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During Blackout, Ham Radio Shined
Mark Cantrell writes "An interesting bit on AP through Yahoo today. Seems that ham radio (which recently had a bit of backlash here on Slashdot from a few people thinking it was useless, outdated technology), really shined through during the blackouts. When the power went, ham radio operators, using battery backup power, were able to help coordinate emergency workers while the cell phone networks were overloaded. For anyone wondering why interference due to power line broadband is considered a bad thing, well, there ya go."
....Right, because when the power is out, those power lines sure generate a lot of interference.
Man, what happened to those phones you needed to crank up??
Shone! Shone! Dear God, 'shined' hasn't been used as a past tense since the 1700s!
So Timothy is a time traveller from the 1700s. That explains a lot of slashdot spelling now that I think about it
Ok, the coffee is kicking in now.
An blonde chick ran out of gas one night and a dude pulled over to offer assistance. She got in the car and noticed he had all kinds of radio equipment in the car and several antennas outside. She asked what that was all about. He explained he was a Ham radio operator and he could talk to anywhere in the world from right here in his car. She asked "Anywhere in the world?" and he assured her he could. "Even in Poland?" she asked. "Yes, even Poland." She said "Wow, my mother lives in Poland and today is her birthday. I'd do anything if I could tell her Happy Birthday." He said "You'd do anything?" She said "Yes, anything." So he pulled over on the top of a hill and pulled out his dick and said "Get with it." She grabbed ahold of it and bent over and said "Happy Birthday, Mom."
Pigeons is the answer.
....where the IP stands for Internet Pigeon)
We would have TCP/IP (
Each one would be tattooed with the appropriate packet type and given a little bag to hold a punched card of data.
You would just number your pigeons, give them their cards and let them go.
Routers would just be called "lofts" and the full message could be put together once all the pigeons had arrived by whatever route they felt was necessary.
Requesting a re-transmission of a dropped packet (damned rednecks and their shotguns) would be a hassle though.
er, I thought we liked UNIX on Slashdot. Did I not get the memo?
Oh, you meant ham radio! Nevermind...
There wasn't much powerline or RF interference during this particular event...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Perhaps, sir, you should reflect a moment longer?
Certainly, candles are nice in a number of situations -- when electricity is unavailable, when tradition is important (weddings, churches, whatever), when elctricity isn't appropriate ("OK Junior! Blow out those light bulbs on your birthday cake!" just won't work!), or for a certain sort of ambience -- even excepting the romantic candle-lit dinners the vast majority of us slashdotters will never enjoy more than once with the same person, some time in candle light is a salve for the soul when you sleep days and work nights under those harsh fluorescents in front of the CRT in the cold, windy, lab...
But the fact is that anyone can use a candle, a ham requires at least some expertise. And we don't do anything to discourage teens from lighting candles (except maybe searching their backpacks for drugs when they go to the Laser Floyd show at the planetarium) like we do to keep Hams from even trying it out.
If we want the Hams there for us Next Time, we need to make sure we've got Hams Next Time.
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
Sorry, but that sort of illiteracy's bloody annoying.
Durned upstarts.
(Speaking as someone who doesn't know any HAM operators, doesn't use HAM radios, and who's perfectly capable of taking care of myself in any short-term power outage.)