Why can't people just take a movie for what it is? These aren't documentaries, you know.
When I go into a science fiction movie, I expect some minor attempt at scientific plausibility. Movies like The Andromeda Strain, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Jurassic Park are examples of good science fiction movies. Sure, they are not scientifically flawless, but their flaws are not so universally obvious as to make reasonably intelligent people gag. I can accept "Warp Drives", "Hyperspace Drives", and "Wormholes" to explain faster-than-light travel even though I know that man will probably never travel faster than the speed of light. I can even accept audible sounds made by explosions in space. Why? Because I don't deal with that kind of thing on a regular basis.
But look at some of the tripe for which you ask us to suspend disbelief: Using a Mac laptop to create and load a virus on some alien computer that has never been seen by humans before? Jumping and falling hundreds of feet onto a speeding vehicle without being injured? When the basic premise of a sci-fi movie is based on grossly-flawed pseudo-science, that ruins the movie for me. It's one thing if an explosion makes a sound in space. It's quite another to be told that the entire reason for enslaving the human race is to use them for electrical generation. Puhlease!
Why should sci-fi movies be given a special license not given to other genres? Would you have been willing to "suspend disbelief" if Saving Private Ryan had ended with someone picking up Private Ryan and leaping 300 feet through the air to safety? Would you have been willing to suspend disbelief if Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ended with them successfully dodging the bullets of the countless men who were shooting at them?
Suspension of disbelief is not a license to fill movies with stupidity and then pretend that the viewer is at fault when he complains about it.
And then, on the other hand, how can you be sure that people won't carry those threats out?
I can't. You can't. The only person who knows whether a threat is real is the person making it.
Remember back when we were talking about Alan Ralsky, and someone went out to his property to take pictures? It's not a very long leap to think that someone more unstable,
Why do you call the person who took the photo "unstable" (by saying that someone else could be "more unstable.")?
It's wrong, no matter who you are. You could be the most despised man in the world (and in this case, he pretty much is), but how much of that is the family's fault? The answer is none.
I never said that it was right to threaten someone's family or to do them harm. What I said was that a death threat was not the same as murder. The poster to whom I was replying said that 'spam doesn't kill people'. Well, neither does a threat.
So, for clarity, it's wrong to spam to anyone and especially wrong to send sexually explicit ads to minors. It's wrong to threaten the life of a spammer or the lives of his family members. And it's obviously wrong to murder someone over spam.
I don't care how bad spam is, it won't kill your kids
And threats won't kill your kids either. How do you know whether the person(s) making the threats intended to make good on them? I seriously doubt that threats against his kid's lives would have been carried out.
The original poster was dead-nuts-on when he pointed out the hypocrisy of a spammer who e-mails sexual content to children and then trys to play the role of the good father.
No, this is what is called Republicanism. Since Bush and his collection of big business ass-kissers took office, we have seen the Justice Department let Microsoft off the hook with a slap on the wrists, the EPA Clean Air Act gutted, and FCC regulations changed to allow huge media conglomerates to crush their competition. The list of such atrocities goes on and on.
I don't understand why people vote for Republicans and then act shocked that big business controls the government.
...and innocent people get pulled over and questioned all the time because they or their car match the description of a wanted vehicle/person. No law enforcement is 100% infallible.
Key phrase: "law enforcement"
Software companies are not, despite what the BSA would have us believe, part of the law enforcement community. They have no right to search your computer for data. They have no right to use your bandwidth to surreptitiously transmit private information about you.
And ISPs are not part of the judicial branch of government. Yet if a software publisher alleges to your ISP that you have a pirated copy of their software, the ISP may decide to shut off your connection to minimize their own legal exposure.
Thus you would have been subjected to a warrantless search by an entity without police powers and punished without a trial by an a firm that is not part of the judiciary. And this seems "right" to you?
Sounds like you ran into an asshole. Also sounds like you handled it in a reasonable manner. You should be commended.
That's kind of you to say. It took me two weeks and a borrowed ham receiver with SSB to find out who the guy was. I finally found his signal by scanning the dial. I heard his call sign and then I just got lucky and saw it on a personalized license plate a few days later. But the only thing I should be commended for is not putting a pin through the guy's coax one night.;-)
I understand your frustration and how this probably set you on edge a bit when it comes to amateur radio.
I'm really not as uptight about it as it may appear here. It's hard to debate a position on Slashdot without coming off like a zealot. If you don't take a hard-line, then people assume that you're losing the debate.
I basically like ham radio. I think that it looks like a fun way to blow some cash and fill up another room of my house. And I really understand where hams are coming from regarding interference because I'm an amateur astronomer in an area with so much light pollution that Carl Sagan would have been able to count the stars on his fingers. If DSL and cable were available everywhere and competition was controlling the prices and service quality, then I might be with hams who want to limit powerline carrier broadband. But when entire communities can't get broadband and others put up with yearly price increases, then it's a real problem and one that, to me, usually outweighs the inconvenience to hams.
BTW, thanks for clearing up your point in other posts. Although I may not agree with you 100%, I can now see that you have put some thought into your opinions.
That's a fallacy, and you know it, if you've read the FCC regs as you've claimed.
It's not a fallacy. It's my belief about how things should work -- even though I know that's not how they do work.
We now have a system that's practically designed to cause friction between hams and the general public. The lack of FCC-mandated standards for interference rejection in consumer electronics means that manufacturers have an economic incentive to produce equipment which is poorly shielded and underdesigned with respect to interference rejection. The people who live close to high-power ham radio transmitters are likely to experience RF interference, but there aren't enough of them for the manufacturers to worry. All they know is that the TV worked great for three years until the ham radio guy moved in across the street and now the picture is crap. Of course they blame him for the problem. And he tells them that it's their 52" projection TV that they paid two grand for. The consumer looks at the Sony/Pioneer/Toshiba/etc. label on the TV and thinks to himself "I bought quality, so this guy is obviously just covering his own ass."
If any manufacturer was to produce consumer electronics with real shielding (like a Faraday cage) and a decent RF front-end, their product would cost significantly more than the plastic-cased-fake-woodgrain units sold by the competition. Sure, they might sell a few to a handful of people tired of RF interference, but the vast majority of people would just buy the competitor's product.
Now, how about showing some civility and by not implying that I might have lied about reading the FCC regs?
You want broadband, you got it. It is called DSL and cable.
I just spoke to my friend who lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C. He can get neither. Many commmunities have neither available. DSL is not available to me and cable took three years to become available. Powerline carrier broadband is a technology that a lot of communities could benefit from.
If the lights go out again and all of the hams are gone, then what are your alternatives.
Not to belittle the praiseworthy effort, but according to the article, there were about 100 hams that handled 800 to 1000 communications in an area with 10 million citizens. That's one communication per 10,000 citizens.
What are the alternatives, you ask? For one, providing emergency services workers with adequate power backups and radio equipment to handle such emergencies without relying on private citizens.
But I'm not suggesting that anyone try to stamp ham radio out of existence. Quite the contrary. I'm glad that hams were there to help. But I think that we need to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether ham radio is important enough to justify abandoning technologies like powerline carrier broadband.
Most hams aren't assholes and they'll try to work with you if you don't come at them like it's their fault.
Like the one that had a Yagi, high-gain beam pointed at my house through which he pumped a kilowatt to talk to some guy 8 miles away? It interfered with top-notch audio equipment at both ends of the house, both televisions, and even could be heard through speakers hooked up to a stereo amp that was shut off. When confronted, he basically told me that it was my problem -- until I pointed out that the FCC rules require that he use no more power than is necessary to establish and maintain reliable communications. When I pulled out the regs and mentioned that the local FCC office might be interested in his operation, suddenly he took an active interest in solving the problem. He put filters in the coax leading to the antenna. He fixed an SWR mismatch. He dropped from a kilowatt to 50 watts for local communications.
Whether he was typical or not, I can't say.
It's just assinine to tell consumers who bought FCC approved gear that they have to modify it, voiding their warranties, because some guy next door decides that he wants to do a Marconi-on-steroids imitation.
First, Part 15 defines radio interference from consumer electronics, and what interference it must simply accept from other stations.
Part 15 is, at its best, vague about interference. Even the sections you pointed out used terms like "good engineering practice", "good engineering design", and "adequate selectivity characteristics."
It's not automatically a ham's fault if you can't listen to your easy-listening station while you surf about the difference between off-white and eggshell white over your WiFi.
Don't insult what I use WiFi for. My Internet usage is far more important than you sitting there in your underwear while talking to some strange man in Guatemala.
97.121 -- Oh boy! A ham can only interfere for 21.5 hours per day -- if the person is able to figure out how to track them down and notify them. What a sad joke.
There are more, but you didn't know that, and until you go read the entire reg, there's no point in trying to argue.
I read all of the regs for ham radio operators because I was going to get a license years ago. I even constructed my own 80 meter transmitter. Don't jump to conclusions. You just end up looking foolish.
You'll find that most hams enjoy doing MORE with LESS. Try talking to your friend in the Czech Republic on 1/4 or 1/2 watt on CW.
No thanks. I'll just e-mail them and not risk causing any interference and have a much greater chance of my message being received.
If it's your responsibility, and it's your Part 15 consumer electronic, you'll need to have it fixed.
If a piece of consumer electronics is FCC approved, then it should not be the responsibility of the consumer to have anything "fixed."
Does the guy in the monster truck plan for pulling out people in snowstorms and organize with other people so he is there when problems arise? I think not. Does he donate his spare time training for these situations?
Who cares? If someone saves my ass, I don't care if they spent hours training for it or not.
I'll play devil's advocate here: Does the average ham radio operator risk his life in an emergency? No. But the guy who's out on the roads transporting nurses, doctors, and unsticking people's cars during a snowstorm is risking his life and a vehicle that costs thousands of dollars and that may be his only transportation. I think that the analogy was pretty darned generous to hams.
BTW, poor design of a commercial receiver that accepts spurious radio emissions is not the fault of a ham. It is the fault of the manufacturer that built a crappy product.
I always find the ham perspective interesting. If their rig interferes with the neighbor's TV, they claim that the TV manufacturer is to blame. But when powerline carrier broadband interferes with their rigs, they blame the power company.
Rejecting interference costs money. Shielding isn't free. Neither is building a sensitive RF receiver that can reject out of band interference that's orders of magnitude greater in signal strength than the target signal. Sony, Toshiba, etc. are not going to raise TV prices by 15% to cover the cost of additional interference rejection. That means that, in practical terms, the consumer either has to live with interference or move.
Don't take this as a flame. I recognize that there are asshole hams out there and I'm not trying to blanketly say all hams are saints. I just think that amateur radio is a valuable service and should be protected. We will need it in the future. You can bank on that.
The vast majority of hams are decent people and many of them have a lot of community spirit and charitable impulses. I never meant to imply otherwise.
But broadband is valuable, too. If asked which was more important to a community, ham radio or broadband, I'd lean towards the latter. It helps the economy, which means more tax dollars which means more for professional emergency services, additional cell towers, improved cell system capacity, etc. It's not so cut and dried as hams might think.
To call amateur radio operators simply hobbiests does them a disservice. They're licensed by the FCC.
To call fishermen simply hobbyists does them a disservice. They are licensed by their states's fish & game services.
That means every radio operator is out there during emergencies because they want to be. They take an active interest in the community they're serving. They invest in their own rigs and the generators to run them so that they might one day HELP YOU, as well as give them an outlet for their interests.
And every guy out in his home-built monster truck in a snow emergency is there because he wants to be. They are trying to HELP YOU, as well as give them an outlet for their interests. Does that mean that they should get a free ride the rest of the year? Does that mean that we should make sure that parking garage roofs are so high that they don't interfere with radically lifted 4x4s? Does it mean that we should make certain that parking spaces in public lots are extra wide so that they don't interfere with the ability of the monster truck owners to park? Should we pass no laws which interfere with the ability of someone to raise their suspension by a foot, install 44" tall tires, and have a bumper that's three feet off of the ground?
If your ham radio doesn't interfere with my stereo, television, or WIFI (see note below), then you can spend your evenings talking to some guy in the Czech Republic if that's how you get your jollies. But don't expect that your willingness to respond in an emergency means that entire communities should abandon powerline broadband and other valuable technologies because those technologies interfere with your ability to keep in touch with your ham-buddy Jaroslav.
Note: People buying consumer electronics have no way to know what effect there will be when their next door neighbor sets up a kilowatt ham rig with a yagi beam pointed at their house.
I figured that was your par for the course after you presented your selective reading of my references
I presented one example that supported my position. You find that surprising?
accused me of being a troll.
I did not accuse you of being a troll. I wondered aloud if you were and said that you "appear to be no more than a troll."
It's both. Microsoft, as usual, has ignored the subtle distinction between two traditionally separate functions, and written them into a single program.
It's not "both". If it was, I would not need a separate terminal emulator to connect to a remote system. Mutt for Windows won't work in a terminal emulator -- just as I've said all along. It requires a Windows Command prompt window. There is no choice. There is no option.
And Microsoft didn't "ignore the subtle distinction between two traditionally separate functions." If you had some years of experience under your belt, you would remember that the PC came out in 1981 and shipped with a whopping 64K of RAM. It was competing against Apple IIs, Ataris, and TRS-80s, none of which had a virtual terminal model. Expecting Microsoft to adopt features of mainframes and minis when it ran at 4.77mhz on an 8-bit bus with 64K of RAM is pretty silly. The Command Prompt window is simply a throwback to the DOS days and was never intended for new application development. That Mutt developers chose not to create a standard GUI application is not a reflection on Microsoft.
Don't put words in my mouth. I haven't sworn anything in this thread, let alone had the delusion that there is a good terminal emulator for running windows software.
Then why did you ask me "And you put up with this?" and write "It's not their fault that you don't have an adequate terminal emulator" when a the Windows version of Mutt won't run in a terminal emulator? There are plenty of good terminal emulators for Windows, but, because text-based applications under Windows don't use the virtual terminal model, it's impossible to use terminal emulators for running local applications.
This will be my last post unless you can provide an interesting argument against my position.
Good. You've wasted enough of my time and now we're right back where this started: My posting to which you commented was dead-nuts-on when it said:
More importantly, the text-based nature of MUTT means that I would lose the ability to use GUI features like mouse-based operation, cut & paste, and so forth.
I am far more intelligent, perceptive, and informed than you. I have the credentials and resume to support that claim. You, on the other hand, appear to be no more than a troll. I try to engage you in debate, ask you questions, and you just ignore them and, instead, resort to childish name calling.
Windows Command Prompt is, in fact, a terminal emulator.
WRONG! When I type in Windows Command Prompt, data does not go out a serial port. It does not go out of a network port. It does not go through some virtual port. It cannot be used to connect to a remote host. If Windows Command Prompt is a terminal emulator, what terminal does it emulate? (ANSWER THAT QUESTION IN YOUR REPLY!)
Windows Command Prompt is a command shell, not a terminal emulator.
I asked before and you weren't man enough to admit you were wrong, so I will ask again:
You keep swearing that there is some "terminal emulator" software which, under Windows, will let me use the standard GUI-based cut and paste with Mutt. Well, what is it? What package will replace the Command Prompt and allow the Windows version of Mutt to use those standard cut and paste commands?
The first full sentence of the xterm man page reads, "The xterm program is a terminal emulator for the X Window System." I can run mutt just fine in xterm.
But you can't run the Windows version of Mutt in xterm and this entire thread has been about running the Windows version of Mutt.
Hyperterminal is an irrelevant distraction to this conversation, since it is neither the only terminal emulator in the world nor an advisable way to run mutt.
I don't care if it's "advisable." It's a terminal emulator for Windows and you say that Mutt for Windows runs in a terminal emulator. So make it run.
You keep swearing that there is some "terminal emulator" software which, under Windows, will let me use the standard GUI-based cut and paste with Mutt. Well, what is it? What package will replace the Command Prompt and allow the Windows version of Mutt to use those standard cut and paste commands?
You don't want the Hyperterminal example? Fine:
Download Mutt for Windows and make it run in ANY terminal emulator on the Windows box.
Are you just trolling now? Oh well, I'll take the bait if you are...
If I don't know what I'm talking about, then apparently FOLDOC, everything2, and wikipedia are all equally misled.
You just provided three links that confirmed what I said and completely contradicted your earlier posts. What I said in my previous message:
Hyperterminal, which ships with Windows, is an example of terminal emulator software.
What Wikipedia said (via the link you provided):
Example programs that provide this capability under Microsoft Windows include the built-in programs HyperTerminal and Telnet.exe
Now, I defy you to download Mutt for Windows and run it via Hyperterminal. Go ahead. You're the one who swears that Mutt runs in a terminal emulator, so prove it.
I'm not picky, though. Call it what you like.
I am picky because I'm a professional software engineer with over two decades of paid experience. A terminal emulator is not a Command Prompt window any more than it is a web browser. The Windows version of Mutt runs on the local machine in a Command Prompt window, not on remote host with a terminal emulator making the PC act like a dumb terminal.
Too bad changing the name won't make it better software.
Changing the name of what? You are the one that can't seem to understand the difference between a Command Prompt window and a terminal emulator. Whats next? Are you going to tell me that I should run Mutt in my web browser or text editor?
It's not their fault that you don't have an adequate terminal emulator.
You don't know what you are talking about. Go to a Windows machine. Start a command prompt window. That's where text-based applications run. No choice. No control-x/c/v cut & paste.
Stop calling it a terminal emulator. It's not a terminal emulator. A terminal emulator is software which causes a PC to emulate a terminal (e.g., VT52, VT220, Wyse 50, etc.) while connected to a remote host. Hyperterminal, which ships with Windows, is an example of terminal emulator software. You can't run a local text-based application in a terminal emulator window.
Mutt doesn't run on a remote host to which I would connect with a terminal emulator. It runs on the local machine as a text-based app and, hence, runs in the command prompt window.
You're right! Screw those clients who have paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. From now on, I only work in Linux! If the clients won't switch, then they can go to hell! If they send me source that compiles under Visual C++, I'll just tell them to convert to Linux. Maybe I could even grow a really bushy beard and mustache and mutter about them needing to get a real computer...
If Ford sucks, then the consumer is free to change to something else.
No they are not. The average consumer does not know where to find another alternator. They don't know how to install it...
The difference though, is that Ford does not have a monopoly on vehicle sales like Microsoft has on desktop OS sales. Also, Fords come with warranties. Try telling Bill Gates that you want him to fix your computer under warranty after his OS breaks. In fact, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act was passed just to assure that consumer product manufacturers don't deny warranty claims because someone chose to use an aftermarket part or accessory. Since the software industry has managed to avoid having software considered to be a product, Microsoft is exempt from such legislation.
If Ford had 90+% of all vehicle sales in the U.S., then you can damned well bet that they would be scrutinized just like Microsoft is.
This is due to change in about 15 to 20 years, maybe by then we will see more intelligence in the average computer-using public, but i wouldnt bet on it.
Nor would I. Some consumers seem to pride themselves in being totally ignorant about their computers.
I looked at the Mutt documentation and it didn't support importing Microsoft's proprietary formats.
Seek FreshMeat, and you will find mbx2mbox attempts to convert Microsoft's proprietary.mbx and.dbx format mailboxes to the standard RFC822 mailboxes used by programs like Pine, Eudora, and Netscape.
From the mbx2mbox homepage:
Mailboxes from newer versions of Outlook and Outlook express may not be supported. (i.e. Your mileage may vary.)...
Also be aware that this script has not been tested for Outlook versions since circa 1997, and may not work.
Hardly reassuring...
This took me about 5 seconds to find, and 15 seconds to post the link. You owe me 10 seconds.
What modern terminal emulator doesn't support cut and paste?
The Command Prompt window under Windows. Sure, if you remember to click on weird buttons and use mouse buttons to cut and paste, you can, but try using the standard control-X, C, and V. I can't count the number of times that I've marked text in a Command Prompt window and hit control-C only to have the text marking disappear with nothing going into the clipboard.
Then you're in luck. Eudora, Mozilla, Netscape 4, and a fair bunch of Unix-based clients use something called "mbox format". It's not compressed very well, because it's basically ALL your messages in one giant text file, but it's more or less a Unix standard
I'm only in luck if I like those clients. And I would only be in luck if the "standard" lent itself well to very large numbers (tens of thousands) of messages. It is painfully slow when there are that many messages. Compression, I don't care about. Hard drives are so big now that I don't even have to delete apps to make room for my porn collection.
Irony: Someone starting a sentence with "Uhh" then calling someone else as an "idiot."
Trust me on this, I'm easily your intellectual superior.
the fact that somebody doesn't know how to do something doesn't mean they are prevented from doing it.
Just how can someone do something that they don't know how to do? Their lack of knowledge prevents them from doing the thing.
If that were the case, I could argue that X is a monopoly because I don't know of any competitor purchase a product from.
Isn't that how IE became the world's most popular browser? And isn't that why the Justice Department went after Microsoft? That's the whole argument against using the Windows monopoly of the desktop OS market to push other Microsoft products.
(mod prev msg +5 Funny (=Stupid)..per his directions)
As I post this, my earlier has a +5 for Insightful and Interesting. Your message (like you) is still a zero.
And that's why I'm still wondering why in the hell are we geeks always worrying about those kind of assholes...
Because they decide what software companies and products fail or succeed. They are the reason that Microsoft is huge, Netscape has almost folded, Linux is a fringe OS, and insecure, unstable commercial products are commonplace. They use whatever is put on their system and that becomes a "standard", whether it's IE, Outlook Express, Windows Media Player, or Wordpad.
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Why can't people just take a movie for what it is? These aren't documentaries, you know.
When I go into a science fiction movie, I expect some minor attempt at scientific plausibility. Movies like The Andromeda Strain, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Jurassic Park are examples of good science fiction movies. Sure, they are not scientifically flawless, but their flaws are not so universally obvious as to make reasonably intelligent people gag. I can accept "Warp Drives", "Hyperspace Drives", and "Wormholes" to explain faster-than-light travel even though I know that man will probably never travel faster than the speed of light. I can even accept audible sounds made by explosions in space. Why? Because I don't deal with that kind of thing on a regular basis.
But look at some of the tripe for which you ask us to suspend disbelief: Using a Mac laptop to create and load a virus on some alien computer that has never been seen by humans before? Jumping and falling hundreds of feet onto a speeding vehicle without being injured? When the basic premise of a sci-fi movie is based on grossly-flawed pseudo-science, that ruins the movie for me. It's one thing if an explosion makes a sound in space. It's quite another to be told that the entire reason for enslaving the human race is to use them for electrical generation. Puhlease!
Why should sci-fi movies be given a special license not given to other genres? Would you have been willing to "suspend disbelief" if Saving Private Ryan had ended with someone picking up Private Ryan and leaping 300 feet through the air to safety? Would you have been willing to suspend disbelief if Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ended with them successfully dodging the bullets of the countless men who were shooting at them?
Suspension of disbelief is not a license to fill movies with stupidity and then pretend that the viewer is at fault when he complains about it.
And then, on the other hand, how can you be sure that people won't carry those threats out?
I can't. You can't. The only person who knows whether a threat is real is the person making it.
Remember back when we were talking about Alan Ralsky, and someone went out to his property to take pictures? It's not a very long leap to think that someone more unstable,
Why do you call the person who took the photo "unstable" (by saying that someone else could be "more unstable.")?
It's wrong, no matter who you are. You could be the most despised man in the world (and in this case, he pretty much is), but how much of that is the family's fault? The answer is none.
I never said that it was right to threaten someone's family or to do them harm. What I said was that a death threat was not the same as murder. The poster to whom I was replying said that 'spam doesn't kill people'. Well, neither does a threat.
So, for clarity, it's wrong to spam to anyone and especially wrong to send sexually explicit ads to minors. It's wrong to threaten the life of a spammer or the lives of his family members. And it's obviously wrong to murder someone over spam.
I don't care how bad spam is, it won't kill your kids
And threats won't kill your kids either. How do you know whether the person(s) making the threats intended to make good on them? I seriously doubt that threats against his kid's lives would have been carried out.
The original poster was dead-nuts-on when he pointed out the hypocrisy of a spammer who e-mails sexual content to children and then trys to play the role of the good father.
This, folks, is called Capitalism.
No, this is what is called Republicanism. Since Bush and his collection of big business ass-kissers took office, we have seen the Justice Department let Microsoft off the hook with a slap on the wrists, the EPA Clean Air Act gutted, and FCC regulations changed to allow huge media conglomerates to crush their competition. The list of such atrocities goes on and on.
I don't understand why people vote for Republicans and then act shocked that big business controls the government.
...and innocent people get pulled over and questioned all the time because they or their car match the description of a wanted vehicle/person. No law enforcement is 100% infallible.
Key phrase: "law enforcement"
Software companies are not, despite what the BSA would have us believe, part of the law enforcement community. They have no right to search your computer for data. They have no right to use your bandwidth to surreptitiously transmit private information about you.
And ISPs are not part of the judicial branch of government. Yet if a software publisher alleges to your ISP that you have a pirated copy of their software, the ISP may decide to shut off your connection to minimize their own legal exposure.
Thus you would have been subjected to a warrantless search by an entity without police powers and punished without a trial by an a firm that is not part of the judiciary. And this seems "right" to you?
And I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I believed that was how things were rather than it being how I thought they should be.
Peace.
Sounds like you ran into an asshole. Also sounds like you handled it in a reasonable manner. You should be commended.
;-)
That's kind of you to say. It took me two weeks and a borrowed ham receiver with SSB to find out who the guy was. I finally found his signal by scanning the dial. I heard his call sign and then I just got lucky and saw it on a personalized license plate a few days later. But the only thing I should be commended for is not putting a pin through the guy's coax one night.
I understand your frustration and how this probably set you on edge a bit when it comes to amateur radio.
I'm really not as uptight about it as it may appear here. It's hard to debate a position on Slashdot without coming off like a zealot. If you don't take a hard-line, then people assume that you're losing the debate.
I basically like ham radio. I think that it looks like a fun way to blow some cash and fill up another room of my house. And I really understand where hams are coming from regarding interference because I'm an amateur astronomer in an area with so much light pollution that Carl Sagan would have been able to count the stars on his fingers. If DSL and cable were available everywhere and competition was controlling the prices and service quality, then I might be with hams who want to limit powerline carrier broadband. But when entire communities can't get broadband and others put up with yearly price increases, then it's a real problem and one that, to me, usually outweighs the inconvenience to hams.
BTW, thanks for clearing up your point in other posts. Although I may not agree with you 100%, I can now see that you have put some thought into your opinions.
Thanks. You're a decent guy for saying that.
That's a fallacy, and you know it, if you've read the FCC regs as you've claimed.
It's not a fallacy. It's my belief about how things should work -- even though I know that's not how they do work.
We now have a system that's practically designed to cause friction between hams and the general public. The lack of FCC-mandated standards for interference rejection in consumer electronics means that manufacturers have an economic incentive to produce equipment which is poorly shielded and underdesigned with respect to interference rejection. The people who live close to high-power ham radio transmitters are likely to experience RF interference, but there aren't enough of them for the manufacturers to worry. All they know is that the TV worked great for three years until the ham radio guy moved in across the street and now the picture is crap. Of course they blame him for the problem. And he tells them that it's their 52" projection TV that they paid two grand for. The consumer looks at the Sony/Pioneer/Toshiba/etc. label on the TV and thinks to himself "I bought quality, so this guy is obviously just covering his own ass."
If any manufacturer was to produce consumer electronics with real shielding (like a Faraday cage) and a decent RF front-end, their product would cost significantly more than the plastic-cased-fake-woodgrain units sold by the competition. Sure, they might sell a few to a handful of people tired of RF interference, but the vast majority of people would just buy the competitor's product.
Now, how about showing some civility and by not implying that I might have lied about reading the FCC regs?
You want broadband, you got it. It is called DSL and cable.
I just spoke to my friend who lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C. He can get neither. Many commmunities have neither available. DSL is not available to me and cable took three years to become available. Powerline carrier broadband is a technology that a lot of communities could benefit from.
If the lights go out again and all of the hams are gone, then what are your alternatives.
Not to belittle the praiseworthy effort, but according to the article, there were about 100 hams that handled 800 to 1000 communications in an area with 10 million citizens. That's one communication per 10,000 citizens.
What are the alternatives, you ask? For one, providing emergency services workers with adequate power backups and radio equipment to handle such emergencies without relying on private citizens.
But I'm not suggesting that anyone try to stamp ham radio out of existence. Quite the contrary. I'm glad that hams were there to help. But I think that we need to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether ham radio is important enough to justify abandoning technologies like powerline carrier broadband.
Most hams aren't assholes and they'll try to work with you if you don't come at them like it's their fault.
Like the one that had a Yagi, high-gain beam pointed at my house through which he pumped a kilowatt to talk to some guy 8 miles away? It interfered with top-notch audio equipment at both ends of the house, both televisions, and even could be heard through speakers hooked up to a stereo amp that was shut off. When confronted, he basically told me that it was my problem -- until I pointed out that the FCC rules require that he use no more power than is necessary to establish and maintain reliable communications. When I pulled out the regs and mentioned that the local FCC office might be interested in his operation, suddenly he took an active interest in solving the problem. He put filters in the coax leading to the antenna. He fixed an SWR mismatch. He dropped from a kilowatt to 50 watts for local communications.
Whether he was typical or not, I can't say.
It's just assinine to tell consumers who bought FCC approved gear that they have to modify it, voiding their warranties, because some guy next door decides that he wants to do a Marconi-on-steroids imitation.
First, Part 15 defines radio interference from consumer electronics, and what interference it must simply accept from other stations.
Part 15 is, at its best, vague about interference. Even the sections you pointed out used terms like "good engineering practice", "good engineering design", and "adequate selectivity characteristics."
It's not automatically a ham's fault if you can't listen to your easy-listening station while you surf about the difference between off-white and eggshell white over your WiFi.
Don't insult what I use WiFi for. My Internet usage is far more important than you sitting there in your underwear while talking to some strange man in Guatemala.
97.121 -- Oh boy! A ham can only interfere for 21.5 hours per day -- if the person is able to figure out how to track them down and notify them. What a sad joke.
There are more, but you didn't know that, and until you go read the entire reg, there's no point in trying to argue.
I read all of the regs for ham radio operators because I was going to get a license years ago. I even constructed my own 80 meter transmitter. Don't jump to conclusions. You just end up looking foolish.
You'll find that most hams enjoy doing MORE with LESS. Try talking to your friend in the Czech Republic on 1/4 or 1/2 watt on CW.
No thanks. I'll just e-mail them and not risk causing any interference and have a much greater chance of my message being received.
If it's your responsibility, and it's your Part 15 consumer electronic, you'll need to have it fixed.
If a piece of consumer electronics is FCC approved, then it should not be the responsibility of the consumer to have anything "fixed."
Does the guy in the monster truck plan for pulling out people in snowstorms and organize with other people so he is there when problems arise? I think not. Does he donate his spare time training for these situations?
Who cares? If someone saves my ass, I don't care if they spent hours training for it or not.
I'll play devil's advocate here: Does the average ham radio operator risk his life in an emergency? No. But the guy who's out on the roads transporting nurses, doctors, and unsticking people's cars during a snowstorm is risking his life and a vehicle that costs thousands of dollars and that may be his only transportation. I think that the analogy was pretty darned generous to hams.
BTW, poor design of a commercial receiver that accepts spurious radio emissions is not the fault of a ham. It is the fault of the manufacturer that built a crappy product.
I always find the ham perspective interesting. If their rig interferes with the neighbor's TV, they claim that the TV manufacturer is to blame. But when powerline carrier broadband interferes with their rigs, they blame the power company.
Rejecting interference costs money. Shielding isn't free. Neither is building a sensitive RF receiver that can reject out of band interference that's orders of magnitude greater in signal strength than the target signal. Sony, Toshiba, etc. are not going to raise TV prices by 15% to cover the cost of additional interference rejection. That means that, in practical terms, the consumer either has to live with interference or move.
Don't take this as a flame. I recognize that there are asshole hams out there and I'm not trying to blanketly say all hams are saints. I just think that amateur radio is a valuable service and should be protected. We will need it in the future. You can bank on that.
The vast majority of hams are decent people and many of them have a lot of community spirit and charitable impulses. I never meant to imply otherwise.
But broadband is valuable, too. If asked which was more important to a community, ham radio or broadband, I'd lean towards the latter. It helps the economy, which means more tax dollars which means more for professional emergency services, additional cell towers, improved cell system capacity, etc. It's not so cut and dried as hams might think.
To call amateur radio operators simply hobbiests does them a disservice. They're licensed by the FCC.
To call fishermen simply hobbyists does them a disservice. They are licensed by their states's fish & game services.
That means every radio operator is out there during emergencies because they want to be. They take an active interest in the community they're serving. They invest in their own rigs and the generators to run them so that they might one day HELP YOU, as well as give them an outlet for their interests.
And every guy out in his home-built monster truck in a snow emergency is there because he wants to be. They are trying to HELP YOU, as well as give them an outlet for their interests. Does that mean that they should get a free ride the rest of the year? Does that mean that we should make sure that parking garage roofs are so high that they don't interfere with radically lifted 4x4s? Does it mean that we should make certain that parking spaces in public lots are extra wide so that they don't interfere with the ability of the monster truck owners to park? Should we pass no laws which interfere with the ability of someone to raise their suspension by a foot, install 44" tall tires, and have a bumper that's three feet off of the ground?
If your ham radio doesn't interfere with my stereo, television, or WIFI (see note below), then you can spend your evenings talking to some guy in the Czech Republic if that's how you get your jollies. But don't expect that your willingness to respond in an emergency means that entire communities should abandon powerline broadband and other valuable technologies because those technologies interfere with your ability to keep in touch with your ham-buddy Jaroslav.
Note: People buying consumer electronics have no way to know what effect there will be when their next door neighbor sets up a kilowatt ham rig with a yagi beam pointed at their house.
I figured that was your par for the course after you presented your selective reading of my references
I presented one example that supported my position. You find that surprising?
accused me of being a troll.
I did not accuse you of being a troll. I wondered aloud if you were and said that you "appear to be no more than a troll."
It's both. Microsoft, as usual, has ignored the subtle distinction between two traditionally separate functions, and written them into a single program.
It's not "both". If it was, I would not need a separate terminal emulator to connect to a remote system. Mutt for Windows won't work in a terminal emulator -- just as I've said all along. It requires a Windows Command prompt window. There is no choice. There is no option.
And Microsoft didn't "ignore the subtle distinction between two traditionally separate functions." If you had some years of experience under your belt, you would remember that the PC came out in 1981 and shipped with a whopping 64K of RAM. It was competing against Apple IIs, Ataris, and TRS-80s, none of which had a virtual terminal model. Expecting Microsoft to adopt features of mainframes and minis when it ran at 4.77mhz on an 8-bit bus with 64K of RAM is pretty silly. The Command Prompt window is simply a throwback to the DOS days and was never intended for new application development. That Mutt developers chose not to create a standard GUI application is not a reflection on Microsoft.
Don't put words in my mouth. I haven't sworn anything in this thread, let alone had the delusion that there is a good terminal emulator for running windows software.
Then why did you ask me "And you put up with this?" and write "It's not their fault that you don't have an adequate terminal emulator" when a the Windows version of Mutt won't run in a terminal emulator? There are plenty of good terminal emulators for Windows, but, because text-based applications under Windows don't use the virtual terminal model, it's impossible to use terminal emulators for running local applications.
This will be my last post unless you can provide an interesting argument against my position.
Good. You've wasted enough of my time and now we're right back where this started: My posting to which you commented was dead-nuts-on when it said:
More importantly, the text-based nature of MUTT means that I would lose the ability to use GUI features like mouse-based operation, cut & paste, and so forth.
Your thickness astounds me.
I am far more intelligent, perceptive, and informed than you. I have the credentials and resume to support that claim. You, on the other hand, appear to be no more than a troll. I try to engage you in debate, ask you questions, and you just ignore them and, instead, resort to childish name calling.
Windows Command Prompt is, in fact, a terminal emulator.
WRONG! When I type in Windows Command Prompt, data does not go out a serial port. It does not go out of a network port. It does not go through some virtual port. It cannot be used to connect to a remote host. If Windows Command Prompt is a terminal emulator, what terminal does it emulate? (ANSWER THAT QUESTION IN YOUR REPLY!)
Windows Command Prompt is a command shell, not a terminal emulator.
I asked before and you weren't man enough to admit you were wrong, so I will ask again:
You keep swearing that there is some "terminal emulator" software which, under Windows, will let me use the standard GUI-based cut and paste with Mutt. Well, what is it? What package will replace the Command Prompt and allow the Windows version of Mutt to use those standard cut and paste commands?
The first full sentence of the xterm man page reads, "The xterm program is a terminal emulator for the X Window System." I can run mutt just fine in xterm.
But you can't run the Windows version of Mutt in xterm and this entire thread has been about running the Windows version of Mutt.
Hyperterminal is an irrelevant distraction to this conversation, since it is neither the only terminal emulator in the world nor an advisable way to run mutt.
I don't care if it's "advisable." It's a terminal emulator for Windows and you say that Mutt for Windows runs in a terminal emulator. So make it run.
You keep swearing that there is some "terminal emulator" software which, under Windows, will let me use the standard GUI-based cut and paste with Mutt. Well, what is it? What package will replace the Command Prompt and allow the Windows version of Mutt to use those standard cut and paste commands?
You don't want the Hyperterminal example? Fine:
Download Mutt for Windows and make it run in ANY terminal emulator on the Windows box.
Are you just trolling now? Oh well, I'll take the bait if you are...
If I don't know what I'm talking about, then apparently FOLDOC, everything2, and wikipedia are all equally misled.
You just provided three links that confirmed what I said and completely contradicted your earlier posts. What I said in my previous message:
Hyperterminal, which ships with Windows, is an example of terminal emulator software.
What Wikipedia said (via the link you provided):
Example programs that provide this capability under Microsoft Windows include the built-in programs HyperTerminal and Telnet.exe
Now, I defy you to download Mutt for Windows and run it via Hyperterminal. Go ahead. You're the one who swears that Mutt runs in a terminal emulator, so prove it.
I'm not picky, though. Call it what you like.
I am picky because I'm a professional software engineer with over two decades of paid experience. A terminal emulator is not a Command Prompt window any more than it is a web browser. The Windows version of Mutt runs on the local machine in a Command Prompt window, not on remote host with a terminal emulator making the PC act like a dumb terminal.
Too bad changing the name won't make it better software.
Changing the name of what? You are the one that can't seem to understand the difference between a Command Prompt window and a terminal emulator. Whats next? Are you going to tell me that I should run Mutt in my web browser or text editor?
It's not their fault that you don't have an adequate terminal emulator.
You don't know what you are talking about. Go to a Windows machine. Start a command prompt window. That's where text-based applications run. No choice. No control-x/c/v cut & paste.
Stop calling it a terminal emulator. It's not a terminal emulator. A terminal emulator is software which causes a PC to emulate a terminal (e.g., VT52, VT220, Wyse 50, etc.) while connected to a remote host. Hyperterminal, which ships with Windows, is an example of terminal emulator software. You can't run a local text-based application in a terminal emulator window.
Mutt doesn't run on a remote host to which I would connect with a terminal emulator. It runs on the local machine as a text-based app and, hence, runs in the command prompt window.
And you put up with this?
You're right! Screw those clients who have paid me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years. From now on, I only work in Linux! If the clients won't switch, then they can go to hell! If they send me source that compiles under Visual C++, I'll just tell them to convert to Linux. Maybe I could even grow a really bushy beard and mustache and mutter about them needing to get a real computer...
If Ford sucks, then the consumer is free to change to something else.
No they are not. The average consumer does not know where to find another alternator. They don't know how to install it...
The difference though, is that Ford does not have a monopoly on vehicle sales like Microsoft has on desktop OS sales. Also, Fords come with warranties. Try telling Bill Gates that you want him to fix your computer under warranty after his OS breaks. In fact, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act was passed just to assure that consumer product manufacturers don't deny warranty claims because someone chose to use an aftermarket part or accessory. Since the software industry has managed to avoid having software considered to be a product, Microsoft is exempt from such legislation.
If Ford had 90+% of all vehicle sales in the U.S., then you can damned well bet that they would be scrutinized just like Microsoft is.
This is due to change in about 15 to 20 years, maybe by then we will see more intelligence in the average computer-using public, but i wouldnt bet on it.
Nor would I. Some consumers seem to pride themselves in being totally ignorant about their computers.
I looked at the Mutt documentation and it didn't support importing Microsoft's proprietary formats.
Seek FreshMeat, and you will find mbx2mbox attempts to convert Microsoft's proprietary
From the mbx2mbox homepage:Hardly reassuring...
This took me about 5 seconds to find, and 15 seconds to post the link. You owe me 10 seconds.
Consider my debt paid with this post.
What modern terminal emulator doesn't support cut and paste?
The Command Prompt window under Windows. Sure, if you remember to click on weird buttons and use mouse buttons to cut and paste, you can, but try using the standard control-X, C, and V. I can't count the number of times that I've marked text in a Command Prompt window and hit control-C only to have the text marking disappear with nothing going into the clipboard.
Then you're in luck. Eudora, Mozilla, Netscape 4, and a fair bunch of Unix-based clients use something called "mbox format". It's not compressed very well, because it's basically ALL your messages in one giant text file, but it's more or less a Unix standard
I'm only in luck if I like those clients. And I would only be in luck if the "standard" lent itself well to very large numbers (tens of thousands) of messages. It is painfully slow when there are that many messages. Compression, I don't care about. Hard drives are so big now that I don't even have to delete apps to make room for my porn collection.
Uhh, idiot,
Irony: Someone starting a sentence with "Uhh" then calling someone else as an "idiot."
Trust me on this, I'm easily your intellectual superior.
the fact that somebody doesn't know how to do something doesn't mean they are prevented from doing it.
Just how can someone do something that they don't know how to do? Their lack of knowledge prevents them from doing the thing.
If that were the case, I could argue that X is a monopoly because I don't know of any competitor purchase a product from.
Isn't that how IE became the world's most popular browser? And isn't that why the Justice Department went after Microsoft? That's the whole argument against using the Windows monopoly of the desktop OS market to push other Microsoft products.
(mod prev msg +5 Funny (=Stupid)..per his directions)
As I post this, my earlier has a +5 for Insightful and Interesting. Your message (like you) is still a zero.
And that's why I'm still wondering why in the hell are we geeks always worrying about those kind of assholes...
Because they decide what software companies and products fail or succeed. They are the reason that Microsoft is huge, Netscape has almost folded, Linux is a fringe OS, and insecure, unstable commercial products are commonplace. They use whatever is put on their system and that becomes a "standard", whether it's IE, Outlook Express, Windows Media Player, or Wordpad.