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The application for this is reading power meters and other continuous but low-bandwidth data. These generally operate in a mesh network. The devices used are generally low-cost and low-power, often in the "Part 15" section of the FCC rules for low-power devices that aren't allowed to interfere with licensed services. The problem is that some homes are too far from any other to link into the mesh, and the expense of reading those meters goes up significantly.

Signal processing theory allows you to trade bandwidth and time for range, such that a signal with a wider bandwidth or longer duration can be received over a greater distance. Hams have been doing this for decades using ultra-low-speed morse, PSK31, and other digital modes.

The achievement isn't really getting a long-range link, you can get 45 miles between mountaintops with wifi and parabolic antennas on a clear day. The achievement would be doing this for a very low installed parts cost and in unlicensed spectrum (which also reduces cost) while avoiding interference from wifi etc.

There are absolutely no gay marriages that can build a proper family.

Really? Reality is disagreeing with you.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2009-3153v1
http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx

If you can read German or Spanish, here's a couple more
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I can link some more if you like.

And Pivar's relationship to Steven Gould.

Thre is a very interesting and contrary review by another Professor, in the International Journal of Developmental Biology.

He acknowledges that the drawings are fanciful, but also emphasizes that the book does make an important point, that development of an organism is an interplay of the mechanics of an organism with the genes that direct the development and organization of tissues in of an organism.

Topologically, we are all tubes (everyone has to eat), but of course we are also more than just our skin. Can anyone who has read the book say whether he was claiming that his fanciful drawings described embryonic development, or were they presented as thought experiments?

Any kernel that may have hinted at a potentially valuable new way to look at what we know was destroyed when the author sued, though.

There are currently no less than three proposals for a standardised Mapudungun writing system

I didn't see anything about any proposals to standardize Mapudungun writing on either the wiki page or the cnn article and the wki page for Mapudungun doesn't mention anything about standardizing the written language. Could you provide me with a link on this? In another part of the thread I said how I support MS in releasing a Mapudungun version of Windows but if there are three proposals for a standard then I need to amend my statement. The Mapuche Indians themselves need to agree on a standard themself and not have anyone else force feed them.

think of the ongoing criticism the standardisation of Catalan has provoked, and the extreme reaction from Valencian speakers

Speaking of the languages of Spain, imagine what the reaction to the use of the Basque language Euskara would be.

Remember all the excitement over PSK31? It was the first taste of what people could do with a sound card and the processing power of even a crummy computer. I first ran it on a Pentium 233MMX (my 486/66 couldn't quite do it). With Linux, of course. :-)

People have now built stripped down little radios that plug in to a sound card and use software to make all sorts of interesting noises.

I'd be surprised if even one ham in 1000 could tell you exactly how PSK31 works, but that's other matter...

...laura

I have been around Hams for twenty years and the tech has usually stayed interesting. During the late 80's packet radio was starting out. When most people were calling bbs's using modems, hams were sending wireless data. Check out Phil Karn's site. He has a lot of wireless experience as both ham and engineer responsible for much of the CDMA standard.

Want to start with some small radios and learn more about electronics at the same time? There are many interesting kits around if you look. You certainly don't have to spend huge amounts on radios to get started. I paid ~$120US for my VX-2R when they were first introduced. It makes a great general purpose scanner too.

Newer modes like PSK31 are incredibly efficient. A couple of watts of power and 31Hz of radio spectrum and you have error free world wide digital communication at 50wpm. It is difficult to audibly detect the signal while listening, even when you know it is there.

2. Place encrypted file PlansToBlowUpParliament.zip on AC's computer.

Going further, make it a 1-byte file and claim it's super-compressed using an unlimited compression algorithm:

The compressed output file created by DataFiles/16 can be used as the input file to subsequent executions of the program. This feature of the utility is known as recursive or iterative compression, and will enable you to compress your data files to a tiny fraction of the original size. In fact, virtually any amount of computer data can be compressed to under 1024 bytes using DataFiles/16 to compress its own output files muliple times. Then, by repeating in reverse the steps taken to perform the recusive compression, all original data can be decompressed to its original form without the loss of a single bit.

gzip and zip are completely different things. gzip compresses a stream (and does a much better job than compress, which it has replaced entirely. However, gzip is slowly being replazed by bzip2 nowadays), whereas zip is an archive format that can store individual (usually compressed) files. The huge advantage of zip over compressed tar archives comes from the fact that you have random access, i.e. can extract a single file from a potentially HUGE archive).

GIF had patent issues with the LZW-Algorithm it used. The patent has expired recently, but the GIF issue is completely unrelated to ZIP (ZIP uses LZ77).

About the patent issue: There are a dozen or so zip-related patents, but they're all highly specific and shouldn't stop anyone from using zip, or even writing a zip utility. See also Patents on data compression algorithms.

Java "jar" files and Mozilla "xpi"s. So whatever there might have been is presumably a non-issue now.

They will use a system called Demotek that is made by four basque companys (Ibermatica, Ikusi, Hunolt and Euskaltel), and uses a really curious way for voting, half analogic, half digital. The voter uses a normal paper for voting, but the ballot paper has a bar code that is read when it is inserted in the ballot box.

The results are available in the moment that the ballot boxes are closed. But, they are not official until the ballot papers are counted.

- It's a easy way because there are no skills necesary (it's not necesary to know using a computer). My grandmother can use it.

-It's a safe way, because there are always the ballot papers for testing if the system was ok and no one has cheat the results.

- It's a fast way for knowing the results. No more Florida like recounting needed.

Sorry for my awfull english

Marcus Ramius

PSK31 is not better then packet. It is different. It was designed to get 50wpm in 31Hz. The authors don't consider PSK31 a digital mode. Think of PSK31 as an alternative to morse.

From the official psk31 web page there is a link to psk31 software. At the bottom of that page it mentions a couple of harward implementations of PSK31. I would think that you could hook one of these up to any type of serial terminal (say Dos + telix) and you would be good to go. As mentioned before some old laptops make good serial terminals. Be carefull though. Some of those old laptops have awfull battery times. And just about any laptop that is over 5 years old will need a new battery. There is probably a battery shop in your yellow pages that will rebuild batteries for you.

From the official psk31 web page there is a link to psk31 software. At the bottom of that page it mentions a couple of harward implementations of PSK31. I would think that you could hook one of these up to any type of serial terminal (say Dos + telix) and you would be good to go. As mentioned before some old laptops make good serial terminals. Be carefull though. Some of those old laptops have awfull battery times. And just about any laptop that is over 5 years old will need a new battery. There is probably a battery shop in your yellow pages that will rebuild batteries for you.

and until fractal compression makes its way into media file formats, all this jazz is just that... empty words.

Fractal compression as we know it is also just empty words. Michael Barnsley's patented fractal transform is an implicit vector quantization approach that scales each 4x4 pixel block from an 8x8 pixel block elsewhere in the picture and adds a constant RGB offset (Read More from the comp.compression FAQ). It has been shown not to be that much stronger than JPEG, especially the new JPEG 2000 that supports wavelet decomposition (no more blocking artifacts).

FUD their claims may be, but if Napster is victorious, we'll see even more massive consolidation of content/distribution and hardware/software.

We'll be awash in memory sticks, minidiscs, and other check-in-but-don't-check-out formats. There are only four big record companies now, and they will all be owned by hardware manufacturers soon enough.

Matsushita/AOL/Time-Warner... that's got a nice ring to it.

The revenue from this tax wouldn't go to the creators of CDs, it would go to music publishers who claim to be losing sales.