While I think that this is a good idea, it appears that they have been creating this system, and the associated network, without thought of how to integrate it with the existing legacy Windows systems.
It’s kind of typical for FCS, putting the proverbial cart before the horse.
It appears that the senate is scheduling a vote on telco immunity for some time tonite, the better to get it passed while no one is looking.
Call your senators.
*Yes, this is a shout out to Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein.
And one is the American wireless user, because whoever won, and the FCC has not announced a winner yet, will pay $4,713,823,000, more than the $4,600,000,000 required by the FCC in order for open access rules to apply.
The FCC has not announced a winner, and the bidders themselves are technically still gagged, but my guess is that it was not Google. They were willing to bid to win, but they were more interested in getting the open access, and why spend $113,823,000 more than the minimum to get that.
Of course, considering my record on predictions…..
This is a good decision. The idea that one is allowed to present a number from a black box which no one in the court can fully understand is ludicrous.
Excerpts from the Court of Appeals of Kentucky’s opinion:
A subpoena may be quashed only upon a showing that compliance therewith would be unreasonable or oppressive. We do not believe the commonwealth and CMI have made this showing.The request is not unreasonable because its purpose is to challenge the validity of the breath alcohol readings produced by the Intoxilyzer 5000 instrument, which is anticipated to be used at trial in support of the Commonwealth’s DUI charge against House. The reading was also used to support the aggravating factor of driving with a breath alcohol reading of .18 or more.
Relevant evidence is admissible unless excluded by some other rule. Because a flaw in the computer source code of the Intoxilyzer 5000 would be consequential to the accuracy of the reading intended to be relied upon by the commonwealth, such evidence is relevant and admissible. Accordingly, requesting the computer code to test the verity of the readings produced by the instrument is not unreasonable.
El Reg is reporting that Woolworths stores to stop selling HD DVD.
Umm…there are still Woolworths out there?
It’s a very high strength steel, wiki here.
I’m looking at a hobby application, so I need a bit more information, like suppliers I can get a quote from, mechanical properties when dead soft, and corrosion resistance.
Anyone have more info out there?
DARPA is getting$750 million for its “Blackswift” hypersonic demonstrator.
It’s performance is fairly mild as hypersonics go, about Mach 6-7, but it will take off and land under its own power, and use conventional hydrocarbon, as opposed to cryogenic fuels, so the utility of such a craft is significantly more than a lot of the other demonstrators.
It won’t need fuel tanks that are basically Dewar flasks, and it’s tanks should be much smaller, since hydrogen is much less dense than conventional jet fuel.
It integrates a turbine for low speed propulsion, using an, “inward turning inlet”
As you can see, this concept looks a bit less “tubby” than hydrogen powered systems/
This might refresh your memory.
It turns out that the Russians did not do it. It was an Estonian script kiddie, see here, and here.
This might also be titled, “Management victims who really need to join a union”.
You know, after 10 years of thinking of IBM as the antiChrist, I had finally replaced them with Microsoft, but this story has me reevaluating.
If they are not the antiChrist, they are at least a minor minion of Chtulhu.
As often happens, companies sometimes get spanked for not paying overtime to its workers, usually for being stupid. It happened to IBM, and they had to pay $65 million in back pay, and they reclassified about 7600 workers as “non-exempt”, meaning qualifying for overtime pay.
IBM took another step too, they cut the base pay of these workers by 15%.
If you do the math, they have to work 45 hours to earn what they previously made at 40.
And economists wonder why the average American is not satisfied with our “wonderful” economy.
BTW, I think you could make an argument that this is illegal retaliation. Talk to a class action lawyer.
In yet another sign that they jumped the shark with Vista, there are now reports that Microsoft is moving up the release date of Windows 7, Vista’s successor from 2010 to 2009.
This is a lot of additional effort, and a lot of lost revenue, but they realize that they have a pig* on their hands.
*No offense intended towards pigs.
Many years ago, when Allegheny Airlines, aka Agony Airlines, announced it’s name change to USAir, the name “Useless Air” was coined at the press conference announcing the new name.
Well, Apple just announced a new iPod in pink, and journalist John Paczkowski in a flash of genius, has named it iPod Pepto.
Bummer of a birth mark, Hal.
Here is an intersting bit of information on Tsien Hsue-shen, the 96-year-old architect of China’s ballistic missile program.
The story goes that he was deported back to China in September, 1955, taking with him information in his head about the US Titan missile program, which he used to develop Chinese ICBMs.
Small problem though, first contract for the Titan development program was not let until October 1955, a, “full month after he was deported to China.”
D’oh!!!! Maybe, just maybe, this guy was a rocket scientist, and had some brains about him.
The Washington Post has a pretty good summary, though they soft pedal the conclusion.
Let’s make this clear, the Clinton administration got into legal trouble with a small problem with backups, the Reagan administration had its email backups used to investigate the Iran-Contra scandal, but somehow these folks, who have a pathological need for secrecy, just screwed up.
Yeah, sure.
Not surprising. The “bomb proof trucks” merely result in a change in tactics by the insurgency. They develop a tactic, than we respond, and then they respond.
The way to get them to stop killing our troops is to get the hell out.
Researchers working on behalf of the mobile phone industry :rofl: have discovered that exposure to cell phone emissions can interfere with your sleep cycle.
Obviously, there is a need for more study, but the methodology, where a group of volunteers were exposed to either 884 MHz signals, or to a sham signal, seems to be a pretty good study format.
I am not sure if this was single, or double blind. (in the latter, the researchers don’t know who got the placebo either).
Definitive word to my mind:
Dr Chris Idzikowski, the director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, says: “There is now more than sufficient evidence, from a large number of reputable investigators who are finding that mobile phone exposure an hour before sleep adversely affects deep sleep.”
The Boston Globe has noted that the military is telling soldiers not to forward the dispicable “Obama is a Crypto-Muslim” email.
It’s against military and civil service regulations.
My guess is that someone in the military realized that this guy might be C-in-C in under a year, and it was ass covering time.
Anyone know what proportion of this spam is coming from military servers.
Sony is now offering a $400 rebate on the purchase of a LCD TV/Blu-ray player package, which makes the Blu-Ray player essentially free, and El Reg is reporting that US HD DVD sales are falling off a cliff.
I’d still wait, to see if the new DVD standards catch on, or if it all loses out to downloads, but I think that HD-DVD is done.
Well, last night I discussed how the USAF is screwing the proverbial pooch in its efforts to get more F-22s, and this weeks issue of Aviation Week confirms this assessment. (paid subscription required)
In this case, they are discussing the capabilities of the F-35 in what the US military likes to call “battle space”, and they reveal something about the F-22.
Specifically, the F-22 is the roach motel of data. Data checks in, but it doesn’t check out.
The F-35, for example, it, “Already offers some capabilities that are not available on the F-22,” which, “for example, has no other way, other than verbally, to send the detailed electronic surveillance data it collects to other types of aircraft or to ground-intelligence facilities.”
The F-22 is designed for the end of the world scenario, with the Soviets attacking through the Fulda Gap. It was designed to operate while the rest of the military infrastructure around it was destroyed, though why the Soviets would not go after the air fields is beyond me.
The Raptor is an expensive anachronism…Though the F-35 is not likely to be much cheaper to buy at the end of the day, it will be more flexible and cheaper to operate, though neither are required for the most likely scenarios.
There are a couple of interesting articles (here and Portable Network Generates EW Attack Weapons in Aviation week(paid subscription required)about the increasing use of civilian tech in military electronic warfare equipment.
“The Chinese, like many countries without billions to spend on defense, are figuring out how to leverage all that commercial technology into their military capabilities,” says Rance Walleston, BAE Systems’ director of information operations initiative and information warfare. “We’ve spent a lot of time looking at Chinese technologies. They’re not building many unique devices. Their integrated air defense system [IADS] uses commercial standards,” such as GSM and voice over Internet protocols (VOIP).
The Syrian raid—which involved air-to-ground and network-to-network electronic invasion of a Russian-built IADS—is convincing some that custom-built, highly specialized and expensive air defenses with long development times are decreasing in deterrent value. In fact, they have become victims of their own uniqueness. Because they were hard to develop and field, they aren’t often modified. That gives electronic warriors the time to conduct analysis and build countermeasures.
We also discover that:
“The government historically procured single-use systems to go after signal X or Y,” Sinkiewicz says. “Now that’s unaffordable, and what they want is a multifunction capability with the same architecture and hardware that can go after many types of signals.”
I’m sure that some of the free market types would like to use this as an argument for the inherent superiority of the free market over government funded systems, but I would argue that the defense procurement infrastructure is among the most incompetent and corrupt segments of our governments, and that using this will not get good policy.
In fact, the Privatization of essential government services in the military (KBR/Halliburton, Blackwater, Triple Canopy, etc.) has proved to be an unmitigated disaster too.
The solution is to put adults in charge of the Military Industrial Complex, because we are currently reaping the consequences of not doing so for the past 60 years.
