You're correct. The wavelength of Ka-band frequencies (26-40 GHz) happens to line up nicely with the size of a raindrop in flight. That leads to more atmospheric signal attenuation, but isn't necessarily a deal-breaker; it just means you need a bigger dish to receive it and a more powerful transmitter for the return channel. (The new generation of high-speed satellite Internet services all use Ka band, despite the "rain fade" issues, because the higher frequency enables higher data rates.) In the past, the satellite industry tended to rely on lower frequency bands (such as Ku and C) to save costs on dish/transmitter size because of this concern.

For a cellular service where you're looking laterally at a tower instead of straight up into the sky, the weather issue should be less of a big deal. However, you should note that any frequency that high up will have a very very hard time penetrating indoors through anything thicker than a single-pane window. So expect that this will be used for fixed home Internet applications where a receiver can be permanently mounted outdoors or near a window, rather than traditional cellphone usage that can happen anywhere you go indoors or outdoors.

Clearly, you were holding it wrong.

That's always a problem with translations. Equivalent words or phrases in different languages take up different amounts of space. You almost always have to provide a different layout for a different language, unless you start out with ginormous buttons that can accommodate all languages.

Yes, many of India's people are impoverished. That condition has existed for thousands of years. Instead, look at the rate at which India has been lifting her people out of poverty. Forty years ago, less than 5% were wealthy, and she had virtually no middle class. Today, about a third of the people are middle class or wealthier. That means that about 400,000,000 people are a whole lot better off than their grandparents.

They won't ever be able to eradicate poverty with the signing of a law, or with a "government cheese" kind of program. Instead, they know it takes a long time, and a strong competitive nation to provide her citizens with opportunities to lift themselves up. India has not been squandering her new independence. It's not perfect, it's not corruption-free, it's not smooth, and it's not fast. But what they have done in the last few decades has been nothing short of amazing.

I think we can safely assume that since Indian engineers are designing and building the chips they'll be using in their own system, it would certainly be possible for them to build their own GPS receivers that aren't subject to the American munitions export restrictions on velocity and altitude. They are doing this strictly for independence from all foreign influences.

You jest, but it's a real problem they are solving by creating their own Indian standard time infrastructure.

The entire system is being designed, built, launched, flown, and operated in India, by Indians, with absolutely no foreign dependencies. Having been burned more than a few times in their short existence by various nations who disagreed with their internal decisions, they take their independence very seriously. This is slightly different than the average American who pretty much takes their own independence for granted these days.

You can get a Thunderbolt / Ethernet adapter for the MacBook Air. The problem with an ethernet jack is that the Air is too thin for it.

Civil disobedience is an option, but it generally requires popular support. When Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, there were a lot of people who agreed that it was an unjust law, and supported her. If he tries that with libel and slander laws, he'll likely find that most people would rather not be lied to, they would not like granting random strangers the freedom to post photoshopped pictures of them smoking crack and costing them their jobs, and ultimately would not support repealing the law.

The Supreme Court has found many cases of unprotected speech, including threats, extortion, incitement, and this goes way back. They have long held that freedom of speech is not absolute.

Now, the laws regarding intentional infliction of emotional distress are new, and are pretty awful. There are other laws that could used to prosecute harassment, and so I can see those eventually being challenged. But libel and slander? Those go all the way back to English law, and at least as of today, they help keep a civil society.

So when I suggested he run for office, that was really my way of saying "go away, and spend your time fruitlessly in pursuit of this nonsense."

As I stated in my other post, I am not proposing the fair tax, it is most aggressive and does exactly what you say it does. I am proposing a tax system that shifts the burden upwards so that the more income one makes, the more taxes one pays. Fair tax usually is a consumption tax, which is a glorified sales tax. Almost all fair tax proposals includes some kind of payment to the poor to help them out with it. However, if it were truly fair, there wouldn't be a need for this payment.

In the 1960s, when the US had some of its greatest increases in GDP, the tax rate was pretty high. What drove the economy was the purchasing power of the middle class. However, since the 1980s, tax law has shifted more and more of the tax burden onto the middle class, pushing many downward and for those who remain, they have less spending ability because of the higher tax burden. As such, the economy has faltered and for the most part has been sustained by consumer debt to make up for the reduced purchasing power. However, debt financing can only go so far before it catches up to you, like it has now, which is why we have companies reporting record profits, paying record dividends and high unemployment.

The mantra "Don't tax the job creators" is a fallacy. Taxing the wealthy doesn't hurt jobs, if the tax burden is lifted from the middle class. Demand for goods and services creates jobs and most of that demand has come historically from the middle class. Policy in the US should be to restore the middle class, at least if we want a strong economy. No "job creator" is going to higher people if there isn't a demand for the goods and services that the employees provide. On the other hand, they will regardless of the tax burden if there is somebody to consume those goods and services. That's the whole idea behind supply and demand.

The "fair tax" is anything but fair. We need to return to a system that taxes people based on their ability to support the needs of the society they are in. That is the system that built America and made it strong.

It is not decreasing the burden on the middle and upper classes. If anything, the lower to middle middle class will see a slight decrease. The upper middle class will be about the same as they are now. The upper class, however, will see an increase because the many loopholes and deductions that allow for them to have a lower effective tax rate than the middle class would be eliminated.

Let's say Buffet's secretary makes $60,000/yr and is in a family of 4. Deduct the $36,000 from that for the poverty level plus 25% portion and she pays tax on $24,000. She is being taxed on 40% of her income. Say one of his managers makes $200,000 with a family of 4, after removing the poverty level, she is taxed on $164,000 on 82% of her income. Buffet, making millions would be taxed on virtually all of his income. But the reality is that everybody gets the same poverty level allowance, so everybody gets the same break.

That is also the main reason such a proposal is unlikely to pass -- the upper class is the ones that politicians cater to and it is unlikely they will go for a plan that increases their taxes, no matter how fair it might be. (It also explains the overwhelming support for the "fair" tax by the upper class, because it actually reduces their tax burden further).

"Detroit" is only nominally the home of the auto industry, and is maintained by Ford and GM as a brand of sorts to evoke classic American cars.

Other than executive offices, all the big auto manufacturing plants are situated - and nearly all the workers live - well outside the city itself, in the suburbs where (other than being impacted by Detroit's implosion and the overall Great Recession decline) things are pretty good.

So when you hear someone say "Detroit is fighting Tesla," thats not the case. Detroit couldn't fight Pawnee, Indiana and win two out of three. What they really actually mean is "Detroit" the brand/region, i.e. the corporations that employ hundreds of thousands of Michigan voters - and the suppliers/subcontractors/vendors to those companies, who probably employ as many if not more Michigan residents. So don't take Detroit's colossal f***up as any indication that the power of Ford/GM, its ecosystem and perhaps most importantly the UAW as being diminished in any way.

According to him, it's the fault of the believer for being so stupid as to trust a random web site claiming he's a pedo. But given how many people believe "it must be true, I read it on the Internet, and they can't publish anything on the Internet that isn't true", I don't think arguing with a potential employer is a winning strategy for a job seeker.

While I haven't really considered where I'd fall on the line of how much the slander and libel laws abridge the right to free speech, the case law itself is well established. To establish a defamation claim, most states require the plaintiff prove four elements: the defendant made a defamatory communication to a third party, the statement was false, the defendant was at fault in communicating it, and the plaintiff suffered harm. The courts have established that sending an email to someone else meets the publication requirement, as does posting on a web site. The plaintiff is supposed to only recover actual or compensatory damages commensurate with the harm suffered. Punitive damages may be awarded if the act was wanton, malicious, reckless, or in willful disregard for another's rights. And in the case of libel, the plaintiff may not have to prove harm.

He may or may not like the law and how it's been interpreted, but either way he's obligated to follow it. If it's that important to him, he can run for office and try to change it.

Or, you believe the government should be limited in the things they are allowed to do, removing the incentive for bribing them in the first place.

I'm interested in protecting the middle class. The poor don't need to be taxed and by removing them reduces the government subsidy required to help sustain them. The wealthy, because of the way are tax code is written often have a very low effective tax rate, so currently, it is the middle class with the biggest tax burden. Going to a system, like I (and many others) proposed, balances out the tax burden between the wealthy and the middle class so they both have the same tax burden.

You don't need a sliding scale if the tax rate is applied to all income instead of just wages. A sliding scale is the sign of a system that has built in inequities. However, with the current system, that favors the accumulation of wealth, if I am paid wages of $100,000, I am taxed higher than somebody who has the brunt of their income in the form of realized gains. Base taxes on all wealth and it doesn't matter how the money is made. That is part of the design behind consumption taxes except that you can shelter consumption taxes by investing it instead of spending it. Unfortunately, the middle class can't afford to set aside that much of their income to avoid paying taxes on it.

A flat tax on all income (no exemptions or deductions), whether you include a poverty break or not, is the fairest system. Everybody pays the same percentage of what they have.

But it doesn't because the poverty level amount is first deducted from everybody's income. Then anything above that amount is taxed at the same percentage. No deductions, no exemptions,etc. If you make $10,000 above the poverty level amount, you are tax x% on that 10,000. If you make $1M over that poverty amount, you are taxed x% on that $1M. The middle class person making just $10,000 over the amount pays 1% of the amount the person making $1M over does.

How is that increasing the burden on the middle class? It actually balances the burden between middle class and wealthy so that Warren Buffet's secretary no longer pays more taxes than he does.