Verio's been hosting spammers and spamvertized web sites for so bloody long that it's going to take a miracle to un-tarnish their rep in the eyes of Lord only knows how many SysAdmins (myself included!)
This is just a small sample. No fewer than 43 known (and sometimes infamous) spammers hosted by Verio. Need I say more?
During a recent visit to DizzyWorld in Orlando (we were actually in town for a conference), my wife and I came across what was the absolute highlight of the day (to my eyes, anyway). Some genius in (I'm assuming) "Imagineering" had fitted a standard park trash can out with an RC receiver, short-range RF voice transceiver (full duplex, I think), steerable drive system, and a set of batteries. The gear was all (most likely) buried in the bottom of the thing to give it a nice, low center of gravity.
Its operator was hiding out a few hundred feet away, on an upper balcony (I spotted the tip of his transmitter's antenna when he moved), and was rolling the thing around and doing some good-natured remote harassment of the visitors. At one point, he rolled the thing along next to someone in one of those electric whoosh-carts, and said "Hey, lady... Keep it under 45, Okay?"
What made it even funnier was that there were a couple of kids in the area, chasing the thing all over the place, going nuts trying to figure out how it worked (the operator, wisely, never let it stay in one place for too long).
That kind of thing is just plain silly. Quality silly. That's hard to come by. This full-blown dinosaur of theirs sounds just plain tacky. That, unfortunately, is all too easy to come by.
I guess what I'm wondering is; Why bother? The entire Orlando park is one huge, ongoing, live-action commercial already. Don't think so? Name me another park where every single ride exits either through, or in proximity to, a similarly-themed gift shop.
Anyway, why blow all that money on something that is most likely going to be murder to maintain, in terms of both time and finances, and that is unlikely to fool any child over the age of, say, four? Why not spend it instead on some real exhibits for their "Animal Kingdom" (Lord, what a joke that was!) park, and at least contribute to the zoological field instead of just making a token appearance of doing so?
Did I mention that the both of us had to keep suppressing an urge to yell out "ANGEL DUST!" during the part of the DizzyWorld parade where the crowd is cued to yell "pixie dust?"
All NASA needs to do is send some key people back to college for courses in Psychoceramics. I guarantee that, after a semester or two of such, they'll be well trained in dealing with crackpots.
...I'm usually on vacation. For my part, I LIKE being 'unwired' for that time. It's one of the few times that I can actually read, write, sleep, or just stare out the window and think without any fear of interruption or mental "clutter."
I have to wonder if this is going to have any impact on social skills, such as the art of good conversation, or meeting someone new? Is connectivity going to, eventually, become as ubiquitous as advertising, to the point where someone might panic if they can't get to their E-mail for a couple of hours?
If that does happen, is it necessarily a Good Thing?
All my hardware has an 'Off' switch. I'm not in the least afraid to use it! How many other people will be able to say the same ten years from now?
C'mon, folks... How much could you really expect from a movie with a trailer in which the Big Villain says something as campy as "Set a course for Earth. Kill everything." I darn near spewed a mouthful of fizzy when I heard that!
The thing with 'Star Trek' movies and books can be summed up in three words; 'Paramount Loves Formula.' Of course 'Nemesis' has no plot. It's not supposed to. It's filler. Fluff. Packing material for mental gaps. Mind-candy. All ka-blooey and no GUI.;-)
Anyway... That's NOT to say it wouldn't be something worth watching. It probably will be, on the order of "It's so bad, it's fun." See it on a matinee, so it's less $$ out-of-pocket, be prepared not to take it at all seriously, and it'll be a good way to blow a couple of hours.
For added fun, gang up on it in MST3K mode with your seat neighbors. Whether said neighbors are friends or family is up to you to decide.;-)
Where the heck are Joel (or Mike), Crow, and Servo when we need them?
...is to combine the best ideas from old and new technology alike, and blend them into an entirely new result. That, to my eyes, is what real "innovation" or R&D is all about.
Some examples: DEC (Digital Equipment), in their heyday, came up with some great techniques for memory management at the hardware level. I'd be curious to know how many of those ideas got rolled over into more current stuff.
Another one; Where would we all be if Xerox's PARC facility had never come up with what has morphed into today's electronic rodent? Heck, IBM was using light pens years before that.
In short; You don't want to just ignore something because it's "old" or "obsolete" (Essence, I loathe that word!). You need to take the good ideas from the old stuff and build on them.
Somehow, I doubt that we would have so many tons of electronic junk choking landfills today if computer and electronics hardware was (a), really built to last, like the old stuff was; And (b), built to be easily upgradeable.
I doubt there are any cable execs reading/., but if there were, the first thing I would say to them is: Rather than blow all that energy hating something that's never going to go away, why not find a way to work with it instead?
Others have pointed out that the Big Thing with cable and satellite companies alike is to get people to... wow!... Watch More TV! No-brainer, right?
So... USE that energy and funding, that would otherwise be spent fighting what consumers have been doing since the Betamax was invented, to develop programs that have good writing, good stories, and that will be INTERESTING for people to watch AND that they will want to record. Duh!
Even if they do record it, they may opt to go out and buy a DVD of the program anyway. I know that's what we did in the case of Hallmark's 'Dinotopia' movie (the later series sucks pterodactyl eggs, 'cause they changed the whole cast, but that's another story).
There's one little thing about Rackspace that they, of course, neglect to tell you; They're a spammer nest.
Rackspace has a long history of being apathetic at best to spamvertized sites, despite their anti-spam Terms of Service. As of 3-Dec-02, they're still hosting at least 20 or so spammers, and chunks of their netspace may still be listed on SPEWS.
Cheap or not, good customer service or not, I would be very wary about selecting Rackspace for any sort of hosting.
"The ability to send unsolicited email to practically anyone has long been a valuable online tool for everything from online protests (like filling your Congressman's mailbox with anti- DMCA flames) to communicating with intriguing personalities. A good deal of anti-spam legislation can be interpreted in ways that infringe on this basic cyber-right..."
Ahhh... Excuse me? Can you point to any existing law that declares the sending of E-mail, or the use of ANY Internet resource for that matter, to be a fundamental "right," as opposed to the privilege (similar to a driver's license) that it is?
You are forgetting that the majority of the Internet is made up of PRIVATELY-OWNED servers, routers, switches, etc. No SysAdmin or server operator is required to accept ANY traffic that they do not wish to.
For example: The spam problem is so widespread in some Pacific Rim countries (Korea and Taiwan come immediately to mind) that I have chosen to block all mail coming from those countries. I realize that this may offend your sensibilities. Well, all I can say to that is 'My servers, my bandwidth, my rules.'
When a spammer craps in my inbox, or that of my other users, they're stealing MY resources to do it. They're shifting the cost of their advertising to me. I will not tolerate that under ANY conditions.
As one very wise individual once pointed out; "Free speech is not free when it comes postage due."
"...But what I really can't stand is when tech people run around and say "never, ever respond to spam, or try to opt out. You will only get more once they realize your email address is good." This is just BS..."
Really? What evidence do you offer in support of this claim? I've tried, as an experiment, using the 'unsubscribe' link or address in a couple of spams. The result was predictable; Lots more spam, from an even wider array of sources. It got bad enough that I had to close down the 'bait' address I used.
There's plenty of at least anecdotal evidence, such as that found here, that I think is more than adequate to counter such a sweeping generalization. I'm sure a Google search could turn up lots of other examples.
This also caught my eye...
"It can be confusing to explain the best way to remove spam - learning to decipher legitmate companies (Buy.com, Hickory Farms, Citi Bank) from the viagra ads, but you have to try. The legit ones will truly remove you when asked - so that's done..."
'Legit' companies won't send you marketing E-mail without you asking for it to begin with. That's what confirmed opt-in is all about.
"This system is also vastly superior to the current black lists, which are far too centralised, clique and arbitrary, and fundamentally ineffective."
Speak for yourself, sir! As the owner/operator of two mail servers (primary and backup), I can say with confidence that blocklists such as SPEWS are far from "fundamentally ineffective!"
SPEWS alone, in the year or so that I've been using it, has saved me many hours of time in dealing with spammers. What SPEWS misses, my local blocklist usually catches.
In that same time, I've had perhaps a dozen pieces of legitimate mail that got accidentally caught in my blocks. Guess what? Not ONE SINGLE PIECE of that legitimate traffic was ever blocked by SPEWS or any other centrally-maintained list. It was all in my local list, easily cured by whitelisting those I wanted to hear from.
Granted, my experiences are probably not typical of a large ISP. However, the point I'm trying to make is that your statement about the current crop of blacklists is far too broad at best, and outright wrong at worst.
Another quote from your post seems, to my eyes, to show your true colors.
"This proposal does no even prevent commercial email, if anything it allows this to legitimise, punishing the fraudsters and crooks whilst rewarding the responsible. It is entirely feasible to choose to accept commercial/bulk email from their bank, or OSDN."
Like many before you, you're missing the point. Commercial/Marketing E-mail is not, never has been, and hopefully never will be about CONTENT. It is about one thing, and one thing only; CONSENT.
Let's try it again for clarity. CONTENT IS IRRELEVANT. CONSENT IS THE ISSUE.
'Consent' as in the explicit and informed consent, obtained in advance of sending ANY type of COMMERCIAL E-mail, from the recipient of such. Without that consent, obtained through EXISTING confirmed opt-in techniques, all you're doing is spamming. Period.
The problem of browser lock-in (sites that will only fully work with a specific browser type or version) still exists. How do you see such lock-in tactics affecting options for people with visual impairment? (either partial sight or complete vision loss).
More specifically; Have you found one type or version of browser to be more or less "impairment-friendly" than others?
I have a particular interest in an answer to this, as my wife is legally blind and what little vision she has left may not last the rest of her life.
I thought the idea of having a park or 'greenbelt' was to be able to get AWAY from being wired, E-mailed, phoned, etc.?
This idea came to mind because, just last week, my wife and I got subjected to at least two morons in the movie theater who didn't turn their phones off. Damn things rang right in the middle of a couple of good scenes in 'Harry Potter.'
I will grant that any wireless device can be a useful tool, but let's not forget where the "Off" switch is, OK? There's enough stress in the world already.
More than that. Verio could (and, possibly, already has) experience widespread blocking of their IP ranges by individual SysAdmins in privately-run (read: local and site-specific) blocklists, if they're dumb enough to throw cartooneys at Spamhaus.
In fact, they already tried the same stunt on Ron Guilmette of monkeys.com (threatened legal action when Ron expanded their listings on his system). Within (probably) minutes of the word going out on the newsgroup, many SA's, myself included, started asking for lists of Verio's IP ranges, and inserted those lists in their private blocklists.
In short: If they threaten legal action against people who are doing nothing more than expressing an opinion (in the form of publishing lists of IP addresses they think are contributing to the spam problem), and taking steps to protect their private property (by checking incoming mail connections against that same list, and selectively blocking the unwanted stuff), they're only going to dig themselves deeper into their existing hole.
Verio is second only to UUNet (also known as 'SpewSpewNet') for harboring spammers. They need a wake-up call like nobody's business. If Steve's listing doesn't do the trick, I don't think anything else will.
I sit corrected. However, I would have appreciated a simpler "No, that's not quite right, here's what's really going on" rather than calling it "utter nonsense."
Can you not imagine how easy it would be for me to make an incorrect statement, knowing as I do that square-wave oscillators put out hideous amounts of harmonic energy?
As it is, I'm still not convinced that modulating a carrier with square-wave digital signals doesn't pose a greater risk of interference and splatter than analog-type signals. I'll go read up on the subject.
"The article seems to suggest that as more TV stations go digital, more small-town police radio will be affected, as the digital signal is significantly stronger than analog..."
Actually, the type of modulation (digital or analog) has little to do with the signal "strength" (which is a function of transmitter power output, transmission line losses, and antenna design and orientation).
Now, with that said, digital modulation, being much closer to a square wave than an analog voice signal, is much richer in HARMONICS than said analog signal.
I've lost count of how many times I've heard interference from digital paging transmitters bleeding into ham radio repeaters. The harmonics from the digital modulation mix with the transmitter's carrier, and that of whatever other transmitters happen to be on the same hilltop, and close to the same frequency range. It sounds awful, and it looks even worse on a spectrum analyzer screen.
The problem may be correctable through (as others have pointed out) better receiver design, in terms of filtering, and good installation practices being followed where the transmitter and antenna system are concerned. Good filtering and modulation techniques at the transmitter end won't do any harm either.
Boeing Employees Credit Union. They actually force you to a "Sorry, your browser is not compatible" page if you even try to access their main site (no signin, nothing that would require a password) with a browser that they don't approve of.
And, of course, they approve of MSIE. Ironically enough, they don't approve of all versions of Nutscape. I think they reject you if you try to use 4.76 or higher.
Oddly enough, I've had limited success using Opera, set up to reply as if it were MSIE 5.0. I get through the encrypted signin, but I have trouble getting the Javascript-based controls to work after that point.
Anyway, although I've asked them many times to work support in for alternative browsers, BECU claims they need to stick with where they are for "security reasons."
Meadow muffins! I think, like a goodly chunk of the rest of Boeing, they're just in bed with the Redmond Empire, and their site is written to Bill's Book of (Broken) Standards.
Slashdot Mirror
Verio's been hosting spammers and spamvertized web sites for so bloody long that it's going to take a miracle to un-tarnish their rep in the eyes of Lord only knows how many SysAdmins (myself included!)
This is just a small sample. No fewer than 43 known (and sometimes infamous) spammers hosted by Verio. Need I say more?
During a recent visit to DizzyWorld in Orlando (we were actually in town for a conference), my wife and I came across what was the absolute highlight of the day (to my eyes, anyway). Some genius in (I'm assuming) "Imagineering" had fitted a standard park trash can out with an RC receiver, short-range RF voice transceiver (full duplex, I think), steerable drive system, and a set of batteries. The gear was all (most likely) buried in the bottom of the thing to give it a nice, low center of gravity.
Its operator was hiding out a few hundred feet away, on an upper balcony (I spotted the tip of his transmitter's antenna when he moved), and was rolling the thing around and doing some good-natured remote harassment of the visitors. At one point, he rolled the thing along next to someone in one of those electric whoosh-carts, and said "Hey, lady... Keep it under 45, Okay?"
What made it even funnier was that there were a couple of kids in the area, chasing the thing all over the place, going nuts trying to figure out how it worked (the operator, wisely, never let it stay in one place for too long).
That kind of thing is just plain silly. Quality silly. That's hard to come by. This full-blown dinosaur of theirs sounds just plain tacky. That, unfortunately, is all too easy to come by.
I guess what I'm wondering is; Why bother? The entire Orlando park is one huge, ongoing, live-action commercial already. Don't think so? Name me another park where every single ride exits either through, or in proximity to, a similarly-themed gift shop.
Anyway, why blow all that money on something that is most likely going to be murder to maintain, in terms of both time and finances, and that is unlikely to fool any child over the age of, say, four? Why not spend it instead on some real exhibits for their "Animal Kingdom" (Lord, what a joke that was!) park, and at least contribute to the zoological field instead of just making a token appearance of doing so?
Did I mention that the both of us had to keep suppressing an urge to yell out "ANGEL DUST!" during the part of the DizzyWorld parade where the crowd is cued to yell "pixie dust?"
All NASA needs to do is send some key people back to college for courses in Psychoceramics. I guarantee that, after a semester or two of such, they'll be well trained in dealing with crackpots.
...had been at Kitty Hawk in ... when was it, 1903? Would he have been in the Wright place at the wrong time?
(I wonder how many Karma points that's going to cost me?)
...I'm usually on vacation. For my part, I LIKE being 'unwired' for that time. It's one of the few times that I can actually read, write, sleep, or just stare out the window and think without any fear of interruption or mental "clutter."
I have to wonder if this is going to have any impact on social skills, such as the art of good conversation, or meeting someone new? Is connectivity going to, eventually, become as ubiquitous as advertising, to the point where someone might panic if they can't get to their E-mail for a couple of hours?
If that does happen, is it necessarily a Good Thing?
All my hardware has an 'Off' switch. I'm not in the least afraid to use it! How many other people will be able to say the same ten years from now?
C'mon, folks... How much could you really expect from a movie with a trailer in which the Big Villain says something as campy as "Set a course for Earth. Kill everything." I darn near spewed a mouthful of fizzy when I heard that!
;-)
;-)
The thing with 'Star Trek' movies and books can be summed up in three words; 'Paramount Loves Formula.' Of course 'Nemesis' has no plot. It's not supposed to. It's filler. Fluff. Packing material for mental gaps. Mind-candy. All ka-blooey and no GUI.
Anyway... That's NOT to say it wouldn't be something worth watching. It probably will be, on the order of "It's so bad, it's fun." See it on a matinee, so it's less $$ out-of-pocket, be prepared not to take it at all seriously, and it'll be a good way to blow a couple of hours.
For added fun, gang up on it in MST3K mode with your seat neighbors. Whether said neighbors are friends or family is up to you to decide.
Where the heck are Joel (or Mike), Crow, and Servo when we need them?
...is to combine the best ideas from old and new technology alike, and blend them into an entirely new result. That, to my eyes, is what real "innovation" or R&D is all about.
Some examples: DEC (Digital Equipment), in their heyday, came up with some great techniques for memory management at the hardware level. I'd be curious to know how many of those ideas got rolled over into more current stuff.
Another one; Where would we all be if Xerox's PARC facility had never come up with what has morphed into today's electronic rodent? Heck, IBM was using light pens years before that.
In short; You don't want to just ignore something because it's "old" or "obsolete" (Essence, I loathe that word!). You need to take the good ideas from the old stuff and build on them.
Somehow, I doubt that we would have so many tons of electronic junk choking landfills today if computer and electronics hardware was (a), really built to last, like the old stuff was; And (b), built to be easily upgradeable.
I doubt there are any cable execs reading /., but if there were, the first thing I would say to them is: Rather than blow all that energy hating something that's never going to go away, why not find a way to work with it instead?
... wow! ... Watch More TV! No-brainer, right?
Others have pointed out that the Big Thing with cable and satellite companies alike is to get people to
So... USE that energy and funding, that would otherwise be spent fighting what consumers have been doing since the Betamax was invented, to develop programs that have good writing, good stories, and that will be INTERESTING for people to watch AND that they will want to record. Duh!
Even if they do record it, they may opt to go out and buy a DVD of the program anyway. I know that's what we did in the case of Hallmark's 'Dinotopia' movie (the later series sucks pterodactyl eggs, 'cause they changed the whole cast, but that's another story).
There's one little thing about Rackspace that they, of course, neglect to tell you; They're a spammer nest.
Rackspace has a long history of being apathetic at best to spamvertized sites, despite their anti-spam Terms of Service. As of 3-Dec-02, they're still hosting at least 20 or so spammers, and chunks of their netspace may still be listed on SPEWS.
Cheap or not, good customer service or not, I would be very wary about selecting Rackspace for any sort of hosting.
...that people using mobile phones while they're driving can now get into accidents twice as fast? ;-)
You write...
"The ability to send unsolicited email to practically anyone has long been a valuable online tool for everything from online protests (like filling your Congressman's mailbox with anti- DMCA flames) to communicating with intriguing personalities. A good deal of anti-spam legislation can be interpreted in ways that infringe on this basic cyber-right..."
Ahhh... Excuse me? Can you point to any existing law that declares the sending of E-mail, or the use of ANY Internet resource for that matter, to be a fundamental "right," as opposed to the privilege (similar to a driver's license) that it is?
You are forgetting that the majority of the Internet is made up of PRIVATELY-OWNED servers, routers, switches, etc. No SysAdmin or server operator is required to accept ANY traffic that they do not wish to.
For example: The spam problem is so widespread in some Pacific Rim countries (Korea and Taiwan come immediately to mind) that I have chosen to block all mail coming from those countries. I realize that this may offend your sensibilities. Well, all I can say to that is 'My servers, my bandwidth, my rules.'
When a spammer craps in my inbox, or that of my other users, they're stealing MY resources to do it. They're shifting the cost of their advertising to me. I will not tolerate that under ANY conditions.
As one very wise individual once pointed out; "Free speech is not free when it comes postage due."
Some more choice quotes...
"...But what I really can't stand is when tech people run around and say "never, ever respond to spam, or try to opt out. You will only get more once they realize your email address is good." This is just BS..."
Really? What evidence do you offer in support of this claim? I've tried, as an experiment, using the 'unsubscribe' link or address in a couple of spams. The result was predictable; Lots more spam, from an even wider array of sources. It got bad enough that I had to close down the 'bait' address I used.
There's plenty of at least anecdotal evidence, such as that found here, that I think is more than adequate to counter such a sweeping generalization. I'm sure a Google search could turn up lots of other examples.
This also caught my eye...
"It can be confusing to explain the best way to remove spam - learning to decipher legitmate companies (Buy.com, Hickory Farms, Citi Bank) from the viagra ads, but you have to try. The legit ones will truly remove you when asked - so that's done..."
'Legit' companies won't send you marketing E-mail without you asking for it to begin with. That's what confirmed opt-in is all about.
Some choice quotes...
"This system is also vastly superior to the current black lists, which are far too centralised, clique and arbitrary, and fundamentally ineffective."
Speak for yourself, sir! As the owner/operator of two mail servers (primary and backup), I can say with confidence that blocklists such as SPEWS are far from "fundamentally ineffective!"
SPEWS alone, in the year or so that I've been using it, has saved me many hours of time in dealing with spammers. What SPEWS misses, my local blocklist usually catches.
In that same time, I've had perhaps a dozen pieces of legitimate mail that got accidentally caught in my blocks. Guess what? Not ONE SINGLE PIECE of that legitimate traffic was ever blocked by SPEWS or any other centrally-maintained list. It was all in my local list, easily cured by whitelisting those I wanted to hear from.
Granted, my experiences are probably not typical of a large ISP. However, the point I'm trying to make is that your statement about the current crop of blacklists is far too broad at best, and outright wrong at worst.
Another quote from your post seems, to my eyes, to show your true colors.
"This proposal does no even prevent commercial email, if anything it allows this to legitimise, punishing the fraudsters and crooks whilst rewarding the responsible. It is entirely feasible to choose to accept commercial/bulk email from their bank, or OSDN."
Like many before you, you're missing the point. Commercial/Marketing E-mail is not, never has been, and hopefully never will be about CONTENT. It is about one thing, and one thing only; CONSENT.
Let's try it again for clarity. CONTENT IS IRRELEVANT. CONSENT IS THE ISSUE.
'Consent' as in the explicit and informed consent, obtained in advance of sending ANY type of COMMERCIAL E-mail, from the recipient of such. Without that consent, obtained through EXISTING confirmed opt-in techniques, all you're doing is spamming. Period.
Mr. Clark,
The problem of browser lock-in (sites that will only fully work with a specific browser type or version) still exists. How do you see such lock-in tactics affecting options for people with visual impairment? (either partial sight or complete vision loss).
More specifically; Have you found one type or version of browser to be more or less "impairment-friendly" than others?
I have a particular interest in an answer to this, as my wife is legally blind and what little vision she has left may not last the rest of her life.
Thanks much.
The pictures ARE indicators of where water is. Aliens need to drink too, ya know... ;-)
...do you left-click with one of these hybrids? Heck, are they two or three-button? PS/2 compatible, or just USB?
For that matter, do they have balls or are they purely optical?
(There go my karma points...)
I thought the idea of having a park or 'greenbelt' was to be able to get AWAY from being wired, E-mailed, phoned, etc.?
This idea came to mind because, just last week, my wife and I got subjected to at least two morons in the movie theater who didn't turn their phones off. Damn things rang right in the middle of a couple of good scenes in 'Harry Potter.'
I will grant that any wireless device can be a useful tool, but let's not forget where the "Off" switch is, OK? There's enough stress in the world already.
Think about it; Glowing trees can provide street or pathway lighting in remote areas without the need for any sort of electrical feed.
;-)
What an energy-saver!
(C'mon, I couldn't let that one go, even if it means losing karma points!)
More than that. Verio could (and, possibly, already has) experience widespread blocking of their IP ranges by individual SysAdmins in privately-run (read: local and site-specific) blocklists, if they're dumb enough to throw cartooneys at Spamhaus.
In fact, they already tried the same stunt on Ron Guilmette of monkeys.com (threatened legal action when Ron expanded their listings on his system). Within (probably) minutes of the word going out on the newsgroup, many SA's, myself included, started asking for lists of Verio's IP ranges, and inserted those lists in their private blocklists.
In short: If they threaten legal action against people who are doing nothing more than expressing an opinion (in the form of publishing lists of IP addresses they think are contributing to the spam problem), and taking steps to protect their private property (by checking incoming mail connections against that same list, and selectively blocking the unwanted stuff), they're only going to dig themselves deeper into their existing hole.
Verio is second only to UUNet (also known as 'SpewSpewNet') for harboring spammers. They need a wake-up call like nobody's business. If Steve's listing doesn't do the trick, I don't think anything else will.
I sit corrected. However, I would have appreciated a simpler "No, that's not quite right, here's what's really going on" rather than calling it "utter nonsense."
Can you not imagine how easy it would be for me to make an incorrect statement, knowing as I do that square-wave oscillators put out hideous amounts of harmonic energy?
As it is, I'm still not convinced that modulating a carrier with square-wave digital signals doesn't pose a greater risk of interference and splatter than analog-type signals. I'll go read up on the subject.
From the /. article header...
"The article seems to suggest that as more TV stations go digital, more small-town police radio will be affected, as the digital signal is significantly stronger than analog..."
Actually, the type of modulation (digital or analog) has little to do with the signal "strength" (which is a function of transmitter power output, transmission line losses, and antenna design and orientation).
Now, with that said, digital modulation, being much closer to a square wave than an analog voice signal, is much richer in HARMONICS than said analog signal.
I've lost count of how many times I've heard interference from digital paging transmitters bleeding into ham radio repeaters. The harmonics from the digital modulation mix with the transmitter's carrier, and that of whatever other transmitters happen to be on the same hilltop, and close to the same frequency range. It sounds awful, and it looks even worse on a spectrum analyzer screen.
The problem may be correctable through (as others have pointed out) better receiver design, in terms of filtering, and good installation practices being followed where the transmitter and antenna system are concerned. Good filtering and modulation techniques at the transmitter end won't do any harm either.
Boeing Employees Credit Union. They actually force you to a "Sorry, your browser is not compatible" page if you even try to access their main site (no signin, nothing that would require a password) with a browser that they don't approve of.
And, of course, they approve of MSIE. Ironically enough, they don't approve of all versions of Nutscape. I think they reject you if you try to use 4.76 or higher.
Oddly enough, I've had limited success using Opera, set up to reply as if it were MSIE 5.0. I get through the encrypted signin, but I have trouble getting the Javascript-based controls to work after that point.
Anyway, although I've asked them many times to work support in for alternative browsers, BECU claims they need to stick with where they are for "security reasons."
Meadow muffins! I think, like a goodly chunk of the rest of Boeing, they're just in bed with the Redmond Empire, and their site is written to Bill's Book of (Broken) Standards.
Keep the peace(es).
That from someone who (a), posted as an 'Anonymous Coward; and (b), got a score of '0.'
So I mistyped. Big whoopee. Come back and talk to me when you're willing to stand behind what you say by saying who you are.
"Don't steal. The DMA hates competition."
(This, of course, follows through with the idea that spamming = theft of other people's computing resources; Bandwidth, disk space, CPU time, etc.)