Not sure if this is relevant but here goes: I was thinking about my early days in electronics, and learning craftsman skills (or learning how not to?). I built a shortwave receiver kit from Radio Shack using one of those 200W Weller soldering guns (yes, shaped like a pistol, big and fat, and not temperature controlled). Solder points were large blobs but the radio seemed to work ok. Easily pick up WWV and also listen to ship-to-shore radiotelephone in the 2MHz bands from stinking rich families in their boats near San Pedro, I was in Northern Calif. Radio was a "desk set" but power for it was 12VDC. I thought this would be cool to have a HF receiver in the car. My mom let me mount one of those long CB whips on the bumper, but had no idea how good or bad because in those days spark plugs and points were immensely noisy so all I heard was static on the radio. Overall I had fun learning.
Last time I did was in 20th century. First wire everything with blue wires. Fixes are then done with red wires. Now what can be ironic is when all is said and done after thorough troubleshooting/correcting mistakes, is the final product has 90% red wires.
unlike Mars is always 20 years away (and has been for past 50 years!). My usual gripe of everyone from Musk to NASA to Zubrin love to talk about Mars because they can always defer building a transfer stage and lander to some other smucks 20 years into the future. Now if we talk about the Moon then gotta start building something now. Now this rover is a small mission but at least puts some focus on the nearest celestial body.
One of you posted a comment that back in 1970s and 80s NASA's plan was to build an infrastructure of LEO, stations, and lunar missions. But in later 1980s the "Mars Underground" hijacked the space policy and pushed to bypass all that and go directly to Mars. And we've been stuck in LEO ever since!
Speaking of reporting, I found this scrap in my various files of commentary from back in usenet days:
>This AP article has been making the rounds. It's rather shoddy journalism in that it takes the words of the spammers completely at face value.
I've been a journalist for over 8 years. I see a lot of misconceptions in the two lines of your post. Maybe it's the TV's fault. Maybe you've grown used to think about Dan Rather or Barbara Walters as journalists. They're not. They're celebrities. A journalist walks his beat, watches, listens and reports the facts. Just the facts.
I've interviewed murderers and rapists. I've also interviewed way more politicians than you'd ever care to meet. And when I come back to my desk and write the story, I simply report what they said. Nobody cares what I think about it; my job is to tell you what they said.
So, taking their words at face value is NOT shoddy journalism. It's real journalism. You, the reader, should decide what to make of their words.
Shoddy journalism would be to assume spammers lie, and mocking them, distorting what they said. It would be a lot more gratifying for antispammers, yes, but it would also be the worst kind of journalism: A distortion of the truth.
--- end quote ---
"First, the reporters later told us that they had never had such good access to scientists, and it made their jobs easier and their reports better. Second, this set up gave our communications team more time to solve problems, plan and react to news, and maintain stability at the center – instead of racing to fill reporter requests."
... they called it the Hitler Channel. No mater what series, if you could tie something to Hitler or the Nazis then it was a big plus.
Godwin's Law Channel might be a better name but doesn't roll off the tongue that well. Like the Military Channel, it's all WWII. Same footage over and over but with color added and better sound effects. Speaking of footage, all combat footage even most of Vietnam War footage is all silent. None of those cameras had sound.
Korean War is the Forgotten War, Vietnam War is still too sensitive to talk about (many people are still "fighting it"), and Iraqi 1 and 2 Wars are mysteriously locked away even considering there is tons of footage from various video sources (there is a lot of clips from camcorders and phones on youtube but all disorganized).
Next well covered war of combat footage is the Civil War, obviously much of it is re-creation.
I guarantee no phone service ever ran on the entire VHF or UHF band.
It didn't. There were specific frequencies allocated to IMTS mobile telephone service. These are in same 150-162 MHz 9and 450-470) band along with police, fire, business, etc. These channels used same bandwidth as a typical 2-way frequency (and 2-way radio has superior audio quality over cellphone). But the IMTS was full duplex (used both xmit and rec freq at same time) and there was not many frequencies available so only the stinking rich got phones in their cars (and many of them had to wait on a very long list to get subscription). See the old TV series Banachek (sp?) where George Peppard sports a car phone in his limo (motivated many techies to get their ham license and build their own car phone, usually a repeater that is phone patched). However doing full duplex with 1960s/70s electronics and industrial quality, these IMTS phones were big, heavy, and scary. Main radio is in trunk, control head was pretty good size as it had regular Model 500 handset and dial (I have one of these control heads, it has a real bell inside). Here we see a briefcase model, if you had one of these babies, then you were The Man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
One thing certain there is no way to plant malware in one of these things.
This model highly unlikely to have malware, though highly unlikely to connect to any towers. It is only $80 with buy-it-now. "These phones both have Very low used air time minutes on there life time counters."
http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Old-...
Following up on FEMA, it's common to hear about how money is distributed and how much, i.e. many never got fully reimbursed from damage by hurricane Sandy.
It seems to me with all the problems and challenges this country faces, top men put war on terrorism which includes need for extensive surveillance the top priority over other issues. Even if govt were better organized in disaster relief, they still would not able help everyone (that's why it is a disaster) but would not be constantly ridiculed for poor performance. However there were some officials saw impending disaster so they forward based a lot of resources closer to Louisiana knowing the state will be calling for help once the winds die down. However, they were a minority because most were focused on terrorist attacks.
Regarding FEMA, I was talking with a emergency manager for a city, he said FEMA does not have response teams like state, county, or city OES departments. FEMA is mostly a fund provider and insurance for disasters.
I have come across articles that do use "non-interlaced" when discussing progressive. It gets confusing. Might as well say non-progressive but that might imply something besides what those electrons and photons do.
I was thinking back in the bad ol' days of TQM (1990s) one of the terms kicked around was "empowerment" but that was subject to interpretation. Does that mean a raise? Delegating? A bankrupt term used in TQM meetings by companies that had enough excess to send employees to useless seminars before they are "downsized" (ugh, another terrible buzzword).
And another term is "high tech" which I think is bankrupt because it is mostly a circular definition (a high tech product is designed and made for high tech use by high tech companies). Best definition I heard is the term was coined by those VC people on Sand Hill Rd. in Palo Alto because it sounds cool, enabling them to get money via emotions instead of facts. It is not limited to microelectronics as there is "high tech" concrete with unique properties required for particular structures.
A few years back the city implemented huge cuts to it's police department in salary and benefits. [ snip ] Myself, and many other residents welcome any effort to clean up the streets.
It seems to me focus on surveillance technology is mostly driven by "war on terrorism" and they are trying to apply same tools to general crime in civilian communities (i.e. another focus is military hardware for police depts). Yes, I'm not happy with huge cuts in city services but yet the city is bringing in revenue like it used to (even though few miles away are companies with billions of cash in reserves). For those outside SJ, note that SJ police no longer respond to burglaries or car break-ins (maybe unless it is an in progress call) because of lack in manpower. I really don't know how to make up for budget shortfalls, especially schools and other community programs have taken a hit (also they no longer have CERT classes). I don't think general population will benefit much from cameras and tanks.
Far as license plate scanners, I see these same as surveillance cameras in downtown areas. Main benefit is to the companies selling the equipment, and they will continue to make money with constant software license renewals and upgrades. There is also cost of dealing with all this data. Regarding cameras, what about able to video taggers spray painting graffiti? I am curious how they do that on freeway overpasses which look more treacherous than slopes on Mt Everest.
Not sure how this fits into the big picture of this discussion, a quote from someone who attended college in 1960s. Hope his contributions are not getting hoarded:
"Back then you didn't have to get an A+ high school grade average and perfect SAT scores to be admitted to a top notch public university. Even luckier, tuition was dirt cheap. I got a world class engineering education nearly free. I remember that good fortune, am eternally grateful and contribute regularly as an alumni. "
desire to keep Russian rocket scientists building rockets for Russia, not ICBMs for North Korea or Iran.
Finally someone posts the real driver behind ISS. Before they spent eight years working on Freedom but not flight hardware was ever built (there were lots of engineering hardware items built to demonstrate various things that are currently in use on ISS). Every year after Reagan started the Space Station, congressional funding support became less and less. Then USSR collapsed, congress balked at the $400B SEI, a new NASA Administrator, and a lot of Russian aerospace engineers out of work. In 1992 and Space Station survived by only one vote, unless a new strategy is done, it will not survive 1993.
Former Rep. Louis Stokes, the Man Who Saved Space Travel, Dies At Age 90
By a narrow vote, Stokes gave a small margin in approving funding for new reusable spacecraft. Conceived in early 1970s to make spaceflight routine as air travel, Space Shuttle later was more expensive and required lengthy refurbishment between missions. Many argued if we continued with same Shuttle, we would be stuck in low earth orbit way into the 21st century. The new shuttle design takes into account of many lessons learned of propulsion, thermal protection, and other systems that and should routinely be reused. NASA Administrator Beggs added, "Objective is to explore and expand scientific and economic sphere beyond earth orbit, not repeat what Gargarin and Glenn did 25 years ago."
It seems this obsession with WWII and how often is there air-to-air combat? Vietnam War era F4 was the last Ace Maker (barely). Probably consider the mission of the Air Force: Put a bomb on target, recon, transport, ground forces support (oh wait, they want to dump the A10). For bombing missions be able to get in and out and not be spotted is effective i.e. F117. It is hard to spot but Lord help the pilot if he is (again how often does that occur?). Except for transport, not much a C17 can do when attacked by another plane but how often does that occur? Looking at the big picture as almost all US warfare is focused on terrorism but now faced with ISIS that doesn't have an air force but have been quite successful without using one. Not sure what a F35 can do about that.
I remember that was their signature describing fidelity of audio quality of their phones. Now Sprint has an abstract emblem based on multiple snapshots of a pin impacting a ground surface. But now nobody understands what that artwork is except old timers from the 20th century.
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure if this is relevant but here goes: I was thinking about my early days in electronics, and learning craftsman skills (or learning how not to?). I built a shortwave receiver kit from Radio Shack using one of those 200W Weller soldering guns (yes, shaped like a pistol, big and fat, and not temperature controlled). Solder points were large blobs but the radio seemed to work ok. Easily pick up WWV and also listen to ship-to-shore radiotelephone in the 2MHz bands from stinking rich families in their boats near San Pedro, I was in Northern Calif. Radio was a "desk set" but power for it was 12VDC. I thought this would be cool to have a HF receiver in the car. My mom let me mount one of those long CB whips on the bumper, but had no idea how good or bad because in those days spark plugs and points were immensely noisy so all I heard was static on the radio. Overall I had fun learning.
Last time I did was in 20th century. First wire everything with blue wires. Fixes are then done with red wires. Now what can be ironic is when all is said and done after thorough troubleshooting/correcting mistakes, is the final product has 90% red wires.
Just change the fingerprints on all accounts and you're safe again.
That is a totally ridiculous solution and yet it seems so reasonable (I'm sure someone will say, "it is the only way to be sure.")
With impending guvmint shutdown sometimes I wonder who's minding the store? There's gotta be a "In Soviet Russia" answer to this one.
unlike Mars is always 20 years away (and has been for past 50 years!). My usual gripe of everyone from Musk to NASA to Zubrin love to talk about Mars because they can always defer building a transfer stage and lander to some other smucks 20 years into the future. Now if we talk about the Moon then gotta start building something now. Now this rover is a small mission but at least puts some focus on the nearest celestial body.
One of you posted a comment that back in 1970s and 80s NASA's plan was to build an infrastructure of LEO, stations, and lunar missions. But in later 1980s the "Mars Underground" hijacked the space policy and pushed to bypass all that and go directly to Mars. And we've been stuck in LEO ever since!
Speaking of reporting, I found this scrap in my various files of commentary from back in usenet days:
>This AP article has been making the rounds. It's rather shoddy journalism in that it takes the words of the spammers completely at face value.
I've been a journalist for over 8 years. I see a lot of misconceptions in the two lines of your post. Maybe it's the TV's fault. Maybe you've grown used to think about Dan Rather or Barbara Walters as journalists. They're not. They're celebrities. A journalist walks his beat, watches, listens and reports the facts. Just the facts.
I've interviewed murderers and rapists. I've also interviewed way more politicians than you'd ever care to meet. And when I come back to my desk and write the story, I simply report what they said. Nobody cares what I think about it; my job is to tell you what they said.
So, taking their words at face value is NOT shoddy journalism. It's real journalism. You, the reader, should decide what to make of their words.
Shoddy journalism would be to assume spammers lie, and mocking them, distorting what they said. It would be a lot more gratifying for antispammers, yes, but it would also be the worst kind of journalism: A distortion of the truth.
--- end quote ---
"First, the reporters later told us that they had never had such good access to scientists, and it made their jobs easier and their reports better. Second, this set up gave our communications team more time to solve problems, plan and react to news, and maintain stability at the center – instead of racing to fill reporter requests."
maybe Joan Collins only wanted to do one ST episode, otherwise could have been an interesting alt ST universe. Dynasty Diva of sorts?
... they called it the Hitler Channel. No mater what series, if you could tie something to Hitler or the Nazis then it was a big plus.
Godwin's Law Channel might be a better name but doesn't roll off the tongue that well. Like the Military Channel, it's all WWII. Same footage over and over but with color added and better sound effects. Speaking of footage, all combat footage even most of Vietnam War footage is all silent. None of those cameras had sound.
Korean War is the Forgotten War, Vietnam War is still too sensitive to talk about (many people are still "fighting it"), and Iraqi 1 and 2 Wars are mysteriously locked away even considering there is tons of footage from various video sources (there is a lot of clips from camcorders and phones on youtube but all disorganized).
Next well covered war of combat footage is the Civil War, obviously much of it is re-creation.
I guarantee no phone service ever ran on the entire VHF or UHF band.
It didn't. There were specific frequencies allocated to IMTS mobile telephone service. These are in same 150-162 MHz 9and 450-470) band along with police, fire, business, etc. These channels used same bandwidth as a typical 2-way frequency (and 2-way radio has superior audio quality over cellphone). But the IMTS was full duplex (used both xmit and rec freq at same time) and there was not many frequencies available so only the stinking rich got phones in their cars (and many of them had to wait on a very long list to get subscription). See the old TV series Banachek (sp?) where George Peppard sports a car phone in his limo (motivated many techies to get their ham license and build their own car phone, usually a repeater that is phone patched). However doing full duplex with 1960s/70s electronics and industrial quality, these IMTS phones were big, heavy, and scary. Main radio is in trunk, control head was pretty good size as it had regular Model 500 handset and dial (I have one of these control heads, it has a real bell inside). Here we see a briefcase model, if you had one of these babies, then you were The Man. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
One thing certain there is no way to plant malware in one of these things.
This model highly unlikely to have malware, though highly unlikely to connect to any towers. It is only $80 with buy-it-now. "These phones both have Very low used air time minutes on there life time counters." http://www.ebay.com/itm/2-Old-...
or is something like that be ancient like IMTS that operated on VHF freq. </factious>
Malware here, spyware there, all I want is a phone but now I have to worry about this.
Following up on FEMA, it's common to hear about how money is distributed and how much, i.e. many never got fully reimbursed from damage by hurricane Sandy.
It seems to me with all the problems and challenges this country faces, top men put war on terrorism which includes need for extensive surveillance the top priority over other issues. Even if govt were better organized in disaster relief, they still would not able help everyone (that's why it is a disaster) but would not be constantly ridiculed for poor performance. However there were some officials saw impending disaster so they forward based a lot of resources closer to Louisiana knowing the state will be calling for help once the winds die down. However, they were a minority because most were focused on terrorist attacks.
Regarding FEMA, I was talking with a emergency manager for a city, he said FEMA does not have response teams like state, county, or city OES departments. FEMA is mostly a fund provider and insurance for disasters.
you sound like someone who works at a sausage factory, and never eats sausages.
I have come across articles that do use "non-interlaced" when discussing progressive. It gets confusing. Might as well say non-progressive but that might imply something besides what those electrons and photons do.
They are REALLY BAD AT COMMUNICATING.
I was thinking back in the bad ol' days of TQM (1990s) one of the terms kicked around was "empowerment" but that was subject to interpretation. Does that mean a raise? Delegating? A bankrupt term used in TQM meetings by companies that had enough excess to send employees to useless seminars before they are "downsized" (ugh, another terrible buzzword).
And another term is "high tech" which I think is bankrupt because it is mostly a circular definition (a high tech product is designed and made for high tech use by high tech companies). Best definition I heard is the term was coined by those VC people on Sand Hill Rd. in Palo Alto because it sounds cool, enabling them to get money via emotions instead of facts. It is not limited to microelectronics as there is "high tech" concrete with unique properties required for particular structures.
A few years back the city implemented huge cuts to it's police department in salary and benefits. [ snip ] Myself, and many other residents welcome any effort to clean up the streets.
It seems to me focus on surveillance technology is mostly driven by "war on terrorism" and they are trying to apply same tools to general crime in civilian communities (i.e. another focus is military hardware for police depts). Yes, I'm not happy with huge cuts in city services but yet the city is bringing in revenue like it used to (even though few miles away are companies with billions of cash in reserves). For those outside SJ, note that SJ police no longer respond to burglaries or car break-ins (maybe unless it is an in progress call) because of lack in manpower. I really don't know how to make up for budget shortfalls, especially schools and other community programs have taken a hit (also they no longer have CERT classes). I don't think general population will benefit much from cameras and tanks.
Far as license plate scanners, I see these same as surveillance cameras in downtown areas. Main benefit is to the companies selling the equipment, and they will continue to make money with constant software license renewals and upgrades. There is also cost of dealing with all this data. Regarding cameras, what about able to video taggers spray painting graffiti? I am curious how they do that on freeway overpasses which look more treacherous than slopes on Mt Everest.
Not sure how this fits into the big picture of this discussion, a quote from someone who attended college in 1960s. Hope his contributions are not getting hoarded:
"Back then you didn't have to get an A+ high school grade average and perfect SAT scores to be admitted to a top notch public university. Even luckier, tuition was dirt cheap. I got a world class engineering education nearly free. I remember that good fortune, am eternally grateful and contribute regularly as an alumni. "
desire to keep Russian rocket scientists building rockets for Russia, not ICBMs for North Korea or Iran.
Finally someone posts the real driver behind ISS. Before they spent eight years working on Freedom but not flight hardware was ever built (there were lots of engineering hardware items built to demonstrate various things that are currently in use on ISS). Every year after Reagan started the Space Station, congressional funding support became less and less. Then USSR collapsed, congress balked at the $400B SEI, a new NASA Administrator, and a lot of Russian aerospace engineers out of work. In 1992 and Space Station survived by only one vote, unless a new strategy is done, it will not survive 1993.
Former Rep. Louis Stokes, the Man Who Saved Space Travel, Dies At Age 90
By a narrow vote, Stokes gave a small margin in approving funding for new reusable spacecraft. Conceived in early 1970s to make spaceflight routine as air travel, Space Shuttle later was more expensive and required lengthy refurbishment between missions. Many argued if we continued with same Shuttle, we would be stuck in low earth orbit way into the 21st century. The new shuttle design takes into account of many lessons learned of propulsion, thermal protection, and other systems that and should routinely be reused. NASA Administrator Beggs added, "Objective is to explore and expand scientific and economic sphere beyond earth orbit, not repeat what Gargarin and Glenn did 25 years ago."
They may not recognize it as a car.
I guess if you don't show up for work because you died then you'll be in big trouble from management?
playbook of the Axis in WWII and ...
It seems this obsession with WWII and how often is there air-to-air combat? Vietnam War era F4 was the last Ace Maker (barely). Probably consider the mission of the Air Force: Put a bomb on target, recon, transport, ground forces support (oh wait, they want to dump the A10). For bombing missions be able to get in and out and not be spotted is effective i.e. F117. It is hard to spot but Lord help the pilot if he is (again how often does that occur?). Except for transport, not much a C17 can do when attacked by another plane but how often does that occur? Looking at the big picture as almost all US warfare is focused on terrorism but now faced with ISIS that doesn't have an air force but have been quite successful without using one. Not sure what a F35 can do about that.
like the VIC-20, i.e. cassette recorder/player to store data? (sorry but the name instantly reminded me of the early 80s products).
Sigh. I pine for the old Pin-Drop Days.
I remember that was their signature describing fidelity of audio quality of their phones. Now Sprint has an abstract emblem based on multiple snapshots of a pin impacting a ground surface. But now nobody understands what that artwork is except old timers from the 20th century.