Ever since I started working at the public library in my town, I have been slowly adding to the collection of non-Microsoft guides, books, and software.
Unfortunately, due to the draconian rights management practiced by some commercial companies over the past twenty years, the concept of "making copies" of software and "giving it away" strikes fear into the hearts of upper management, many of whom haven't actually learned anything about software since their library master's program, when computers were XT class machines, a library would be lucky to have just/one/, and no library ever heard of an internet.
One thing that someone (and I may take up this charge) should do is write an article for the Library Journal or another of the librarian-professional publications. Describe the history of free/open software, describe the licensing issues, answer the obvious questions that arise from the Microsoft-addled point of view, and then review a number of free software items. Knoppix and several different flavors of Linux, various flavors of BSD, office software, and other applications.
Then describe the market! Who can use this software? Who/does/ use this software? Why is this important to the people who use the library?
Find out if your library has a geek on staff, and whether they have a CD burner. If they don't, or they aren't willing to donate the CD's, how about printing up some decent labels, burning the CD's for the library, and donating them?
In doing this, you would reach the majority of the professional library staff, and show something of the community spirit which has made free/open software possible.
Believe me, the librarians are your best friend in this endeavor. You might even find that the younger technical librarians (the kind that maintain the computers, do cataloguing, web page maintenance, and databases--you know, the 'back room' librarians) are already Linux/BSD/etc. geeks, just itching to help promote the cause!
The main feature that I use OO for these days is its PDF export function -- you don't get that with office unless you've got a full copy of Acrobat.
PDF995 http://www.pdf995.com/
This works great. Using it as the free version is fine if you don't mind a web-browser nag screen every time you print (I don't mind), or you can pay the purchase price (all of something like $9.95) and avoid the nag screen.
The PDF's it creates have worked flawlessly for me and the people I have sent them to.
It isn't just Cadillacs. Chrysler vehicles since the early 1980's have a diagnostic sequence that you can run easily.
See http://www.allpar.com/fix/codes.html for details. Through the mid-1990's, you usually:
* Start with the key in "off" * Within about five seconds, turn the key "on-off-on-off-on". Leave it in on the last "on". * Watch the "Check Engine" or "Service Engine Soon" light. Count the blinks. Digits are seperated by small pauses, individual trouble codes are seperated by longer pauses. The "end of codes" code is 5-5.
See the above link for more information.
I wouldn't be suprised if one of the ultimate goals of the open-car-computer push is to make it so that anyone can download the most recent engine computer code and flash it into the engine controller. Stealerships charge you a lot to do this simple procedure, and there is no reason why you or an independent mechanic shouldn't be able to use the common OBD-2 interfaces to upload new control software.
But I have not yet seen any objective evidence that Broadband over Powerlines causes more interference than the existence of the power lines themselves. Maybe the studies are there - if they are, great. But I haven't seen any that aren't sponsored by either amateur radio groups or energy companies.
Well, if you can get Aunt Fannie's Quilting Association to sponsor a radio frequency interference profile, be my guest.
My guess is that the military and FEMA are conducting tests now, but the results may not be available to the public for a while...if ever. Expect the FCC to swiftly and severely crack down on power companies that interfere with military operations.
We'll report it to the FCC if they don't comply, and then they'll get a letter like this from Riley Hollingsworth at the FCC:
(From FCC enforcement letters at www.arrl.org)
July 10, 2003
Mr. Peter Burg, CEO FirstEnergy Corporation 76 South Main Street Akron, OH 44308
Dear Mr. Burg:
The Federal Communications Commission has received complaints that equipment operated by your utility may be causing harmful radio interference to an operator in the Amateur Radio Service. The complainant is:
Donald Benedict, NN2Y 1947 Teakwood Rd. Toms River NJ 08753-4547
The FCC has the responsibility to require that utility companies rectify such problems within a reasonable time if the interference is caused by faulty power utility equipment. Under FCC rules, most power-line and related equipment is classified as an "incidental radiator." This term is used to describe equipment that does not intentionally generate any radio-frequency energy, but that may create such energy as an incidental part of its intended operation.
To help you better understand your responsibilities under FCC rules, here are the most important rules relating to radio and television interference from incidental radiators:
Title 47, CFR Section 15.5 General conditions of operation.
(b) Operation of an intentional, unintentional, or incidental radiator is subject to the conditions that no harmful interference is caused and that interference must be accepted that may be caused by the operation of an authorized radio station, by another intentional or unintentional radiator, by industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) equipment, or by an incidental radiator.
(c) The operator of the radio frequency device shall be required to cease operating the device upon notification by a Commission representative that the device is causing harmful interference. Operation shall not resume until the condition causing the harmful interference has been corrected.
Title 47, CFR Section 15.13 Incidental radiators.
Manufacturers of these devices shall employ good engineering practices to minimize the risk of harmful interference.
Title 47, CFR Section 15.15 General technical requirements.
(c) Parties responsible for equipment compliance should note that the limits specified in this part will not prevent harmful interference under all circumstances. Since the operators of Part 15 devices are required to cease operation should harmful interference occur to authorized users of the radio frequency spectrum, the parties responsible for equipment compliance are encouraged to employ the minimum field strength necessary for communications, to provide greater attenuation of unwanted emissions than required by these regulations, and to advise the user as to how to resolve harmful interference problems (for example, see Sec. 15.105(b)).
The complainant has attempted unsuccessfully to work through your usual complaint resolution process and as a result the matter has been referred to our office. The FCC prefers that those responsible for the proper operation of power lines assume their responsibilities fairly. This means that your utility company should locate the source of any interference caused by its equipment and make necessary corrections within a reasonable time.
While the FCC has confidence that most utility companies are able to resolve these issues voluntarily, the FCC wants to make your office aware that this unresolved problem may be a violation of FCC rules and could result in a monetary forfeiture for each occurrence. At this stage, the FCC encourages the parties to resolve this problem without FCC intervention, but if necessary to facilitate resolution, the FCC may investigate possible rules violations and address appropriate remedies.
The American Radio Relay League, a national organization of Amateur Radio operators, may be able to offer help and guidance about radio interference that involves Amateur Radio operators.
Just the other day I ran knoppix on a PII 266 laptop wi/ 64 megs. I used a swapfile on the windows partition and booted into the XFCE desktop in KDE. It took a while to start up, but other than that ran fine.
Aha, swapfile. Knoppix is most useful (imho) because it can load and run from the CD without needing to use the HDD. This allows me to pop in and take a look at the HDD if things are awry.
Of course, on a computer that is in good working order anyway, you can use the swapfile and just delete it later. That isn't a very useful way to do things if the HDD or OS is having problems.
You can get so much information from a knoppix CD, it's just not worth looking anywhere else.
Yes, but only if the computer can run Knoppix. Knoppix has suprisingly high basic requirements -- it runs a lot of processor and memory intensive eye candy.
It won't even try to boot on my 350 mhz laptop with 96 megs of ram.
Most full scale HF (high frequency) amateur radios, which are the ones used as a backbone for emergency network traffic, cost $500-$3000, plus another $500-$5000 in associated equipment such as antennas, tuners, test equipment, etc.
I am happy to give up my day, weekend, whatever, if I am needed for emergency service. Fine. But I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars on radio equipment that I can only use during a major disaster. Not only would I then not get to enjoy the/fun/ side of the hobby when there/aren't/ disasters, but when a disaster/does/ happen I won't have any practice in actually operating on an HF emergency net.
Would you spend $4000 on a sweet P4 3ghz box with all the latest high-performance parts, and continue to upgrade it and keep it current and tuned, if you were only likely to be able to turn it on once every four or five years, and then only for a day or two?
Those hams who responded to the NY attack did what RACES/ARES/SATERN hams (among others) train to do: they provided vital communications links for search & rescue, for disaster command posts, for health and shelter organizations, and for health/welfare traffic.
Rubbernecking is not the same thing as reporting and serving. The emergency service portion of amateur radio had its largest scale emergency response that day, and performed admirably.
Other instances where ham radio has provided very important service:
If it wasn't an essential service, we wouldn't be part of the emergency planning on the local, state, and federal levels. Officials are going so far as to encourage more people to get licensed: Read here.
Who do you think responds to FEMA when they need communications assistance?
RACES and ARES groups.
Who supports the Salvation Army with communications for shelters and medical assistance?
SATERN and ARES.
Amateur radio is not some antiquated spark-gap device. Providing live, on-scene video feeds of disaster areas; establishing ad-hoc RF computer networks over tens to hundreds (to thousands, if need be) miles to transfer data and images; communicating damage reports to take load off of the public service frequencies; providing primary site-to-site links between emergency operations centers and site command posts (often with agencies that do not use compatible communications equipment)...
The list goes on indefinitely. If you think amateur radio is something antiquated...you are way, way behind the times.
Aside from the special testing that needs to be done to equipment to ensure that it can survive the hazards of space travel, there are technical reasons why one would choose not to use a commercial style multi-megapixel camera.
For one, higher megapixel cameras tend to be less sensitive, due to limitations in current chip design.
Two, you must ensure that the image sensor has a known and definable response to all of the various wavelengths that are important to scientific analysis. That likely includes several infrared bands and ultraviolet--not typically covered very well by commercial digital cameras.
Combining multispectral data into color and "false color" images actually does reveal important data that is not obvious in the original data. Landsat image analysis is one example--using two color and one infrared band, you can differentiate vegetated areas. With combinations of infrared and visible bands, you can determine soil water content, rock type, etc.
If you walk into the scientists data analysis labs, you'll see scientists looking at false color images using various combinations of those monochrome images.
Google for "advanced image processing" and check out the academic sites. My AIP class was very interesting (at Emporia State).
By its appearance, I would guess two main possibilities.
One, it may be an irregular rock solidified when molten material was ejected from an impact crater.
Two, it may be a fulgurite, which is a type of glass formed when lightning strikes a "sand" type material. The Martian surface is quite dusty--I could see these forming. I don't recall offhand whether there is any significant atmospheric electrical activity on Mars. You can find some information on fulgurites and other similar objects at http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/conferences/lplc/2002/a bstract_volume/wasserman.pdf
There are other possibilities, but if the enhanced image is true to what is there, I'd want to toddle the rover over there to have a look. Whatever it is, it's interesting. And, I suppose, there is a very remote chance that it might run away when the rover approaches...;)
here in kc, the police & fire depts apparently didnt like being eavesdropped on, but couldnt get any laws passed to stop it.
Their solution? a multi-million dollar proprietary radio network that uses encrypted digital signals... and also doesnt work worth a damn.
I'm also a KC native, and I remember when they switched to that system. Massive failure--police and fire units couldn't keep radio contact. I wouldn't be suprised if some deaths were directly caused by comm failures.
Digital trunking systems make efficient use of bandwidth compared to simple channel systems, however I don't think that encrypting police communications is a good idea. They are, after all, a public entity, and should be subject to public scrutiny (IMHO). There are very few limited reasons why they should use encryption occasionally, but none which justify its use for routine daily communications.
isn't it highly illegal to have a police radio scanner in a moving vehicle? I thought it was only legal to posess them if it was in a fixed location like your living room
Not necessarily.
Some states do not have such restrictions on scanner use (or state explicitly that it is illegal only if used in the commission of a crime).
A *lot* of states also explicitly exempt amateur radio operators. Even states that do not may not be able to support their case against an amateur radio operator in court if the "scanner" is actually an amateur radio transciever with extended recieve capacity (which is "most" amateur radio transcievers these days...).
It is essential to check the law in your state! There are many sites with "scanner laws" state-by-state--google for them.
I would say we are really a lot closer to Nazi Germany circa 1932-1937.
We need to fight with the next election. Get rid of the problems.
I'm willing to take the same terrorism risk on every plane flight that I took before 9/11. Let's roll back these draconian, orwellian, nazi-esque laws.
Write your senators, write your representatives, both federal and state! Let them know that we are not willing to "buy safety" at this price! It is not worth what we are giving up!
I was taught Matlab in my computational physics graduate class, which biases me toward Matlab in my own research. I also own Mathematica, but have not taken the time to master its language and command structure. Mathematica was an award at a conference where I presented a paper, but I purchased Matlab for myself.
There are two primary advantages which I see in Matlab. The first advantage to me is its abilities with matrices and arrays; it can do things in a couple of lines of code which can take some roundabout programming and subroutines in other more conventional languages.
The second is Matlab's graphical abilities. Display of data is very important, both in the final product (thesis, paper) and in the research process itself. After a brief introduction to graphing in Matlab, it becomes a trivial task to choose and use various display options for your data.
In physics, it seems that we stick with what works until something better is found. That applies to our theories and to our tools. It is not uncommon for us to use Fortran, Pascal, or even various types of Basic to perform simple calculations and experiments.
Much of what one uses may be determined partially by chance--what software package was available at your institution, what professor did you study under, did your undergraduate degree require a programming course? The work involved in switching from one major package to another, for instance from Matlab to Mathematica, simply seems like too much effort for very little sure return.
Slashdot Mirror
Ever since I started working at the public library in my town, I have been slowly adding to the collection of non-Microsoft guides, books, and software.
/one/, and no library ever heard of an internet.
/does/ use this software? Why is this important to the people who use the library?
Unfortunately, due to the draconian rights management practiced by some commercial companies over the past twenty years, the concept of "making copies" of software and "giving it away" strikes fear into the hearts of upper management, many of whom haven't actually learned anything about software since their library master's program, when computers were XT class machines, a library would be lucky to have just
One thing that someone (and I may take up this charge) should do is write an article for the Library Journal or another of the librarian-professional publications. Describe the history of free/open software, describe the licensing issues, answer the obvious questions that arise from the Microsoft-addled point of view, and then review a number of free software items. Knoppix and several different flavors of Linux, various flavors of BSD, office software, and other applications.
Then describe the market! Who can use this software? Who
Find out if your library has a geek on staff, and whether they have a CD burner. If they don't, or they aren't willing to donate the CD's, how about printing up some decent labels, burning the CD's for the library, and donating them?
In doing this, you would reach the majority of the professional library staff, and show something of the community spirit which has made free/open software possible.
Believe me, the librarians are your best friend in this endeavor. You might even find that the younger technical librarians (the kind that maintain the computers, do cataloguing, web page maintenance, and databases--you know, the 'back room' librarians) are already Linux/BSD/etc. geeks, just itching to help promote the cause!
Jim D.
If you're concerned about privacy in your emails, why not use encryption?
The freeware PGP-type solutions are reasonably secure and quite simple to use.
Jim
The main feature that I use OO for these days is its PDF export function -- you don't get that with office unless you've got a full copy of Acrobat.
PDF995 http://www.pdf995.com/
This works great. Using it as the free version is fine if you don't mind a web-browser nag screen every time you print (I don't mind), or you can pay the purchase price (all of something like $9.95) and avoid the nag screen.
The PDF's it creates have worked flawlessly for me and the people I have sent them to.
Jim
It isn't just Cadillacs. Chrysler vehicles since the early 1980's have a diagnostic sequence that you can run easily.
See http://www.allpar.com/fix/codes.html for details. Through the mid-1990's, you usually:
* Start with the key in "off"
* Within about five seconds, turn the key "on-off-on-off-on". Leave it in on the last "on".
* Watch the "Check Engine" or "Service Engine Soon" light. Count the blinks. Digits are seperated by small pauses, individual trouble codes are seperated by longer pauses. The "end of codes" code is 5-5.
See the above link for more information.
I wouldn't be suprised if one of the ultimate goals of the open-car-computer push is to make it so that anyone can download the most recent engine computer code and flash it into the engine controller. Stealerships charge you a lot to do this simple procedure, and there is no reason why you or an independent mechanic shouldn't be able to use the common OBD-2 interfaces to upload new control software.
Jim
None of our earth-borne problems are going to make one whit of difference if an asteroid hits us.
There won't be a welfare problem anymore, because there won't be anyone left to be on welfare.
Jim
Can you imagine you land line provider telling you that you would have to pay extra for using your line for a modem instead of voice?
Were you not around in the 1980's when telephone companies wanted to do just that?
Jim
But I have not yet seen any objective evidence that Broadband over Powerlines causes more interference than the existence of the power lines themselves. Maybe the studies are there - if they are, great. But I haven't seen any that aren't sponsored by either amateur radio groups or energy companies.
Well, if you can get Aunt Fannie's Quilting Association to sponsor a radio frequency interference profile, be my guest.
My guess is that the military and FEMA are conducting tests now, but the results may not be available to the public for a while...if ever. Expect the FCC to swiftly and severely crack down on power companies that interfere with military operations.
Jim kc0lpv
We'll report it to the FCC if they don't comply,
and then they'll get a letter like this from
Riley Hollingsworth at the FCC:
(From FCC enforcement letters at www.arrl.org)
July 10, 2003
Mr. Peter Burg, CEO
FirstEnergy Corporation
76 South Main Street
Akron, OH 44308
Dear Mr. Burg:
The Federal Communications Commission has received complaints that equipment operated by your utility may be causing harmful radio interference to an operator in the Amateur Radio Service. The complainant is:
Donald Benedict, NN2Y
1947 Teakwood Rd.
Toms River NJ 08753-4547
The FCC has the responsibility to require that utility companies rectify such problems within a reasonable time if the interference is caused by faulty power utility equipment. Under FCC rules, most power-line and related equipment is classified as an "incidental radiator." This term is used to describe equipment that does not intentionally generate any radio-frequency energy, but that may create such energy as an incidental part of its intended operation.
To help you better understand your responsibilities under FCC rules, here are the most important rules relating to radio and television interference from incidental radiators:
Title 47, CFR Section 15.5 General conditions of operation.
(b) Operation of an intentional, unintentional, or incidental radiator is subject to the conditions that no harmful interference is caused and that interference must be accepted that may be caused by the operation of an authorized radio station, by another intentional or unintentional radiator, by industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) equipment, or by an incidental radiator.
(c) The operator of the radio frequency device shall be required to cease operating the device upon notification by a Commission representative that the device is causing harmful interference. Operation shall not resume until the condition causing the harmful interference has been corrected.
Title 47, CFR Section 15.13 Incidental radiators.
Manufacturers of these devices shall employ good engineering practices to minimize the risk of harmful interference.
Title 47, CFR Section 15.15 General technical requirements.
(c) Parties responsible for equipment compliance should note that the limits specified in this part will not prevent harmful interference under all circumstances. Since the operators of Part 15 devices are required to cease operation should harmful interference occur to authorized users of the radio frequency spectrum, the parties responsible for equipment compliance are encouraged to employ the minimum field strength necessary for communications, to provide greater attenuation of unwanted emissions than required by these regulations, and to advise the user as to how to resolve harmful interference problems (for example, see Sec. 15.105(b)).
The complainant has attempted unsuccessfully to work through your usual complaint resolution process and as a result the matter has been referred to our office. The FCC prefers that those responsible for the proper operation of power lines assume their responsibilities fairly. This means that your utility company should locate the source of any interference caused by its equipment and make necessary corrections within a reasonable time.
While the FCC has confidence that most utility companies are able to resolve these issues voluntarily, the FCC wants to make your office aware that this unresolved problem may be a violation of FCC rules and could result in a monetary forfeiture for each occurrence. At this stage, the FCC encourages the parties to resolve this problem without FCC intervention, but if necessary to facilitate resolution, the FCC may investigate possible rules violations and address appropriate remedies.
The American Radio Relay League, a national organization of Amateur Radio operators, may be able to offer help and guidance about radio interference that involves Amateur Radio operators.
Just the other day I ran knoppix on a PII 266 laptop wi/ 64 megs. I used a swapfile on the windows partition and booted into the XFCE desktop in KDE. It took a while to start up, but other than that ran fine.
Aha, swapfile. Knoppix is most useful (imho) because it can load and run from the CD without needing to use the HDD. This allows me to pop in and take a look at the HDD if things are awry.
Of course, on a computer that is in good working order anyway, you can use the swapfile and just delete it later. That isn't a very useful way to do things if the HDD or OS is having problems.
Jim
You can get so much information from a knoppix CD, it's just not worth looking anywhere else.
Yes, but only if the computer can run Knoppix. Knoppix has suprisingly high basic requirements -- it runs a lot of processor and memory intensive eye candy.
It won't even try to boot on my 350 mhz laptop with 96 megs of ram.
Jim
If we need HAM... won't the power be out?
I can operate for days without any outside source of power. Longer if you include the station in my car with the extra battery and a full tank of gas.
Jim kc0lpv
Most full scale HF (high frequency) amateur radios, which are the ones used as a backbone for emergency network traffic, cost $500-$3000, plus another $500-$5000 in associated equipment such as antennas, tuners, test equipment, etc.
/fun/ side of the hobby when there /aren't/ disasters, but when a disaster /does/ happen I won't have any practice in actually operating on an HF emergency net.
I am happy to give up my day, weekend, whatever, if I am needed for emergency service. Fine. But I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars on radio equipment that I can only use during a major disaster. Not only would I then not get to enjoy the
Would you spend $4000 on a sweet P4 3ghz box with all the latest high-performance parts, and continue to upgrade it and keep it current and tuned, if you were only likely to be able to turn it on once every four or five years, and then only for a day or two?
Jim kc0lpv
>> My AIP class was very interesting
>
>Please excuse my ignorance, but what does AIP
>stand for? Advanced Image Processing?
Yes.
Jim
Those hams who responded to the NY attack did what RACES/ARES/SATERN hams (among others) train to do: they provided vital communications links for search & rescue, for disaster command posts, for health and shelter organizations, and for health/welfare traffic.
Rubbernecking is not the same thing as reporting and serving. The emergency service portion of amateur radio had its largest scale emergency response that day, and performed admirably.
Other instances where ham radio has provided very important service:
Every major hurricaine;
The Colorado/West Coast wildfires;
The Columbia accident response.
If it wasn't an essential service, we wouldn't be part of the emergency planning on the local, state, and federal levels. Officials are going so far as to encourage more people to get licensed: Read here.
Jim kc0lpv
Who do you think responds to FEMA when they need communications assistance?
RACES and ARES groups.
Who supports the Salvation Army with communications for shelters and medical assistance?
SATERN and ARES.
Amateur radio is not some antiquated spark-gap device. Providing live, on-scene video feeds of disaster areas; establishing ad-hoc RF computer networks over tens to hundreds (to thousands, if need be) miles to transfer data and images; communicating damage reports to take load off of the public service frequencies; providing primary site-to-site links between emergency operations centers and site command posts (often with agencies that do not use compatible communications equipment)...
The list goes on indefinitely. If you think amateur radio is something antiquated...you are way, way behind the times.
Jim kc0lpv
Aside from the special testing that needs to be done to equipment to ensure that it can survive the hazards of space travel, there are technical reasons why one would choose not to use a commercial style multi-megapixel camera.
For one, higher megapixel cameras tend to be less sensitive, due to limitations in current chip design.
Two, you must ensure that the image sensor has a known and definable response to all of the various wavelengths that are important to scientific analysis. That likely includes several infrared bands and ultraviolet--not typically covered very well by commercial digital cameras.
Jim
Combining multispectral data into color and "false color" images actually does reveal important data that is not obvious in the original data. Landsat image analysis is one example--using two color and one infrared band, you can differentiate vegetated areas. With combinations of infrared and visible bands, you can determine soil water content, rock type, etc.
If you walk into the scientists data analysis labs, you'll see scientists looking at false color images using various combinations of those monochrome images.
Google for "advanced image processing" and check out the academic sites. My AIP class was very interesting (at Emporia State).
Jim
Bah, I inserted the wrong link and I have now lost the original.
Google for "fulgurite" and "tektite".
Jim
By its appearance, I would guess two main possibilities.
a bstract_volume/wasserman.pdf
;)
One, it may be an irregular rock solidified when molten material was ejected from an impact crater.
Two, it may be a fulgurite, which is a type of glass formed when lightning strikes a "sand" type material. The Martian surface is quite dusty--I could see these forming. I don't recall offhand whether there is any significant atmospheric electrical activity on Mars. You can find some information on fulgurites and other similar objects at http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/conferences/lplc/2002/
There are other possibilities, but if the enhanced image is true to what is there, I'd want to toddle the rover over there to have a look. Whatever it is, it's interesting. And, I suppose, there is a very remote chance that it might run away when the rover approaches...
Jim
here in kc, the police & fire depts apparently didnt like being eavesdropped on, but couldnt get any laws passed to stop it.
Their solution? a multi-million dollar proprietary radio network that uses encrypted digital signals... and also doesnt work worth a damn.
I'm also a KC native, and I remember when they switched to that system. Massive failure--police and fire units couldn't keep radio contact. I wouldn't be suprised if some deaths were directly caused by comm failures.
Digital trunking systems make efficient use of bandwidth compared to simple channel systems, however I don't think that encrypting police communications is a good idea. They are, after all, a public entity, and should be subject to public scrutiny (IMHO). There are very few limited reasons why they should use encryption occasionally, but none which justify its use for routine daily communications.
Jim kc0lpv
isn't it highly illegal to have a police radio scanner in a moving vehicle? I thought it was only legal to posess them if it was in a fixed location like your living room
Not necessarily.
Some states do not have such restrictions on scanner use (or state explicitly that it is illegal only if used in the commission of a crime).
A *lot* of states also explicitly exempt amateur radio operators. Even states that do not may not be able to support their case against an amateur radio operator in court if the "scanner" is actually an amateur radio transciever with extended recieve capacity (which is "most" amateur radio transcievers these days...).
It is essential to check the law in your state! There are many sites with "scanner laws" state-by-state--google for them.
Jim kc0lpv
You can use FRS frequencies with FCC-approved FRS walkie talkies.
/not/ license free.
To use any GMRS-exclusive frequencies, you MUST purchase a license from the FCC and use the appropriate call sign and operating procedures.
GMRS radios are
Jim
I would say we are really a lot closer to Nazi Germany circa 1932-1937.
We need to fight with the next election. Get rid of the problems.
I'm willing to take the same terrorism risk on every plane flight that I took before 9/11. Let's roll back these draconian, orwellian, nazi-esque laws.
Write your senators, write your representatives, both federal and state! Let them know that we are not willing to "buy safety" at this price! It is not worth what we are giving up!
Jim
Trade Wars 2002, Pimp Wars, and my terminal programs of choice, Procomm 2.4.3 (shareware) and Procomm Plus 2.0.
Ah, memories...
Jim
I was taught Matlab in my computational physics graduate class, which biases me toward Matlab in my own research. I also own Mathematica, but have not taken the time to master its language and command structure. Mathematica was an award at a conference where I presented a paper, but I purchased Matlab for myself.
There are two primary advantages which I see in Matlab. The first advantage to me is its abilities with matrices and arrays; it can do things in a couple of lines of code which can take some roundabout programming and subroutines in other more conventional languages.
The second is Matlab's graphical abilities. Display of data is very important, both in the final product (thesis, paper) and in the research process itself. After a brief introduction to graphing in Matlab, it becomes a trivial task to choose and use various display options for your data.
In physics, it seems that we stick with what works until something better is found. That applies to our theories and to our tools. It is not uncommon for us to use Fortran, Pascal, or even various types of Basic to perform simple calculations and experiments.
Much of what one uses may be determined partially by chance--what software package was available at your institution, what professor did you study under, did your undergraduate degree require a programming course? The work involved in switching from one major package to another, for instance from Matlab to Mathematica, simply seems like too much effort for very little sure return.
Jim Deane