The FCC's Consumer Broadband Test enables US consumers to test the quality of their broadband connections.
The FCC says it may use data collected when you run the Consumer Broadband Test, along with a street address you may have contributed, to analyze broadband quality and availability geographically across the US.
Two consumer broadband testing tools have been selected by the FCC for this test which measures bandwidth and latency.
There is also a free Mobile Consumer Broadband Test for the Apple iPhone and Android mobile platforms called the “FCC Broadband Test”
Link :
Tasty beat sequences and abyssal ambient noise make this a massive Dubstep classic.
Pretty cool psychedelic squid.
Translation from the article of Denis Delbecq
In a work published in Geophysical Research Letters, a Japan-US team proposes another way, (additionally to the planet's warming) for explaining the rapid disappearance of sea ice in the Arctic.
The three researchers have studied the wind regime in the Arctic Ocean for 31 years. And they have noted that it has changed. Moreover, they reveal a direct link between weather anomalies (located north of Greenland and in the Beaufort Sea) and the minimum extent of polar sea ice, raised each year in September. Basically, the winds tend to push the ice towards the south, and get them across the Fram Strait, the gateway to warmer waters leading to their rapid disappearance.
According to this work, the wind patterns explain half the variation of ice extent recorded from one year to another. On a scale climate (the 31 years of the study), winds explain about one third of the trend towards reduction of Arctic sea ice at the end of the summer. That is a second figure more representative of what is a climate, whose evolution is measured in decades rather than one year to another. The researchers also stressed that their results on wind regimes contradict others. Further work will be needed to decide.
Meanwhile, a question mark remains, which no one can answer today: what is the origin of weather regime changes during summer in the Arctic?
Global warming is not just hot air or hot water, which melts the ice. In short, these mass movements southward may be linked, or not be linked to global warming. That is the question.
Other link :
American Practical Navigator (Bowditch):
Ancient nautical treatise, generally though to deal with navigation, which to the present day has resisted all attempts to decipher it. Often found on board ship as a decorative element or paperweight.
Buoy:
1) Opposite of girlie or flying gull.
2) Navigational aid. There are several types and colors of buoys of which the most numerous are:
- green can (seen as a fuzzy black spot on the horizon)
- red nun (seen as a fuzzy black spot on the horizon)
- red or green day beacon(seen as a fuzzy black spot on the horizon), and
- vertically striped black-and-white channel marker (seen as a fuzzy black spot on the horizon)
Chart:
1) Large piece of paper that is useful in protecting cabin and cockpit surfaces from food and beverage stains.
2) Type of nautical map which tells you exactly where you are aground or what you just hit.
3) A map that confirms to the user that they don't know where they are, while allowing them to convince others that they do.
Course:
The direction in which a skipper wishes to steer his boat and from which the wind is blowing. Also, the language that results by not being able to.
Dead Reckoning:
1) A course leading directly to a reef.
2) What a Southern Doctor pronounces after a sailor goes to Davy Jone's Locker.
3) Using a map instead of a chart.
Estimated Position:
A place you have marked on the chart where you are sure you are not.
Fix:
1) The estimated position of a boat.
2) True position a boat and its crew in are in most of the time.
Great Circle Route:
1) Ship's course when the rudder is jammed or stuck..
2) Depression left in a seat cushion.
3) Mark around your eye after sailor's pub brawl.
Latitude:
The number of degrees off course allowed a guest.
Mile (Nautical):
A relativistic measure of surface distance over water - in theory, 6076.1 feet. In practice, a number of different values for the nautical mile have been observed while under sail, for example: after 4 p.m., approximately 40,000 feet; in winds of less than 5 knots, about 70,000 feet; and during periods of threatening weather in harbor approaches, around 100,000 feet.
Passage:
Long voyage from A to B, interrupted by unexpected landfalls or stopovers at point K, point Q and point Z.
Points:
Traditional units of angular measurement from the viewpoint of someone on board a vessel. They are:
Straight ahead of you, right up there;
Just a little to the right of the front;
Right next to that thing up there;
Between those two things;
Right back there, look;
Over that round doohickey;
Off the right corner;
Back over there;
Right behind us.
Sailing
1) The fine art of getting wet and becoming ill, while going nowhere slowly at great expense.
2) Standing fully clothed in an ice-cold shower tearing up boat bucks as fast as you can go.
Links :
Jules Verne Trophy is now held by Groupama which has beaten the round the world record under sail via the three capes, circling the World in 48 days, 7 hours, 44 mts (an average actual speed of 24.6 knts and 28,523 sailed miles whilst the official optimum course amounts to 21,760 miles) after 2 failed attempts.
Setting out on 31st January 2010 whilst the weather `window' was not particularly favourable, how a few days at 25/30kts changes a 600+ mile deficit (so about 1 day in relation to the 2005 reference time of Bruno Peyron's Orange2) thanks to a dazzling final sprint from the Equator, to lowering record by 2 days!
Congratulations to Franck Cammas the skipper, Stan Honey the navigator and all the other members of the crew (watch leaders Fred Le Peutrec and Steve Ravussin, helmsmen/trimmers Loïc Le Mignon, Thomas Coville and Lionel Lemonchois, and the three bowmen Bruno Jeanjean, Ronan Le Goff and Jacques Caraës, supported on shore by router Sylvain Mondon)
Thomas Coville, back on the team spirit that reigned aboard Groupama 3 : "We gave our opinion when it was requested or when we had something to contribute to the group, but overall we had a respect for the decision which had been taken. Decision team was especially Stan and Frank. We were in complete confidence. There are times when maybe we would have personally done differently. But the force we have had was to have a group that acted as a group and not by ego. When one has a different view, it is sometimes important not to show or to assert in order to enable the group to be right. We have all respected that so Frank and Stan were in the best condition to take the best decisions."
