I have no data to back this up, but based on my own experience* I think there are differences in the nature of communication between cell phones and radios (CB/Amateur/business/etc.).
Cell phones being full-duplex, people are more likely to talk over one another, as they do in face-to-face conversations, which means you have to be listening while talking. With half-simplex radios, on the other hand, you're either receiving only or transmitting only, which seems like it would make it easier to "compartmentalize" the activities in the brain. Again, I'm just hypothesizing. Also, on the radio, long pauses in a conversation are not on acceptable but frequently encouraged (to listen for any other stations to want to join the conversation or use the frequency). This, coupled with the necessity of coordination would seem to have the effect of generally slowing down the pace of the conversation, and freeing up more cycles in everyone's brain.
*Granted, I'm definitely biased on this topic, being a ham radio operator who regularly talks on a mobile radio with several other hams while driving to work in the morning. I do try to take sensible precautions, though; I don't talk and drive if the weather is bad, if visibility is low, if I'm trying to navigate in an unfamiliar part of town, or if I'm merging or performing some other delicate maneuver.
I actually asked a police officer about this subject once. Specifically, I asked if they received any special training on how to drive and talk on the radio/phone at the same time.
His response was, in effect: No, there's no special training, but witnessing on a daily basis the deaths, injuries, and carnage caused by careless driving serves as a strong motivation to exercise caution while driving.
My understanding is that if you use a ham radio to [view] the internet you can't go to any web page with an [advertisement] on it.
In the US, at least, the regulations (FCC regulations Part 97.113 in the US) prohibit "communications in which the station licensee... has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer..."
Viewing a web page that had a few ads over a D-Star or packet network is not a violation, but sending an advertisement, or solicitation would be against the regulations.
The biggest impediment to using the Internet over ham radio is the prohibition on encrypted content. So sending a PGP-encrypted message or viewing a website over HTTPS would be against the rules.
I'm a techie who tends to avoid products from Microsoft. However, I also don't consider search engines to be products.
Google doesn't earn any money from all the web surfers typing "facebook.com" into the Google search window. Its primary business is selling audiences to advertisers. When you use a search engine, you're not a customer, you're the product being sold.Given Microsoft's history of defending and promoting their products, I figure I'd much rather be a Microsoft product than a Microsoft customer.
I've seen worse. How about...
RMS = Richard Stallman - Mister Free Software himself
RMS = Windows Rights Management Services - Microsoft's proprietary system for restricting access to documents
For a while, about 7 years ago, IThell.com was one of my favorite sites. It had a nice forum for IT professionals to gather and vent about technical, managerial, and other problems. Then it suddenly seems to have been abandoned. The last time I checked, the main page of the site was still there, frozen in time.
Whenever the topic of RFID tags comes up, I see suggestions on destroying them or disabling them. What about a different approach: jamming them?
Think of the children's story where the man forces a leprechaun to lead him to his pot of gold. The man ties a ribbon around the tree where the gold is buried, and makes the leprechaun promise not to remove the ribbon while the man goes to get his shovel. When the man returns, the leprechaun has tied ribbons around thousands of different trees, making it impossible for the man to find the one he wants.
Along the same lines, if you just bought a handful (several thousand or so, after all they're small and cheap) RFID tags and carried them around with you, wouldn't the multiple responses make it difficult or impossible for anyone to "scan" you without your knowledge or permission?
Can someone who's more familiar with the technical workings of RFID tags comment on whether this would work or not, and why?
The program that acts as a modem is called soundmodem. Its home is www.baycom.org/~tom/ham/soundmodem. You run audio from your radio's earphone to the computer's line-in, and from the computer's line-out to the radio's mic/line-in. Soundmodem handles converting the data-audio signal conversion.
The tricky part is getting the computer to actually turn on the mic (push the PTT button) on the radio before transmitting. This requires an interface between the computer's parallel or serial port, and the radio's PTT port.
I've just learned all of this while playing around with soundmodem during the last few weeks.
Microsoft Systems Management Server provides the ability to monitor exactly which users are using which executables, on what dates. It'll even present this info in an easty-to-read report. It works on hashes of the.exe's, so a user who thinks he's being clever by renaming sol.exe to sol1.exe will still be monitored.
Perhaps the best solution to excess "wasted" time, rather than trying to stamp out games altogether, is simply monitor everyone's game program use and make the results public. When there's a rush and the general workload is higher than normal, nobody will want to be the slacker who's been the at the top of the "Top 10 game players" in the department for 3 weeks in a row.
I've heard of companies that take this approach with non-work-related web browsing, and have reported positive results.
It's open to any member of the public who has a amateur radio license. Flooding or jamming it would be "willful or malicious interference," which is prohibited by the FCC (and by its counterparts in all countries where amateur radio exists), and would result in one's license being revoked.
JWPce is an open source Japanese word processor for Microsoft Windows. I first started using it back in 1996, when I was living in Japan but only had English Windows.
One of its most useful features is the ability to highlight a Japanese word and get not only the pronunciation but an English translation as well.
Slashdot Mirror
When will the US realize they have to regulate their internet market?
If the local government only allows one monopoly ISP in a given town, it's not really a "market," is it?
Also, please insert the phrase "where telegrams are" after the word "countries" in my previous post :)
Add Japan to the list of countries are still a surviving, if somewhat quaint, custom: http://www.ntt-west.co.jp/service_guide/4useful/useful17.html
How does this compare to FlightMemory.com?
About 10% of my books are in Japanese. Where do they fall in the order?
Another way of phrasing it (which I remember being used in the context of Microsoft's API): "software sharecropping."
I have no data to back this up, but based on my own experience* I think there are differences in the nature of communication between cell phones and radios (CB/Amateur/business/etc.).
Cell phones being full-duplex, people are more likely to talk over one another, as they do in face-to-face conversations, which means you have to be listening while talking. With half-simplex radios, on the other hand, you're either receiving only or transmitting only, which seems like it would make it easier to "compartmentalize" the activities in the brain. Again, I'm just hypothesizing. Also, on the radio, long pauses in a conversation are not on acceptable but frequently encouraged (to listen for any other stations to want to join the conversation or use the frequency). This, coupled with the necessity of coordination would seem to have the effect of generally slowing down the pace of the conversation, and freeing up more cycles in everyone's brain.
*Granted, I'm definitely biased on this topic, being a ham radio operator who regularly talks on a mobile radio with several other hams while driving to work in the morning. I do try to take sensible precautions, though; I don't talk and drive if the weather is bad, if visibility is low, if I'm trying to navigate in an unfamiliar part of town, or if I'm merging or performing some other delicate maneuver.
I actually asked a police officer about this subject once. Specifically, I asked if they received any special training on how to drive and talk on the radio/phone at the same time. His response was, in effect: No, there's no special training, but witnessing on a daily basis the deaths, injuries, and carnage caused by careless driving serves as a strong motivation to exercise caution while driving.
My understanding is that if you use a ham radio to [view] the internet you can't go to any web page with an [advertisement] on it.
In the US, at least, the regulations (FCC regulations Part 97.113 in the US) prohibit "communications in which the station licensee ... has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer..."
Viewing a web page that had a few ads over a D-Star or packet network is not a violation, but sending an advertisement, or solicitation would be against the regulations.
The biggest impediment to using the Internet over ham radio is the prohibition on encrypted content. So sending a PGP-encrypted message or viewing a website over HTTPS would be against the rules.
I'm a techie who tends to avoid products from Microsoft. However, I also don't consider search engines to be products. Google doesn't earn any money from all the web surfers typing "facebook.com" into the Google search window. Its primary business is selling audiences to advertisers. When you use a search engine, you're not a customer, you're the product being sold.Given Microsoft's history of defending and promoting their products, I figure I'd much rather be a Microsoft product than a Microsoft customer.
I'm sure there are enough people bothered by this that it won't be long before someone comes up with a Firefox add-on to circumvent it.
I've seen worse. How about...
RMS = Richard Stallman - Mister Free Software himself
RMS = Windows Rights Management Services - Microsoft's proprietary system for restricting access to documents
I would add one additional step:
0. Back up your data and configuration files
For a while, about 7 years ago, IThell.com was one of my favorite sites. It had a nice forum for IT professionals to gather and vent about technical, managerial, and other problems. Then it suddenly seems to have been abandoned. The last time I checked, the main page of the site was still there, frozen in time.
Same here, except my fingers tend to gravitate to the ".coim" domain.
An excellent point. Here are the rhetorical questions I use to try to explain the appeal of amateur radio to non-hams:
"Why does anyone spend huge amounts of money on a fishing boats and fishing equipment, when they can just buy a fish at the grocery store?"
"Why do people go horseback riding, when a car would get them where they want to go, faster and more comfortably?"
Amateur radio is a hobby. Like most hobbies, it's not meant to be practical (though it can sometimes come in handy during emergencies).
Maybe they're the ones who come up with those crazy domain names found in spam emails? You know, like:e spam.cgi?id=geUTDKV8k
http://jqxxlzctyrwddq.fake-m0rtages.biz/sendmemor
Wow, I thought I was making up a fake-but-spammy-sounding URL, but "fake-m0rtages.biz" appears to be actually registered....
Whenever the topic of RFID tags comes up, I see suggestions on destroying them or disabling them. What about a different approach: jamming them?
Think of the children's story where the man forces a leprechaun to lead him to his pot of gold. The man ties a ribbon around the tree where the gold is buried, and makes the leprechaun promise not to remove the ribbon while the man goes to get his shovel. When the man returns, the leprechaun has tied ribbons around thousands of different trees, making it impossible for the man to find the one he wants.
Along the same lines, if you just bought a handful (several thousand or so, after all they're small and cheap) RFID tags and carried them around with you, wouldn't the multiple responses make it difficult or impossible for anyone to "scan" you without your knowledge or permission?
Can someone who's more familiar with the technical workings of RFID tags comment on whether this would work or not, and why?
The program that acts as a modem is called soundmodem. Its home is www.baycom.org/~tom/ham/soundmodem. You run audio from your radio's earphone to the computer's line-in, and from the computer's line-out to the radio's mic/line-in. Soundmodem handles converting the data-audio signal conversion.
The tricky part is getting the computer to actually turn on the mic (push the PTT button) on the radio before transmitting. This requires an interface between the computer's parallel or serial port, and the radio's PTT port.
I've just learned all of this while playing around with soundmodem during the last few weeks.
Microsoft Systems Management Server provides the ability to monitor exactly which users are using which executables, on what dates. It'll even present this info in an easty-to-read report. It works on hashes of the .exe's, so a user who thinks he's being clever by renaming sol.exe to sol1.exe will still be monitored.
Perhaps the best solution to excess "wasted" time, rather than trying to stamp out games altogether, is simply monitor everyone's game program use and make the results public. When there's a rush and the general workload is higher than normal, nobody will want to be the slacker who's been the at the top of the "Top 10 game players" in the department for 3 weeks in a row. I've heard of companies that take this approach with non-work-related web browsing, and have reported positive results.
2.0.36 ? But 2.0.40 has been out for months now! :)
It's open to any member of the public who has a amateur radio license. Flooding or jamming it would be "willful or malicious interference," which is prohibited by the FCC (and by its counterparts in all countries where amateur radio exists), and would result in one's license being revoked.
You'll get some strange looks in Japan when you start using those Mandarin Chinese phrases on people :)
You might want to check out the RULE project ("Run Up to date Linux Everywhere).
RULE home page
JWPce is an open source Japanese word processor for Microsoft Windows. I first started using it back in 1996, when I was living in Japan but only had English Windows.
One of its most useful features is the ability to highlight a Japanese word and get not only the pronunciation but an English translation as well.
All about JWPce