Leo Bodnar launched a small balloon with a 11 gram payload. The payload is solar powered and has telemetry. Balloon hobbyists have been watching the flight since July 12th 2014. It is still flying. It has circled the earth (not at equator) about 5 times now I believe.
B-64/M0XER-4 Flight Web Page
APRS Position
Simply amazing. The longest flight I can recall prior to this was one that was launched in California and made it to somewhere near the Mediterranean sea a few days later.
Sure it might be better, but it definitely can be much worse.
Worse than no high speed broadband service? Wilson built their system because Time Warner and others refused to. So, the city decided to solve the problem themselves. When you refuse to serve a community, you can't complain about 'unfair competition' when they decide to serve themselves.
(Time Warner thanks you for your loyalty)
It is wonderful that someone took the time to have him recognized. So many times people don't take the time to do things like this.
Regarding contracting out:
I was a boom operator in the Air Force (inflight refueling specialist). In my free time, I wrote an aircraft weight and balance calculation application in basic that ran on desktop PCs (which were brand spanking new at the time). We had been filling a form out (called a Form-F) by hand using numbers looked up in charts. It took about 20 minutes to fill this form out. The Air Force had contracted out the creation of an app that ran in an HP programmable calculator to do this same task. It took about 5 minutes to fill the form out using the calculator. My program could generate this form in about 2 minutes. And my program was also more accurate (and it printed on a full page instead of 2" wide thermal paper). After I wrote my app, nobody used the calculator to generate the Form-F unless they filling it out on the airplane.
I was already out of the Air Force at the time. But a buddy of mine who took on maintaining the program I wrote said it was used to 'load plan' every KC-135 flight in the first gulf war. Not bad for a program that I could not even get certified (if you used it on a check ride you would have actually failed the check ride, even though the result was actually more accurate).
I certainly never got a medal for my app. It did get me Airman of the Quarter at our base. But, the real reward was that it worked and that people loved it. The fact that it worked better than the contracted solution was icing on the cake. I think this guy's story is great.
Defending is typically more expensive then brining a suit
Brining a suit would actually be pretty cheap.
A bucket of water, a few cups of salt, a few cups of sugar. I'd probably leave it overnight.
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde