LightSquared Satellite Disabled By Last Week's Solar Storm 70
volts writes "Troubled LightSquared's primary Skyterra 1 satellite has been out of service since the solar storm on March 7. The company says it is 'working through the rebuild of the satellite tapping into the resources that were involved in the original program.' This development follows a stream of bad news including layoffs, default on payments, the resignation of CEO Sanjiv Ahuja and FCC rejection of a scheme to repurpose satellite frequencies for cellular data due to interference with GPS. Another kick in the teeth as company struggles to avoid bankruptcy."
This is a cover-up (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll use this as an excuse for bankruptcy/liquidation/etc. "Don't blame us, blame the Sun."
Re:This is a cover-up (Score:5, Funny)
I was more thinking who they're going to sue over this. Perhaps God, with the God Apollo and the FCC named as co-defendants.
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I'd guess their solar storm insurance provider. And they shouldn't have to sue, but when the dollars get that big they will probably have to.
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But Sun is no more. It got taken over by Oracle [oracle.com]. [grin]
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But The Sun [thesun.co.uk] still exists.
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Or maybe the Phoenix Suns [nba.com]. ;)
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Try 'insurance claim'. They'll try to cash out their CxOs before bankrupting themselves outright. The layoffs are trying to make that possible.
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I doubt the sun had anything to do with their issues with the satellite. It comes across more and more than these guys are politicians not actually doing anything but trying to be given free money. I would assume that the satellite had issues before this, but the flare makes a convenient excuse.
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting, LS doesn't happen to have an insurance policy on that baby that would payoff if it failed do they?
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"I'm here to collect my castle insurance."
"What happened?"
"It sank into the swamp."
"Your policy doesn't cover swamps, we explicitly removed that when you said you were building it in a swamp."
"Well, before if sank into the swamp it fell over."
"Also not covered, the shoddy foundation of a swamp made the falling over inevitable."
"While your engineers still hold to that claim, I'm fairly certain it only fell over because of the fire."
"A fire? In a stone castle? Built in the swamp?"
"Yes."
"Ok, that's covered,
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
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In fairness, many of those people were being honest. A good friend of mine had her home wrecked by Hurricane Gustav. It blew off the roof off the house, allowing rain to come in and flood the interior, destroying basically everything she owned. If it hadn't been for the wind removing the roof, there wouldn't have been any flooding, so I think it's quite reasonable to classify it as wind damage.
Admittedly, not every homeowner could claim this. In Katrina especially, due to the failing levies, there were
Insurance (Score:5, Informative)
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The part I found interesting in TFS (yes, it's /. and I know reading it is unpossible) was; "The company says it is 'working through the rebuild of the satellite tapping into the resources that were involved in the original program.' "
Who here in the US feels another taxpayer-reaming coming up?
I wish the government, if it has to be involved in somehow assisting/subsidizing/granting the areas of technology/green energy/space/etc would stop just freaking handing out money to people, usually with political don
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I'm sure it was insured against a great number of possible occurences, and I'm sure there were just as great a number of exclusions. Have you ever read an insurance document?
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Yup, in the middle, about page 12, in 1 point font:
12.5.2.1(a) This policy excludes coverage of everything that actually occurs
12.5.2.1(b) This policy excludes coverage of everything that does not occur
good! (Score:1)
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Re:Maybe the universe is telling them something.. (Score:5, Funny)
There are nails in the coffin, and then there's the coffin being doused in gasoline, lit on fire, pissed on, dropped from 30,000 feet with lit sticks of dynamite inside.
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English, motherfucker! Do you speak it? (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFS:
Another kick in the teeth as company needs struggles to avoid bankruptcy.
Yep. as company needs struggles.
Now I've been around for a while, so I'm familiar with /.'s keyboard-bashing monkey approach to editing, and the general crappy quality of summaries. But it seems to me the last couple weeks have had a high incidence, even by /. standards, of these nonsense phrases in summaries. And it's getting old.
Re:English, motherfucker! Do you speak it? (Score:4, Funny)
I heard what you are said. But in a seriously note, I think you needs struggles to avoid blowing you're top.
Interestingly, it seemed they will edited the summary to finishing with, "Another kick in the teeth as company struggles to avoid bankruptcy."
Maybe this been a new approach to editing, and they just randomly insert and words until something vaguely intelligible on the screen?
(Editors: please consider this post a writing sample for purposes of my employment as a member of the crack /. editing team.)
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When I submitted this article, the preview wasn't reliably displaying changes to text in the edit box; "needs struggles" got by me.
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When I submitted this article, the preview wasn't reliably displaying changes to text in the edit box;
Yeah, that's been broken for quite a while. I hate the way they changed journal submissions, too.
"needs struggles" got by me.
Fixing that's supposed to be an editor's job. Sometimes they do an excellent job and sometimes they do a really bad one.
ENGLISH MFer! Do you type it!? (Score:1)
"Another kick in the teeth as company needs struggles to avoid bankruptcy." This "sentence" makes my brain bleed.
Idea's don't die (Score:2)
They just get hit with solar flares and fizzle out.
Seriously though, the only angle that LightSquard had was, "It's already up there, all we have to do it turn it on..." and that has just gone up in smoke. Just like their business model and momentum. It's time they go back to the drawing board and come up with a new plan, get new backers, and find a new way to do what they want to do.
Re:Idea's don't die (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually I think if they had just stayed with satellite level signals instead of trying to get their high powered ground source signals approved they probably would have been ok with the FCC.
Re:Idea's don't die (Score:5, Interesting)
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"catastrophe"
Fuck em, it's a scumbag deal and that's why you posted as AC.
Nail in the coffin (Score:1, Interesting)
Even God wants you to fail.
Another thought; since this was a put together deal by a bunch of investors to sell off at a later date, (or so it seems) it reminds me of the late 90's when groups of "investors" were buying up mom and pop dial up ISP's bundled them under the same name then selling them off, they had no intention of doing anything for the customer, the individual accounts were just a body count.
Lightsquared seems like a similar deal:
"The legal team now includes Theodore Olson, who helped George W
Karma (Score:2)
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I don't actually believe in karma, but if it did exist then this would be a very appropriate example.
Not believing in Evolution doesn't make one impervious to its effects...
Karma-Bonus Modifier: +1
A terrible idea that should have died long ago (Score:4, Interesting)
As soon as it was found LightSquared interfered with GPS (which was a while ago) all permission should have been axed and the company disbanded.
Instead, because of heavy donations to the Democratic party they got the blessing of the FCC to proceed despite actual physical interference to others caused by the product, making it inevitable the company could never go to market. [hotair.com]
Some partisans will inevitably come down on me simply because of the origin of that news. But you can't deny the connections and how obvious it was the FCC should NEVER have allowed certification not matter who was involved.
Political connections should NEVER override something as important as allowing experiments that interfere with devices as important as GPS!
Re:A terrible idea that should have died long ago (Score:5, Insightful)
LightSquared made a $30,400 donation to the Democrats in Sept, 2010. One month later, in October, they made an identical $30,400 donation to the Republicans.
And yet strangely, people like SuperKendall only ever seem to mention the donation to the Democrats. I wonder why that is?
By the way, why do you feel that the FCC shouldn't have even let them test out their idea? Sure, it was probably doomed to failure, but I don't see the harm in letting them test it out with their own money.
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Re:A terrible idea that should have died long ago (Score:4, Informative)
Got a source to back that up? I can't find any sources to support your claim, even on the most conservatives sites.
Wikipedia seems to agree with me:
The Federal Election Commission has no record of Phil Falcone, a registered Republican, nor LightSquared Chairman and CEO Sanjiv Ahuja of having ever contributed to President Obama’s political campaigns.[39] However, since 2007, Philip Falcone has donated $50,500 to the Democratic Senatorial campaign Committee (and $85,500 to Republicans). Both Falcone's wife and LightSquared CEO Ahuja donated $30,400 to the DSCC (Ahuja gave the same amount to Republicans).
So tell me, where did you get this stuff about "several hundred thousand dollars in other donations"?
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And yet strangely, people like SuperKendall only ever seem to mention the donation to the Democrats. I wonder why that is?
It's because the Republicans have no power currently over the FCC.
The Democrats do, the actions taken are squarely on them. Note that it's a REPUBLICAN investigating. I wonder why you failed to mention THAT.
Talk about partisan...
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Is your theory that LightSquared donated roughly equal amounts of money to both parties, with the GOP actually receiving slightly more, as a way of currying favor with Obama? That they went to Obama and said, "Here's $100k. We gave even more to the men who have sworn to destroy you at any cost. Now do us a favor!"
Can't you see how illogical that is? Here's my theory: LightSquared is run by morons. They were morons to think that this plan would work in the first place, and that same stupidity drove the
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LightSquared made a $30,400 donation to the Democrats in Sept, 2010. One month later, in October, they made an identical $30,400 donation to the Republicans.
You know, that should be a felony. If you give money to both candidates in a race, it's clearly bribery. Is it no wonder our country is so screwed up these days? Or that there seems to be little difference between Ds and Rs?
Defective by design (Score:2)
Lightsquared got a $267 million dollar federal loan from the Dept of Agriculture. LightSquared's major backer is Philip Falcone, a high-level Democratic party donor and owner of Harbinger Capital, the venture fund with a $3 billion majority stake in LightSquared. And what were democrats saying about evil capitalists?
Given that Lightsquared's hardware interferes with GPS, it doesn't surprise me that their satellite wasn't designed properly either. My theory is that they designed all their hardware as chea
It's not the Sun's fault.... (Score:2)
Why should the Sun be at fault if lightsquared can't be bothered to build their satellites to the correct frequency of space/time?
Piracy is at fault. or terrorist. (Score:2)
They are going to blame it on piracy, or terrorism. I know it.
So they can make a profit off it. Blame it on the Sun and it's an act of god! (notice, i didn't capitalize god. good, it don't exist.)
Ding dong the ... (Score:2)
Not permanately out of service (Score:1)
Did anyone even read TFA?