Yeah, you're talking about a two year community college -- it's not going to have much of a CS program. If you're really interested in CS or Engineering, go up the road a bit to CSU, Chico, where they have a very nice CS and Engineering departments.
I'm still working my way through the commentary tracks, but this set is nicely put together.
Everybody has gone their separate ways, so we won't see a second season, but at one point in the commentary they said they didn't want to spill all of the beans in case there is a Firefly movie.
But I want to know all of the beans! There were so many good story lines to take advantage of, but were never explained!
I work as a programmer in the gaming industry, and there is a lot of security in place, but it all makes since. Before I can work, I need to get a state "gaming card" which says that I've had my background check, and I'm generally not a menice to society. The machines have security in place to know if something is wrong (eprom signatures, various locks). Everything we develop also goes through two or three other independent verification agencies make sure it's all legit.
We're proud of making a secure device (at least as secure as we can make it), and it's in ours and our customer's interest to do so. Most of the security built in isn't necessarily hard to do, but it does take planning, foresight, and desire to integrate it all with the final product.
I hope that a voting machine company can say the same.
There is a lot of relief here to me, as a spectator. The first game had Garry as white with a strong opening and everything looked good, then due to some dubious moves, it was a drawn game.
The second game on Thursday had Garry as black beat pretty much from the beginning. Garry fought back very well and might have drawn the game, but then foolishly blundered which cost him the game almost immediately. You could see the frustration level just go through the roof, as he's still trying to prove that he's better than the computer, but only to be beaten by the slow, steady computer approach.
But today, he's redeemed himeself. Although the match is now tied, he has shown that he can win against the computer. I feel better.:)
The last game will be difficult for Garry as black. But the fact that he won an game, and didn't draw them all has got to have him elated.
It seems like solar power efficiency has been at about 10-20% for about forever now, and I thought I read somewhere that where purifiying the semiconductors will get you more efficient at a higher price, there was still a maximum amount you could get out of current designs or theories.
Is there some sort of theoretical limit we're hitting with current technologies, or are there different technologies that may have some promise? This article doesn't address efficiency, it just says they can make them cheaper than anybody else.
It's not the amount that's at issue, but the fact that I'm supporting this. The one comments I've heard around the hallways here after the third, fourth, and now fifth story is, "I'm glad I'm not a subscriber."
At least around me, this line of posts is pissing more people off -- including me -- than it is helping the site by some sort of odd humor.
It used to be very necessary to balance your checkbook, back when banks kept account balances on paper, and human errors were common, but is this still necessary?
I stopped balancing my checkbook a couple of years ago, and have saved myself a lot of greef. I can check my balances and verify that nothing is improperly charged by using current web interfaces, and if I do goof on my in-my-head calculations of how much money is left in my account, most banks will give free overdraft protection, which I just pay back when my check comes in.
This can sound kind of silly, but it has made my life a lot easier, and spot audits have shown that everything is working great.
--Lance
Re:Security on Progressive games
on
Net Vegas
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Uh, no. Not in any of the systems I'm familiar with.
Who would write such a system anyway. That'd be a system just begging to be hacked.
Each machine on the network has the odds to win a particular payline already set in the machine paytables. Say, 1 in 100 million for the big prize, as a simple case.
Each machine sends a command to a little box located in each bank of machines, that "Somebody just paid $3". A fraction of that goes towards the local progressive jackpot, or if it's a wide-area progressive (i.e. Megabucks), it will sync with the central server from time to time. The box may send back the current value of the progressive jackpot, allowing the individual machine to display it somewhere on the machine itself, but it's simply informative. The protocols really aren't that complicated since most were originally created when machines used 8051 microcontrollers.
Now, with statistics at work, only one of the machines will hit the jackpot every so often. The wide-area progressive allow more machines to contribute to a central jackpot, and the jackpot is bigger. If a machine does it, it tells the system "I won the big one.", the progressive counter stops, techs make sure the CRC's on the program and paytable are right and that nothing else is screwed up, then the jackpot is reset. Depending on the system and where it's at, there may or may not be encryption on the communication channel, and since there _isn't_ a command to tell it to win, it really doesn't matter.
I can sit and describe short vs. long term statistics until I'm blue in the face and describe how everything works in minute detail, but there's a certain segment of the population that won't belive me no matter what I say. Oh well.
Re:How closely are the casino's being watched?
on
Net Vegas
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Yeah, craps and blackjack are generally the best games to play. Play blackjack "right" to get the 2%.
The _only_ true odds bet in the entire casino is the "odds" bet in craps. Play that bet as much as you can. Learn craps if you don't know what I'm talking about.:)
Slots run 85%-95%, keno is at the limit at 75%.
You know those little machines which have a bunch of quarters that all look like they're going to be pushed over the edge at any minute, if you'd just put _one_ more coin in? Those are the worst in the whole place. In fact, they had to get special permission to get around the fact that state law says that all games must pay at least 75%, because these pay out about 40-50%.
No slot machine credit cards
on
Net Vegas
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Ever wonder why you haven't seen credit cards on a slot machine?
Besides it screaming to be a bad idea because you know people would abuse it, but that normally doesn't stop the marketing people.
No, the main problem is that you're only liable for $50 on your credit card if the card is lost. What's to stop somebody from running up $2000 on a machine, then claiming to "lose" the card. They'd be personally liable for only $50, and the casino would have a chargeback for the rest. Not a good business plan.
There was a pilot program a while back (there might be others now), that used an ATM like card where you can put money on a card, then withdraw it at the individual machines. It was scary to look at the reports and see some guy at a machine withdraw $10k from his card, then 20 minutes later, withdraw another $10k, over and over again.
Problems with all methods of power generation
on
Tidal Power a Reality
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Nobody is ever happy with power generation. No matter what you pick, there are always critcs:
--Coal/Oil/Natural Gas: Air pollution --Nuclear: Nuclear waste --Hydroelectric: Rivers need to be dammed --Geothermal: Releases lots of sulfer and arsnic --Solar: Not cost effective --Wind turbines: Kills birds --Tidal: We'll think of something
Slots really are random
on
Net Vegas
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Last comment on this thread, then I'm going to bed.
To the people who have asked "who's watching the gaming commission?", all I can say is that slot machines use lots of variables to make sure that everything is random on the machine, and everything is on the up-and-up. With casinos and manufacturer being corporate controlled entities these days, it doesn't make since to screw around with this -- the house is already making a nice profit, so why run the risk of a lawsuit.
And if there was something fishy in the software, there'd be a lot more rich ex-software engineers running around. I'm proof that there isn't.:)
Player Tracking Technologies
on
Net Vegas
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
A technology I always thought was interesting at the Casinos was the whole "Player Tracking" aspect. The marketing people just drool to know what and when individuals are playing.
Just like the grocery "club cards", a player can sit down at a machine, put in their tracking card, and play away in the hopes of getting credits towards a hotel room or something. In the back room, some guy is looking over the reports, and sees that you tend to come in on Friday nights, play for a little while, have dinner, then bet a little bit more for a couple of hours. You stay an average of 20 minutes per machine, tend to gravitate towards the red machines, but stay longer at blue ones, and that you like to play "Double Diamond". The waitress can view a summary screen near the drink station and see a list of everybody in her area, have it highlighed in red if you're a top player, highlighted in green if it's your birthday, and if it's both, well, you'll get a nice bottle of champaine delivered to you without even asking.
The whole "science" of which colors attract which people for how long, which seats are the best, and which layouts work is a fascinating subject, but really only studied by a select few.
Security on Progressive games
on
Net Vegas
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I used to be work on the communications software for slot machine, and although every machine in the building is wired together via fiber optic cable (fiber optics aren't as suseptable to a lot of the noise generated in the casino, such as neon, among other reasons), it's important to realized that there isn't a whole lot data on the line that's really a security risk.
Every machine has generates it's own random numbers and determines if it hits the jackpot by itself. The methods to do that are faily secure, but since there are a lot of variable to pick from, such as the number of milliseconds between user buttonpresses, randomness is not much of a problem. The command to win the jackpot does not come over the network.
All that's really on the network are things like coins in/coins out, number of plays, and a lot of accounting data. This data goes to the casino for their own accounting, and also goes into a box which then computes how much to increment the progressive jackpot. If an individual machine says "I won the big one!", then everything is shut down, the individual machine is checked to make sure the software hasn't been tampered or any other security measure broken, then the winner is paid (sort of). The command "to win" doesn't come from the network, so security is not a problem from the network.
On some lottery setup, an administrator can send a command to shut a particular machine down, but on the whole, the machines are pretty autonomous. Casinos are considered pretty secure environments anyway.
I always thought this was pretty interesting when I've explained it to others, so I thought I'd repeat it here.
Yikes! But what everybody will need to know next is: Who is affected by this? Which board manufacturers used these brands? Will they actually tell us, or will we have to fight for this information?
I work with Radiation Therapy, and HIPAA is causing quite a bit of concern. All of the patients that come through there for treatment have nice binders with their name on the spine. We've got warning stickers when two patients may have similar names. This makes it easy when you set them down on the table for the radiation treatment, that you're looking at Nancy Johnson's chart, and you don't get it confused with somebody else.
However, under HIPAA, all names that are viewable by any public must be removed. Those names on the binders -- they've got to be replaced with some ID number. The names on the whiteboards of the patients must also be removed. QA is _much_ harder when to confirm that you've got the right chart, you somehow have to verify you're looking at the right ID number, instead of just asking, "Are you Nancy Johnson?"
Federal compliance has been delayed before for some of these same problems, and there is any indication that it will be delayed again. Our director is moving towards HIPAA compliance, but not at the expense of care and safety.
This also has all of the earmarks of a Software Engineering windfall -- all of the medical systems have to be modified to remove names from public places. That's a lot of work!
It's great that with the Internet, it's gotten easier to self-publish your own works. Just like web pages, free books are a way for anybody to get the point out to the general public. However, now that anybody is allowed to do this, now the general public has figure out the difference between the good and the bad.
As far as e-books go, they've been promising that we'll have everything on microfiche since the 60's, and that the book is dead. Until I can read a book online and be able to find a subject quickly by "thumbing" though the book, there will always be room for paper books.
Recently, I found a little personal power meter that you plug into the wall, and the device you want to measure in front of that. It then shows the amount of kWh that device is used. It's a stand-alone device, and runs between $40-50.
Alright, maybe I've mistated what I meant. Sniping doesn't "win" you any more auctions than if you just put in your full proxie bid. Both ways, you're putting in the max amount you're willing to pay for an item.
However, look at any auction. See a couple of joes who place multiple bids because they didn't put in their max bid. They put just what they thought would win at the moment. The current proxie bid went up accordingly. They didn't win, so they bid again. Look through enough auctions, and you see many people who bid just enough to raise the final price of the auction, but because you were a good buyer, you had your proxie in place and you still won.
This happens all the time. The advantage of sniping is that you're putting in your proxie bid at the last minute. There is no time left for people testing the waters to raise the final price. The auction is over. But because you waited, the final price was lower.
It's the buyer that wins at this, not the seller. That's what you don't see things like the auctionsniper logo at the bottom of auctions -- the seller can't even watch the bids go up until the last 30 seconds.
If you get beat these days, often it's because somebody put in that $20 bid, it didn't win, then placed a $22 bid that beat you. Sniping avoids this.
Because other people tend to base what they are willing to pay on what you are willing to pay.
This is exactly it. I never really thought about it before, but have only recently realized the advantage of auction sniping. Lots of people just put a bid in just higher than the existing people, and sniping at the last minute solves the problem of them comming back later. I've won a lot more auctions recently this way.
Anyway, I know that this client works really well, and I'm not going back.:-)
I've been playing with auction sniping clients recently. They work really well when you don't want to be "one-upped" when bidding on auctions. Pretty cool.
Maybe they'd only work with an object of this magnatude if you throw a pack of "wonder diet pills" in with it.
One of the oldest geek-outs has been the Amateur (Ham) Radio Field Day. Thousands of amatuers gather on hilltops each June, setup their radios, antennas, solar panels, generators, laptops, and barbeques to see how many other people you can contact in a 24-hour period. Radios can be busy at 4am trying to "network" with people with a minimum of equipment.
Digital modes (i.e. PSK-31) are becomming more popular. Who said you couldn't try to play Quake against the group on the next mountain over.
With more and more levels of technologies when using computers these days, it's neat to see radios work from coast-to-coast with little more than a wire strung between trees. Geek campouts at its most basic.
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerc e. exe?preadd=action&key=FM10a
The kit comes with parts, a circuit board, and nicely written instructions. If you've soldered anything before, it's really easy to build. This kit is about $35 now, which doesn't include the case (unlike some of the other more expensive kits on the same page). You'll probably want the case for the extra $15 and it includes the whip antenna.
They have others transmitters that use a phase-locked loop (PLL) to prevent frequency drift, instead of a tuned coil like the FM10A, but I haven't had any problems with drift.
Oh, and to answer other questions, broadcasting at this power (enough to go down the road a bit for this little kit) onto the commericial FM band is not normally legal, except for the case of homebrew, as I understand it. That's why it's in parts. It's a well made kit.
You're underestimating this transmitter. I've got the $30 model that doesn't have PLL tuning, and I've never had it drift significantly in frequency on me. It will also transmit about 1/4 mile away, and the signal is bright and strong, and doesn't get "blocked" by simply walking in front of it. The higher one with PLL turning is "locked" and will not drift.
I've got several friends who have this also, and it really is the only way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, you're talking about a two year community college -- it's not going to have much of a CS program. If you're really interested in CS or Engineering, go up the road a bit to CSU, Chico, where they have a very nice CS and Engineering departments.
I'm still working my way through the commentary tracks, but this set is nicely put together.
Everybody has gone their separate ways, so we won't see a second season, but at one point in the commentary they said they didn't want to spill all of the beans in case there is a Firefly movie.
But I want to know all of the beans! There were so many good story lines to take advantage of, but were never explained!
I work as a programmer in the gaming industry, and there is a lot of security in place, but it all makes since. Before I can work, I need to get a state "gaming card" which says that I've had my background check, and I'm generally not a menice to society. The machines have security in place to know if something is wrong (eprom signatures, various locks). Everything we develop also goes through two or three other independent verification agencies make sure it's all legit.
We're proud of making a secure device (at least as secure as we can make it), and it's in ours and our customer's interest to do so. Most of the security built in isn't necessarily hard to do, but it does take planning, foresight, and desire to integrate it all with the final product.
I hope that a voting machine company can say the same.
There is a lot of relief here to me, as a spectator. The first game had Garry as white with a strong opening and everything looked good, then due to some dubious moves, it was a drawn game.
:)
The second game on Thursday had Garry as black beat pretty much from the beginning. Garry fought back very well and might have drawn the game, but then foolishly blundered which cost him the game almost immediately. You could see the frustration level just go through the roof, as he's still trying to prove that he's better than the computer, but only to be beaten by the slow, steady computer approach.
But today, he's redeemed himeself. Although the match is now tied, he has shown that he can win against the computer. I feel better.
The last game will be difficult for Garry as black. But the fact that he won an game, and didn't draw them all has got to have him elated.
It seems like solar power efficiency has been at about 10-20% for about forever now, and I thought I read somewhere that where purifiying the semiconductors will get you more efficient at a higher price, there was still a maximum amount you could get out of current designs or theories.
Is there some sort of theoretical limit we're hitting with current technologies, or are there different technologies that may have some promise? This article doesn't address efficiency, it just says they can make them cheaper than anybody else.
Any links or references would be appriciated.
It's not the amount that's at issue, but the fact that I'm supporting this. The one comments I've heard around the hallways here after the third, fourth, and now fifth story is, "I'm glad I'm not a subscriber."
At least around me, this line of posts is pissing more people off -- including me -- than it is helping the site by some sort of odd humor.
--Lance
I've been subscribed to Slashdot since the option became available, and I check this site all of the time.
But *five* times! This really isn't funny, and it holding back from any ligitamate news stories.
Should I be regretting my subscription money?
--Lance
It used to be very necessary to balance your checkbook, back when banks kept account balances on paper, and human errors were common, but is this still necessary?
I stopped balancing my checkbook a couple of years ago, and have saved myself a lot of greef. I can check my balances and verify that nothing is improperly charged by using current web interfaces, and if I do goof on my in-my-head calculations of how much money is left in my account, most banks will give free overdraft protection, which I just pay back when my check comes in.
This can sound kind of silly, but it has made my life a lot easier, and spot audits have shown that everything is working great.
--Lance
Uh, no. Not in any of the systems I'm familiar with.
Who would write such a system anyway. That'd be a system just begging to be hacked.
Each machine on the network has the odds to win a particular payline already set in the machine paytables. Say, 1 in 100 million for the big prize, as a simple case.
Each machine sends a command to a little box located in each bank of machines, that "Somebody just paid $3". A fraction of that goes towards the local progressive jackpot, or if it's a wide-area progressive (i.e. Megabucks), it will sync with the central server from time to time. The box may send back the current value of the progressive jackpot, allowing the individual machine to display it somewhere on the machine itself, but it's simply informative. The protocols really aren't that complicated since most were originally created when machines used 8051 microcontrollers.
Now, with statistics at work, only one of the machines will hit the jackpot every so often. The wide-area progressive allow more machines to contribute to a central jackpot, and the jackpot is bigger. If a machine does it, it tells the system "I won the big one.", the progressive counter stops, techs make sure the CRC's on the program and paytable are right and that nothing else is screwed up, then the jackpot is reset. Depending on the system and where it's at, there may or may not be encryption on the communication channel, and since there _isn't_ a command to tell it to win, it really doesn't matter.
I can sit and describe short vs. long term statistics until I'm blue in the face and describe how everything works in minute detail, but there's a certain segment of the population that won't belive me no matter what I say. Oh well.
Yeah, craps and blackjack are generally the best games to play. Play blackjack "right" to get the 2%.
:)
The _only_ true odds bet in the entire casino is the "odds" bet in craps. Play that bet as much as you can. Learn craps if you don't know what I'm talking about.
Slots run 85%-95%, keno is at the limit at 75%.
You know those little machines which have a bunch of quarters that all look like they're going to be pushed over the edge at any minute, if you'd just put _one_ more coin in? Those are the worst in the whole place. In fact, they had to get special permission to get around the fact that state law says that all games must pay at least 75%, because these pay out about 40-50%.
Besides it screaming to be a bad idea because you know people would abuse it, but that normally doesn't stop the marketing people.
No, the main problem is that you're only liable for $50 on your credit card if the card is lost. What's to stop somebody from running up $2000 on a machine, then claiming to "lose" the card. They'd be personally liable for only $50, and the casino would have a chargeback for the rest. Not a good business plan.
There was a pilot program a while back (there might be others now), that used an ATM like card where you can put money on a card, then withdraw it at the individual machines. It was scary to look at the reports and see some guy at a machine withdraw $10k from his card, then 20 minutes later, withdraw another $10k, over and over again.
Nobody is ever happy with power generation. No matter what you pick, there are always critcs:
--Coal/Oil/Natural Gas: Air pollution
--Nuclear: Nuclear waste
--Hydroelectric: Rivers need to be dammed
--Geothermal: Releases lots of sulfer and arsnic
--Solar: Not cost effective
--Wind turbines: Kills birds
--Tidal: We'll think of something
Last comment on this thread, then I'm going to bed.
:)
To the people who have asked "who's watching the gaming commission?", all I can say is that slot machines use lots of variables to make sure that everything is random on the machine, and everything is on the up-and-up. With casinos and manufacturer being corporate controlled entities these days, it doesn't make since to screw around with this -- the house is already making a nice profit, so why run the risk of a lawsuit.
And if there was something fishy in the software, there'd be a lot more rich ex-software engineers running around. I'm proof that there isn't.
A technology I always thought was interesting at the Casinos was the whole "Player Tracking" aspect. The marketing people just drool to know what and when individuals are playing.
Just like the grocery "club cards", a player can sit down at a machine, put in their tracking card, and play away in the hopes of getting credits towards a hotel room or something. In the back room, some guy is looking over the reports, and sees that you tend to come in on Friday nights, play for a little while, have dinner, then bet a little bit more for a couple of hours. You stay an average of 20 minutes per machine, tend to gravitate towards the red machines, but stay longer at blue ones, and that you like to play "Double Diamond". The waitress can view a summary screen near the drink station and see a list of everybody in her area, have it highlighed in red if you're a top player, highlighted in green if it's your birthday, and if it's both, well, you'll get a nice bottle of champaine delivered to you without even asking.
The whole "science" of which colors attract which people for how long, which seats are the best, and which layouts work is a fascinating subject, but really only studied by a select few.
I used to be work on the communications software for slot machine, and although every machine in the building is wired together via fiber optic cable (fiber optics aren't as suseptable to a lot of the noise generated in the casino, such as neon, among other reasons), it's important to realized that there isn't a whole lot data on the line that's really a security risk.
Every machine has generates it's own random numbers and determines if it hits the jackpot by itself. The methods to do that are faily secure, but since there are a lot of variable to pick from, such as the number of milliseconds between user buttonpresses, randomness is not much of a problem. The command to win the jackpot does not come over the network.
All that's really on the network are things like coins in/coins out, number of plays, and a lot of accounting data. This data goes to the casino for their own accounting, and also goes into a box which then computes how much to increment the progressive jackpot. If an individual machine says "I won the big one!", then everything is shut down, the individual machine is checked to make sure the software hasn't been tampered or any other security measure broken, then the winner is paid (sort of). The command "to win" doesn't come from the network, so security is not a problem from the network.
On some lottery setup, an administrator can send a command to shut a particular machine down, but on the whole, the machines are pretty autonomous. Casinos are considered pretty secure environments anyway.
I always thought this was pretty interesting when I've explained it to others, so I thought I'd repeat it here.
Yikes! But what everybody will need to know next is: Who is affected by this? Which board manufacturers used these brands? Will they actually tell us, or will we have to fight for this information?
Ick.
I work with Radiation Therapy, and HIPAA is causing quite a bit of concern. All of the patients that come through there for treatment have nice binders with their name on the spine. We've got warning stickers when two patients may have similar names. This makes it easy when you set them down on the table for the radiation treatment, that you're looking at Nancy Johnson's chart, and you don't get it confused with somebody else.
However, under HIPAA, all names that are viewable by any public must be removed. Those names on the binders -- they've got to be replaced with some ID number. The names on the whiteboards of the patients must also be removed. QA is _much_ harder when to confirm that you've got the right chart, you somehow have to verify you're looking at the right ID number, instead of just asking, "Are you Nancy Johnson?"
Federal compliance has been delayed before for some of these same problems, and there is any indication that it will be delayed again. Our director is moving towards HIPAA compliance, but not at the expense of care and safety.
This also has all of the earmarks of a Software Engineering windfall -- all of the medical systems have to be modified to remove names from public places. That's a lot of work!
It's great that with the Internet, it's gotten easier to self-publish your own works. Just like web pages, free books are a way for anybody to get the point out to the general public. However, now that anybody is allowed to do this, now the general public has figure out the difference between the good and the bad.
As far as e-books go, they've been promising that we'll have everything on microfiche since the 60's, and that the book is dead. Until I can read a book online and be able to find a subject quickly by "thumbing" though the book, there will always be room for paper books.
It's called the Kill-A-Watt, and is available from ETA Engineering, CCrane, and Radio Shack. .
I'm not involved in this, but just bought one, and it's answered a bunch of questions about how much everything uses. Interesting!
However, look at any auction. See a couple of joes who place multiple bids because they didn't put in their max bid. They put just what they thought would win at the moment. The current proxie bid went up accordingly. They didn't win, so they bid again. Look through enough auctions, and you see many people who bid just enough to raise the final price of the auction, but because you were a good buyer, you had your proxie in place and you still won.
This happens all the time. The advantage of sniping is that you're putting in your proxie bid at the last minute. There is no time left for people testing the waters to raise the final price. The auction is over. But because you waited, the final price was lower.
It's the buyer that wins at this, not the seller. That's what you don't see things like the auctionsniper logo at the bottom of auctions -- the seller can't even watch the bids go up until the last 30 seconds.
If you get beat these days, often it's because somebody put in that $20 bid, it didn't win, then placed a $22 bid that beat you. Sniping avoids this.
OK. I'm done now. :-)
This is exactly it. I never really thought about it before, but have only recently realized the advantage of auction sniping. Lots of people just put a bid in just higher than the existing people, and sniping at the last minute solves the problem of them comming back later. I've won a lot more auctions recently this way.
Anyway, I know that this client works really well, and I'm not going back. :-)
Maybe they'd only work with an object of this magnatude if you throw a pack of "wonder diet pills" in with it.
Digital modes (i.e. PSK-31) are becomming more popular. Who said you couldn't try to play Quake against the group on the next mountain over.
With more and more levels of technologies when using computers these days, it's neat to see radios work from coast-to-coast with little more than a wire strung between trees. Geek campouts at its most basic.
This is the link to the one I have (the FM10A):
c e. exe?preadd=action&key=FM10a
http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commer
The kit comes with parts, a circuit board, and nicely written instructions. If you've soldered anything before, it's really easy to build. This kit is about $35 now, which doesn't include the case (unlike some of the other more expensive kits on the same page). You'll probably want the case for the extra $15 and it includes the whip antenna.
They have others transmitters that use a phase-locked loop (PLL) to prevent frequency drift, instead of a tuned coil like the FM10A, but I haven't had any problems with drift.
Oh, and to answer other questions, broadcasting at this power (enough to go down the road a bit for this little kit) onto the commericial FM band is not normally legal, except for the case of homebrew, as I understand it. That's why it's in parts. It's a well made kit.
You're underestimating this transmitter. I've got the $30 model that doesn't have PLL tuning, and I've never had it drift significantly in frequency on me. It will also transmit about 1/4 mile away, and the signal is bright and strong, and doesn't get "blocked" by simply walking in front of it. The higher one with PLL turning is "locked" and will not drift.
I've got several friends who have this also, and it really is the only way to go.