What you want is a "mint tin" CW rig, such as the Pixie. Range is much more than 50 miles (depending on antenna), but I don't know what a PP3 battery is or how long it lasts.
I don't think it is a requirement for ATV, or some of the other stuff mentioned.
It's not. Morse was for the HF bands (below 50MHz) which are used for long-range communications. Morse-less hams were restricted to short-range frequencies*, where they could do ATV, PSK31, etc all they pleased.
*Ok, so 50-54MHZ is sometimes long range, but certainly not often nor reliably.
I've found that a scaled-down version of a 72-hour kit is great as a car kit. Rather bulky for a family of 5, even after omitting sleeping bags, but the loss of trunk space is worth it.
Must depend on the area. A couple of years ago, I was lucky to get one bar next to a south-facing window in a house in the middle of nowhere, Idaho. Now I get signal almost anywhere in the house. I guess Idaho is simply more important than TN and NY.;)
I suppose most of those "loaded and unlocked" weapons are intended for home defense, but even for that application there's no reason to keep the weapon actually loaded.
An unloaded gun is about as useful as a paper weight in a self-defense situation. It requires far too many fine motor movements to load a gun in a high-stress, adrenaline-charged instant. You're far more likely to spill that speedloader on the carpet than actually get it into your gun with your hands shaking.
It had better be ready to go or all your attacker is going to do is take it away and beat you with it.
we should fund firearms training courses to teach people how to store and use their guns safely.
Couldn't agree more. We could start in the first grade. Heck if we're going to teach them about "alternative lifestyles", I see no reason not to teach them about firearm safety.
You actually consider it to be a good thing when a "bad guy" gets shot?
Yes.
Next question?
precisely how do you guys define the concept?
In the context of using deadly force for self-defense outside the home, the "bad guy" must 1. demonstrate the intent, 2. have the means, and 3. be in the act or immediately about to begin the act of a violent crime. To use deadly force in self-defense, you must also shoot only to STOP the threat, not necessarily kill the attacker. If they also happen to die, oh well.
Inside the home, the rules change (see "Castle Doctrine"). You pretty much have a green light to defend yourself with deadly force unless the invader is actively retreating from the home and clearly no longer poses a threat.
These concepts are well-defined by legislation and case law (though they do vary by jurisdiction). It isn't a fuzzy gray line.
In short, "good guys" and "bad guys" alike have nothing to fear from a gun-toting citizen unless they violently attack said citizen or invade their home.
It should be possible to write a Linux kernel or fs patch for a "flash-mode" not unlike the existing patches for laptop-mode. Laptop-mode saves up disk writes (meaning that Bad things happen if you should lose power) and then commits them all in one go. I'm sure you could tune that same idea for flash storage. You would probably need some code in the filesystem so that if an application truncated and then rewrote a file, you could examine which sectors didn't change between the old and new versions, and only commit the changed sectors to flash.
If anyone remembers the old Psion Series 3 handheld computer, it came with removable flash disks and features addressing the flash issue were integrated into the OS. Whenever you made a "change" to a file, the changes were merely appended to the end of the existing file (thus requiring, say, only a 1K write on a 100K file instead of the full 100K being rewritten). If I remember correctly, you could periodically run a shrink operation to commit the changes back into the main file and thus free up the space wasted by the change logs.
New file formats are a double-edged sword. If my new MSOffice documents can't be read by older versions, then I might as well save a bundle of money by switching to OpenOffice.org. At least OOo documents can be read by MSOffice.
Using satellites would introduce too much latency to be practical for routine phone calls
Almost -- using geostationary satellites would introduce too much latency to be practical for routine phone calls. LEO or Low Earth Orbit satellites are close enough to introduce minimal delay though. In fact, Iridium and GlobalStar (and the older Inmarsat) satellite phone services use LEO satellites. There is still a little bit of lag, but not too bad.
A sugar low means you'll lose thinking ability (you look dumb) and won't realize what you're doing or what's going on.
This leads quickly (just a few minutes sometimes) to passing out (possible convulsions, spasms) and possibly coma/death if no one knows what's happening.
It's worse than that -- a well-intentioned person may actually give you a shot of insulin ("Hm, an unconscious diabetic, diabetics gives themselves shots all the time, I'd better give them a shot!"), which of course makes the problem 10 times worse... if it doesn't kill you.
Oh come now..."criminal"?!? He was a student there!
And how could the police know he was a student there? He refused to show ID!
There is a concept called "prima facie" evidence. If you you are pulled over and refuse to produce a drivers license, that's prima facie evidence you are not a licensed driver, and you can be charged with unlicensed driving. By refusing to show a student ID, then the police were justified, by law, in assuming guy was not a student.
That's all irrelevant, though. Even if he *had* produced a valid student ID, he was *still* required to leave the premises after being told to do so by the private property owner or an agent thereof. The law gives private property owners that right. If you don't like it, don't enter private property.
What's next? Worst Buy door-nazis tasering shoppers who refuse to consent to having their bags searched?
Retailers are *already* empowered to detain anyone suspected of stealing until law enforcement arrives. This is nothing new. If you don't like it, don't enter private property.
Tasering some guy because he doesn't have ID tells me we might be close.
Hello, he wasn't Tasered because he refused to show ID. He was Tasered for criminal trespass -- if you're asked to leave private property and refuse, that's a misdemeanor in most jurisdictions.
Come on, this is Super Heated Plasma Fireballs we're talking about here, it's only fitting that they're watched on a vision re-production device capable of understanding the concept of Plasma, isn't it ?
So... what if yout put a plasma TV in a microwave?
A $10K deductible is all fine and dandy, until something happens that insurance won't fully cover. The insurance companies are weasels and will do anything to get out of paying. We have a $5K deductible, but that's PER PERSON. Suddenly my $5K deductible is $10K if two people get hurt.
And in my sad experience, the insurance company says "gee, we don't cover this... or that... nor this other thing" and "oh, and we'll only pay 50% of this line item, and 30% of this line item". Now my $10K bill is $15K. All this and I'm still shelling out several $K per year on premiums.
I'm ranting now, but a "$10K deductible" means you better have about $25K on hand to cover an emergency.
The whole point of the new arrangement... is to put the most-frequent letters first
Reminds me of the Fitaly layout. I bought a FitalyStamp sticker that turned a previously frustrating Grafiti area on my Palm into a useful keyboard. I got pretty good with it after a couple of weeks, too.
Most of the differences appeared to be brightness/contrast/saturation to me, which can easily be altered on most TV sets. The sharpness, eh, yeah there's a bit of a difference but I don't know if it's enough to justify the expense of going from DVD and analog TV to the newer formats. Hard to tell from a picture on a website.
The other two wires are for power. Notice how the phone works during a blackout?
Er, no. Not anymore:
An RJ11 jack uses two of the six positions... In the powered variation, Pins 2 and 5 (black and yellow) carry 24-volt, DC power. While the phone line itself supplies enough power for most telephone terminals, old telephone terminals with incandescent lights in them (such as the classic Western Electric Trimline) need more power than the phone line can supply. Typically, the power on Pins 2 and 5 comes from a transformer plugged into a wall near one jack, supplying power to all of the jacks in the house.
So even if you do have some ancient phone that needs juice on those wires, you have to plug something into wall power to get power into them. The phone company does not power them.
In 99.9% of modern installations, the 2nd yellow/black pair is Line 2.
Is there even any point to running high-performance 3D games in Wine? I would expect that they would run a good bit slower, and it would really suck to hit some bug in Wine right before you're about to make the winning score and have it all crash on you.
Heck, I had problems playing Starcraft, an old 2D game in Wine, but to be fair that was over a year ago.
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What you want is a "mint tin" CW rig, such as the Pixie. Range is much more than 50 miles (depending on antenna), but I don't know what a PP3 battery is or how long it lasts.
Just Google for "QRP" (low-power) transceivers.
*Ok, so 50-54MHZ is sometimes long range, but certainly not often nor reliably.
I've found that a scaled-down version of a 72-hour kit is great as a car kit. Rather bulky for a family of 5, even after omitting sleeping bags, but the loss of trunk space is worth it.
Must depend on the area. A couple of years ago, I was lucky to get one bar next to a south-facing window in a house in the middle of nowhere, Idaho. Now I get signal almost anywhere in the house. I guess Idaho is simply more important than TN and NY. ;)
It had better be ready to go or all your attacker is going to do is take it away and beat you with it.
Couldn't agree more. We could start in the first grade. Heck if we're going to teach them about "alternative lifestyles", I see no reason not to teach them about firearm safety.
Next question?
In the context of using deadly force for self-defense outside the home, the "bad guy" must 1. demonstrate the intent, 2. have the means, and 3. be in the act or immediately about to begin the act of a violent crime. To use deadly force in self-defense, you must also shoot only to STOP the threat, not necessarily kill the attacker. If they also happen to die, oh well.
Inside the home, the rules change (see "Castle Doctrine"). You pretty much have a green light to defend yourself with deadly force unless the invader is actively retreating from the home and clearly no longer poses a threat.
These concepts are well-defined by legislation and case law (though they do vary by jurisdiction). It isn't a fuzzy gray line.
In short, "good guys" and "bad guys" alike have nothing to fear from a gun-toting citizen unless they violently attack said citizen or invade their home.
It should be possible to write a Linux kernel or fs patch for a "flash-mode" not unlike the existing patches for laptop-mode. Laptop-mode saves up disk writes (meaning that Bad things happen if you should lose power) and then commits them all in one go. I'm sure you could tune that same idea for flash storage. You would probably need some code in the filesystem so that if an application truncated and then rewrote a file, you could examine which sectors didn't change between the old and new versions, and only commit the changed sectors to flash.
If anyone remembers the old Psion Series 3 handheld computer, it came with removable flash disks and features addressing the flash issue were integrated into the OS. Whenever you made a "change" to a file, the changes were merely appended to the end of the existing file (thus requiring, say, only a 1K write on a 100K file instead of the full 100K being rewritten). If I remember correctly, you could periodically run a shrink operation to commit the changes back into the main file and thus free up the space wasted by the change logs.
Man I miss my Psion...
Er, I'm going to hope that you're being sarcastic, since giving up privacy *is* a loss of freedom.
There is a concept called "prima facie" evidence. If you you are pulled over and refuse to produce a drivers license, that's prima facie evidence you are not a licensed driver, and you can be charged with unlicensed driving. By refusing to show a student ID, then the police were justified, by law, in assuming guy was not a student.
That's all irrelevant, though. Even if he *had* produced a valid student ID, he was *still* required to leave the premises after being told to do so by the private property owner or an agent thereof. The law gives private property owners that right. If you don't like it, don't enter private property.
Retailers are *already* empowered to detain anyone suspected of stealing until law enforcement arrives. This is nothing new. If you don't like it, don't enter private property.
The universe as we know it might implode.
Of course, that's mainly due to pollution rather than temperature or salinity changes, but still.
These concepts remind me of an old Novell "bouncing ball" screensaver. The ball had a "tail" that grew in length as the load on the server increased.
A $10K deductible is all fine and dandy, until something happens that insurance won't fully cover. The insurance companies are weasels and will do anything to get out of paying. We have a $5K deductible, but that's PER PERSON. Suddenly my $5K deductible is $10K if two people get hurt.
And in my sad experience, the insurance company says "gee, we don't cover this... or that... nor this other thing" and "oh, and we'll only pay 50% of this line item, and 30% of this line item". Now my $10K bill is $15K. All this and I'm still shelling out several $K per year on premiums.
I'm ranting now, but a "$10K deductible" means you better have about $25K on hand to cover an emergency.
I hate insurance companies.
Most of the differences appeared to be brightness/contrast/saturation to me, which can easily be altered on most TV sets. The sharpness, eh, yeah there's a bit of a difference but I don't know if it's enough to justify the expense of going from DVD and analog TV to the newer formats. Hard to tell from a picture on a website.
An RJ11 jack uses two of the six positions
-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RJ11%2C_RJ14%2C_RJ25
So even if you do have some ancient phone that needs juice on those wires, you have to plug something into wall power to get power into them. The phone company does not power them.
In 99.9% of modern installations, the 2nd yellow/black pair is Line 2.
Is there even any point to running high-performance 3D games in Wine? I would expect that they would run a good bit slower, and it would really suck to hit some bug in Wine right before you're about to make the winning score and have it all crash on you.
Heck, I had problems playing Starcraft, an old 2D game in Wine, but to be fair that was over a year ago.