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The 1 watt peek transmitter power is allowed by the part 15 regulations. Much higher transmit powers are possible with part 97. Source

True, you can talk to someone around the world in a ton of different ways, but can you do it point-to-point without any other infrastructure? I'm still amazed at times when I talk from my home (or car) here in Northeast Texas to someone in California, Kansas or New York. (I can just flip on the radio and work those stations with a coat hanger for an antenna.) Or can you reach another person over 500miles away off of a radio running off a 9V battery inside an Altoids tin?

For me, it's the technical side of the hobby that interests me. Sure I can go buy a radio and spend hundreds of dollars on some new commercialized antenna design, but do you really know how that thing works? How about with a radio you built on a wire dipole you measured out and cut to the precise frequency? That's where the magic is. When you understand every step along the way that makes the electrons in your mic excite electrons on the other guy's speaker. It's fascinating to actually do. Reading it in a book or online, understanding the theory is cool, but actually doing it - that's where I get my enjoyment.
(Which is probably why I abhor the guys that just go buy an HT and talk on local repeaters and act like some bastard step-child of the local police or fire department.)

I think some of the luster of the hobby was lost when the technical understanding required in the hobby went out the window. So many guys use radios they've just bought and have little or no understanding of how radio works. So often guys have no notion of how AM, SSB, FM or CW are different. I don't know many guys that can crack open a radio and pin point where the "front end" of their radio is or find the oscillator - if something just stops working on their little mass-produced HT, they just buy a new one so they can check into their weekly net.
To me, the true ham is a technically capable individual that has the skill set, equipment and ingenuity to see himself through a situation like the upper west coast has seen recently.

Li-Ion technology is horrible in terms of performance, reliability, safety, and environmental impact.

Well, if you have a 50 quid budget, that's like 500 US dollars, so just put a GPS and camera in it, and voila, you can become part of the growing and popular hobby of sending your payload into space on a baloon:

http://www.qsl.net/w5sjz/ntxballoonproject.htm
http://www.jpaerospace.com/

Plus hundreds of other links . . .

> Once you get to microwaves they act even more
> like light. They need a line of sight and are
> easy to block.

High microwaves, maybe. Amateur radio contesters have been using troposcatter for long haul contacts for decades at frequencies up to 24GHz. For an explanation of troposcatter: http://www.qsl.net/oz1rh/troposcatter99/troposcatt er99.htm Some communications records held by hams: http://www.nzart.org.nz/nzart/vhf/world_dx_records 2006.html

The point isn't to pick a nit, only to note that there are reliable mechanisms that can be used for reliable long haul communications at microwave frequencies. I'm not personally familiar with the attenuation of the atmosphere at 1THz and up; perhaps if we generate 100 watts at 1THz we can use tropo there too...

The maximum power for the 2.4GHz 802.11x is 100mW.

Here is my citation, right out of the FCC regulations, 15.247. (And here it is on the FCC site itself.) :

Sec. 15.247 Omni-Directional Antennas (b) The maximum peak output power of the intentional radiator shall not exceed the following: (1) For frequency hopping systems operating in the 2400-2483.5 MHz or 5725-5850 MHz band and for all direct sequence systems: 1 watt.

For the 2.4 GHz band, for point to point use, you can use a higher gain (more directional) antennna, but you have to reduce your power by 1 dB for each 3 dB of gain your antenna has over 6 dBi. For the 5.8 GHz band, you can use higher gain antennas with no power reduction for point to point connections.

I see how Cisco's documentation says 100 mW, but I'm not sure what that's about, because that's not what the FCC says. Perhaps they're referring to other countries -- I think the limit is now 100 mW in much (all?) of Europe now, for example. Perhaps that's what Cisco is referring to -- they want to make gear that can be sold outside of the US as well.)

Your antenna gain analogy took a few too many liberties. You really can't compare a dipole to an incandescent bulb, and a high gain antenna to a more efficient florescent bulb. In both cases, a good antenna is pretty close to 100% efficient for transmitting, low or high gain. The difference is that the high gain antenna sends most of the signal in one direction, and a low gain antenna (like a dipole, but a dipole does have 3 dBi of gain) sends it all over the place. A 100 watt spotlight vs. a 100 watt bare bulb is a much better analogy -- both emit the same amount of light (assuming similar efficiencies) but the spotlight sends it mostly in one direction, and the bare bulb sends it in all directions. As for which is better, it depends on what you need -- high gain antennas are not automatically better than low gain ones.

As long as you do not combine and modify equipment to operate above regulation, it's legal. That's why you can buy higher dBm antennas in Walmart, they're designed to stay within spec.

Typically those antennas are certifed with certain gear. See here.

Actually, if you are a licensed amateur radio operator, you can already use 1500 Watts on 802.11G :-D See: http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/wireless/alloca tions.html . So everyone should go out and get an amateur license.....

1. Use the best FM radio you have. In most cases, this is your car radio. AM/MW doesn't work.
2. Find the most open frequency possible. It's best if you can find a frequency where you hear only noise, but meteor-reflected signals can override weak stations, so don't give up if you can't find a completely open spot. In the U.S., be careful that you don't use an "open" frequency that's right next to a strong local station. It might not actually be open.
3. Listen!.

Yep: Homebrew RF Test Equipment and Software.

They'd save themselves a lot of time & money, if they just asked the DND to let them research the makeup of self-healing metal found in Roswell

"I happened to notice when I put that piece of foil in that box, and the damn thing just started unfolding and just flattened out. Then I got to playing with it. I'd fold it, crease it, lay it down and it'd unfold. It's kinda wierd. I couldn't tear it. The color was in between tinfoil and lead foil, about the thickness of lead foil."

From: http://www.qsl.net/w5www/roswell.html
(about 1/2 way down - use CTRL+F)

Adeptus

Until the tsunamis get ahold of these.

Good detective work. This story dates back to the 1880's. Try using Google sometime.
http://www.qsl.net/w5www/marfa.html
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/article s/MM/lxm1.html

So, it's like an episode of Scooby-Doo basically, everyone knows the lights are cars but the local area has used it as sort of fun way of attracting tourists and they even have a festival around the event. See http://www.qsl.net/w5www/marfa.html . So, it's kind of sad that these students went to this amount of trouble to explain away the lights.

I think it's interesting that the local legend has it that the lights have been there before cars and that you hear a tuning fork sound in one ear. Obviously these little details have been added to add the little bit of doubt to keep the charade going and to draw some more money into town.

It's a fun thing... let it go, as I'm sure the people down there will not be accepting of even a scientific study like this.

>For example, if I can only get 50% of the way to the Shannon limit using hardware in a real-world environment, could I boost that number by ignoring symbols that are indistinguishable and just let error correction (like reed-solomon) take care of the missing parts?

Yes, it's called "coding gain" and it can be measured in dB. If you want to get the results you would have had with twice as much signal to noise ratio, you need 10*log(2)=3dB coding gain. Unfortunately, putting in forward error correction reduces the data rate or increases the bandwidth, so you need to make sure you're coming out ahead.

If you're interested in experimenting with these topics, try reading about ham radio digital modes for HF (3-30Mhz). The cost of entry is low, and with open source software such as gMFSK it's possible to do your own experimentation. You might start with this historic article that started a new set of experimentation on a phase-shift keying modulation scheme called PSK31, which packs all the power into a tiny 31Hz wide bandwidth. You can read a less technical description, or read about other modulation techniques using multiple carriers (MFSK, Olivia, which uses Walsh functions for FEC and can be copyable with low power in noisy conditions).

For a long overview of HF digital mode performance in practical circumstances, see this paper from the Radio Society of Great Britain.

There's also plenty going on in UHF as this 900 Mhz work is doing, but it's a little harder to experiment there, but if you are already comfortable building 802.11 equipment and have the skills necessary there, there's plenty to do. Some hams recently conducted Earth-Moon-Earth bounce communcations using 47GHz (which I heard one of the 24GHz pioneers say would never happen!).

And at the other end of the spectrum, US, Australian, and European hams are experimenting with LF in the 137KHz region (under special license in the US) and have made super-slow communications across the oceans. There are challenges here as well, and the data rates are extremely low, not unlike the 76KHz signal that we used to send to our nuclear submarines underwater, which I think is roughly one bit (a repeated "don't-blow-it-up don't-blow-it-up don't-blow-it-up...).

Then Mr. Gates, how do you explain even a field as subdued and quant-- Amaeture Radio, is able to create tons of software

http://www.qsl.net/kf8gr/linsoft.html

for their community and the public.

And they do this by incorporating it into a mainstream Linux product, Knoppix

http://hamshack-hack.sourceforge.net/

which is a Live CD.

You can also see here, William, http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/doc/exploring -gnuradio.html

how an amazzzing project is allowing people to program their computers to tune into any frequencies on the radio spectrum WITHOUT the use of a radio, but by using OSS type software only!!

These are just some of the examples of what the OSS community can and HAS done, with only one of the smaller more obscure industries on the earth..

Which begs the question, just how much MORE is going on, BillyBouy, than your MicroFud article is attemping to preach. :)

The article mentions the Emergency Communications Response Vehicles (ECRV) and as someone who has been trained how to operate the systems and vehicle, lemme tell ya, it rocks.

The Excursions were donated by Ford and the labor unions and all the equipment was donated by the manufactures, which means no money donated to the Red Cross via the website or phone bank was used.

The operation is really simple. Pull up to any location that needs external communications, point the dish (all 9 ECRV's and stand alone sat systems share 1 T1's worth a bandwidth - although I'm sure more has been allocated during this disaster). Each ECRV has 10 VoIP phones and 10 laptops with 2 WAPs available to deploy (one is permanently mounted in the truck, the other can be run into a building).

There is also a JPS ACU-1000 cross-connect machine installed that ties all the amateur, FEMA and Red Cross radios together (HF, low band, VHF and UHF are all covered).

Here's some more info on the truck (be kind, they have no idea you're coming).

Once you get some idea of when the sat will be overhead, you can start tuning around the transmit frequency. You have to keep the squelch open, and it helps to have a continuous tuning receiver because it is easier to adjust for doppler shift. I wouldn't think the NASA communications between the ISS and ground control is open for the general public (looks like the ground control systems are not easily heard by a scanner anyway), but the HAM stuff is all just narrowband FM. Good luck.

(editted for brevity)

Now if you want to see a really cool portable station, check this out.... I e-mailed ... to let him know how cool I thought this was. He replied it was photos of a guy he had known back in the 50's. The trailer behind the car is a generator to power all the tube equipment. He was running full power out of the car, 2,000 watts in those days. The antenna was on a pneumatic mast that pushed up to 30 feet. The guy had added extra leafs to the springs to support all the gear in the back of the car. How cool is that?

Hmm....yes, there are always bad apples but check out:

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/06/24/2/

http://www.southgatearc.org/articles/vu2rbi/andama n_nicobar_1.htm

http://www.qsl.net/trarc/floyd2.html

http://www.skywarn.org/

http://www.severe-weather.org/

GOOD ham groups are great volunteers and eyes and ears for law enforcement, American Red Cross and other agencies. Emergecny Communcations provided by hams is NOT just a PR illusion. It's real.

I wish it was that easy. It's pretty hard to find a moving target with a little pocket device that gives signal strength. A better solution would be to buy a nice receiver that can process signal direction (like a newer ICOM or Uniden). Of course you'd still have to fire up the laptop to figure out what channel the SSID you're chasing is on.
Ham's have these (find the transmitting guy) things all the time. They call them foxhunts. The best anecdote I remember is one year the guy transmitting was an elderly man fishing off a bridge. He was using the fishing poll as the antenna. Nobody wanted to disturb him.
- Cary
--Fairfax Underground: Where Fairfax County comes out to play

The least among these is that the ionosphere somehow regains and replenishes itself with charged particles.

The "somehow" is, IIRC, primarily ultraviolet light which can break the bonds between between atoms in O2, N2, etc. As long as you continue to have sunlight and O2/N2, you will have an ionosphere.

The worst is that a "leak" in the ionosphere leads to a complete destruction of the radiation-blocking area that keeps us alive.

SNGH (Simply Not Going to Happen). See above.

For a basic look at the ionoshere, take a look at http://www.qsl.net/ki0eg/propagation/propprimer.ht ml for a basic overview of the ionosphere as it relates to communications.

Whoops - I screwed up the link... One more time :).

http://www.qsl.net/yo5ofh/others/how_many_hams.htm

You don't have to believe me. However, it was a *cover article* for QST magazine in the late '90's.

I don't have that issue of QST, and I can't find the article online, so I can't say what exactly is in it. I don't doubt that QSOs can be made on a dummy load -- no matter what you do, there's going to be some leakage. What I really doubt is that he worked six continents with this antenna.

Ahh, found it. This link tells the story as you've heard it. I still have my doubts -- I'll bet the feed lines, coax and balun notwithstanding -- did more of the radiating and receiving than the bulb did itself.

Were the bulb screwed directly into the antenna socket of the radio I'd be a lot more convinced.

There are still quite a few hams who homebrew there own radio equipment.

Here is a good site about some hams who homebrew their own wireless LAN hardware, antennas, amplifiers and everything. They also document lots of other neat projects, like cellphone-to-ham converters and the van Eck stuff.

They even have open source microwave path analysis CGI utilities.

Yesterday I talked to Paul Budanov at Akademik Vernadsky Station on Galindez Island in Antarctica. Paul is there for the year, and is an amateur radio operator in addition to his scientific duties. I was using 25 Watts from my house, but I heard a friend talk to to Paul from his bicycle in Redding, California.

I always love BG Micro's weird catalog. Don't let the yellow background throw you, it's a mimic of the colored paper they print the dead-tree version on. It's significantly less annoying in that form. Don't count on them for production quantities unless they say so, but some of the small lots of surplus stuff are super cool.

American Science and Surplus, formerly known as Jerryco carries a broader spectrum of stuff, including plastic replicas of human organs, glow-in-the-dark everything, millitary surplus and yes, a variety of electrical and electronic weirdness. If the Edmund Scientific catalog is too highbrow for you, Jerryco is sure to amuse.

There are some hardware hackers over at Green Bay Professional Packet Radio whose projects you might enjoy.

I'm also going to suggest del.icio.us as a good way to collectively manage bookmarks like these. Just go play with it.

I live directly across the lake from Toronto. Buffalo 45 miles south, Rochester 75 miles east. But New York City is 300 miles southeast and certainly not within line of sight. KD4SAI's VHF/UHF Line of Sight Calculator

Your idea of using surplus is only good is you have whatever said surplus already laying around. I don't happen to have any of the old parts you mention (gameboys, zip drives, scanner, etc.) lying around, or you have a large enough surplus supply (electronic goldmine, ocean state electronics, ebay but prices get whacked quickly) on the market.

Experimenting with cheap 8-bit microcontrollers such as Microchip's PIC or Atmel's AVRs is quite cheap, and typically all you need is a chip and one (really cheap if want) device - a programmer to transfer the (binary/hex) programs from your PC to the microcontroller's flash memory.

You will quickly outgrow Radio Shack unless you need a part right now and you don't have the right one in your own stock pile, often referred to as a "junk box" regardless of actual physical size. You should be getting the free catalogs (or CDs) from Digikey, Mouser, Newark, and Jameco. These all have usable online ordering systems and reasonable minimum order & shipping fees. UK geeks check G3SEK's UK Component and Tool Suppliers web page.

Many useful projects can be made for less than $100 even if you need to buy all the parts. After you build a collection of common parts (common resistors, capacitor values, PIC 16F628, AVR AT90S2313, red & green LEDs, 2N2222A, 2N3904, 2N3906, 2N4401, 2N4403, 2N4416, 4N25, 1N4148, 1N4001, 1N4007, etc.) and tools this cost will go down.

The real question is do they assume a general audience or do they assume a "knowledgeable user" is their target market? If the stuff is purely "cookbook" & kit building (AmQRP kits as an example) with little or no encouragement (and knowledge transfer) for the average Make reader to explore and expand it won't survive IMHO. BTW AmQRP kits on their own are pretty limited at expanding your knowledge, but combined with the AMQRP Homebrewer magazine and Conference Proceedings they do teach a lot. There is also the QRP-L mailing list which is very useful for technical questions (and has a rich archive)

I think it should be what Nuts and Volts magazine tries to be, but without the "legacy" dead weight and filler articles. A gentler introduction to most of the Circuit Cellar type stuff.

If people think this will recreate the Homebrew Computer Club, I expect they will be mistaken, but if you expect it to awaken the curiousity and encourage youth to learn about electronics, then I hope it is a brillent success.

In the end, I am curious and not quite sure what to expect of Make. It could be really lame if all it ends up being is computer geeks pretending to be electronic engineers (or electronic hobbyists). I hope that at least 10% of it expands what I know, which is more than I can say of books like Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks (O'Reilly) and Hardware Hacking: Have Fun While Voiding Your Warranty. I am more interested in reading stuff like Hacking the Xbox (An Introduction to Reverse Engineering) by Andrew "bunnie" Huang which starts simple but gets into FPGAs and reverse engineering.

(Bite my maple-sugared ass?)

• http://www.n1bug.net/tech/laser/alc_wa6ejo.html
• http://www.messaggeri.it/xoptoelettronica.htm
• http://www.hut.fi/Misc/Electronics/circuits/laserl ink.html
• http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/laserdps.htm
• http://www.qsl.net/wb9ajz/laser/data/cheepo.txt
• http://www.clansullivan.com/joseph/projects/laser. htm

Being a former Cinci resident, I was a bit curious about these guys, and google-stalked them . . .

Looks like they all went to St. Xavier, a pretty well respected (in both athletics and academics) prep school.

Here's a picture of Ben when he was a junior, winning a theater award for sound production.

Meng's got a website here that's a bit outdated, but considering the projects were from his junior year in high school, rather impressive. Seems he was a HAM radio guy.

Running out of time, the first link I found for Justin Rigling was this link. One more connection to the guy, since I use to work for AK Steel. The little blurb about the scholarship does make him sound like a stereotypical geek (JETS, Science Olympiad, Robotics, Math, and Photography clubs, etc etc). A bit of a contrast to his sister. Not exactly what you'd expect from the son of a steelmaker . . .

Okay, enough being a stalker . . .

You are right for the lower frequency bands, but once you start moving up above 1000 MHz then EME is possible with much more modest systems. For example on 23cms (1296 MHz) you can work CW EME with 100W and a 3m dish, if you are peering with someone like HB9Q or HB9BBD then you can use a lot less than that.

The introduction of digital modes like JT44 and JT65 (using FFTs, correlation and strong FEC) has made a big difference and has made EME available for people with much smaller gardens and purses. Unfortunately there are a number of EME operators who insist that a digital mode somehow isn't "real" or that the contacts count for less. This is a shame and gives newcomers the wrong impression of a fine part of the hobby.

I intend to get active soon with a marginal system for CW work but more than adequate for the more advanced data modes.

For info about more reasonable microwave EME systems see G4CCH and N2UO

How Far is a Parsec?
Check out google if you need more convincing.

People can try to prove a lot of things. People can also be wrong.

Line of Sight Calculator

At 5,000 feet, your line of sight to a ground-based station is 100 miles.

Somebody, somewhere does periodic surveys that let chart makers tweak the declination lines on aerial navigation charts. Even if the polarity flip takes only 1000 years, the low estimate, the rate of change should be small enough that the charts could be kept up to date.

Low altitude, dead reckoning type navigation is lots of fun. If you aren't careful, local geological features can throw off your compass readings. Large ore deposits are part of the problem, and sometimes the anomalies have no attribution.

I wonder if the earth's gross magnetic field overrides these micro-local anomalies to any degree or if the vectors of the earth's magnetic field and the field of the ore bodies, for instance, are simply summed. Will the compass deviations caused by these local bodies vary in proportion to the change in the overall magnetic field or will they "pop" out?

You can tell that I'm not much of a physicist, right? I don't think the above poster addressed this question! This page is interesting if not totally obvious to the layman.

Anyway, multiple, redundant & cross checked instruments are your friend. Even without a compas or GPS there's no excuse for a pilot to get lost.

That scene towards the end of the movie wasn't unrealistic at all. Think about it some time...amateurs maintain a world network, pretty much primitive, and low tech, yet powerful enough to not worry any government, yet be able to communicate how they want when they want, without government interference (Licensing of course...).

My personal ham site where I have a few pictures of the first and second field day I participated in. The first one, I was 17, organized the whole event in about 3 days. The second one was planned over about a month, and included more of my peers, and one mentor. Whole setup ran off of a generator, and was pretty much 100% self sufficient.

-Mikey P

• Foothill Amateur Radio Society
• Sunnyvale
• Milpitas, CA
• Fremont, CA

A bit ironic that you need a broadband connection to see the video from ARRL - isn't it.

How do you figure, shithead? Last I checked the ARRL has nothing against broadband Internet services. I have a broadband connection (as I have had for 10 years (some of those in college)) and none of them relied on BPL. Tell me, you fuckwit, how criticism and opposition to Broadband over Power-Lines is an opposition to broadband Internet access in general?

Also, as an ARRL member I can tell you that there are more younger, technology oriented hams than you might think and many of them see BPL as a bunch of crap and a nuisance.

Also, if you weren't such a trolling fuck you would realize that the ARRL has sponsered the development systems that utilize the Internet as part of their operation, like TrustedQSL (a PK based electronic QSL system). and amateur radio clubs for youth clubs that run Echolink and IRLP
Here is an example. The ARRL has funded many youth clubs like this around the nation (I am involved with one in the Northeast, and let me tell you that the equipment grants are considerable). Many of these clubs run Echolink and IRLP nodes, some with ARRL funded equipment. So much for your theory of the ARRL being anti-Internet.

I am rather ambivalent about the Code requirement now that it is so simple (5 wpm). That said, I enjoy the code, so fuck you for telling me to give it up. I agree that it is fallacious to think that the Code keeps out the riff raff on HF. I am sure even a fuckwit like yourself could get the code out of the way. It isn't a question of aptitude, but laziness, I would surmise.

You're a lazy trolling fuck.

Oh yeah, you're ugly too. Honestly, you think you're so fucking hot that you need that obnoxious picture on your site? I'd say double bag it and snap it again.

A frequency counter is a standard bit of test equipment for people who have to test radio transmitters, be they these little very low power things like garage door openers, or big TV transmitters. What a frequency counter does is that it tells you what frequency your transmitter is ACTUALLY transmitting at (not what is being claimed). There are firms that sell frequency counters and building a frequncy counter is well with in the range of someone with reasonable construction skills, such as here or here.

Now for investigating aroung what you suspect may be a transmitter, well, a portable frequency counter will tell you if your dealing with a working transmitter, and if it is transmitting, what frequency the transmitter is using. That information can then lead you other places, like who is legally allowed to transmit on the frequency you are detecting...

jammer
Seems to me that it would be pretty darn difficult to take out 5,000 of these spread out over the surface. Not to mention several hundred launched on small balloons. They could be concealed in civilian vehicles and on and on. Yes they work and no you are incorrect. As for filtering out the spurious signals, that's hogwash. Nice try anyway.

A perfect example is a laser communication system. A laser beam can be modulated and used to transmit audio. The receiver needs to collect as many photons as possible from the laser transmitter - hence the use of the fresnel lense. Signals can be bounced off clouds - I've heard of transmissions going over 60 miles!

The Amatuer Radio Laser Communications Page has a good primer that has a link to a lot of the basics. And no, you don't need a ham license - although it helps!

This is kinda like what some amateur radio operators are doing with 802.11b transverters to lower the frequency to help in non line-of-sight situations. You can even increase to frequency to evade interference issues.

Frequency Transverters for Wireless LAN Devices

2.4 GHz to 700 MHz Converter

This is kinda like what some amateur radio operators are doing with 802.11b transverters to lower the frequency to help in non line-of-sight situations. You can even increase to frequency to evade interference issues.

Frequency Transverters for Wireless LAN Devices

2.4 GHz to 700 MHz Converter

Please keep in mind that Amateurs have primary use of much of the 2.4GHz spectrum.

Primary means priority use over secondary users. 2.4GHz is loosely regulated by the FCC and has become a problem for stable communications. I have seen some 2.4GHz phones that will kill wi-fi connections everytime the phone rings...

Anyone catch the NPR piece on piracy today?

Seems to me like this, or a similar technology would be just the ticket to stop pirates from nabbing ships and their cargo.

I've been thinking that an rf transmitter tag with gps interface would work well.

I've built one based on a gps receiver, 2 meter ham radio, and the TinyTrack II Works great in my car, and with the ham radio APRS infrastructure... now how to convert to a ship in the ocean.

Don't forget that most of the calendar using world formats its dates as dd/mm/yyyy, not our American system of mm/dd/yyyy. So if you plan on writing software for use outside of the U.S., this would be a really useful piece of code to keep laying around.

Actually, most of the world is following ISO 8601 standard, which says that you should use YYYY-MM-DD instead. The ISO 8601 time format is also recommended by W3C.

Because the reverse-engineering effort needed to make it happen will yield other fruits.

I'd like to know how to add a remote display and simple button-driven UI to an iPod, for instance. My old PC-based car MP3 player is too big and clunky to fit in my current daily driver, and I'd like to come up with a way to interface its LCD and track-selection buttons to an iPod, using a microcontroller to do the dirty work rather than a whole PC. I'm about to go surf their tech notes to see if they offer any clues, even though I have no intention of running Linux on the iPod (if I can help it).

Apparently you really don't know ;)
A failing fusion reactor would not pose much more threat than a working one, since the amount of fuel is really small (grams as opposed to kilograms in a fission reactor) and the reaction would stop immediately.
The problem with fusion is that the reactor walls are irradiated with lots of neutrons, which causes them to get radioactive themselves and also would alter their mechanical properties. So youre not stuck with radiactive fuel leftovers but with radioactive reactor leftovers. What would be better in a reactor in a useful power range is to be determined yet. Oh, and because of the mechanical properties, you'll have to change them really often, like, once a year or something. There are ways to reduce this problem, with materials that react better to neutrons than others, but as far as I know, this only makes the radiation appear somewhere else.
Also, at the moment, fusion reactors are sci-fi. Yes, there are experiments that achieve fusion, but for now its a few seconds at best. And miles from break-even point, and even more miles from suistained reaction.
Generall discussion here.
Just as a footnote, do not try to build your own breeder.

These patent claims bring a (somewhat) amusing anecdote to mind. Around 1990, I was working at Dell Computer as a wet-behind-the-ears engineer, when the company announced a "patent bounty" of $1,000 per filed application. "Cool!", thought I, as I hastened to write up patent disclosures on every personal project I'd worked on for the past couple of years. (Hey, it seemed like a lot of money at the time.)

One of the disclosures I submitted was for an ungainly contraption that predated most manufacturers' earliest portable digital cameras. "PicturePerfect" was inspired by the Canon Xapshot, but, unlike the Xapshot, it had the ability to store images independently of a host computer and transmit them as data rather than raw video. It worked a lot more like a modern digital camera than anything on the market at that time.

The patent committee at Dell was unimpressed. They didn't file the patent(s) I submitted, didn't pay me $1,000... and possibly missed a chance to own a big chunk of the whole digital-photography industry.