The Internet killed amateur radio, it's that simple. You can more easily (no skill needed) talk to more people than were ever on the radio.
Just talking to people isn't the point. You can punch a few buttons on your wireless phone and call any telephone in the world.
Talking to people, with absolutely nothing between you and them, is what it's all about. With other modes, there is a massive infrastructure between you and the other person. With radio, it's you and your rig and antenna, and the other person and her rig and antenna, and nothing in between but the "ether", and your mastery of how to work that "ether" to make that contact.
At least tonight it is... just check out 40 meters. Wall to wall signals for 50 kHz. 40 CW is almost always hopping, as is 30 meters.
CW and other digital modes will be of greater importance during the coming downturn in the solar cycle, when poor propogation makes SSB transmission difficult.
The Morse requirement is not a serious impediment to growth in the ham ranks, as we know with the success of the no-code technician license. Furthermore, five words per minute is so simple to learn and pass that anyone who wants to can pass it. You can practically look it up as it's sent at that slow speed. Kids as young as seven and eight routinely pass the 5wpm test; I've even worked a 10-year-old Extra.
True, ham radio isn't just about Morse, but when all else fails (hey, that sounds familiar), you can get a message through using it.
Not anymore, anyway. According to most interpretations, the letters don't stand for anything so don't write it in all caps! The actual origin of the term 'ham' has been lost to history.
And true, ham radio is not dying. (It could be, though, without younger people getting interested and bringing in the new technology.) This weekend should be a fine example.
-- Me, still wondering why the/. eds don't like me, since I posted the same topic three days ago and was rejected.
Murdoch said his proposed acquisition of DirecTV would not harm competition or limit consumer choices. He said the merger will improve DirecTV, providing consumers with more local TV stations and better high-speed Internet access.
What's next?
`Gates said his proposed acquisition of AOL/Time Warner would not harm competition or limit consumer choices. He said the merger would improve AOL, providing consumers with more chat rooms and better high-speed Internet access.'
Remember when there were NINE commissioners on the FCC? Making it much harder for one party to stuff the panel in their favor. Imagine how it would be with only five Supreme Court justices...
And while we're at it, there was a time when the FCC Commissioners were engineers, not lawyers and politicians.
>Correction.....5 people voted 3 R 2 D. Sorry, my local news station got it wrong
Go easy on the reporter. He was probably flustered having to write six versions of the story for the noon newscasts on the six different stations in six different cities that his centralized newsroom produces for.
Probably the most significant statement surrounding all this was made by Viacom Stations Group head Fred Reynolds, quoted in a NY Times story (frrbbb): "We're in the business of making money." So much for the public interest, convenience and necessity.
While the small 'k' is standard for kilo, it's not ambiguous, and probably not incorrect, to use the capital 'K' (as is usually done with KB, kilobytes). However, since it's volts we're talking about, and it's named after someone, Alessandro would appreciate a capital 'V'. Thus, 'kV' is the way to abbreviate kilovolts.
In this case, the surplus capacitors would "punch thru" if you applied more than a nominal 10,000 volts to the terminals.
If it was megavolts, it would be MV to differentiate from mV, which is millivolts.
And while we're nitpicking, nothing is 'marsured'. It's 'measured', unless you're in Ohio, where it's 'may-zhured'.
Speaking of Ben Folds -- How was it being onstage with Ben and Fleming McWilliams at the Hollywood show last week? Would you consider going on tour with Ben?
You gotta consider that this was back when OS/2 was the only semi-reliable multitasking networkable O/S available. He needed to print, and I had the only printer. And it worked!! Plus, it really was "better DOS than DOS and better Windows than Windows" - his games could crash WinOS2 all he wanted and the kernel kept running.
Our machines are all dual-boot. My older son (11) can work in either Win98 or Mandrake, and knows his way around MacOS from school as well as OS/2, which is what he started out with. He generally prefers Mandrake because of all the nifty toys (like xeyes and mousepedometa). Browsers (Opera, Moz) work basically the same under either OS, and we use Open Office for both, so that works the same either way. Win98 is currently a necessity to play their CD-ROM games, though, so that gets booted more than Linux, at least on the machines the rest of the family uses. (I'm 100% Linux at home.)
I'd suggest setting up at least one dual-boot machine and letting the kids play with KDE. If they can figure out Windows' GUI, they can run KDE. Plus, they'll have fun naming and customizing all those desktops that Windows doesn't have!
But as the first poster said, the real problem is keeping them off the computer and away from the TV/games and getting them to go outside and play with real friends (or just do their homework). That's the first battle.
Re:One Days Notice?
on
Field Day 2002
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Put a memo in your pda for next year then -- it's always the 4th weekend in June. Next year, June 28 and 29.
Nautel has been making solid-state high power AM rigs since the 1970s. They started with a 1 kW transmitter and now they make them up to 300 kW. FM up to 40 kW as well. Largely air-cooled. They are all built around hot-swappable power MOSFET modules that deliver a couple hundred watts each, fed into hybrid combiners. For more power, just build a cabinet that can hold more modules. Beauty is if you lose a module you don't go off the air, you only drop from 50 kW to 49.8 kW.
I'll agree that you need all the bandwidth you can get your hands on to transmit HD, or any digital video for that matter. I suspect the demo loop includes some rather challenging material that would probably be degraded somewhat even at 19.29 Mbit/s. After all, the encoder is trying to crunch a 1.5 Gbit/s uncompressed stream which means it has to throw away 78 out of every 79 bits of data. It always amazes me that you can still make pictures, decent pictures at that, with that much compression! That's twice as aggressive as DVD video compression, for instance.
Furthermore, stations are not required to transmit a hidef signal (by the FCC, anyways) - only a standard definition (480p) signal. That takes up only about 4-5 Mbit/s, leaving 14+ Mbit/s for other uses including multicasting and datacasting.
Within the last year at our facility we installed close to twenty PCs running MS-DOS on a Novell network. Why? Because for the applications we were running (real-time process control, written in-house) DOS provides solid, reliable execution, extremely fast reboots when necessary, not a lot of OS and GUI overhead, and mouse-free user interaction (see! my fingers never leave my hands). And this was developed relatively recently (NT 3.5 and 98 were both available at the time) so it's not like DOS was all they had to work with. We even installed a system with an application that runs under OS/2 2.1! They needed something that would multitask, and at the time the application was developed, Windows just wasn't up to it. It works, so why change it?
I don't mind that M$ has dropped DOS. Good riddance. There's always IBM PC-DOS and DR-DOS which I guess is now GPL, right? I begrudgingly paid for several copies of MS-DOS that I would rather not have had to do, because the software guys said that's what they needed.
I can't help but agree with your observations right up until the last paragraph, when I had to cringe and go "ooooh, I don't think I'd freeze dry Fido" (yes, I named my dog after the BBS network; his nickname is 1:120/1347). I'm one of those OS/2 Refuseniks and I still use Warp 4 for about 40 percent of my productivity, partly because it runs DOS like nothing else does and partly because of its highly intelligent GUI, features like shadows and sticky-note templates, and apps I just can't find for any other OS.
Maybe as a fanatic I'm elated and hoping for a revival, but like those of us who are also Linux evangelists, we have to be content to win the war on another front for now. OS/2 was once described as having its head kept alive in a pan; maybe Serenity is providing a mutant body and some rudimentary grafting. You can't make it as a hobbyist OS anymore, like Amiga; the revived OS/2 will have to find its market if it's going to survive and grow. I'm just glad to see some progress after being left for dead by IBM.
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The Internet killed amateur radio, it's that simple. You can more easily (no skill needed) talk to more people than were ever on the radio.
Just talking to people isn't the point. You can punch a few buttons on your wireless phone and call any telephone in the world.
Talking to people, with absolutely nothing between you and them, is what it's all about. With other modes, there is a massive infrastructure between you and the other person. With radio, it's you and your rig and antenna, and the other person and her rig and antenna, and nothing in between but the "ether", and your mastery of how to work that "ether" to make that contact.
Last I checked CW was not that big in ham radio
... just check out 40 meters. Wall to wall signals for 50 kHz. 40 CW is almost always hopping, as is 30 meters.
At least tonight it is
CW and other digital modes will be of greater importance during the coming downturn in the solar cycle, when poor propogation makes SSB transmission difficult.
The Morse requirement is not a serious impediment to growth in the ham ranks, as we know with the success of the no-code technician license. Furthermore, five words per minute is so simple to learn and pass that anyone who wants to can pass it. You can practically look it up as it's sent at that slow speed. Kids as young as seven and eight routinely pass the 5wpm test; I've even worked a 10-year-old Extra.
True, ham radio isn't just about Morse, but when all else fails (hey, that sounds familiar), you can get a message through using it.
Not anymore, anyway. According to most interpretations, the letters don't stand for anything so don't write it in all caps! The actual origin of the term 'ham' has been lost to history.
/. eds don't like me, since I posted the same topic three days ago and was rejected.
And true, ham radio is not dying. (It could be, though, without younger people getting interested and bringing in the new technology.) This weekend should be a fine example.
-- Me, still wondering why the
Murdoch said his proposed acquisition of DirecTV would not harm competition or limit consumer choices. He said the merger will improve DirecTV, providing consumers with more local TV stations and better high-speed Internet access.
What's next?
`Gates said his proposed acquisition of AOL/Time Warner would not harm competition or limit consumer choices. He said the merger would improve AOL, providing consumers with more chat rooms and better high-speed Internet access.'
Remember when there were NINE commissioners on the FCC? Making it much harder for one party to stuff the panel in their favor. Imagine how it would be with only five Supreme Court justices...
And while we're at it, there was a time when the FCC Commissioners were engineers, not lawyers and politicians.
>Correction.....5 people voted 3 R 2 D. Sorry, my local news station got it wrong
Go easy on the reporter. He was probably flustered having to write six versions of the story for the noon newscasts on the six different stations in six different cities that his centralized newsroom produces for.
Probably the most significant statement surrounding all this was made by Viacom Stations Group head Fred Reynolds, quoted in a NY Times story (frrbbb): "We're in the business of making money." So much for the public interest, convenience and necessity.
Fair Radio Sales in Lima, Ohio has been dishing the surplus goodies like hand-crank military surplus field telephones, vacuum tubes and, yes, 10 kV capacitors for decades. A real treasure trove.
While the small 'k' is standard for kilo, it's not ambiguous, and probably not incorrect, to use the capital 'K' (as is usually done with KB, kilobytes). However, since it's volts we're talking about, and it's named after someone, Alessandro would appreciate a capital 'V'. Thus, 'kV' is the way to abbreviate kilovolts.
In this case, the surplus capacitors would "punch thru" if you applied more than a nominal 10,000 volts to the terminals.
If it was megavolts, it would be MV to differentiate from mV, which is millivolts.
And while we're nitpicking, nothing is 'marsured'. It's 'measured', unless you're in Ohio, where it's 'may-zhured'.
Oakland County, Michigan (suburban Detroit) is also online. You can even read the giant changeable message boards that hang above the freeway.
Remember that the "D" originally stood for Dirty.
Speaking of Ben Folds -- How was it being onstage with Ben and Fleming McWilliams at the Hollywood show last week? Would you consider going on tour with Ben?
You gotta consider that this was back when OS/2 was the only semi-reliable multitasking networkable O/S available. He needed to print, and I had the only printer. And it worked!! Plus, it really was "better DOS than DOS and better Windows than Windows" - his games could crash WinOS2 all he wanted and the kernel kept running.
Our machines are all dual-boot. My older son (11) can work in either Win98 or Mandrake, and knows his way around MacOS from school as well as OS/2, which is what he started out with. He generally prefers Mandrake because of all the nifty toys (like xeyes and mousepedometa). Browsers (Opera, Moz) work basically the same under either OS, and we use Open Office for both, so that works the same either way. Win98 is currently a necessity to play their CD-ROM games, though, so that gets booted more than Linux, at least on the machines the rest of the family uses. (I'm 100% Linux at home.)
I'd suggest setting up at least one dual-boot machine and letting the kids play with KDE. If they can figure out Windows' GUI, they can run KDE. Plus, they'll have fun naming and customizing all those desktops that Windows doesn't have!
But as the first poster said, the real problem is keeping them off the computer and away from the TV/games and getting them to go outside and play with real friends (or just do their homework). That's the first battle.
Put a memo in your pda for next year then -- it's always the 4th weekend in June. Next year, June 28 and 29.
(nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft)
Yet.
They used to say that about IBM, too.
Nautel has been making solid-state high power AM rigs since the 1970s. They started with a 1 kW transmitter and now they make them up to 300 kW. FM up to 40 kW as well. Largely air-cooled. They are all built around hot-swappable power MOSFET modules that deliver a couple hundred watts each, fed into hybrid combiners. For more power, just build a cabinet that can hold more modules. Beauty is if you lose a module you don't go off the air, you only drop from 50 kW to 49.8 kW.
When I try to access the Salon article, Opera (NT4, which I have to run here at work) Dr. Watsons. Every time.
Because then all we'll have to look forward to is KDE for Workgroups 3.11, and KDE 95.
I thought he was more like a combination of Matthew Broderick and Mike Myers.
I can see him doing Broadway someday.
I'll agree that you need all the bandwidth you can get your hands on to transmit HD, or any digital video for that matter. I suspect the demo loop includes some rather challenging material that would probably be degraded somewhat even at 19.29 Mbit/s. After all, the encoder is trying to crunch a 1.5 Gbit/s uncompressed stream which means it has to throw away 78 out of every 79 bits of data. It always amazes me that you can still make pictures, decent pictures at that, with that much compression! That's twice as aggressive as DVD video compression, for instance.
Furthermore, stations are not required to transmit a hidef signal (by the FCC, anyways) - only a standard definition (480p) signal. That takes up only about 4-5 Mbit/s, leaving 14+ Mbit/s for other uses including multicasting and datacasting.
Within the last year at our facility we installed close to twenty PCs running MS-DOS on a Novell network. Why? Because for the applications we were running (real-time process control, written in-house) DOS provides solid, reliable execution, extremely fast reboots when necessary, not a lot of OS and GUI overhead, and mouse-free user interaction (see! my fingers never leave my hands). And this was developed relatively recently (NT 3.5 and 98 were both available at the time) so it's not like DOS was all they had to work with. We even installed a system with an application that runs under OS/2 2.1! They needed something that would multitask, and at the time the application was developed, Windows just wasn't up to it. It works, so why change it?
I don't mind that M$ has dropped DOS. Good riddance. There's always IBM PC-DOS and DR-DOS which I guess is now GPL, right? I begrudgingly paid for several copies of MS-DOS that I would rather not have had to do, because the software guys said that's what they needed.
I can't help but agree with your observations right up until the last paragraph, when I had to cringe and go "ooooh, I don't think I'd freeze dry Fido" (yes, I named my dog after the BBS network; his nickname is 1:120/1347). I'm one of those OS/2 Refuseniks and I still use Warp 4 for about 40 percent of my productivity, partly because it runs DOS like nothing else does and partly because of its highly intelligent GUI, features like shadows and sticky-note templates, and apps I just can't find for any other OS.
Maybe as a fanatic I'm elated and hoping for a revival, but like those of us who are also Linux evangelists, we have to be content to win the war on another front for now. OS/2 was once described as having its head kept alive in a pan; maybe Serenity is providing a mutant body and some rudimentary grafting. You can't make it as a hobbyist OS anymore, like Amiga; the revived OS/2 will have to find its market if it's going to survive and grow. I'm just glad to see some progress after being left for dead by IBM.