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Comment Re:Get over it. (Score 4, Insightful) 332

I'm not a drafter. I'm an electrical engineer. I can make drawings, I can follow the guidelines, but I'm not as good at drafting as our drafters are.

The drafters can understand what I'm trying to say and then make it pretty.

Let people be good at what they do and support them with staff that can hold up the spots where they don't shine quite so bright.

Comment Re:power level of a detectable signal at 1200 ly ? (Score 1) 79

It's 100 MYW:

Let's make a couple of quick assumptions:
1. Lossless, perfect vacuum.
2. Height difference = 0 and line of sight.
3. Minimum detectable = 1mW.
4. Omni-directional antenna, since they aren't aiming at us.
5. Let's also simplify by assuming there are no equipment or connector losses.
6. We'll also go with a 20MHz transmission.

P(rx) = P(tx) - L(fs)

L(fs) = 32.45 + 20 x log(20MHz ) + 20 x log (1.1 × 10^16 km)
380dB loss.

Heh, that converts to 100 x 10^30 W. It might get a little warm near the transmitter. Do we have an SI prefix for that high a number? Nope, looks like we go up to yotta at 10^24 and that's it. Unless we can use mega-yotta-watts. Sure, let's use those. 100 Mega-Yotta-Watts.

Comment Re:So, in other words.... (Score 0) 259

I beleive the leading guess is that the universe expands to its limit, then gravity asserts itself, causing all matter in the universe to compress into an unstable singularity.

This unstable singularity explodes.

Repeat.

Where did everything come from for the first iteration, and why is there something instead of nothing? That's what philosophers have been trying to figure out for thousands of years, why religion holds so many in its grasp, and why we've built machines to find the Higgs Boson. We simply don't know. We may never know. We'll try our best to find those answers with the tools we have.

Comment Re:They needed research for this? (Score 1) 288

Exactly. You can't shoot all of us, and I'm going to grab as many of those bullets as I can before I drag you to hell with me.

Before 9/11, it was "pfft, we'll ride this out, settle with the airline for stress and discomfort, this guy with the box cutter just made me $50k quick and easy."

Canada

Submission + - Warrants required for text messages (www.cbc.ca)

Beardo the Bearded writes: The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has ruled that your text messages cannot be seized without a wiretap order.

FTA: "The decision overturns a lower court ruling against Telus that required the company to hand over copies of two of its customers' text messages after it was served with a general warrant by police in Owen Sound, Ontario.

Telus had appealed the ruling. The phone provider argued that seizing the messages would constitute "interception" of the communication and would therefore require a wiretap warrant. That is more difficult to get than a general warrant, because of special privacy provisions in the Criminal Code protecting private communications."

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