It turns out that OPM outsourced at least some of its computer work. UNIX systems administrators for these systems were physically located in other countries like Argentina and CHINA.
Yeah, outsourcing sure saves people a lot of money! After all, that chinese guy was simply administering the computers Americans won't! *rolleyes*
...then they're surprised when there's a data breach. Typical.
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Didn't we go through this with Iridium? 700 low-altitude satellites to provide Internet access all over the world, via satellite.
Don't expect to play WoW on the thing; latency will still be horrible. Though not as bad as going all the way to and from geosync would be. The article says it won't have high latency--that ADSL latencies are expected of such a system--but I'll believe that when I see it. Speed-of-light delay will, at least, be fairly low with a 500 KM orbital height, but going to and from and to and from, it will stack up.
Still--Iridium was supposed to provide satellite cell phone coverage all over the world, and it was supposed to be the do-all-be-all of phone service...and then it dropped off the face of the planet and people stopped talking about it, and I thought the system was defunct.
Turns out it's not. Which is good, because that means this idea is also doable, and world-wide Internet coverage for a few bucks a month would be wonderful. (Assuming they can hack it.) What won't work is charging a (relative) few people $100 a month (or whatever) for low-latency world-wide Internet access.
You're still going to need a modem of some kind to connect to the service--it's not world-wide WiFi or anything--but that's not going to be bulky or require a huge satellite dish, either. Probably, a device the size of a typical cellular hotspot will be enough.
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So it's under 70 outside, but the dewpoint approximates the temperature, and it feels sticky. Well, summer; what do you expect?