I think plain language speech interfaces apply to more than just applications where being hands-free is important. Most people don't type as fast as they speak (OK, I type faster than I speak but that's because I'm a computer nerd). People will (as they do, somewhat, today) tell their computer things like "Take a letter", "call home", etc. Even when they use a graphical display, speech combined with a pointing device will be the dominant means of input.
That's not the real Bruce Perens. Note the "." after the user name.
Re:Good News: An End To Morse Code Testing in Sigh
on
Is Ham Radio Dead??
·
· Score: 2
Yes, the no-code tech has been around for a while. I had one for a few months and was licensed as KD6OTD, then I upgraded.
The problem is that the way the no-code tech was set up fragmented ham radio - the no-codes were on VHF and the coders were on HF, and the codes didn't consider the other guys "real hams" at all and didn't mix with them much. We've gone a lot of the way toward ending the fragmentation now, because the new folks have to a large extent moved onto HF.
Thanks
Bruce
Re:Good News: An End To Morse Code Testing in Sigh
on
Is Ham Radio Dead??
·
· Score: 2
I forgot to mention No-Code International, an organization pushing for an end to code testing. Hit their web site and join, it's free!
Bruce
Good News: An End To Morse Code Testing in Sight!
on
Is Ham Radio Dead??
·
· Score: 3
A lot of what has been holding ham radio back since the 70's was the insistence on an obsolete test on high-speed Morse code. This was required for all hams who could use the lower frequencies, which have international range. This test was required of hams regardless of whether or not they were interested in Morse code operation: if you want to work on voice or digital modes on the lower frequencies, you had to learn high-speed Morse first. This is in not only national law, but paragraph S25.5 of the International Telecommunications Union treaty. Fortunately, clear heads are finally prevailing: the U.S. has reduced the code speed to an easy-to-learn minimum until the international law is changed, and Europe, it appears, will follow. One now has to learn 5 words-per-minute code, which is pretty easy, versus 13 words-per-minute, which is fast enough that you have to recognize the sound rather than count dots and dashes. Many people have never been able to do this, and it took me 3 months of practice, half an hour morning and evening, to get from 5 to 13 WPM. That was wasted time for me, I've never used Morse on the air.
We expect the international law to fall at the 2003 ITU conference, and after that hopefully the Morse code test will be entirely eliminated from national laws. Ham Radio should be a way to learn technology for our young people - you can do so many things that aren't possible on the Internet! It's too bad that stupid laws have held it back for so long.
You have to understand that the boss in this case has an obligation to the company's owners and shareholders to maximize profits.
I guess I should state my background. I am president of Linux Capital Group, chairman of Progeny Linux, and chairman of another company that will be announced in a week or so. People have invested Millions in these companies. Thus, I have fiduciary responsibility.
Amazon suing to protect the one-click patent was a questionable decision, but was not against the law. Cheating on software licenses exposes your company to civil liability and is also against a number of criminal laws.
None of my stockholders would be able to prosecute a case that I have irresponsibly refrained from breaking the law, lying, etc., when such behavior would have saved them money!
I also run Open Source businesses, and can justify that to the stockholders and in court, dispite what's been written on that topic here previously. The business plans are based on Open Source and the businesses don't succeed if we play fast and loose with the community.
I think that could be mistaken, and that Rob did not "bitchslap" you. I am looking at the initial posting score function in the Slashcode. Here it is:
if($I{U}{uid} > 0 && !$I{F}{postanon} ) { $pts = $I{U}{defaultpoints}; $pts-- if $I{U}{karma} < -10; $pts++ if $I{U}{karma} > 25 and !$I{F}{nobonus}; # Enforce proper ranges on comment points. $pts = -1 if $pts < -1; $pts = 5 if $pts > 5; }
I'm not that great of a Perl hacker, but it looks as if you get that initial -1 score if you have been moderated to a -11 karma or any more negative value. I think that the "bitchslap" could have come from a democratic vote of the readership rather than from Rob Malda. By the way, I don't see a "keep this guy down even if he's been moderated positive" function, which I think you are claiming exists in the Slashcode. But I'm not much of a Perl hacker, and I'll defer to someone else who shows me it's there. Perhaps you should look at the Slashcode yourself?
People who do unethical things to save $100 probably treat their employees unethically, too. I'd not work in a situation that required me to act unethically. You don't have to, either.
I gave the opening talk, on Tuesday, unfortunately to 13 people. I'll be happy to show up again, in Overland Park or somewhere else in the Midwest. I'm told I give a pretty good show:-)
I generally ask any LUG or show who want me to speak to find a local sponsor who will fund transportation and lodging, but I do not ask for any honorarium. If the show is well-funded, sometimes I ask them to bring out my wife and child as well.
If you aren't gearing your posts to be what I would write, I suggest you call yourself "Brucedot" instead of "Bruce Perens." and then you would probably have a positive moderation and certainly more people would see what you post, and I will thank you publicly and not bother you again. If there was ever a joke to this it's really old and not funny any longer, and I don't see that it's doing you any good, and people just think you're a jerk for doing it. Show some sense and lay it off.
Morphing is an advantage to the manufacturer if it lets them compete better, yes. Maybe this year. Once Intel's 64-bit architecture makes it to retail, it will become progressively less important that the chip can emulate an extremely arcane segmented CISC architecture well.
This tells us something about the future performance of Transmeta stock, doesn't it?
Again, not what I would write. Maybe you'll get there some day.
Code-morphing ability is not an advantage, it's an implementation detail. Low power consumption is an advantage. The point is that someone running a program doesn't really care that their instruction set has been interpreted, they care that the instruction set runs, that it runs at reasonable speed, and that it runs within their battery life if they are mobile.
Maildirs should be served up via IMAP. Then, you need a mail user agent that talks IMAP. That separates the implementation of your mail file from the interface.
Most web browsers provide a direct means of reading IMAP mail. Certainly Netscape Navigator does, and the Open Source version "Mozilla" does. By allowing them to read mail through the browser, your users have one less program to learn.
Note that phones don't have much fading and multipath. Over on the radio side, we are generally engineering 20 dB fade-margin into digital communications systems to account for weather and so on. If we had to do that on a phone, we would not be sending 50 kilobits through a 4 KHz channel.
P.S. To be really thorough, there is polarization diversity (at the antenna) as a bandwidth-increasing technique, but I think this is only useful for fixed stations.
What you are talking about can be decomposed into amplitude and phase modulation. What happened with the phone modems getting better is because we took maximum advantage of AM and PM on the line until we reached physical limits. In this case, we are talking about a physical limit again, we can get more efficient but we can't pass it.
I'd suggest you read Shannon and a text on modulation before you take this further.
Cellular is a way of re-using radio spectrum. Essentially, a geographical area is divided into cells and each tower covers one cell. Frequencies are re-used in cells that are just out-of-range of each other.
PCS is very definitely a cellular system. What you call "cellular" is actually more accurately referred to as NAMPS, for New Automatic Mobile Phone System, and DAMPS, for Digital Automatic Mobile Phone System. The old AMPS was the car-phone of the 60's and 70's (and earlier?), the "Automatic" referred to the fact that calls can be placed without an operator:-)
PCS is a cellular system. You are confusing bands and deployment with the cellular architecture. Even if they are on building and phone poles, those are still cells.
He said the transmitters they were using broadcast at signal strengths below the natural background radiation. That meant you couldn't detect it (neato),
They appear to be below the noise floor of a non-spread receiver. However, every spread-spectrum transmitter in range raises that noise floor. Also, call it transmitting, the word "broadcasting" is specific to one-to-many transmitting.
and that you didn't need a license or FCC approval to broadcast.
This is part of Part 15 of the FCC rules and regulations. Power limits of up to 1 watt, with antenna size restrictions, are allowed.
Since it's not using one band, but various signal strengths between an upper and lower frequency limit, it didn't fall into the idea/trap of a band or bandwidth.
That's not really the case. You can have some number of spread-spectrum stations take turns on a chip, a frequency that they visit momentarily, but that's controlled by (time you spend on a chip / 1). You can also have some amount of collission between transmitters before the signal degrades too much, but not an infinite amount. So, even with spread-spectrum radio there is an upper limit to the carrying capacity of a band, given a large number of stations in range of each other.
Slashdot Mirror
I think plain language speech interfaces apply to more than just applications where being hands-free is important. Most people don't type as fast as they speak (OK, I type faster than I speak but that's because I'm a computer nerd). People will (as they do, somewhat, today) tell their computer things like "Take a letter", "call home", etc. Even when they use a graphical display, speech combined with a pointing device will be the dominant means of input.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
That's not the real Bruce Perens. Note the "." after the user name.
The problem is that the way the no-code tech was set up fragmented ham radio - the no-codes were on VHF and the coders were on HF, and the codes didn't consider the other guys "real hams" at all and didn't mix with them much. We've gone a lot of the way toward ending the fragmentation now, because the new folks have to a large extent moved onto HF.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
We expect the international law to fall at the 2003 ITU conference, and after that hopefully the Morse code test will be entirely eliminated from national laws. Ham Radio should be a way to learn technology for our young people - you can do so many things that aren't possible on the Internet! It's too bad that stupid laws have held it back for so long.
Bruce
I guess I should state my background. I am president of Linux Capital Group, chairman of Progeny Linux, and chairman of another company that will be announced in a week or so. People have invested Millions in these companies. Thus, I have fiduciary responsibility.
Amazon suing to protect the one-click patent was a questionable decision, but was not against the law. Cheating on software licenses exposes your company to civil liability and is also against a number of criminal laws.
None of my stockholders would be able to prosecute a case that I have irresponsibly refrained from breaking the law, lying, etc., when such behavior would have saved them money!
I also run Open Source businesses, and can justify that to the stockholders and in court, dispite what's been written on that topic here previously. The business plans are based on Open Source and the businesses don't succeed if we play fast and loose with the community.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
I think that could be mistaken, and that Rob did not "bitchslap" you. I am looking at the initial posting score function in the Slashcode. Here it is:
if($I{U}{uid} > 0 && !$I{F}{postanon} ) {
$pts = $I{U}{defaultpoints};
$pts-- if $I{U}{karma} < -10;
$pts++ if $I{U}{karma} > 25 and !$I{F}{nobonus};
# Enforce proper ranges on comment points.
$pts = -1 if $pts < -1;
$pts = 5 if $pts > 5;
}
I'm not that great of a Perl hacker, but it looks as if you get that initial -1 score if you have been moderated to a -11 karma or any more negative value. I think that the "bitchslap" could have come from a democratic vote of the readership rather than from Rob Malda.
By the way, I don't see a "keep this guy down even if he's been moderated positive" function, which I think you are claiming exists in the Slashcode. But I'm not much of a Perl hacker, and I'll defer to someone else who shows me it's there. Perhaps you should look at the Slashcode yourself?
Bruce
Bruce
I generally ask any LUG or show who want me to speak to find a local sponsor who will fund transportation and lodging, but I do not ask for any honorarium. If the show is well-funded, sometimes I ask them to bring out my wife and child as well.
Thanks
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Morphing is an advantage to the manufacturer if it lets them compete better, yes. Maybe this year. Once Intel's 64-bit architecture makes it to retail, it will become progressively less important that the chip can emulate an extremely arcane segmented CISC architecture well.
This tells us something about the future performance of Transmeta stock, doesn't it?
Bruce
Bruce
Again, not what I would write. Maybe you'll get there some day.
Code-morphing ability is not an advantage, it's an implementation detail. Low power consumption is an advantage. The point is that someone running a program doesn't really care that their instruction set has been interpreted, they care that the instruction set runs, that it runs at reasonable speed, and that it runs within their battery life if they are mobile.
Bruce
Bruce
Most web browsers provide a direct means of reading IMAP mail. Certainly Netscape Navigator does, and the Open Source version "Mozilla" does. By allowing them to read mail through the browser, your users have one less program to learn.
Bruce
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
I'd suggest you read Shannon and a text on modulation before you take this further.
Thanks
Bruce
PCS is very definitely a cellular system. What you call "cellular" is actually more accurately referred to as NAMPS, for New Automatic Mobile Phone System, and DAMPS, for Digital Automatic Mobile Phone System. The old AMPS was the car-phone of the 60's and 70's (and earlier?), the "Automatic" referred to the fact that calls can be placed without an operator :-)
Bruce
Bruce
Atmospheric attenuation is useful, too, because it lets you build microcells.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce
They appear to be below the noise floor of a non-spread receiver. However, every spread-spectrum transmitter in range raises that noise floor. Also, call it transmitting, the word "broadcasting" is specific to one-to-many transmitting.
and that you didn't need a license or FCC approval to broadcast.
This is part of Part 15 of the FCC rules and regulations. Power limits of up to 1 watt, with antenna size restrictions, are allowed.
Since it's not using one band, but various signal strengths between an upper and lower frequency limit, it didn't fall into the idea/trap of a band or bandwidth.
That's not really the case. You can have some number of spread-spectrum stations take turns on a chip, a frequency that they visit momentarily, but that's controlled by (time you spend on a chip / 1). You can also have some amount of collission between transmitters before the signal degrades too much, but not an infinite amount. So, even with spread-spectrum radio there is an upper limit to the carrying capacity of a band, given a large number of stations in range of each other.
Bruce