I'll give them credit for an interesting way of arranging the crank, con rods, and barrels, to give two opposed piston two-stroke cylinders running off a single crank. I also notice the motor's all shown in CGI cutaways and not as an actual running device. There's also some crucial details omitted in the cutaways that make me wonder how they're solving some of the obvious issues with this engine.
Now, personally, I'm a huge fan of two-stroke opposed-piston motors, but usually in Diesel form. There's also some well known issues with getting these motors to run clean, which is one reason we haven't seen a lot of them since the Deltic motors of the 40's. Does it have potential? Sure. Might even be lighter than a counter-crank arrangement, but hell, the Deltics were popular back in their day precisely because of their power density - finally being supplanted in Maritime service by turbines.
Of course, there's currently some rather interesting engines already well into development with some impressive power densities.
Seriously, though, engine efficiency is great, but we'd all be better off scrapping those 4 ton behemoth SUV's and switching to lighter, more aerodynamic, vehicles.
I see a lot of people posting, but very few people actually trying to address your problem.
The fact is when you're at sea you'll be away from any kind of reasonably priced internet service. It's just a fact. No land lines on the open ocean, and bi-directional sat service is expensive.
Cruising sailors / powerboaters are usually stuck with either paying insane amounts for some kind of real time bi-directional satlink (which is what the ship has) or spending a lot less for some sort of Store and Forward satellite system.
Another option open to cruisers is using HF radio and RTTY to send email around. Slow, but surprisingly reliable. That'd require either a marine HF, or a Ham Radio license, and the appropriate hardware.
None of those may be an option for you.
There is a product called Sailmail that might suit your needs. Essentially a little hand held device that has an accoustic coupler in it. Call into the server to send and receive your mail over any phone.
Ultimately, I'll give you one piece of advice. Namely: For waht you need, forget Slashdot. You'll get more people talking about how many seconds a day 100 minutes works out to. Try something like the user forums over on Cruising World or any of the other cruising / sailing forums.
Talk to people who actually know the subject matter at hand.
Mass transit is the answer - not just BART - REAL mass transit. I cannot stress enough that if one travels to Japan and sees for oneself how fucking cool and efficient the Japanese mass rail system is - billion dollar proposals like this would die at conception.
No. Sorry. Mass transit is part of the solution, but it is not the solution.
The problem lies in the inherent difference between mass transit and public transit and most people don't recognize the difference.
Mass transit focuses on getting mass number of people between various high density locations. These are your medium to heavy rail systems. For the Bay Area that's BART and CalTrain.
In places like Japan, where they have high population densities, it works great. There's a reason places like Tokyo, Moscow, New York, London, etc., can have fantastically efficient mass transit systems: they have the population density to deal with it.
Public transit on the other hand focuses on being a 'vehicle replacement' so people in lower density areas can actually give up their cars. This is taxies up through light rail. Fewer passengers, but more convenient and more versatile.
Bay Area geography doesn't really favor Mass Transit. It's why BART basically sucks for commuting. With the exception of MUNI linking well to BART, most of the Public to Mass links suck.
The whole electric car infrastructure is an expensive idea, and it talks to the whole "chicken and the egg" problem. Without infrastructure, electric cars are useless. Without electric cars, no one will build the infrastructure. This is actively solving the infrastructure problem ahead of the cars.
Is it a good idea? Ultimately, yes. Is it the right idea? That's a lot harder to say. A massive bay area wide fleet of on-demand bio-diesel fueled hybrid shuttle buses might be better. But who's to say? Cars are a part of US culture partially because of our geography. We live in suburbia, which is inherently tied in with car culture.
Unless your mass transit plan includes re-arranging US cities and how people live in this country, it will never be the solution.
"I tell you now - terrorists are holding the citizens of the US and the UK captive via proxy, and the proxy is ironically the very governments they are battling."
While I don't disagree that this is part of a long, painful, slide into a pervasive surveylance society in both the US and the UK (moreso in the UK at this point, it seems) and just generally a really bad idea that normal citizens shouldn't be putting up with, I disagree on the "terrorists are winning" because of it.
Yes, there is the very real argument that if we change our ways because of the terrorist threats, we're letting them win. But this, pervasive monitoring, isn't their goal. They don't want our government to watch us. They want to kill us. The only people who want to watch us are our own governments.
There's been a long, long, history of government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence community (queue the "military intelligence" jokes) wanting to have a deeper view into the lives of ordinary citizens. While I don't know about spying scandals in the UK, there have been more than enough of them in the US to reveal the pattern.
The government doesn't want to watch us to keep us safe. The government wants to watch us to maintain their own hold on power. They always have. They always will. The "keep us safe from terrorists!" ploy is just the latest excuse they can drag out to give them a deeper view into their citizen's lives. And their citizens are letting them for the same reason we put up with the Security Theater we get in US airports.
Will it stop? Eventually. Privacy seems to be on a pendulum, and right now it's swinging towards the government's side. Eventually it will swing back when the people who're getting pissed off about it now elect new overlords into power who see things more our way.
I think you've missed the main point, and confused several others. This isn't about the Government butting into the development of a private company's product. This is about about the Government enforcing legal judgments on a company that was (here's the important part) convicted of breaking the law several times.
If it was just the government butting into a random developer to force them to do things Big Brother's way, you'd be closer. But it's not. It's a convicted monopolist who got busted for it, but still managed to stay in business more or less intact.
While I appreciate the Libertarian view on big government, this is more about law enforcement than big brother.
I agree with you for the most part, but would almost call bullshit on the "Pick any two." It's possible to build light weight cars without resorting to exotic expensive materials. Just look at the average curb weight of cars now verses cars in the early to mid 80's. Back then your typical Econobox was several hundred pounds lighter than the cars in its class now. My own '68 BMW 2002 (forerunner of the highly successful 3 series) clocked in a full 1000 pounds lighter than a modern 3. It was a BMW, so it wasn't the cheapest car on the road then, but it wasn't made of exotic composites - and could pull down mid-30's gas mileage in highway driving.
The issue with building cars light is that the Nanny State safety nazis have burdened our modern vehicles with 8 air bags, self tensioning seatbelts, extra reinforcement, and god knows what else was mandated to "make our cars safe!"
Think of the children!
Rather than address the root cause (most Americans are crappy drivers) they added in gadgetry to try and make up for that sad fact. That gadgetry adds mass. That is why cars need exotic materials now to be light. If you took out all the crap Congrenanny added, taught the driver how to drive, and built light without resorting to exotics, 1500 pound cars with small engines, great economy, and decent performance would be the norm.
You mention the comfort and convenience of modern cars, and you're right. People have gotten to expect that. They want the creature comforts and sound insulation and all the other crap that adds weight. But again, that doesn't mean you can't build a light car. Or even a strong light car. But it does mean making some sacrifices.
It's the expectations that would need to change.
Personally, I'll stick with bikes. I give up creature comforts for 40+ MPG and performance that will leave anything short of an $75K sports car for dead.
Doing a quick search for "2.4Ghz horn antenna" will turn up a number of inexpensive to buy, or -very- inexpensive to build horn antenna designs. For a fixed installation like this, a horn is a better bet than a Yagi and more effective than a Cantenna.
For a 500M shot, a cheap access point and a good antenna should have you covered as long as you've got a reasonably clean line of sight.
You can do it with a single antenna, or go for even better signal and use one at each end of the link. I've routinely been able to get decent link speeds with a.5M apperature horn across several miles to a standard AP. It just takes a wireless network card with an external antenna adapter.
Total cost:
Cheap AP - $50 Built horn - $15 - $50 (each) Bought horn - $50 - $500 or more.
Now, using a high gain antenna is technically against FCC regulations, but unless someone actually complains it won't matter. Given the situation, it's unlikely the FCC would do more than say "please take that down" even if they did get a complaint.
There's some good advice here already, and a lot of good questions that need to be answered before anyone could give a comprehensive answer. But having done a bit of this myself when I worked at "Large hardware vendor in The Valley" I've got a fairly simple combination to toss out.
1: Encrypt the data itself. PGP/GPG is your friend. If your consultant can't figure out how to use basic file encryption, find another vendor.
2: Confirm the keys. Face to face or on the phone, make sure you (and they) have the right keys on your ring.
3: Secure the transfer. In theory, properly encrypting the data itself should be enough. Even if the file's intercepted in transit, it should be unbreakable. That doesn't mean you shouldn't transfer it over a secure pipe. Pick your method here. SCP / SFTP are fine for point to point. So is burning the encrypted file to a CD/DVD and sending it via courier.
4: Accept the risk. Once the data's out of your hands, you no longer have control over it. You can't stop the contractor from signing for the package, decrypting the file, sticking it on a thumb drive in cleartext, and leaving the thumbdrive on the counter at Starbucks. Getting them to sign appropriate legal documentation will shift the liability, but won't actually stop the damage from the data getting out.
I remember the Mythbusters episode in question, and the conditions they were able to get "significant interference" in was Grant's mockup cockpit. While he put all the pieces together, he didn't put them together with the same levels of shielding that a real aircraft would have. When they moved to a borrowed corporate jet, they got no results as you pointed out. The difference being that an aircraft's controls and instruments are well shielded from stray RF interference.
I seem to remember their conclusion was based more on FAA regulations than anything else.
The reality is people leave their cell phones on all the damn time on aircraft. Phone signals are notorious for getting into nearby speakers and headphones, and I can't count the number of times I've heard the distinct "Dit-Di-Dit-Di-Dit" tones coming through my earphones. Did the plane fall out of the sky? Of course not! But the commercial airline and aircraft manufacturing industries are understandably conservative when it comes to safety. The type acceptance already included a broad range of tests to make sure the aircraft would reject unwanted interference, but they'd rather be safe than very, very, sorry.
Unfortunately, they already bend over for the Cellular Phone industry as it is. Why else would it be OK to use a cell phone on the ground a moment after landing, but NOT ok to use an iPod? The phone's orders of magnitude more likely to cause interference, yet the airline knows it won't. The difference here being that the cell system's happy to accomodate a bunch of people on a taxiing jet, while they have issues dealing with one crossing cell sites every 30 seconds.
Honestly, I'm perfectly happy to see the ban remain in place as long as possible. It's bad enough dealing with the clowns on phones trying to get in last minute calls before takeoff and all trying to talk over each other. Letting them do it in flight is just asking for -someone- to see if a cell phone can be jammed so far down someone's throat it comes out their butt.
The term "spiking" goes back a loooong time to it's use in permanently disabling a cannon. A spike of some form was pounded into the touchhole to keep it from ever firing again. While the could sometimes be repaired, it was a pretty effective method.
The military utilizes a number of methods for physically destroying drives. The big metal shredder is fun to watch, but I think the most satisfying it a couple rounds from a 1911.
My guess for drive destruction in this administration? Put them in the podium when Bush is giving a speech, and let the hot air melt the platters.
You mentioned in your own reply that you've found AFIS, with it's relatively large collection. Now, to answer your question of uniqueness being an untestable hypothesis it's not 100% provable, but it is possible to give a statistical likelyhood of finding two people with identical prints. Since as far as I know there've been no identical prints found from different people in existing databases, it's possible to safely say that the likelyhood is less than 1 in (sample size), where sample size is the total number of prints in the existing DB's. That's going to be something like 1 in 20M. While not proof, it is statistically significant.
Caveat: My statistics classes are many years behind me, and I may be over simplifying.
A couple of posters have already commented on this being a Bad Idea (tm), and I agree. It's still only one-factor authentication. Without even going into the privacy and anonymity issues, one factor authentication is a bad idea.
Self-promoting "security experts" making up far-fetched theories about "cyberwarfare" to get press coverage
Being in InfoSec where I deal with this stuff a lot, I'd say you're over 99% right on the first part. And about 80% right on the second.
The organization I work for sees a huge number of simple scans and lame intrusion attempts on a daily basis. A handful appear to be more sophisticated, and are sourced from a number of interesting locations: Mostly compromised machines acting as proxies.
As for the self promotion, you're right for many of them. They have a Publish or Perish attitude, especially if they're consultants. Which means we see papers and interviews that often blow things way out of proportion. Though it doesn't mean there isn't at least a grain of truth in the warnings.
Are the Chinese attacking the US over the Internet? Yeah, so? Stay tuned, Film at 11.
Yes! But, unfortunately, their lobbyists got the politicians to give them local monopolies. So, therefore, they won't lose customers unless their customers are willing to do without.
Even when there's only one Cable system in town, there are usually alternatives for broadband. Not many, and often not as cost effective, but they are there. DSL is available in most areas, and Satellite is an option even in areas where there's not Cable OR DSL service. If you really want to have first rate service, and can afford it, full T1's are down under $300/mo in some places. Sure it's 5 times the price of Cable broadband, but you're dealing with a whole world's different class of service.
Personally, I'd love to see the FCC smack Comcast silly for this crap. Cable ISPs and Telco's like to claim Common Carrier protections for a world of things. But they want to be able to filter content and manipulate traffic too, and the FCC needs to put it's Governmental boot down and say "No! You can filter, or you can be common carrier. Not both!"
Richard Dawkins writes: "If a single, well-verified mammal skull were to turn up in 500-million year-old rocks, our whole modern theory of evolution would be utterly destroyed" [The Blind Watchmaker, 3rd ed., p. 320]. J. B. S. Haldane also said that "Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian" would constitute evidence that might contradict evolution.
Both men were, undoubtedly, being a bit melodramatic. As the previous poster pointed out, Paleontologists would have a serious "WTF?!" moment but it wouldn't destroy modern evolutionary theories. What it would force would be a review of the paleontological evidence, and a serious search for more evidence to fill in some then-obvious and large gaps in the record.
Which is what science does. (heavily bastardized here) It takes observations and develops theories that explain the observed evidence. The theory should lead to predictions about other observations. If the observations are seen, the theory becomes stronger. If they're not, or something contradictory is observed, the theory is adjusted. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
A 500M year old Mammal skull would be an observation. That's in the Rinse part. . .
Ultimately, I think we agree. My only real contention was the analogy of just picking a screwdriver because you liked it better than a hammer. You understand the 'best tool for the job' bit, but I'm not sure your point there was clear in the original post.
Abandoning religion in favor of reason is like abandoning hammers because you like screwdrivers better. Seems to me like a wise person would look at the fact that religious modes of thought exist in every culture around the world, and understand that there is value in other thought processes than reductionistic rationality.
I'm not sure your analogy holds here. What's more important is whether you're trying to drive a nail or a screw. It's often said "when the only tool on your belt is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." In this case, the wise man looks at the problem before selecting his tool, and then select the tool best suited to the job. In the case of the "Where did we come from and how did we get here?" problem, "reason" strikes me as the better tool.
There is no conflict between science and religion. Why are people so invested in creating one?
Because people don't understand selecting the right tool for the job. Religion seems to be quite good at providing emotional comfort and giving people a foundation setting their moral compass. Science is considerably better for solving "technical" problems, including the actual mechanisms for how the universe works.
The problem comes when one side insists on using their tool to solve a problem best suited to the other side.
I leave it to your imagination to decide where Religion is intruding on Science, or Science in intruding on Religion.
(Though I will add that no one was ever burned at the stake for not believing in evolution, the earth revolving around the sun, or the theory of gravity...)
Interesting concept, but human beings just don't produce all that much horsepower. I mean think about it. Could you push your car 20 miles in 3 to 4 hours? Must people would be challenged to walk 20 miles in 4 hours, let alone do it pushing a car. Now, factor in how much energy you lose to heat compressing the air for the tank, and you see where this is going.
Compressed air really isn't an ideal energy storage media. Though it does have the advantage of being freely available and non-toxic.
As for working off a meal, I remember more than one lunch during High School that I paid for doing dishes in the kitchen. Barter systems exist in small scale all over the place. Usually involving goods or services that are more specialized than raw labor.
Put more succintly: "Objects thrown off a building have always fallen" is a statement of fact. "Objects thrown off a building will always fall" is a hypothesis derived from a theory.
Nice explanation, though wouldn't it be a "prediction based on a theory?"
Back in the day, I worked for Pacific Bell - the Baby Bell for California and Nevada. Not too long after I joined the company, the "Historic Merger" with SBC happened - "Historic Merger" being Texan for "We bought ya'all." At the time, PacBell was pushing second lines for residential customers so they could telecommute. Huge push, and PacBell's policy was that if you could do your job remotely, and your manager was cool with it, by all means do it. Once SBC took over the show, the policy changed. The comment around the office was "The Colonel likes ta see yo smilin' face." Basically, SBC upper management didn't trust their employees, so telecommuting was shoved aside. Never mind they were still pushing second lines like crazy with a huge advertising campaign.
Just don't think they actually want their own workers to enjoy the benefits of what they were selling...
One and Two are mostly right though in an automotive fuel system pure ethanol requires some extensive modifications to most existing vehicles (It's corrosive to a number of materials used in an engine). Not all vehicles are "Flex Fuel" and those that are are designed for no more than 85% Ethanol in the mix.
Point three, I suspect you are absolutely dead on. The whole Ethanol as Fuel culture revolves around agribusiness getting their slice of the pie, whether or not Ethanol is worth crap as a fuel or not.
Why do I say crap as fuel? Because turning biomass into ethanol is a relatively energy intensive process. Some studies have shown it's net positive, others have shown it's actually net negative. Also, it has a lower energy density than gasoline or biodiesel. Bottom line being ethanol will never be a solution onto itself.
The article, of course, is about bioengineering plants to be easier to convert and give higher yields. The problem is that Ethanol will still be crap as fuel. Seriously, a biodiesel fueled hybrid will probably be the most efficient solution for the foreseeable future. While biodiesel from alge isn't perfect yet, chances are it'll be much more viable than ethanol from engineered biomass, and there are existing plants that deliver higher yields in biodiesel than plants that are used for ethanol.
Of course, that leads back to your third point: Agribusiness isn't in it for efficiency or preserving the environment. They are in it for the money.
Not exactly. At freeway speeds, the electric portion of your drivetrain is providing only a small fraction of the car's power when it's accelerating or climbing hills. Steady state cruise, it's mostly dead weight. It recovers energy when breaking, or when going down hill, and can recharge a bit when the gas motor's got some ceiling between the steady state power need and it's maximum efficiency ceiling.
The main reason you get exceptional highway gas mileage is because the Insight is A:Very, very, light. B: very, very slippery. and C: has a really dinky, highly efficient, motor. That's the same reason the old Geo Metro (rebadged Suzuki Swift with the smaller 1.0L 3 cylinder) could get over 60MPG on the highway if you were careful.
An Insight would get that mileage in steady state highway driving, or even better, if you were to remove the hybrid portion. Where the hybrid drivetrain comes into its own is in city, or stop and go, driving, where gas engine efficiency drops off dramatically.
Your car certainly gets great mileage. Of that, there is no doubt. But it's not because it's a hybrid. It's in spite of it being a hybrid.
As I understand it, Commercial Speech is not protected under the 1st amendment. Customer records would certainly fall under that definition. The reality is, Verizon's clutching at straws to try and make it look like they're just exercising their rights by divulging customer information for no good reason.
As I mentioned, I haven't worked with the latest version. My experience was with an earlier version in a 7 series. And you are aware that the iDrive installed in the 3 series isn't the same as the earlier version installed in the 5 and 7 series? (It may be now. Originally though, they weren't the same.) I'm not surprised at all that they have a better implementation in the 3.
The 3 series does seem to be the darling of the family, doesn't it?
Thirdly, about the criticisms that it's unsafe to use while driving? No shit sherlock. Neither is your cell phone. Or putting on makeup. Or shaving. Or eating lunch.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll give them credit for an interesting way of arranging the crank, con rods, and barrels, to give two opposed piston two-stroke cylinders running off a single crank. I also notice the motor's all shown in CGI cutaways and not as an actual running device. There's also some crucial details omitted in the cutaways that make me wonder how they're solving some of the obvious issues with this engine.
Now, personally, I'm a huge fan of two-stroke opposed-piston motors, but usually in Diesel form. There's also some well known issues with getting these motors to run clean, which is one reason we haven't seen a lot of them since the Deltic motors of the 40's. Does it have potential? Sure. Might even be lighter than a counter-crank arrangement, but hell, the Deltics were popular back in their day precisely because of their power density - finally being supplanted in Maritime service by turbines.
Of course, there's currently some rather interesting engines already well into development with some impressive power densities.
Seriously, though, engine efficiency is great, but we'd all be better off scrapping those 4 ton behemoth SUV's and switching to lighter, more aerodynamic, vehicles.
I see a lot of people posting, but very few people actually trying to address your problem.
The fact is when you're at sea you'll be away from any kind of reasonably priced internet service. It's just a fact. No land lines on the open ocean, and bi-directional sat service is expensive.
Cruising sailors / powerboaters are usually stuck with either paying insane amounts for some kind of real time bi-directional satlink (which is what the ship has) or spending a lot less for some sort of Store and Forward satellite system.
Another option open to cruisers is using HF radio and RTTY to send email around. Slow, but surprisingly reliable. That'd require either a marine HF, or a Ham Radio license, and the appropriate hardware.
None of those may be an option for you.
There is a product called Sailmail that might suit your needs. Essentially a little hand held device that has an accoustic coupler in it. Call into the server to send and receive your mail over any phone.
Ultimately, I'll give you one piece of advice. Namely: For waht you need, forget Slashdot. You'll get more people talking about how many seconds a day 100 minutes works out to. Try something like the user forums over on Cruising World or any of the other cruising / sailing forums.
Talk to people who actually know the subject matter at hand.
Cheers,
and enjoy the semester.
Bagheera
Mass transit is the answer - not just BART - REAL mass transit. I cannot stress enough that if one travels to Japan and sees for oneself how fucking cool and efficient the Japanese mass rail system is - billion dollar proposals like this would die at conception.
No. Sorry. Mass transit is part of the solution, but it is not the solution.
The problem lies in the inherent difference between mass transit and public transit and most people don't recognize the difference.
Mass transit focuses on getting mass number of people between various high density locations. These are your medium to heavy rail systems. For the Bay Area that's BART and CalTrain.
In places like Japan, where they have high population densities, it works great. There's a reason places like Tokyo, Moscow, New York, London, etc., can have fantastically efficient mass transit systems: they have the population density to deal with it.
Public transit on the other hand focuses on being a 'vehicle replacement' so people in lower density areas can actually give up their cars. This is taxies up through light rail. Fewer passengers, but more convenient and more versatile.
Bay Area geography doesn't really favor Mass Transit. It's why BART basically sucks for commuting. With the exception of MUNI linking well to BART, most of the Public to Mass links suck.
The whole electric car infrastructure is an expensive idea, and it talks to the whole "chicken and the egg" problem. Without infrastructure, electric cars are useless. Without electric cars, no one will build the infrastructure. This is actively solving the infrastructure problem ahead of the cars.
Is it a good idea? Ultimately, yes. Is it the right idea? That's a lot harder to say. A massive bay area wide fleet of on-demand bio-diesel fueled hybrid shuttle buses might be better. But who's to say? Cars are a part of US culture partially because of our geography. We live in suburbia, which is inherently tied in with car culture.
Unless your mass transit plan includes re-arranging US cities and how people live in this country, it will never be the solution.
Cheers,
Bagheera
"I tell you now - terrorists are holding the citizens of the US and the UK captive via proxy, and the proxy is ironically the very governments they are battling."
While I don't disagree that this is part of a long, painful, slide into a pervasive surveylance society in both the US and the UK (moreso in the UK at this point, it seems) and just generally a really bad idea that normal citizens shouldn't be putting up with, I disagree on the "terrorists are winning" because of it.
Yes, there is the very real argument that if we change our ways because of the terrorist threats, we're letting them win. But this, pervasive monitoring, isn't their goal. They don't want our government to watch us. They want to kill us. The only people who want to watch us are our own governments.
There's been a long, long, history of government, law enforcement, and the Intelligence community (queue the "military intelligence" jokes) wanting to have a deeper view into the lives of ordinary citizens. While I don't know about spying scandals in the UK, there have been more than enough of them in the US to reveal the pattern.
The government doesn't want to watch us to keep us safe. The government wants to watch us to maintain their own hold on power. They always have. They always will. The "keep us safe from terrorists!" ploy is just the latest excuse they can drag out to give them a deeper view into their citizen's lives. And their citizens are letting them for the same reason we put up with the Security Theater we get in US airports.
Will it stop? Eventually. Privacy seems to be on a pendulum, and right now it's swinging towards the government's side. Eventually it will swing back when the people who're getting pissed off about it now elect new overlords into power who see things more our way.
It'll happen. Just takes time.
I think you've missed the main point, and confused several others. This isn't about the Government butting into the development of a private company's product. This is about about the Government enforcing legal judgments on a company that was (here's the important part) convicted of breaking the law several times.
If it was just the government butting into a random developer to force them to do things Big Brother's way, you'd be closer. But it's not. It's a convicted monopolist who got busted for it, but still managed to stay in business more or less intact.
While I appreciate the Libertarian view on big government, this is more about law enforcement than big brother.
Cheers,
Bagheera
I agree with you for the most part, but would almost call bullshit on the "Pick any two." It's possible to build light weight cars without resorting to exotic expensive materials. Just look at the average curb weight of cars now verses cars in the early to mid 80's. Back then your typical Econobox was several hundred pounds lighter than the cars in its class now. My own '68 BMW 2002 (forerunner of the highly successful 3 series) clocked in a full 1000 pounds lighter than a modern 3. It was a BMW, so it wasn't the cheapest car on the road then, but it wasn't made of exotic composites - and could pull down mid-30's gas mileage in highway driving.
The issue with building cars light is that the Nanny State safety nazis have burdened our modern vehicles with 8 air bags, self tensioning seatbelts, extra reinforcement, and god knows what else was mandated to "make our cars safe!"
Think of the children!
Rather than address the root cause (most Americans are crappy drivers) they added in gadgetry to try and make up for that sad fact. That gadgetry adds mass. That is why cars need exotic materials now to be light. If you took out all the crap Congrenanny added, taught the driver how to drive, and built light without resorting to exotics, 1500 pound cars with small engines, great economy, and decent performance would be the norm.
You mention the comfort and convenience of modern cars, and you're right. People have gotten to expect that. They want the creature comforts and sound insulation and all the other crap that adds weight. But again, that doesn't mean you can't build a light car. Or even a strong light car. But it does mean making some sacrifices.
It's the expectations that would need to change.
Personally, I'll stick with bikes. I give up creature comforts for 40+ MPG and performance that will leave anything short of an $75K sports car for dead.
Cheers,
Bagheera
Doing a quick search for "2.4Ghz horn antenna" will turn up a number of inexpensive to buy, or -very- inexpensive to build horn antenna designs. For a fixed installation like this, a horn is a better bet than a Yagi and more effective than a Cantenna.
.5M apperature horn across several miles to a standard AP. It just takes a wireless network card with an external antenna adapter.
For a 500M shot, a cheap access point and a good antenna should have you covered as long as you've got a reasonably clean line of sight.
You can do it with a single antenna, or go for even better signal and use one at each end of the link. I've routinely been able to get decent link speeds with a
Total cost:
Cheap AP - $50
Built horn - $15 - $50 (each)
Bought horn - $50 - $500 or more.
Now, using a high gain antenna is technically against FCC regulations, but unless someone actually complains it won't matter. Given the situation, it's unlikely the FCC would do more than say "please take that down" even if they did get a complaint.
Cheers,
Bagheera
There's some good advice here already, and a lot of good questions that need to be answered before anyone could give a comprehensive answer. But having done a bit of this myself when I worked at "Large hardware vendor in The Valley" I've got a fairly simple combination to toss out.
1: Encrypt the data itself. PGP/GPG is your friend. If your consultant can't figure out how to use basic file encryption, find another vendor.
2: Confirm the keys. Face to face or on the phone, make sure you (and they) have the right keys on your ring.
3: Secure the transfer. In theory, properly encrypting the data itself should be enough. Even if the file's intercepted in transit, it should be unbreakable. That doesn't mean you shouldn't transfer it over a secure pipe. Pick your method here. SCP / SFTP are fine for point to point. So is burning the encrypted file to a CD/DVD and sending it via courier.
4: Accept the risk. Once the data's out of your hands, you no longer have control over it. You can't stop the contractor from signing for the package, decrypting the file, sticking it on a thumb drive in cleartext, and leaving the thumbdrive on the counter at Starbucks. Getting them to sign appropriate legal documentation will shift the liability, but won't actually stop the damage from the data getting out.
Your mileage may vary.
Cheers,
Bagheera
I remember the Mythbusters episode in question, and the conditions they were able to get "significant interference" in was Grant's mockup cockpit. While he put all the pieces together, he didn't put them together with the same levels of shielding that a real aircraft would have. When they moved to a borrowed corporate jet, they got no results as you pointed out. The difference being that an aircraft's controls and instruments are well shielded from stray RF interference.
I seem to remember their conclusion was based more on FAA regulations than anything else.
The reality is people leave their cell phones on all the damn time on aircraft. Phone signals are notorious for getting into nearby speakers and headphones, and I can't count the number of times I've heard the distinct "Dit-Di-Dit-Di-Dit" tones coming through my earphones. Did the plane fall out of the sky? Of course not! But the commercial airline and aircraft manufacturing industries are understandably conservative when it comes to safety. The type acceptance already included a broad range of tests to make sure the aircraft would reject unwanted interference, but they'd rather be safe than very, very, sorry.
Unfortunately, they already bend over for the Cellular Phone industry as it is. Why else would it be OK to use a cell phone on the ground a moment after landing, but NOT ok to use an iPod? The phone's orders of magnitude more likely to cause interference, yet the airline knows it won't. The difference here being that the cell system's happy to accomodate a bunch of people on a taxiing jet, while they have issues dealing with one crossing cell sites every 30 seconds.
Honestly, I'm perfectly happy to see the ban remain in place as long as possible. It's bad enough dealing with the clowns on phones trying to get in last minute calls before takeoff and all trying to talk over each other. Letting them do it in flight is just asking for -someone- to see if a cell phone can be jammed so far down someone's throat it comes out their butt.
Cheers,
Bagheera
The term "spiking" goes back a loooong time to it's use in permanently disabling a cannon. A spike of some form was pounded into the touchhole to keep it from ever firing again. While the could sometimes be repaired, it was a pretty effective method.
The military utilizes a number of methods for physically destroying drives. The big metal shredder is fun to watch, but I think the most satisfying it a couple rounds from a 1911.
My guess for drive destruction in this administration? Put them in the podium when Bush is giving a speech, and let the hot air melt the platters.
You mentioned in your own reply that you've found AFIS, with it's relatively large collection. Now, to answer your question of uniqueness being an untestable hypothesis it's not 100% provable, but it is possible to give a statistical likelyhood of finding two people with identical prints. Since as far as I know there've been no identical prints found from different people in existing databases, it's possible to safely say that the likelyhood is less than 1 in (sample size), where sample size is the total number of prints in the existing DB's. That's going to be something like 1 in 20M. While not proof, it is statistically significant.
Caveat: My statistics classes are many years behind me, and I may be over simplifying.
A couple of posters have already commented on this being a Bad Idea (tm), and I agree. It's still only one-factor authentication. Without even going into the privacy and anonymity issues, one factor authentication is a bad idea.
Cheers
Bagheera
Being in InfoSec where I deal with this stuff a lot, I'd say you're over 99% right on the first part. And about 80% right on the second.
The organization I work for sees a huge number of simple scans and lame intrusion attempts on a daily basis. A handful appear to be more sophisticated, and are sourced from a number of interesting locations: Mostly compromised machines acting as proxies.
As for the self promotion, you're right for many of them. They have a Publish or Perish attitude, especially if they're consultants. Which means we see papers and interviews that often blow things way out of proportion. Though it doesn't mean there isn't at least a grain of truth in the warnings.
Are the Chinese attacking the US over the Internet? Yeah, so? Stay tuned, Film at 11.
Cheers
Yes! But, unfortunately, their lobbyists got the politicians to give them local monopolies. So, therefore, they won't lose customers unless their customers are willing to do without.
Even when there's only one Cable system in town, there are usually alternatives for broadband. Not many, and often not as cost effective, but they are there. DSL is available in most areas, and Satellite is an option even in areas where there's not Cable OR DSL service. If you really want to have first rate service, and can afford it, full T1's are down under $300/mo in some places. Sure it's 5 times the price of Cable broadband, but you're dealing with a whole world's different class of service.
Personally, I'd love to see the FCC smack Comcast silly for this crap. Cable ISPs and Telco's like to claim Common Carrier protections for a world of things. But they want to be able to filter content and manipulate traffic too, and the FCC needs to put it's Governmental boot down and say "No! You can filter, or you can be common carrier. Not both!"
Wishful thinking, I know.
Richard Dawkins writes: "If a single, well-verified mammal skull were to turn up in 500-million year-old rocks, our whole modern theory of evolution would be utterly destroyed" [The Blind Watchmaker, 3rd ed., p. 320]. J. B. S. Haldane also said that "Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian" would constitute evidence that might contradict evolution.
Both men were, undoubtedly, being a bit melodramatic. As the previous poster pointed out, Paleontologists would have a serious "WTF?!" moment but it wouldn't destroy modern evolutionary theories. What it would force would be a review of the paleontological evidence, and a serious search for more evidence to fill in some then-obvious and large gaps in the record.
Which is what science does. (heavily bastardized here) It takes observations and develops theories that explain the observed evidence. The theory should lead to predictions about other observations. If the observations are seen, the theory becomes stronger. If they're not, or something contradictory is observed, the theory is adjusted. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
A 500M year old Mammal skull would be an observation. That's in the Rinse part. . .
Cheer,
Bagheera
Ultimately, I think we agree. My only real contention was the analogy of just picking a screwdriver because you liked it better than a hammer. You understand the 'best tool for the job' bit, but I'm not sure your point there was clear in the original post.
Cheers,
Bagheera
Abandoning religion in favor of reason is like abandoning hammers because you like screwdrivers better. Seems to me like a wise person would look at the fact that religious modes of thought exist in every culture around the world, and understand that there is value in other thought processes than reductionistic rationality.
I'm not sure your analogy holds here. What's more important is whether you're trying to drive a nail or a screw. It's often said "when the only tool on your belt is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." In this case, the wise man looks at the problem before selecting his tool, and then select the tool best suited to the job. In the case of the "Where did we come from and how did we get here?" problem, "reason" strikes me as the better tool.
There is no conflict between science and religion. Why are people so invested in creating one?
Because people don't understand selecting the right tool for the job. Religion seems to be quite good at providing emotional comfort and giving people a foundation setting their moral compass. Science is considerably better for solving "technical" problems, including the actual mechanisms for how the universe works.
The problem comes when one side insists on using their tool to solve a problem best suited to the other side.
I leave it to your imagination to decide where Religion is intruding on Science, or Science in intruding on Religion.
(Though I will add that no one was ever burned at the stake for not believing in evolution, the earth revolving around the sun, or the theory of gravity...)
Cheers
Bagheera
Interesting concept, but human beings just don't produce all that much horsepower. I mean think about it. Could you push your car 20 miles in 3 to 4 hours? Must people would be challenged to walk 20 miles in 4 hours, let alone do it pushing a car. Now, factor in how much energy you lose to heat compressing the air for the tank, and you see where this is going.
Compressed air really isn't an ideal energy storage media. Though it does have the advantage of being freely available and non-toxic.
As for working off a meal, I remember more than one lunch during High School that I paid for doing dishes in the kitchen. Barter systems exist in small scale all over the place. Usually involving goods or services that are more specialized than raw labor.
Neat concept though. . .
Cheers,
Bagheera
Put more succintly: "Objects thrown off a building have always fallen" is a statement of fact. "Objects thrown off a building will always fall" is a hypothesis derived from a theory.
Nice explanation, though wouldn't it be a "prediction based on a theory?"
Cheers
Bagheera
Back in the day, I worked for Pacific Bell - the Baby Bell for California and Nevada. Not too long after I joined the company, the "Historic Merger" with SBC happened - "Historic Merger" being Texan for "We bought ya'all." At the time, PacBell was pushing second lines for residential customers so they could telecommute. Huge push, and PacBell's policy was that if you could do your job remotely, and your manager was cool with it, by all means do it. Once SBC took over the show, the policy changed. The comment around the office was "The Colonel likes ta see yo smilin' face." Basically, SBC upper management didn't trust their employees, so telecommuting was shoved aside. Never mind they were still pushing second lines like crazy with a huge advertising campaign.
Just don't think they actually want their own workers to enjoy the benefits of what they were selling...
Penetration testers doing their job: Film at 11.
Seriously, while it's not an entirely bad article on a penetration test, this is nothing but a shameless plug.
One and Two are mostly right though in an automotive fuel system pure ethanol requires some extensive modifications to most existing vehicles (It's corrosive to a number of materials used in an engine). Not all vehicles are "Flex Fuel" and those that are are designed for no more than 85% Ethanol in the mix.
Point three, I suspect you are absolutely dead on. The whole Ethanol as Fuel culture revolves around agribusiness getting their slice of the pie, whether or not Ethanol is worth crap as a fuel or not.
Why do I say crap as fuel? Because turning biomass into ethanol is a relatively energy intensive process. Some studies have shown it's net positive, others have shown it's actually net negative. Also, it has a lower energy density than gasoline or biodiesel. Bottom line being ethanol will never be a solution onto itself.
The article, of course, is about bioengineering plants to be easier to convert and give higher yields. The problem is that Ethanol will still be crap as fuel. Seriously, a biodiesel fueled hybrid will probably be the most efficient solution for the foreseeable future. While biodiesel from alge isn't perfect yet, chances are it'll be much more viable than ethanol from engineered biomass, and there are existing plants that deliver higher yields in biodiesel than plants that are used for ethanol.
Of course, that leads back to your third point: Agribusiness isn't in it for efficiency or preserving the environment. They are in it for the money.
Whenever someone uses the term "Web 2.0" God kills a kitten.
Not exactly. At freeway speeds, the electric portion of your drivetrain is providing only a small fraction of the car's power when it's accelerating or climbing hills. Steady state cruise, it's mostly dead weight. It recovers energy when breaking, or when going down hill, and can recharge a bit when the gas motor's got some ceiling between the steady state power need and it's maximum efficiency ceiling.
The main reason you get exceptional highway gas mileage is because the Insight is A:Very, very, light. B: very, very slippery. and C: has a really dinky, highly efficient, motor. That's the same reason the old Geo Metro (rebadged Suzuki Swift with the smaller 1.0L 3 cylinder) could get over 60MPG on the highway if you were careful.
An Insight would get that mileage in steady state highway driving, or even better, if you were to remove the hybrid portion. Where the hybrid drivetrain comes into its own is in city, or stop and go, driving, where gas engine efficiency drops off dramatically.
Your car certainly gets great mileage. Of that, there is no doubt. But it's not because it's a hybrid. It's in spite of it being a hybrid.
As I understand it, Commercial Speech is not protected under the 1st amendment. Customer records would certainly fall under that definition. The reality is, Verizon's clutching at straws to try and make it look like they're just exercising their rights by divulging customer information for no good reason.
As I mentioned, I haven't worked with the latest version. My experience was with an earlier version in a 7 series. And you are aware that the iDrive installed in the 3 series isn't the same as the earlier version installed in the 5 and 7 series? (It may be now. Originally though, they weren't the same.) I'm not surprised at all that they have a better implementation in the 3.
The 3 series does seem to be the darling of the family, doesn't it?
Thirdly, about the criticisms that it's unsafe to use while driving? No shit sherlock. Neither is your cell phone. Or putting on makeup. Or shaving. Or eating lunch.
Amen brother!