That's just the coverage available on one particular website. (Other sites can have different data sources and different coverage.) Also, those rectangles just mean that there is some coverage within the rectangle. (Often, coverage is available around larger cities and a lot of the area is not covered.)
Furthermore, AIS is sometimes used for collision avoidance, so it is used for safety.
Whether or not you were ever a fan, it was a sad scene.
That's just capitalism. The sad thing is that the same thing is not happening to failed banks, insurance companies and investment companies.
While imperative languages often have some functional aspects, they're not "pure." And functional programming is all about purity.
You should try to learn Haskell if you ever get a chance. I'm about 2 weeks into it and it is blowing my mind coming from Ruby and Python. Normally I can pick up languages pretty easily, but this.... this is just insane. It is like learning to program all over again. You aren't getting the full experience if you're just using a few functional aspects of a imperative language.
Dude! I finally broke the 640k conventional memory barrier with QEMM386. You should try it!
8 Catfish = 1 Octo-puss