I believe there was serious consideration given to the use of chemical weapons if the US had invaded Japan. American casualties in a conventional invasion would have been enormous.
If the bomb had not been used, there is a good chance that Truman would have been impeached. I don't think too many people were concerned about how many Japanese might die in the final stage of the war, they just wanted a successful end to the war, quickly, and without massive allied casualties.
The first bomb (little boy) had two parts. One was a cylinder with a cylindrical hole in its center, the other was a cylindrical bullet that was fired into the hole in the other cylinder.
That's assuming you have a life. How many people alive today wouldn't exist because one or both of their parents would have ended up in a concentration camp or death camp. I know that I wouldn't be here.
Fiber offers a much lower cost of bandwidth, measured as bps (bits per second) per dollar. That's assuming you want a lot of bandwidth, let's say 100+ Mbps. Twisted pair is cheap but limited in speed and distance. Coax is better, but gets complex and expensive if you want something better than asymmetrical cable modem service.
Every so often, I see a truck installing new cable for the telephone company or local data networks. They've been installing nothing but fiber for many years. Copper and coax are just not cost-effective.
Being annoying isn't a crime, neither is "contempt of cop". The problem is when you get police officers, or other authority figures, who are unable to deal with criticism or resistance in a rational manner.
Re:What is a pre-emptive multitasking operating sy
on
IBM Officially Kills OS/2
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· Score: 2, Informative
It means that the operating system doesn't depend on applications voluntarily yielding the CPU to the operating system, like with early versions of Windows and Mac OS.
Linux is just as much, if not more of a pig, than Windows when you throw a GUI on top of it. It isn't of much use on older machines that can still run quite nicely with OS/2 and its GUI.
I helped write a data acquisition and processing system that is still in use today. It is used to capture experiment data from analog magnetic tape, turn it into digital products, and send the results over the Internet to a data archiving system.
When it was initially developed, OS/2 was the best operating system available for the task. It probably still is. Rewriting it for another operating system would be very expensive and would provide few benefits. The system runs well on a AMD 486-133 PC with a SCSI host adapter, Ethernet NIC, frame synchronizer, time code reader, and an intelligent ADC board. Much of the expensive custom hardware would have to be redesigned or replaced if the PC was "upgraded".
The problem is that there are too many politicians like Al Gore, who was a conservative when he was a congressman, then became a liberal when he ran for higher office. He adjusted his public political beliefs to match what he thought the voters wanted to hear.
"Tell me where the People are headed, for I must lead them!"
They are a compromise. Better than a dipole, worse than a Yagi. A friend used to refer to them as "the antenna that works like crap on all frequencies".
Congress passed the enabling legislation for this in 1962 (All-Channel Receiver Act), and the FCC is using the granted authority to force a phase-out of NTSC television receivers.
It's just one data point but my analog reception is marginal due to distance, geography and being limited to an indoor antenna. I get better reception of the digital signals. It isn't perfect, but it's much more watchable than analog. It eliminates all of the snow and ghosts.
It's a wasteful use of a huge chunk of the RF spectrum.
The FCC has already taken part of the UHF TV band for cellular telephones and public safety communications. The UHF TV band was originally from channels 14 to 83. Switching to digital will allow them to take another chunk of the UHF TV band and allocate it for more productive use.
If it was up to me, I'd eliminate the VHF and UHF TV bands entirely. The broadcasters could switch to satellite and fiber for distributing their programming.
ATSC allows the FCC to pack the same number of stations in a smaller broadcast band due to ATSC's superior resistance to interference from transmitters on the same or nearby channels. The channel size remains the same (6 MHz), but the minimum space in between transmitters, both in frequency and geographical distance, is being reduced.
Analog cable is going to disappear in many areas. The cable companies are planning to eliminate it once digital cable boxes become cheap enough to give away to their existing analog customers. Like OTA NTSC, analog cable is an inefficient use of the cable system's bandwidth.
It's in the public interest, like banning leaded gasoline, spark-gap radio transmitters, and the burning of trash.
Markets don't always work. The FCC tried that with AM Stereo and it was a disaster. Sometimes they have to force spectrum users to switch to systems that use the best available technology and meet stricter standards.
The death of NTSC is long overdue. If you have to replace your TV, tough shit. There are plenty of people who have had to replace or upgrade equipment to meet evolving FCC requirements and they didn't get a nickel.
Floppy disks used to be useful, before the drive and media manufacturers started their race to the bottom, to see who could make the cheapest and most unreliable drives and media.
Back when hard drives were a very expensive luxury, many systems relied on floppy drives for working storage. The drives were expensive ($500), but they worked reliably. Bad floppy disks were rare. Normally, you could expect every disk in the box to be error-free and durable. Bit rot was unheard of.
Today, the drives and media are of such poor quality that they are almost useless. Hooray for Capitalism!
They are commonly used on vehicles with expensive windows to protect them from accidental damage and foreign materials. It keeps them from getting scratched and covered with bird shit or other atmospheric contaminants. The Air Force has similar problems with their aircraft. A window or canopy can be polished or refinished to remove scratches, but it is time-consuming and expensive.
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If the bomb had not been used, there is a good chance that Truman would have been impeached. I don't think too many people were concerned about how many Japanese might die in the final stage of the war, they just wanted a successful end to the war, quickly, and without massive allied casualties.
The first bomb (little boy) had two parts. One was a cylinder with a cylindrical hole in its center, the other was a cylindrical bullet that was fired into the hole in the other cylinder.
That's assuming you have a life. How many people alive today wouldn't exist because one or both of their parents would have ended up in a concentration camp or death camp. I know that I wouldn't be here.
Every so often, I see a truck installing new cable for the telephone company or local data networks. They've been installing nothing but fiber for many years. Copper and coax are just not cost-effective.
I like the sound of that.
It would be cheaper than a lawsuit, and more entertaining :).
Being annoying isn't a crime, neither is "contempt of cop". The problem is when you get police officers, or other authority figures, who are unable to deal with criticism or resistance in a rational manner.
It means that the operating system doesn't depend on applications voluntarily yielding the CPU to the operating system, like with early versions of Windows and Mac OS.
Linux is just as much, if not more of a pig, than Windows when you throw a GUI on top of it. It isn't of much use on older machines that can still run quite nicely with OS/2 and its GUI.
When it was initially developed, OS/2 was the best operating system available for the task. It probably still is. Rewriting it for another operating system would be very expensive and would provide few benefits. The system runs well on a AMD 486-133 PC with a SCSI host adapter, Ethernet NIC, frame synchronizer, time code reader, and an intelligent ADC board. Much of the expensive custom hardware would have to be redesigned or replaced if the PC was "upgraded".
"Tell me where the People are headed, for I must lead them!"
They are a compromise. Better than a dipole, worse than a Yagi. A friend used to refer to them as "the antenna that works like crap on all frequencies".
Congress passed the enabling legislation for this in 1962 (All-Channel Receiver Act), and the FCC is using the granted authority to force a phase-out of NTSC television receivers.
There are three band segments used in the USA.
VHF-LO (2..6) 54-88 MHz
VHF-HI (7..13) 174-216 MHz
UHF (14..69) 470-806 MHz
Be nice or I'll get my Wouff Hong.
It's just one data point but my analog reception is marginal due to distance, geography and being limited to an indoor antenna. I get better reception of the digital signals. It isn't perfect, but it's much more watchable than analog. It eliminates all of the snow and ghosts.
The FCC has already taken part of the UHF TV band for cellular telephones and public safety communications. The UHF TV band was originally from channels 14 to 83. Switching to digital will allow them to take another chunk of the UHF TV band and allocate it for more productive use.
If it was up to me, I'd eliminate the VHF and UHF TV bands entirely. The broadcasters could switch to satellite and fiber for distributing their programming.
See http://www.refurbdepot.com/productdetails2.cfm?Pro duct_ID=3719. I bought one and I'm happy with it.
I bought a refurbed (like new) ATSC tuner for $160. It works fine with my old NTSC color TV.
ATSC allows the FCC to pack the same number of stations in a smaller broadcast band due to ATSC's superior resistance to interference from transmitters on the same or nearby channels. The channel size remains the same (6 MHz), but the minimum space in between transmitters, both in frequency and geographical distance, is being reduced.
Analog cable is going to disappear in many areas. The cable companies are planning to eliminate it once digital cable boxes become cheap enough to give away to their existing analog customers. Like OTA NTSC, analog cable is an inefficient use of the cable system's bandwidth.
Markets don't always work. The FCC tried that with AM Stereo and it was a disaster. Sometimes they have to force spectrum users to switch to systems that use the best available technology and meet stricter standards.
The death of NTSC is long overdue. If you have to replace your TV, tough shit. There are plenty of people who have had to replace or upgrade equipment to meet evolving FCC requirements and they didn't get a nickel.
Back when hard drives were a very expensive luxury, many systems relied on floppy drives for working storage. The drives were expensive ($500), but they worked reliably. Bad floppy disks were rare. Normally, you could expect every disk in the box to be error-free and durable. Bit rot was unheard of.
Today, the drives and media are of such poor quality that they are almost useless. Hooray for Capitalism!
They are commonly used on vehicles with expensive windows to protect them from accidental damage and foreign materials. It keeps them from getting scratched and covered with bird shit or other atmospheric contaminants. The Air Force has similar problems with their aircraft. A window or canopy can be polished or refinished to remove scratches, but it is time-consuming and expensive.