Re:Good thing for HAMS...
on
Field Day 2002
·
· Score: 1
You've obviously never heard a pileup on HF... hundreds of stations trying to contact that one rare station that's up and on the air. It creates a slashdot effect!
the article's short on detail, though. Which PDAs can handle this? It seems a processor intensive task, so I'm guessing there would be some pretty significant delay - it's hard to imagine it being realtime.
Annual regulatory fee for an FM stations (depends on the class of station and the population of your city of license):
6. FM Classes A, B1 and C3
1,000,000 population $3,750
7. FM Classes B, C, C1 and C2
1,000,000 population $4,550
The fee that must accompany an application for a construction permit:
$3385
Now, we've just scratched the surface.
First, we have to find a frequency. Let's ask a consulting engineer to find us one: $450.
OK, but we have to have the table of allotments amended to make this frequency available in the city we want it to be in... again, get on the horn to the consulting engineer, and send him $1900 to do the petition for rulemaking.
Now, we have our frequency, it's alloted to our town. Time to file an application for a construction permit... $4000 to the consulting engineer, $3385 to the FCC.
We've spent $9735 - almost $10,000 - and we still aren't sure we'll even get a permit.
Some time passes, and assuming there are no amendments to our application (which will cost us more), we get our construction permit in the mail.
We now have 18 months to build our station and apply for a license - the construction permit just grants authority to build the station, test it and operate it until the license is applied for and granted.
The costs really start to add up now... tower, tower installation (you're not actually going to go out to the tower site and haul tower sections up by hand are you?)... antenna... transmission line... transmitter... unless our studio will be at the transmitter site, we have to buy a microwave unit to send the signal from our studio to the transmitter... then we have to have a studio, with control console, CD players, etc... oops, don't forget the audio processor and stereo generator...
Building the station actually costs a lot more than operating it... or it can, unless you are very frugal and buy a lot of used equipment!
The ongoing costs that any business has include rent, power, insurance, payroll, business license.
Then you get to pay ASCAP, BMI and SESAC their fees - and they all have an annual minimum, even if you're losing money.
Fortunately, you don't have to pay the RIAA... the only bright spot...
Of course, every year we get to pay the regulatory fee listed above.
Yes, operating a music FM can be costly - but with today's computers and software, and if you don't actually make money the ASCAP/BMI/SESAC fees aren't that much, you can keep costs to less than a lot of other businesses.
The single biggest problem is the vast number of existing television receivers.
Video technology has made astonishing leaps in the past 10-15 years. We currently see the highest resolutions ever via our existing NTSC receivers.
In order to take advantage of higher resolutions and other technologies, the basic receiver has to undergo changes. Which ultimately means that all existing sets have to be replaced... or at a minimum, an external receiver must be added.
This was, and still is, the dilemna facing broadcasters, manufacturers and the regulating authorities.
I've made this statement before and stand by it today: broadcast television serves a much less useful purpose than ever in this day and age. With the ubiquitous cable or satellite receiver, more and more of the population is served by means other than direct over-the-air reception.
Local stations are on the air, broadcasting the same programs as every other station in the country. The only thing that differentiates one station from another is local advertising, and in some cases, local news. Even there, so many stations don't even do local news.
The "broadcast" networks are seeing their news viewership erode constantly - witness the recent willingness of ABC to remove Nightline in favor of entertainment programming (Letterman, if they'd gotten him).
Remember that anybody who wants to put up the $$ can have a "local" television station - buy the equipment, the programming, but don't buy a transmitter. Buy a fiber loop to the local cable headend(s). Work out your deal with the cable company to get on their system. You're "on the air" and done right, people watching will never realize the difference between your station and a broadcast station.
Time-Warner Cable has done this in the Raleigh-Durham area themselves with their News 14.
Slick production, fairly relevant local news and information. Live trucks running around the Triangle with the News 14 logo - in fact, the first time I saw one, I didn't know about the cable channel, and I wondered who was on the air on channel 14.
I have two points in this long and rambling post... one is that it's a daunting task to change out the huge installed base of television receivers... and that task is exclusively consumer driven. If people don't perceive added value from whatever new technology, they aren't going to drop the $$ on new receivers. In my own case, I'm hoping my 10 year old Magnavox holds out long enough for some of this to shake out (and prices to come down a little more)
My second point is that the electromagnetic spectrum currently allocated to television could be put to better use. Let existing broadcasters provide their programming to cable and satellite providers via fiber loops or microwave.
Thanks for letting me ramble - sometimes I get annoyed at the confusion generated by all this, when it seems so simple and clear cut to me.
As an aside, note that devices operating in the ham portions of 2.4 GHz are allowed on a secondary basis, meaning they may not interfere, and must accept any interference.
This was a concern the first time I built a 2.4 GHz wireless network (2mbps, using Overlan gear), so I looked it up specifically.
You took the words out of my mouth, but there is one additional concern - RF exposure.
Don't crank up on a high gain antenna pointed through your neighbor's bedroom. Be prepared to show compliance with RF exposure rules anytime you put up any antenna.
My poor little ol' MFJ TNCs are gathering dust - I used to run a packet BBS. Ended up with one ol' boy usin' it, with a W4 call - almost never got him to get on the Internet.
When I moved, I finally took it down, and didn't start it back up.
Been thinking about firing one up lately to see if there's any APRS activity anymore, but just haven't gotten around to it.
Now, if we can build out a packet network with some decent speed, that'll be a whole different kettle of fish
It's been noted several times in comments here that HDTV really isn't worth the extra $$ when compared with what you get.
Here in Raleigh/Durham, NC, there are several stations broadcasting their digital signals, including the nation's leader in digital television, WRAL-TV. WRAL produced a special on the move of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, and it looks SPECTACULAR in HD.
But...
I look at the cost of the digital-ready sets. And cringe. Keep in mind that you have to buy the set, and then you have to buy the tuner to actually receive digital signals!
All the other toys mentioned are nice as well, but let's look at why standard definition is still the best value (and still the choice of millions of consumers).
Standard definition televisions today produce an incredible picture. They're capable of much better quality than we actually see!
How's that?
Analog cable in many, many locations is awful. Here, for example, the NBC affiliate is unviewable on Time-Warner. They have it on channel 2, but tune in to channel 2, and nobody's home. WRAL on channel 3 isn't much better, but you can at least see there's a signal there.
If you're a cable customer, there are few instances where your TV isn't able to actually give you a much better picture - but it just isn't being given a good one to show you.
The same is true for the DirecTV and Dish Network customers... sure, the picture quality blows away cable. But bandwidth issues are causing both companies to use a lot more compression than is healthy, as well as other tweaks, to cram all the channels they have onto the system.
This results in digital artifacts (pixels, etc) showing up on even the worst televisions. My wife can never see those - until the recent addition of local channels required by law (a whole different topic). Then even she noticed what I'd been talking about with digital artifacts.
Over the air reception is still the best way to get the best possible picture - and of course doesn't include cable-only channels. And even over the air presents its own problems, with antennas, pointing them, etc.
My major point is this - there just aren't enough HD signals available. Standard definition televisions can actually display better pictures than are currently provided (yes, yes, aside from DVD and HD).
Unless you're a video buff, rent/buy a lot of DVDs, or are willing to settle for a limited amount of High Definition programming, the cost to move to HDTV simply can't be justified right now.
Personally, I'm hoping my old 27" Magnavox holds out for another 3 years. I'd hate to buy a new TV right now, but if it becomes necessary, until prices come down (and they are, fairly quickly) quite a bit, and digital tuners are included in the sets (I know, some have 'em now - but I think they should be in every one), I'll be sticking with standard definition.
It's entirely possible that's not the best phone. My experience in those areas is with the venerable Samsung SCH-1500, which has an excellent receiver sensitivity. Originally, I got a Qualcomm 2700 for my wife, and the Samsung would work, and work pretty well, in areas where the Qualcomm insisted there was no signal... such as here in the house.
The Sanyo 4700 I just bought does even better than the Samsung... but I seem to recall seeing lots of folks complain about the newer Samsung phones..
I've never had a problem... in central Georgia, here in Durham, NC, in Orlando, in Baltimore, all along I-20 from GA to TX, up I-35 to Oklahoma City, along I-40 from Durham, NC to Oklahoma City, in Ada, Oklahoma...
If my phone can get a signal, it's worked. I've had maybe a dozen dropped calls in 3+ years.
Oh, I have no doubt that there's a market for direct connect.
I think most of us understand, though, that market is business. I'm certainly not going to go out and buy two new phones for myself and my wife so we can do the walkie talkie thing... it's just as easy (to me, your mileage may vary) to use the speed dial to reach her.
No question at all that the direct connect feature will help Sprint PCS get into more businesses. None at all.
My point really is that the only real advantage the average consumer *might* see from CDMA2000 is increased network capacity. A segment will surely use the higher data speeds.
I could be wrong - I just don't think 3G (or CDMA2000) is going to be an immediate huge hit with the consumer market, simply because of the investment in new phones the consumer would have to make.
Additionally, Sprint PCS will be using their 3G network (CDMA2000) to implement the direct-connect type thing that Nextel does... where you'll be able to use your phone as a walkie-talkie (2-way radio).
They're claiming 144kb/sec data as well (for the first phase of the rollout).
No word yet on what pricing will be, for either data or the direct-connect feature.
I think both these features will be somewhat slow to catch on - people will have to buy new phones to get the advantage... unless Sanyo, for example, actually does what they've promised and provide firmware upgrades to the 4700 and newer models (I just bought a 4700, not for 3G, but because after 3 years, it was time to ditch the old Samsung 1500 with the broken antenna and battery that wouldn't hold a charge anymore).
Though Google claims the voting system won't directly, and more importantly, immediately, have any effect on results of a search, I think they're going to have to spend a lot of money on abuse detection.
The arguments Ms. West uses are weak, and easily addressed. In my digital camera, a 64MB card holds ~200 images in "high quality" mode (1280x960, jpg, some compression). I have 4 of these 64 meg cards. So if I'm out, I have the capacity of nearly 800 images before I need to cull or download the images to a PC.
Granted, the pros use higher quality images, which use more space. So more memory cards! It really is that simple. As someone's pointed out, they would never go in the field with too little film (intentionally), so why go in the field with too little memory?
Certainly, the ability to review your images immediately and cull them is there - and it can be tempting, too! As a rule, though, I don't delete images (unless one's a total waste of space), and just download 'em to the PC for later storage on CD.
Finally, we do get to storage. Why would anyone intentionally spend money to store images online? I guess there's value to the clients of news agencies (AP, etc) to have those available, but for permanent archival, they need to go on CD. And personally, if it were up to me, they would, and then be made available online from those CDs.
I just think this is a case of someone using a very small potential problems to get a little "face time."
Actually, I can demonstrate RF field strength quite handily, thanks.
Not to turn this into a flamefest, but your repetition of 802.11 makes it sound like there are special rules for that protocol. There are not. The rules in question cover the IMS bands.
Please be sure that I can demonstrate that my installations are part 15 compliant. Granted, many couldn't, and can be led astray by general statements like "hang an antenna off the back."
Since the WAP-11 is spec'd to do 54mw out, with 10 feet of LMR-400 into a 24dBi gain antenna, you're gonna be something over 5 watts effective... way illegal.
In the one situation where I've "hung antennas off the back" of a WAP-11, I'm getting something like 90mw effective... at 30 feet AGL.
Line-of-sight means exactly what it says. Yes, you must be able to see the other site.
(yeah, I know all about the radio horizon vs. visual horizon, and Freznel zones, etc. - but for most purposes, with these devices, radio horizon isn't going to be an issue)
Trees, buildings, mountains cannot obstruct the view. The frequency ranges used do not pass through objects very well at all.
If the two sites are close enough, with enough gain (remember, gotta keep it legal, though), some amount of trees, walls, etc, may work.
To put it in the simplest terms - increasing the gain of the antenna effects not only the transmit range (more power out) but the reception range (more received power delivered to the receiver)
Of course, increasing gain also narrows the beamwidth - which means that alignment of the antennas becomes increasingly critical as the antenna gain goes up.
With a 15 dBi antenna on each end, and a coax run of only 5 feet, this would work, and remain inside the rules - BUT would have a very low fade margin.
But that means you would have to mount NEMA boxes to put the WAP-11s in and run power up to the boxes.
There's not a good way to make this work that's readily apparent and stay within the rules. It would require some site survey at all three locations, and additional work to determine how to make it work.
And you can use any antenna that's built for 2.4 GHz. Unity gain, 5.5 dBi (what I'm using to link 2 condo complexes), etc.
Use LMR-400 (or better - better is left as an exercise for the reader) cable, reverse TNC Male connector for the back of the Linksys... N-type female (usually) on the antenna end of the cable.
A word of caution - don't mess with the connectors yourself unless you know what you're doing. A stray strand of braid touching the center conductor will blow you out of the water. Also, to minimize loss (we're only talking 50 milliwatts here - not much power), be sure you use quality, solder-type connectors, and only the ones at each end... "measure twice, cut once" is an invaluable piece of advice when installing your transmission cable.
Also be careful of short coax runs and 24 dBi gain antennae - don't want to run afoul of the FCC.
One other comment - don't use channel 6 (the default in the WAP 11).
I think the biggest thing we're all waiting for is for someone to break a law in another country, and find themselves arrested and extradited.
The Skylarov case comes to mind, obviously, but it's slightly different. Mr. Skylarov was accused of breaking US law, and then when he voluntarily entered the US, he was arrested.
What scares me, and should scare the rest of you, is the possibility of a foreign nation demanding extradition of someone for breaking that nation's laws without ever entering the country physically.
It is a simple matter to break Singaporean or Chinese law - simply denounce the government. Many other countries have similar laws, and if I should put up a website denouncing the Chinese government, that website would be in violation of the law in China. But I'm not in China, I'm not a Chinese citizen, the website wouldn't be in China.
That may not matter. China can demand my extradition to China to stand trial. Certainly, today the US wouldn't comply with that demand. But how long until keeping China happy is more important than a single US citizen? China produces a LOT that's exported to the US, and enjoys most favored nation trade status currently. This gives them a certain amount of clout with the US government (admittedly, not enough to extort $1million for an airplane sitting on a runway for 6 weeks or so).
If you think this can't happen, look to the state of California extending its jurisdiction to anyone in the world (the DeCSS case). I'm afraid this is only the beginning.
Thanks for taking a moment to listen to my ramblings and consider.
Re:IRC doesn't need security..
on
Secure IRC?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
You overlook the fact that server operators can join any channel - private or not.
Anytime you have a server-based protocol, you'll have people who will not be willing to change to a protocol they can't snoop on.
Major changes to IRC are going to be a hard sell. A very hard sell. And I just don't see it happening.
Slashdot Mirror
You've obviously never heard a pileup on HF... hundreds of stations trying to contact that one rare station that's up and on the air. It creates a slashdot effect!
I have yet to get php4.2.x to work properly with Apache 1.3.x under Solaris 8 or 9, and last night's release is no exception.
It all compiles fine - but php simply won't pass form variables, even in a $PHP_SELF.
Have had to stay away from 4.2.x until I can get around to going to Apache 2.0.x
the article's short on detail, though. Which PDAs can handle this? It seems a processor intensive task, so I'm guessing there would be some pretty significant delay - it's hard to imagine it being realtime.
Annual regulatory fee for an FM stations (depends on the class of station and the population of your city of license):
6. FM Classes A, B1 and C3
1,000,000 population $3,750
7. FM Classes B, C, C1 and C2
1,000,000 population $4,550
The fee that must accompany an application for a construction permit:
$3385
Now, we've just scratched the surface.
First, we have to find a frequency. Let's ask a consulting engineer to find us one: $450.
OK, but we have to have the table of allotments amended to make this frequency available in the city we want it to be in... again, get on the horn to the consulting engineer, and send him $1900 to do the petition for rulemaking.
Now, we have our frequency, it's alloted to our town. Time to file an application for a construction permit... $4000 to the consulting engineer, $3385 to the FCC.
We've spent $9735 - almost $10,000 - and we still aren't sure we'll even get a permit.
Some time passes, and assuming there are no amendments to our application (which will cost us more), we get our construction permit in the mail.
We now have 18 months to build our station and apply for a license - the construction permit just grants authority to build the station, test it and operate it until the license is applied for and granted.
The costs really start to add up now... tower, tower installation (you're not actually going to go out to the tower site and haul tower sections up by hand are you?)... antenna... transmission line... transmitter... unless our studio will be at the transmitter site, we have to buy a microwave unit to send the signal from our studio to the transmitter... then we have to have a studio, with control console, CD players, etc... oops, don't forget the audio processor and stereo generator...
Building the station actually costs a lot more than operating it... or it can, unless you are very frugal and buy a lot of used equipment!
The ongoing costs that any business has include rent, power, insurance, payroll, business license.
Then you get to pay ASCAP, BMI and SESAC their fees - and they all have an annual minimum, even if you're losing money.
Fortunately, you don't have to pay the RIAA... the only bright spot...
Of course, every year we get to pay the regulatory fee listed above.
Yes, operating a music FM can be costly - but with today's computers and software, and if you don't actually make money the ASCAP/BMI/SESAC fees aren't that much, you can keep costs to less than a lot of other businesses.
The single biggest problem is the vast number of existing television receivers.
Video technology has made astonishing leaps in the past 10-15 years. We currently see the highest resolutions ever via our existing NTSC receivers.
In order to take advantage of higher resolutions and other technologies, the basic receiver has to undergo changes. Which ultimately means that all existing sets have to be replaced... or at a minimum, an external receiver must be added.
This was, and still is, the dilemna facing broadcasters, manufacturers and the regulating authorities.
I've made this statement before and stand by it today: broadcast television serves a much less useful purpose than ever in this day and age. With the ubiquitous cable or satellite receiver, more and more of the population is served by means other than direct over-the-air reception.
Local stations are on the air, broadcasting the same programs as every other station in the country. The only thing that differentiates one station from another is local advertising, and in some cases, local news. Even there, so many stations don't even do local news.
The "broadcast" networks are seeing their news viewership erode constantly - witness the recent willingness of ABC to remove Nightline in favor of entertainment programming (Letterman, if they'd gotten him).
Remember that anybody who wants to put up the $$ can have a "local" television station - buy the equipment, the programming, but don't buy a transmitter. Buy a fiber loop to the local cable headend(s). Work out your deal with the cable company to get on their system. You're "on the air" and done right, people watching will never realize the difference between your station and a broadcast station.
Time-Warner Cable has done this in the Raleigh-Durham area themselves with their News 14.
Slick production, fairly relevant local news and information. Live trucks running around the Triangle with the News 14 logo - in fact, the first time I saw one, I didn't know about the cable channel, and I wondered who was on the air on channel 14.
I have two points in this long and rambling post... one is that it's a daunting task to change out the huge installed base of television receivers... and that task is exclusively consumer driven. If people don't perceive added value from whatever new technology, they aren't going to drop the $$ on new receivers. In my own case, I'm hoping my 10 year old Magnavox holds out long enough for some of this to shake out (and prices to come down a little more)
My second point is that the electromagnetic spectrum currently allocated to television could be put to better use. Let existing broadcasters provide their programming to cable and satellite providers via fiber loops or microwave.
Thanks for letting me ramble - sometimes I get annoyed at the confusion generated by all this, when it seems so simple and clear cut to me.
As an aside, note that devices operating in the ham portions of 2.4 GHz are allowed on a secondary basis, meaning they may not interfere, and must accept any interference.
This was a concern the first time I built a 2.4 GHz wireless network (2mbps, using Overlan gear), so I looked it up specifically.
73 de KE4UWL
You took the words out of my mouth, but there is one additional concern - RF exposure.
Don't crank up on a high gain antenna pointed through your neighbor's bedroom. Be prepared to show compliance with RF exposure rules anytime you put up any antenna.
73 de KE4UWL
Oh, puhleeze... heh...
My poor little ol' MFJ TNCs are gathering dust - I used to run a packet BBS. Ended up with one ol' boy usin' it, with a W4 call - almost never got him to get on the Internet.
When I moved, I finally took it down, and didn't start it back up.
Been thinking about firing one up lately to see if there's any APRS activity anymore, but just haven't gotten around to it.
Now, if we can build out a packet network with some decent speed, that'll be a whole different kettle of fish
73 de KE4UWL
It's been noted several times in comments here that HDTV really isn't worth the extra $$ when compared with what you get.
Here in Raleigh/Durham, NC, there are several stations broadcasting their digital signals, including the nation's leader in digital television, WRAL-TV. WRAL produced a special on the move of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, and it looks SPECTACULAR in HD.
But...
I look at the cost of the digital-ready sets. And cringe. Keep in mind that you have to buy the set, and then you have to buy the tuner to actually receive digital signals!
All the other toys mentioned are nice as well, but let's look at why standard definition is still the best value (and still the choice of millions of consumers).
Standard definition televisions today produce an incredible picture. They're capable of much better quality than we actually see!
How's that?
Analog cable in many, many locations is awful. Here, for example, the NBC affiliate is unviewable on Time-Warner. They have it on channel 2, but tune in to channel 2, and nobody's home. WRAL on channel 3 isn't much better, but you can at least see there's a signal there.
If you're a cable customer, there are few instances where your TV isn't able to actually give you a much better picture - but it just isn't being given a good one to show you.
The same is true for the DirecTV and Dish Network customers... sure, the picture quality blows away cable. But bandwidth issues are causing both companies to use a lot more compression than is healthy, as well as other tweaks, to cram all the channels they have onto the system.
This results in digital artifacts (pixels, etc) showing up on even the worst televisions. My wife can never see those - until the recent addition of local channels required by law (a whole different topic). Then even she noticed what I'd been talking about with digital artifacts.
Over the air reception is still the best way to get the best possible picture - and of course doesn't include cable-only channels. And even over the air presents its own problems, with antennas, pointing them, etc.
My major point is this - there just aren't enough HD signals available. Standard definition televisions can actually display better pictures than are currently provided (yes, yes, aside from DVD and HD).
Unless you're a video buff, rent/buy a lot of DVDs, or are willing to settle for a limited amount of High Definition programming, the cost to move to HDTV simply can't be justified right now.
Personally, I'm hoping my old 27" Magnavox holds out for another 3 years. I'd hate to buy a new TV right now, but if it becomes necessary, until prices come down (and they are, fairly quickly) quite a bit, and digital tuners are included in the sets (I know, some have 'em now - but I think they should be in every one), I'll be sticking with standard definition.
It's entirely possible that's not the best phone. My experience in those areas is with the venerable Samsung SCH-1500, which has an excellent receiver sensitivity. Originally, I got a Qualcomm 2700 for my wife, and the Samsung would work, and work pretty well, in areas where the Qualcomm insisted there was no signal... such as here in the house.
The Sanyo 4700 I just bought does even better than the Samsung... but I seem to recall seeing lots of folks complain about the newer Samsung phones..
Like most things, your mileage may vary.
I've never had a problem... in central Georgia, here in Durham, NC, in Orlando, in Baltimore, all along I-20 from GA to TX, up I-35 to Oklahoma City, along I-40 from Durham, NC to Oklahoma City, in Ada, Oklahoma...
If my phone can get a signal, it's worked. I've had maybe a dozen dropped calls in 3+ years.
Oh, I have no doubt that there's a market for direct connect.
I think most of us understand, though, that market is business. I'm certainly not going to go out and buy two new phones for myself and my wife so we can do the walkie talkie thing... it's just as easy (to me, your mileage may vary) to use the speed dial to reach her.
No question at all that the direct connect feature will help Sprint PCS get into more businesses. None at all.
My point really is that the only real advantage the average consumer *might* see from CDMA2000 is increased network capacity. A segment will surely use the higher data speeds.
I could be wrong - I just don't think 3G (or CDMA2000) is going to be an immediate huge hit with the consumer market, simply because of the investment in new phones the consumer would have to make.
Additionally, Sprint PCS will be using their 3G network (CDMA2000) to implement the direct-connect type thing that Nextel does... where you'll be able to use your phone as a walkie-talkie (2-way radio).
They're claiming 144kb/sec data as well (for the first phase of the rollout).
No word yet on what pricing will be, for either data or the direct-connect feature.
I think both these features will be somewhat slow to catch on - people will have to buy new phones to get the advantage... unless Sanyo, for example, actually does what they've promised and provide firmware upgrades to the 4700 and newer models (I just bought a 4700, not for 3G, but because after 3 years, it was time to ditch the old Samsung 1500 with the broken antenna and battery that wouldn't hold a charge anymore).
Though Google claims the voting system won't directly, and more importantly, immediately, have any effect on results of a search, I think they're going to have to spend a lot of money on abuse detection.
The arguments Ms. West uses are weak, and easily addressed. In my digital camera, a 64MB card holds ~200 images in "high quality" mode (1280x960, jpg, some compression). I have 4 of these 64 meg cards. So if I'm out, I have the capacity of nearly 800 images before I need to cull or download the images to a PC.
Granted, the pros use higher quality images, which use more space. So more memory cards! It really is that simple. As someone's pointed out, they would never go in the field with too little film (intentionally), so why go in the field with too little memory?
Certainly, the ability to review your images immediately and cull them is there - and it can be tempting, too! As a rule, though, I don't delete images (unless one's a total waste of space), and just download 'em to the PC for later storage on CD.
Finally, we do get to storage. Why would anyone intentionally spend money to store images online? I guess there's value to the clients of news agencies (AP, etc) to have those available, but for permanent archival, they need to go on CD. And personally, if it were up to me, they would, and then be made available online from those CDs.
I just think this is a case of someone using a very small potential problems to get a little "face time."
Rebuild the entire complex. And do the towers as the tallest buildings in the world.
Design in a memorial to those who perished in today's tragedy - the first 2 or 3 floors of each tower, with each person's name engraved in marble.
Heh... nor do I recall heads exploding.
600W at 1.9 GHz? Could be fun to put that into a 24dBi gain antenna and see how much smoke we could create in our neighbor's houses...
Actually, I can demonstrate RF field strength quite handily, thanks.
Not to turn this into a flamefest, but your repetition of 802.11 makes it sound like there are special rules for that protocol. There are not. The rules in question cover the IMS bands.
Please be sure that I can demonstrate that my installations are part 15 compliant. Granted, many couldn't, and can be led astray by general statements like "hang an antenna off the back."
Since the WAP-11 is spec'd to do 54mw out, with 10 feet of LMR-400 into a 24dBi gain antenna, you're gonna be something over 5 watts effective... way illegal.
In the one situation where I've "hung antennas off the back" of a WAP-11, I'm getting something like 90mw effective... at 30 feet AGL.
Line-of-sight means exactly what it says. Yes, you must be able to see the other site.
(yeah, I know all about the radio horizon vs. visual horizon, and Freznel zones, etc. - but for most purposes, with these devices, radio horizon isn't going to be an issue)
Trees, buildings, mountains cannot obstruct the view. The frequency ranges used do not pass through objects very well at all.
If the two sites are close enough, with enough gain (remember, gotta keep it legal, though), some amount of trees, walls, etc, may work.
That's not necessarily true.
To put it in the simplest terms - increasing the gain of the antenna effects not only the transmit range (more power out) but the reception range (more received power delivered to the receiver)
Of course, increasing gain also narrows the beamwidth - which means that alignment of the antennas becomes increasingly critical as the antenna gain goes up.
Illegal modifications?
g i?TITLE=47&PART=15&SECTION=247&YEAR=2000&TYPE=TEXT
By whose definition?
CFR 47, 15.247 defines maximum peak power, among other things (such as the frequency hopping intervals, occupied bandwidth, etc).
FCC rules do NOT specify that you must use the antennas supplied with the system.
Quite specifically, in fact, the rules leave the choice of antenna to the user... within specified limits.
May I suggest that you read the actual rules before making such a general comment? Here's the link:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.c
With a 15 dBi antenna on each end, and a coax run of only 5 feet, this would work, and remain inside the rules - BUT would have a very low fade margin.
But that means you would have to mount NEMA boxes to put the WAP-11s in and run power up to the boxes.
There's not a good way to make this work that's readily apparent and stay within the rules. It would require some site survey at all three locations, and additional work to determine how to make it work.
Reverse TNC Male
i n.cgi?GoButton=Go+Now%21
And you can use any antenna that's built for 2.4 GHz. Unity gain, 5.5 dBi (what I'm using to link 2 condo complexes), etc.
Use LMR-400 (or better - better is left as an exercise for the reader) cable, reverse TNC Male connector for the back of the Linksys... N-type female (usually) on the antenna end of the cable.
Calculate your system gains/losses at this site:
http://www.dct.com/~multiplx/wireless/wireless.ma
A word of caution - don't mess with the connectors yourself unless you know what you're doing. A stray strand of braid touching the center conductor will blow you out of the water. Also, to minimize loss (we're only talking 50 milliwatts here - not much power), be sure you use quality, solder-type connectors, and only the ones at each end... "measure twice, cut once" is an invaluable piece of advice when installing your transmission cable.
Also be careful of short coax runs and 24 dBi gain antennae - don't want to run afoul of the FCC.
One other comment - don't use channel 6 (the default in the WAP 11).
I think the biggest thing we're all waiting for is for someone to break a law in another country, and find themselves arrested and extradited.
The Skylarov case comes to mind, obviously, but it's slightly different. Mr. Skylarov was accused of breaking US law, and then when he voluntarily entered the US, he was arrested.
What scares me, and should scare the rest of you, is the possibility of a foreign nation demanding extradition of someone for breaking that nation's laws without ever entering the country physically.
It is a simple matter to break Singaporean or Chinese law - simply denounce the government. Many other countries have similar laws, and if I should put up a website denouncing the Chinese government, that website would be in violation of the law in China. But I'm not in China, I'm not a Chinese citizen, the website wouldn't be in China.
That may not matter. China can demand my extradition to China to stand trial. Certainly, today the US wouldn't comply with that demand. But how long until keeping China happy is more important than a single US citizen? China produces a LOT that's exported to the US, and enjoys most favored nation trade status currently. This gives them a certain amount of clout with the US government (admittedly, not enough to extort $1million for an airplane sitting on a runway for 6 weeks or so).
If you think this can't happen, look to the state of California extending its jurisdiction to anyone in the world (the DeCSS case). I'm afraid this is only the beginning.
Thanks for taking a moment to listen to my ramblings and consider.
You overlook the fact that server operators can join any channel - private or not.
Anytime you have a server-based protocol, you'll have people who will not be willing to change to a protocol they can't snoop on.
Major changes to IRC are going to be a hard sell. A very hard sell. And I just don't see it happening.