2 12 inch pipes? They might as well be pipe cleaners because you are not going to get enough water though them to make *any* kind of difference. I'll be that we loose more water in Torrance CA though dripping faucets than you could get though those pipes.

Have you seen what they have in New York City? You think 2 12 inch pipes will be of any use? NTMWD where I get my water in North Texas gets 10% of it's supply though ONE 96 inch pipeline from Lake Texoma and where they are not running the pumps flat out, I don't think they could do more than about 40% of our daily need though that with the pumps funning full blast. And that's just for a couple of counties north and east of Dallas.

No, you are going to need pipelines measured in tens of feet to be of much use...

It would also create a boat load of shade and only work during the day.... I'm not so sure that's a viable path n Cali...

And a $30B pipe is cheaper to run? Maybe, but it still takes power to run the pumps.

I vote for the desalination plants myself. Yea, you might need to build a few power plants to run those pumps too, but if you go with some modern nuclear plants and collocate them along the coast you get two birds with one set of stones. Water AND power, both things sorely needed in Cali bout now...

This plan is *cheaper* and less environmentally costly than running pipes from Washington state... Plus, when you don't need the water (like after it starts raining someday again) you will still have the power plants to use...

I'm not an MBA, though in my 25 years of working in the technology business, I've worked for a bunch of them and know a few more besides.

What I am is an observer. I've seen what they do and the common mistakes they make. I've heard how they think and although I've not been formally trained, I can usually identify WHY they made the decisions they make and what parts of their reasoning I agree with, and what parts I do not.

There is one think that all this observation has taught me. MBA's generally mean well, although they sometimes don't fully understand the situations (especially the technical issues) and their training leads them to generalize about things like labor costs and schedules. As an engineer I've had to live with the consequences of their mistakes on technical grounds, but I also respect what they do. I don't want to worry about the cash flow or profit margin, I just want to do the right thing and build cool technical solutions the our customers need and want. But we'd go broke without the MBAs worrying about the financial details, then where would we be? Unemployed....

I've been unemployed, it's not very much fun, so bring on the MBA, especially the one who can stop with the spreadsheets long enough to come talk to me about the project, the budget and the schedule and trusts me to make the technical calls for them.

I KNOW otherwise... I've done avionics work in the past, and where I'm not saying ALL or even MOST of the engineers involved in this understand network security, the system engineering that goes into these designs is done by engineers who ARE good at network security.

However, you miss my point. This self proclaimed security expert doesn't know about avionics, has never really demonstrated his alleged hacks on any actual hardware/software. All he has is the following: 1. A theory, 2. Some power point slides, and 3. a big mouth. Well, and he now has 4. Some national news coverage.

If this guy doesn't get himself arrested for tampering with a real airliner while in flight, all I expect from him is 10 min of fame and some speaking gig fees. He will be old news in about 2 weeks, unless he really did do the hacking he claimed, in which case he will be lucky to stay off the "do not fly list" and not end up behind bars.

What part of "cost money" to wipe didn't you understand.

Why would the government spend *more* money to repurpose something for civilian use, so they could sell them for pennies? There comes a time to just call it junk and be done with it and personally I figure that point is where what you can get is less than what it costs you to sell, maybe even a few dollars per unit above that...

In this case, the number of useable units was twice the number of possible buyers who could legally use the units. I'm in the pool of people who could legally use these things and I know I'd not likely be interested in even ONE of them unless they are giving them away, then one would likely be my limit. Who's going to take more than their allotted 2 to make up for that?

These things are outdated junk. Maybe they should wipe and sell 10K of them, but not a million. Most need to be trashed (or chipped up and recycled for the metal in them).

You mean the one glowing blue?

And rightly so, it likely would have cost more than what they could get for them to wipe them... With 600K hams out there, if you dumped millions of radios onto the market, I can only guess what the price would fall too... I know I can only use one radio at a time, even if I have 4 or 5...

Sometimes junk is just junk, even if it is mil-standard junk...

73's

Asbestos is safe as long as you don't disturb it when it is dry, so yes, sinking nasty stuff works great for a lot of it.

Well, Only because it is a long term commitment with the stuff and who knows what will be recoverable by the "bad guys" in 2 thousand years...

He has no experience with aircraft systems, only theories about them based on his network security experience over the last 5 years? Now if he was an actual avionics engineer with experience on any kind of avionics system, or had actually performed tests of his theories on actual hardware in the lab, I'd be a bit less condescending towards him and his theories. However, as this stands, he's no more qualified than the GAO when they made their claims about the FAA sacrificing flight safety for similar reasons.

This nut is basically the same as some registered nurse who knows how to administer chemotherapy drugs trying to come across as an expert in treating cancer with radiation and calling the local cancer treatment center on the carpet for doing it wrong. Yea that nurse may have power point slides and research to back up the claims, but they are no expert and have no credibility in the field, the slides may even fool the untrained masses, but that's not proof that that nut job's theory has anything real behind it.

If you want to construct a conspiracy theory about this guy and the government trying to hush all this up, what can I say but "you are nuts!"

He doesn't know anything, he just has a good story, a big mouth and some power point slides.

IF he actually DID try something, I have visions of him running the IIS hack scripts from 10 years ago or port scanning whole network segments while sitting back in a 23B trying to keep the guy in 23A from watching the screen...

This guy who fancies himself a "aviation hacking expert" goes around the country giving lectures on all sorts of things he sees as "risks" in all sorts of things just got himself in trouble by saying stupid things at the wrong time. It's like a security expert who gave talks about preventing Hijacking was talking about his presentation as he goes though the TSA checkpoint or with the flight attendant. Somebody took exception to the topic being discussed because of the context (he was actually ON an airplane at the time) and in the abundance of caution he was detained and questioned. I'll bet he never attempted any hacking, much less validated any of his perceived risks, most likely he made some inane statement like "I could hack into this plane and cause .... to happen" which got the attention of the flight crew who called the FBI who stops him as he gets off the plane.

But NOW this guy has a PR angle to play. And why not? Here is some self proclaimed "expert hacker" who has even been questioned by the FBI about possible hacking attempts and had his electronic devices taken in the process while he was on his way to give a talk on the very subject. Play that up, get more speaking gigs by playing up your qualifications.

This guy has nearly zero credibility with me. He's never really tested any of his theories on real equipment, doesn't work for anybody who would have access to the actual design specifications. Never worked for Boeing, Airbus or any avionics manufacturer. Has never demonstrated any successful attack and to my knowledge hasn't even attempted to hack anything. About all he has are a series of power point presentations that outline a lot of perceived risks he's come up with, but never verified, yet now he's the subject of international news? I sure hope he wasn't stupid enough to actually have tried his theories out on an actual commercial flight because the FBI is going to make an example of him if he did.

This guy's angle is all about milking the PR now. He's hit the short term jackpot and will be the featured speaker at "aviation security" conferences and I hope he makes some money. He's going to need it to pay the lawyers. However, IMHO, he's a nut job with power point skills and very little actual knowledge. He's just some lucky nut with a big mouth who fancies himself an expert on some issue that happens to be the news story of the day.