PSK31 uses (you guessed it!) about 31 hertz of bandwidth, though it doesn't have error correction built in to the mode. There is also a related mode (PSK63) that uses 63 hertz of bandwidth with a higher data rate. PSK is indeed a very reliable low-power and low-bandwidth means of communication. Whether you're a ham or a short-wave listener, I highly recommend giving it and the other digital modes a try. Just hook up your radio's audio out to your computer's sound-card, download one of the many digital mode software packages out there, and enjoy monitoring! If you're a ham, hook up a few more cables, adjust your audio level a bit, and you're on the air! I recommend MultiPSK as a good software package to get started. It's a bit ugly in the interface but it will work with almost any digital mode on the air. Or, for just PSK and RTTY, give WinWarbler a try, from the DXLab suite. It's a much easier to use interface, and is my personal favorite for when I don't care about anything but PSK.
I tackled this same problem several times with varying results.
My first attempt used a TINI controller board hooked up to relays hooked up to model rocket igniters. This worked well, but relays are expensive and don't scale well if you want to do this on the cheap.
My next attempt used a Freescale GP32 controller with MOSFETs. This worked very well, and is a more scalable solution. Again, I used model rocket igniters. If you look at my pictures, you can see how I made a nice set of firing racks, too, complete with power distribution scheme and chainable serial control. I wrote a program in Java to send control signals to the controllers to shoot the shells off in sequence.
After these attempts, I finally got sick of playing with the small stuff and got my explosives permit so I can play with 1.3g display fireworks. When you have your explosives permit, you're no longer limited to crappy model rocket igniters. You can buy professional quality e-matches that are meant for the task. They're a bit pricey, but they already are the right length of leads, and work GREAT. Also, the larger shells are MUCH easier to electrically fuse, since they use quick match instead of visco fuse. But, no vendor is going to sell you those nice e-matches without first seeing your LEUP. (Low Explosives User Permit.) That takes a bit of work to get, so I'll assume that's beyond your scope. Of course, there are also professional systems available for control, but they're pricey.
So, I'm going to take a guess that you don't have a LEUP and just want to hack something together to shoot off your 1.4g consumer fireworks. Here's what I've learned from my experience doing the same thing. It's not that tough to do, but don't underestimate the amount of wiring you have ahead of you if you intend on shooting off more than a few shells. With only a few weeks from new years, you'll probably get a more impressive display by buying several nice cakes. But, since that's not the slashdot way, here's how you can do what you want to do...
First, don't do any of this in your living room! Don't go burning down or blowing up your house.
Buy packs of estes model rocket igniters, and attach longer leads to them. This is the cheapest and most reliable way of doing what you want without getting an explosives permit.
Buy the plain-jane 1.4g artillery shells from your favorite roadside vendor (NOT the canister style shells, because they're not easily electrically re-fused), and CAREFULLY cut or remove the fuses. Black powder is sensitive stuff, so be smart about this step!!!
Cut a slit in the paper bottom of the shell. This is where the black powder lift charge is. Insert your igniter into the slit, and tape over it and any hole left over from the original fuse to hold the igniter in place and prevent the loss of your lift charge.
Place the shells into your PROPERLY SIZED artillery shell tubes, and hook up the leads to your firing system, be that through relays, MOSFETs, or a simple switch. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to get the right size and type of tubes and to make sure they are stable! Pyro Universe is a good resource for this and other info.
When everyone is a safe distance away, and the area is secure, hook up your system to power and apply current to the igniters. They will fire the instant you apply current if you've inserted the igniter correctly.
Please be safe about this! It's a ton of fun, but observe sensible safety precautions. I highly recommend taking a class on display fireworks to learn how to do all this right. Premier Pyro gives great classes on this every year, and you'll have tons of fun to boot. At the very least, give NFPA 11
Just so you know, I started with Skype, and it works just dandy. If it drains away my resources, I haven't noticed it. But, I've recently had the pleasure of installing asterisk at home, and it is the way to go! If you install and use Asterisk, you have the widest choice of phones (including soft phones) and VoIP endpoint providers, and you have the flexibility of changing your mind about any one of those choices at any time without disturbing the rest of the system. In my recent conversion, I converted the whole house to use Asterisk without changing any of our phones. My wife doesn't notice the difference - she just calls normally and it works. But, behind the scenes, I can selectively route different calls to different networks - hard wired or VoIP - to take advantage of whatever route I decide is the best. If any one of those routes starts to irritate me, I can change it without affecting the rest of the system. Try that with Skype.
Now, a common argument you might get against this approach is that it's unneccesarily complicated and requires a dedicated machine. Well, it may be partially true, in that it's more complicated than installing a single SIP or Skype phone or softphone, and the best (IMHO) approach for an install takes a surplus box; however, the TrixBox distribution gets you up and running awfully fast, and can be installed onto a crap machine (I'm using a celeron 500). Follow the How-To here. The flexibility is worth it. And, if you have a decent net connection and VoIP provider, the call quality even for VoIP is outstanding.
Other advantages are flexibility in call routing. I currently have a digium TDM400P card hooked up in my install, with one module hooked up to the phone line, and the other module hooked up to all my analog phones in the house. (I'll eventually replace some of the analog phones with some nice IP phones when I have the cash.) I could just as easily add SIP softphones connected to Asterisk, if I wanted, but normal phones seem more natural to me, and it's cheap to do with the TDM400P card. I have three inbound and outbound trunks set up, one using the land line, one using VoipJet for long distance over VoIP, and one for calls in from and out to the Free World Dialup SIP network. I have my dial plan set up as follows:
Any calls coming in from either my old PSTN landline or my Free World Dialup account are routed to my dialplan, which during the day (6AM to 11PM) rings the analog phones. If the caller is blocking caller id, it forces them to enter their phone number first before ringing the phones. At night, (currently defined as 11PM to 6AM) callers are sent to a VRU, which asks them to hang up if they're a phone solicitation, press 1 to actually call us, or 2 to send the call straight to voicemail without waking us up. In either case when it rings the phones, it will go to voicemail if we don't answer. That voicemail can be retrieved either by the phone, by secure web interface, or currently I also have it email me the wav file of the message.
For outgoing calls, I have it set like this: If you dial a seven digit number, a toll free number, 911, or use a 9 prefix before a long distance call (in case my network connection is down), it dials out through the land line. If you dial a long distance number normally (using just 1 + area code + number, or 011 + country code + international number), it routes it through the IAX2 trunk to VoipJet and saves us tons of money. If you dial a 8 or 393 prefix before the number, it assumes you want to call a FWD number, and routes it out the IAX2 trunk to FWD, which would be a direct SIP to SIP call for free.
In summary, it works awesome, and I had the whole thing working in a basic way (PSTN + analog phone + VoipJet trunk) in one Saturday morning. I had rerouted the whole house's phone system and revam
Mod parent up! It took an AC to write one of the only constructive posts in this thread. Although I also actually paid for the full version of Eagle and consider it the best money I've ever spent, at least the above thread tried to give the guy a FOSS solution.
For what it's worth, though, Eagle rocks! Another poster commented about the difficulty of cad software makers to maintaining parts libraries - I think the better question is the ease of making your own parts libraries in your chosen CAD software. Eagle makes it easy, which is nice when you're using the latest obscure part in your design. Add that to a well thought-out interface and pretty good auto-router and Eagle is definitely worth the money.
Thanks for the info, I did find a DRM folder in my C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data folder, and when copied to my Linux box, it appeared to work. That is, the files were quickly converted.
Unfortunately, both files I tried to convert ended up unplayable. I tried faad, mplayer, iTunes, and Winamp 5, all with no luck. Bummer.
Oh great, now no-one will get it. If someone by some miracle actually gets the DVD downloaded before it's/.'d or taken down by the site, can they PLEASE post a torrent?
I just bought this movie on DVD when I was in Japan two weeks ago. It's EXCELLENT! The animation was great, and it had a wonderful storyline. I would definitely recommend seeing it when it hits the theater. Or, if you have or are in the mood for region hacking your DVD player (for those not in region 2) go order the DVD.
Unfortunately, it does work for a lot of sleazy companies. Some business models do not rely on having a good image for the company. It's just a numbers game. Even if they only get a tiny number of sales for every batch of emails, it will still make them money because it is so cheap to send out the solicitations. Spammers will keep spamming until enough people smarten up and stop making it profitable for them.
The real exciting consequence of this article is the proliferation of solid state devices as an AFFORDABLE portable storage media, especially for things you don't mind archiving, like pictures and music.
Think about it...
Right now to affordably carry around a bunch of music, we're stuck with CDs and various magnetic media (zip disks, ls-120, etc.). Yes, you can buy the expensive flash based storage media, but it costs way too much to have a whole pile of them to throw in your pocket on your way out the door. And, of course, CDs and magnetic media all require mechanical devices to read them.
If this comes to fruition at the cheap prices they were implying, we could be buying solid state memory cards in large quantities the same way we used to go and buy floppies. This amount of convenience coupled with not having to worry about every bump jolting some disk reader is definitely a good thing.
Have you successfully used the iPod with a PC? If so, what did it involve? What's the procedure to upload/download files off the iPod with a firewire equipped PC? Did it involve any additional software? I was under the impression the iPod was Mac only.
This is Microsoft trying to affect social change through their software. This is NOT the place for a general purpose software package! This is VERY WRONG!
At least here in the US, the 5th Amendment to our constitution guarantees the right against self-incrimination. IANAL, but having one's car tattle on you almost certainly crosses that line.
The hardware size and copyright bs are definitely two of the main problems holding it back. But, I think eye strain associated with current display technology also comes into play.
I just can't relax staring into an LCD. When E-ink comes out, assuming it really meets the claims they've been doling out, that could change it enough that I'd consider using e-books more.
Along with most others in this thread, I agree whole-heartedly that Access + MySQL isn't a very good combo. However, the Access brand of SQL syntax shouldn't be the reason you don't do it. You can use native MySQL SQL syntax in access by using a pass-through query. This is a much better way of doing things especially for large queries, since all the joining is done on the server instead of the Access client. When you use Access linked tables and Access queries, Access will pull down all the possible data needed, greatly increasing your network overhead. Please, please don't do that with big queries! This applies to SQL Server too, BTW.
Anyway, just my two cents. I still wouldn't recommend it.
I believe you grossly underestimate net users' desire to share mp3s. The 'need for Napster' is not fleeting. As long as internet users listen to music, there will be a Napster-like tool to aid them in their journey. No government will ever be able to completely stamp out music copyright infringement, no matter how hard they try. They would need to change millions of people's attitudes towards music and the net - a feat that is completely unrealistic in the short term, and an uphill battle in the long term.
At least here in Iowa, if you apply for and receive a handgun purchase permit (valid for one year), they do the background check right there, and after a five-day waiting period you can use the permit to purchase any legal firearm. For that one year period, you don't need to submit to another background check - you just show the permit.
Eventually, I foresee bidirectional wireless high-speed service offering ways around all the constant roadblocks to full-time access around the world. But, isn't it about time that carriers and governments see that they should be moving towards better service to extract higher fees rather than nickel and diming everyone for the current ultra-low-speed status quo?
Re:DirecTV/DircPC(No more ISA cards or static IPs)
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A quick correction - it's no longer an ISA card, they now only support the PCI version. This would be all fine and dandy with me, were it not for another couple policy changes they made recently.
First, they removed the unlimited usage plan availability. I was grandfather claused in, but... Previously, everyone with an ISA card also received a static IP address. I used this all the time with great results to transfer files from work, etc. (And they're not kidding about the speed - it was great!) Now, however, you are stuck with a dynamically assigned IP. The kicker, though, is that your system IP configuration is stuck with an internal use IP (Mine is 10.20.30.something). This causes all kinds of problems establishing connections from the outside world to your home computer. (Note, this is probably an over-simplification, but you get the idea.) And, from my communications with them, they have no plan to re-establish static IPs for anyone.
So, if you just want to surf the net fast, DirecPC is great. But, don't plan on being able to do anything remotely serverish.
This is just more confirmation that the music industry execs care less about their customers and more about flexing their legal muscles just because they can. Heck, this recent move doesn't even benefit THEM!
By industry groups tearing down public service sites such as these, all they are doing is angering their customer base. This will ultimately result in less business for them, due to customers seeking any other source of music just to spite them.
They may be trying to reduce copyright infringements and music piracy, but every time they pull one of these they just increase it.
Slashdot Mirror
Valium (Diazepam) is actually a benzodiazepine derivative drug. Barbiturates are different. Funny video, though. :)
PSK31 uses (you guessed it!) about 31 hertz of bandwidth, though it doesn't have error correction built in to the mode. There is also a related mode (PSK63) that uses 63 hertz of bandwidth with a higher data rate. PSK is indeed a very reliable low-power and low-bandwidth means of communication. Whether you're a ham or a short-wave listener, I highly recommend giving it and the other digital modes a try. Just hook up your radio's audio out to your computer's sound-card, download one of the many digital mode software packages out there, and enjoy monitoring! If you're a ham, hook up a few more cables, adjust your audio level a bit, and you're on the air! I recommend MultiPSK as a good software package to get started. It's a bit ugly in the interface but it will work with almost any digital mode on the air. Or, for just PSK and RTTY, give WinWarbler a try, from the DXLab suite. It's a much easier to use interface, and is my personal favorite for when I don't care about anything but PSK.
Enjoy!
Brad - N0TCP
My first attempt used a TINI controller board hooked up to relays hooked up to model rocket igniters. This worked well, but relays are expensive and don't scale well if you want to do this on the cheap.
My next attempt used a Freescale GP32 controller with MOSFETs. This worked very well, and is a more scalable solution. Again, I used model rocket igniters. If you look at my pictures, you can see how I made a nice set of firing racks, too, complete with power distribution scheme and chainable serial control. I wrote a program in Java to send control signals to the controllers to shoot the shells off in sequence.
After these attempts, I finally got sick of playing with the small stuff and got my explosives permit so I can play with 1.3g display fireworks. When you have your explosives permit, you're no longer limited to crappy model rocket igniters. You can buy professional quality e-matches that are meant for the task. They're a bit pricey, but they already are the right length of leads, and work GREAT. Also, the larger shells are MUCH easier to electrically fuse, since they use quick match instead of visco fuse. But, no vendor is going to sell you those nice e-matches without first seeing your LEUP. (Low Explosives User Permit.) That takes a bit of work to get, so I'll assume that's beyond your scope. Of course, there are also professional systems available for control, but they're pricey.
So, I'm going to take a guess that you don't have a LEUP and just want to hack something together to shoot off your 1.4g consumer fireworks. Here's what I've learned from my experience doing the same thing. It's not that tough to do, but don't underestimate the amount of wiring you have ahead of you if you intend on shooting off more than a few shells. With only a few weeks from new years, you'll probably get a more impressive display by buying several nice cakes. But, since that's not the slashdot way, here's how you can do what you want to do...
Please be safe about this! It's a ton of fun, but observe sensible safety precautions. I highly recommend taking a class on display fireworks to learn how to do all this right. Premier Pyro gives great classes on this every year, and you'll have tons of fun to boot. At the very least, give NFPA 11
Just so you know, I started with Skype, and it works just dandy. If it drains away my resources, I haven't noticed it. But, I've recently had the pleasure of installing asterisk at home, and it is the way to go! If you install and use Asterisk, you have the widest choice of phones (including soft phones) and VoIP endpoint providers, and you have the flexibility of changing your mind about any one of those choices at any time without disturbing the rest of the system. In my recent conversion, I converted the whole house to use Asterisk without changing any of our phones. My wife doesn't notice the difference - she just calls normally and it works. But, behind the scenes, I can selectively route different calls to different networks - hard wired or VoIP - to take advantage of whatever route I decide is the best. If any one of those routes starts to irritate me, I can change it without affecting the rest of the system. Try that with Skype.
Now, a common argument you might get against this approach is that it's unneccesarily complicated and requires a dedicated machine. Well, it may be partially true, in that it's more complicated than installing a single SIP or Skype phone or softphone, and the best (IMHO) approach for an install takes a surplus box; however, the TrixBox distribution gets you up and running awfully fast, and can be installed onto a crap machine (I'm using a celeron 500). Follow the How-To here. The flexibility is worth it. And, if you have a decent net connection and VoIP provider, the call quality even for VoIP is outstanding.
Other advantages are flexibility in call routing. I currently have a digium TDM400P card hooked up in my install, with one module hooked up to the phone line, and the other module hooked up to all my analog phones in the house. (I'll eventually replace some of the analog phones with some nice IP phones when I have the cash.) I could just as easily add SIP softphones connected to Asterisk, if I wanted, but normal phones seem more natural to me, and it's cheap to do with the TDM400P card. I have three inbound and outbound trunks set up, one using the land line, one using VoipJet for long distance over VoIP, and one for calls in from and out to the Free World Dialup SIP network. I have my dial plan set up as follows:
Any calls coming in from either my old PSTN landline or my Free World Dialup account are routed to my dialplan, which during the day (6AM to 11PM) rings the analog phones. If the caller is blocking caller id, it forces them to enter their phone number first before ringing the phones. At night, (currently defined as 11PM to 6AM) callers are sent to a VRU, which asks them to hang up if they're a phone solicitation, press 1 to actually call us, or 2 to send the call straight to voicemail without waking us up. In either case when it rings the phones, it will go to voicemail if we don't answer. That voicemail can be retrieved either by the phone, by secure web interface, or currently I also have it email me the wav file of the message.
For outgoing calls, I have it set like this: If you dial a seven digit number, a toll free number, 911, or use a 9 prefix before a long distance call (in case my network connection is down), it dials out through the land line. If you dial a long distance number normally (using just 1 + area code + number, or 011 + country code + international number), it routes it through the IAX2 trunk to VoipJet and saves us tons of money. If you dial a 8 or 393 prefix before the number, it assumes you want to call a FWD number, and routes it out the IAX2 trunk to FWD, which would be a direct SIP to SIP call for free.
In summary, it works awesome, and I had the whole thing working in a basic way (PSTN + analog phone + VoipJet trunk) in one Saturday morning. I had rerouted the whole house's phone system and revam
Mod parent up! It took an AC to write one of the only constructive posts in this thread. Although I also actually paid for the full version of Eagle and consider it the best money I've ever spent, at least the above thread tried to give the guy a FOSS solution.
For what it's worth, though, Eagle rocks! Another poster commented about the difficulty of cad software makers to maintaining parts libraries - I think the better question is the ease of making your own parts libraries in your chosen CAD software. Eagle makes it easy, which is nice when you're using the latest obscure part in your design. Add that to a well thought-out interface and pretty good auto-router and Eagle is definitely worth the money.
Thanks for the info, I did find a DRM folder in my C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data folder, and when copied to my Linux box, it appeared to work. That is, the files were quickly converted.
Unfortunately, both files I tried to convert ended up unplayable. I tried faad, mplayer, iTunes, and Winamp 5, all with no luck. Bummer.
How did you obtain the drm key? I couldn't find this documented anywhere. I've got it compiled, but I don't know where to go from here.
Oh great, now no-one will get it. If someone by some miracle actually gets the DVD downloaded before it's /.'d or taken down by the site, can they PLEASE post a torrent?
You forgot your imports, you insensitive clod!
import java.io.*;
I just bought this movie on DVD when I was in Japan two weeks ago. It's EXCELLENT! The animation was great, and it had a wonderful storyline. I would definitely recommend seeing it when it hits the theater. Or, if you have or are in the mood for region hacking your DVD player (for those not in region 2) go order the DVD.
Ya, and don't forget to relay them through his server!
Unfortunately, it does work for a lot of sleazy companies. Some business models do not rely on having a good image for the company. It's just a numbers game. Even if they only get a tiny number of sales for every batch of emails, it will still make them money because it is so cheap to send out the solicitations. Spammers will keep spamming until enough people smarten up and stop making it profitable for them.
The real exciting consequence of this article is the proliferation of solid state devices as an AFFORDABLE portable storage media, especially for things you don't mind archiving, like pictures and music.
Think about it...
Right now to affordably carry around a bunch of music, we're stuck with CDs and various magnetic media (zip disks, ls-120, etc.). Yes, you can buy the expensive flash based storage media, but it costs way too much to have a whole pile of them to throw in your pocket on your way out the door. And, of course, CDs and magnetic media all require mechanical devices to read them.
If this comes to fruition at the cheap prices they were implying, we could be buying solid state memory cards in large quantities the same way we used to go and buy floppies. This amount of convenience coupled with not having to worry about every bump jolting some disk reader is definitely a good thing.
Have you successfully used the iPod with a PC? If so, what did it involve? What's the procedure to upload/download files off the iPod with a firewire equipped PC? Did it involve any additional software? I was under the impression the iPod was Mac only.
This is Microsoft trying to affect social change through their software. This is NOT the place for a general purpose software package! This is VERY WRONG!
That might have been what happened to the fourth plane. (In PA). I have to wonder if that's the reason it never made it to DC.
At least here in the US, the 5th Amendment to our constitution guarantees the right against self-incrimination. IANAL, but having one's car tattle on you almost certainly crosses that line.
If this is really possible, let's see them post a demo! Post a demo codec, and let us see a demo clip.
This big secret demo policy just screams fake.
The hardware size and copyright bs are definitely two of the main problems holding it back. But, I think eye strain associated with current display technology also comes into play.
I just can't relax staring into an LCD. When E-ink comes out, assuming it really meets the claims they've been doling out, that could change it enough that I'd consider using e-books more.
Anyway, just my two cents. I still wouldn't recommend it.
I believe you grossly underestimate net users' desire to share mp3s. The 'need for Napster' is not fleeting. As long as internet users listen to music, there will be a Napster-like tool to aid them in their journey. No government will ever be able to completely stamp out music copyright infringement, no matter how hard they try. They would need to change millions of people's attitudes towards music and the net - a feat that is completely unrealistic in the short term, and an uphill battle in the long term.
Eventually, I foresee bidirectional wireless high-speed service offering ways around all the constant roadblocks to full-time access around the world. But, isn't it about time that carriers and governments see that they should be moving towards better service to extract higher fees rather than nickel and diming everyone for the current ultra-low-speed status quo?
A quick correction - it's no longer an ISA card, they now only support the PCI version. This would be all fine and dandy with me, were it not for another couple policy changes they made recently.
First, they removed the unlimited usage plan availability. I was grandfather claused in, but... Previously, everyone with an ISA card also received a static IP address. I used this all the time with great results to transfer files from work, etc. (And they're not kidding about the speed - it was great!) Now, however, you are stuck with a dynamically assigned IP. The kicker, though, is that your system IP configuration is stuck with an internal use IP (Mine is 10.20.30.something). This causes all kinds of problems establishing connections from the outside world to your home computer. (Note, this is probably an over-simplification, but you get the idea.) And, from my communications with them, they have no plan to re-establish static IPs for anyone.
So, if you just want to surf the net fast, DirecPC is great. But, don't plan on being able to do anything remotely serverish.
This is just more confirmation that the music industry execs care less about their customers and more about flexing their legal muscles just because they can. Heck, this recent move doesn't even benefit THEM!
By industry groups tearing down public service sites such as these, all they are doing is angering their customer base. This will ultimately result in less business for them, due to customers seeking any other source of music just to spite them.
They may be trying to reduce copyright infringements and music piracy, but every time they pull one of these they just increase it.
Long Live MP3!