actually common sense would say get your silly toy computers off the internet and out of the way of adults trying to do their jobs. Even you admit that there is a lot of stuff for them to keep track of. the laast thing they need is to have to worry about some overly important idiot trying to get a good you-tube clip for his friends.
How can you profess to be an AMA member, and a pilot, and yet buy in to every single paranoiac fantasy spouted by the FAA and the Airline Pilots Association? When was the last time you had a legitimate reason to fly above 500feet with your RC aircraft? I can barely see the damn things that high, and if I can't see it, whats the point of flying it? I've been flying RC since the 70's but apparently because you can buy a drone at the mall we have to lower the air ceiling to 2 feet and call a tower for prior approval?
Obviously you've never seen a drone, or a bird, or both. A drone is *not* denser in it's main body than a bird, pound for pound, of comparable sizes.
And someone didn't pay $1-$5k per bird to set it loose around an airport runway.
Fact is, that FAA list is *sightings*. For some unknown reason (unknown my ass) anything a pilot sees anymore is automatically considered a drone.
I eagerly await the testing of throwing a 2.5 lb Phantom against a Cessna windshield, and then throwing a 5 lb chicken carcass at the same 120mph. Until someone shows me the plastic shell with bits of metal does more damage than the 5lb chunk of Meat, I'm gonna call BS.
People who threaten aircraft should be jailed, wether it's a drone or laser pointer but that doesn't mean all drones are for is to bring down airliners, regardless of what CNN tells you.
I may be mistaken, but Google's "search monopoly" doesn't exist. A monopoly means not only you dominate in a field, but you purposely exclude others. No PC or smartphone or tablet ships with Google search only. When you buy your computer, there is no "google tax" that you can't remove from the price of your PC. I can *easily* on any device I own use whatever search engine I please whenever I want.
You can rant all you want about Google and their nefarious plot to subjugate the world, but they are coming by that power by us giving it to them, not back-door licensing deals that force your device to use Google and only Google. Google is nothing like Microsoft, and your attempt to frame this in a "Both sides are bad, so vote Republican" manner is disingenuous and frankly rather pointless.
\veteran of the Microsoft F***ed Me wars
\\OS/2 2.x beta tester
Looks like it will be a bit more painful to do so, because the reports show it *without* a card slot ("You store all your goodies in the Cloud").
Not near as easy to hack as the Nook Color.
Smells like the IOPener a bit to me..
I was working at a Lazarus department store that fall in '82, in the stereo/camera department (remember when there was a Camera Department?) when we go our first CD player.
It was included in a new Fisher 100watt component stereo system right across the aisle from me. I remember the only CD's the salesman had to sell, or demo, were classical music.
I also remember watching the salesman carefully take one our of the jewel case, by the edges, show it to all of us carefully - then drop it on the floor and STOMP on it.
My boss nearly Shat himself. It played fine.
OT: That same Fisher 100watt system - we took the audio output line off the back of an Atari 800 (we sold 'em then for $699, I believe) and ran it into the stereo in an AUX input.
Fire up Star Raiders, and crank up the bass. Kids would come running in from the mall *downstairs* to watch and play.
It's Money, and *only* money, that made Broadcasters bitch about the conversion to Digital.
Do you have any idea how much it *costs* to put up another run of line up a tower, and a new transmitter on the ground, *and* get a *digital* signal there?
The tower/line is an average of $400-600K. *If* you can find an available tower crew.
The Transmitter costs start at $600K and goto $1.5M range, depending on your channel assignment and/or how much power you have to make to replicate your range.
I worked at one station who was Analog channel 3 - their power bill was $900/month. DTV allotment was Channel 48. To duplicate coverage at that frequency, it took enough power to generate a $7000/month electric bill.
Sure, Broadcasters are making out like *bandits*!
BTW, the signal TV broadcasters send over-the-air *is* compressed - from an original 370Meg down to a max of 19.2Meg. And most stations would be *thrilled* if the local cable headend would carry their DTV signal un-molested. The cable companies want to compress it much harder, to the point where their signals look better.
Time for you to find another Straw-Man for *this* argument, Clyde.
CheapEngineer (stuck at a transmitter site, Deep in the Plains)
This looks to be as effective as those sad little towns here in the midwest whose City Councils decide to vote themselves a "Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone" or resolutions showing their displeasure at the Iraq War.
I'm sure Rummy is concerned.
I'm sure GWB will follow *that* law, since he does such a good job writing himself "get out of jail free" cards attached to every bill he signs...
I vote that a woodcut of this GPL variant be placed in the Dictionary next to the definition of "pointless".
Great. Now I get to listen to people who can't even manage to pick up our low VHF station with their fillings *now* try to pick up our UHF DTV with an expensive receiver.
Sorry to burst the "gleeful" bubble, but I want to know the percentage of Local Cable and/or Dish/Sat provider "local affiliate " rebroadcasts that are derived from antennas looking at the Broadcaster's analog channel.
In my market, Dish Network's Local Channels are *all* Off-Air NTSC signals, which are then digital encoded and fibered to DishNetwork.
Only a few of the local stations have direct fiber connections with cable companies, and then only the "major" cable outlet, not the 30 others in the surrounding towns and counties.
No cable providers here are retransmitting the local channel's DTV signal.
The NTSC transmitter is still in use, and if you think broadcasters are just sitting on these channels, milking them for their last penny, you're right.
You have to pay for that DTV transmitter somehow - you know, the one that you have to operate, but yet cannot sell airtime on because only 150 people in your market have the equipment to watch it.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the *broadcast* gear can't handle being tossed around 24 hours a day.
The old Betacam gear was modular enough, but DVCPRO (the pro ancestor of MiniDV) is much more "just replace the whole deck assembly" than the machines of even 10 years ago.
And now, a *lot* of the "Pro's" are using the DV gear anyway - our corporate Overlords are foisting a few of these new camcorders on us. They cost 1/4 as much as the Broadcast gear, but are essentially inpossible to do major repairs on.
My suggestion would to buy as much as you can afford, more money usually equals fewer plastic mechanical parts which *usually* means longer life.
Quotes on "Well, of you sell enough of them, the price will theoretically go down to $50" bullsh*t are not allowed.
As a TV engineer, I know as a *fact* that the analog will not be turned off until enough little old ladies have been given new TV's/set-top-boxes and are sufficiently placated. The original "deadline" includes the concept "2006 or until a sufficient percentage of homes have the digital receivers in place"
Any useful information in that message was completely canceled out by the use of the word "meme" *three* times - thereby invoking the small print at the bottom of Godwin's Law, which states that only Nazis use the word "meme".
As if everyone doesn't hate us *enough*, you want to give them a junk computer *and* make them try to install (and actually attempt to *operate*) Linux?
Jesus, just shoot 'em in the head and get it over with.
I am a Broadcast Engineer, which means I work on everything at a TV station (personally I'm better at field cameras, Transmitters and computer hardware).
No, I don't have a MCSE, and Yes, I'd get one gladly if I worked in a profession where my employers were likeley to pony up the cash to do so. I maintain a small building with approx 100 Wintel clients running XP pro, W2kPro, and various versions of 98 and 95, along with several Sun boxes for Weather, a SCO Newsroom server and a w2kserver or 3.
*In my "spare" time*.
I can barely manage to get these boneheads to operate a computer like the one they have at home, let alone *any* flavor of Linux, so save your breath there. The software I need doesn't exist for *Linux, and won't for the next 20 years.
So I'm stuck with Microsoft, as much as I hate them.
"Beyond their abilities, both technically and conceptually"
WTF?
How do you walk through standard width doors with a melon that big?
Understand that I've held a special disgust for Microsoft for longer than Linux has been your favorite toy (Anyone remember OS/2?), but to throw out the blanket "Even Windows IT people are too stoopid to understand the things *I* understand" statement shoots you right to the top of the Elitist Linux Bastard (c) League.
It's apparently a general purpose software decoder of digital signals; decode DTV at a software level, apply software filters to analog audio, basically thru programming replicate all those arcane things done in both analog and digital radio/tv/shortwave signals.
Slashdot Mirror
Please read the frigging article.
actually common sense would say get your silly toy computers off the internet and out of the way of adults trying to do their jobs. Even you admit that there is a lot of stuff for them to keep track of. the laast thing they need is to have to worry about some overly important idiot trying to get a good you-tube clip for his friends.
How can you profess to be an AMA member, and a pilot, and yet buy in to every single paranoiac fantasy spouted by the FAA and the Airline Pilots Association? When was the last time you had a legitimate reason to fly above 500feet with your RC aircraft? I can barely see the damn things that high, and if I can't see it, whats the point of flying it? I've been flying RC since the 70's but apparently because you can buy a drone at the mall we have to lower the air ceiling to 2 feet and call a tower for prior approval?
Show me your testing, before you spout *your* comparisons. Otherwise, it's as fictional as the 'sky is falling' fear the FAA is trying to promulgate.
Obviously you've never seen a drone, or a bird, or both. A drone is *not* denser in it's main body than a bird, pound for pound, of comparable sizes. And someone didn't pay $1-$5k per bird to set it loose around an airport runway. Fact is, that FAA list is *sightings*. For some unknown reason (unknown my ass) anything a pilot sees anymore is automatically considered a drone. I eagerly await the testing of throwing a 2.5 lb Phantom against a Cessna windshield, and then throwing a 5 lb chicken carcass at the same 120mph. Until someone shows me the plastic shell with bits of metal does more damage than the 5lb chunk of Meat, I'm gonna call BS. People who threaten aircraft should be jailed, wether it's a drone or laser pointer but that doesn't mean all drones are for is to bring down airliners, regardless of what CNN tells you.
Red Thunder by John Varley (http://www.amazon.com/Red-Thunder-John-Varley/dp/0441010156). What kid doesn't want to build his own spaceship?
I may be mistaken, but Google's "search monopoly" doesn't exist. A monopoly means not only you dominate in a field, but you purposely exclude others. No PC or smartphone or tablet ships with Google search only. When you buy your computer, there is no "google tax" that you can't remove from the price of your PC. I can *easily* on any device I own use whatever search engine I please whenever I want. You can rant all you want about Google and their nefarious plot to subjugate the world, but they are coming by that power by us giving it to them, not back-door licensing deals that force your device to use Google and only Google. Google is nothing like Microsoft, and your attempt to frame this in a "Both sides are bad, so vote Republican" manner is disingenuous and frankly rather pointless. \veteran of the Microsoft F***ed Me wars \\OS/2 2.x beta tester
Looks like it will be a bit more painful to do so, because the reports show it *without* a card slot ("You store all your goodies in the Cloud"). Not near as easy to hack as the Nook Color. Smells like the IOPener a bit to me..
I was working at a Lazarus department store that fall in '82, in the stereo/camera department (remember when there was a Camera Department?) when we go our first CD player.
It was included in a new Fisher 100watt component stereo system right across the aisle from me. I remember the only CD's the salesman had to sell, or demo, were classical music.
I also remember watching the salesman carefully take one our of the jewel case, by the edges, show it to all of us carefully - then drop it on the floor and STOMP on it.
My boss nearly Shat himself. It played fine.
OT: That same Fisher 100watt system - we took the audio output line off the back of an Atari 800 (we sold 'em then for $699, I believe) and ran it into the stereo in an AUX input.
Fire up Star Raiders, and crank up the bass. Kids would come running in from the mall *downstairs* to watch and play.
I sold a *lot* of Atari computers that winter...
Cheap "Old Bastard" Engineer
I call bullsh*t.
'The affiliate system'? Riiiight.
It's Money, and *only* money, that made Broadcasters bitch about the conversion to Digital.
Do you have any idea how much it *costs* to put up another run of line up a tower, and a new transmitter on the ground, *and* get a *digital* signal there?
The tower/line is an average of $400-600K. *If* you can find an available tower crew.
The Transmitter costs start at $600K and goto $1.5M range, depending on your channel assignment and/or how much power you have to make to replicate your range.
I worked at one station who was Analog channel 3 - their power bill was $900/month. DTV allotment was Channel 48. To duplicate coverage at that frequency, it took enough power to generate a $7000/month electric bill.
Sure, Broadcasters are making out like *bandits*!
BTW, the signal TV broadcasters send over-the-air *is* compressed - from an original 370Meg down to a max of 19.2Meg. And most stations would be *thrilled* if the local cable headend would carry their DTV signal un-molested. The cable companies want to compress it much harder, to the point where their signals look better.
Time for you to find another Straw-Man for *this* argument, Clyde.
CheapEngineer
(stuck at a transmitter site, Deep in the Plains)
>The easiest way to fix that is to get married.
That'll kill your sex drive enough that you'll have no desire for pr0n again...
CheapEngineer
Riiiiight.
This looks to be as effective as those sad little towns here in the midwest whose City Councils decide to vote themselves a "Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone" or resolutions showing their displeasure at the Iraq War.
I'm sure Rummy is concerned.
I'm sure GWB will follow *that* law, since he does such a good job writing himself "get out of jail free" cards attached to every bill he signs...
I vote that a woodcut of this GPL variant be placed in the Dictionary next to the definition of "pointless".
CheapEngineer
The only thing he forgot was to scatter the word "mem" in his post. CheapEngineer
I'd *really* like to work in the world you work in.
You know, the one where there's *time* to write *anything* down, before the next forest fire erupts.
How *are* things at the University?
CheapEngineer
Great. Now I get to listen to people who can't even manage to pick up our low VHF station with their fillings *now* try to pick up our UHF DTV with an expensive receiver.
What a giveaway for Broadcasters!
*cough**BULLSH*T**cough*
Sorry to burst the "gleeful" bubble, but I want to know the percentage of Local Cable and/or Dish/Sat provider "local affiliate " rebroadcasts that are derived from antennas looking at the Broadcaster's analog channel.
In my market, Dish Network's Local Channels are *all* Off-Air NTSC signals, which are then digital encoded and fibered to DishNetwork.
Only a few of the local stations have direct fiber connections with cable companies, and then only the "major" cable outlet, not the 30 others in the surrounding towns and counties.
No cable providers here are retransmitting the local channel's DTV signal.
The NTSC transmitter is still in use, and if you think broadcasters are just sitting on these channels, milking them for their last penny, you're right.
You have to pay for that DTV transmitter somehow - you know, the one that you have to operate, but yet cannot sell airtime on because only 150 people in your market have the equipment to watch it.
CheapEngineer
Sorry to burst your bubble, but the *broadcast* gear can't handle being tossed around 24 hours a day.
The old Betacam gear was modular enough, but DVCPRO (the pro ancestor of MiniDV) is much more "just replace the whole deck assembly" than the machines of even 10 years ago.
And now, a *lot* of the "Pro's" are using the DV gear anyway - our corporate Overlords are foisting a few of these new camcorders on us. They cost 1/4 as much as the Broadcast gear, but are essentially inpossible to do major repairs on.
My suggestion would to buy as much as you can afford, more money usually equals fewer plastic mechanical parts which *usually* means longer life.
CheapEngineer
Thanks for being the first to actually define GST.
I bet someone that I could read the whole thread without that explanation, and unusually, I lost this time.
CheapEngineer
Bullsh*t call.
Provide a link for the mythical $50 set-top box.
Quotes on "Well, of you sell enough of them, the price will theoretically go down to $50" bullsh*t are not allowed.
As a TV engineer, I know as a *fact* that the analog will not be turned off until enough little old ladies have been given new TV's/set-top-boxes and are sufficiently placated. The original "deadline" includes the concept "2006 or until a sufficient percentage of homes have the digital receivers in place"
Cheap Engineer
Second line here is $37/mo and DSL is unavailable. Cablemodem is $42/mo + $10 month modem rental.
Try again!
Any useful information in that message was completely canceled out by the use of the word "meme" *three* times - thereby invoking the small print at the bottom of Godwin's Law, which states that only Nazis use the word "meme".
CheapEngineer
As if everyone doesn't hate us *enough*, you want to give them a junk computer *and* make them try to install (and actually attempt to *operate*) Linux?
Jesus, just shoot 'em in the head and get it over with.
CheapEngineer
To clarify things;
I am a Broadcast Engineer, which means I work on everything at a TV station (personally I'm better at field cameras, Transmitters and computer hardware).
No, I don't have a MCSE, and Yes, I'd get one gladly if I worked in a profession where my employers were likeley to pony up the cash to do so. I maintain a small building with approx 100 Wintel clients running XP pro, W2kPro, and various versions of 98 and 95, along with several Sun boxes for Weather, a SCO Newsroom server and a w2kserver or 3.
*In my "spare" time*.
I can barely manage to get these boneheads to operate a computer like the one they have at home, let alone *any* flavor of Linux, so save your breath there. The software I need doesn't exist for *Linux, and won't for the next 20 years.
So I'm stuck with Microsoft, as much as I hate them.
CheapEngineer
"Beyond their abilities, both technically and conceptually"
WTF?
How do you walk through standard width doors with a melon that big?
Understand that I've held a special disgust for Microsoft for longer than Linux has been your favorite toy (Anyone remember OS/2?), but to throw out the blanket "Even Windows IT people are too stoopid to understand the things *I* understand" statement shoots you right to the top of the Elitist Linux Bastard (c) League.
Congrats!
CheapEngineer
It's apparently a general purpose software decoder of digital signals; decode DTV at a software level, apply software filters to analog audio, basically thru programming replicate all those arcane things done in both analog and digital radio/tv/shortwave signals.