If that's the case, who can blame them? Rather than efficiency gains going to pay better wages or reduce hours,...
Huh? That's exactly where the efficiency gains are going. The latter, of course. Hours are reduced to zero for every unnecessary employee.
the efficiency gains are largely going to the upper class.
Unlike a progressive tax system where, almost by definition, tax cuts are going to benefit predominately the richer (someone who actually pays taxes) taxpayer, cuts in electric prices will benefit all electric consumers. Even poor people have to pay for power.
And it's not being replaced by any alternative means of getting money for food, clothing or shelter either.
Every dollar saved not paying for electricity is a dollar that can be used to pay for food, clothing, or shelter. You don't
need to create an alternative means.
And I knew it then, which is why I was working specifically in the functions that the profiler told me were slow.
The only place I disagree with you is in the planning for optimization. I write my code so I can read it and understand it, because for MOST things I write my time is more valuable than the computer's and I don't care if a loop takes a bit longer. I don't write loops unrolled or combine constants usually, because that's harder to debug and less obvious.
This was a special case of a program that needed to keep up with a running video stream and do many things at once.
Other than that, I agree with you -- so I'll give it a 95%. It's got a beat you can dance to but the lyrics are odd.
The volatile keyword prevents the compiler from doing things like moving values into registers,
What "volatile" actually means is that the memory location underlying the variable is able to change without the CPU knowing it and thus not only can the variable not be assigned to a register (which is what the "register" keyword causes), it must be accessed anew each time it is referenced. Thus, code that says something like:
if( x==0 )
do something;
if( x > 0)
do something else;
end
end
cannot optimize out the (x>0) test and something else code if x is marked volatile.
C purists will say that you can look at code and tell exactly what assembler output it will result in, but that's a ridiculous claim on any sort of optimizing compiler--a whole lot of stuff you didn't specify goes on.
C purists stopped being able to say that a long long time ago. Or int64 time ago.
I was once using an SGI MIPS C compiler, writing code I needed to run as fast as computerly possible. I was doing all the standard and even some pretty advanced hand optimization steps and getting nowhere. I finally realized that the O3 option to the compiler was already doing pretty much everything I was doing by hand and I was wasting my time. And then I ran across an early version of the Intel C compiler which was happily optimizing out an entire chunk of code that wasn't optimizable. (It was something to do with the instruction pipeline and branch look-aheads that wasn't being handled right, not a true "optimization". That means the code was still there, just lost in the pipeline when a branch took place.) So, it is as easy to say that there is a lot of stuff going on that you didn't know about, and a lot of stuff that isn't going on that you think should be.
But....shouldn't the compiler already know this...
If you are using memory-mapped IO, the compiler won't know if you are reading from an external device like an FPU or a simple memory location.
This kind of coding is standard for IO libraries. Things like reading values from memory mapped UART registers. A smart compiler will optimize the actual memory access away and rely on the previous read that is has stored in a local register. Without calling the address volatile you can wait all day for the IORDY bit to go high on a serial input device, as the CPU simply bit-compares the data in an internal register.
This is why you use the native libraries for such things when running on a variety of devices, so that people who understand that specific hardware and system better than you do can deal with such specificity and you can deal with writing a good programming language.
A number of languages have their own versions of strtod(), and it's because the system version is often deeply sub-optimal. (Going the other direction is even worse, especially if you want minimal representations of numbers.) Typically, system library authors stop once they've got something that works well enough, whereas other clients of that sort of functionality are much more exposed to it and so care much more about it being optimal.
Yes, because PHP is so widely known as a hard-number-crunching programming language that the time it takes to convert a string to binary double is criti-fucking-al. And it is well known that there are no standard, optimized math libraries that can do that job.
I mean, all of the bigger climate simulation models are written in PHP, don't you know? FORTRAN is just too damn slow for such things.
As for the previous poster who complained about how hard it is to make C calls from Python (as an example of how hard it is for PHP to do the same), well, yes, if you had to make your own call to the C function strtod you might have a point. But that call would be buried internal to the PHP system and wrapped by a PHP function so the programmer wouldn't have to do the hard work, and it would be done at the internals level.
Which isn't to say that if you're is reimplementing a system library function, you can get out of testing it very thoroughly. Oh no, not at all...
But it is to say that if you are reimplementing the C library in PHP you are doing something very very wrong and very very stupid.
Tactile feedback rocks. Touch screen can't replicate that very well.
You kids and your tactile feedback on modern keyboards. You just don't know what that is.
I used to program minis using a KSR-33 teletype keyboard (either direct connect or via punched tape). Talk about feedback.
Each key press was about 1/2 inch, had a good smooth travel almost to the bottom where it triggered the hardware, and
then you got to hear a resounding TWHAP as the printing mechanism displayed your letter on the paper.
I can type faster in bursts on a modern keyboard, but because I want to type faster I make more mistakes. The good old KSR would force you into an even rhythm because the next key wouldn't move until the mechanism had cleared from the last. The goal was not to be 1000 wpm, it was to keep the system active. You could actually think about the next letter before you had to type it. And sometimes plan two or three letters ahead. (See, just typing 'ahead' I had to try three times to keep from saying 'ahrde'). And if you were in the process of making a mistake on a KSR, you actually had time to stop your finger from pressing the key all the way!
Of course, having to count how many tape punches to backspace over and NULL out was a pain, but you could still impress the chicks with twenty feet of tape as the result of a late night programming session. They didn't have to know that 2/3 of it was NULL, it was the length that mattered. (Ok, I lied. I never impressed the chicks.)
It also keeps my finger smudges out of my line of sight. I hate touch screen anything. They always end up dirty.
Or scratched. And on some touch-screen technologies, a scratch makes it erratic beyond reasonable use.
This is why I hate my touch-screen Sony eReader PRS-650. Not only does the touch screen get dirty and streaky and hard to read through, but Sony has gone out of their way to make the UI unbearable. There is no "up" button to go back up a level or back where you were. While I'm reading the downloaded newspapers (shouts to Calibre, which I was not happy with on my previous Sony, but is simply fabulous now), if I want to go back up the menus I sometimes have to press a little arrow icon on the screen and sometimes press the "options" button so I can get a touchscreen menu that has a little arrow icon, and it usually requires alternating between the two.
I've finally given up and simply press the "HOME" button and re-navigate down through the periodicals pages to get where I want to go. At least that way it is one button press followed by a sequence of screen taps. It takes less time overall because I'm not having to switch gears and moving my hand around so often.
How is your 1500 watt transmitter going to help you overcome the reception noise on your end? It's not and you're going to just piss off the neighborhood and spend $4,000+ on equipment to do it.
It won't. Transmitters don't deal with reception. But the 1500 watt transmitter that the guy on the other end of the link is using will overcome my rx noise, for the same reason that I'm using 1500 watts to overcome the noise at his end.
Pissing off the neighborhood requires them knowing who and why the outages are occurring. Do you really think that any US utility is going to tell the truth about this to any user who complains? "Unidentified hardware issue." You'll not hear "a licensed user of the spectrum is preventing our system from working because we didn't bother to avoid his frequencies OR to shield our open-wire system from them."
Example: Comcast could not dare come out and tell me that they weren't sending me enough signal when I installed my digital cable box and I couldn't get "On Demand" to work. They kept telling me I wasn't authorized "On Demand" and trying to sell me a service upgrade for $1/month. After I returned the hardware and told the local office supervisor I was not going to resubscribe until someone came out and checked the signal levels at the demarc (and that I was going to file a complaint for fraud with the FTC, FCC and state Attorney General), the "On Demand" started working.
In the US most consumer devices must not cause interfere to Amateur Radio operations, but Amateur Radio equipment is allowed priority regarding interfere with most consumer devices. This is because the Amateur Radio Service and the experienced radio operators are considered valuable national resources, particularly in emergency/disaster scenarios.
It's actually simpler than that. Unlicensed users (most consumer devices) must not cause interference to, and must accept interference from, ANY licensed user. That means if you get a baby monitor that picks up the police, tough noogies for you. If the police start picking up your baby monitor, tough noogies for you. It's not just ham.
Further, secondary licensed users must accept interference from, and not cause interference to, primary users. For example, the 440MHz ham band in the US is secondary to the military. In California, a lot of hams were required to stop using, or to reduce the power of, a lot of repeaters in that band because the Air Force has over-the-horizon radar that operates in the band and it was being interfered with.
The reason hams get to keep ANY of the spectrum as secondary or primary users is because of the list of reasons in 47CFR97.1, which includes emergency communications, but once the spectrum is granted and the user is licensed, that becomes the reason for the protection from interference.
So, the point remains, if I have to boost power to maintain communications because of noise from BPL, 1) BPL is creating interference as in unintentional (and thus unlicensed) radiator and is IN THE WRONG, and 2) if my comms wipes out the BPL for an entire city, well, tough noogies. If you can somehow prove I am doing it willfully and maliciously, THEN you have some standing to stop me, but that will be very hard to prove.
Right, my whole point was the infrastructure for electric meters is best engineered at the "K" level, and they're trying to convince us they'll piggyback a "G" level service on top of it. Total BS.
No, that's not what they're trying to convince us of.
They're figuring that if they have to implement data-over-powerline anyway to support smart meters etc., they might as well implement it at as high a speed as possible and sell the excess to the customer. Instead of installing hardware that will do 1200 baud everywhere, install 200Mb. The harware costs are the small part of the equation. It's the labor and time doing the install that will cost. You have to spend the labor costs anyway, might as well spend a bit more for better hardware and do it once.
The other thing they are trying to convince us of is that having large wire antenna arrays spewing RF energy all over the countryside will not be in any way detrimental to the licensed and unlicensed intentional radiator users. I.e., AM/FM radio, TV, ham, CB, marine, international BC, maritime, OTH radar, public safety, commercial, and a thousand other users.
I'm a member of RSGB (Radio Society Great Britain) and I'm amazed at how poorly OFCOM protects the ham users they regulate. Maybe they're trying to emulate the FCC on this one.
... I may as well install an inground swimming pool at the same time as I carry my glass of iced tea outside, since they are such similar engineering tasks.
Would you like to try for a car analogy? You'd probably find a better one. Yes, if it cost the same amount to carry a glass of iced tea into your backyard as to make an iced-tea manufacturing plant there, you'd have a good analogy.
Bab5 - Wait til 2nd season. Seasons 2,3 and 4 are fantastic...some of the best sci-fi I've ever seen.
Until it turned into Sheridan talking the Ancients into leaving with a long, drawn out speech. So reminiscent of Kirk out-arguing the nasty computer villain or bad space alien. Lorien and The Shadows should have just squished him like a grape and kept on with their fun. And maybe fixed Delenn's nose while they were at it. How DID she breathe, anyway?
The best parts were Billy Mumy's and Flounder's. And G'kar. And ok, Flounder's boss. Claudia wasn't bad to look at, and the time she became green leader and red leader at the same time... And who wouldn't want a hot, P5 telepath who would know exactly what to do to have the best effect?
These are the people we used to be when we were a great nation.
And you are probably one of the people who stuck his head out the window and shouted at Paul Revere to shut the hell up and let you sleep.
Expecting common courtesy is a two-way street, and much different than enforcing it. Common courtesy not only includes expecting someone not to have a ringing phone at a movie, but it includes ME allowing for the fact that THEY have a life, too, and that THEY paid for the movie, too, and that maybe the message they are getting is important to them and maybe other people, too.
Common courtesy also includes YOU allowing for the fact that my decision to donate my time and efforts to helping others when needed should NOT require that I give up any hope of any life outside my own home, or any use of those facilities that you so happily claim for yourself. Such as a movie or a dinner out.
The difference between expecting and enforcing is called "freedom", and I shall not spend the time explaining the difference here.
That's right. Nobody has to be. But some people volunteer their time and services to help protect and serve the community. Like the SAR volunteer who drops what he's doing to come look for your 81 year old grandfather who has walked away from his assisted living center and it's 30 degrees F outside and he may die from hypothermia if he's not found. That call can come anytime of day or night, 24/7/365.24. When it happens, it's not just one person that needs to show up, it is a dozen or more.
YOU ARE NOT THAT GODDAMNED IMPORTANT. Nobody is.
You are right. Screw your grandfather, I'd rather watch a movie and eat a fancy dinner anyway. Your grandfather isn't that important. Nor is your lost child. Or your lost spouse.
But YOU, yes, YOU are that god damned important that you must be protected from any annoyances anywhere near you, even if that means that other people are inconvenienced. Just don't get lost and need someone to come help you, because my cell phone won't vibrate and I won't come to help find you, because you wanted my cell phone jammed while I watch a movie that you aren't even at.
Pagers work on a different frequency than Cell phones.
With the proliferation of text messaging services and email push to cell phones, the use of dedicated pagers is on the decline. In our local SAR group, I am just one of about three people who still uses a pager and not have callouts come to my cell phone. Most people just don't want to carry two devices when one will do. I'd rather be able to leave my pager at home when I travel out of the area and not have callouts count against my text messaging limit, so I still pay for and carry both.
This is my point: jamming cell phones in order to keep entertainment and other "quiet" venues from being disturbed is a bad idea.
No, that wasn't your point. You responded to someone who pointed out that doctors really do need to get cell text messages sometimes and that jamming was a bad idea with the suggestion that doctors could afford a phone with a vibrate option. As if the vibrate option would somehow get around the jammer. Well, it won't. That's a stupid suggestion.
So the reason vibrating cell phones is not a solution is that you are too clumsy to properly operate the buttons.
That's not anywhere close to what I said. I didn't say they weren't a solution, I said they were, but that even that solution sometimes doesn't work and requires more. And it had nothing to do with being "too clumsy to properly operate the buttons", but you know that. It has everything to do with the placement of the buttons and that they are easily pressed by anything close to them. Just like buttons can be pressed while in your back pocket, and thus my clear, deliberate reference to butt-dialing. But it's more fun to be insulting and deliberately misinterpret things, isn't it?
And you call me "technically illiterate".
The suggestion that doctors can afford "vibrate mode" phones as a means of getting around a cell phone jammer is technically illiterate. Vibrate mode is irrelevant in a discussion about the use of jammers.
If you are on call 24hrs a day then YES. You should give up your freedoms during your NOT FREE TIME so that it dose not infringe upon the freedoms of those that are actually enjoying their FREE TIME.
Oh, God, please let there be an amendment to the Constitution listing "the right to never be annoyed by anyone else in public ever" so I can sue every asshole who chews gum or bumps into me or coughs loudly or, God forbid, looks at his cellphone because a message about his kids just came in and his phone vibrated soundlessly in his pocket. Please let's codify this "right" somewhere so all those jerks who think it exists will be happy.
Maybe the "doctor" should get a phone that vibrates. With what he makes, I assume he could afford it.
Please, if you are technically illiterate, don't make suggestions how to solve problems with technology.
If you are jamming cell phones, it doesn't matter if the phone has a vibrate option. It won't ring, it won't vibrate, it won't do anything, because some asshole has decided that nobody ought to be able to use a cellphone anywhere near him because he's so fucking special and his rights are more important than everyone else's. Even when everyone else is being nice and polite and using vibrate setting.
My phone has a vibrate option. It also has the buttons to set this on the side of the phone where they often get pushed and it comes out of vibrate mode all by itself. Like butt-dialing. So I have the volume on the ringer turned down all the time, too. I've missed some important calls because of that. All because I thought I was being polite to assholes who don't care and don't think I should be able to get warnings about my house heating system failing or my work disk arrays falling apart while I'm not at home or at work.
I'm turning my ringer on high and locking it there. Screw you.
From the folks I know, it seems extremely highly correlated with ARES and the like membership. Almost a 100% chance there is an orange vest in the trunk of that car.
About half the ARES folks I know have vanity plates. But I see a LOT more people with vanity plates that I know are not. Personally, I have a magnetic sign I put on the car when necessary...
I bet you consider those guys with APRS trackers in their car to be very amusing.
Well, amusing is a good word for it. It's a minor version of the twitter/facebook status effect: "hey everyone, look at me, I'm sitting in the coffee shop...".
The nosiest print magazine I can think of is QST where the ARRL also knows my callsign.
Given your name and address, I can look up your callsign.
What I cannot fathom is why people buy vanity license plates to put their callsign on. I mean, given a callsign I can look up your address, and if you are tooling around in your car you aren't at home where all your expensive ham radios are... plus I know that you probably have one in your car that is easily stolen when you park it on the street. (We had a rash of such thefts not long ago.)
iPad vs. eInk: I find eInk harder to read because it needs a certain level of light. I find eInk better overall because it uses so much less power internally because it doesn't have a backlight.
Paper vs. electronic magazines: Did anyone figure out if the decline in wired electronic versions is because people don't like reading electronic versions in general or just don't like reading Wired? I dropped my Wired paper sub because I think Wired has become Tired. One can stand only so much of the 'circus' format that was bleeding edge when they started. And that's with a $10/year sub rate.
On the other hand, I've been buying Analog in electronic format because it is so much easier to keep up with my reading. My paper copy goes on the shelf where I never pick it up. My e-copy goes with me where I go. I'm thinking about doing more magazines that way.
"Texting" is illegal. But other phone functions like talking, dialing, or using GPS Nav applications are still legally ok. This makes it functionally impossible to enforce.
In Oregon it is illegal to use a cell phone while driving, with limited exceptions. The law actually refers to mobile two-way communications devices and thus includes two-way radios, but contains exemptions for amateur radio, CB, and fire/police. It was quite a fight to get a ham exemption into the law, and other federally licensed radio users (like CAP) are screwed.
The law also exempts farmers who are conducting farm business. So, it's ok to be on the phone calling your feed dealer while driving I5 through Portland at rush hour, but not calling your wife to let her know you're stuck in traffic because a moron had an accident while calling his feed dealer...
Oregon made it easy. Cop sees you driving with a phone in your hand (hands-free phoning is legal) , he can pull you over. (The law also makes it a primary offense which means you can be pulled over for doing it, not just ticketed as a result of a stop for something else.)
Damn feel-good fuzzy-warm-feeling think-of-the-children legislators. At least I'm both ham and CAP, so if I'm using my CAP radio I'll just pull out my ham license and get a pass.
I would actually pay for both of those devices. Not for myself, but for my S/O who, of all things, lacks "will" and "drive" for most things in life. She's the kind of person who would buy the silver-bullet placebos I described without fail.
So she would wind up with an expensive lock, an expensive clock, plus a secret stash of oreos and ding-dings and would always be an average of 5 minutes late for everything. At least, that's what I'd wind up with if I bought those silver-bullets. I'd keep the oreos on the same shelf (and in the same boxes) that I have all those electronic parts and gizmos that I bought for projects I haven't gotten to yet.
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Huh? That's exactly where the efficiency gains are going. The latter, of course. Hours are reduced to zero for every unnecessary employee.
the efficiency gains are largely going to the upper class.
Unlike a progressive tax system where, almost by definition, tax cuts are going to benefit predominately the richer (someone who actually pays taxes) taxpayer, cuts in electric prices will benefit all electric consumers. Even poor people have to pay for power.
And it's not being replaced by any alternative means of getting money for food, clothing or shelter either.
Every dollar saved not paying for electricity is a dollar that can be used to pay for food, clothing, or shelter. You don't need to create an alternative means.
And I knew it then, which is why I was working specifically in the functions that the profiler told me were slow.
The only place I disagree with you is in the planning for optimization. I write my code so I can read it and understand it, because for MOST things I write my time is more valuable than the computer's and I don't care if a loop takes a bit longer. I don't write loops unrolled or combine constants usually, because that's harder to debug and less obvious.
This was a special case of a program that needed to keep up with a running video stream and do many things at once.
Other than that, I agree with you -- so I'll give it a 95%. It's got a beat you can dance to but the lyrics are odd.
The volatile keyword prevents the compiler from doing things like moving values into registers,
What "volatile" actually means is that the memory location underlying the variable is able to change without the CPU knowing it and thus not only can the variable not be assigned to a register (which is what the "register" keyword causes), it must be accessed anew each time it is referenced. Thus, code that says something like:
if( x==0 )
do something;
if( x > 0)
do something else;
end
end
cannot optimize out the (x>0) test and something else code if x is marked volatile.
C purists will say that you can look at code and tell exactly what assembler output it will result in, but that's a ridiculous claim on any sort of optimizing compiler--a whole lot of stuff you didn't specify goes on.
C purists stopped being able to say that a long long time ago. Or int64 time ago.
I was once using an SGI MIPS C compiler, writing code I needed to run as fast as computerly possible. I was doing all the standard and even some pretty advanced hand optimization steps and getting nowhere. I finally realized that the O3 option to the compiler was already doing pretty much everything I was doing by hand and I was wasting my time. And then I ran across an early version of the Intel C compiler which was happily optimizing out an entire chunk of code that wasn't optimizable. (It was something to do with the instruction pipeline and branch look-aheads that wasn't being handled right, not a true "optimization". That means the code was still there, just lost in the pipeline when a branch took place.) So, it is as easy to say that there is a lot of stuff going on that you didn't know about, and a lot of stuff that isn't going on that you think should be.
If you are using memory-mapped IO, the compiler won't know if you are reading from an external device like an FPU or a simple memory location.
This kind of coding is standard for IO libraries. Things like reading values from memory mapped UART registers. A smart compiler will optimize the actual memory access away and rely on the previous read that is has stored in a local register. Without calling the address volatile you can wait all day for the IORDY bit to go high on a serial input device, as the CPU simply bit-compares the data in an internal register.
This is why you use the native libraries for such things when running on a variety of devices, so that people who understand that specific hardware and system better than you do can deal with such specificity and you can deal with writing a good programming language.
Any USPS inteface that deals with numbers like 2e-308 is, well, fascinating to think about but hardly relevant to the real world.
I mean, "I'd like a penny stamp please". "Here are 5e307 2e-308 cent stamps instead...."
Yes, because PHP is so widely known as a hard-number-crunching programming language that the time it takes to convert a string to binary double is criti-fucking-al. And it is well known that there are no standard, optimized math libraries that can do that job.
I mean, all of the bigger climate simulation models are written in PHP, don't you know? FORTRAN is just too damn slow for such things.
As for the previous poster who complained about how hard it is to make C calls from Python (as an example of how hard it is for PHP to do the same), well, yes, if you had to make your own call to the C function strtod you might have a point. But that call would be buried internal to the PHP system and wrapped by a PHP function so the programmer wouldn't have to do the hard work, and it would be done at the internals level.
Which isn't to say that if you're is reimplementing a system library function, you can get out of testing it very thoroughly. Oh no, not at all...
But it is to say that if you are reimplementing the C library in PHP you are doing something very very wrong and very very stupid.
You kids and your tactile feedback on modern keyboards. You just don't know what that is.
I used to program minis using a KSR-33 teletype keyboard (either direct connect or via punched tape). Talk about feedback. Each key press was about 1/2 inch, had a good smooth travel almost to the bottom where it triggered the hardware, and then you got to hear a resounding TWHAP as the printing mechanism displayed your letter on the paper.
I can type faster in bursts on a modern keyboard, but because I want to type faster I make more mistakes. The good old KSR would force you into an even rhythm because the next key wouldn't move until the mechanism had cleared from the last. The goal was not to be 1000 wpm, it was to keep the system active. You could actually think about the next letter before you had to type it. And sometimes plan two or three letters ahead. (See, just typing 'ahead' I had to try three times to keep from saying 'ahrde'). And if you were in the process of making a mistake on a KSR, you actually had time to stop your finger from pressing the key all the way!
Of course, having to count how many tape punches to backspace over and NULL out was a pain, but you could still impress the chicks with twenty feet of tape as the result of a late night programming session. They didn't have to know that 2/3 of it was NULL, it was the length that mattered. (Ok, I lied. I never impressed the chicks.)
Or scratched. And on some touch-screen technologies, a scratch makes it erratic beyond reasonable use.
This is why I hate my touch-screen Sony eReader PRS-650. Not only does the touch screen get dirty and streaky and hard to read through, but Sony has gone out of their way to make the UI unbearable. There is no "up" button to go back up a level or back where you were. While I'm reading the downloaded newspapers (shouts to Calibre, which I was not happy with on my previous Sony, but is simply fabulous now), if I want to go back up the menus I sometimes have to press a little arrow icon on the screen and sometimes press the "options" button so I can get a touchscreen menu that has a little arrow icon, and it usually requires alternating between the two.
I've finally given up and simply press the "HOME" button and re-navigate down through the periodicals pages to get where I want to go. At least that way it is one button press followed by a sequence of screen taps. It takes less time overall because I'm not having to switch gears and moving my hand around so often.
It won't. Transmitters don't deal with reception. But the 1500 watt transmitter that the guy on the other end of the link is using will overcome my rx noise, for the same reason that I'm using 1500 watts to overcome the noise at his end.
Pissing off the neighborhood requires them knowing who and why the outages are occurring. Do you really think that any US utility is going to tell the truth about this to any user who complains? "Unidentified hardware issue." You'll not hear "a licensed user of the spectrum is preventing our system from working because we didn't bother to avoid his frequencies OR to shield our open-wire system from them."
Example: Comcast could not dare come out and tell me that they weren't sending me enough signal when I installed my digital cable box and I couldn't get "On Demand" to work. They kept telling me I wasn't authorized "On Demand" and trying to sell me a service upgrade for $1/month. After I returned the hardware and told the local office supervisor I was not going to resubscribe until someone came out and checked the signal levels at the demarc (and that I was going to file a complaint for fraud with the FTC, FCC and state Attorney General), the "On Demand" started working.
And try $10,000.
It's actually simpler than that. Unlicensed users (most consumer devices) must not cause interference to, and must accept interference from, ANY licensed user. That means if you get a baby monitor that picks up the police, tough noogies for you. If the police start picking up your baby monitor, tough noogies for you. It's not just ham.
Further, secondary licensed users must accept interference from, and not cause interference to, primary users. For example, the 440MHz ham band in the US is secondary to the military. In California, a lot of hams were required to stop using, or to reduce the power of, a lot of repeaters in that band because the Air Force has over-the-horizon radar that operates in the band and it was being interfered with.
The reason hams get to keep ANY of the spectrum as secondary or primary users is because of the list of reasons in 47CFR97.1, which includes emergency communications, but once the spectrum is granted and the user is licensed, that becomes the reason for the protection from interference.
So, the point remains, if I have to boost power to maintain communications because of noise from BPL, 1) BPL is creating interference as in unintentional (and thus unlicensed) radiator and is IN THE WRONG, and 2) if my comms wipes out the BPL for an entire city, well, tough noogies. If you can somehow prove I am doing it willfully and maliciously, THEN you have some standing to stop me, but that will be very hard to prove.
No, that's not what they're trying to convince us of.
They're figuring that if they have to implement data-over-powerline anyway to support smart meters etc., they might as well implement it at as high a speed as possible and sell the excess to the customer. Instead of installing hardware that will do 1200 baud everywhere, install 200Mb. The harware costs are the small part of the equation. It's the labor and time doing the install that will cost. You have to spend the labor costs anyway, might as well spend a bit more for better hardware and do it once.
The other thing they are trying to convince us of is that having large wire antenna arrays spewing RF energy all over the countryside will not be in any way detrimental to the licensed and unlicensed intentional radiator users. I.e., AM/FM radio, TV, ham, CB, marine, international BC, maritime, OTH radar, public safety, commercial, and a thousand other users.
I'm a member of RSGB (Radio Society Great Britain) and I'm amazed at how poorly OFCOM protects the ham users they regulate. Maybe they're trying to emulate the FCC on this one.
Would you like to try for a car analogy? You'd probably find a better one. Yes, if it cost the same amount to carry a glass of iced tea into your backyard as to make an iced-tea manufacturing plant there, you'd have a good analogy.
Until it turned into Sheridan talking the Ancients into leaving with a long, drawn out speech. So reminiscent of Kirk out-arguing the nasty computer villain or bad space alien. Lorien and The Shadows should have just squished him like a grape and kept on with their fun. And maybe fixed Delenn's nose while they were at it. How DID she breathe, anyway?
The best parts were Billy Mumy's and Flounder's. And G'kar. And ok, Flounder's boss. Claudia wasn't bad to look at, and the time she became green leader and red leader at the same time... And who wouldn't want a hot, P5 telepath who would know exactly what to do to have the best effect?
And you are probably one of the people who stuck his head out the window and shouted at Paul Revere to shut the hell up and let you sleep.
Expecting common courtesy is a two-way street, and much different than enforcing it. Common courtesy not only includes expecting someone not to have a ringing phone at a movie, but it includes ME allowing for the fact that THEY have a life, too, and that THEY paid for the movie, too, and that maybe the message they are getting is important to them and maybe other people, too.
Common courtesy also includes YOU allowing for the fact that my decision to donate my time and efforts to helping others when needed should NOT require that I give up any hope of any life outside my own home, or any use of those facilities that you so happily claim for yourself. Such as a movie or a dinner out.
The difference between expecting and enforcing is called "freedom", and I shall not spend the time explaining the difference here.
You shouldn't wonder about a lack of friends. It's obvious.
That's right. Nobody has to be. But some people volunteer their time and services to help protect and serve the community. Like the SAR volunteer who drops what he's doing to come look for your 81 year old grandfather who has walked away from his assisted living center and it's 30 degrees F outside and he may die from hypothermia if he's not found. That call can come anytime of day or night, 24/7/365.24. When it happens, it's not just one person that needs to show up, it is a dozen or more.
YOU ARE NOT THAT GODDAMNED IMPORTANT. Nobody is.
You are right. Screw your grandfather, I'd rather watch a movie and eat a fancy dinner anyway. Your grandfather isn't that important. Nor is your lost child. Or your lost spouse.
But YOU, yes, YOU are that god damned important that you must be protected from any annoyances anywhere near you, even if that means that other people are inconvenienced. Just don't get lost and need someone to come help you, because my cell phone won't vibrate and I won't come to help find you, because you wanted my cell phone jammed while I watch a movie that you aren't even at.
With the proliferation of text messaging services and email push to cell phones, the use of dedicated pagers is on the decline. In our local SAR group, I am just one of about three people who still uses a pager and not have callouts come to my cell phone. Most people just don't want to carry two devices when one will do. I'd rather be able to leave my pager at home when I travel out of the area and not have callouts count against my text messaging limit, so I still pay for and carry both.
No, that wasn't your point. You responded to someone who pointed out that doctors really do need to get cell text messages sometimes and that jamming was a bad idea with the suggestion that doctors could afford a phone with a vibrate option. As if the vibrate option would somehow get around the jammer. Well, it won't. That's a stupid suggestion.
So the reason vibrating cell phones is not a solution is that you are too clumsy to properly operate the buttons.
That's not anywhere close to what I said. I didn't say they weren't a solution, I said they were, but that even that solution sometimes doesn't work and requires more. And it had nothing to do with being "too clumsy to properly operate the buttons", but you know that. It has everything to do with the placement of the buttons and that they are easily pressed by anything close to them. Just like buttons can be pressed while in your back pocket, and thus my clear, deliberate reference to butt-dialing. But it's more fun to be insulting and deliberately misinterpret things, isn't it?
And you call me "technically illiterate".
The suggestion that doctors can afford "vibrate mode" phones as a means of getting around a cell phone jammer is technically illiterate. Vibrate mode is irrelevant in a discussion about the use of jammers.
Oh, God, please let there be an amendment to the Constitution listing "the right to never be annoyed by anyone else in public ever" so I can sue every asshole who chews gum or bumps into me or coughs loudly or, God forbid, looks at his cellphone because a message about his kids just came in and his phone vibrated soundlessly in his pocket. Please let's codify this "right" somewhere so all those jerks who think it exists will be happy.
Please, if you are technically illiterate, don't make suggestions how to solve problems with technology.
If you are jamming cell phones, it doesn't matter if the phone has a vibrate option. It won't ring, it won't vibrate, it won't do anything, because some asshole has decided that nobody ought to be able to use a cellphone anywhere near him because he's so fucking special and his rights are more important than everyone else's. Even when everyone else is being nice and polite and using vibrate setting.
My phone has a vibrate option. It also has the buttons to set this on the side of the phone where they often get pushed and it comes out of vibrate mode all by itself. Like butt-dialing. So I have the volume on the ringer turned down all the time, too. I've missed some important calls because of that. All because I thought I was being polite to assholes who don't care and don't think I should be able to get warnings about my house heating system failing or my work disk arrays falling apart while I'm not at home or at work.
I'm turning my ringer on high and locking it there. Screw you.
About half the ARES folks I know have vanity plates. But I see a LOT more people with vanity plates that I know are not. Personally, I have a magnetic sign I put on the car when necessary...
I bet you consider those guys with APRS trackers in their car to be very amusing.
Well, amusing is a good word for it. It's a minor version of the twitter/facebook status effect: "hey everyone, look at me, I'm sitting in the coffee shop...".
I'm not the asshat trying to ban everything that I find annoying, bud.
Given your name and address, I can look up your callsign.
What I cannot fathom is why people buy vanity license plates to put their callsign on. I mean, given a callsign I can look up your address, and if you are tooling around in your car you aren't at home where all your expensive ham radios are... plus I know that you probably have one in your car that is easily stolen when you park it on the street. (We had a rash of such thefts not long ago.)
iPad vs. eInk: I find eInk harder to read because it needs a certain level of light. I find eInk better overall because it uses so much less power internally because it doesn't have a backlight.
Paper vs. electronic magazines: Did anyone figure out if the decline in wired electronic versions is because people don't like reading electronic versions in general or just don't like reading Wired? I dropped my Wired paper sub because I think Wired has become Tired. One can stand only so much of the 'circus' format that was bleeding edge when they started. And that's with a $10/year sub rate.
On the other hand, I've been buying Analog in electronic format because it is so much easier to keep up with my reading. My paper copy goes on the shelf where I never pick it up. My e-copy goes with me where I go. I'm thinking about doing more magazines that way.
In Oregon it is illegal to use a cell phone while driving, with limited exceptions. The law actually refers to mobile two-way communications devices and thus includes two-way radios, but contains exemptions for amateur radio, CB, and fire/police. It was quite a fight to get a ham exemption into the law, and other federally licensed radio users (like CAP) are screwed.
The law also exempts farmers who are conducting farm business. So, it's ok to be on the phone calling your feed dealer while driving I5 through Portland at rush hour, but not calling your wife to let her know you're stuck in traffic because a moron had an accident while calling his feed dealer...
Oregon made it easy. Cop sees you driving with a phone in your hand (hands-free phoning is legal) , he can pull you over. (The law also makes it a primary offense which means you can be pulled over for doing it, not just ticketed as a result of a stop for something else.)
Damn feel-good fuzzy-warm-feeling think-of-the-children legislators. At least I'm both ham and CAP, so if I'm using my CAP radio I'll just pull out my ham license and get a pass.
So she would wind up with an expensive lock, an expensive clock, plus a secret stash of oreos and ding-dings and would always be an average of 5 minutes late for everything. At least, that's what I'd wind up with if I bought those silver-bullets. I'd keep the oreos on the same shelf (and in the same boxes) that I have all those electronic parts and gizmos that I bought for projects I haven't gotten to yet.
They won't be able to download the data from the pedometer because the damn micro-USB connector will be clogged with paint!