The obvious answer is that Voyager 1 punctured the helioshpere as it passed through. It (helioshpere) has been deflating ever since (much like a balloon with a slow leak).
Just be thankful that it did not pop in a violent manner like most fully inflated balloons do when punctured.
Now, do we have any volunteers to travel to the location of the hole with a patch and some rubber cement?
Or could it be...just maybe...that this isn't about law & order, principles, or anything more noble than the pursuit of economic interests.
Pursuit of economic interests is exactly what one would expect from a publically traded corporation (which has an obligation to maximize profit potential for its shareholders). Right, wrong, or indifferent, it is the law of the corporate jungle.
If I were a shareholder, I would expect nothing less from Apple, Google, or <your favorite benevolent corp here> under the same circumstances.
>>Why is this being legislated?...Economically, this doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't make economic sense for the broadcasters, but it does for the government.
Billions in revenue to federal government from auction of the freed up spectrum. Billions to state and local governments from the sales taxes on new TVs and converter boxes.
One of the lessons the bloomin' software industry relearns evry generation is that it's always a blokes problem. It's not that blokes are the bleedin' actual problem o'course. It's wen software developers naively use technology ter try ter solve us problems instead of addressin' the underlyin' issues that blokes are actually facin'. Then the wrong fings inevitably 'appen...
Who determines how much a channel is worth? Logic would suggest, whatever the market will bear. Pricing should even vary by region of the country. One would expect CMT to command a higher rate in Nashville as opposed to Boston. But... since we are talking about a governmental agency setting rules here. Logic probably does not apply here.
Will you have the choice of either or plan? To opt out? Can you choose from something other than one monopolistic cable company that only serves your area?
You already have that choice. Cable, sattellite, or broadcast. No one is holding a gun to your head to subscribe to cable.
The only reason that Europe doesn't try to control the world is because it can't.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the US does indeed have more influence over the rest of the world than Europe (or any other single entity).
Right or wrong, the US has enough economic clout to influence political decisions (virtually all international political decisions are ultimately based on a nation state's economic interests). Europe does not yet speak with one economic voice in many cases.
And it doesn't hurt that the US is the only entity that has a military capable of injecting itself enmasse almost anywhere in the world. Always useful when diplomatic means fail:-)
Fortunately in Europe we also have a system of public transport which most environment minded people (like myself) prefer to use rather than pretend we are doing our bit through the purchase of a new car
The main reasons that Europe has a far superior public transport system to the US have little to do with being environmentally minded.
The higher population denisty in Europe made it much more economical to create/maintain systems of public transportation as opposed to the US.
WWII resulted in the rebuilding of virtually the entire continent's transportation infrastructure allowing for a better overall strategy than the hodge-podge US system.
European city streets were laid out hundreds of years before Daimler and Benz's horseless carriages were even conceived. Driving and parking on said streets is a royal PITA and strongly encourages drivers to take a bus/train.
That it is more environmentally friendly is littel more than a happy coincidence. Enjoy it, but do not expect the US to implement any type of public transportion system anywhere close to Europe's until there is a significant population redistribution in the US into high-density urban areas.
... where simple incompetence will suffice as an excuse.
I've worked in plenty of dysfunctional organizations in my life. Not one of them ever had staff sit around a meeting room and consicously sabotage a product. Although, despite best efforts, more often than not, the result was a crappy product.
Anything that comes from the government that is 77 pages of regulations should be required to be named: The Legal Professionals Full Employment Act of 2005
You are correct that there is a long term benefit in being able to remotely read meters.
But, you are forgetting that the standard electric meter does not have the ability to transmit its readings. There is additional cost with replacing all of these meters. Power companies are miserly when it comes to investing in any infrastructure. (I've worked for one).
There are also huge regulatory hurdles to overcome in any infrastructure upgrades for utilities. Every $ spent must be justified before the respective state's Public Utilities Commission to 'ensure' that the costs are not being 'unfairly' being passed on to consumers. All this makes providing last mile BPL service to BFE even more unattractive (from the corporate perspective).
Don't hold your breath for WiMax or broadband over powerline coming to a BFE near you.
Deploying a broadband infrastructure takes lots of $$$. And where are the best places to recover your capitol expenses? The high population density areas (which by the way already have other forms of broadband already available (cable, DSL)).
The bottom line is that you have to already have access to broadband in order to get other forms of broadband.
I live in BFE Ohio and am resigned to the fact that I will need to wait for suburban sprawl to engulf my area before I'll have any hope of broadband.
Extinction is not likey. Humans can survive in pretty much any environment on earth without sophisticated technology. The Inuit needed not much more than a sharpened antler and/or bone on a stick to survive in the arctic for thousands of years. There were humans surviving just fine thank you in the harshest deserts of the world with not much more than a few goats and a camel.
The worst case for the human race is that global warming destabilizes our cozy Western civilization. Our global trade/transportation networks break down. People starve, nations go to war, the earth is vastly depopulated (dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the process), and the pockets of survivors (and there will be plenty), pick up thier stone tipped spears and begin human civilization phase II.
then rewrite it from the ground up with elegant code
There isn't a senior CS major alive that can write elegant code. When I was a senior I thought my code was a thing of beauty. When I look at it now, years later, I shudder in disbelief that such crap ever eminated from my fingertips.
Also, any/.er who claims to have written elegant code during college is either lying or delusional.
I have a plug-in for the 'evil' IE browser that allows me to delete all cookies on browser exit. Plus is allows me to "white list" some cookies that aren't purged.
I get the benefits of purging the evildoers and still retaining my laziness by not having to login to sites such as Slashdot every visit.
TFA cited an application deployed by the other police stations (not running StarOffce) that needed significant retrofitting to be usable by the StarOffice users. It is this type of interoperability issue (not fonts/formatting) that is the major hurdle to OS solutions.
There will always be issues with embedded MS specific object/controls etc. MS has convinced the powers that be in most organizations that they cannot live w/o these 'features' that will tie them forever to Windows.
Even conceding that current versions of Star/Open Office are far superior to the version in question, Star/OpenOffice obviously still does not work and play well with MS Office.
Given that 95% of the Scottish police stations use MS Office, interoperability is a primary requirement.
We can rant/rave all we want about how MS Office is MS Windows centric. But, until there is an OpenSource solution that offers 95%+ compatibility with MS Office, large scale market penetration is a pipe dream.
This whole 'can' vs 'should' argument is a moot point.
The genie is out of the proverbial bottle and we all have lost some of our privacy as a side effect of personal/private information being made easier to obtain.
So long as the private information published is true there is not anything that anyone can do about it (the truth is the ultimate defense in slander/libel cases). The best one can do is to shame the publishers of so-called private information into a cease and decist mode.
However, like spammers, there will be some that refrain from such 'illegitimate' uses, and many more that will not (with most shielding themselves from being labeled as the source/publisher of the data-mined information).
Slashdot Mirror
Just be thankful that it did not pop in a violent manner like most fully inflated balloons do when punctured.
Now, do we have any volunteers to travel to the location of the hole with a patch and some rubber cement?
Pursuit of economic interests is exactly what one would expect from a publically traded corporation (which has an obligation to maximize profit potential for its shareholders). Right, wrong, or indifferent, it is the law of the corporate jungle.
If I were a shareholder, I would expect nothing less from Apple, Google, or <your favorite benevolent corp here> under the same circumstances.
>>Why is this being legislated?...Economically, this doesn't make any sense.
It doesn't make economic sense for the broadcasters, but it does for the government.
Billions in revenue to federal government from auction of the freed up spectrum. Billions to state and local governments from the sales taxes on new TVs and converter boxes.
Here you go.
One of the lessons the bloomin' software industry relearns evry generation is that it's always a blokes problem. It's not that blokes are the bleedin' actual problem o'course. It's wen software developers naively use technology ter try ter solve us problems instead of addressin' the underlyin' issues that blokes are actually facin'. Then the wrong fings inevitably 'appen...
Logic would suggest, whatever the market will bear. Pricing should even vary by region of the country. One would expect CMT to command a higher rate in Nashville as opposed to Boston. But... since we are talking about a governmental agency setting rules here. Logic probably does not apply here.
Will you have the choice of either or plan? To opt out? Can you choose from something other than one monopolistic cable company that only serves your area?
You already have that choice. Cable, sattellite, or broadcast. No one is holding a gun to your head to subscribe to cable.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the US does indeed have more influence over the rest of the world than Europe (or any other single entity).
Right or wrong, the US has enough economic clout to influence political decisions (virtually all international political decisions are ultimately based on a nation state's economic interests). Europe does not yet speak with one economic voice in many cases.
And it doesn't hurt that the US is the only entity that has a military capable of injecting itself enmasse almost anywhere in the world. Always useful when diplomatic means fail :-)
The main reasons that Europe has a far superior public transport system to the US have little to do with being environmentally minded.
The higher population denisty in Europe made it much more economical to create/maintain systems of public transportation as opposed to the US. WWII resulted in the rebuilding of virtually the entire continent's transportation infrastructure allowing for a better overall strategy than the hodge-podge US system.
European city streets were laid out hundreds of years before Daimler and Benz's horseless carriages were even conceived. Driving and parking on said streets is a royal PITA and strongly encourages drivers to take a bus/train.
That it is more environmentally friendly is littel more than a happy coincidence. Enjoy it, but do not expect the US to implement any type of public transportion system anywhere close to Europe's until there is a significant population redistribution in the US into high-density urban areas.
I've worked in plenty of dysfunctional organizations in my life. Not one of them ever had staff sit around a meeting room and consicously sabotage a product. Although, despite best efforts, more often than not, the result was a crappy product.
They are trenches being dug by the Martian defense forces as part of preparations to repel the imminent invasion by the Terrans.
Because, it will be 2012 before all of the kinks/bugs are worked out of the new features.
Anything that comes from the government that is 77 pages of regulations should be required to be named:
The Legal Professionals Full Employment Act of 2005
But, you are forgetting that the standard electric meter does not have the ability to transmit its readings. There is additional cost with replacing all of these meters. Power companies are miserly when it comes to investing in any infrastructure. (I've worked for one).
There are also huge regulatory hurdles to overcome in any infrastructure upgrades for utilities. Every $ spent must be justified before the respective state's Public Utilities Commission to 'ensure' that the costs are not being 'unfairly' being passed on to consumers. All this makes providing last mile BPL service to BFE even more unattractive (from the corporate perspective).
Deploying a broadband infrastructure takes lots of $$$. And where are the best places to recover your capitol expenses? The high population density areas (which by the way already have other forms of broadband already available (cable, DSL)).
The bottom line is that you have to already have access to broadband in order to get other forms of broadband.
I live in BFE Ohio and am resigned to the fact that I will need to wait for suburban sprawl to engulf my area before I'll have any hope of broadband.
The worst case for the human race is that global warming destabilizes our cozy Western civilization. Our global trade/transportation networks break down. People starve, nations go to war, the earth is vastly depopulated (dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the process), and the pockets of survivors (and there will be plenty), pick up thier stone tipped spears and begin human civilization phase II.
unlike these little buggers that poisoned the earth's atmosphere forever.
There isn't a senior CS major alive that can write elegant code. When I was a senior I thought my code was a thing of beauty. When I look at it now, years later, I shudder in disbelief that such crap ever eminated from my fingertips.
Also, any /.er who claims to have written elegant code during college is either lying or delusional.
In all likleyhood, if you could afford to print your resume on such paper, you wouldn't need a job.
Even if the public video camera can identify oh say someone who blew up a bus.
- General Jack D. Ripper
I get the benefits of purging the evildoers and still retaining my laziness by not having to login to sites such as Slashdot every visit.
There will always be issues with embedded MS specific object/controls etc. MS has convinced the powers that be in most organizations that they cannot live w/o these 'features' that will tie them forever to Windows.
We can rant/rave all we want about how MS Office is MS Windows centric. But, until there is an OpenSource solution that offers 95%+ compatibility with MS Office, large scale market penetration is a pipe dream.
The genie is out of the proverbial bottle and we all have lost some of our privacy as a side effect of personal/private information being made easier to obtain.
So long as the private information published is true there is not anything that anyone can do about it (the truth is the ultimate defense in slander/libel cases). The best one can do is to shame the publishers of so-called private information into a cease and decist mode.
However, like spammers, there will be some that refrain from such 'illegitimate' uses, and many more that will not (with most shielding themselves from being labeled as the source/publisher of the data-mined information).
They will need to work around the blackout dates however.
...and then Congress will pass a knee-jerk law banning Bluetooth.