While true, many satellite earth stations require dishes that track satellites in order to provide an uplink (depends upon the band and the satellite system used). Within reason, a system can maintain a lock under a variety of circumstances. A hit from a missile and the resultant, immediate aircraft disintegration probably presents a situation that would make such a lock exceedingly difficult to maintain.

I work in this field (aeronautical communications, including satellite systems), and specifically with FAA personnel who are tasked with knowing and regulating such systems (spectrum managers). What I'm saying comes directly as an answer from them in response to a query about why we don't do exactly as you suggest. It's not merely a question of the total satellite bandwidth available. Satellite bandwidth is used for a lot of things, remember -- and only a small subset is used for protected aeronautical satellite (AMS(R)S) assignments. It's not as simple as you suggest.

I won't even rate this one as "nice try".

I'd think there would be an additional consideration, though: BUK and similar systems are "transponder aware", and thus will avoid hitting civilian aircraft by default. Whoever fired this would have had to know the system well enough to disable transponder sensing.

It's not a matter of technology. It's a matter of satellite bandwidth, given the number of flights in the air. One possible solution has been developed that predicts imminent disaster and rapidly commences data upload. I'm not sure whether that would work in the case of a missile attack, though.

Stupidity, bigotry, and grammar violations all in a two-line post. I suppose that's par for the course. Kids these days.

I'll trade you Wikipedia links!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

You might also need to eliminate caste effects--as far as we know, a uniquely human thing that may affect the expression of base intelligence.

I'm sorry...did you think you were responding to the post above you? Because nowhere did I see a refutation of what Burz wrote regarding WUWT (which was linked to in the abstract, making it relevant) taking funding from Heartland.

You see, "both sides do it" muddying of the waters may work in right wing circles, but it's really not a solid argument. Media Matters' funding or skew isn't at issue, here, nor did I see anyone deny it -- they cited several sources, including Watt's own post commenting on news regarding his ties to Heartland, as a reference, and had you bothered to click through, you would have seen that.

Undisclosed conflict of interest - a major difference between what you're citing and what Burz mentioned - is a serious problem. You might want to read up on it.

All scientists rely on funding. And if I were looking to get rich, I'd be producing results favorable to the denialists. There's a lot more money there, and a lot less competition.

Fine -- let's an a condition: "The science is as settled as the scientific conclusion that cigarette smoking causes cancer". I hope that clarifies things.

...that everyone seems to assume the Truecrypt developer(s) were in the U.S.

It is possible the Truecrypt project has been bleeding what developers it had for some time. It hasn't been updated in a while. Maybe this was the last one standing saying "enough, I want to do something else". Also hoping for a fork if this is legit, and with the audit and the change in license, it's the perfect time (which may also have occurred to whoever decided enough was enough). State actor or court order theories don't seem to make much sense, and given the effort involved to do all that was evidently done (beyond defacing a website), I'm now doubtful this was a compromise.

It says above that the signing key was updated prior to the change in site/posting of new binary.

Yep. The rationale provided is also at odds with past statements regarding planned development. I'd bet this is a compromised site.