Happy Birthday Big E!

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via Wired

1960: USS Enterprise, the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, is launched in Newport News, Virginia. CVN-65, nicknamed Big E, was the first carrier of its kind, powered solely by its eight nuclear reactors.

With nuclear power to propel it, the Enterprise does not need to carry its own fuel oil and has more room for aircraft and weapons. It routinely carries 70 to 90 planes. The ship measures in at 1,120 feet (about 100 feet longer than the USS Saratoga), with a 250-foot-wide flight deck and 93,970 tons displacement. It relies on a crew of 5,700.

All this came with a price: around $451.3 million (equivalent to $3.3 billion in today’s money), according to Jane’s American Fighting Ships of the 20th Century. The Enterprise came in well over budget and ended up being the only ship in its class. Five other planned ships were not constructed.

According to Wikipedia, the Enterprise is scheduled for decommissioning in 2013.

Yes, it is still on active duty.

Verizon and Class Warfare

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So much for unlimited bandwidth on your cell phone.

via Reuters

It’s the beginning of the end for unlimited data plans on smart phones. Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile carrier, plans to stop selling unlimited data plans to new customers and instead introduce two service plans with monthly data caps.

They had to see this coming.

If you read the entire article, the author never raises the question of whether or not the carrier needs to drastically upgrade their equipment to handle the extra phones, instead they decide to limit users access to the system.

Carriers have long insisted that their top bandwidth users are at the upper 5% of the spectrum. Sound familiar? The top 5% of wage earners should pay most of the taxes type of thing. Well, in this new scenario the top 5% of the bandwidth users will be paying for the bandwidth.

That is all well and good but it doesn’t address the root problem of poor infrastructure. In a way, the carrier will argue that setting limits will alleviate infrastructure issues and in the short term they will be correct. Unfortunately, people are not going to stop buying smart phones and in fact, they will most likely buy even more.

Without the infrastructure upgrades, this problem will happen again.

Treating the symptoms and not treating the disease; that is all this is.

I wonder if these two stories a could be related?

Hmmm.

Mountain Bike versus Picnic Table

Location: Take That Media, LLC main office outside of Lancaster, PA.

The mountain bike brings home a smashing victory!

Literally.

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The table was picked up by the storm and landed square on top of the bike which in turn, smashed it.

The chain was knocked off. The kick stand was pushed forward.

Other than that, everything else looks fine.

Stealing Stale Bread

images.jpegThis story comes from Reuters.

A woman who worked at a super market in Germany took bread home that was supposed to be discarded. Is she guilty of a crime?

The 44-year-old cashier had been asked to dispose of the bread in a bio-waste container in March this year, but it was later found in her bag when she was searched by supermarket security personnel on leaving work later that day.

The woman, who was not named, argued that she had intended to put the bread in the bio-waste container, but her employer believed she meant to take it home and eat it.

The Leipzig labor court ruled on Monday that even if the employee did intend to eat the bread, it did not constitute grounds for dismissal, especially given her 27-year employment record with the company and the fact that the bread no longer had any monetary worth for the employer.

The answer is yes. She is guilty of a crime. She took something that did not belong to her. Whether or not it is worth $0.00 or $2,000.00 the fact remains that the property did not belong to her and she took it.

The law really is or rather, should be that simple.

Stealing is a very simple concept. I own a CD. I bought it at Wal-Mart. I have a receipt for it and the CD clearly belongs to me. You come along and take it from me. That is stealing. You don’t own it. It didn’t belong to you.

The bread was the sole property of her employer and she willfully took it.

For reasons unknown to me, German courts seem to think that they can just add a condition to the definition of theft. Well, it wasn’t really very expensive so it’s ok if the woman took it.

And that my friends, is why the world is going to hell in a hand basket.