Well, as someone from the Chicago suburbs, particularly Crook County, I can tell you the cops around here always use "disorderly conduct" as a general bullshit catch-all charge for "we don't like you, or what you did, whichever". I know, I was in a local station lockup for about 12 hours on a complete bullshit disorderly charge.
I was guilty of being in the same car as a buddy who got into an argument with someone who turned out to be a an off-duty Chicago pig. And I use the word "pig" in the worst sense possible, this guy was a real asshole and everyone at the local station hated him and told us so. But the jerk turned out to be a fairly high ranking detective, so he had my friend arrested and when I went into the station to find him, he pointed at me and said "Oh, yeah I want him arrested too". Meaning me. I was like, "WTF? I did nothing...". The guys at the local station kept apologizing to me, telling me there was nothing they could do as long as Lt. Dickless wanted me arrested. Well, conveniently, the fax system was "down" and they had to hand-courrier our prints downtown to make sure we weren't wanted on other charges, which I'm sure the asshole told them to make sure we were kept in the cooler for a while, because we both had enough money on us to bail ourselves out.
Anyway, there's a sort of happy ending. We went to get the best damn shyster lawyer we could find, and we found a really good one - this guy was an crooked ex-judge who later got investigated in the Operation Greylord stings in the 80's - a big anti-corruption operation in Cook County, Chicago in particular. But when we knew him, he did us good - the lawyer found a nice obscure legal precedent that in order to be guilty of disorderly conduct you had to incite others to become disorderly! Great one huh? Basically, short of inciting a riot you can't be guilty of disorderly conduct. At this point the judge points to me and says "It sounds like you weren't involved at all" - I said "you're right, your Honor". And he dismissed my case and found the precedent sufficient to dismiss my buddy's case. Lt. Dickless was pissed!! Heheh.
The moral is the disorderly conduct charge in Chicago is a joke but popular because it's totally discretionary - it's the Officer's call if you are "disorderly" or not, like "Driving too fast for conditions", which can get you a ticket for going under the speed limit if the Cop thinks you are going too fast. These are bullshit laws but they exist as a catch-all to cover the gaps, I guess. The teen in question should be able to get out of the charge easily because he was not causing anyone else to be disorderly, if they get a good mouthpiece he should be able to get off easily.
Epilogue: My buddy and I went to Internal Affairs and filed a claim on the asshole for wrongful arrest, and we hoped thy would investigate him. Well one day, we were watching the local educational TV WTTW, and actually saw the jerk on a talk show! Except now he was Captain Dickless!! They actually promoted him. Words failed me at that point. Just as no good deed goes unpunished, I guess no bad one goes unrewarded.
Actually, more importantly, it shows that a large percentage of _moral_ people will do immoral things, under the guise of or with the supervision of authority. They feel immune from guilt or compassion when they are told something is OK and do it, even if it disagrees with their own critical thinking. "I was just following orders!!"
(I know, Godwin, etc, but someone already used the "N"azis word...)
Got one more for ya - bind/dress wounds temporarily.
The newsprint travels on rolls from its manufacture through printing and automated folding, almost nothing touches the paper during the entire process except shiny steel rollers and press mechs. These are of course continuously wiped clean by the paper going by. Anyway, it's not completely sterile but almost, at least much better than using an article of clothing or something else, an inner sheet from the paper has probably never been touched by human hands. The inks are non-toxic and most are water-based these days.
FYI Coke from Mexico has real sucrose in it too! Check with you local carnicera or barrio (local Mexican grocery store or bar) and see - a lot of them get "original" Coke brought up from south of the border. No not that kind, the drinkable one! It's usually sold in real glass bottles 10 or 12 oz.
Since there is nothing to see here I've got an interesting Tron story. I must have watched the original at least 25-30 times through the years, I own a 12" laserdisc and DVD's of it, and never really noticed before, but after re-watching it on TV the other day due to sheer boredom, I finally noticed a name at the end credits I never recognized before - Peter Jurasik. It suddenly dawned on me that was the actor who played Londo Molari on Babylon 5 - you know, the Centauri ambassador with the Peacock / Bozo hair. I tried to think of who it was in the movie, and realized it's the accounting/actuarial program that gets imprisoned at the beginning along with ROM? CROM?. He says of the MCP - "Who does he calculate he is, anyway?". That's him! Just thought I'd share that bit of trivia with everyone.
Good title to the topic, Erroneous. You are WRONG, the US 70 cm band is 420.000 - 449.995 MHz with some exceptions near the Canadian border. Look it up.
All amateur radio operators reading about this should be incensed. This is a major grab of our bands for public safety and they already have a very generous portion of the radio spectrum and don't need to steal ours. They already have 450-470 as public service bands and these are only used for that in major metro areas along with 700-800 MHz.
In 90% of the country public safety uses VHF high and low bands (150 and 30 Mhz, respectively) and that is adequate for their needs. The same is true for amateur radio with the exception of 700-800 MHz, where VHF is primarily used throughout the country and 440 MHz is mostly used in areas of higher urban/suburban density. In these areas, the 2 meter bands are saturated with large, old repeaters and the 440 MHz band is the most vital and dynamic band around, it's where the more technically savvy types tend to hang out, whereas the older systems on 2 meters are usually older folks talking about what they are dying of. Due to saturation of 2 meter repeaters there is no opportunity for growth or change there, if someone wants to put up a new system then 440 MHz band may be their only choice. Also, most of the dinosaur 2 meter machines are multi-receive site networks, and the remote receivers are linked in the 420-430 MHz band. The other service that would be mostly impacted is Amateur Television (ATV) which is mostly in the 420-430 MHz band, that would be completely eliminated.
There is a nice website set up that will automatically generate a letter of objection, tailored to your local state representative automatically. It's nice and easy you just enter your callsign and it looks it up and generates an auto-addressed letter ready to print and sign. The link is here. Calling all hams! This is really important, please do it today!!
Huh? There was no mention of Microsoft, IBM, or Apple anywhere in the movie. Interesting history lesson you have there but completely irrelevant. If you are thinking Tyrell was the "Bill Gates" you refer to, I'd have to say the character was more like Howard Hughes - rich reclusive research scientist spends his days in bed and heading one of the more powerful corporations of the day.
Re:What about NEW stuff?
on
Tron: Legacy
·
· Score: 1
At the risk of a spoiler, I'll point out three entirely new vehicles:
1. Flying light-cycles
2. A sort of personal wing-set for short flights
3. A 2 passenger "light car" they leave the light cycle game grid in.
There are also numerous "service vehicles" in the background moving around freight, etc. none of which are visible large or long enough to really see what they're like - they just add to the ambiance.
So yeah, there are some surprises and new ideas at work, not just a total re-hash. Although the re-hashes were very impressive and of course sported details the originals didn't have (or need).
Re:Already wrote about this in my journal
on
Tron: Legacy
·
· Score: 1
You must not be reading the posts too carefully then. Almost every one comments on how well-done and subtle the use of effects and 3D were. The only thing people are really agreeing on that was bad was the overall plot. Music, effects and action were definitely NOT what people disliked about it.
The sequel was nicely done. I was a bit worried about exaggerated 3D effects, but they were well done, subtle and immersive. In fact I really didn't notice which scenes were done in 2D and which were 3D - that's how subtle the use was.
The new light cycles are most excellent, apparently they can switch on and off the deadly wall-trails at will. The new "recognizers" are much more believable as actual vehicles, and look really cool as well. The new virtual cityscapes look really creepy and neat - especially the Disney Castle at the intro! That was a shocker... The new "Carrier" at the end was a nice update on the old one.
The soundtrack also went very well with the action and fit perfectly to the type of future-scape being presented. The club scene with the hilarious David Bowie clone had a particularly good track or two going in it.
The dialog wasn't as bad as it could have been, to be sure. There weren't too many computer in-jokes, most of the dialog was believable. There weren't too many throwback references to the old film either - there were a few, of course - the old laser, the Mattel Football game, the name "Dumont" appeared on a freight container that was part of Sam's house, but overall they were few and also subtly done.
If you had not seen the original you really wouldn't be at a disadvantage seeing this movie - there were quite a few youngsters in the audience that had either not seen it or had only recently heard of it and had watched it maybe once.
Overall I liked it very much - saw it in IMAX 3D which is polarized with dual projectors so there is no shuttering action on the glasses - they were light and comfortable and don't give you headaches, and it's at full frame-rate for both eyes.
Take a look at a modern battle Tank or Destroyer class missile cruiser - they have flat angled sides with these roundish "targets" in the middle. A close-up reveals those circles to be composed of hundreds of individual antennas in a circle-shaped array. Our AEGIS missile cruisers were the first to get this, now land vehicles like tanks and the new ADS (Active Denial System - the "death ray" weapon) use phased array antennas like the ones on shipboard, just smaller...
GP is correct - the dish size has all to do with the gain of the antenna, not the resonant frequency. The actual antenna is at the focal point of the dish and it's length IS frequency-critical. The surface area of the dish directly corresponds to its gain.
The reason we no longer use giant 6' dishes is twofold - because they are using 24 GHz instead of 5 GHz means the antenna at the focal point is much smaller, and the area of the dish is relatively the same size - with relationship to the wavelength - which is also much smaller.
The other reason is the peak power of, say the DirecTV sats, is as high as 150W for some transponders, whereas the older C-Band stuff was about 10W peak.
Dishes typically are designed to produce somewhere around 30dB of gain, which is 1000x magnification of the signal over a straight dipole with no reflector.
I have exactly such a setup in my lab at home, and I can tell you why it's underwhelming - there are no collimation optics present at the end of the fiber. The beam spreads wildly from the end of the fiber, the spot is about a pencil lead diameter at an inch from the target, but back off 6 inches and the spot size is a good 2". This has hardly enough energy density to do anything beyond the immediate end of the fiber, the target has to be closer than 1 inch away to burn anything.
The blue laser in question, I'm assuming, is properly collimated and will burn things at a distance and do it much faster than what you see happening in the video, due to all the energy being concentrated into a tight spot.
BTW the biggest problem with the fiber setup is the smoke given off by burning objects contaminates the end of the fiber and fouls the optical quality of the output. Removal of the smoke by air pressure or vacuum is very important or you'll have to keep re-polishing the end of the fiber. I clamped mine into a cheap mechanical pencil to for a nice hand-held beam delivery wand.
That said, yeah, it does take a second or two for things to burn so you'd probably react from the initial heat before you actually caught fire. Not so with optical damage - even millisecond exposure can blind.
By the same token, you can't just invent a word and say well, there - it's been "commonly used" so now its a word.
Just because one gaming mag uses it for it's l33tspeak doesn't make it "popular" or widespread, at least not from where I'm sitting.
I tire of people trotting out the "common usage" defense daily here, in defense of what is usually local slang. In order for your cult to be a religion, you gotta have followers!
Yes, it's true we don't have a Central Authority for Proper English, but more than a select crowd of gameheads needs to adopt the usage before you can claim the "common usage" defense, IMHO.
Really? It's an 8086. My 8086 only took 360KB disks, not even 720KB. 1.2MB disks were very rare; the only machines I saw with those also had 3.5" disks and only used the 5.25" drive for interoperability with older machines (which didn't support the 1.2MB disks).
Really.
A lot of even older Z-80 based CP/M machines, predating 8086, had 96 tpi floppy drives. For a 5 1/4 disk drive, 96tpi = 1.2 MB, whereas the 360 kB disks were 48 tpi.
They were a real mo-fo to align (yes you could align the disks back then, and you actually had to for interchangeability or only your machine would read them) - the 48tpi's were a breeze by comparison, with tracks twice as wide!
There was absolutely NO compatibility in 5 1/4 floppy drive formats between ANY of the early PC's and the CP/M machines that preceded them. I used to have a format exchange program years ago and it had at least 50 different disk formats it would do. Finding anything today that would read them would be most likely impossible, still better to do a serial capture, IMHO.
I don't usually feed Trolls, but here's a ration for you...
1. Hams are much more capable in an emergency than "Professional" operators. Outside your control room or situation vehicle, you barely know how to find your dick to take a piss. Hams are used to operation in field environments and practice at it frequently.
2. Hams own their own equipment and can take it at a moment's notice to the affected area. You gonna uproot your public safety tower at the police station and take it with you? I don't think so.
3. Many Hams like myself own almost exclusively "Professional" grade gear - I own almost all Motorola radios, the same digital units the federal government uses currently.
4. Speaking of authenticity, I'd rather believe from the ARRL this happened than take the word of an anonymous Troll idiot on slashdot that it didn't.
5. Our "fantasy" world becomes "reality" every disaster, time and again. Maybe next time we'll even save YOUR dumb ass, too.
Because... well, a whole global organization, succumbing to the views of a single irrelevant idiot with zero competence, would be... just completely silly.
You must have never heard of George W. Bush, then.
This idiocy also extends to the mysterious malfunctioning of any electronic device in the radio-phobe's houses!
True Ham Radio story - my mentor told me when putting up an antenna at home, put up the mast and antenna but deliberately DON'T connect a feedline to it or use it for a week or two.
Sure enough, two of the neighbors on my block came to complain of TV and telephone interference. I casually handed them a binocular so they could notice there was no wire to the bottom of the antenna, yet.
They sheepshly apologized and went away... Unlike these idiots who are persisting in their delusion.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, as someone from the Chicago suburbs, particularly Crook County, I can tell you the cops around here always use "disorderly conduct" as a general bullshit catch-all charge for "we don't like you, or what you did, whichever". I know, I was in a local station lockup for about 12 hours on a complete bullshit disorderly charge.
I was guilty of being in the same car as a buddy who got into an argument with someone who turned out to be a an off-duty Chicago pig. And I use the word "pig" in the worst sense possible, this guy was a real asshole and everyone at the local station hated him and told us so. But the jerk turned out to be a fairly high ranking detective, so he had my friend arrested and when I went into the station to find him, he pointed at me and said "Oh, yeah I want him arrested too". Meaning me. I was like, "WTF? I did nothing...". The guys at the local station kept apologizing to me, telling me there was nothing they could do as long as Lt. Dickless wanted me arrested. Well, conveniently, the fax system was "down" and they had to hand-courrier our prints downtown to make sure we weren't wanted on other charges, which I'm sure the asshole told them to make sure we were kept in the cooler for a while, because we both had enough money on us to bail ourselves out.
Anyway, there's a sort of happy ending. We went to get the best damn shyster lawyer we could find, and we found a really good one - this guy was an crooked ex-judge who later got investigated in the Operation Greylord stings in the 80's - a big anti-corruption operation in Cook County, Chicago in particular. But when we knew him, he did us good - the lawyer found a nice obscure legal precedent that in order to be guilty of disorderly conduct you had to incite others to become disorderly! Great one huh? Basically, short of inciting a riot you can't be guilty of disorderly conduct. At this point the judge points to me and says "It sounds like you weren't involved at all" - I said "you're right, your Honor". And he dismissed my case and found the precedent sufficient to dismiss my buddy's case. Lt. Dickless was pissed!! Heheh.
The moral is the disorderly conduct charge in Chicago is a joke but popular because it's totally discretionary - it's the Officer's call if you are "disorderly" or not, like "Driving too fast for conditions", which can get you a ticket for going under the speed limit if the Cop thinks you are going too fast. These are bullshit laws but they exist as a catch-all to cover the gaps, I guess. The teen in question should be able to get out of the charge easily because he was not causing anyone else to be disorderly, if they get a good mouthpiece he should be able to get off easily.
Epilogue: My buddy and I went to Internal Affairs and filed a claim on the asshole for wrongful arrest, and we hoped thy would investigate him. Well one day, we were watching the local educational TV WTTW, and actually saw the jerk on a talk show! Except now he was Captain Dickless!! They actually promoted him. Words failed me at that point. Just as no good deed goes unpunished, I guess no bad one goes unrewarded.
Actually, more importantly, it shows that a large percentage of _moral_ people will do immoral things, under the guise of or with the supervision of authority. They feel immune from guilt or compassion when they are told something is OK and do it, even if it disagrees with their own critical thinking. "I was just following orders!!"
(I know, Godwin, etc, but someone already used the "N"azis word...)
Got one more for ya - bind/dress wounds temporarily.
The newsprint travels on rolls from its manufacture through printing and automated folding, almost nothing touches the paper during the entire process except shiny steel rollers and press mechs. These are of course continuously wiped clean by the paper going by. Anyway, it's not completely sterile but almost, at least much better than using an article of clothing or something else, an inner sheet from the paper has probably never been touched by human hands. The inks are non-toxic and most are water-based these days.
Might save a life in an emergency!
FYI Coke from Mexico has real sucrose in it too! Check with you local carnicera or barrio (local Mexican grocery store or bar) and see - a lot of them get "original" Coke brought up from south of the border. No not that kind, the drinkable one! It's usually sold in real glass bottles 10 or 12 oz.
Since there is nothing to see here I've got an interesting Tron story. I must have watched the original at least 25-30 times through the years, I own a 12" laserdisc and DVD's of it, and never really noticed before, but after re-watching it on TV the other day due to sheer boredom, I finally noticed a name at the end credits I never recognized before - Peter Jurasik. It suddenly dawned on me that was the actor who played Londo Molari on Babylon 5 - you know, the Centauri ambassador with the Peacock / Bozo hair. I tried to think of who it was in the movie, and realized it's the accounting /actuarial program that gets imprisoned at the beginning along with ROM? CROM?. He says of the MCP - "Who does he calculate he is, anyway?". That's him! Just thought I'd share that bit of trivia with everyone.
But what if he comes at you with a Pointed Stick?
I guess that shit *really was* rocket fuel!
Would that be Mushroom Cloud computing?
Good title to the topic, Erroneous. You are WRONG, the US 70 cm band is 420.000 - 449.995 MHz with some exceptions near the Canadian border. Look it up.
All amateur radio operators reading about this should be incensed. This is a major grab of our bands for public safety and they already have a very generous portion of the radio spectrum and don't need to steal ours. They already have 450-470 as public service bands and these are only used for that in major metro areas along with 700-800 MHz.
In 90% of the country public safety uses VHF high and low bands (150 and 30 Mhz, respectively) and that is adequate for their needs. The same is true for amateur radio with the exception of 700-800 MHz, where VHF is primarily used throughout the country and 440 MHz is mostly used in areas of higher urban/suburban density. In these areas, the 2 meter bands are saturated with large, old repeaters and the 440 MHz band is the most vital and dynamic band around, it's where the more technically savvy types tend to hang out, whereas the older systems on 2 meters are usually older folks talking about what they are dying of. Due to saturation of 2 meter repeaters there is no opportunity for growth or change there, if someone wants to put up a new system then 440 MHz band may be their only choice. Also, most of the dinosaur 2 meter machines are multi-receive site networks, and the remote receivers are linked in the 420-430 MHz band. The other service that would be mostly impacted is Amateur Television (ATV) which is mostly in the 420-430 MHz band, that would be completely eliminated.
There is a nice website set up that will automatically generate a letter of objection, tailored to your local state representative automatically. It's nice and easy you just enter your callsign and it looks it up and generates an auto-addressed letter ready to print and sign. The link is here. Calling all hams! This is really important, please do it today!!
Huh? There was no mention of Microsoft, IBM, or Apple anywhere in the movie. Interesting history lesson you have there but completely irrelevant. If you are thinking Tyrell was the "Bill Gates" you refer to, I'd have to say the character was more like Howard Hughes - rich reclusive research scientist spends his days in bed and heading one of the more powerful corporations of the day.
At the risk of a spoiler, I'll point out three entirely new vehicles:
1. Flying light-cycles
2. A sort of personal wing-set for short flights
3. A 2 passenger "light car" they leave the light cycle game grid in.
There are also numerous "service vehicles" in the background moving around freight, etc. none of which are visible large or long enough to really see what they're like - they just add to the ambiance.
So yeah, there are some surprises and new ideas at work, not just a total re-hash. Although the re-hashes were very impressive and of course sported details the originals didn't have (or need).
You must not be reading the posts too carefully then. Almost every one comments on how well-done and subtle the use of effects and 3D were. The only thing people are really agreeing on that was bad was the overall plot. Music, effects and action were definitely NOT what people disliked about it.
The sequel was nicely done. I was a bit worried about exaggerated 3D effects, but they were well done, subtle and immersive. In fact I really didn't notice which scenes were done in 2D and which were 3D - that's how subtle the use was.
The new light cycles are most excellent, apparently they can switch on and off the deadly wall-trails at will. The new "recognizers" are much more believable as actual vehicles, and look really cool as well. The new virtual cityscapes look really creepy and neat - especially the Disney Castle at the intro! That was a shocker... The new "Carrier" at the end was a nice update on the old one.
The soundtrack also went very well with the action and fit perfectly to the type of future-scape being presented. The club scene with the hilarious David Bowie clone had a particularly good track or two going in it.
The dialog wasn't as bad as it could have been, to be sure. There weren't too many computer in-jokes, most of the dialog was believable. There weren't too many throwback references to the old film either - there were a few, of course - the old laser, the Mattel Football game, the name "Dumont" appeared on a freight container that was part of Sam's house, but overall they were few and also subtly done.
If you had not seen the original you really wouldn't be at a disadvantage seeing this movie - there were quite a few youngsters in the audience that had either not seen it or had only recently heard of it and had watched it maybe once.
Overall I liked it very much - saw it in IMAX 3D which is polarized with dual projectors so there is no shuttering action on the glasses - they were light and comfortable and don't give you headaches, and it's at full frame-rate for both eyes.
Take a look at a modern battle Tank or Destroyer class missile cruiser - they have flat angled sides with these roundish "targets" in the middle. A close-up reveals those circles to be composed of hundreds of individual antennas in a circle-shaped array. Our AEGIS missile cruisers were the first to get this, now land vehicles like tanks and the new ADS (Active Denial System - the "death ray" weapon) use phased array antennas like the ones on shipboard, just smaller...
GP is correct - the dish size has all to do with the gain of the antenna, not the resonant frequency. The actual antenna is at the focal point of the dish and it's length IS frequency-critical. The surface area of the dish directly corresponds to its gain.
The reason we no longer use giant 6' dishes is twofold - because they are using 24 GHz instead of 5 GHz means the antenna at the focal point is much smaller, and the area of the dish is relatively the same size - with relationship to the wavelength - which is also much smaller.
The other reason is the peak power of, say the DirecTV sats, is as high as 150W for some transponders, whereas the older C-Band stuff was about 10W peak.
Dishes typically are designed to produce somewhere around 30dB of gain, which is 1000x magnification of the signal over a straight dipole with no reflector.
I have exactly such a setup in my lab at home, and I can tell you why it's underwhelming - there are no collimation optics present at the end of the fiber. The beam spreads wildly from the end of the fiber, the spot is about a pencil lead diameter at an inch from the target, but back off 6 inches and the spot size is a good 2". This has hardly enough energy density to do anything beyond the immediate end of the fiber, the target has to be closer than 1 inch away to burn anything.
The blue laser in question, I'm assuming, is properly collimated and will burn things at a distance and do it much faster than what you see happening in the video, due to all the energy being concentrated into a tight spot.
BTW the biggest problem with the fiber setup is the smoke given off by burning objects contaminates the end of the fiber and fouls the optical quality of the output. Removal of the smoke by air pressure or vacuum is very important or you'll have to keep re-polishing the end of the fiber. I clamped mine into a cheap mechanical pencil to for a nice hand-held beam delivery wand.
That said, yeah, it does take a second or two for things to burn so you'd probably react from the initial heat before you actually caught fire. Not so with optical damage - even millisecond exposure can blind.
Spot on! Hilarious!
By the same token, you can't just invent a word and say well, there - it's been "commonly used" so now its a word.
Just because one gaming mag uses it for it's l33tspeak doesn't make it "popular" or widespread, at least not from where I'm sitting.
I tire of people trotting out the "common usage" defense daily here, in defense of what is usually local slang. In order for your cult to be a religion, you gotta have followers!
Yes, it's true we don't have a Central Authority for Proper English, but more than a select crowd of gameheads needs to adopt the usage before you can claim the "common usage" defense, IMHO.
Well, I've never read GamePro, and never heard "Protip" used in my region, so AFAIK it's not a word.
Protip: What you give a hooker if she's REALLY good.
Naah, it's the loose nut just behind the steering wheel!
Really? It's an 8086. My 8086 only took 360KB disks, not even 720KB. 1.2MB disks were very rare; the only machines I saw with those also had 3.5" disks and only used the 5.25" drive for interoperability with older machines (which didn't support the 1.2MB disks).
Really.
A lot of even older Z-80 based CP/M machines, predating 8086, had 96 tpi floppy drives. For a 5 1/4 disk drive, 96tpi = 1.2 MB, whereas the 360 kB disks were 48 tpi.
They were a real mo-fo to align (yes you could align the disks back then, and you actually had to for interchangeability or only your machine would read them) - the 48tpi's were a breeze by comparison, with tracks twice as wide!
There was absolutely NO compatibility in 5 1/4 floppy drive formats between ANY of the early PC's and the CP/M machines that preceded them. I used to have a format exchange program years ago and it had at least 50 different disk formats it would do. Finding anything today that would read them would be most likely impossible, still better to do a serial capture, IMHO.
I don't usually feed Trolls, but here's a ration for you...
1. Hams are much more capable in an emergency than "Professional" operators. Outside your control room or situation vehicle, you barely know how to find your dick to take a piss. Hams are used to operation in field environments and practice at it frequently.
2. Hams own their own equipment and can take it at a moment's notice to the affected area. You gonna uproot your public safety tower at the police station and take it with you? I don't think so.
3. Many Hams like myself own almost exclusively "Professional" grade gear - I own almost all Motorola radios, the same digital units the federal government uses currently.
4. Speaking of authenticity, I'd rather believe from the ARRL this happened than take the word of an anonymous Troll idiot on slashdot that it didn't.
5. Our "fantasy" world becomes "reality" every disaster, time and again. Maybe next time we'll even save YOUR dumb ass, too.
Because... well, a whole global organization, succumbing to the views of a single irrelevant idiot with zero competence, would be... just completely silly.
You must have never heard of George W. Bush, then.
This idiocy also extends to the mysterious malfunctioning of any electronic device in the radio-phobe's houses!
True Ham Radio story - my mentor told me when putting up an antenna at home, put up the mast and antenna but deliberately DON'T connect a feedline to it or use it for a week or two.
Sure enough, two of the neighbors on my block came to complain of TV and telephone interference. I casually handed them a binocular so they could notice there was no wire to the bottom of the antenna, yet.
They sheepshly apologized and went away... Unlike these idiots who are persisting in their delusion.