One of the useful functions of the FCC is that they set technical standards for spectrum users. They often force spectrum users to use new and improved technology that makes more efficient use of the available spectrum. This allows more people to use the same amount of spectrum, at the cost of making radios more expensive.
Market forces are not a cure-all, as the AM Stereo debacle illustrated.
The difference is that as technology improves and becomes cheaper, high-end products become mass-market products. Something that once only affected a select few may affect nearly everyone.
How is this any better than the KGB's requirement that every owner of a typewriter supply them with a sample page?
Those kind of work schedules can cause permanent damage to your health, not to mention your sanity. Your body does not have an unlimited capacity for absorbing abuse.
What about pulsars? They are rapidly spinning neutron stars whose rotational speed is very stable and predictable. They make the Earth look like a rusty pocket watch.
Rubidium clocks are used when cost and space are more important than accuracy. They are inferior to cesium clocks. The output frequency drifts with age.
The USNO is responsible for military time keeping. The NIST is responsible for civil time keeping. The USNO has about 70 cesium clocks, along with hydrogen masers and other frequency/time standards.
Secure communications systems can always use more accurate clocks. They allow many stations to stay in synchronization with each other at high data rates for long periods of time. See the military applications of spread spectrum communications.
The Earth is a lousy time standard. The international atomic time scale (TAI) does not have leap seconds and is not synchronized to the movement or rotation of the Earth. Civil time (UTC) has leap seconds to keep it synchronized with the Earth's rotation. This is for the convenience of people who use it for navigation.
Hydrogen masers have better short-term stability than cesium frequency standards, so one can compare the two and measure the short-term variation in the frequency of the cesium standard.
Clocks can also be run in groups. With some mathematics, the group can produce a result that is more accurate than a single clock.
If you have a detailed knowledge of the physics involved
in the operation of a clock, the possible sources of error can be modeled and predicted.
They are nowhere near as accurate as an atomic clock. Even with a lab grade radio clock, large amounts of error are introduced by the propagation delay of the radio signal, which isn't constant. Consumer grade radio clocks are useless for any serious applications. They use cheap quartz crystal oscillators and compensate for errors by resetting the clock once a day.
Basic Combat Training teaches you some of the fundamentals, like how to fire and maintain your weapon, but it does not make you into a real infantry soldier. It takes a lot more training and experience to produce a useful infantry soldier.
I'm an excellent shot with the M16, thanks to Uncle Sam. Put me in an infantry squad and I would just be a liability. I was never trained in small unit tactics and many other things that an infantry soldier needs to know.
A lot is going to depend on the police department and the crime rate. Many big city police departments get swamped with homicide cases. In other jurisdictions, homicides are rare enough that they can spend a great deal of time on the tough cases.
In the old days, it would have been done by full-time employees of the Bell Operating Company. People with training and experience. Now, they would rather save a buck by contracting everything out to the lowest bidder.
Maybe we need to go back to the old days and look for a union label on the products that we buy. This seems to be the age of Wal-Mart, where a low price trumps any concerns about ethics and morality.
The ATF had been infamous for decades for being the shit-hole of federal law enforcement. It was full of unprofessional cowboys and jerks who did some pretty despicable things to innocent citizens. Waco was just another example of their dishonesty and incompetence.
Also, if you're going to be passing a digital signal of any form (coax or toslink) cable quality doesn't matter a whit. Period. It either works or it doesn't work.
Digital signals are resistant to degradation but you still can have problems with cables. Are the electrical connections to the connectors mechanically and electrically reliable? Are the connectors stress relieved? Do the connectors meet the dimensional specifications for their type? Does the coax have adequate braid coverage/shielding?
The gold prevents corrosion, which can cause a number of problems. What you can't see, without cutting open the cable, is the quality of the coaxial cable that is used to construct the finished cables. Another problem is that the cables are grossly overpriced for what it actually costs to make them.
RCA connectors are also a terrible design. Nobody uses them in commercial/industrial equipment. Unfortunately, they are the standard for consumer electronics.
If I buy cables, I look for companies that use quality components from companies like Amphenol and Belden. I also check to see if they properly test their cables after they assemble them.
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I assumed there was some standard code in the console firmware for saving and loading games.
Market forces are not a cure-all, as the AM Stereo debacle illustrated.
How is this any better than the KGB's requirement that every owner of a typewriter supply them with a sample page?
Those kind of work schedules can cause permanent damage to your health, not to mention your sanity. Your body does not have an unlimited capacity for absorbing abuse.
What about pulsars? They are rapidly spinning neutron stars whose rotational speed is very stable and predictable. They make the Earth look like a rusty pocket watch.
Hybrids are also useful for vehicles with large electrical loads, which is the case for many military vehicles.
That depends on what you use it for, and how often you check against a reference clock and reset it.
I've found that, among other things, an accurate clock is very useful on eBay for submitting bids just before an auction closes.
The USNO is responsible for military time keeping. The NIST is responsible for civil time keeping. The USNO has about 70 cesium clocks, along with hydrogen masers and other frequency/time standards.
Secure communications systems can always use more accurate clocks. They allow many stations to stay in synchronization with each other at high data rates for long periods of time. See the military applications of spread spectrum communications.
The Earth is a lousy time standard. The international atomic time scale (TAI) does not have leap seconds and is not synchronized to the movement or rotation of the Earth. Civil time (UTC) has leap seconds to keep it synchronized with the Earth's rotation. This is for the convenience of people who use it for navigation.
Clocks can also be run in groups. With some mathematics, the group can produce a result that is more accurate than a single clock.
If you have a detailed knowledge of the physics involved in the operation of a clock, the possible sources of error can be modeled and predicted.
They are nowhere near as accurate as an atomic clock. Even with a lab grade radio clock, large amounts of error are introduced by the propagation delay of the radio signal, which isn't constant. Consumer grade radio clocks are useless for any serious applications. They use cheap quartz crystal oscillators and compensate for errors by resetting the clock once a day.
I'm an excellent shot with the M16, thanks to Uncle Sam. Put me in an infantry squad and I would just be a liability. I was never trained in small unit tactics and many other things that an infantry soldier needs to know.
What are they going to do when people routinely wear image capture/enhancement devices to compensate for disabilities or to improve their senses?
A lot is going to depend on the police department and the crime rate. Many big city police departments get swamped with homicide cases. In other jurisdictions, homicides are rare enough that they can spend a great deal of time on the tough cases.
In the old days, it would have been done by full-time employees of the Bell Operating Company. People with training and experience. Now, they would rather save a buck by contracting everything out to the lowest bidder.
That's also a criminal act.
I think you have confused the Pentium with the Pentium Pro. The Pentium Pro started at 150 Mhz. The Pentium started at 60 MHz.
Maybe we need to go back to the old days and look for a union label on the products that we buy. This seems to be the age of Wal-Mart, where a low price trumps any concerns about ethics and morality.
The ATF had been infamous for decades for being the shit-hole of federal law enforcement. It was full of unprofessional cowboys and jerks who did some pretty despicable things to innocent citizens. Waco was just another example of their dishonesty and incompetence.
Digital signals are resistant to degradation but you still can have problems with cables. Are the electrical connections to the connectors mechanically and electrically reliable? Are the connectors stress relieved? Do the connectors meet the dimensional specifications for their type? Does the coax have adequate braid coverage/shielding?
That isn't the way that the law works. If you think that you are too smart to be conned, you probably aren't as smart as you think you are.
RCA connectors are also a terrible design. Nobody uses them in commercial/industrial equipment. Unfortunately, they are the standard for consumer electronics.
If I buy cables, I look for companies that use quality components from companies like Amphenol and Belden. I also check to see if they properly test their cables after they assemble them.
It forces the builder to design something new, instead of just another overgrown ICBM from the 1950s.