He may not think that Anakin Skywalker counts as Darth Vader.
Asside from this contradicting everything else Lucas said about episodes 1-3 in the 80's, it's dead wrong. Anakin Skywalker was in the third movie, episode 6, if you consider him the same character as Vader or not.
He may not think that Anakin Skywalker counts as Darth Vader.
No Lucas clearly understands that Darth and Anakin skywalker are the same character. Back in the 80's when he spoke of 9 movies it was to be 3 independent 3 movie sets. The "first" was set long before the original, the characters from the "first" 3 would have been long dead before the original was to have occured. The last 3 were to have been after the original. He stated that. I don't recall if he was as clear about how far past the original that last set of 3 was in time as he had been with the first three, but he made it clear that it would be far enough that there would be no characters from the first three in any of the other six. He very clearly stated that the two robots were to be the only two characters that were to be in all 9 movies and that none of the non-robot characters would be in per-quels or sequels.
He's clearly changed his vision since then. That doesn't mean episodes 1, 2 and C are any worse or any better than his original vision. I personally think he could have done mush better if he had followed his original vision, but looking at things like Jar-Jar it's clear that he could have screwed up the original vision too by trying to be too cute and creating merchandising oportunities and forgetting who the original movie was targeted at and appealed to. But any claim that a quick taste of the story for episode 3 was taken from anything Lucas did in '83 is clearly bogus.
And let me correct myself before everyone else does - the word from Lucas back then was a vision of 3 movies set long before the original 3, in which there would be no characters that overlap with the original 3 except the robots, and that followed by the last 3 episodes, again with only the robots as a common thread. He certainly had no intention of making the first 3 include Darth Vader, Yoda or anyone else he might be weaseling in because of their obvious marketing potential back in '83 when he was laying out his plan for the 9 movies.
episode III might be like (either taken from Lucas' journal in 1983, or just a fake
Considering that 1 and 2 are nothing at all like Lucas said they would be back in '83 (remember the promise that none of the characters from the original series would be in any of the other six episodes?), nothing he said back them would matter at all. This is clearly a fake.
Does anyone old enough to use slashdot without mommy or daddy's help care about this anyway? The original episode was fantastic and a quantum leap in sci-fi production. The next two were ok, but suffered from a lot of very obvious merchandising influences and also bad muppets rather than the good innovative effects of the original. Things went down hill from there, I can't see how episodes one, two and now three could have any appeal unless the advertisements in your Saturday morning cartoons and on your 60% sugar breakfast cereal product tie-in box brainwash a weak mind into thinking they want to see this.
Fake artists is either an oxymoron or a largely all encompasing group noun. If I were to record myself banging trash cans together I would be just as much of an artist as most of the crap out there. I figure if they have any right to sign up for the loot then I certainly do too. Particularly when by legal standards the non-fake artists are recording silence and claiming they own it.
If I can help this lame scheeme fall apart by announcing my intention to sign up, let me record that announcement and call it art.
Have you ever bought a Royal product before? I did. Long ago I got a typewriter with a printer interface on it. I paid way too much, but was attracted by the promise of being able to replace the print wheels, of the promise of variable spacing type print wheels amd how I could use this on a computer. Then I ran into Royal customer service when I tried to actually buy the variable pitch print wheel. They pretty much laughed at me and told me it wasn't really available. While I was still trying to track it down I also tried to find out what the width table for the variable spacing mode was (I would need it to build my own printer driver software - this was long before Windows and there was no company supplied sriver software at all). Again, I was treated like dirt for even expecting that I could get information that was going to be needd to actually use my Royal product from the group that claimed to be supporting it.
I will never buy a Royal product again. Any company I'm involved in where I have a say in the matter will never buy Royal equipment (yes, I have stopped some purchases). There are other PDA's in the world; no one needs one bad enough to buy one from Royal.
This is complete Bullshit, and maybe fraud as well. Will they sell my one man company the complete advanced server system talked about for $100? Not just software, but the full system, hardware too? It certainly seems to be what their newly stated prices claim, but we all know they are not going to do it. Do you think they are going to start walking away from business from the major corporations with too many employess to make these prices even close to what they could get for a system? Hardly! And what about a customer who might really need a Sun system, but has way too many grunt level staff who never touch a computer? Do you think McDonalds would be paying $100 a head for every zit faced teenager asking "da ja' want fries wit' that?" in every company owned location if they want one Sun system?
This system will never be applied fairly, it certainly will not be applied to the one man shop perfectly willing to pay $100 for a complete Sun system, software and hardware. It will not be applied to the big corporations, or to any diverse corporation who has many sectors of business activity, much of which does not include Sun systems. And what if two companys were to merge? While expecting to save some maney from cost factors of scale in the merger, how will they take it to find that their Sun systems are now going to cost twice as much for the same systems?
The only people this might affect are the mid-size corporations that Sun thinks it can squeeze more money from. Those that pay it are as stupid as those who would pay SCO.
But companies depending on
Microsoft Certified Engineers to adapt to Linux will carry over a number of problems, significantly increasing the chance of project failure.
They even "get it", that if a warrant isn't required here it isn't required at all, meaning that the government is completely free to put a GPS device on you and everyone else for the purpose of tracking everything you and they do. That is hardly freedom (the ruling even goes into why it would infringe freedom) and so the warrant is required.
According to him the pickup is slow but the fuel economy is great
The fule economy is great, but one should consider the high cost of these small cars in contrast to other small cars if the reason they think they are getting the car is for economy.
If you figure you are going to get 100,000 miles from this car and get a 20 mpg improvement in fuel economy, that is 5000 gallons of gas saved. Price certainly varies, but if you average $1.50 a gallon for that gas that would be a "savings" of $7500 in gas over the life of the car. But if you have to pay that much more up front to buy this small car contrasted to other small cars (and are paying interest on that extra up-front costs in the form of higher car payments) and still have to put up with the little engine and lack of acceleration, as well as the extra costs of dealing with those expensive batteries and other maintence issues, the claim but the fuel economy is great might turn out to be a serious illusion. Sure, you might keep the car long enough to pay it off, or gas prices might go through the roof, or you might live in California where they already do, or you might have other motives in getting the car, but one should do an honest contrast of this car against other available conventional cars that get good mileage and cost less before deciding that they need to pay lots of extra money up front for this car in the expectation that the fuel economy is great .
chrisd notes that his company is making SCO employees unhireabl
Wow, that must really concern management at SCO, that they don't have to wory about employees leaving and going somewhere else because no one will hire them. Even is this were true, it actually would be great news for top management. Between that and Linus's response being a lame "grow up" while they watch company stock go through the roof and some chumps actually paying them and they must really be having a good day today.
Is there a toll free 800 number that I can call to talk to a salesman about getting a license? I would certainly like to. I would suggest that maybe the next SCO story de jour be posted early in the business day and include an an SCO 800 number that we can all call and get more information on this wonderful SCO offering.
If it is setup safely and cleanly (over an IPSEC ESP vpn tunnel) then his port 135 block would not have affected you. Windows file sharing is for INTRANET use as the hundreds of exploits and bugs in it have made abundantly clear.
As you well know, vpn isn't always an option, and wasn't in this case. But your intranet argument is bogus. Sure, I would be an idiot to open the file sharing ports to everyone. But by passing only the desired remote IP/port through my firewall/router, this was a very safe setup, all down without some ISP sticking their fingers in it and stopping me fron doing it at all because some idiots can not do it safely. Sure, the directory listing was send openly as plain text, someone intercepting the data stream at a point along the way might see the directory tree. That's not anything I gave a dam about or that would compromise the security of my system. Those who support such port blocks for such a lame reason might as well block all unencryped e-mail first.
And how can you demand people to learn computer security if you think it's excessive to require you to opt-out from the isp firewall?
The article mentioned no opt-out list. Neither did Beatbyte when talking about suddenly blocking ports on paying customers. And do you think those paying customers were even warned that ports their applications might use are being blocked? I very much doubt it.
As one more example of this, Mindspring blocked the port used for outgoing SMTP several years ago. They gave no warning and they certainly didn't give an opt-out procedure. This was a supposed move to fight spam, but inconvienced a number of users who had legitimate needs to send through SMTP servers at their place of work, or even who administered those work servers. I was in neither category, but I was inconvienced too; Mindspring's e-mail servers went down frequently and stayed down for hours. I had other SMTP servers that I had a legitimate account on that I could use before this port was blocked, but after this was done and with no access to another SMPT server I often had to suffer those outages because of their lame port blocking.
I don't see how anyone could see this as a bad thing. (welcome input)
Then you (as well as your employers) are very short sighted. I could well be using those ports.
Many software programs that dynamically allocate ports likely will use some ports you block, and users applications will just fail "randomly". And, of course, your tech support people will deny all knowledge of it. Or, in the case of well known ports such as port 135 mentioned in the original posting, I've actually used port 135 to share entire windows directory structures across the Internet (between a system in Indiana and one in North Carolina). It was slick and very handy, although too few understand how cleanly (and safely) this can be set up and made to work. How can slashdot readers really advocate ISPs blocking the utility of the service we buy because some people who also buy it are too lazy to learn to use it properly?
You're misunderstanding what "Morse claims to do".
You're presuming a lot to say I'm misunderstand. Different people may have different feelings on the value of Morse code, but that doesn't make my understanding any less than yours.
PSK31 is a superior mode, but I defy you to copy or send in that mode without the aid of computer equipment.
Sure. And I defy you to send morse code over radio waves without the aid of radio equipment. You seem to just be drawing a very arbitrary line on what equipment is and is not to be used for "normal" transmissions. Particularly in this age where many or most ham radios rely on some form of microprocessor technology, you seem to be telling me that it's ok to rely on radio equipment but that somehow using digital technology, even if it were to send and receive the old morse system of encoding, is "less honest" than tuning into morse code with the latest $5000 ham rig with a special DSP front end to clean up the signals and then copying the code by ear. If there was a special class for those few hams who blew their own vacumn tubes and pumper the air out themselves and built their own equipment with them then I might be able to support you. But to have hams that can't build their own radios (even from of the shelf parts) and buy the latest top end equipment because they have thousands of bucks to spend and then operate them because they were able to learn code and pass a one time test is far too arbitrary. Suggesting that the use of computer equipment is somehow wrong while buying and using other hardware is right is very difficult to support.
Morse is still an important human readable mode.
Morse is still a human readable mode, although by a dwindling group. It is no longer an important human readable mode. Even the World Radio conference, long the reason used to justify this long outdated mode, has finally acknowledged that.
It's sort of like arguing that kids shouldn't have to learn multiplication and long division because there are calculators.
I don't realy believe this argument holds up. The differences are much to great.
The phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie etc.) is another important "code" that most people don't bother to learn any more.
Learning that is still covered in the ham license tests, isn't it? (I'll acknowledge I haven't looked at the current tests, but it certainly should be.) Maybe what you are saying is that people learn it, but that many never retain it after they get their "ticket". And the same thing can be said for morse code. I know many hams who were able to pass the test but never used code again. They, however, are allowed to operate on the HF bands (voice, although they could use code with the aid of computer equipment if they wanted), while someone who was unable to learn code is permittted neither, even if in all other ways they could be shown to be a more qualified ham radio operator.
but I still can't believe they expect that phrases like 'complete albums,' 'full-length movies,' and 'Napster lives' are to be interpreted as '100% legal.'"
By this logic, SanityInAnarchy's own post would be illegal, as the post uses the exact same words that it suggests should in some way be illegal to search for or index. Once we have forbidden words we have a very small step to forbidden thought.
One can argue that the piracy should be illegal, but it's a far stretch to say that a link with any of these phrases should not exist on Google. There are invalid uses of the phrases, but there are many valid uses as well, including a group that might not wish to sell their soul to a major label and the RIAA and might want to make their "complete albums" freely downloadable on the Internet. It's a shame or worse that an RIAA mentality might hamper their ability to do so.
That was the same argument that was made before the codeless Tech license came into being over ten years ago. But the end result is that the bands above 30 MHZ have only gotten better while the bands below 30 have gone to hell. In fact, the only bands I have heard questionable traffic on are the HF bands. I'm not saying it never has happened on the VHF or UHF bands, but you should know as well as I that it is regularly happening on the HF bands. Dropping the code requirement above 30 mhz did not have the predicted effect of destroying those bands. Droping an outdated licensing requirement below 30 mhz will not either. Not doing something about the old farts that are already operating improperly below 30 mhz is the lowering of the bar.
Will this save ham radio? I don't know. It very well might have if the requirement was dropped thirty years ago when it should have been. Now with everything from Cell phones to the Internet to 3 cent a minute long distance rates, there is certainly less interest in putting up a hugh antenna to try to get through to someone hundreds of miles away and hope they are operating the same time you are.
I had another ham friend call me (on the telephone) just last Thursday, and the first thing he said was that when the code requirement was dropped I had better get an HF radio, because I had been complaining about the code requirement for years. And I had. But the world moved on. When I first complained to him about the lack of a valid reason for the morse code requirement was even before I talked about wanting a high speed paper tape reader to replace the ASR-33 tape reader I was using on my PDP-11. I never got a high speed paper tape reader. But if I could get one now I would have no use for it. In keeping the HF bands the way they have been for decades, ham radio may have done itself a lot of harm. When the code requirement is dropped we may well find that not many want the HF bands any more. If they are revived it will be because of new technology like PSK31, no thanks to those that dragged the 19th century Morse code into the 21st century just to haze new operators with.
Actually morse code has many abbreviations many of which are not even english acronyms so they are in fact language independent.
CQ CQ - I see why you would post such a lame statement as that as AC. Sure, there are abbreviations, but without a common language you dont "overcome real language barriers" as the common morse code misrepresentation likes to claim just by being able to send a few words as abbreviations. How much do you think you can really communicate with someone who speaks only Chineese if you speak only English and you both know morse code and the common abbreviations? 73
reason for the 5WPM requirement (and it used to much harder -- the top classes required 20WPM) was treaty.
20 WPM was never treaty. The treaty didn't even require 5 WPM, just a "working knowledge" of morse code. At one point not all that long ago (in my lifetime) we had no higher ham radio class than General. The 20 WPM requirement was actually created by strong lobbying efforts on the part of the ARRL, and actually took away band space (including voice band space!) from licensed operators who were previously licensed to operate on those frequencies. And a good part of the ARRL income came from selling code trainging tapes, and they sold a lot more after they had that band space taken away and reseverved for their elite class code operators (even those who learned the code for the test and never used it again).
The International Treaty wasn't really much of an issue anyway. Japan recognized the importance of electronics and involving the next generation long ago. They basically ignored the International treaty. And they were right in doing so. But even though the World Radio conference has admitted that Morse code is outdated, we still have old farts here that just want to haze new hams with "If I had to learn it, then you should have to learn it".
That would be insightful if the ban on encoded messages only applied to opressive dictatorships where the people were known to have no freedoms. But the U.S. (and all others, A.F.A.I.K.) bans encoded messages, even on bands above 30 mhz (the bands below being bands covered by international treaty, so there might be some argument for an need for the U.S. to ban encryption there as there was for the code requirement before it was dropped from the international requirements). The international World Radio Conference treaty considers bands above 30 MHZ to be "local" in nature, which is why the morse code requirement could be dropped for a license on those bands (Actually, Japan had an even better idea - unlike us they recognized the importance of electronics and getting the next generation involved and they simply stopped enforcing the code requirement long before the World Radio conference dropped the requirement).
And obviously, there are still plenty of ways for espionage to get through that encoded message. "Have Uncle Tunuse send more olives" can be a request for more olives or a pre-arranged signal,
you don't really stop organized planned espionage from using the ham bands by outlawing encryped messages, you just reduce the privacy rights of your own citizens. And you also do a little to keep business from encroaching on the ham bands, since if messages were encrypted it would be difficult to determine if the message was business or hobby.
Because Morse code is a technique that is long past beeing needed in ham radio, it's now only the old farts way of hazing new members to ham radio.
There are actually much better technologies for doing anything Morse code claims to do now. PSK31, for example, is a far better digital modulation system than Morse. Even Morse could survive if it was desired, but why keep a very knowledgable ham (perhaps one that has even passed the Expert class written exam) off the bands just because they can't learn an ancient 19th century audio encoding technique? There is plenty of computer technology that would allow a ham to both send and receive code much better than someone doing it by hand and ear. You need some technology to receive a radio signal anyway, why arbitrarly draw that line short of letting a ham put a morse-to-speach converted in a set of headphones? (Which, of course, is perfectly legal for all use, just not for qualifying for a license in the first place. In fact I know many hams who learned code to get their license and never used it again afterwards, and, although they have renewed their licenses since then, could not use morse code now if they had to.)
Most importantly, a frequent argument the old farts like to make is the "importance" of Morse code in emergency situations. But keeping people out of the hobby and having less stations able to monitor and respond in emergency situations because people who can not learn morse code have been kept out does not make sense. In this sense the morse code license requirement actually keeps many hams (like myself) from having HF equipment that they could provide aid with when a disaster hits.
And yes, although some people have no problem with it, there is a significant barrier for Morse code for many. It's not just learning what the patterns are and what letters they match up to, it's being able to hear them and do that translation in real time while signals continue to come in. Easy for some, hard or imposiable for others, even though they have tried all of the tricks many times.
Forcing new hams to learn Morse code would be like a teacher forcing new computer students to learn the Hollerith code for punch cards, saying "I had to learn it so you have to learn it". The information shouldn't be lost, but new programmers no longer need to be able to look at rectangular holes in a punch card and read the information on sight. The same should be the case for Morse code.
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Asside from this contradicting everything else Lucas said about episodes 1-3 in the 80's, it's dead wrong. Anakin Skywalker was in the third movie, episode 6, if you consider him the same character as Vader or not.
No Lucas clearly understands that Darth and Anakin skywalker are the same character. Back in the 80's when he spoke of 9 movies it was to be 3 independent 3 movie sets. The "first" was set long before the original, the characters from the "first" 3 would have been long dead before the original was to have occured. The last 3 were to have been after the original. He stated that. I don't recall if he was as clear about how far past the original that last set of 3 was in time as he had been with the first three, but he made it clear that it would be far enough that there would be no characters from the first three in any of the other six. He very clearly stated that the two robots were to be the only two characters that were to be in all 9 movies and that none of the non-robot characters would be in per-quels or sequels.
He's clearly changed his vision since then. That doesn't mean episodes 1, 2 and C are any worse or any better than his original vision. I personally think he could have done mush better if he had followed his original vision, but looking at things like Jar-Jar it's clear that he could have screwed up the original vision too by trying to be too cute and creating merchandising oportunities and forgetting who the original movie was targeted at and appealed to. But any claim that a quick taste of the story for episode 3 was taken from anything Lucas did in '83 is clearly bogus.
And let me correct myself before everyone else does - the word from Lucas back then was a vision of 3 movies set long before the original 3, in which there would be no characters that overlap with the original 3 except the robots, and that followed by the last 3 episodes, again with only the robots as a common thread. He certainly had no intention of making the first 3 include Darth Vader, Yoda or anyone else he might be weaseling in because of their obvious marketing potential back in '83 when he was laying out his plan for the 9 movies.
Considering that 1 and 2 are nothing at all like Lucas said they would be back in '83 (remember the promise that none of the characters from the original series would be in any of the other six episodes?), nothing he said back them would matter at all. This is clearly a fake.
Does anyone old enough to use slashdot without mommy or daddy's help care about this anyway? The original episode was fantastic and a quantum leap in sci-fi production. The next two were ok, but suffered from a lot of very obvious merchandising influences and also bad muppets rather than the good innovative effects of the original. Things went down hill from there, I can't see how episodes one, two and now three could have any appeal unless the advertisements in your Saturday morning cartoons and on your 60% sugar breakfast cereal product tie-in box brainwash a weak mind into thinking they want to see this.
No, I though about that before I posted it, but in a world where anything passes as art, being labeled a fake artist is an oxymoron.
Fake artists is either an oxymoron or a largely all encompasing group noun. If I were to record myself banging trash cans together I would be just as much of an artist as most of the crap out there. I figure if they have any right to sign up for the loot then I certainly do too. Particularly when by legal standards the non-fake artists are recording silence and claiming they own it.
If I can help this lame scheeme fall apart by announcing my intention to sign up, let me record that announcement and call it art.
I will never buy a Royal product again. Any company I'm involved in where I have a say in the matter will never buy Royal equipment (yes, I have stopped some purchases). There are other PDA's in the world; no one needs one bad enough to buy one from Royal.
This system will never be applied fairly, it certainly will not be applied to the one man shop perfectly willing to pay $100 for a complete Sun system, software and hardware. It will not be applied to the big corporations, or to any diverse corporation who has many sectors of business activity, much of which does not include Sun systems. And what if two companys were to merge? While expecting to save some maney from cost factors of scale in the merger, how will they take it to find that their Sun systems are now going to cost twice as much for the same systems?
The only people this might affect are the mid-size corporations that Sun thinks it can squeeze more money from. Those that pay it are as stupid as those who would pay SCO.
well, doh!
What the hell does 'red' TopCoders mean? They were red-heads? They were Russian? They programmed all night and needed Visene to clear up their eyes?
They even "get it" , that if a warrant isn't required here it isn't required at all, meaning that the government is completely free to put a GPS device on you and everyone else for the purpose of tracking everything you and they do. That is hardly freedom (the ruling even goes into why it would infringe freedom) and so the warrant is required.
The fule economy is great, but one should consider the high cost of these small cars in contrast to other small cars if the reason they think they are getting the car is for economy.
If you figure you are going to get 100,000 miles from this car and get a 20 mpg improvement in fuel economy, that is 5000 gallons of gas saved. Price certainly varies, but if you average $1.50 a gallon for that gas that would be a "savings" of $7500 in gas over the life of the car. But if you have to pay that much more up front to buy this small car contrasted to other small cars (and are paying interest on that extra up-front costs in the form of higher car payments) and still have to put up with the little engine and lack of acceleration, as well as the extra costs of dealing with those expensive batteries and other maintence issues, the claim but the fuel economy is great might turn out to be a serious illusion. Sure, you might keep the car long enough to pay it off, or gas prices might go through the roof, or you might live in California where they already do, or you might have other motives in getting the car, but one should do an honest contrast of this car against other available conventional cars that get good mileage and cost less before deciding that they need to pay lots of extra money up front for this car in the expectation that the fuel economy is great .
Wow, that must really concern management at SCO, that they don't have to wory about employees leaving and going somewhere else because no one will hire them. Even is this were true, it actually would be great news for top management. Between that and Linus's response being a lame "grow up" while they watch company stock go through the roof and some chumps actually paying them and they must really be having a good day today.
Is there a toll free 800 number that I can call to talk to a salesman about getting a license? I would certainly like to. I would suggest that maybe the next SCO story de jour be posted early in the business day and include an an SCO 800 number that we can all call and get more information on this wonderful SCO offering.
My god, with that much money we could even defeat Microsoft, and have a little left over to then turn our attention to SCO.
As you well know, vpn isn't always an option, and wasn't in this case. But your intranet argument is bogus. Sure, I would be an idiot to open the file sharing ports to everyone. But by passing only the desired remote IP/port through my firewall/router, this was a very safe setup, all down without some ISP sticking their fingers in it and stopping me fron doing it at all because some idiots can not do it safely. Sure, the directory listing was send openly as plain text, someone intercepting the data stream at a point along the way might see the directory tree. That's not anything I gave a dam about or that would compromise the security of my system. Those who support such port blocks for such a lame reason might as well block all unencryped e-mail first.
The article mentioned no opt-out list. Neither did Beatbyte when talking about suddenly blocking ports on paying customers. And do you think those paying customers were even warned that ports their applications might use are being blocked? I very much doubt it.
As one more example of this, Mindspring blocked the port used for outgoing SMTP several years ago. They gave no warning and they certainly didn't give an opt-out procedure. This was a supposed move to fight spam, but inconvienced a number of users who had legitimate needs to send through SMTP servers at their place of work, or even who administered those work servers. I was in neither category, but I was inconvienced too; Mindspring's e-mail servers went down frequently and stayed down for hours. I had other SMTP servers that I had a legitimate account on that I could use before this port was blocked, but after this was done and with no access to another SMPT server I often had to suffer those outages because of their lame port blocking.
Then you (as well as your employers) are very short sighted. I could well be using those ports. Many software programs that dynamically allocate ports likely will use some ports you block, and users applications will just fail "randomly". And, of course, your tech support people will deny all knowledge of it. Or, in the case of well known ports such as port 135 mentioned in the original posting, I've actually used port 135 to share entire windows directory structures across the Internet (between a system in Indiana and one in North Carolina). It was slick and very handy, although too few understand how cleanly (and safely) this can be set up and made to work. How can slashdot readers really advocate ISPs blocking the utility of the service we buy because some people who also buy it are too lazy to learn to use it properly?
You're presuming a lot to say I'm misunderstand. Different people may have different feelings on the value of Morse code, but that doesn't make my understanding any less than yours.
PSK31 is a superior mode, but I defy you to copy or send in that mode without the aid of computer equipment.
Sure. And I defy you to send morse code over radio waves without the aid of radio equipment. You seem to just be drawing a very arbitrary line on what equipment is and is not to be used for "normal" transmissions. Particularly in this age where many or most ham radios rely on some form of microprocessor technology, you seem to be telling me that it's ok to rely on radio equipment but that somehow using digital technology, even if it were to send and receive the old morse system of encoding, is "less honest" than tuning into morse code with the latest $5000 ham rig with a special DSP front end to clean up the signals and then copying the code by ear. If there was a special class for those few hams who blew their own vacumn tubes and pumper the air out themselves and built their own equipment with them then I might be able to support you. But to have hams that can't build their own radios (even from of the shelf parts) and buy the latest top end equipment because they have thousands of bucks to spend and then operate them because they were able to learn code and pass a one time test is far too arbitrary. Suggesting that the use of computer equipment is somehow wrong while buying and using other hardware is right is very difficult to support.
Morse is still an important human readable mode.
Morse is still a human readable mode, although by a dwindling group. It is no longer an important human readable mode. Even the World Radio conference, long the reason used to justify this long outdated mode, has finally acknowledged that.
It's sort of like arguing that kids shouldn't have to learn multiplication and long division because there are calculators.
I don't realy believe this argument holds up. The differences are much to great.
The phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie etc.) is another important "code" that most people don't bother to learn any more.
Learning that is still covered in the ham license tests, isn't it? (I'll acknowledge I haven't looked at the current tests, but it certainly should be.) Maybe what you are saying is that people learn it, but that many never retain it after they get their "ticket". And the same thing can be said for morse code. I know many hams who were able to pass the test but never used code again. They, however, are allowed to operate on the HF bands (voice, although they could use code with the aid of computer equipment if they wanted), while someone who was unable to learn code is permittted neither, even if in all other ways they could be shown to be a more qualified ham radio operator.
By this logic, SanityInAnarchy's own post would be illegal, as the post uses the exact same words that it suggests should in some way be illegal to search for or index. Once we have forbidden words we have a very small step to forbidden thought.
One can argue that the piracy should be illegal, but it's a far stretch to say that a link with any of these phrases should not exist on Google. There are invalid uses of the phrases, but there are many valid uses as well, including a group that might not wish to sell their soul to a major label and the RIAA and might want to make their "complete albums" freely downloadable on the Internet. It's a shame or worse that an RIAA mentality might hamper their ability to do so.
Will this save ham radio? I don't know. It very well might have if the requirement was dropped thirty years ago when it should have been. Now with everything from Cell phones to the Internet to 3 cent a minute long distance rates, there is certainly less interest in putting up a hugh antenna to try to get through to someone hundreds of miles away and hope they are operating the same time you are.
I had another ham friend call me (on the telephone) just last Thursday, and the first thing he said was that when the code requirement was dropped I had better get an HF radio, because I had been complaining about the code requirement for years. And I had. But the world moved on. When I first complained to him about the lack of a valid reason for the morse code requirement was even before I talked about wanting a high speed paper tape reader to replace the ASR-33 tape reader I was using on my PDP-11. I never got a high speed paper tape reader. But if I could get one now I would have no use for it. In keeping the HF bands the way they have been for decades, ham radio may have done itself a lot of harm. When the code requirement is dropped we may well find that not many want the HF bands any more. If they are revived it will be because of new technology like PSK31, no thanks to those that dragged the 19th century Morse code into the 21st century just to haze new operators with.
CQ CQ - I see why you would post such a lame statement as that as AC. Sure, there are abbreviations, but without a common language you dont "overcome real language barriers" as the common morse code misrepresentation likes to claim just by being able to send a few words as abbreviations. How much do you think you can really communicate with someone who speaks only Chineese if you speak only English and you both know morse code and the common abbreviations? 73
20 WPM was never treaty. The treaty didn't even require 5 WPM, just a "working knowledge" of morse code. At one point not all that long ago (in my lifetime) we had no higher ham radio class than General. The 20 WPM requirement was actually created by strong lobbying efforts on the part of the ARRL, and actually took away band space (including voice band space!) from licensed operators who were previously licensed to operate on those frequencies. And a good part of the ARRL income came from selling code trainging tapes, and they sold a lot more after they had that band space taken away and reseverved for their elite class code operators (even those who learned the code for the test and never used it again).
The International Treaty wasn't really much of an issue anyway. Japan recognized the importance of electronics and involving the next generation long ago. They basically ignored the International treaty. And they were right in doing so. But even though the World Radio conference has admitted that Morse code is outdated, we still have old farts here that just want to haze new hams with "If I had to learn it, then you should have to learn it".
And obviously, there are still plenty of ways for espionage to get through that encoded message. "Have Uncle Tunuse send more olives" can be a request for more olives or a pre-arranged signal, you don't really stop organized planned espionage from using the ham bands by outlawing encryped messages, you just reduce the privacy rights of your own citizens. And you also do a little to keep business from encroaching on the ham bands, since if messages were encrypted it would be difficult to determine if the message was business or hobby.
There are actually much better technologies for doing anything Morse code claims to do now. PSK31, for example, is a far better digital modulation system than Morse. Even Morse could survive if it was desired, but why keep a very knowledgable ham (perhaps one that has even passed the Expert class written exam) off the bands just because they can't learn an ancient 19th century audio encoding technique? There is plenty of computer technology that would allow a ham to both send and receive code much better than someone doing it by hand and ear. You need some technology to receive a radio signal anyway, why arbitrarly draw that line short of letting a ham put a morse-to-speach converted in a set of headphones? (Which, of course, is perfectly legal for all use, just not for qualifying for a license in the first place. In fact I know many hams who learned code to get their license and never used it again afterwards, and, although they have renewed their licenses since then, could not use morse code now if they had to.)
Most importantly, a frequent argument the old farts like to make is the "importance" of Morse code in emergency situations. But keeping people out of the hobby and having less stations able to monitor and respond in emergency situations because people who can not learn morse code have been kept out does not make sense. In this sense the morse code license requirement actually keeps many hams (like myself) from having HF equipment that they could provide aid with when a disaster hits.
And yes, although some people have no problem with it, there is a significant barrier for Morse code for many. It's not just learning what the patterns are and what letters they match up to, it's being able to hear them and do that translation in real time while signals continue to come in. Easy for some, hard or imposiable for others, even though they have tried all of the tricks many times.
Forcing new hams to learn Morse code would be like a teacher forcing new computer students to learn the Hollerith code for punch cards, saying "I had to learn it so you have to learn it". The information shouldn't be lost, but new programmers no longer need to be able to look at rectangular holes in a punch card and read the information on sight. The same should be the case for Morse code.