Same thing happened in radio. They called everything above 1MHz "HF" or High Frequency. Then they realized there was a/lot/ of spectrum up there, and called everything above 50MHz VHF (Very HF). Then they realized that was still a _huge_ chunk of spectrum, so everything above 400MHz was deemed UHF (Ultra HF). Then they're like oh crap, that's still a huge swath of spectrum above *that*, so they named everything above 1GHz microwave. Whew!!
"What is the point of amateur radio when the Internet has connected most of the globe?"
Indeed. But there are many remote places that the Internet has not reached and may never reach. Also, amateur radio has far better mobile operating abilities (i.e., when your cell phone is not in range of a tower, you can still use ham radio to make contact). The Internet (and, incidentally, cell phones) also tends to become unavailable when natural disaster (such as hurricanes or tsunamis) strike.
Ham radio is becoming overshadowed by the Internet, but Ham still has a few tricks up it's sleeve. It will still be relevant -- if not as popular -- for decades to come.
"few transmission methods can so easily slice through poor radio conditions as Morse"
True, but there are digital modes that *do* slice through the noise quite easily. In many situations, PSK31 can outperform morse. A PSK31 decoder can pick a signal out of the mud that a human ear can't even detect. Of course, there are other situations where morse outperforms PSK31, so it's kind of a wash.
Morse (or more properly, CW) has a place and should always have a slice bandwidth reserved for it's exclusive use (so it's not drowned out by other modes). But for people using digital modes, there is no real reason to learn morse.
The entry-level ticket, Technician, is just a written test, no morse. You also have no HF privileges (VHF and up only). However, as a Technician you can take a morse test and become a Technician Plus, and gain a limited set of HF privileges.
If you take a second written test, and pass the morse test, now you are a General with most HF privileges.
Take a third written test (no more morse test, you already passed that) and now you're an Extra, with all privileges.
Yeah, I'm a no-code Technician. Don't plan to learn code, either. I hope the FCC votes to remove the code requirement for HF, but I also hope that a portion of each band is reserved only for those who do pass a code test. That way, they can go there to get away from us no-code schmucks who are cluttering up the rest of the frequencies.:-P
The whole "technology X has lots of bandwidth!" thing is silly anyway. DOCSIS (Cable Modems) go up to 10Mbps. Who has 10Mbps cable? Nobody. You're lucky to get 3Mbps for less than $100 a month. If you want higher speeds, you will pay through the nose.
So, customers buying this "100Mbps" service will probably get 10Mbps tops unless they can pay $1000 a month and have a first-born son to sell.
"tax dollars spent to pay farmers to grow corn in Idaho"
As an Idahoan, I am deeply saddened by this comment. Idaho has spent thousands (we don't have millions) on its "Idaho Spuds" and "Real Idaho Potatoes" advertising compaigns, but obviously to no benefit. Sigh.
We do grow a little bit of corn here, but that's just to relieve the monotony of digging so many #$%^& potatoes.
Yup. IIRC, some "green" automobiles increase their efficiency by putting a sterling or other heat engine on the hot exhaust system, extracting another few % of energy.
It adds a lot of complexity without much gain, though. A permanent installation such as a iron forge and distillation plant would probably be much less complex -- sounds like you have a killer idea there. Quick, patent it!!
"Every DVD I have played is flawless and never choppy"
I think this has a lot to do with having MPEG2 decoding abilities in your video card, and having DVD software that takes advantage of it. When I had my 650MHz Duron, some DVD players (PowerDVD) would play movies choppy, others (Interactual -- I know, I know, yuck!!) would play smooth.
HP made them. The original Omnibook, 486-class, IIRC. We have a couple of them at work gathering dust. The mouse is actually pretty cool, it has no ball but is attached with a plastic "tongue" and it senses mouse movements via that (no mousing surface needed). The mouse is small, but feels surprisingly good.
It was probably dropped due to the left-right handedness issue, and the fact that touchpads take up less room in the chassis.
Putty doesn't have to be installed. It's just just one little EXE that can be run from a USB key or downloaded from the web and run in place (from your Temporary Internet Files folder).
"as when the ink dries in the head the whole printer has to be replaced"
I see this a lot in the comments in this article. Ever try a taking wet cotton swab to the head, or failing that, a swab dipped in alcohol? Always worked for me. Haven't owned an inkjet for a few years though, so maybe that trick doesn't work any more.
"Most commercially available cell-phones don't have encryption"
Au contraire. GSM (Cingular, AT&T, T-Mobile) phones have pretty good encryption. IIRC there was a/. article about someone breaking the protocol for the first time, and I think it took a supercomputer about a week to brute force it. I imagine CDMA (Sprint & Verizon) and whatever Nextel uses (iMode??) are similiar.
Of course, it's quite easy for the government to wiretap calls at the cell carrier side. But digital cell calls *are* encrypted while going "over the air."
Now, *analog* cell phones, a pretty much obsolete technology, can be picked up with just about any $50 police scanner.
"Just stick 10% of your income away in a bank account every time you get any money"
Mutual funds. They are MUCH less risky than the stock market, yet allow your money to grow faster than inflation (something that a savings account will NOT do -- the pitiful interest rates on bank savings accounts usually do not keep up with inflation, actually losing you money). Many mutual fund companies do an auto-pay or direct-debit. I don't miss the $100 a month that automatically goes into my fund, but man I've got a nice chunk 'o' change there if I ever get laid off or have to come up with a few grand on short notice (mutual funds are totally liquid, you can cash out at any time).
I'm not flying commerical airliners anymore, but it's not because I'm afraid of terrorist attack. It's the infringments upon my personal rights by my government that I will be subjected to if I choose to fly. Take off my shoes? Submit to a strip search? Body cavity search? Forget it. I'll walk. The terrorists have already won.
Indeed. If GUI's had first come out with hard-to-read transparent windows, everyone would think it a great advance when a later version made them a more legible opaque.
"killing cops in games could be considered a future crime, like in Minority Report"
+5 Insightful! I think we are headed that way. I don't want this to degenerate into a gun rights flamefest, but what the heck -- this is a Columbine article and it's bound to happen sooner rather than later: I think the reason that places like DC, Illinois, and NYC prevent law-abiding citizens from owning handguns is because those citizens 'might' shoot somebody, someday. Sounds to me like future crime is already legislated and punished in some areas. (The problem with that is, of course, is that most gun owners and most guns are never involved in a crime.)
I beg to differ. It's imperfect, I'll admit, but overall it was a fun action flick. Richard Roxburgh played a brilliant vampire (I loved his performance).
And anyway, Kate Beckinsale and those vampire chicks are *hot*.
Re:Can't beat the price/performance ratio...
on
Attack of the $1 DVDs
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I got a bunch of these $1 DVDs at Wal-Mart months ago. The classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead and the excellent and dark 1950 version of DOA were both good picks.
Unfortunately, most of the other ones were crap. Mostly just bad movies and/or bad acting, but on one of them the audio was so distorted that you couldn't understand what people are saying.
Load time isn't just dependant on RAM and CPU speed. The bottleneck is the disk! I would contend that an IDE machine with 1GHz/256MB/RAID-1 or RAID-0 will outperform a 2GHz/512MB/single drive system, as far as boot and load times are concerned. Especially if we are using 7,200rpm drives.
"has one of the first (if not the first) use of the laser special effects"
You didnt even mention where they were used. There was the face-altering scene, of course, but IIRC lasers were also used to create the holograms during the interrogation scene. The commentary says that the holograms were really cool and freaky in real life, but were flat and uninteresting once on film. Pity.
Slashdot Mirror
[What will they call the next one? "OMG"...]
/lot/ of spectrum up there, and called everything above 50MHz VHF (Very HF). Then they realized that was still a _huge_ chunk of spectrum, so everything above 400MHz was deemed UHF (Ultra HF). Then they're like oh crap, that's still a huge swath of spectrum above *that*, so they named everything above 1GHz microwave. Whew!!
Same thing happened in radio. They called everything above 1MHz "HF" or High Frequency. Then they realized there was a
"What is the point of amateur radio when the Internet has connected most of the globe?"
Indeed. But there are many remote places that the Internet has not reached and may never reach. Also, amateur radio has far better mobile operating abilities (i.e., when your cell phone is not in range of a tower, you can still use ham radio to make contact). The Internet (and, incidentally, cell phones) also tends to become unavailable when natural disaster (such as hurricanes or tsunamis) strike.
Ham radio is becoming overshadowed by the Internet, but Ham still has a few tricks up it's sleeve. It will still be relevant -- if not as popular -- for decades to come.
"few transmission methods can so easily slice through poor radio conditions as Morse"
True, but there are digital modes that *do* slice through the noise quite easily. In many situations, PSK31 can outperform morse. A PSK31 decoder can pick a signal out of the mud that a human ear can't even detect. Of course, there are other situations where morse outperforms PSK31, so it's kind of a wash.
Morse (or more properly, CW) has a place and should always have a slice bandwidth reserved for it's exclusive use (so it's not drowned out by other modes). But for people using digital modes, there is no real reason to learn morse.
The entry-level ticket, Technician, is just a written test, no morse. You also have no HF privileges (VHF and up only). However, as a Technician you can take a morse test and become a Technician Plus, and gain a limited set of HF privileges.
:-P
If you take a second written test, and pass the morse test, now you are a General with most HF privileges.
Take a third written test (no more morse test, you already passed that) and now you're an Extra, with all privileges.
Yeah, I'm a no-code Technician. Don't plan to learn code, either. I hope the FCC votes to remove the code requirement for HF, but I also hope that a portion of each band is reserved only for those who do pass a code test. That way, they can go there to get away from us no-code schmucks who are cluttering up the rest of the frequencies.
You guys are making me sad... check out my prices: http://cableone.net/internet/plans.asp
:(
$100/mo for 4Mbps. Cableone is the only provider in my area, and I can't even get DSL.
The whole "technology X has lots of bandwidth!" thing is silly anyway. DOCSIS (Cable Modems) go up to 10Mbps. Who has 10Mbps cable? Nobody. You're lucky to get 3Mbps for less than $100 a month. If you want higher speeds, you will pay through the nose.
So, customers buying this "100Mbps" service will probably get 10Mbps tops unless they can pay $1000 a month and have a first-born son to sell.
"tax dollars spent to pay farmers to grow corn in Idaho"
As an Idahoan, I am deeply saddened by this comment. Idaho has spent thousands (we don't have millions) on its "Idaho Spuds" and "Real Idaho Potatoes" advertising compaigns, but obviously to no benefit. Sigh.
We do grow a little bit of corn here, but that's just to relieve the monotony of digging so many #$%^& potatoes.
Yup. IIRC, some "green" automobiles increase their efficiency by putting a sterling or other heat engine on the hot exhaust system, extracting another few % of energy.
It adds a lot of complexity without much gain, though. A permanent installation such as a iron forge and distillation plant would probably be much less complex -- sounds like you have a killer idea there. Quick, patent it!!
"Every DVD I have played is flawless and never choppy"
I think this has a lot to do with having MPEG2 decoding abilities in your video card, and having DVD software that takes advantage of it. When I had my 650MHz Duron, some DVD players (PowerDVD) would play movies choppy, others (Interactual -- I know, I know, yuck!!) would play smooth.
HP made them. The original Omnibook, 486-class, IIRC. We have a couple of them at work gathering dust. The mouse is actually pretty cool, it has no ball but is attached with a plastic "tongue" and it senses mouse movements via that (no mousing surface needed). The mouse is small, but feels surprisingly good.
It was probably dropped due to the left-right handedness issue, and the fact that touchpads take up less room in the chassis.
Putty doesn't have to be installed. It's just just one little EXE that can be run from a USB key or downloaded from the web and run in place (from your Temporary Internet Files folder).
"as when the ink dries in the head the whole printer has to be replaced"
I see this a lot in the comments in this article. Ever try a taking wet cotton swab to the head, or failing that, a swab dipped in alcohol? Always worked for me. Haven't owned an inkjet for a few years though, so maybe that trick doesn't work any more.
"Most commercially available cell-phones don't have encryption"
/. article about someone breaking the protocol for the first time, and I think it took a supercomputer about a week to brute force it. I imagine CDMA (Sprint & Verizon) and whatever Nextel uses (iMode??) are similiar.
Au contraire. GSM (Cingular, AT&T, T-Mobile) phones have pretty good encryption. IIRC there was a
Of course, it's quite easy for the government to wiretap calls at the cell carrier side. But digital cell calls *are* encrypted while going "over the air."
Now, *analog* cell phones, a pretty much obsolete technology, can be picked up with just about any $50 police scanner.
"...I was seriously considering getting a gun, ... and killing every motherfucker in the room."
Oops, you forgot to check that 'Post Anonymously" box. The police will be knocking on your door shortly.
"Just stick 10% of your income away in a bank account every time you get any money"
Mutual funds. They are MUCH less risky than the stock market, yet allow your money to grow faster than inflation (something that a savings account will NOT do -- the pitiful interest rates on bank savings accounts usually do not keep up with inflation, actually losing you money). Many mutual fund companies do an auto-pay or direct-debit. I don't miss the $100 a month that automatically goes into my fund, but man I've got a nice chunk 'o' change there if I ever get laid off or have to come up with a few grand on short notice (mutual funds are totally liquid, you can cash out at any time).
"Are you not flying anymore?"
I'm not flying commerical airliners anymore, but it's not because I'm afraid of terrorist attack. It's the infringments upon my personal rights by my government that I will be subjected to if I choose to fly. Take off my shoes? Submit to a strip search? Body cavity search? Forget it. I'll walk. The terrorists have already won.
"People died, there is absolutely nothing funny"
People dying can be funny. Look at the Darwin Awards.
That said, this particular event was most certainly not funny.
"I'm not going to scrag my main machine to play"
:)
One word for you: QEMU. Or if you're rich, VMWare.
You're welcome.
"Surely 'prettier' is a subjective term"
Indeed. If GUI's had first come out with hard-to-read transparent windows, everyone would think it a great advance when a later version made them a more legible opaque.
"killing cops in games could be considered a future crime, like in Minority Report"
+5 Insightful! I think we are headed that way. I don't want this to degenerate into a gun rights flamefest, but what the heck -- this is a Columbine article and it's bound to happen sooner rather than later: I think the reason that places like DC, Illinois, and NYC prevent law-abiding citizens from owning handguns is because those citizens 'might' shoot somebody, someday. Sounds to me like future crime is already legislated and punished in some areas. (The problem with that is, of course, is that most gun owners and most guns are never involved in a crime.)
Eh, I wasn't using that Karma anyways...
I beg to differ. It's imperfect, I'll admit, but overall it was a fun action flick. Richard Roxburgh played a brilliant vampire (I loved his performance).
And anyway, Kate Beckinsale and those vampire chicks are *hot*.
I got a bunch of these $1 DVDs at Wal-Mart months ago. The classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead and the excellent and dark 1950 version of DOA were both good picks.
Unfortunately, most of the other ones were crap. Mostly just bad movies and/or bad acting, but on one of them the audio was so distorted that you couldn't understand what people are saying.
Still, it's hard to go wrong for a buck.
Can you compile and run UML? Inside of a UML you can have root.
I looked a little bit and I don't see that you need root on the host system to compile and run UML, but I didnt read too close so I could be wrong.
Load time isn't just dependant on RAM and CPU speed. The bottleneck is the disk! I would contend that an IDE machine with 1GHz/256MB/RAID-1 or RAID-0 will outperform a 2GHz/512MB/single drive system, as far as boot and load times are concerned. Especially if we are using 7,200rpm drives.
"has one of the first (if not the first) use of the laser special effects"
You didnt even mention where they were used. There was the face-altering scene, of course, but IIRC lasers were also used to create the holograms during the interrogation scene. The commentary says that the holograms were really cool and freaky in real life, but were flat and uninteresting once on film. Pity.