Category: technology

Rep. Markey Proposes Universal Access Bill for Wireless

No Comments

Rep. Markey has consistently been at the forefront of such things, and how he has proposed the Wireless Consumer Protection and Community Broadband Empowerment Act, which calls for the following:

  • Adequate and plain English disclosures about contracts.
  • Provision of more detailed coverage maps.
  • Require the sale of plans without early termination fees.
  • Require phone carriers to sell “subsidy free” phones.
  • Give municipalities the explicit right to offer broadband services, preempting state laws forbidding this.

Seems like a good bill to me.

Sikorsky’s REveals Successor to It’s ABC Concept

No Comments

In the 1980s, Sikorsky had a test aircraft that they called the ABC (Advancing Blade Concept) helicopter. It used a coaxial rotor, and offloaded the retreating blades to eliminate retreating blade stall (as a helicopter goes faster, the blade going backwards goes more slowly relative to the air stream).

Sikorsky unveiled its successor, the X2 test aircraft at Heli-Expo:


It’s certainly a lot cleaner and more developed than its predecessor.

It also promises performance close to that of a tilt-rotor with the low speed handling and auto rotation of a helicopter.

The MicroFlaccid Clown Show that Is Vista

No Comments

Yep, their update, Vista SP 1, breaks antivirus and firewall programs, in addition to putting some machines into an endless reboot loop.

A major update to Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system could leave computers vulnerable to hackers and malware as the service pack prevents several widely used antivirus programs from operating, the company said.

The list of security products that Windows Vista Service Pack 1 blocks includes Zone Alarm Security Suite 7.1, Trend Micro Internet Security 2008, and BitDefender 10. It also blocks the 2008 version of the Jiangmin antivirus product.

I don’t know of anyone who is using Vista who does not regret it.

BitTorrent Companies Develop Technology to Thwart Comcast Throttling

No Comments

And so goes the technological war between BitTorrent and Comcast. A coalition of BitTorrent software providers are developing an encryption technology to allow the connections to be obscured.

What Comcast does not realize is that BitTorrent is the canary in the coal mine. Any issues that they create are an artifact of a network that is heading towards inadequacy, and they need to fix it.

Reasons for Intercepting Crippled Satellite Do Not Hold UP

No Comments

We are now getting skeptical reports from media sources, such as BBC News and Wired that the administrations justifications for shooting down the dead surveillance satellite are a 6 pounds of fertilizer in a 5 pound bag.

The justification is that it carries 400 l of UDMH (unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine) fuel for maneuvering is a threat to life and limb.

The fact is that UDMH is about as benign a propellant as is used in rocketry (it’s still nasty), and the effected area would be on the order of two football fields, but that is only for irritant, not life threatening effects.

One explanation is that the, “MDA [Missile Defense Agency] is always looking for ways to pimp their systems”, and another is that this is actually an anti-satellite (ASAT) test in response to the Chinese test last year.

My guess is a combination of both, and that Bush and His Evil Minions&trade intend to create an arms race in this area, so as to further constrain a future administration.

US Air Force Intent on Committing Suicide

No Comments

Gen. Bruce Carlson, chief of Air Force Materiel Command, told a group of reporters Wednesday that the Air Force will figure out a way to buy 380 F-22s, despite the fact that the Pentagon – through the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) – has capped the number of Raptors to be procured at 183.

What is first obvious is that is engaging in insubordination by giving a press conference saying that he will find a way to subvert the decisions of a superior in his chain of command, and he should be fired immediately.

This is far more brassy, and far more public than anything MacArthur did to Truman.

That being said, if he gets his wish, he will destroy the USAF as a fighting unit.

Flight International’s Stephen Trimble does the numbers, and gets an additional 20 F-22s a year at $150 million an aircraft gets another $3 Billion a year over the next 10 years.

Based on my experience with military contracting, I’d double that number when operational expenses, the inevitable cost overruns, and gold plated block improvements are added.

To do this, I think that you need to slash personnel, and cancel pretty much every other program, the F-35, the KC-X, the next gen bomber, the next gen freighter, etc.

You will also have to reduce the existing inventory to cut costs and to reflect the fact that you don’t have enough people to keep the stuff running

Rep Markey Tries Incrementalism In New Net Neutrality Bill

No Comments

Once again, the draw by crayon libertarians at CNET get it wrong, and Harold Feld at TOTSF gets it right.

This is a change, and while it seems minor at least to the folks at CNET, it’s not.

Specifically, it ammends the FCC act of 1934 and adds a specific goal for the regulators at the FCC:

by adopting and enforcing baseline protections to guard against unreasonable discriminatory favoratism for, or degredation of, operators based upon its source, ownership or destination on the Internet.

In addition, this explicitly gives the FCC authority over “information services”, and eliminates the argument that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 stripped this authority.

Go read the whole post.

Comcast’sAnswer to Complaints of Sabotaging Applications: A Change to Their Terms of Service

No Comments

More confirmation that the Cable companies will be the first ones up against the wall when the revolution comes.

In response to complaints to spoofing packets to break filesharing applications (and other applications too, like Lotus Notes), Comcast has rewritten its terms of service.

The short version is:

Our network sucks, and we can block your peer-to-peer connections — and everything else — for any or no reason. And since the FCC’s competition policy lets us operate with no competitors — where else are you going to go?

Additionally, Comcast’s terms of service have “conduct terms” that would make John Ashcroft proud.

Note to self: Check out Verizon Fios terms of service.

Iran launches project to build stealth aircraft

No Comments

At least according to the Tehran Times.

In related news, I am now dating Janice Joplin.

This is obviously not true.

However, it is entirely possible that Iran might be working on some stealth projects.

The basic science for computing radar cross sections has been known for years, the math was published in a Soviet mathematics journal in the 1960s, and if a Linux cluster can do Shreck, it can certainly work on that.

To do an operationally meaningful low radar cross section manned aircraft is very expensive, and at this point, they are reverse-engineering their 1960s vintage F-5 aircraft.

However, if you wanted to create a drone, or a missile with a low RCS in the forward hemisphere, that would sound to me quite doable, with the caveat that I have never worked on issues of radar cross section.