First off, if the grandparent post has really gone beyond simple dissent.
Secondly, as others have mentioned, you can get your Technicians level license without knowing morse code. You still have to take and pass the test, so it's not a free ride like CB, MURS, FRS, GMRS, etc.
So the old fogies bother you? There sure seems to be a lot of spectrum out there for you to communicate on. Use the modern tech to your advantage. Go talk to other people far away using IRLP internet connected repeaters. Go talk to people around the world by working an amateur radio satellite. There's all sorts of possibilities out there. What continues to amaze me is that people don't go looking for them.
As an amateur radio operator, I hear things like this all the time. Maybe it's true in your neck of the woods, but for the most part I think you're totally off base.
I'm 24 years old. I've had my ticket for over a year now. Of all the local hams I've met, most of them are under 50 years of age. I have contemporaries who are involved in a wide range of different activities on amateur radio. Sure, some of us (myself included) have basic Technician level tickets, and we mostly use amateur radio to comunitcate locally and rag chew about the latest crazy drivers, stuff that we could probably do with Nextel's and their ilk, but there's still stuff that you can't do with more modern tech. Heck, I volunteer for a local RACES group, and we can go places and get voice and packet data working where even the county's super duper trunking radio system won't go. That's where amateur radio comes into its own - time and time again ham's have been able to get comms into and out of a disaster area when all other means of rapid communication have failed. There's no more heartwarming feeling to me than to be able to pass that piece of traffic that lets someone know their loved one is ok.
In short, the beauty of amateur radio is you can do just about anything you put your mind to, like this guy did.
If you've had some bad experiences, or found yourself being poo pooed by the same white haired hippies you refer to, I'm truly sorry. But there are still a plethora of usefull and fun things to do with amateur radio, and as long as there is that one person who picks up the mic and calles CQ, then amateur radio will be alive.
Oh, one other thing... if you're really that bitter about it, do the rest of us a favor... stay off the air.
There's a difference between not comprehending a technical detail, or something in context, and not comprehending the flow of the text.
Original:
"I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."
It's almost like a run on sentance with more open brackets than closed. Let's see what a rewrite can do:
"I updated the Status report with the four discrepancies Lennie forwarded to us via e-mail (they are in the Barry file). To confirm my understanding of his message, it seems we provided Murray with incorrect information. However, after verifying the controls on JBL, JBL has the indicator as 'B'. I wanted to make sure that with the recent changes I made today did not have an impact, before Murray changed the setting on the mainframe to 'C' again."
It may not be technically correct, but I'll wager that for most people it reads a lot more smoothly.
I've thought about doing that, but I'd prefer something a bit less cumbersome and a bit more automated. I'll figure it out, somewhere in my copious free time... *sigh*
Yes, I agree that there is the posibility that a Win32 based live cd could get infected. I think however that the possibility of that is pretty slim. First off, it's on a read only media, so the worst possible thing that could happen is that the actual processes in memory could be infected. In that case, a simple reboot would fix the problem. However, in order to get infected, viral or spyware code would actually have to run, and someone who's using this is not really liable to go around double clicking on random executables. On top of that you've only got enough of the Win32 API realized in order to carry out basic graphical, disk, and networking functions. I don't believe there's a lot of vulnerable code in those API's.
In short, I think it's a pretty safe way to do it.
I've recently seen a rash of new spyware that registers a.dll or ten into the TCP/IP stack, or even in some cases a device driver. Those are truly the beasts. And, of course, the normal Windows startup routines don't necessarily apply, since Windows will include the dll's at launch, and once they're hooked into a process, they'll go about their nasty business as part of what may otherwise be considered a legitemite executable. The line between spyware and a virus/worms/trojans these days is so incredibly thin, it's hard to see anymore.
If it hasn't already become obvious I'm all in favor of dropping large objects on the scumbags that make this kind of stuff. Say, a super-large special order 1000 ton ACME anvil, to start?
There's two utilities I use on a regular basis for winsock fixing:
1. LSP Fix. This program will let you see what dll's are embedded in your TCP/IP stack. Most of the time it will even detect stuff that's not supposed to be there, but you do have the option to override its judgement. Spybot S&D also has the ability to look into the stack, but you can't use it to remove offending modules, nor see their actual dll filenames.
2. Winsock XP Fix. This nifty little utility will basically reset all registry settings for the stack back to what they're supposed to be. This is usefull if some nasty has totally trashed the stack on its way out the door. It would also appear it works on earlier versions of Windows (certianly Win2k) but I've never tried it on anything but XP.
I used to joke that as long as people break their computers I'd have a job, but there are times when the spyware thing really drives me up a wall...
First off, I love linux, but in this case I think there's a better tool for the job. (The following is not really a shameless plug).
I use Bart's PE Builder. In a nutshell, it's a bootable cd with a Win32 network, disk (with native NTFS support) and GUI API load. The best thing is that it's built using actual Windows dll's and the like. Of course, you have to have a copy of XP or Server 2003 to built it, and it may not be strictly within Microsoft's licensing agreement to use their IP in this fashion, but that doesn't bother nor stop me.
Anyway, there's a native Ad-Aware plugin for BartPE, and I've hacked together a Spybot S&D plugin, as well. My usual proceedure is to boot the system with my cd, run AAW & S&D to clean up files on the hard drive. Then, I boot from the hard drive into safe mode with networking support, install the latest versions of AAW & S&D, and run them again. This cleans the registry as well (which unfortunately I haven't figured out how to do under BartPE... yet). This method has worked well in situations where the system is so infested I can't start from safe mode.
Part of the problem is that even with the proliferation of anti-spyware programs, often to completely eradicate these nasties, manually crawling for files and registry entries may be necessary. At least for the forseeable future I don't see this becoming a fully automated task.
I actually had one of these back when I had a Handspring. I initially bought it to eliminate the "remote clutter" of my various devices, but I mostly ended up doing something very similar to this - I would constantly turn off my brother's TV. Fun times:)
Anyway, with this thing, you draw a button on the screen and make it "learn" any IR sequence. Too bad my Handspring is kaput, or otherwise I'd go have some fun with it.
Mobile repeaters are not new. This is esentially what these mobile cell towers are. But in order to work, they still need to be connected to the greater cell/phone network.
Enter amateur radio. Your typical handheld or mobile radio (which is not a toy like most cell phones are) are much more powerfull and usually have a greater bredth of configuration options. Thus, they can quickly be configured to throw together an emergency P2P network of operators, even in the absence of the normal local amateur repeaters.
Envision a natural disaster where a majority of the radio towers are down. You need to get information from one side of a rural county to another. Call it 50 miles. Even using handhelds, a series of amateur radio operators can relay the message across that distance in almost no time at all. Way before the cell on a truck shows up.
On a side note, I guess I should resist the urge to connect "Plus" with "Positive" in a shockingly bad pun... oh, wait...
The Military, for starters
on
Is Caps Lock Dead?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
I'm a navy reservist, and although the Navy and the other branches of the armed forces are moving towards computerization of almost every aspect of information management, oft times you'll find that because of some arcane requirement for filling out a form or other type of data entry, you're required to use all caps. However, in many cases, the program that was written to replace forms with this requirement won't enforce the capitalization, much less actually automatically capitalize everything. You say it's dumb, I say it's dumb, and all the staff we have say it's dumb. But, in the mean time, they have to live with it, and having the caps lock key makes it all the more bearable.
Being a Californian who's had landline and cell service for a while now, I have to say that the only thing which constantly tweaks me is the fees. 6 years ago when I got my first landline, basic service was 10 bucks a month, flat fee (for local calling, anyway). Now it's closer to 20 bucks a month. The same thing applies for cell service. Even with my government discount, I still pay close on to 10 bucks a month extra in fees. I asked a customer service rep once if I could have a certian fee removed, because I didn't have any interest in using the service for which the fee apparently paid for. She of course said, "I'm sorry, but we can't remove that, everybody has to have it.", which of course, begs the question why it isn't included in the base monthly fee in the first place, and of course the anser to that is marketing. I sometimes wonder why corporations get away with passing on fees to the consumer that they are supposed to pay as a cost of doing business. Anyway, I'm glad in a general sense that this is happening in my home state, but I wish they'd expand it to all fine print. Fine print ought not to be fine, it ought to be the same damn size as everything else on the contract. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with my cell service. It really is funny to hear all those Nextel chirps, once you actually listen for them. They're everywhere!
*scratches head*
on
Open Maps?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Maybe I've missed something, but I was under the impression that the arial and topo maps presented via terraserver were copyrighted/owned by the people that put them together in the first place. I don't think Microsoft, as much as we may think otherwise, has mapping sats in orbit. Last time I checked, the data itself belonged to people like the USGS.
That's funny. I setup a new machine on an Intel D865PERLX motherboard w/ an 80gb Seagate S-ATA drive, loaded XP Pro SP1a onto it, and it had no problem seeing the drive.
Slashcode inserts spaces so that there's never more than 50 non-space characters in a row. Hence, the plain text of the URL has an extra space. Of course, it doesn't insert spaces except in text that will actually be displayed. So, even if you look at your displayed text, it still has a space in it, though the HREF doesn't.
I can't have been the only one to think, "Gee, wouldn't it be odd to see Worf trying to bang away at some php in the middle of a battle?"
Guess it could be worse. If the Enterprise used PERL, the show wouldn't make any sense to anyone except the people who made it... oh, wait. Isn't that how it is right now under B&B?
... neither misspelling seems to be actually registered (no WHOIS information), yet both do indeed resolve. Curiously enough, the first resolves to a Sprint netblock (which in turn is subdevided) and the second to a Verio netblock. What's more is they both resolve consistantly over multiple name lookups. Kinda interesting, if this is an unknown wildcard redirect, that different typos would end up different places. Perhaps this is part of the strategy?
Slashdot Mirror
First off, if the grandparent post has really gone beyond simple dissent.
Secondly, as others have mentioned, you can get your Technicians level license without knowing morse code. You still have to take and pass the test, so it's not a free ride like CB, MURS, FRS, GMRS, etc.
So the old fogies bother you? There sure seems to be a lot of spectrum out there for you to communicate on. Use the modern tech to your advantage. Go talk to other people far away using IRLP internet connected repeaters. Go talk to people around the world by working an amateur radio satellite. There's all sorts of possibilities out there. What continues to amaze me is that people don't go looking for them.
As an amateur radio operator, I hear things like this all the time. Maybe it's true in your neck of the woods, but for the most part I think you're totally off base.
I'm 24 years old. I've had my ticket for over a year now. Of all the local hams I've met, most of them are under 50 years of age. I have contemporaries who are involved in a wide range of different activities on amateur radio. Sure, some of us (myself included) have basic Technician level tickets, and we mostly use amateur radio to comunitcate locally and rag chew about the latest crazy drivers, stuff that we could probably do with Nextel's and their ilk, but there's still stuff that you can't do with more modern tech. Heck, I volunteer for a local RACES group, and we can go places and get voice and packet data working where even the county's super duper trunking radio system won't go. That's where amateur radio comes into its own - time and time again ham's have been able to get comms into and out of a disaster area when all other means of rapid communication have failed. There's no more heartwarming feeling to me than to be able to pass that piece of traffic that lets someone know their loved one is ok.
In short, the beauty of amateur radio is you can do just about anything you put your mind to, like this guy did.
If you've had some bad experiences, or found yourself being poo pooed by the same white haired hippies you refer to, I'm truly sorry. But there are still a plethora of usefull and fun things to do with amateur radio, and as long as there is that one person who picks up the mic and calles CQ, then amateur radio will be alive.
Oh, one other thing... if you're really that bitter about it, do the rest of us a favor... stay off the air.
OMGWTFBBQ!!1 *splat*
Chicken Little? Is that you?
There's a difference between not comprehending a technical detail, or something in context, and not comprehending the flow of the text.
... However after verifying controls on JBL - JBL has the indicator as B ???? - I wanted to make sure with the recent changes - I processed today - before Murray make the changes again on the mainframe to 'C'."
Original:
"I updated the Status report for the four discrepancies Lennie forward us via e-mail (they in Barry file).. to make sure my logic was correct It seems we provide Murray with incorrect information
It's almost like a run on sentance with more open brackets than closed. Let's see what a rewrite can do:
"I updated the Status report with the four discrepancies Lennie forwarded to us via e-mail (they are in the Barry file). To confirm my understanding of his message, it seems we provided Murray with incorrect information. However, after verifying the controls on JBL, JBL has the indicator as 'B'. I wanted to make sure that with the recent changes I made today did not have an impact, before Murray changed the setting on the mainframe to 'C' again."
It may not be technically correct, but I'll wager that for most people it reads a lot more smoothly.
I've thought about doing that, but I'd prefer something a bit less cumbersome and a bit more automated. I'll figure it out, somewhere in my copious free time... *sigh*
Yes, I agree that there is the posibility that a Win32 based live cd could get infected. I think however that the possibility of that is pretty slim. First off, it's on a read only media, so the worst possible thing that could happen is that the actual processes in memory could be infected. In that case, a simple reboot would fix the problem. However, in order to get infected, viral or spyware code would actually have to run, and someone who's using this is not really liable to go around double clicking on random executables. On top of that you've only got enough of the Win32 API realized in order to carry out basic graphical, disk, and networking functions. I don't believe there's a lot of vulnerable code in those API's.
In short, I think it's a pretty safe way to do it.
I've recently seen a rash of new spyware that registers a .dll or ten into the TCP/IP stack, or even in some cases a device driver. Those are truly the beasts. And, of course, the normal Windows startup routines don't necessarily apply, since Windows will include the dll's at launch, and once they're hooked into a process, they'll go about their nasty business as part of what may otherwise be considered a legitemite executable. The line between spyware and a virus/worms/trojans these days is so incredibly thin, it's hard to see anymore.
If it hasn't already become obvious I'm all in favor of dropping large objects on the scumbags that make this kind of stuff. Say, a super-large special order 1000 ton ACME anvil, to start?
There's two utilities I use on a regular basis for winsock fixing:
1. LSP Fix. This program will let you see what dll's are embedded in your TCP/IP stack. Most of the time it will even detect stuff that's not supposed to be there, but you do have the option to override its judgement. Spybot S&D also has the ability to look into the stack, but you can't use it to remove offending modules, nor see their actual dll filenames.
2. Winsock XP Fix. This nifty little utility will basically reset all registry settings for the stack back to what they're supposed to be. This is usefull if some nasty has totally trashed the stack on its way out the door. It would also appear it works on earlier versions of Windows (certianly Win2k) but I've never tried it on anything but XP.
I used to joke that as long as people break their computers I'd have a job, but there are times when the spyware thing really drives me up a wall...
First off, I love linux, but in this case I think there's a better tool for the job. (The following is not really a shameless plug).
I use Bart's PE Builder. In a nutshell, it's a bootable cd with a Win32 network, disk (with native NTFS support) and GUI API load. The best thing is that it's built using actual Windows dll's and the like. Of course, you have to have a copy of XP or Server 2003 to built it, and it may not be strictly within Microsoft's licensing agreement to use their IP in this fashion, but that doesn't bother nor stop me.
Anyway, there's a native Ad-Aware plugin for BartPE, and I've hacked together a Spybot S&D plugin, as well. My usual proceedure is to boot the system with my cd, run AAW & S&D to clean up files on the hard drive. Then, I boot from the hard drive into safe mode with networking support, install the latest versions of AAW & S&D, and run them again. This cleans the registry as well (which unfortunately I haven't figured out how to do under BartPE... yet). This method has worked well in situations where the system is so infested I can't start from safe mode.
Part of the problem is that even with the proliferation of anti-spyware programs, often to completely eradicate these nasties, manually crawling for files and registry entries may be necessary. At least for the forseeable future I don't see this becoming a fully automated task.
I actually had one of these back when I had a Handspring. I initially bought it to eliminate the "remote clutter" of my various devices, but I mostly ended up doing something very similar to this - I would constantly turn off my brother's TV. Fun times :)
Anyway, with this thing, you draw a button on the screen and make it "learn" any IR sequence. Too bad my Handspring is kaput, or otherwise I'd go have some fun with it.
... he isn't running, let's say, Gentoo PPD?
Mobile repeaters are not new. This is esentially what these mobile cell towers are. But in order to work, they still need to be connected to the greater cell/phone network.
Enter amateur radio. Your typical handheld or mobile radio (which is not a toy like most cell phones are) are much more powerfull and usually have a greater bredth of configuration options. Thus, they can quickly be configured to throw together an emergency P2P network of operators, even in the absence of the normal local amateur repeaters.
Envision a natural disaster where a majority of the radio towers are down. You need to get information from one side of a rural county to another. Call it 50 miles. Even using handhelds, a series of amateur radio operators can relay the message across that distance in almost no time at all. Way before the cell on a truck shows up.
You must have missed the "Plus" in his statement.
On a side note, I guess I should resist the urge to connect "Plus" with "Positive" in a shockingly bad pun... oh, wait...
I'm a navy reservist, and although the Navy and the other branches of the armed forces are moving towards computerization of almost every aspect of information management, oft times you'll find that because of some arcane requirement for filling out a form or other type of data entry, you're required to use all caps. However, in many cases, the program that was written to replace forms with this requirement won't enforce the capitalization, much less actually automatically capitalize everything. You say it's dumb, I say it's dumb, and all the staff we have say it's dumb. But, in the mean time, they have to live with it, and having the caps lock key makes it all the more bearable.
Being a Californian who's had landline and cell service for a while now, I have to say that the only thing which constantly tweaks me is the fees. 6 years ago when I got my first landline, basic service was 10 bucks a month, flat fee (for local calling, anyway). Now it's closer to 20 bucks a month. The same thing applies for cell service. Even with my government discount, I still pay close on to 10 bucks a month extra in fees. I asked a customer service rep once if I could have a certian fee removed, because I didn't have any interest in using the service for which the fee apparently paid for. She of course said, "I'm sorry, but we can't remove that, everybody has to have it.", which of course, begs the question why it isn't included in the base monthly fee in the first place, and of course the anser to that is marketing. I sometimes wonder why corporations get away with passing on fees to the consumer that they are supposed to pay as a cost of doing business. Anyway, I'm glad in a general sense that this is happening in my home state, but I wish they'd expand it to all fine print. Fine print ought not to be fine, it ought to be the same damn size as everything else on the contract. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with my cell service. It really is funny to hear all those Nextel chirps, once you actually listen for them. They're everywhere!
Maybe I've missed something, but I was under the impression that the arial and topo maps presented via terraserver were copyrighted/owned by the people that put them together in the first place. I don't think Microsoft, as much as we may think otherwise, has mapping sats in orbit. Last time I checked, the data itself belonged to people like the USGS.
"These nanobatteries, to be introduced before the end of 2005, will last longer than traditional ones and will be respectful of our environment."
Heh. I read this and immediately thought of the Simpsons episode with Mr. Sparkle. "Can you not see I am disrespectfull of dirt!"
That's funny. I setup a new machine on an Intel D865PERLX motherboard w/ an 80gb Seagate S-ATA drive, loaded XP Pro SP1a onto it, and it had no problem seeing the drive.
You must be new here.
Slashcode inserts spaces so that there's never more than 50 non-space characters in a row. Hence, the plain text of the URL has an extra space. Of course, it doesn't insert spaces except in text that will actually be displayed. So, even if you look at your displayed text, it still has a space in it, though the HREF doesn't.
And now you know. Consider yourself edjumicated.
... what with Belkin being the /. Mortal Enemy of the Day(tm), and all...
Should have been http://vader.inowknowwhataslashdottingfeelslike.co m.
You backspaced twice, but you only needed to replace the 5 with 0, thus only needing to erase one of the characters. Hence:
15^H0 minutes without a remote root exploit!
... oh, wait. You were doing that for illustratory purposes...
I reeealy need to get a life...
I can't have been the only one to think, "Gee, wouldn't it be odd to see Worf trying to bang away at some php in the middle of a battle?"
Guess it could be worse. If the Enterprise used PERL, the show wouldn't make any sense to anyone except the people who made it... oh, wait. Isn't that how it is right now under B&B?
I'm so confused...
... neither misspelling seems to be actually registered (no WHOIS information), yet both do indeed resolve. Curiously enough, the first resolves to a Sprint netblock (which in turn is subdevided) and the second to a Verio netblock. What's more is they both resolve consistantly over multiple name lookups. Kinda interesting, if this is an unknown wildcard redirect, that different typos would end up different places. Perhaps this is part of the strategy?