Sorry, but things haven't been that way for years here in the US; it may be that way still in (parts of?) Canada and Mexico. Here, the old Class-D stations are required to lower power enough to prevent interference (in some cases to ridiculous values like *TENS* of watts!), but not go off the air completely. Likewise, FM and TV stations are not allowed to go off the air without a good reason.
I don't remember exactly when this was done, but I'm pretty sure it was in the 90's.
1a. You haven't specified exactly what you'll be doing: if it's just office crap, anything will do; but if you'll be running the GIMP, games, etc, you'll need higher-end hardware (both CPU and GPU).
1b. Do you need x86/x64? If not, a Chromebook or tablet with USB-OTG and hub may be an answer; unfortunately, the below blob problem still applies.
2. For GPUs there are two kinds of drivers: reverse-engineered and proprietary blobs; you almost certainly know this. NVIDIA is the king of the blob department, AMD/ATI is middle of the road, and Intel (along with older stuff like SiS) is mostly completely reverse-engineered or even released open. Bear in mind, the open drivers are messy: based on the state of the art, graphics is by far the most difficult thing to reverse engineer a driver for, and I really feel for the guys working on them! (Edit: AMD/ATI's blobs are well known for being a mess, too!)
Bottom line: if RMS can barely get a machine to his liking, you'll have only a marginally less difficult time. Sorry.
Not one of you seems to have caught the "baking for several hours at 250C has the same effect" part, so big question: could I bake my SSD at 250C (482F for us Americaners, and easily attainable in any kitchen oven) to restore it once I exceed the flash's write limit? Or will the caps pop, die packages (or even the PCB and its traces!) de-laminate, etc?
Thanksgiving (and now Christmas) turkey fresh from the oven along with a freshened SSD sounds especially delicious!
The games lineup is a strong one, with games such as New Super Mario Bros U, Arkham City Armoured Edition, Assassins Creed 3, Call of Duty Black Ops 2, Sonic AllStars Racing, Nintendo Land, Tank Tank Tank, ScribbleNauts Unlimited, Epic Mickey 2 The Power of Two, ESPN Sports Connection, DarkSiders 2, Rabbids Land, Mass Effect 3, Ninja Gaiden 3 Razors Edge, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Wipeout 3 and Just Dance 4 all available on launch day.
What, no Hero's Duty, Sugar Rush Speedway, or Fix-It Felix, Jr?
I just bought a Galaxy Note 2 last week; now that the Nexus 4 is released, it has made me really question whether I should return the GN2 for the N4. There are a few reasons I decided against it:
1. I *LOVE*LOVE*LOVE* the 5.5" true RGB AMOLED screen! Sure at least one person here is whining 4.7" is too big, but the GN2 fits in my pocket fine, though holding it one-handed can be tough without a case (it's slippery like most modern phones). In any case, this is the #1 reason I bought it and I think I'll have a hard time buying something smaller in the future.
2. All (recent?) Nexus devices have no SD? What's up with that? I agree with everyone else, this is sort of a deal-breaker, and the main reason I never bought the Galaxy Nexus. I do *NOT* want to have to store my crap in the cloud.
3. Not really Nexus, but vs LG, HTC, etc, no removable battery is a total deal-breaker PERIOD.
4. GN2 has 4 cores and LTE built-in, even on the T-Mobile USA version (which future-proofs it from a network standpoint); only the "international" (unbranded) version is lacking it. That said, unless you're tethering, I don't think HSPA+ 21Mbps is going to be that bad unless you're in a fringe area, which LTE handles much better, supposedly (and LTE-Advanced should do better still). Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, and "international" GN2 all have pentaband radios as well, meaning they should support GSM and HSPA+ on every band in the world except 12cm (2600 MHz used for Sprint/Clearwire here in the USA, also Telstra down under according to Wikipedia) and 700 MHz (Verizon and AT&T in USA, but they're only putting LTE there so it doesn't matter).
Now, the one iffy part is Nexus is, by definition, open--what the whole article is about--and the GN2 is not. Being Samsung, rooting should be easy on the GN2, and with Exynos open sourced (still a bit in shock over that, but not as much as Broadcom and the Raspberry-Pi's chip!), hopefully CyanogenMod will be available soon, though I'll probably wait until the warranty goes first.
One last thing: I'm coming from my N900 and I'm still not sure I'll be selling it. I've read numerous times that Android appears clunky compared to Maemo (which is Debian-based), though Jelly Bean is better: after playing for a while, I agree, but it's certainly not horrible unless you're a dev, I suppose. My main worry with Android is security: that you can't revoke app permissions in stock Android and you pretty much have to root. It's not a huge problem for me because I don't trust carrying around Google Wallet and NFC along with lots of personal stuff without much better security, but it's painfully clear that they want to track you: I mean, the Accuweather widgit on the main window won't even update unless you turn tracking on!
I know this is overly-long, but hope it helps someone.
It IS possible, and it's called Iridium. The catch is that it's low bandwidth. But the antarctic bases (as well as plenty of arctic users) are Iridium's bread and butter, particularly among civilian users.
I don't have them in front of me, but I remember there being patents on this very thing going back quite a few years--some back to the 80's! I also think there was a/. article on it somewhere along the line...
The Times article has a good example: a phone-controlled bomb or similar device. There's also a more general human C&C such as the Mumbai terrorist attack, which is apparently why satellite phones are banned in India now.
OTOH, the BART fiasco was a knee-jerk reaction so typical these days and that seems to be what prompted the FCC to do this. It is also clearly NOT an "imminent threat".
Here's the problem I see: there is a very clear ban against jammers in the USA, yet you see US manufacturers all over the place online who supposedly can't sell to you or I, yet have no problem selling to Syria et al. AFAIK, jammers are only "legal" for the miltary to have in the USA, so what was BART/SFPD/etc doing with them in their possession in the first place? (IANAL)
Being a ham radio op as well as somewhat obsessed about this very subject (over-reliance on GPS), I decided to look up some stuff and see what I could find:
2a. Here in the USA jamming is strictly verbotten by non-military under ANY circumstances: I don't even think the civie police get to use it, though I'm not 100% sure there. This is also why cell/mobile phone jamming in movie theaters and similar places that is done in some other countries is not done here.
2b. Googling "ofcom jamming laws" yields this: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enforcement/spectrum-enforcement/jammers In short, jamming carries "a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine." Note that while this section specifically talks about phones, the way it's written it's probably applicable to everything, just like elsewhere.
3. While GPS is indeed a US-DoD system, the UK and US have been real tight for a long time, so I'm sure any problems in GPS will be dealt with pretty harshly. The fact that they're putting these remote radios up all over the place must mean they're having a serious problem with the jamming as I haven't heard of any problems like this elsewhere. (Though I'm guilty of getting a disproportionate amount of my news from/., so...)
4. Outside of the jamming, GPS alternatives are Glonass (currently being rebuilt), Galileo, Baidou, and other upcoming systems (none of which are operational yet AFAIK)--all of which are satellite-based and thus vulnerable to anything that could affect things in space--and the leftovers of LORAN-C in western Europe, the Soviet equivalent Chayka, and the Soviet Omega system equivalent, Alpha--all of which are terrestrial. None of these systems are in operation anymore in N. America, so we're "playing without a net" as it were, which worries me to no end. (Yes, there are the various ILS's for planes, but what about everyone else?)
Jay: Zed, don't you guys ever get any sleep around here?
Zed: The twins keep us on Centaurian time, standard thirty-seven hour day. Give it a few months. You'll get used to it... or you'll have a psychotic episode.
For the same reason they keep trying to steal the amateur 70cm band (420-450 MHz in the New World, 420-440 MHz elsewhere): the propagation happens to lie in a "sweet spot" of being able to penetrate vegetation, buildings, etc with minimal loss, high power can be generated rather cheaply and easily, and yet there sufficient bandwidth to be able to do high speed data and what-not.
Further up into the microwaves (including mid and high-UHF) you get more bandwidth but attenuation and lower power generation (necessitating directional antennas for most apps) become problematic: witness the differences between the original 800/900 MHz cell bands and the PCS bands at 1700-2100 MHz.
Further down you start needing big antennas to do anything and man-made interference (static and such) starts becoming a real issue. Also, while VHF TV exists where it does for historical reasons, available bandwidth starts getting real scarce as you go down here. Finally, in the low VHF band (FM radio and below) you start seeing ionospheric propagation crop up which can be a nightmare for commercial uses (we hams love it, of course) and will probably be even worse for unlicensed users who will probably be stuck with lower power levels.
My guess is that the interference/big antenna issue will make low VHF (channels 2-6) useless in cities while in rural areas its use will be determined by available channels (a lot of translators are still on VHF even now). Possibly ditto for high VHF (7-13), especially in the number of channels still in use. ATSC has always done better on UHF so in cities where there are a zillion transmitters (half of them low power religious and the like), I can easily see the lack of white spaces being a big problem. In rural areas, the propagation isn't as good on this band, but still far better than 900 MHz+, so we'll see what happens.
One other question I haven't seen answered anywhere: what about Canada and Mexico? If the USA doesn't have some agreement with them on this (and I have yet to see one) none of this may be available in border regions (similar to the Line A and B issues on the 70cm UHF ham band along the US/Canadian border).
I don't see this as a network neutrality thing at all, but rather--especially when "micro-transactions" are mentioned--as a temporary SLA boost. As I read the description, if the network is loaded down and you just HAVE to have whatever you're doing get through and are willing to pay for it, you can pay the fee and *BAM* your network priority went up for that app for that transaction or specified period of time: other than the temporary nature, I don't see this as any different than prioritization of traffic based on an SLA you'd see on any other provider. Since it's the customer (app user) and not the app author who pays, this is network-neutral by definition.
Now all that said, what this *DOES* exacerbate is the argument about having to shell out $10/GB: you're already paying through the nose, and now you have to pay MORE just to be able to use your device (or app) at certain times of day? Here's a better idea: do what they do with phone minutes and have peak and off peak times, with off-peak being unlimited. It's a lot more fair and you know what you're getting. Good luck getting a modern wireless company to think in terms of real "fairness", of course...
If those stations were on VHF, the aurora might have had something to do with it; however, if they're on UHF, it had nothing to do with it and it was most likely tropospheric ducting, which is common in the Midwest.
After reading this bit of reminiscing, I have to add my own, in this case working for KNPB-TV Channel 5, the PBS station in Reno in the early 90's.
For real emergencies, we had three 3/4" tapes in colored bags hanging on the wall. The red one was for a national alert, and I was told it contained a graphic of a mushroom cloud (I was never brave enough to pull it out and play it to find out). The yellow one was for state or local emergencies, and some other operators had played it for various things over the years. The green one was for the "all-clear" signal.
The alert itself came over a receiver tuned to 780 AM, which I think is still the primary station for NW Nevada to this day at it broadcasts 50kW Class-B and avoiding WBBM Chicago (Class-A omni) at night; I don't remember if it had changed call and format to KKOH yet (the original 3-letter KOH was on 630 AM; it plays ESPN radio off satellite these days) or was still its original call and format of KROW (country). When they would fire off the tones, the receiver would fire a dedicated cart recorder (same 1/4" carts as radio stations) to record the announcement, which would then have to be manually played after recording--unlike the receiver of the radio station above, this one didn't take over the broadcast automatically.
While all the tapes (the 3 real ones and the EBS test tape) contained tones, we had a specific button on the board to send out locally-generated tones, no doubt to reduce noise from the tapes. Tests were broadcast late morning to early afternoon, as I recall, and we broadcast both the tests we received upstream as well as our own, which is apparently still done; for our local tests, we would just dub the EBS test tape into the appropriate break on the break tape. (The station didn't have a sequencer, the board op was responsible for editing breaks together during his/her shift.)
I guess because of when I was a board op, I still call it EBS to this day.
And although I'm not first, let me congratulate Shigeru on a job well done! Oh, and to the idiot complaining of all the wasted CO2, please turn in your geek/nerd card now: computing Pi (and e and...) is NEVER a waste!:P
As an asthmatic, I can totally back this up: the old Freon-12 (dichloro-difluoromethane) based inhaler worked MUCH better than the new Freon-114a (1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane) based inhalers. Both have the same ingredient--albuterol aka salbutamol--but the micro-dispersion is different and thus not as much gets down into the deep lungs. Add to that that all of these new formulations are patented, and you get the same drug for 13x as much now (around $50 with tax) from Wal-Mart compared to $4 before. Ouch.
The ban now just affects Primatine, which is inhaled epinephrine: that is, an inhaled version of the Epi Pen. I'm guessing the same problems are in play in the conversion, not the least of which is that I believe R-114a has a lower boiling point and therefore higher pressure in the canister; the old Primatine inhalers were made of plastic-encased glass, as I recall.
I completely agree: I've got an old PC running pfSense as our main firewall/NAT box for our public wi-fi network at our motel, and it runs rock-solid. They also give some guidelines at:
Combine that with a good dual-band N card or AP, and your requirements are met.
One last thing, keep in mind we're talking routing, not switching: I don't see *ANY* cheapo ARM, MiPS, ATOM, etc box ever keeping up, even with just simple NATing. You can do switching in hardware, but routing--by definition--must be done in software, and at those speeds you're starting to talk serious horsepower, even more if you start running Snort, ntop, etc.
FWIW, I really do wonder if whatever your CPE is (the device from the ISP you plug in to) can actually handle all that data itself--I wouldn't be surprised if it starts choking, too.
Though I live in Phoenix now, all of my family is there, and though its unlikely they went to the show, for some reason I can't get a hold of anyone but my dad and aunt--who are both out of town.
The Reno Air Races have a long history, and this is apparently the first time a plane crashed into the stands. The previous crashes didn't stop the event--that is, it went on again the next year--and I hope this one doesn't either.
"As with its digital distribution service, TuneCore passes 100 percent of Amazonâ(TM)s payout to the artist â" about 40 percent of the retail price. If one of Amazonâ(TM)s 80 million customers buys your 10-song CD on Amazon for $8.98, youâ(TM)ll receive $3.59. After selling just nine discs, youâ(TM)re in the black."
Which makes my wondering about how they can turn a profit on such small runs even more pertinent...
The $31 is per YEAR, basically setting up an account like you would with some of those "work from home" outfits, but for a reasonable price. The TFA states that "all other costs are passed on to the buyer". What those costs work out to I don't know, but if you can sell a stamped CD at $10 and still make a buck or two minimum, then you're not doing bad.
What I want to know is how a major stamping operation can retool so easily between different CD's that they can still do this economically?
Slashdot Mirror
I stand corrected!
Sorry, but things haven't been that way for years here in the US; it may be that way still in (parts of?) Canada and Mexico. Here, the old Class-D stations are required to lower power enough to prevent interference (in some cases to ridiculous values like *TENS* of watts!), but not go off the air completely. Likewise, FM and TV stations are not allowed to go off the air without a good reason.
I don't remember exactly when this was done, but I'm pretty sure it was in the 90's.
There are two problems here:
1a. You haven't specified exactly what you'll be doing: if it's just office crap, anything will do; but if you'll be running the GIMP, games, etc, you'll need higher-end hardware (both CPU and GPU).
1b. Do you need x86/x64? If not, a Chromebook or tablet with USB-OTG and hub may be an answer; unfortunately, the below blob problem still applies.
2. For GPUs there are two kinds of drivers: reverse-engineered and proprietary blobs; you almost certainly know this. NVIDIA is the king of the blob department, AMD/ATI is middle of the road, and Intel (along with older stuff like SiS) is mostly completely reverse-engineered or even released open. Bear in mind, the open drivers are messy: based on the state of the art, graphics is by far the most difficult thing to reverse engineer a driver for, and I really feel for the guys working on them! (Edit: AMD/ATI's blobs are well known for being a mess, too!)
Bottom line: if RMS can barely get a machine to his liking, you'll have only a marginally less difficult time. Sorry.
Not one of you seems to have caught the "baking for several hours at 250C has the same effect" part, so big question: could I bake my SSD at 250C (482F for us Americaners, and easily attainable in any kitchen oven) to restore it once I exceed the flash's write limit? Or will the caps pop, die packages (or even the PCB and its traces!) de-laminate, etc?
Thanksgiving (and now Christmas) turkey fresh from the oven along with a freshened SSD sounds especially delicious!
Maybe it was just buried, but its hard to believe not ONE of you remembered Stallman's comments on Amazon:
http://stallman.org/amazon.html
What, no Hero's Duty, Sugar Rush Speedway, or Fix-It Felix, Jr?
I just bought a Galaxy Note 2 last week; now that the Nexus 4 is released, it has made me really question whether I should return the GN2 for the N4. There are a few reasons I decided against it:
1. I *LOVE*LOVE*LOVE* the 5.5" true RGB AMOLED screen! Sure at least one person here is whining 4.7" is too big, but the GN2 fits in my pocket fine, though holding it one-handed can be tough without a case (it's slippery like most modern phones). In any case, this is the #1 reason I bought it and I think I'll have a hard time buying something smaller in the future.
2. All (recent?) Nexus devices have no SD? What's up with that? I agree with everyone else, this is sort of a deal-breaker, and the main reason I never bought the Galaxy Nexus. I do *NOT* want to have to store my crap in the cloud.
3. Not really Nexus, but vs LG, HTC, etc, no removable battery is a total deal-breaker PERIOD.
4. GN2 has 4 cores and LTE built-in, even on the T-Mobile USA version (which future-proofs it from a network standpoint); only the "international" (unbranded) version is lacking it. That said, unless you're tethering, I don't think HSPA+ 21Mbps is going to be that bad unless you're in a fringe area, which LTE handles much better, supposedly (and LTE-Advanced should do better still). Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, and "international" GN2 all have pentaband radios as well, meaning they should support GSM and HSPA+ on every band in the world except 12cm (2600 MHz used for Sprint/Clearwire here in the USA, also Telstra down under according to Wikipedia) and 700 MHz (Verizon and AT&T in USA, but they're only putting LTE there so it doesn't matter).
Now, the one iffy part is Nexus is, by definition, open--what the whole article is about--and the GN2 is not. Being Samsung, rooting should be easy on the GN2, and with Exynos open sourced (still a bit in shock over that, but not as much as Broadcom and the Raspberry-Pi's chip!), hopefully CyanogenMod will be available soon, though I'll probably wait until the warranty goes first.
One last thing: I'm coming from my N900 and I'm still not sure I'll be selling it. I've read numerous times that Android appears clunky compared to Maemo (which is Debian-based), though Jelly Bean is better: after playing for a while, I agree, but it's certainly not horrible unless you're a dev, I suppose. My main worry with Android is security: that you can't revoke app permissions in stock Android and you pretty much have to root. It's not a huge problem for me because I don't trust carrying around Google Wallet and NFC along with lots of personal stuff without much better security, but it's painfully clear that they want to track you: I mean, the Accuweather widgit on the main window won't even update unless you turn tracking on!
I know this is overly-long, but hope it helps someone.
Mike
Did the XBMC guys drop a bunch of platforms?
Also just noticed that their competitor www.mythtv.org is about to have a release early next month as well.
It IS possible, and it's called Iridium. The catch is that it's low bandwidth. But the antarctic bases (as well as plenty of arctic users) are Iridium's bread and butter, particularly among civilian users.
I don't have them in front of me, but I remember there being patents on this very thing going back quite a few years--some back to the 80's! I also think there was a /. article on it somewhere along the line...
The Times article has a good example: a phone-controlled bomb or similar device. There's also a more general human C&C such as the Mumbai terrorist attack, which is apparently why satellite phones are banned in India now.
OTOH, the BART fiasco was a knee-jerk reaction so typical these days and that seems to be what prompted the FCC to do this. It is also clearly NOT an "imminent threat".
Here's the problem I see: there is a very clear ban against jammers in the USA, yet you see US manufacturers all over the place online who supposedly can't sell to you or I, yet have no problem selling to Syria et al. AFAIK, jammers are only "legal" for the miltary to have in the USA, so what was BART/SFPD/etc doing with them in their possession in the first place? (IANAL)
Being a ham radio op as well as somewhat obsessed about this very subject (over-reliance on GPS), I decided to look up some stuff and see what I could find:
1. The UK's version of the FCC is Ofcom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofcom
2a. Here in the USA jamming is strictly verbotten by non-military under ANY circumstances: I don't even think the civie police get to use it, though I'm not 100% sure there. This is also why cell/mobile phone jamming in movie theaters and similar places that is done in some other countries is not done here.
2b. Googling "ofcom jamming laws" yields this: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enforcement/spectrum-enforcement/jammers
In short, jamming carries "a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine." Note that while this section specifically talks about phones, the way it's written it's probably applicable to everything, just like elsewhere.
3. While GPS is indeed a US-DoD system, the UK and US have been real tight for a long time, so I'm sure any problems in GPS will be dealt with pretty harshly. The fact that they're putting these remote radios up all over the place must mean they're having a serious problem with the jamming as I haven't heard of any problems like this elsewhere. (Though I'm guilty of getting a disproportionate amount of my news from /., so...)
4. Outside of the jamming, GPS alternatives are Glonass (currently being rebuilt), Galileo, Baidou, and other upcoming systems (none of which are operational yet AFAIK)--all of which are satellite-based and thus vulnerable to anything that could affect things in space--and the leftovers of LORAN-C in western Europe, the Soviet equivalent Chayka, and the Soviet Omega system equivalent, Alpha--all of which are terrestrial. None of these systems are in operation anymore in N. America, so we're "playing without a net" as it were, which worries me to no end. (Yes, there are the various ILS's for planes, but what about everyone else?)
Courtesy of the original Men in Black:
Jay: Zed, don't you guys ever get any sleep around here?
Zed: The twins keep us on Centaurian time, standard thirty-seven hour day. Give it a few months. You'll get used to it... or you'll have a psychotic episode.
For the same reason they keep trying to steal the amateur 70cm band (420-450 MHz in the New World, 420-440 MHz elsewhere): the propagation happens to lie in a "sweet spot" of being able to penetrate vegetation, buildings, etc with minimal loss, high power can be generated rather cheaply and easily, and yet there sufficient bandwidth to be able to do high speed data and what-not.
Further up into the microwaves (including mid and high-UHF) you get more bandwidth but attenuation and lower power generation (necessitating directional antennas for most apps) become problematic: witness the differences between the original 800/900 MHz cell bands and the PCS bands at 1700-2100 MHz.
Further down you start needing big antennas to do anything and man-made interference (static and such) starts becoming a real issue. Also, while VHF TV exists where it does for historical reasons, available bandwidth starts getting real scarce as you go down here. Finally, in the low VHF band (FM radio and below) you start seeing ionospheric propagation crop up which can be a nightmare for commercial uses (we hams love it, of course) and will probably be even worse for unlicensed users who will probably be stuck with lower power levels.
My guess is that the interference/big antenna issue will make low VHF (channels 2-6) useless in cities while in rural areas its use will be determined by available channels (a lot of translators are still on VHF even now). Possibly ditto for high VHF (7-13), especially in the number of channels still in use. ATSC has always done better on UHF so in cities where there are a zillion transmitters (half of them low power religious and the like), I can easily see the lack of white spaces being a big problem. In rural areas, the propagation isn't as good on this band, but still far better than 900 MHz+, so we'll see what happens.
One other question I haven't seen answered anywhere: what about Canada and Mexico? If the USA doesn't have some agreement with them on this (and I have yet to see one) none of this may be available in border regions (similar to the Line A and B issues on the 70cm UHF ham band along the US/Canadian border).
I don't see this as a network neutrality thing at all, but rather--especially when "micro-transactions" are mentioned--as a temporary SLA boost. As I read the description, if the network is loaded down and you just HAVE to have whatever you're doing get through and are willing to pay for it, you can pay the fee and *BAM* your network priority went up for that app for that transaction or specified period of time: other than the temporary nature, I don't see this as any different than prioritization of traffic based on an SLA you'd see on any other provider. Since it's the customer (app user) and not the app author who pays, this is network-neutral by definition.
Now all that said, what this *DOES* exacerbate is the argument about having to shell out $10/GB: you're already paying through the nose, and now you have to pay MORE just to be able to use your device (or app) at certain times of day? Here's a better idea: do what they do with phone minutes and have peak and off peak times, with off-peak being unlimited. It's a lot more fair and you know what you're getting. Good luck getting a modern wireless company to think in terms of real "fairness", of course...
If those stations were on VHF, the aurora might have had something to do with it; however, if they're on UHF, it had nothing to do with it and it was most likely tropospheric ducting, which is common in the Midwest.
After reading this bit of reminiscing, I have to add my own, in this case working for KNPB-TV Channel 5, the PBS station in Reno in the early 90's.
For real emergencies, we had three 3/4" tapes in colored bags hanging on the wall. The red one was for a national alert, and I was told it contained a graphic of a mushroom cloud (I was never brave enough to pull it out and play it to find out). The yellow one was for state or local emergencies, and some other operators had played it for various things over the years. The green one was for the "all-clear" signal.
The alert itself came over a receiver tuned to 780 AM, which I think is still the primary station for NW Nevada to this day at it broadcasts 50kW Class-B and avoiding WBBM Chicago (Class-A omni) at night; I don't remember if it had changed call and format to KKOH yet (the original 3-letter KOH was on 630 AM; it plays ESPN radio off satellite these days) or was still its original call and format of KROW (country). When they would fire off the tones, the receiver would fire a dedicated cart recorder (same 1/4" carts as radio stations) to record the announcement, which would then have to be manually played after recording--unlike the receiver of the radio station above, this one didn't take over the broadcast automatically.
While all the tapes (the 3 real ones and the EBS test tape) contained tones, we had a specific button on the board to send out locally-generated tones, no doubt to reduce noise from the tapes. Tests were broadcast late morning to early afternoon, as I recall, and we broadcast both the tests we received upstream as well as our own, which is apparently still done; for our local tests, we would just dub the EBS test tape into the appropriate break on the break tape. (The station didn't have a sequencer, the board op was responsible for editing breaks together during his/her shift.)
I guess because of when I was a board op, I still call it EBS to this day.
Mike
Kind of obvious to me, being one. Here is his info:
http://hamcall.net/call/JA0HXV
And although I'm not first, let me congratulate Shigeru on a job well done! Oh, and to the idiot complaining of all the wasted CO2, please turn in your geek/nerd card now: computing Pi (and e and...) is NEVER a waste! :P
Wait, so the Powerpuff Girls (formerly known as the Kickass Girls) are really from Down Under?
A rendition of the cover, courtesy of Matt Groening pre-Simpsons: http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/workhell_3.html
I think we can all agree our boss-man is a subscriber!
As an asthmatic, I can totally back this up: the old Freon-12 (dichloro-difluoromethane) based inhaler worked MUCH better than the new Freon-114a (1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane) based inhalers. Both have the same ingredient--albuterol aka salbutamol--but the micro-dispersion is different and thus not as much gets down into the deep lungs. Add to that that all of these new formulations are patented, and you get the same drug for 13x as much now (around $50 with tax) from Wal-Mart compared to $4 before. Ouch.
The ban now just affects Primatine, which is inhaled epinephrine: that is, an inhaled version of the Epi Pen. I'm guessing the same problems are in play in the conversion, not the least of which is that I believe R-114a has a lower boiling point and therefore higher pressure in the canister; the old Primatine inhalers were made of plastic-encased glass, as I recall.
I completely agree: I've got an old PC running pfSense as our main firewall/NAT box for our public wi-fi network at our motel, and it runs rock-solid. They also give some guidelines at:
http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=49
Combine that with a good dual-band N card or AP, and your requirements are met.
One last thing, keep in mind we're talking routing, not switching: I don't see *ANY* cheapo ARM, MiPS, ATOM, etc box ever keeping up, even with just simple NATing. You can do switching in hardware, but routing--by definition--must be done in software, and at those speeds you're starting to talk serious horsepower, even more if you start running Snort, ntop, etc.
FWIW, I really do wonder if whatever your CPE is (the device from the ISP you plug in to) can actually handle all that data itself--I wouldn't be surprised if it starts choking, too.
Though I live in Phoenix now, all of my family is there, and though its unlikely they went to the show, for some reason I can't get a hold of anyone but my dad and aunt--who are both out of town.
The Reno Air Races have a long history, and this is apparently the first time a plane crashed into the stands. The previous crashes didn't stop the event--that is, it went on again the next year--and I hope this one doesn't either.
I should have read lower down in TFA:
"As with its digital distribution service, TuneCore passes 100 percent of Amazonâ(TM)s payout to the artist â" about 40 percent of the retail price. If one of Amazonâ(TM)s 80 million customers buys your 10-song CD on Amazon for $8.98, youâ(TM)ll receive $3.59. After selling just nine discs, youâ(TM)re in the black."
Which makes my wondering about how they can turn a profit on such small runs even more pertinent...
The $31 is per YEAR, basically setting up an account like you would with some of those "work from home" outfits, but for a reasonable price. The TFA states that "all other costs are passed on to the buyer". What those costs work out to I don't know, but if you can sell a stamped CD at $10 and still make a buck or two minimum, then you're not doing bad.
What I want to know is how a major stamping operation can retool so easily between different CD's that they can still do this economically?