When I worked at a small educational software startup in the 1980's, we got back floppy disks from school libraries more than once. They had staped card catalog cards to them.
>Apparently, a major source of opposition to BPL is operators of ham radios.
Hams are just canaries in this fight, not villains.
BPL has been shown to cause radio interference to all users, amateur, military, and commercial. Michael Powell, then FCC chairman, squashed a report from the NTIA that said it causeinterference>/a, and the FCC required that frequencies allocated to government use be "notched out." That leaves just us citizens unprotected and ungagged (at least for now).
And before you say that HF radio isn't necessary anymore, and everyone who is anyone uses cell phones (of if they have buckets of money Iridium satphones) take a look at just one of thousands of uses, NOPAC. Last night on 10.148 Mhz (square in the middle of the band that BPL trashes), I heard a Singapore Airlines flight over the Pacific contacting a NOPAC control station in Alaska asking for route planning information, right on the heels of a JAL flight doing the same thing. The NOPAC instructions have detailed accounts of how to use HF radio when over the Pacific, which is what I heard last night.
Finally, the FCC didn't grant any license to BPL systems. Instead, it said that they would be allowed under Part 15 regulations. Those are the same regulations that govern radio controlled cars; in essence, they're allowed to use low power if they don't cause interference and if they accept interference. The NTIA and others argued that BPL was fundamentally different from a kid with a radio controlled car on 27Mhz, because BPL will be widespread both geographically and in spectrum -- occupying the entire area beteween 2MHz and 80Mhz.
The result: a few critical government frequencies get notched out, and everybody else gets told to call the power company and complain "if" there is any problem. And in the few test cases where this has happened, even in test trials, getting the power company to do anything has taken months, and only a few even tried, and of those few that tried, all but about three had to discontinue the project becuase they couldn't resolve the Part 15 complaints.
So yes, it hasn't happened widespread yet, and it hasn't caused widespread problems yet, but don't blame the people who are technically savvy enough to see what's going to happen.
And finally, don't you think it's strange that energy companies are getting a big help from the current administration to get into the ISP business? I mean, it's not like there's any connection between energy companies and the Bush administration, is there?
>Parent was complaining about the lack of complete SVG viewers. The parent posting suggested that W3C drafts should have implementations before advancing to recommendation status; I was pointing out that that's already been done, and XForms was listed in the article, so it's not completely OT.
> It seems to me that any W3C standard needs a complete and free reference implementation before it should be ratified as a W3C standard.
XForms had as exit criteria for becoming a recommendation one complete and two interoperable implementations . One of the complete implementations that served to meet this goal was X-Smiles, a GPL implementation of XForms (and co-indcidentally SVG, XHTML 1.0, CSS of various levels, SMIL, etc.).
The Mozilla XForms project also aims to provide a complete XForms 1.0 implementation under the Mozilla license, and it's quite far along, and is included as an XPI with each nightly build. The last Linux build I looked at was a 141KB, and about 200KB for Windows, and is a single-click install, just like the bugreport tool.
Here is a picture of Sergei Krikalev talking to an earth-based school group using his amateur radio equipment onboard ISS. Sergey is an active amateur radio operator while aboard ISS, since Expedition One, The first ISS crew launched October 31, 2000.
According to Nasa: "Dozens of astronauts have used the Space Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment, or SAREX, to talk to thousands of kids in school and to their families on Earth while they were in orbit. They have pioneered space radio experimentation, including television and text messaging as well as voice communication. The Russians have had a similar program for the cosmonauts aboard the Russian Space Station Mir. When U.S. astronauts were aboard Mir in preparation for the long duration missions of the International Space Station, they used amateur radio for communication, including emergency messaging while Mir was in distress."
It's interesting that this occured at a railway, for two reasons:
Railways were early drivers of major parts of business culture; JoAnne Yates developed this idea in her landmark book "Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American Management". According to Yates, railroad industry was the first geographically disperse industry, and this developed the accoutrements of modern business culture, starting with hierarchical organization and its assets (top-down communication: the memorandom; bottom-up communication: the report, the filing cabinet, and alphabetic filing, which superseded the pigeonhole and various numerical systems). Here is a free critique of some of Yates's work, if you don't want to buy the book.
Finally, the business needs of the railroads drove the development of the telegraph, to satisfy their need to communicate. Telegraphers were among the first business employees to develop repetitive stress injuries, from their morse code keys. The Vibroplex Bug was invented by Horace Martin in 1890 to compensate for the RSI injury of telegraphers, which as called "glass arm."
I also listened to the shuttle mission live on my VX2R handheld (about the size of an iPod), courtesy of NA6MF, the NASA Ames amateur radio club retransmitting their internal audio feed on 145.585 MHz.
Hey, that's great news! You can try hamtestonline.com as well, which has a study guide (free for the first 15% of the questions or so) and see if that fills in the gaps.
You don't need roof access to get to a satellite, you can do it from outside. Send me mail please if you want to go further and I can hook you up with people to help.
Well, it's an international limited resource with a minimal competence and rules examination you have to pass first. The tests are online at QRZ.com (click on practice exam) and you can have your license in a few weeks. It's actually fairly similar to certification exams for IT professionals, for MS developers, or DBAs.
As for low tech, far from it. I just finished building a PIC-based microprocessor controled module for my radio; it's actually quite similar to the kind of experimentation that people do now with home robotics, only when radio signals instead of stepper motors.
So, go check out QRZ.com for the Technician (no morse code required) test, looka t Arrow Antennas for a $75 antenna, and you can get a $150 hand-held radio or two and start sending data and voice directly through satellites and the ISS. I think that hardly qualifies as low-tech either.
Great, so what you were seeing is the raw protocol data. For examples of what gets done with it see aprsworld, an open source site and database of APRS location-based service data generated by and for hams. You can see google map overlays, ACME.com topo map overlays, tracking data, historical events, and also other services such as weather reports from individual weather stations.
I've been watching the shuttle mission on the K6BEN amateur TV repeater near San Jose, which is on 421.25Mhz, the same as cable (not broadcast) channel 57, through my VCR and with a Yagi I made from a magazine article. The NASA Ames Amateur Radio Club is providing the feed with a 1.2GHz uplink to the repeater. They also have shuttle audio on two meters, and I can receive that with my VX-2R HT.
There's plenty of folks having fun with 2.4Ghz, 10GHz, and even 47 Ghz point-to-point links, legally. For example, see 50 MHz and Up:
Frank and Gary completed a 47 GHz contact over a 290 km distance to set a new world record.... Read an entertaining account of Frank's (W6QI) adventure in the Sierras.
Interested in microwave experimentation and RF hacking? Get a ham license and gain legal, high-power access to 900Mhz, 1.2 GHz, 2.3 GHz, 2.4Ghz, 3.4 GHz, 5.6 GHz, 10 GHz, 24 Ghz, 47 GHz, 75 GHz, 120 GHz, 142 GHZ, 241 GHz, and 300 Ghz and up. A guy nearby managed to be the first person to bounce a 24 GHz signal off the moon! Or check out one of the various local organizations (I randomly chose San Bernadino Microwave Society) for more info.
No morse code test required, and see Technician Test for practice test online.
> Direct from NASA-TV, retransmission of audio 145.585 in the south San Francisco bay area. Video is also retransmitted on the K6BEN-ATV video repeater. I saw it this morning using the Yagi I built from a magazine article and hooked to my VCR set to cable channel 57. And the 145.585 Mhz audio feed was working great, too! We listened to it at lunch at work.
sshdfilter blocks the frequent brute force attacks on ssh daemons, it does this by directly reading the sshd logging output and generating iptables rules, the process can be quick enough to block an attack before they get a chance to enter any password at all.
>No. The DRM on my satellite television decoder has never gotten in the way of my enjoyment of watching the shows. It's pretty much invisible to me, and that's the sort of DRM I'm fine with.
Unlike with e-books, you have no investment in the software, because it's only licensed to you for single viewing (or space-limited viewing if you have an HDR) but with e-books, the presumption you have of having an unlimited license to view the content runs counter to the physical reality that if anyone in the DRM chain (Microsoft in the case of this story) drops the ball, your content is gone.
But in your case, there is a bit of an anlogy: if the satellite company decided to stop actively supporting the hardware you had, your investment would be useless. Perhaps you could take it apart and re-use the LEDs.
>The reason their technical support knows nothing about the DRM is because the whole MS LIT/MS Reader project appears to be abandonware. The reader app hasn't had any non-critical updates in years.
That's kind of the problem with all this DRM and closed-format stuff, innit?
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When I worked at a small educational software startup in the 1980's, we got back floppy disks from school libraries more than once. They had staped card catalog cards to them.
>Apparently, a major source of opposition to BPL is operators of ham radios.
Hams are just canaries in this fight, not villains.
BPL has been shown to cause radio interference to all users, amateur, military, and commercial. Michael Powell, then FCC chairman, squashed a report from the NTIA that said it causeinterference>/a, and the FCC required that frequencies allocated to government use be "notched out." That leaves just us citizens unprotected and ungagged (at least for now).
And before you say that HF radio isn't necessary anymore, and everyone who is anyone uses cell phones (of if they have buckets of money Iridium satphones) take a look at just one of thousands of uses, NOPAC. Last night on 10.148 Mhz (square in the middle of the band that BPL trashes), I heard a Singapore Airlines flight over the Pacific contacting a NOPAC control station in Alaska asking for route planning information, right on the heels of a JAL flight doing the same thing. The NOPAC instructions have detailed accounts of how to use HF radio when over the Pacific, which is what I heard last night.
Finally, the FCC didn't grant any license to BPL systems. Instead, it said that they would be allowed under Part 15 regulations. Those are the same regulations that govern radio controlled cars; in essence, they're allowed to use low power if they don't cause interference and if they accept interference. The NTIA and others argued that BPL was fundamentally different from a kid with a radio controlled car on 27Mhz, because BPL will be widespread both geographically and in spectrum -- occupying the entire area beteween 2MHz and 80Mhz.
The result: a few critical government frequencies get notched out, and everybody else gets told to call the power company and complain "if" there is any problem. And in the few test cases where this has happened, even in test trials, getting the power company to do anything has taken months, and only a few even tried, and of those few that tried, all but about three had to discontinue the project becuase they couldn't resolve the Part 15 complaints.
So yes, it hasn't happened widespread yet, and it hasn't caused widespread problems yet, but don't blame the people who are technically savvy enough to see what's going to happen.
And finally, don't you think it's strange that energy companies are getting a big help from the current administration to get into the ISP business? I mean, it's not like there's any connection between energy companies and the Bush administration, is there?
If you want fiber, push on getting fiber.
>Parent was complaining about the lack of complete SVG viewers.
The parent posting suggested that W3C drafts should have implementations before advancing to recommendation status; I was pointing out that that's already been done, and XForms was listed in the article, so it's not completely OT.
Sorry, Mozilla XForms Project.
> It seems to me that any W3C standard needs a complete and free reference implementation before it should be ratified as a W3C standard.
XForms had as exit criteria for becoming a recommendation one complete and two interoperable implementations . One of the complete implementations that served to meet this goal was X-Smiles, a GPL implementation of XForms (and co-indcidentally SVG, XHTML 1.0, CSS of various levels, SMIL, etc.).
The Mozilla XForms project also aims to provide a complete XForms 1.0 implementation under the Mozilla license, and it's quite far along, and is included as an XPI with each nightly build. The last Linux build I looked at was a 141KB, and about 200KB for Windows, and is a single-click install, just like the bugreport tool.
Here is a recording of Sergei on ISS over Bangkok Thailand mentioned on SouthGate ARC's site.
According to Nasa:
"Dozens of astronauts have used the Space Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment, or SAREX, to talk to thousands of kids in school and to their families on Earth while they were in orbit. They have pioneered space radio experimentation, including television and text messaging as well as voice communication. The Russians have had a similar program for the cosmonauts aboard the Russian Space Station Mir. When U.S. astronauts were aboard Mir in preparation for the long duration missions of the International Space Station, they used amateur radio for communication, including emergency messaging while Mir was in distress."
I also listened to the shuttle mission live on my VX2R handheld (about the size of an iPod), courtesy of NA6MF, the NASA Ames amateur radio club retransmitting their internal audio feed on 145.585 MHz.
And just for funsies, I made a sample PodCast RSS of W1AW Morse code practice.
Hey, that's great news!
You can try hamtestonline.com as well, which has a study guide (free for the first 15% of the questions or so) and see if that fills in the gaps.
You don't need roof access to get to a satellite, you can do it from outside.
Send me mail please if you want to go further and I can hook you up with people to help.
(That goes for anyone.)
Well, it's an international limited resource with a minimal competence and rules examination you have to pass first. The tests are online at QRZ.com (click on practice exam) and you can have your license in a few weeks. It's actually fairly similar to certification exams for IT professionals, for MS developers, or DBAs.
As for low tech, far from it. I just finished building a PIC-based microprocessor controled module for my radio; it's actually quite similar to the kind of experimentation that people do now with home robotics, only when radio signals instead of stepper motors.
So, go check out QRZ.com for the Technician (no morse code required) test, looka t Arrow Antennas for a $75 antenna, and you can get a $150 hand-held radio or two and start sending data and voice directly through satellites and the ISS. I think that hardly qualifies as low-tech either.
Great, so what you were seeing is the raw protocol data.
For examples of what gets done with it see
aprsworld, an open source site and database of APRS location-based service data generated by and for hams.
You can see google map overlays, ACME.com topo map overlays, tracking data, historical events, and also other services such as weather reports from individual weather stations.
Have you ever looked at the wire protocol of IRC?
It's actually fairly similar to this.
I've been watching the shuttle mission on the K6BEN amateur TV repeater near San Jose, which is on 421.25Mhz, the same as cable (not broadcast) channel 57, through my VCR and with a Yagi I made from a magazine article. The NASA Ames Amateur Radio Club is providing the feed with a 1.2GHz uplink to the repeater. They also have shuttle audio on two meters, and I can receive that with my VX-2R HT.
>a tiny speaker inside Mighty Mouse produces button-clicking and Scroll Ball-rolling sound effects.
I wonder if I can program it to send morse code?
I fail to see why you think that information about radio experimentation is offtopic to a discussion about radio experimentation.
Interested in microwave experimentation and RF hacking?
Get a ham license and gain legal, high-power access to 900Mhz, 1.2 GHz, 2.3 GHz, 2.4Ghz, 3.4 GHz, 5.6 GHz, 10 GHz, 24 Ghz, 47 GHz, 75 GHz, 120 GHz, 142 GHZ, 241 GHz, and 300 Ghz and up. A guy nearby managed to be the first person to bounce a 24 GHz signal off the moon! Or check out one of the various local organizations (I randomly chose San Bernadino Microwave Society) for more info.
No morse code test required, and see Technician Test for practice test online.
And note that
Eileen Collins KD5EDS, Charles Camarda KC5ZSY, James Kelley KC5ZSW, Wendy Lawrence KC5KII, Soichi Noguchi KD5TVP, and Andrew Thomas KD5CHF are all licensed amateur radio operators.
> Direct from NASA-TV, retransmission of audio 145.585 in the south San Francisco bay area. Video is also retransmitted on the K6BEN-ATV video repeater.
I saw it this morning using the Yagi I built from a magazine article and hooked to my VCR set to cable channel 57.
And the 145.585 Mhz audio feed was working great, too! We listened to it at lunch at work.
It looks like the Nokia 770 doesn't have a keyboard.
>No. The DRM on my satellite television decoder has never gotten in the way of my enjoyment of watching the shows. It's pretty much invisible to me, and that's the sort of DRM I'm fine with.
Unlike with e-books, you have no investment in the software, because it's only licensed to you for single viewing (or space-limited viewing if you have an HDR) but with e-books, the presumption you have of having an unlimited license to view the content runs counter to the physical reality that if anyone in the DRM chain (Microsoft in the case of this story) drops the ball, your content is gone.
But in your case, there is a bit of an anlogy: if the satellite company decided to stop actively supporting the hardware you had, your investment would be useless. Perhaps you could take it apart and re-use the LEDs.
The Sandia National Laboratories ham club is operating a special event station from the site. I just talked to them using 35 watts.
See here.
>The reason their technical support knows nothing about the DRM is because the whole MS LIT/MS Reader project appears to be abandonware. The reader app hasn't had any non-critical updates in years.
That's kind of the problem with all this DRM and closed-format stuff, innit?