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Comment It's kinda sad (Score 0) 80

I get sad when I watch a country commit suicide by stupid decision. It's made worse this time because it shows China won't have to invade. They just have to be patient and wait for Taiwan to finish it's protracted suicide. Then it can simply move in with no guns or any fuss at all.
{o.o}

Comment In the intersts of reliability (Score 4, Insightful) 75

These ultra-smart appliances bother me conceptually. The more "stuff" in a product is not just more function. It is more failure. So maybe smart should be left to those things that are designed to be smart, like humans. Leave dumb for refrigerators,

Note that the "smart" usually involves logging into, in this case, the Samsung Cloud service. The smart is not resident in my equipment. It has to log in to become smart. This has a downside. Everything eventually dies, even mega-corporations such as Samsung. All it takes is the cloud services at Samsung to die and I cannot log into my bloody refrigerator? I hope would not have to log into the cloud to open the door. Either way, though, the refrigerator can be effectively taken away from me by an external failure due to the cloud complexity, and snooping, involved. I can imagine how I'd feel kicking myself around my dark house the night Samsung Cloud vanishes, even if only for hours.

Please let me run my OWN bloody cloud that has no phone homes built into it.

{^_^}

Comment Re:guess nothing can be done then (Score 1) 130

"Obviously a war with either China or Russia is not desirable for planet Earth."

I have two observations for you. First both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have a vote in whether there will be war. Second as I read the evidence neither one is afraid of what the results of said war would be. (Hint, there are not enough nukes in the world to turn even a modest size country like Iraq into a glassy lake. I did the arithmetic on that while Shrub was in office. Israel maybe. Iraq, no. And that math presumed it was pool table flat with no mountains or the like.)

{^_^}

Comment It's not just EVs. It's not just batteries. (Score 2) 160

Perhaps it is time for China to quit subverting governments, setting up covert Chinese police stations in other countries, presuming it owns what it does not own in the South China Sea, stop its wasteful military build up, and quit declaring they are at war with the US in their internal military literature and classrooms. I for one choose to believe, literally, anybody who declares I am an enemy he is willing to destroy at any cost. It is time to believe China, lock the doors, and be ready to demonstrate that attacking the US would be foolish, even at only a financial level.
{^_^}

Comment Re:I'm a nerd for this stuff (Score 1) 42

It depends on the accuracy you need. The speed of light becomes your enemy when using cheap oscillators. Light travels at pretty close to 1' per nanosecond. Clocks drift that 1 nanosecond pretty quickly. With 86400 seconds in a day a single day's drift of a 1ppm oscillator will be as much as 0.09 seconds. That means inside of a day your time error translates to about 16 miles. This can be dealt with for short missions and 1000' CEP requirements. Precision weaponry talks about errors in the single digit feet or less. With all due respect, sir, you have a point; but, it's not so slam dunk simple as you seem to think.
{o.o}

Comment Re:Clear As Mud! (Score 1) 42

It can make the GPS spoofing attempt much more difficult. Since location and time are derived from the GPS signal a jammed signal will show wrong location AND wrong time unless parameters can be rather carefully juggled. It may not get you back on path; but, it will alert you to use alternate navigation tools due to time errors. Any new jammers will be more complex and more expensive. And, of course, they will come.

{^_^}

Comment Hubris (Score 0) 222

The hubris, or abject imbecility, of these youngsters is breathtaking. They think nature can be driven by man. They think one state, Montana, can make a significant difference in the face of China's pollution levels which are supposedly larger than the rest of the planet combined. That's allowed because they are a self declared "developing nation" and get breaks.... Anyway, these youngsters will likely be alive to regret their choices here.

{^_^}

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