It won't work that way. If BPL interferes with ham radio, the number of operators will decrease below the crticical mass necessary to provide emergency communications, worldwide.
Here's why: BPL produces interference across the entire spectrum of "high frequency" (3-30Mhz) radio, and a little above and below in fact. The HF frequencies have special properties (on this planet, at least) of being reflected around the world by the ionosphere. A tiny sliver of these frequencies are used by amateur radio operators, but there are litterally thousands of other kinds of licensees worldwide.
BPL power lines radiate this interference, and when the ionosphere is highly reflective, the interference will be sent around the world. Since the FCC denied the request to have the BPL systems transmit identification, there won't be any way for anyone to identify which BPL installation is causig interference, since it might be halfway around the country, or halfway around the world.
There are BPL systems that don't use HF radio waves, but in all the rush to "Step 3: Profit" these technical issues have been ignored, and the comlpanies with the best lobbiests have won.
Even so, here's what I want out of a PDA, and the Axim comes close, but not close enough. The Hiptop comes closer: it gives you 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and GPRS instead of WiFi for #1. Why don't you try one while you're waiting for the ultimate to come out? (There's also a VNC client on #6, for when you absolutely have to...)
I suspect that "Eight Megs" refers to the later Unix EMACS versions, because the AI PDP-10 didn't have that much memory. The 256K x 36-bit word Ampex core memory racks were pretty big and I think AI had 758KWords, or 3.375 mega-octets, if you wanted to count it that way, which it didn't.
E-MACS was a TECO macro package that RMS picked up. There was also T-MACS and R-MACS. When I used E-MACS, it was on v134, I think, and RMS for a couple of years been the only maintainer of it, but a small number of people were still using ^R mode in TECO or one of the other macro packages. When RMS stopped maintaining ITS and Twenex EMACS to start the GNU project, I maintained it for a while, but it was eventually clear that it wasn't the way of the future. By that time, Lisp Machines and the Vax had happened.
By the way, last time I was at the computer museum in Mountain View, CA, I saw a Lisp Machine whose serial number (CADR 8) I recognized. I figured it was time to leave.
In ham radio, there's a 1000 miles per watt award that's not particularly hard to get....I made 1842 miles per watt (Palo Alto, California to Sakhalin Island in Russia) using a data modulation called PSK-31 and a wire antenna on my roof, and just over 1000 miles per watt from San Luis Obispo, CA to Estonia using CW: 5700 miles with 4.5 watts to a 28 foot wire thrown from a second-story window into a small tree, running on a pack of AA batteries.
> The FCC has ruled repeatedly with regards to HAM Radio antennas, DBS dishes and OTA TV antennas that landlords cannot unduly restrict tenants from installing them. I'm sorry to inform you that this is incorrect. The FCC's OTARD fact sheet clearly states that protections do not extend to ham radio. It's quite a big deal if you happen to live in an area (such as an entire state) that is full of these restrictions that are ostensibly part of voluntary contracts.
Read more about antenna restrictions and join the fight -- the way the FCC is going these days, it may soon be easy for landlords to prohibit 802.11 devices in entire housing developments and "offer" you their own leased-line service for only nine ninety nine ninety nine ninety none...
>A lease that says I can't use a HAM radio on the property is unenforceable. Unfortunately, a lease that says you can't have a ham radio antenna is enforceable.
>Can a landlord restrict use of a technology by explicitly putting it in the >contract? The answer may seem obvious, but keep in mind that anyone can put up a >DirecTV dish in their apartment no matter what the landlord says. And if they >were allowed to, would landlords start restricting the use of WiFi as part of >their contract or demand payement for it? >I think that's what the FCC is trying to avoid.
It seems very likely to me that big developers will soon start prohibiting 802.11 access points in new housing developments, and instead profit from the fiber lines that they put in, and we'll have absolutely no recourse.
Here's why:
Satellite TV antennas are specifically excepted from the CC&R (codes, covenants, and restrictions) by FCC regulation. Other types of antennas, such as amateur radio antennas (see Antenna Restrictions are excluded. Note that part of the 2.4 GHz 802.11 spectrum is actually a ham radio band, and the wireless APs are FCC Regulation Part 15 devices...so you can't even get around CC&R (or HOA -- homeowner association) rules by claiming it's for ham radio use.
Fortunately, PRB-1 prevents local government from prohibiting antennas or over-regulating them, but nothing prevents CC&Rs or Homeowner's Associations from doing so. In fact, a bill recently made it through the Hawaii legislature only to be vetoed by Hawaii's Republican Governor on the grounds that it interfered with "private contracts." Unfortunately, when big developers develop half of a town and put CC&R's in place, they're impossible to remove. Good luck finding somewhere to live.
New York, New York, August 6, 2004... In 2000, Dutton published a hardcover book called Amazon.com by Katie Tarbox, an eye-opening account of one teenager's descent into the seductive world of Internet Shopping. After the book was released into the market, it was brought to Dutton's attention that a website of the same name existed on the Internet.
The fact that the book, Amazon.com, and the website shared the same name was purely coincidental. In an effort to avoid any association between the book and the site, when Plume issued the book in trade paperback in 2001, it printed on the copyright page that the author of Amazon.com and events described in the book have no connection whatsoever with the website domain owner Amazon or her e-mail address.
Trena Keating, Editor-in-chief of Plume, said, "We have made every effort to clarify the fact that Plume's book, Amazon.com, and the website, Amazon.com, are not in any way associated with one another. In addition, it was erroneously reported recently that Plume had asked its attorney to attempt to buy the web site Amazon.com from domain owner Jeff Bezos
This is absolutely not true. Ms. Jones confirms this point in a message currently posted on her web site. "We are not working in association with author Katie Tarbox or any other individual in an attempt to assume ownership of the domain name address www.katie.com. Of course, the personal views of the author are hers and do not represent Plume in any way.
"Most of the stated improvements over the 1st-generation of the color Sidekick are software."
I would say that the hard-button UI redesign, the better RF system (reportedly both better domestic signal strength and tri-band/european coverage), smaller form factor, improved battery life, and the better handset/speakerphone are significant motivators for hardware upgrade.
"These won't be selling points for the new one if the old one gets the same software."
I don't think this enters into the equation at all. The phone business is a razor-blade business; if people keep their plans, the carriers make money and Danger makes money, as they get a cut. If customers upgrade handsets, it's probably a wash in terms of cost for the carrier (and is considered part of the cost of customer retention). Whether they keep their old device or get a new one, they still pay monthly. So, I see it in the carrier's interest to offer the software upgrade, as it helps in customer retention at low cost, and reduces the number of platforms that software must be written for, which improves the customer experience and again helps retention.
Now, improved hardware reliability and an phone or RF functionality would be good for the carriers because it means more voice minutes and hence more revenue, so if it really is significantly better I expect the carriers to offer upgrade incentives.
>...IM threatens the insanely lucrative SMS revenue...
T-Mobile also already has a plan that is $30/mo, has unlimited AOL IM and unlimited SMS. (And unlimited email and web browsing). It's the Sidekick plan.
Palo Alto Field Day and Ham Instant Messaging
on
Field Day 2004
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I will be helping out at the "Get On The Air" station at the Palo Alto Amateur Radio Association field day. Non-hams are welcome to come to the GOTA station in Saturday after 11AM and get on the air.
I will be helping demonstrate something called "PSK-31" which is kind of amateur radio Instant Messaging. With your laptop computer and a small radio running on AA batteries and a piece of wire, you can talk halfway around the world, instantly.
Read all about it at my PSK presentation for non-hams. And if you are in the Bay Area, come check us out, or one of the other area Field Day sites such as
I remember reading about making a speaker out of a candle or gas jet, I think in an old ham radio magazine from the 1950's. From what I remember, you stick two wires into the flame and drive it with a high voltage modulated with audio.
No.. it's telling you that 1 mile per watt is equal to 1609.344 m^-1 kg^-1 s^3. It just did a unit conversion to the MKS system.
Google writes all answers with units in MKS. It simply converted your mixed-system ratio -- one unit is imperial, the other is metric, what an ugly mix.
By the way, m^-1 kg^-1 s^3 is equivalent to "seconds per newton" which is a fairly meaningless unit. A Google search for the term "seconds per newton" comes up with only a few hits, none of which has any physical meaning.
The units of a physical quantity are a fundamental component of the quantity. If you ignore them you'll end up really confused like you got here.
Do you really think I didn't know all that? The end result was that it was funny. As Governer Arnold Schwartzenegger said in The Terminator, "Category: Joke".
So, for the humor impaired and recently elected, let me spell it out in easy steps.
I entered a plain text search phrase, "miles per watt", hoping to find a web site that would, given a latitude and longitude or pair of Maidenhead Grid coordinates, and my power, calculate the number of miles per watt.
Google interpreted "miles per watt" as a unit calculation, with unity values, and simplified it to MKS units.
The scalar component of the answer it got was about 1600, which is a reasonably good number for miles-per-watt on HF radio transmission, so I was briefly startled to see a number in response to my quest, which was in fact to find a number of about that magnitude.
I thought it was a funny and unexpected result of searching for a plain text phrase, so I posted it to Slashdot, hoping that others would find it funny as well.
Instead, I got a bunch of geeks explaining to me what units are.
My dipole gets a bit farther out at 2.5 watts, but my portable HF antenna with the various loading coils has had a maximum range so far of about 1600 miles or so...
The vertical has a lower takeoff angle than the dipole at pretty much any height, so the ionospheric F-layer skip will be longer, and if you're out HFPacking then you're away from more noise sources, so the additional noise you have from a vertically-polarized antenna is offset by being away from the city. Head to the ocean or beach with your vertical if you want to see it really "take off".
I wanted to find information about a low-power ham radio site that would tell me how many miles per watt I was getting, given two locations. I searched for miles per watt and found out that the answer is a constant, 1609.344!
FCC CHAIRMAN ASSURES CONGRESSMAN ON BPL STUDIES FCC Chairman Michael Powell has assured US Representative Greg Walden, WB7OCE, that the Commission will give "thorough consideration" to all Broadband over Power Line (BPL) studies before it takes final action on BPL. Powell responded February 3 to Walden's January 15 letter requesting that the FCC defer any further action in its BPL proceeding until the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) releases the results of its BPL study and the public has had a chance to comment. On February 12 the FCC took the proceeding to the next level, unanimously approving the issuance of a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM). Among other provisions, the NPRM would require BPL providers to employ "adaptive interference-mitigation techniques."
Morse Code using a sip-and-puff interface for disabled people; see the video. For desktop or laptop use there is the DARCI Morse USB device, though pure software methods shold be available somewhere. (And yes, technically it is International Morse Code).
I built an analog remote control computer display meter in April 2001 and demonstrated it publicly: here. The file date on the oldest version of the index.html.old file is April 21, 2001.
What does the FCC have to do with a Canadian outfit, like the one mentioned? Yes, the Canadian government has their own equivilant to the FCC, but the rules arn't identical, so your siting is pretty much irrelavant. In this case, as the technology was developed by Amperion of Andover, MA and Columbus, OH, and is being pushed quite hard by them in the US, what the huge market of the US does and thus what the FCC says could make or break them. The Canadian test is just a small market probe.
Personally I think BPL is a bad solution to a problem, and one that has the potential to wipe out radio spectrum of tremendous value.
One analogy that hasn't been made is to that of light pollution. RF and light are just at different points of the spectrum. While nobody doubts the value of having light delivered over electric power lines, we are still struggling with the effects of light pollution on astronomy (both professional and amateur).
Let's not extend the pollution problem down the spectrum to HF radio!
I'm glad with only one year of experience with Fedora betas you are able to figure out how to configure it to update the way that RedHat 9 and earlier did out of hte box. I can't. And don't the various sources of paid support for old versions come with their own version schism problems? The loss of critical mass with the Red Hat split is detrimental to critical mass, which RedHat and Debian had, and now RedHat lacks.
By the way, a colleague ordered Red Hat Server disks and they arrived with bad media, and RH said "we just shipped those to fill the order, we knew they were bad." It doesn't come with postgresql on it, either. "Compile it if you want it" is the answer.
More center of gravity is needed, and Red Hat has decided that they don't want to hold the center any more. That's their business decision, but as a customer (paying) I am certainly allowed to complain about it without it being called "bitching and moaning." With the time bomb of RH9 support ending as well, I am trying to find something else to move to.
Except that the up2date service doesn't work right, and yum requires you to futz with repositories and takes days to get updates, and neither works through proxy servers(ignoring/etc/sysconfig/rhn values and/etc/yum.conf values), but they kinda work if you set http_proxy, or if you use a TSOCKS proxy with LD_PRELOAD, but that doesn't work all the time either. And half the fedora web pages are about the old Hawaii release and the other half are wishful thinking about what ought to work. It's enough to drive one to Debian, except of course all the Debian documentation is on people's home pages that have been cracked by the kernel bug a couple of months ago, and the Debian people haven't got a consistent story about releases and snapshots either.
So, you could just rely on RedHat to QA things and release them, and even pay them a pittance for good bandwidth for one or two machines, but now that's broken, Fedora is in chaos, and Debian is as always, about to start on an installer and full of people who tell you "just do apt get upgrade dpkg" except depending on what time of the week you do it it may leave you with a combination of packages heretofore completely unseen by humankind.
Slashdot Mirror
It won't work that way. If BPL interferes with ham radio, the number of operators will decrease below the crticical mass necessary to provide emergency communications, worldwide.
Here's why:
BPL produces interference across the entire spectrum of "high frequency" (3-30Mhz) radio, and a little above and below in fact. The HF frequencies have special properties (on this planet, at least) of being reflected around the world by the ionosphere. A tiny sliver of these frequencies are used by amateur radio operators, but there are litterally thousands of other kinds of licensees worldwide.
BPL power lines radiate this interference, and when the ionosphere is highly reflective, the interference will be sent around the world. Since the FCC denied the request to have the BPL systems transmit identification, there won't be any way for anyone to identify which BPL installation is causig interference, since it might be halfway around the country, or halfway around the world.
There are BPL systems that don't use HF radio waves, but in all the rush to "Step 3: Profit" these technical issues have been ignored, and the comlpanies with the best lobbiests have won.
Even so, here's what I want out of a PDA, and the Axim comes close, but not close enough.
The Hiptop comes closer: it gives you 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, and GPRS instead of WiFi for #1. Why don't you try one while you're waiting for the ultimate to come out? (There's also a VNC client on #6, for when you absolutely have to...)
I suspect that "Eight Megs" refers to the later Unix EMACS versions, because the AI PDP-10 didn't have that much memory. The 256K x 36-bit word Ampex core memory racks were pretty big and I think AI had 758KWords, or 3.375 mega-octets, if you wanted to count it that way, which it didn't.
E-MACS was a TECO macro package that RMS picked up. There was also T-MACS and R-MACS. When I used E-MACS, it was on v134, I think, and RMS for a couple of years been the only maintainer of it, but a small number of people were still using ^R mode in TECO or one of the other macro packages. When RMS stopped maintaining ITS and Twenex EMACS to start the GNU project, I maintained it for a while, but it was eventually clear that it wasn't the way of the future. By that time, Lisp Machines and the Vax had happened.
By the way, last time I was at the computer museum in Mountain View, CA, I saw a Lisp Machine whose serial number (CADR 8) I recognized. I figured it was time to leave.
In ham radio, there's a 1000 miles per watt award that's not particularly hard to get....I made 1842 miles per watt (Palo Alto, California to Sakhalin Island in Russia) using a data modulation called PSK-31 and a wire antenna on my roof, and just over 1000 miles per watt from San Luis Obispo, CA to Estonia using CW: 5700 miles with 4.5 watts to a 28 foot wire thrown from a second-story window into a small tree, running on a pack of AA batteries.
> The FCC has ruled repeatedly with regards to HAM Radio antennas, DBS dishes and OTA TV antennas that landlords cannot unduly restrict tenants from installing them.
I'm sorry to inform you that this is incorrect. The FCC's OTARD fact sheet clearly states that protections do not extend to ham radio. It's quite a big deal if you happen to live in an area (such as an entire state) that is full of these restrictions that are ostensibly part of voluntary contracts.
Read more about antenna restrictions and join the fight -- the way the FCC is going these days, it may soon be easy for landlords to prohibit 802.11 devices in entire housing developments and "offer" you their own leased-line service for only nine ninety nine ninety nine ninety none...
>A lease that says I can't use a HAM radio on the property is unenforceable.
Unfortunately, a lease that says you can't have a ham radio antenna is enforceable.
>Can a landlord restrict use of a technology by explicitly putting it in the
>contract? The answer may seem obvious, but keep in mind that anyone can put up a
>DirecTV dish in their apartment no matter what the landlord says. And if they
>were allowed to, would landlords start restricting the use of WiFi as part of
>their contract or demand payement for it?
>I think that's what the FCC is trying to avoid.
It seems very likely to me that big developers will soon start prohibiting 802.11 access points in new housing developments, and instead profit from the fiber lines that they put in, and we'll have absolutely no recourse.
Here's why:
Satellite TV antennas are specifically excepted from the CC&R (codes, covenants, and restrictions) by FCC regulation. Other types of antennas, such as amateur radio antennas (see Antenna Restrictions are excluded. Note that part of the 2.4 GHz 802.11 spectrum is actually a ham radio band, and the wireless APs are FCC Regulation Part 15 devices...so you can't even get around CC&R (or HOA -- homeowner association) rules by claiming it's for ham radio use.
Fortunately, PRB-1 prevents local government from prohibiting antennas or over-regulating them, but nothing prevents CC&Rs or Homeowner's Associations from doing so. In fact, a bill recently made it through the Hawaii legislature only to be vetoed by Hawaii's Republican Governor on the grounds that it interfered with "private contracts." Unfortunately, when big developers develop half of a town and put CC&R's in place, they're impossible to remove. Good luck finding somewhere to live.
Join the fight against senseless antenna restrictions.
The Hiptop displays Japanese and Chinese fine, and if you become a developer you can install a Japanese dictionary , or use one online in its browser.
The XForms announcement is really cool -- now I'll be able to use XDIF to do my combination ham log!
"Most of the stated improvements over the 1st-generation of the color Sidekick are software."
I would say that the hard-button UI redesign, the better RF system (reportedly both better domestic signal strength and tri-band/european coverage), smaller form factor, improved battery life, and the better handset/speakerphone are significant motivators for hardware upgrade.
"These won't be selling points for the new one if the old one gets the same software."
I don't think this enters into the equation at all. The phone business is a razor-blade business; if people keep their plans, the carriers make money and Danger makes money, as they get a cut. If customers upgrade handsets, it's probably a wash in terms of cost for the carrier (and is considered part of the cost of customer retention). Whether they keep their old device or get a new one, they still pay monthly. So, I see it in the carrier's interest to offer the software upgrade, as it helps in customer retention at low cost, and reduces the number of platforms that software must be written for, which improves the customer experience and again helps retention.
Now, improved hardware reliability and an phone or RF functionality would be good for the carriers because it means more voice minutes and hence more revenue, so if it really is significantly better I expect the carriers to offer upgrade incentives.
What makes you say that the old ones won't get software updates?
>...IM threatens the insanely lucrative SMS revenue...
T-Mobile also already has a plan that is $30/mo, has unlimited AOL IM and unlimited SMS. (And unlimited email and web browsing). It's the Sidekick plan.
at the Palo Alto Amateur Radio Association field day. Non-hams are welcome to come to the GOTA station in Saturday after 11AM and get on the air.
I will be helping demonstrate something called "PSK-31" which is
kind of amateur radio Instant Messaging. With your laptop
computer and a small radio running on AA batteries and a piece of wire,
you can talk halfway around the world, instantly.
Read all about it at my PSK presentation for non-hams. And if you are in the Bay Area, come check us out, or
one of the other area Field Day sites such as
I remember reading about making a speaker out of a candle or gas jet, I think in an old ham radio magazine from the 1950's. From what I remember, you stick two wires into the flame and drive it with a high voltage modulated with audio.
Do you really think I didn't know all that? The end result was that it was funny. As Governer Arnold Schwartzenegger said in The Terminator, "Category: Joke".
So, for the humor impaired and recently elected, let me spell it out in easy steps.
The vertical has a lower takeoff angle than the dipole at pretty much any height, so the ionospheric F-layer skip will be longer, and if you're out HFPacking then you're away from more noise sources, so the additional noise you have from a vertically-polarized antenna is offset by being away from the city. Head to the ocean or beach with your vertical if you want to see it really "take off".
I wanted to find information about a low-power ham radio site that would tell me how many miles per watt I was getting, given two locations. I searched for miles per watt and found out that the answer is a constant, 1609.344!
Morse Code using a sip-and-puff interface for disabled people; see the video. For desktop or laptop use there is the DARCI Morse USB device, though pure software methods shold be available somewhere. (And yes, technically it is International Morse Code).
I built an analog remote control computer display meter in April 2001 and demonstrated it publicly: here.
The file date on the oldest version of the index.html.old file is April 21, 2001.
What does the FCC have to do with a Canadian outfit, like the one mentioned? Yes, the Canadian government has their own equivilant to the FCC, but the rules arn't identical, so your siting is pretty much irrelavant.
In this case, as the technology was developed by Amperion of Andover, MA and Columbus, OH, and is being pushed quite hard by them in the US, what the huge market of the US does and thus what the FCC says could make or break them. The Canadian test is just a small market probe.
Personally I think BPL is a bad solution to a problem, and one that has the potential to wipe out radio spectrum of tremendous value.
Good points Eric, as always.
One analogy that hasn't been made is to that of light pollution.
RF and light are just at different points of the spectrum.
While nobody doubts the value of having light delivered over electric power lines, we are still struggling with the effects of light pollution on astronomy (both professional and amateur).
Let's not extend the pollution problem down the spectrum to HF radio!
I'm glad with only one year of experience with Fedora betas you are able to figure out how to configure it to update the way that RedHat 9 and earlier did out of hte box. I can't. And don't the various sources of paid support for old versions come with their own version schism problems? The loss of critical mass with the Red Hat split is detrimental to critical mass, which RedHat and Debian had, and now RedHat lacks.
By the way, a colleague ordered Red Hat Server disks and they arrived with bad media, and RH said "we just shipped those to fill the order, we knew they were bad." It doesn't come with postgresql on it, either. "Compile it if you want it" is the answer.
More center of gravity is needed, and Red Hat has decided that they don't want to hold the center any more. That's their business decision, but as a customer (paying) I am certainly allowed to complain about it without it being called "bitching and moaning." With the time bomb of RH9 support ending as well, I am trying to find something else to move to.
Except that the up2date service doesn't work right, and yum requires you to futz with repositories and takes days to get updates, and neither works through proxy servers(ignoring /etc/sysconfig/rhn values and /etc/yum.conf values), but they kinda work if you set http_proxy, or if you use a TSOCKS proxy with LD_PRELOAD, but that doesn't work all the time either. And half the fedora web pages are about the old Hawaii release and the other half are wishful thinking about what ought to work. It's enough to drive one to Debian, except of course all the Debian documentation is on people's home pages that have been cracked by the kernel bug a couple of months ago, and the Debian people haven't got a consistent story about releases and snapshots either.
So, you could just rely on RedHat to QA things and release them, and even pay them a pittance for good bandwidth for one or two machines, but now that's broken, Fedora is in chaos, and Debian is as always, about to start on an installer and full of people who tell you "just do apt get upgrade dpkg" except depending on what time of the week you do it it may leave you with a combination of packages heretofore completely unseen by humankind.