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User: Ozoner

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Comments · 188

  1. Re:The difference between DIY and Maker on Democratizing the Maker Movement · · Score: 1

    Yes. In every generation there are talented amateurs who create interesting things, and those who try to make money out of them.

    The Hacker movement is just the latest of such parasites.

  2. Re:Nothing special... on Tilting 4WD 'Spider Car' Makes Light Work of Bizarre Terrain · · Score: 1

    Wow, nasty much? Along with the half-wit up-votes.

    Actually, the OP is correct:

    - The term "Axle Assembly" refers to the axle housing as well as as the actual axles.

      - And if it doesn't have axles, how come the wheels don't fall off?

      - And having hub motors adds essentially nothing to it's off-road ability. It could as well use chains, hydraulics, or more conventional shafts and universals.

    It's essentially no different to a conventional 4WD, except that the pivot points are above the center of gravity.

  3. Re:RC Rules on British Pilots: Poll Data Says Public Wants Strict Rules For Drones · · Score: 1

    > I bet you could count on 2 hands the number of people who were hobby flying RC aircraft in your city

    Utter rubbish.

    When I was a kid (rural Australia, in the 1950's and 60's), RC modeling was a huge hobby. Most of us progressed from Free-Flight, to Control Line models, to RC flying. Not to mention RC boats and cars.

    Admittedly the gear was rather basic with only one or two channels. We could only dream of owning the expensive USA gear, hence our homemade Valve (Tube) Transmitters, Receivers, servos, tone decoders, etc.

    Surely you've seen the many DIY magazine articles and books from back then?

    http://www.singlestickstuff.co...

  4. Re:Watch The Dish on 17-Year-Old Radio Astronomy Mystery Traced Back To Kitchen Microwave · · Score: 1

    In the movie they RECEIVED the video from the moon. They didn't Broadcast it.

  5. Re:Not Actually $3500 on Tesla's Household Battery: Costs, Prices, and Tradeoffs · · Score: 1

    Or you could do a little research and learn that using solar electricity to generate low grade heat (eg cooking) is an idiotic waste of high grade energy.

    Solar requires a little intelligence and a willingness to conserve energy. Clearly it's not for you.

  6. Re:Living off the grid on The Myth of Going Off the Power Grid · · Score: 1

    Have lived of-grid for over twenty years. Have a large battery bank, but only 600W of solar cells. That runs my house and workshop without ever needing to run a generator. The only concessions needed are no electric heating or cooling. I rely instead on good insulation and wood heating.

    The main barrier to Solar living is the typical American mentality, "I'm not going to live without my Air-conditioner/Clothes-dryer/Electric Heating".

    To my mind, frugal living gives many bonuses beside the ability to survive without the ever more expensive (and unreliable) mains power.

  7. Utter garbage on First Fully Digital Radio Transmitter Built Purely From Microprocessor Tech · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I could build a "Fully Digital Radio Transmitter" in a few minutes using a Crystal and a CMOS gate.

  8. Re:Not actually batteryless on Ultra-Low Power Radio Transceiver Enables Truly Wireless Earbuds · · Score: 1

    Because if the Cell Phone didn't "Leak" it wouldn't work at all.

    This "leaking" as you call it, is the Cell phone actually transmitting useful Radio Energy.

    And in the case of a GSM phone signal, the RF envelope is heavily Amplitude Modulated.

    The problem is that cheap electronic junk has poor "Radio Immunity" causing it to act as a radio receiver when it should not.

  9. That's the way that GSM phines operate on Ultra-Low Power Radio Transceiver Enables Truly Wireless Earbuds · · Score: 1

    Because that's the way that GSM phones operate.
    In order to achieve Full Duplex operation, it receives for half the time, then transmissions for half the time.

    These transmit data bursts result in a deeply Amplitude modulated RF envelope.

    This is why you hear Brrrp, Brrrp when you put your GSM phone near a pair of cheap loudspeakers.

  10. Re:Google is becoming useless on Google Wants To Rank Websites Based On Facts Not Links · · Score: 1

    Except I'm not looking for the phrase "Electronic Component". I'm looking for a specific data sheet for a specific component.

  11. Google is becoming useless on Google Wants To Rank Websites Based On Facts Not Links · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This sounds like a great improvement.

    Some years ago if I searched for a data sheet for an Electronic Component, I could rely on a direct link to the PDF in the first hit or so.

    Now however, any worthwhile result is often many pages down the list. The first page or two are full of "Are you searching for xxxx? We don't have that right now, but here's a great way to earn big dollars!!".

    Google is so badly scammed that I usually don't bother. I hate to say it, but even Bing is better now.

  12. Re:Not actually batteryless on Ultra-Low Power Radio Transceiver Enables Truly Wireless Earbuds · · Score: 2

    For what it's worth a FM Crystal set on VHF is most definitely possible.
    (do a search on "FM Crystal Radio", there are many articles).

    And of course a Crystal Set can pick up AM signals from a cell phone. It's trivially easy.

    The trick of course is the Inverse Square of distance Law. When you are close, the signals are so much stronger.
    And in the near-field the relationship is Inverse Cubed which makes it even easier.

  13. Re:Health risks? on Ultra-Low Power Radio Transceiver Enables Truly Wireless Earbuds · · Score: 2

    The experts are absolutely NOT divided, and your own post illustrates the case nicely.

    When health studies were done on Smoking and Cancer, the adverse relationship quickly became evident.

    But studies of the relationship between RF Exposure and Cancer has consistently gone the other way.
    In spite of hundreds of detailed tests over many decades, no adverse relationship has ever been detected.

    There have been once-off results, but each time they were independently re-tested, the effect vanished.

    There is now a vast amount of data across different Frequencies, Power Levels, Modulation, etc.
    If there were a relationship (as there clearly is with smoking) it would be easy to demonstrate.

  14. Re:Government Intervention on Ask Slashdot: When and How Did Europe Leapfrog the US For Internet Access? · · Score: 1

    > First, it's polemical to call the LNP ultra conservatives.

    This is correct. They should be referred to as Ultra Corrupt Parasites.

    And thanks for spewing mindless LNP propaganda. The proposed NBN had years of intense design work, and the actual uptake wildly exceeded expectations.

    A google search for "NBN myths" will produce may informative pages, especially those exhaustively documented by Delimiter and Sortius.

  15. Hype and Misdirection on Ask Slashdot: Best Books On the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Have lately been reading everything I can find on Tesla, hoping to find a rational scientific explanation of his "discoveries".
    Unfortunately everything so far has been utter balderdash. Just an endless stream of hype.

    I had hoped that "Man Out of Time would be better, but sadly it is not.
    Cheney seems to be yet another author who has drunk the Tesla Cool Aid.

    We hear repeatedly about "Powerful Vacuum Tubes" which turn out to be Geissler tubes,
    and how Tesla would "let 100,000 volts harmlessly pass through his body" (no mention that it's high-impedance, and that nerves don't respond to H.F.)
    And talk about his secret "High Power Oscillator", which was just a steam-driven linear generator.
    Over and over we are told that "Scientists to this day don't know how this was done" when obviously most of it is third rate stage magic.

    Hopefully one day a technically literate author will write a book which describes Telsa's work, but without all the hype and misdirection.

  16. Re:Not a narcisisst on Ask Slashdot: Best Books On the Life and Work of Nikola Tesla? · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but NO.

    Animals (and people) don't have complex impedances.

    They are purely resistive (to all practical purposes)

  17. Re:They've reinvented CB radio! on LTE Upgrade Will Let Phones Connect To Nearby Devices Without Towers · · Score: 1

    I forgot.

    The question is: Will it work if you are out of range of the towers, or does it need the network to do the handshaking?

  18. They've reinvented CB radio! on LTE Upgrade Will Let Phones Connect To Nearby Devices Without Towers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Once there was private peer-to-peer radio. It was called "Ham Radio". But the companies couldn't charge for it, so they made the radios always work through their base stations and called it "Cellular Radio". And of course they removed the peer-to-peer function.

    But wait, now it's back! (in a way that can be monetised of course).

  19. Re:Whoa, Deja Vu! on Kano Ships 18,000 Learn-To-Code Computer Kits · · Score: 1

    Likewise I started with a KIM-1 !

    Also a SYM-1 and then a Rockwell AIM-65.
    Then built my own version with a 6502 and a MM57109.

    Then the Apple II came along...

  20. Re:Polarization modulation. on Scientists Twist Radio Beams To Send Data At 32 Gigabits Per Second · · Score: 1

    Any kind of Multiplexing requires additional bandwidth.
    TANSTAAFL.

    If there's no change, there's no data encoded.

  21. Polarization modulation. on Scientists Twist Radio Beams To Send Data At 32 Gigabits Per Second · · Score: 1

    It's still modulation, modulation creates sidebands, and sidebands require bandwidth.

    Nothing has changed, the Shannon–Hartley theorem still rules.

  22. Re:this leads me to a question. on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: 1

    It depends on the country, but in general it's OK to encrypt control codes, but not OK to encrypt data. Although shared keys probably fix the problem.

  23. Re:Scrap all the rules on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: -1

    BTW, encryption is already permitted (in the ham bands) in many countries. The only catch is that the encryption must be via a publicly disclosed method.
    There are many encrypted ham standards, PSK31 WSPR, WSJT, MAP65, Hellscriber, etc, etc.

    The main reason (for public methods) is to prevent commercial organisations taking advantage of the generous Amateur Radio provisions.

  24. Re:Scrap all the rules on UK Ham Radio Reg Plans To Drop 15 min Callsign Interval and Allow Encryption · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can now. Just stick to the allocated ISM bands (eg WiFi).

    What you can't do now is build your own transmitter without a ham license. This obviously is to prevent interference to other services.

    The philosophy is simple. License the Radio or License the Operator. The Amateur Operator has passed sufficient technical barrier to ensure that they won't do stupid things and cause interference.

    There is one catch however. The Amateur License excluded commercial operations. To do that you need a commercial license.

    The amateur license is primarily for self education.

  25. So how does it actually work? on Restoring Salmon To Their Original Habitat -- With a Cannon · · Score: 1

    What a lousy article.

    I've read that a vacuum sucks the fish into the tube, and then air pressure propels them along the tube, but how the hell is that achieved?

    How do you get a vacuum at the start and then pressure all the way up?