seem to be missing is that anything above a certain frequency is strictly line of sight. Exactly where the difference is depends on conditions -- sometimes even VHF signals can go further thanks to ducting -- but 2.4 GHz signals are definately always line of sight, so I don't care HOW big your antennas are, or how much power you have, you can't go further than you can see.
Of course you need line-of-sight, but the station apparently sits on a hilltop.
Obviously to get the distances they got, they need to do more than sit on a hilltop. They need two mountains. There's two components to getting large distances with WiFi-like radios -- high gain antennas and high mounts to give you a good line of site. The mountains are going to be the ultimate limiting factor, at least until you start looking at baloons or airplanes or satellites, though in that case it'll be hard to aim the antennas well enough -- a high gain antenna has a VERY tight beam.
Compare this to HF, where with 5 watts and a reasonable (not huge, but not tiny) antenna and good conditions, you can talk to somebody on the other side of the world. No mountains needed.
Ham radio operators can use high gain antennas, but then you're using a licensed band (though the licensed 2.4 GHz band does overlap with the unlicended band.)
Really, if these people used the unlicensed band, and did not go under the ham radio rules, they probably violated the law. I don't know how upset the FCC would be about a 0.250 watt transmission that doesn't actually interfere with anything (I assume that's how much power they used) even if the ERP was much higher, but we shall see.
As for a 200 dB antenna, well, I'd like to see that. I suspect it would be larger than the size of the Earth for the 2.4 GHz band:)
I don't get it... what is impressive about transmitting in the 2.4 GHz range?
People have talked with people all the way across the world with 5 watts of power. But that's on the HF bands -- 2.4 GHz is strictly line of sight, so it's difficult to make really long connections.
Also, the power is limited to something like 0.250 watts, though it's certainly possible to talk with somebody many thousands of miles away with only 0.250 watts -- but again, on the HF bads.
The First Amendment only explicitly disallows any of the rights from being abridged by Congress. Over time, however, the courts held that this extends to the executive and judicial branches. The Supreme Court has held that the Fourteenth Amendment extends the limitations of the First Amendment to actions by the states.
As far as I know, it also extends to actions by cities and counties and other smaller government bodies, but perhaps I'm wrong there. Or perhaps it's just been assumed that it does, and nobody has actually taken the issue up with the Supreme Court (who would probably rule that way if it came up.)
That being said,The first admendment forbids congress from passing a law abirdging the freedom of speech. Congress is not the president - so the president can't violate the first amendment of the united states.
That sounds good. Except that this amendment has been interpeted as meaning that the government is forbidden from passing these laws...
After all, local governments are also prohibited from violating this amendment, even if they don't have any body called `congress'. And so is the President. Yes, the Bill of Rights says what you say it says, but that's not what the courts have decided it means.
Private citizens, however, cannot violate this amendment (at least not as far as they're acting on their own and not for the government.) Freedom of the press belongs to the person who owns the press.
The emphasis of the article was not on the energy efficiency of the vehicle, but its capacity to reduce oil consumption, for political reasons.
The subject of the article was, in case you missed it --
Experimental Hybrid Cars Get Up to 250 Mpg
... and while that may be accurate on some level, it's incredibly dishonest. Which was my point.
Considering that more electrical power is generated from coal than any other source in the US, really what these people are powering their cars indirectly via coal and gas rather than just gas, but giving the mpg figure based only on the gas.
Really, the guy should make it a point to NEVER use the gas engine. Then he could claim infinite miles per gallon!
It's like saying I survive an entire day on just one 12 oz can of coke. Which is true -- that's all the soda I'll let myself drink in a day -- but it ignores the rest of the food I eat. When you consider where the rest of my caloric intake comes from, it's not nearly so impressive.
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You're right, the poles don't get nearly as much sun as the equator. However, snow and ice reflect almost all of the light that does hit them. If the snow and ice melts, we go from almost 100% reflectance to a much smaller value.
Also note that the part of the ice that melts the first will be the part of the ice cap that's the furthest from the pole. This part will get a good deal more light than the pole itself.
Ultimately, you're right -- the effect will be small, at least compared to covering the equator with ice. But not zero. And it'll snowball -- as more and more of the polar ice caps melt, more heat will be collected by the Earth, helping the polar ice caps melt even more ...
Formed into a ship and floating, it would displace enough water to support it's weight. Since steel is about 8x as dense as water, it would displace approximiately 8 cubic meters of water.
(I'm ignoring the density of the air, which is small enough to pretty much ignore this demonstration. And steel is more like 7.85 times as dense as pure water, but the exact figure will depend on which steel, how salty the water is, the temperature, etc. 8 is close enough.)
However, the original poster's point is correct when referring to ice, because the density is generally constant. A steel boat is different -- the density of the steel part is much higher than the density of the part filled with air.
That, and polar bears are mostly water, with a density close to that of water, so really any effect they'd have either standing on the ice or swimming in the water would be minimal. :)
Looking through the US Patent and Trademark office, searching for `Linux', I find lots of registrations that involve the name Linux, some going back as far as 1999. For example, LINUXWORLD CONFERENCE & EXPO.
I wouldn't call 1999 recently ...
Ultimately, trademarking anything that might be associated with your business is a common business method of operation. For example, McDonald's I'm Loving it was almost certainly registered even before the onslaught of commercials started.
In the real world, attacking even one police officer, even in a minor way, is going to do far more than making life more difficult. You're likely to end up captured or dead very shortly -- and in either case, you can't just hit reload.
Granted, GTA is a game and you play by game rules, but by adding ramifications to `bad' actions, you're not really teaching morality or anything else like that. You're just making the game more fun. (Which is a good thing, don't get me wrong.)
I suspect that Planescape has roughly the same interface as BG1, but that BG2 improved it greatly (and again, I forget what the improvements were) and that I got to like them and it grated on my nerves when I went back ...
Personally, the best CRPG I've played recently was KOTOR2. It did get a bit weak at the end, but up until then it was great. But it wasn't the graphics ... it was the story.
But Planescape, it was hard to go back to. Perhaps it was just me.
Unfortunately, I went to play Planescape after playing BG2, and BG2 ruined it for me. Yes, I could tell that Planescape looked like fun from the beginning, but BG2's graphics were much better (1024x768 is much better than 640x480, even if BG2 didn't make proper use of it) and the interface was considerably better. I know it shouldn't really matter, but it did.
(Note that BG2 and Planescape had the same general interface -- an isometric view, 2D sprites, etc. BG2 just had it polished a good deal more, as it came out later.)
Neverwinter Nights was sort of fun too, but it never really did it for me like BG2 did. Sure, the graphics were better, but I really missed having a full party, and the story wasn't nearly as good. (Story is very important for games like this.) And the interface never seemed right, though I couldn't really put my finger on it, beyond never really liking those `radial selection things'.
It would be very neat if Planescape came out with either the BG2 or NWN engine (or something newer.) The BG2 engine could probably be done relatively simply, though the artwork might need to be redrawn (or we could just have a larger screen, which would be nice too) and the NWN engine would probably require a complete rewrite. And considering how poorly Planescape sold, I don't see this happening. A pity.
But on the other hand, the father should have some say too -- after all, the embryo in there is half his genetic material.
It's not really fair that the man has no say in what happens to their embryo, but that's ultimately the way it works, because it's in her body and she should be the final authority about what happens to it (and by proxy what happens to the embryo inside.)
I don't really have a better solution (short of being able to safely remove the embryo and raise it somewhere else, but that requires technology we don't have yet), but I do feel justified in saying that the father should have some say. If it comes down to it, his say doesn't really count for much if she disagrees and doesn't care what he wants, but hopefully that's the exception rather than the rule.
I suspect that there may have been a few pro-choice people who are as you said they are, but I suspect it's a small minority.
The `left' says there is no moral question? It may be that the `right' is generally `pro-life' and the `left' is generally `pro-choice', but these are hardly hard and fast rules. And I'm not aware of many `pro-choice' people who would claim that there is `NO MORAL question' about abortion (and stem cell research) at all.Quick summary:
laptops in the classroom -- may help a lot, may help a little, may hurt a little. I suspect it's more `may help a little' than anything else.
Starving people in the Ukraine -- bad any way any normal person looks at it.
Or were you suggesting that I overused the word progress here? Or that the laptops should be sold and the money earned sent to the Ukraine to buy them food? (Good luck getting that one past the school board ...)
The kids are now charged with felonies, and you're mentioning traffic violations? In some states, traffic violations aren't even considered to be crimes, only `infractions' (it depends on the state.)
If a cop sees you speed, nobody's likely to get on his case for giving you a warning or just letting you go, unless you're a celebrity and he stops to have his picture taken with you and it becomes public knowledge.
This case is different. The school district claims that a crime has occurred, and it seems quite likely that the law has been violated in some manner (though I don't think the police should have been involved.) And they're pressing charges.
There's a big difference between a victimless crime like speeding, and a case where you DO have a victim, you DO have evidence, and the victim is actively pushing for the police to take action.
Of course not. Just like you. That case is rather different, and it pertains specifically to restraining orders. Part of the decision reads -- Considering that Kutztown is in Pennsylvania, I don't think Colorado law really applies anyways.In any event, the police usually don't know much about computers, and they certainly aren't equipped to judge the merits of a case without even talking to the people accused of the crime. I'd say the police chief's reaction was appropriate, even if the case turns out to have no merit (though I doubt this will happen. Though the DA may very well decide not to prosecute, or the school district may drop the charges.)
If you actually read the letter, you'd see he even asked the DA for advice, who suggested that charges be filed.
The rest is for the courts and the DA to work out.
The `computer hacking' laws are generally pretty stupid nation wide, and in many cases some very routine things could be considered technically illegal, even though people aren't usually convicted because nobody really considers them to be crimes once they understand it. But in this case, the school district is pushing it, and the police don't have a lot of say in the matter. All they can do is look at the evidence and decide that the school district may have a case, and so they have to do the rest, stupid as it may be.
But hey, go ahead and crucify the police chief if it makes you feel better. I'm sure he deserves it for something else he's done wrong ...
dougmc's first corollary to dougmc's theorem on computer related analogies :
dougmc's second corollary to dougmc's theorem on computer related analogies :It's called progress. I'm not sure that more computers are really progress, but since I'm not an educator, I don't really get to decide -- that's up to the schools.
You are correct. Laptops are fragile, and high school students are hard on things. But the school district probably got a grant from some local business that had to be spent on computers and they decided to go with laptops. To an educator (or an administrator, or a PTA, or a community leader) a classroom with a computer is better than a classroom without, and a classroom with 30 computers is better than either.(Nevermind that the kids are spending their time playing around with the computers rather than actually doing their work. I know I was ...)
Agree or not, you're not likely to change it.
The school district administration is being a bunch of jerks about this, but the police are just doing their job. The DA might eventually decide not to prosecute the case, but the police officers involved don't have much say in the matter.
Personally, I think the kids should stick their ground and not take any `deals' where they admit their guilt and do community service, especially if these deals include reduced criminal charges. Being kids, the police can't do that much to them, and I suspect that ultimately the entire thing will blow over once the DA and school district realizes that the EFF and ACLU are breathing down their necks and that public opinion is likely to be on the kid's side as well.
But that's just me. I was somewhat of a troublemaker in highschool too, though at least our administration was a little more cool than this.
Of course, it always seemed ironic to me to suspend a kid for skipping school. And as for expulsion, he just went to another school in the same district, so what did that accomplish? (Answer: he's now somebody else's problem, not this school's.)
If you really want the discussion to be `closed', then you'll need to point out exactly where I'm wrong in a convincing manner. Citations from subject matter experts are often very helpful.
Another option is to bore me to death or convince me that you're just a troll, so I just stop responding, but in that case the discussion isn't really `closed', just left hanging.
At the moment, the latter option seems much more likely.
Making up quotes and attributing them to me is not very convincing, especially in a medium where it's trivial to go back and see what I really said.
And yes, you are correct that 2.4 GHz signals have been sent thousands of miles, by going through a satellite. I'm not aware of any amateur satellites that do 802.11*, but it's not impossible. I don't think it's really possible to do 802.11* via moon bounce, aurora bounce or meteor trail bounce though -- CW works, SSB might work under ideal conditions (but with bad distortion), but 802.11*? No way. And even the CW guys will use more than 0.250 watts to make those sorts of connections.
Considering that a 802.11b signal is 30 MHz in size, larger than even what we usually call the entire HF band, you're probably right. I don't know much about their proprietary system, but the HF bands (especially using skip) really aren't going to work well with any sort of signal that uses many MHz of bandwidth.What it does is aim the signal very precisely, but the same amount of signal is still transmitted. A few miles away, if the antenna is pointed right at you, the signal is as strong as if there was a 25 watt transmitter with an isotropic antenna, but ultimately there's still only 0.25 watts.
Let me make that more clear ... high gain antennas do not amplify the signal one bit. They just aim it all very precisely in one direction. And as for receiving, they still don't amplify the signal, but they do pick up signal from only that one direction, so the noise floor is much lower than it would be with a lower gain antenna -- and ultimately the noise floor is the limit in if you can receive a signal or not.
A typical dipole has a gain of 2.1 dBi -- 2.1 dB over an antenna (a hypotetical antenna) that raidates equally in all directions. Good HF antennas often do have more gain than dipoles, as they'll use Yagis or other directional antennas. 20 dBi of gain is rare, but possible with a large enough antenna. I'm still not sure what factor you're referring to -- and I'm an extra class amateur radio operator. If you're trying to say that high gain antennas for the 2.4 GHz band are smaller than a similarly high gain antenna for an HF band, you're right. But we're very well aware of that.What you seem to be missing is that anything above a certain frequency is strictly line of sight. Exactly where the difference is depends on conditions -- sometimes even VHF signals can go further thanks to ducting -- but 2.4 GHz signals are definately always line of sight, so I don't care HOW big your antennas are, or how much power you have, you can't go further than you can see.
Obviously to get the distances they got, they need to do more than sit on a hilltop. They need two mountains. There's two components to getting large distances with WiFi-like radios -- high gain antennas and high mounts to give you a good line of site. The mountains are going to be the ultimate limiting factor, at least until you start looking at baloons or airplanes or satellites, though in that case it'll be hard to aim the antennas well enough -- a high gain antenna has a VERY tight beam.Compare this to HF, where with 5 watts and a reasonable (not huge, but not tiny) antenna and good conditions, you can talk to somebody on the other side of the world. No mountains needed.
Ham radio operators can use high gain antennas, but then you're using a licensed band (though the licensed 2.4 GHz band does overlap with the unlicended band.)
Really, if these people used the unlicensed band, and did not go under the ham radio rules, they probably violated the law. I don't know how upset the FCC would be about a 0.250 watt transmission that doesn't actually interfere with anything (I assume that's how much power they used) even if the ERP was much higher, but we shall see.
As for a 200 dB antenna, well, I'd like to see that. I suspect it would be larger than the size of the Earth for the 2.4 GHz band :)
Also, the power is limited to something like 0.250 watts, though it's certainly possible to talk with somebody many thousands of miles away with only 0.250 watts -- but again, on the HF bads.
Here you go.
It reads in part :
As far as I know, it also extends to actions by cities and counties and other smaller government bodies, but perhaps I'm wrong there. Or perhaps it's just been assumed that it does, and nobody has actually taken the issue up with the Supreme Court (who would probably rule that way if it came up.)After all, local governments are also prohibited from violating this amendment, even if they don't have any body called `congress'. And so is the President. Yes, the Bill of Rights says what you say it says, but that's not what the courts have decided it means.
Private citizens, however, cannot violate this amendment (at least not as far as they're acting on their own and not for the government.) Freedom of the press belongs to the person who owns the press.
Considering that more electrical power is generated from coal than any other source in the US, really what these people are powering their cars indirectly via coal and gas rather than just gas, but giving the mpg figure based only on the gas.
Really, the guy should make it a point to NEVER use the gas engine. Then he could claim infinite miles per gallon!
It's like saying I survive an entire day on just one 12 oz can of coke. Which is true -- that's all the soda I'll let myself drink in a day -- but it ignores the rest of the food I eat. When you consider where the rest of my caloric intake comes from, it's not nearly so impressive.