For people who have never dealt with them, they are. For people who will probably never deal with them up close and personal, they are irrelevant. There are simply too many things to do in ham radio that don't include designing or fixing radios for it to be considered a gateway skill.
What is diffucult (for me) is memorizing stuff, for example, "Which CEPT document has the requirements for the license?
I'm assuming this is information that European country license tests include, since CEPT isn't mentioned in the US tech pool at all. As I recall, the US tech license doesn't meet the requirements for CEPT, but it has been a long time since I was one and needed to know that. You're right, though. If I did, I'd look it up online.
Who said anything about the FCC? When I said "government agency" I was referring to the emergency services agencies that are allowing those yellow-vested know-nothings into their EOCs and field operations without any training on ICS or whatever it was MM0YEQ was complaining about. It's THEM who decide who gets in the door, and if they let any yahoo with a ham license in they are the ones at fault, not the hams or the FCC.
MMOYEQ's comment does resonate to a degree and it's a bit scary to see just how basic the intro electronics articles are in CQ (the ARRL's magazine)
'CQ' is not ARRL's magazine. You're thinking of QST. Yes, there are some basic articles there because not everyone knows everything when they start out and ARRL isn't there to serve just the Amateur Extra Class licensees. Even some of the Extras can use the basic articles there, since some kinds of circuits have been developed since some Extras got licensed. We're still not talking about the problem MM0YEQ complained about. You really don't need to know the resistor color code to be a useful radio operator in an EOC. Or how to use an ATU, whatever that is. (We have one on the roof now. An auto-tuner. Nobody needs to know how to use it or what's in it, because all they have to do is transmit and it tunes. I know what's in it because I'm an Amateur Extra Class and we know everything. And I opened it up to look. And it's my job to know what's in it and how it works because I'm one of the main technical resources in our county for the emergency manager.)
In these bizarre days I think you can do worse than to associate with a bunch of mildly introverted overweight guys creating a defined social structure which potentially involves physical activity and has the side effect that it can help other people. A few of them just might venture into soldering something more complex than a power lead. 73 KL1SA
It's not just the outsiders saying the hobby is dying. Go to any ham club and you can find the group (usually aged 60+) who think all this new fangled internet shit is killing the hobby and how echolink isn't really "ham radio".
Sorry, I'm not 60+ but I also think Echolink isn't ham radio. Sitting at a computer and talking through someone else's ham radio isn't radio, it's VOIP. IRLP at least is supposed to be limited to linking of repeaters, which requires some radio use by all participants to start with. But you can set up an IRLP node that isn't connected to the radio and still join in...
Packet radio is ham radio, but the parts where Winlink 2000 connects to the internet leave the realm of ham radio far behind. Explain to me how it is "ham radio" when I can participate in Winlink 2000 without touching or using a radio in any way, shape or form.
Then you have the smaller group that hates anything above 28Mhz and you're not cool unless you have antennas that have to be stretched between trees.
And it has to be CW or it isn't real. It's hard to understand the hatred these CW-only freaks have for the no-code techs when CW was never the only mode allowed and most people didn't use it after they passed the test.
The equipment cost is on-par with most computers Slashdotters probably use, and the cost of the exam is trivial ($14)
A simple handheld VHF radio costs about $100 new. If you go to the Dayton Hamvention the test is free. Anyone who operates under the Laurel VE system (http://larcmd.org/vec) doesn't charge, and they have tests in a number of places. If you test at Dayton on Friday (and pass) you will be in the FCC computer by Saturday and have a callsign and operating privileges. (I VEd for them one year and I was impressed by their operation.)
Unfortunately, the latest set of tech questions is much more technical than the old set. Last year you didn't need to know what a capacitor or resistor were; this year you need to know them and recognize schematic symbols and what they do. There's even a question about how a capacitor works. I don't know if the VEC was deliberately trying to make getting the first license harder, or just got carried away trying to pack all the basics into one test...
Sorry, meant to say "safe harbor". Same rule, different name. And that repeater I run on top of the mountain? Covers both counties plus some, at current power levels.
The whole problem is that the ARRL and to a lesser extent the RSGB are pushing the whole emcomm thing above all else - so you end up with idiots in high-vis jackets getting in the way of the emergency services as they wave their obsolete ex-PMR radios around trying to look important.
Ahhh, PMR. I didn't know that hams in Great Britain commonly modify what we would call FRS radios over here in the states. (Interesting fact: PMR446 radios operate in the US ham bands. You can't use them here unless you are a ham. Their narrowband and odd frequency splits make them difficult to use with standard ham gear, but the LPD frequencies are really cool and only 10mW!).
If this is a problem in GB, then it is the fault of the government agency for not demanding proper training before making it a resource. Ok, if this is a problem anywhere, ditto.
As for knowing what's in an "ATU", I'm stumped. I'm looking up that acronym and trying to find some British and ham relevant result. "AUTODIN Transfer Unit"? No, AUTODIN is a US military thing, but is communications related. Audio Tape Unit? Oh, wait, Antenna Tuning Unit. That must be it. Sorry, we don't use ATUs for most of our VHF work. We don't need to know what is in one to be a valuable resource for the emergency services people we support. They don't care.
... slap them about the head with a Tait Orca reprogrammed for Raynet frequencies.
Oh my God, you people still use Taits over there? I've seen those. They really suck. You know the old saying, don't you? "He who has a Taits is lost." I understand now why your hams modify PMR radios; they don't have a good supply of surplus real radio equipment (like Moto, Kenwood, BK) to play with.
all that infrastructure will become useless during a power failure, thats when HF/VHF/UHF radio all running on battery packs come in handy.
Bingo.
For example, my county and our neighbor are busy designing a trunked 700MHz system to cover all the government users within the two counties. This system will require more than a dozen repeater sites to get anything close to the coverage they need, PLUS a handful of old VHF systems to fill in a few of the important empty spots. All of this is linked through a network connection to a city 40 miles away in another county.
Cut through the fiber running next to the interstate -- POOF, all repeaters revert to standalone mode. No links. You wanna talk from the hinterlands back to the city? Good luck. Ditto if someone just accidentally pulls the plug on the controller in that distant city. (They probably do have someone who vacuums the rugs on a regular basis...)
In an earthquake, the towers fall over, or the antennas fall down. Those are on mountain tops. How fast do you think the commercial radio service people will get to all of them? OTOH, if the road is open I can drive to the top of the local mountain and repair whatever is up there myself. Or half a dozen people in this county can do it. Legally.
In a couple of years "safe haven" rules kick in. That means that all of those repeaters the two counties put up will have strict, reduced power limits and thus limited coverage. My repeaters have no such limits, and the main one on the mountain top is not even close to full power right now. I can fix one repeater and have coverage over the entire county -- unlike even the existing LMR VHF system in use.
What the OP is probably missing is that ham radio is picking up a lot of the "emergency services own communications systems" business, and a lot of government agencies are betting the retirement fund on hams being there.
I heard someone said during the San Bruno, CA, gas pipeline explosion Red Cross was looking for some amateur radio operators to help with the disaster, but couldn't find any.
Red Cross shot themselves in the foot metaphoriclly speaking a few years ago with their ham friends by pushing through a criminal background check for all volunteers, including radio ops. A LOT of ham ops don't want to have anything to do with background checks, and those that do get sucked up by the governmental agencies that do ES.
I think they've withdrawn this requirement, but even so the bad karma they generated will stay with them for a long time. I haven't kept up with the situation since the local chapter got reorganized into a multi-county group that doesn't have any offices in our county anymore. They used to be a served agency for our ARES group, but when they left the area we stopped helping them.
And you don't need to spend billions, just need to draw in citizens willing to help their fellow citizens when disaster strikes.
"Fellow citizens", without training, might be able to figure out how to deal with an FRS radio, but God please don't plonk them down on a real radio where people need to know what they are doing. It will be bad enough all the untrained hams coming out of the woodwork when the balloon goes up, people who have no clue about radio will be useless -- for radio work.
Yes, because CO2 in the atmosphere has absolutely not drawback whatsoever, regardless of its concentration.
So far as I can tell, you're the only one who has said this. I haven't.
Newsflash: everything and nothing is poisonous, once you disregard quantities and way of administration.
I routinely spend time in a place that has a CO2 monitor. It starts in the morning at 800 ppm and goes up to 1200 ppm by the end of the event. I have yet to see anyone die, gasping for breath, or pass out. The database I have in my pocket for emergency responders doesn't even list CO2.
On the other hand, it lists SO2 with an acceptable exposure level of just 5 ppm. I suspect that most people could detect levels below 1ppm, although that's just a guess.
The difference in toxicity is a well known fact. The difference in function of the two gases is a well-known fact. Pretending that CO2 is a poison that has to be regulated just like SO2 is ridiculous. Basing an argument for regulation on the fact that everything is poisonous at some level is just as ridiculous. Be careful what arguments you use; you may wind up with a complete ban on the sale and use of dihydrogen oxide because it, too, is poisonous at some level, despite it being mandatory for the existence of life as we know it.
That's what matters. Any regulation of any activity or product takes into account quantity and distribution.
And that's why regulating CO2 the same way you do SO2 is stupid. You've forgotten sources of production and sinks and necessity of the material to the existence of life.
In any case, the regulation of CO2 has nothing to do with quantity and distribution, it has everything to do with how much money can be made and how much power can be shifted where the regulators want it to wind up.
I can't quite figure out how they'll stop me from taking a screenshot of the encrypted image.
One of the satellite photo systems prior to googleEarth wanted to keep their images controlled and did something similar to this. You had to have their plugin to see the images and you had to run javascript to load them, and the javascript did something to disable the print-screen button -- on windows -- and the "save image" option. As I recall, the plugin didn't work on unix/linux so they were protected there.
Unless, of course, you were VNCing into a windows box from a Linux box, and then xwd was quite able to dump the window contents.
But it would be much simpler and effective to just have a carbon tax, paid at the point of extraction or import.
"Good morning, Mrs. ShanghiaBill, congratulations on your new baby. What's his name? By the way, we caclulate that he will produce X tons of CO2 during his lifetime, so since you are the 'point of extraction' for him, we are taxing you $45,000 to cover his CO2 emissions. And another $340,543 to cover his uric acid production that is going to pollute the local water system. Net 30, 5% penalty for late payments. Thanks so much."
We did just that with SOx emissions and it worked.
The difference is that SOx is an actual poison and CO2 is the natural product of all animal life on the planet and is needed by the plant life. (With the exception of those few sulfur eaters down at the bottom of the ocean near the hydrothermal vents.) Other than that small difference, there is no difference at all between SOx and COx emissions.
I wonder if the guys who stole the credits are thinking they can sell them on the black market to europeans who want to have a backyard cookout? Or did they steal them to cover for the CO2 emissions from their weekend pot smoking binge?
So you don't think there's anything wrong with employing paedophiles at schools, youth groups, and so on?
So how did you come to that absolutely ridiculous conclusion? Oh, sorry, I forgot. This is/., where a statement about why something was done is assumed to be approval for or denouncement of that action, depending on the day of the week.
Let me clear it up for you. The fact that his background check was probably for sex or child-abuse related crimes does not mean I support the automatic hiring of those who fail said background checks.
That's an interesting prospect for hostile nations to consider. Plant an operative in the right company, and that right part can have its defect right on schedule.
You know, that Feynman guy did seem to know a bit too much about the failure of that shuttle SRB for a civilian. He was a foreigner, wasn't he? A name like "Feynman" has to be foreign. And I hear he went around breaking into locked filing cabinets at LLNL, or was it LANL?
I'm suspicious, and I don't care what other people think.
However, the most extensive check was for volunteering at the YMCA. I had to get fingerprinted and have that checked out to make sure I wasn't a suspect in any violent crimes.
I suspect they checked your record for child and/or sex related crimes. You know, the things that the little darling's parents would sue them for if they let you near their little Johnny or Suzy and you touched them.
(though I'm not sure how that applies to groups like the lost boys who were too young to have knowingly participated in their atrocities).
The Lost Boys participated in atrocities? You call being the victim of the murders of your parents and rape and murder of your sisters and every other female relative being "a participant"?
Wow. Simply wow. Is english not your primary language? Or are you trying to be funny and are referring to the vampire movie?
And yet "most people" think nothing of loaning (or borrowing) a CD to rip a copy of a song or two. In fact, the standard argument is that there is no way to prove that a sale was lost by such activity, and it serves to spread the knowledge of the author.
The only difference in what I wrote is that you aren't sharing the movie with other people who haven't seen it and might buy a copy, only with yourself, and you've seen it and are less likely to buy a copy.
QOS is your friend. Various SOHO products provide bandwidth-throttling too. And if you happen to have a Linux box handy...
During the recent discussions on net neutrality I heard a network provider engineer comment that the first thing they do is strip the user-provided QOS data from every packet that comes in and reassign QOS based on required latency.
I'm sure there are many who still think DVD-over-net is expensive.
Well, most of those people are probably including what they pay for THEIR connection in the total and not caring what Netflix pays for its connection.
If you pay $50/month for broadband and watch 50 movies/month, your effective cost per movie is $1 plus the cost of Netfix itself. When you are done watching the movie, you have nothing but happy memories.
If you use the by-mail version of Netflix, you pay nothing for postage and pay only the Netflix membership fee. Industrious users will wind up with not only a happy memory of the movie, but their own backup copy of it for later viewing.
I can tell you which way sounds like a better deal to me. I don't believe I could watch 50 movies per month, so my numbers would be more like ten, at most, or $5/movie. I would have to write off the cost of the Tb disk to keep all the video on, though....
Bad idea: letting your employees bring in their own computers
There, fixed that for you.
The first time someone brings in their own computer and uses that personal copy of Office or Matlab or other really expensive licensed program for corporate work and gets caught, the money saved by not having to buy that new system will prove the adage "penny wise, pound foolish". And ditto when the employee walks out with a copy of several expensive company-licensed programs and another copy has to be purchased for his replacement.
...the IT guys who want their 10 or so lives to be simple at the expense of the simplicity of the 1000 users who have to fight their computer to get it to do what they want it to.
Wow, you have ten IT guys to support 1000 users? That's 100 users per support person.
Imagine the fun for everyone involved if just fifty of those users went to the wrong website and picked up a bot or virus. Fifty people who are demanding immediate response from the ten IT guys to "fix it so I can do my work", the head of IT stopping by to find out why he's getting calls from other sites telling him about the multiple DOS attacks coming from within his domain. Where do the IT guys find the time to update anything? And how do they avoid the problems of updating 1000 different computers with 1000 different configurations?
Then the software-AA comes knocking and someone has to explain why 500 of those 1000 have installed copies of programs that nobody can find the license for...
And how do reporting stations matter when satellites are measuring the temperature?
A quick nit: satellites do not measure the temperature. They are one of those "proxy data" sources people keep talking about as how we know the temperature 100,000 years ago.
It wasn't but ten years ago or so that someone figured out that all the satellite data was wrong because they made an incorrect assumption about some relevant process and all the numbers were changed. Knowing this kind of thing happens makes one hesitant to go chicken little about any of the numbers from proxy sources.
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For people who have never dealt with them, they are. For people who will probably never deal with them up close and personal, they are irrelevant. There are simply too many things to do in ham radio that don't include designing or fixing radios for it to be considered a gateway skill.
What is diffucult (for me) is memorizing stuff, for example, "Which CEPT document has the requirements for the license?
I'm assuming this is information that European country license tests include, since CEPT isn't mentioned in the US tech pool at all. As I recall, the US tech license doesn't meet the requirements for CEPT, but it has been a long time since I was one and needed to know that. You're right, though. If I did, I'd look it up online.
Who said anything about the FCC? When I said "government agency" I was referring to the emergency services agencies that are allowing those yellow-vested know-nothings into their EOCs and field operations without any training on ICS or whatever it was MM0YEQ was complaining about. It's THEM who decide who gets in the door, and if they let any yahoo with a ham license in they are the ones at fault, not the hams or the FCC.
MMOYEQ's comment does resonate to a degree and it's a bit scary to see just how basic the intro electronics articles are in CQ (the ARRL's magazine)
'CQ' is not ARRL's magazine. You're thinking of QST. Yes, there are some basic articles there because not everyone knows everything when they start out and ARRL isn't there to serve just the Amateur Extra Class licensees. Even some of the Extras can use the basic articles there, since some kinds of circuits have been developed since some Extras got licensed. We're still not talking about the problem MM0YEQ complained about. You really don't need to know the resistor color code to be a useful radio operator in an EOC. Or how to use an ATU, whatever that is. (We have one on the roof now. An auto-tuner. Nobody needs to know how to use it or what's in it, because all they have to do is transmit and it tunes. I know what's in it because I'm an Amateur Extra Class and we know everything. And I opened it up to look. And it's my job to know what's in it and how it works because I'm one of the main technical resources in our county for the emergency manager.)
In these bizarre days I think you can do worse than to associate with a bunch of mildly introverted overweight guys creating a defined social structure which potentially involves physical activity and has the side effect that it can help other people. A few of them just might venture into soldering something more complex than a power lead. 73 KL1SA
10-4 good buddy.
Sorry, I'm not 60+ but I also think Echolink isn't ham radio. Sitting at a computer and talking through someone else's ham radio isn't radio, it's VOIP. IRLP at least is supposed to be limited to linking of repeaters, which requires some radio use by all participants to start with. But you can set up an IRLP node that isn't connected to the radio and still join in...
Packet radio is ham radio, but the parts where Winlink 2000 connects to the internet leave the realm of ham radio far behind. Explain to me how it is "ham radio" when I can participate in Winlink 2000 without touching or using a radio in any way, shape or form.
Then you have the smaller group that hates anything above 28Mhz and you're not cool unless you have antennas that have to be stretched between trees.
And it has to be CW or it isn't real. It's hard to understand the hatred these CW-only freaks have for the no-code techs when CW was never the only mode allowed and most people didn't use it after they passed the test.
A simple handheld VHF radio costs about $100 new. If you go to the Dayton Hamvention the test is free. Anyone who operates under the Laurel VE system (http://larcmd.org/vec) doesn't charge, and they have tests in a number of places. If you test at Dayton on Friday (and pass) you will be in the FCC computer by Saturday and have a callsign and operating privileges. (I VEd for them one year and I was impressed by their operation.)
Unfortunately, the latest set of tech questions is much more technical than the old set. Last year you didn't need to know what a capacitor or resistor were; this year you need to know them and recognize schematic symbols and what they do. There's even a question about how a capacitor works. I don't know if the VEC was deliberately trying to make getting the first license harder, or just got carried away trying to pack all the basics into one test...
Sorry, meant to say "safe harbor". Same rule, different name. And that repeater I run on top of the mountain? Covers both counties plus some, at current power levels.
Ahhh, PMR. I didn't know that hams in Great Britain commonly modify what we would call FRS radios over here in the states. (Interesting fact: PMR446 radios operate in the US ham bands. You can't use them here unless you are a ham. Their narrowband and odd frequency splits make them difficult to use with standard ham gear, but the LPD frequencies are really cool and only 10mW!).
If this is a problem in GB, then it is the fault of the government agency for not demanding proper training before making it a resource. Ok, if this is a problem anywhere, ditto.
As for knowing what's in an "ATU", I'm stumped. I'm looking up that acronym and trying to find some British and ham relevant result. "AUTODIN Transfer Unit"? No, AUTODIN is a US military thing, but is communications related. Audio Tape Unit? Oh, wait, Antenna Tuning Unit. That must be it. Sorry, we don't use ATUs for most of our VHF work. We don't need to know what is in one to be a valuable resource for the emergency services people we support. They don't care.
Oh my God, you people still use Taits over there? I've seen those. They really suck. You know the old saying, don't you? "He who has a Taits is lost." I understand now why your hams modify PMR radios; they don't have a good supply of surplus real radio equipment (like Moto, Kenwood, BK) to play with.
Bingo.
For example, my county and our neighbor are busy designing a trunked 700MHz system to cover all the government users within the two counties. This system will require more than a dozen repeater sites to get anything close to the coverage they need, PLUS a handful of old VHF systems to fill in a few of the important empty spots. All of this is linked through a network connection to a city 40 miles away in another county.
Cut through the fiber running next to the interstate -- POOF, all repeaters revert to standalone mode. No links. You wanna talk from the hinterlands back to the city? Good luck. Ditto if someone just accidentally pulls the plug on the controller in that distant city. (They probably do have someone who vacuums the rugs on a regular basis...)
In an earthquake, the towers fall over, or the antennas fall down. Those are on mountain tops. How fast do you think the commercial radio service people will get to all of them? OTOH, if the road is open I can drive to the top of the local mountain and repair whatever is up there myself. Or half a dozen people in this county can do it. Legally.
In a couple of years "safe haven" rules kick in. That means that all of those repeaters the two counties put up will have strict, reduced power limits and thus limited coverage. My repeaters have no such limits, and the main one on the mountain top is not even close to full power right now. I can fix one repeater and have coverage over the entire county -- unlike even the existing LMR VHF system in use.
What the OP is probably missing is that ham radio is picking up a lot of the "emergency services own communications systems" business, and a lot of government agencies are betting the retirement fund on hams being there.
Red Cross shot themselves in the foot metaphoriclly speaking a few years ago with their ham friends by pushing through a criminal background check for all volunteers, including radio ops. A LOT of ham ops don't want to have anything to do with background checks, and those that do get sucked up by the governmental agencies that do ES.
I think they've withdrawn this requirement, but even so the bad karma they generated will stay with them for a long time. I haven't kept up with the situation since the local chapter got reorganized into a multi-county group that doesn't have any offices in our county anymore. They used to be a served agency for our ARES group, but when they left the area we stopped helping them.
And you don't need to spend billions, just need to draw in citizens willing to help their fellow citizens when disaster strikes.
"Fellow citizens", without training, might be able to figure out how to deal with an FRS radio, but God please don't plonk them down on a real radio where people need to know what they are doing. It will be bad enough all the untrained hams coming out of the woodwork when the balloon goes up, people who have no clue about radio will be useless -- for radio work.
So far as I can tell, you're the only one who has said this. I haven't.
Newsflash: everything and nothing is poisonous, once you disregard quantities and way of administration.
I routinely spend time in a place that has a CO2 monitor. It starts in the morning at 800 ppm and goes up to 1200 ppm by the end of the event. I have yet to see anyone die, gasping for breath, or pass out. The database I have in my pocket for emergency responders doesn't even list CO2.
On the other hand, it lists SO2 with an acceptable exposure level of just 5 ppm. I suspect that most people could detect levels below 1ppm, although that's just a guess.
The difference in toxicity is a well known fact. The difference in function of the two gases is a well-known fact. Pretending that CO2 is a poison that has to be regulated just like SO2 is ridiculous. Basing an argument for regulation on the fact that everything is poisonous at some level is just as ridiculous. Be careful what arguments you use; you may wind up with a complete ban on the sale and use of dihydrogen oxide because it, too, is poisonous at some level, despite it being mandatory for the existence of life as we know it.
That's what matters. Any regulation of any activity or product takes into account quantity and distribution.
And that's why regulating CO2 the same way you do SO2 is stupid. You've forgotten sources of production and sinks and necessity of the material to the existence of life.
In any case, the regulation of CO2 has nothing to do with quantity and distribution, it has everything to do with how much money can be made and how much power can be shifted where the regulators want it to wind up.
One of the satellite photo systems prior to googleEarth wanted to keep their images controlled and did something similar to this. You had to have their plugin to see the images and you had to run javascript to load them, and the javascript did something to disable the print-screen button -- on windows -- and the "save image" option. As I recall, the plugin didn't work on unix/linux so they were protected there.
Unless, of course, you were VNCing into a windows box from a Linux box, and then xwd was quite able to dump the window contents.
"Good morning, Mrs. ShanghiaBill, congratulations on your new baby. What's his name? By the way, we caclulate that he will produce X tons of CO2 during his lifetime, so since you are the 'point of extraction' for him, we are taxing you $45,000 to cover his CO2 emissions. And another $340,543 to cover his uric acid production that is going to pollute the local water system. Net 30, 5% penalty for late payments. Thanks so much."
The difference is that SOx is an actual poison and CO2 is the natural product of all animal life on the planet and is needed by the plant life. (With the exception of those few sulfur eaters down at the bottom of the ocean near the hydrothermal vents.) Other than that small difference, there is no difference at all between SOx and COx emissions.
I wonder if the guys who stole the credits are thinking they can sell them on the black market to europeans who want to have a backyard cookout? Or did they steal them to cover for the CO2 emissions from their weekend pot smoking binge?
So how did you come to that absolutely ridiculous conclusion? Oh, sorry, I forgot. This is /., where a statement about why something was done is assumed to be approval for or denouncement of that action, depending on the day of the week.
Let me clear it up for you. The fact that his background check was probably for sex or child-abuse related crimes does not mean I support the automatic hiring of those who fail said background checks.
Ok?
You know, that Feynman guy did seem to know a bit too much about the failure of that shuttle SRB for a civilian. He was a foreigner, wasn't he? A name like "Feynman" has to be foreign. And I hear he went around breaking into locked filing cabinets at LLNL, or was it LANL?
I'm suspicious, and I don't care what other people think.
I suspect they checked your record for child and/or sex related crimes. You know, the things that the little darling's parents would sue them for if they let you near their little Johnny or Suzy and you touched them.
Think of the children!
Puts a whole new spin on the group People for the Edible Treatment of Animals.
What? Ethical? Oh, never mind.
The Lost Boys participated in atrocities? You call being the victim of the murders of your parents and rape and murder of your sisters and every other female relative being "a participant"?
Wow. Simply wow. Is english not your primary language? Or are you trying to be funny and are referring to the vampire movie?
He probably has a PO box or lives in a government-run loony hospital.
Or he's a postal employee who doesn't like having to live up to this "rain, snow, sleet, dark of night" standard.
And yet "most people" think nothing of loaning (or borrowing) a CD to rip a copy of a song or two. In fact, the standard argument is that there is no way to prove that a sale was lost by such activity, and it serves to spread the knowledge of the author.
The only difference in what I wrote is that you aren't sharing the movie with other people who haven't seen it and might buy a copy, only with yourself, and you've seen it and are less likely to buy a copy.
To stop the 1984 Amazon debacle from happening.
Because you want to watch it again and have paid for it once already.
Because you don't want to be tied to your computer for the entire time the movie streams.
Because you like seeing the ads and using the captive menus.
Because you like supporting the post office.
Because you don't like supporting Comcast.
During the recent discussions on net neutrality I heard a network provider engineer comment that the first thing they do is strip the user-provided QOS data from every packet that comes in and reassign QOS based on required latency.
Well, most of those people are probably including what they pay for THEIR connection in the total and not caring what Netflix pays for its connection.
If you pay $50/month for broadband and watch 50 movies/month, your effective cost per movie is $1 plus the cost of Netfix itself. When you are done watching the movie, you have nothing but happy memories.
If you use the by-mail version of Netflix, you pay nothing for postage and pay only the Netflix membership fee. Industrious users will wind up with not only a happy memory of the movie, but their own backup copy of it for later viewing.
I can tell you which way sounds like a better deal to me. I don't believe I could watch 50 movies per month, so my numbers would be more like ten, at most, or $5/movie. I would have to write off the cost of the Tb disk to keep all the video on, though. ...
There, fixed that for you.
The first time someone brings in their own computer and uses that personal copy of Office or Matlab or other really expensive licensed program for corporate work and gets caught, the money saved by not having to buy that new system will prove the adage "penny wise, pound foolish". And ditto when the employee walks out with a copy of several expensive company-licensed programs and another copy has to be purchased for his replacement.
Wow, you have ten IT guys to support 1000 users? That's 100 users per support person.
Imagine the fun for everyone involved if just fifty of those users went to the wrong website and picked up a bot or virus. Fifty people who are demanding immediate response from the ten IT guys to "fix it so I can do my work", the head of IT stopping by to find out why he's getting calls from other sites telling him about the multiple DOS attacks coming from within his domain. Where do the IT guys find the time to update anything? And how do they avoid the problems of updating 1000 different computers with 1000 different configurations?
Then the software-AA comes knocking and someone has to explain why 500 of those 1000 have installed copies of programs that nobody can find the license for...
A quick nit: satellites do not measure the temperature. They are one of those "proxy data" sources people keep talking about as how we know the temperature 100,000 years ago.
It wasn't but ten years ago or so that someone figured out that all the satellite data was wrong because they made an incorrect assumption about some relevant process and all the numbers were changed. Knowing this kind of thing happens makes one hesitant to go chicken little about any of the numbers from proxy sources.