Analog radio is inherently imperfect because the information is not discrete. A loss of amplitude, or an attenuation, means a change in the content of the signal, and there's no checking mechanism to know that something changed. So what get's played (or recorded) is not exactly what was broadcast.
I'd put it another way. Digital radio is inherently imperfect because the information is discrete. Analog signals start out perfect in theory but degrade in practice because of the imperfect environment of the real world. Digital signals are born imperfect because they're quantized, and quantization always introduces errors. However this error is known, controllable, and can be made as small as desired (but never zero). In practice, digital signals aren't as sensitive to degradation from the imperfect environment as analog, and what degradation there is is more predictable. Thus the tradeoff is one of random, hard-to-predict errors vs. less random, more controllable, more predictable errors.
Then again, maybe it's because I don't have 24 karat gold speaker cords that were woven by maiden virgins under the full moon of an Aquaries retrograde.
Oh you lucky kids today. I remember when we only had copper speaker cords twisted by bowlegged barmaids during a drenching downpour. And we liked it!
Thanks. I stand corrected. I guess I consider them both vastly overused technologies that make the web a more hostile place to be, and thus I tend to think of them both as the same thing.
Agreed. It's probably time to propose to your congresscritter to enact a law that requires any web-based information service that interacts with any government agency to be compatible with W3 standards.
The real reason this kind of stuff happens is that the IT critters (more likely, IT contractors) are all Windoze-certified and haven't a clue how to build a W3-compliant website, and/or they're only familiar with Microsoft site-building tools that encourage (require?) the use of insecure, proprietary junk like ActiveX. The IT staff just flat out LIES to management, saying things like "there's no way you can get the features you want without ActiveX" and "it'll be more expensive to support non-IE browsers", and management is too uninformed to realize they're being lied to. The short-term solution is to fire any IT staff who says things like that and hire people who have a clue. The long-term solution is to pass a law requiring clued-in IT staff. Once a significant chunk of web-site-building contractors realize they won't be able to do any more business with the government with their Frontpage staff, they'll be forced to train them properly.
Exactly. But it's not Google's fault. Keyhole has always been Windoze only. Wake me when there's an OSX version. It sounds like Google is going to DTRT and make it happen.
How many people that you really want flying an airplane would be able to handle the execution of dozens or (on large planes) hudreds of people? How many eight year old girls would it have to have their throats cut before you or anyone else opened the door?
Pilots can control this kind of thing without opening the door. For example, they can depressurize the cabin. How easy would it be, do you think, for a terrorist to cut someone's throat while he's holding an oxygen mask up to his own face to keep from suffocating? How about if the plane is upside-down? I know commercial jetliners aren't rated for aerobatics, but a skilled pilot can roll a jetliner without overstressing it while still tumbling the passengers all over the cabin.
Anybody who's ever watched Star Trek knows that when you overload the power supply of a tricorder, phaser, or communicator, the thing makes a high pitched whine and then goes boom. This kid obviously doesn't watch enough TV.
This is just too silly to be believed. The sudden appearance of a black hole on Long Island would have profound consequences for the planet.
The very fact that I'm still sitting here scratching my ass and posting to Slashdot proves that the world is still intact.
my guess is that Humma Kavula/John Malkovich is the character sitting at the dining room table that stands up and has no body below the edge of the table
Interesting. I interpreted that guy as Slartibartfast. Or as he's also known, "Fjord Perfect."
If not, where could I find a RJ-11-to-VoIP converter for my base station? The system has 2 lines, so I could convert one to VoIP and use the other as a normal land-line. Cool!
This story seemed like no big deal to me. I've been using my Siemens Gigaset 8825 with VoIP from Packet8 for several months now. Packet8 send you a network interface box that has an RJ-45 for your broadband connection and an RJ-11 for your phone, and boom! You're in business. Line 1 of my Siemens is landline (still needed for 911, faxing, and reliability during power failures); Line 2 is VoIP with unmetered long distance and an area code of my choice that gives my friends two states away the ability to call me with a local call. 20 bucks a month. You could do the same thing with Vonage but they're 25 bucks a month.
IMHO, using VoIP with Packet8 or Vonage is much preferable to Skype because
a) It doesn't require a computer in the loop.
b) It works with any telephone.
Of course it could be better; it could be open source hardware so we could build/program the network interface boxes ourselves, but hey, it ain't bad for now.
Funny enough, the only state that I know of to be officially secular is France.
Then apparently you're not familiar with Turkey. The people of Turkey are 99.8% Muslim, but the government is so radically secular that the wearing of scarves by women employed in government-related positions is expressly forbidden.
It's hard to compare the Kashmir problem to anything in the United States because we aren't involved in any border disputes with our neighbors. The closest thing that I can come up with would be to say that Texas still belongs to Mexico.
Perhaps, but we do have internal border disputes in the United States, often because rivers tend to move around. The city of Kaskaskia, Illinois actually lies west of the Mississippi River because of an avulsion, and the 200-year-old border dispute between Texas and Oklahoma was only finally settled in (believe it or not) 2000. The problems certainly can't be compared with the situation in Kashmir, but nevertheless borders even
in the U.S. aren't always as fixed and settled as they might seem.
I for one welcome our new fingerprint scanning overlords. I'm sure they have our best interests at heart, and we all know that fingerprint readers cannot be fooled.
The reason AC is used because it's easier/cheaper to efficiently step up (and down) the voltage to useful levels, as per your power transmission example.
Exactly right. The real issue is that transmission lines are not perfect conductors; there is always some small resistance which causes power to be lost in heating up the wire. The heat loss is given by the square of the current times that resistance. Therefore, you want to transmit power with as low a current as possible to minimize the power lost along the wire itself. Lowering the current necessarily requires raising the voltage if you want the same power to come out the other end of the wire, thus power is most efficiently transmitted at high voltages and low currents. This is just as true for DC as it is for AC, but AC allows you to easily step the voltage back down again for use at the load.
If we had superconducting transmission lines--which could become commonplace this century--the whole issue would become moot because we'd be able to efficiently transmit at high current and low voltage and DC would be just as practical as AC (if not more so because of the lack of AC radiation effects mentioned by another poster).
Ok, so Hawkins "A Brief History of Time" would qualify as a popular scientific publications...
Stephen Hawking wrote "A Brief History of Time". Richard Dawkins, the subject of this article, wrote "The Blind Watchmaker" and lots of other books on evolutionary biology. Two different authors.
> I still remember lifting up the rubber boot around the shifter and seeing road
>>Hey, that sounds like a handy feature for checking for black ice & whatnot. Also for checking on altitude without relying on the instruments. VFR rulez!
Not to mention saving lots of time when nature calls.
Rest stop? We don't need no steenking rest stop! Just lift up the boot and let fly!
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You had DAC chips? We had to build our DACs from scratch out of op-amps and resistor ladders. And we LIKED it!
Damn kids today.
I'd put it another way. Digital radio is inherently imperfect because the information is discrete. Analog signals start out perfect in theory but degrade in practice because of the imperfect environment of the real world. Digital signals are born imperfect because they're quantized, and quantization always introduces errors. However this error is known, controllable, and can be made as small as desired (but never zero). In practice, digital signals aren't as sensitive to degradation from the imperfect environment as analog, and what degradation there is is more predictable. Thus the tradeoff is one of random, hard-to-predict errors vs. less random, more controllable, more predictable errors.
Oh you lucky kids today. I remember when we only had copper speaker cords twisted by bowlegged barmaids during a drenching downpour. And we liked it!
Thanks. I stand corrected. I guess I consider them both vastly overused technologies that make the web a more hostile place to be, and thus I tend to think of them both as the same thing.
The real reason this kind of stuff happens is that the IT critters (more likely, IT contractors) are all Windoze-certified and haven't a clue how to build a W3-compliant website, and/or they're only familiar with Microsoft site-building tools that encourage (require?) the use of insecure, proprietary junk like ActiveX. The IT staff just flat out LIES to management, saying things like "there's no way you can get the features you want without ActiveX" and "it'll be more expensive to support non-IE browsers", and management is too uninformed to realize they're being lied to. The short-term solution is to fire any IT staff who says things like that and hire people who have a clue. The long-term solution is to pass a law requiring clued-in IT staff. Once a significant chunk of web-site-building contractors realize they won't be able to do any more business with the government with their Frontpage staff, they'll be forced to train them properly.
Exactly. But it's not Google's fault. Keyhole has always been Windoze only. Wake me when there's an OSX version. It sounds like Google is going to DTRT and make it happen.
Yes, well, being black doesn't necessarily prevent you from having pasty white skin.
Pilots can control this kind of thing without opening the door. For example, they can depressurize the cabin. How easy would it be, do you think, for a terrorist to cut someone's throat while he's holding an oxygen mask up to his own face to keep from suffocating? How about if the plane is upside-down? I know commercial jetliners aren't rated for aerobatics, but a skilled pilot can roll a jetliner without overstressing it while still tumbling the passengers all over the cabin.
That's my heart bleeding for poor Larry.
Cry me a freakin' river.
Anybody who's ever watched Star Trek knows that when you overload the power supply of a tricorder, phaser, or communicator, the thing makes a high pitched whine and then goes boom. This kid obviously doesn't watch enough TV.
War of the Worlds? It stars Tom Cruise and is directed by Steven Spielberg. If Minority Report is any indication, WOTW is gonna blow chunks.
What is this "wife" you speak of?
Don't be silly. Everybody knows you can't take a picture of a black hole. And that's the second thing that black holes and vampires have in common.
Oh wait.
Here you go.
And yes, they do ship to the United States.
Interesting. I interpreted that guy as Slartibartfast. Or as he's also known, "Fjord Perfect."
Wait... Microsoft has a Chief Security Executive?
Now that's what I wanna see when I type "define: oxymoron" into Google!
This story seemed like no big deal to me. I've been using my Siemens Gigaset 8825 with VoIP from Packet8 for several months now. Packet8 send you a network interface box that has an RJ-45 for your broadband connection and an RJ-11 for your phone, and boom! You're in business. Line 1 of my Siemens is landline (still needed for 911, faxing, and reliability during power failures); Line 2 is VoIP with unmetered long distance and an area code of my choice that gives my friends two states away the ability to call me with a local call. 20 bucks a month. You could do the same thing with Vonage but they're 25 bucks a month. IMHO, using VoIP with Packet8 or Vonage is much preferable to Skype because
a) It doesn't require a computer in the loop.
b) It works with any telephone.
Of course it could be better; it could be open source hardware so we could build/program the network interface boxes ourselves, but hey, it ain't bad for now.
Then apparently you're not familiar with Turkey. The people of Turkey are 99.8% Muslim, but the government is so radically secular that the wearing of scarves by women employed in government-related positions is expressly forbidden.
Perhaps, but we do have internal border disputes in the United States, often because rivers tend to move around. The city of Kaskaskia, Illinois actually lies west of the Mississippi River because of an avulsion, and the 200-year-old border dispute between Texas and Oklahoma was only finally settled in (believe it or not) 2000. The problems certainly can't be compared with the situation in Kashmir, but nevertheless borders even in the U.S. aren't always as fixed and settled as they might seem.
Peter Norvig, another Lisp guru, has written about this topic.
I for one welcome our new fingerprint scanning overlords. I'm sure they have our best interests at heart, and we all know that fingerprint readers cannot be fooled.
Exactly right. The real issue is that transmission lines are not perfect conductors; there is always some small resistance which causes power to be lost in heating up the wire. The heat loss is given by the square of the current times that resistance. Therefore, you want to transmit power with as low a current as possible to minimize the power lost along the wire itself. Lowering the current necessarily requires raising the voltage if you want the same power to come out the other end of the wire, thus power is most efficiently transmitted at high voltages and low currents. This is just as true for DC as it is for AC, but AC allows you to easily step the voltage back down again for use at the load.
If we had superconducting transmission lines--which could become commonplace this century--the whole issue would become moot because we'd be able to efficiently transmit at high current and low voltage and DC would be just as practical as AC (if not more so because of the lack of AC radiation effects mentioned by another poster).
Stephen Hawking wrote "A Brief History of Time". Richard Dawkins, the subject of this article, wrote "The Blind Watchmaker" and lots of other books on evolutionary biology. Two different authors.
>>Hey, that sounds like a handy feature for checking for black ice & whatnot. Also for checking on altitude without relying on the instruments. VFR rulez!
Not to mention saving lots of time when nature calls.
Rest stop? We don't need no steenking rest stop! Just lift up the boot and let fly!