I'm sold on SMART. It's saved my bacon in a major way at least twice. I use it on my SuSE boxes and my WinXP machines. I have the schedule set up to run self-tests everynight and a long test every weekend, which causes almost no impact on the drive while the test is running.
The testing algorythm is built into the drive, it runs on the drive, and doesn't consume memory or CPU on the host machine.
Watch the logs carefully for relocated sectors and other tell-tales, like lengthening seek times.
http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
It works.
In the US, (well, my experience is pretty much limited to the Midwest) don't ship via UPS. Demand FedEx ground. I've never had stuff arrive in ragged torn busted up boxes with FedEx, but I have with UPS- numerous times.
SCSI controllers are cheep cheep on Ebay and etc. I have about 6 laying around-- some people gave me. Ok, so only the PCI bus types count, and only the ones that can handle wide devices, but still, I've gotten 4 or 5 cheap or free. SCSI is easy to work with, especially if you haunt the swaps like I do where SCSI cards and cables show up cheap all the time.
I agree that there's not really a free solution for Windows that has any reasonable level of elegance and usability.
But it's not true that there's no solution. I've been using NTBackup and the removable media plug-in for years, and both come free with WinXP. It can be clunky, it's a little feature-poor, but it works. And it copes with two different situations I have: one is a 6-tape DAT changer, the other is four DLT drives connected in a SCSI daisy-chain. The removeable storage handler copes with both. Not very elegantly, but I can start a backup and go to bed.
Backup? Yes, everyone should be doing that. But how many of us check the smarts built right into every hard disk (made since the early 90's) to see if the drive is about to fail?
SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System) monitoring is built into nearly all modern [S|P]ATA and SCSI drives. The drive itself watches trends in bad sectors, spin-up time, internal temperature, a dozen parameters that allow the drive itself to predict failure.
At a minimum, turn on the SMART check in your BIOS-- at least your machine will run a basic health check at boot-up. I've been alerted to an incipient failure at least once that way. But some of us seldom boot our boxes.
Better to use a tool like SmartMonTools http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools which can run on most Linux distros and Winders too. It can run scheduled self-tests, log errors, send emails or console alerts, and keep you on top of how your drives are feeling. It can even reach through a 3Ware raid card and query individual drives. Does ATA, SATA, SCSI, or devices that emulate them.
I bought an HP Surestor DAT changer at a swap for cheep. It was stuck and wouldn't eject the catridge carrier. I disassembled it and got the carrier out. Now I can stick 6 DAT tapes in it, 40gb each (20gb native), and fireup NTBackup, the default backup utility that cames with XP.
It's a little clunky and awkward, but at least I can span tapes.
I have an 80gb disk, plus a 160gb, so it takes a while. Everything else is on one of the two RAID arrays on the SuSE box (running Samba) in the same room.
Sure, tape is hopelessly archaic and slow, but I can take a small box of DAT tapes to my mom's house or work and sleep a little more soundly. I have a dual layer DVD writer too, but that's still only, what, 8gb nominal, vs. 25gb or so I get with compression on the DAT tapes.
I also back up to DLT tapes too, I have 4 drives (3 that work well) but that requires SCSI differential, and I only have one card that does that, and there's not many free slots in other machines to transfer the card from machine to machine. And DLT tapes are bulky.
Sorry, I should have added that link. I meant to, must have been distracted before hitting "post." I read the "actual thing the article is about" to see if it the current article was still altered. It's not. It's pretty benign list of specs and facts at this moment.
We also used to ride the free ferry at Merrimac, across the Wisconsin River. Great fun. I think my dad only did it because we pestered him about every time we were in the area. It was 45 miles out of the way of our route home from "up north."
What we seem to have missed here are applications for people who unlike Mr. Hiroyuki are not completely physical able.
Millions of people depend on wheel chairs and personal care workers to do almost everything for them. If this gaze detection could be developed a bit more, these people could type (even those without use of their arms or hands) record conversations selectively, operate home lighting and heating controls, and holler for help if they fall or (as frequently happens) a care person fails to show up.
My wife (and the agency she works for) works with a large population of people for whom technology hasn't quite fulfilled its promise yet. They have great electric wheel chairs and other adaptive technologies, but a real usable interface is still seemingly just around the corner. Except for a few early adopters of substantial means, of course.
I think it's safe to say there's enough idiots to go around. I wouldn't limit the count to one, as you propose.
In my market area, there have been 3-4 price reductions on DSL service, and one upgrade in speed (384k to 1.5g) in the last 18 months. In each case, there was a promo price, limited time only, and in each case, the price went down, not up, usually long before the promo price expired. Heck, I called up and got my 70-year-old mom signed up for half of whatI was paying. Then I said, gee, I'm still paying $24.95 for that service. The service rep said it was a promo price for new customers, but "would I like that plan too?" No change in features or address. "Um, yeah" was my response.
The response of the rep I spoke with was the most instructive: "The pressure on price is downward, not upward, and it's increasing right now. I can't imaging this price going up in the next 18 months."
Wow, no mail box limits? Really? Sounds really expensive. I work for the large telco in the US where we get about 20-50 business related messages each a day, if it's a quiet day and there's no crisis in progess. Even here, we have pretty draconian limits in place. We use Micro$oft LookOut! Exceed your limits and you get a message from "System Attendant" saying that your "n" oldest messages have been moved to System Cleanup folder, where your folder hierarchy is duplicated (Inbox, Sent Items, etc). Anything that spends more than a few days in System Cleanup just disappears. If you want to archive anything, you have to create personal folders on your personal network drive. Anyone that runs a large organization really has to have size limits and rules in place from the start, along with aggressive education on creating personal folders and automated rules for sort mail based on content and age. LookOut! is pretty menu-driven about buiding mail sorting rules so even mundanes can do it with a little training, and they should!
Morse is not ambiguous unless you have a sloppy fist. There's rules for the length of a dash vs. that of a dot at any sending speed (I forget-- 1.5 times? 3 times? Can't remember) so that it scales up and down. If you send carefully a program in a PIC using a few K of code can decode you reliably.
Even if you send sloppily, the best decoder in the world is the human brain, and it can pick out the meaning in a 30 words-a-minute conversation under difficult conditions where no other communication method can punch through.
I can't speak to its efficiency or lack thereof, but are you aware that Morse did take into account usage frequency when designing the code? The shortest letters are the ones he thought, based on the research he had available at the time, were the most frequently occuring in English, "E" and "T" which are one symbol each (dot, and dash). He made an attempt to follow that plan for the rest of the code as well.
So it's flawed, I grant that. But it's worked pretty darn well for approximately a hundred and fifty years. Saved a few lives. Would have saved many of the souls on the Titantic if it hadn't been for human stupidity.
Because BPL is coming to the US, if certain corporate entities have their way, and this apparently imminent implementation over our Northern border just points out how inexorable that process seems to be.
Did you see our alleged regulatory agency, the FCC, acting the role of cheerleader, praising this technology, when it should be asking some hard questions about how they are going to make it work cleanly?
I hear about other countries all the time, just today, about how the pacific rim is going to be the first big market for the new X-Box online gaming machine. Why????? Because those countries are miles ahead the the good old USA in broadband accessability. And they are NOT using BPL.
BPL poses a threat to amateur radio, civil and law enforcement communications, and federal emergency management communications. And potentially any Part 15 electronics you got laying around the house.
See that cool remote weather station widget you got, with the remote outdoor sensor? Probably uses 450 MHz to report the outside temp back to the main unit. Baby monitors. Cordless phones, except maybe digital spread spectrum ones. Wireless burglar alarms. Etc etc etc.
All exist by the grace of FCC rules, part 15, which says, "This device must not cause any interference to any other device, and must accept any interference from any other device." That means that if you pay money for it, get it home, and the RF hash from the BPL outside your window blankets the range used by it, and it's useless, you got nobody to cry to. Refer to part 15, FCC rules.
Ok, now, Ham Radio, licensed under part 95 (or part 97? Can never keep that straight) is DIFFERENT. There are specific portions of spectrum carved out and devoted to amateur radio as PRIMARY use bands. If you are not licensed by the FCC under part 95, and you interfere in one of those bands, YOU are required to shut it down.
Lo and behold! BPL in the US is a Part 15 licensee. Guess what? A ham files a notice with the FCC and East Podunk Power Light & Internet needs to punch the buttons that shift the BPL carrier to another set of bands. Then the country sheriff's non-trunked 435 MHz (or whatever) radios become useless in certain areas. A few more notices, a few more shifts, and if they can't stay out of bands they don't belong in without radiating all over the place, and the FCC shows up and says, "Turn it off."
And how tight and non-radiating do you think those rusty bolts and cable clamps are, out in the weather, some of which were last inspected in 1952? Not very, I'll wager. Ever stand near (not UNDER!) a high-voltage distribution tower in wet weather and hear the continuous sizzle? And you think THATS RFI tight??
Nope. You are wrong here. In last month's issue of QST, representatives of the company that makes this stuff, Amperion, invited some folks from the ARRL on a ridealong as they did a small-scale field test. It goes over power lines dude, to 802.11 access points in the neighborhood for the last hundred meters or so.
Just to expand on your expansion, propagation is just what the FCC rules on CB are designed to suppress; it's designed to be a local only communication method, or at least if you follow the regs. That's why the 4-watt limit etc.
Hams have their own satellites, for heaven's sake. Talk about long-range, all you need is a handheld and an "arrow" (yagi antenna with a hand grip) and a orbital table. And a decent watch.
I got my wife (N9YKB) a FT1500, a bulletproof little radio for her car. Nice! Tiny speaker, though, she was really glad when I plugged in an outboard one. Small, rugged, alphanumeric display so she doesn't have to remember what frequency is what repeater. And I've seen them on sale for $139.
Most hams have radios both in the house and in the car, plus a selection of handhelds. Those that typically volunteer keep a bunch of batteries charged up for all their handhelds, maintain car chargers and alternate power sources, and etc. They are darn good and ready for this kind of thing, especially a hurricane they've seen coming for over a week.
CB is limited by FCC regs to 4 watts (I think) whereas licensed hams are limited to 1500 watts. We have dozens of bands to choose from and are able to pick a band with local, regional, or national/worldwide characteristics that will work best for situation. Many Hams are volunteers and train for emergencies, allowing them to work right alongside FEMA, Red Cross, National Guard, local government and local emergency management. Hams are usually the first communications on the scene of an emergency and often the only reliable communications for the first half or more of any disaster. Hams repeatedly garner praise from served agencies after the emergency is passed.
You don't typically hear similar things CB'ers. Nothing wrong with them. In fact, there's lot's of CB's that have gone the extra step and gotten a ham license, and some have become active volunteers.
My $0.02
Gee, I was going to comment on how I hardly ever game any more but used to really like Commander Keen and Wolfenstein, and played both a lot for a while when each came out. Reading this short article, flawed though it may be, reminded me of simpler days.
But someone will probably attempt to create me a new orifice. Hmmm, [Post] [Delete] click one to continue...
"You are factually correct, but your answer is of no use whatsoever."
He's right, in that there need be no interference. But we live in the real world, and the overriding concern in the real world, after "does it work?" is "how much does it cost?"
Ask yourself why interference between consumer devices exploded suddenly in the 70's. Why cell phone hands-free kits send loud pulses into stereos, wired phones, computer speakers, etc. Why cordless phones can trash TV reception.
It's because we live in the real world, where TV's, stereos, and all manner of consumer goods used to be built with metal housings or at least metallized components combined with metal. Then manufacturers and industry groups protested that the cost was just too high and that other countries with less stringent regulation were passing us by. So it was all deregulated.
Did you know that the TV/DVD/Camcorder/Wireless phone/etc/etc/etc came with a contract that said it was going to have interference problems, and you agreed to it? Yup, all that stuff is licensed under Part 15 of FCC rules, which clearly state "this device must not cause interference with other devices, and must accept interference from other devices." Deregulation was great for cheap and plentiful electronic widgets, but it came at a price.
Yeah....
Further, in general, the wider you are from the carrier, the better the quality. CW (Morse code) sends nothing but a 1-bit binary pulse train, not even the tone (that's recreated in the receiver) but As Seen in the Movies(tm) on ID4 a CW signal is so narrowband and bounces off the ionosphere that you can talk around the world under the right conditions. Single-Sideband-supressed-carrier punches a voice thru where FM fears to tread- again, narrowband (not as narrow as CW) because they supress the carrier- don't even bother transmitting it. They just send the band of frequencies deviating above (or below) the imaginary carrier. But it ain't KROC-FM. Then there's AM, the gold standard for voice broadcast until the 60's or so. Both sidebands and the carrier, bigger RF footprint, but it doesn't sound like donald duck if you mistune slightly, like SSB.
Commercial FM the way its used in US broadcast, is the bandwidth pig. Oddly, FM stereo (twice the information, right?) doesn't have a bigger footprint than the original FM broadcast spec. It's encoded with a 19khz pilot signal. But FM broadcast is limited in frequency (remember that 19khz pilot tone?) somewhat more (limited) than most modern stereo components.
Neal Stephenson, oh yeah. Snow Crash: very good, one of the better reads I've had in the '00's to-date, but also one of the more demanding. Many genuinely new ideas and themes, complex but rewarding.
Cryptonomicon: Not really SF, but then again, it sort-of is, I mean... I'm not sure what I mean. Just read it and decide for y'sef.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sold on SMART. It's saved my bacon in a major way at least twice. I use it on my SuSE boxes and my WinXP machines. I have the schedule set up to run self-tests everynight and a long test every weekend, which causes almost no impact on the drive while the test is running. The testing algorythm is built into the drive, it runs on the drive, and doesn't consume memory or CPU on the host machine. Watch the logs carefully for relocated sectors and other tell-tales, like lengthening seek times. http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/ It works.
In the US, (well, my experience is pretty much limited to the Midwest) don't ship via UPS. Demand FedEx ground. I've never had stuff arrive in ragged torn busted up boxes with FedEx, but I have with UPS- numerous times.
SCSI controllers are cheep cheep on Ebay and etc. I have about 6 laying around-- some people gave me. Ok, so only the PCI bus types count, and only the ones that can handle wide devices, but still, I've gotten 4 or 5 cheap or free. SCSI is easy to work with, especially if you haunt the swaps like I do where SCSI cards and cables show up cheap all the time.
But it's not true that there's no solution. I've been using NTBackup and the removable media plug-in for years, and both come free with WinXP. It can be clunky, it's a little feature-poor, but it works. And it copes with two different situations I have: one is a 6-tape DAT changer, the other is four DLT drives connected in a SCSI daisy-chain. The removeable storage handler copes with both. Not very elegantly, but I can start a backup and go to bed.
SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology System) monitoring is built into nearly all modern [S|P]ATA and SCSI drives. The drive itself watches trends in bad sectors, spin-up time, internal temperature, a dozen parameters that allow the drive itself to predict failure.
At a minimum, turn on the SMART check in your BIOS-- at least your machine will run a basic health check at boot-up. I've been alerted to an incipient failure at least once that way. But some of us seldom boot our boxes.
Better to use a tool like SmartMonTools http://sourceforge.net/projects/smartmontools which can run on most Linux distros and Winders too. It can run scheduled self-tests, log errors, send emails or console alerts, and keep you on top of how your drives are feeling. It can even reach through a 3Ware raid card and query individual drives. Does ATA, SATA, SCSI, or devices that emulate them.
Be safe!
It's a little clunky and awkward, but at least I can span tapes.
I have an 80gb disk, plus a 160gb, so it takes a while. Everything else is on one of the two RAID arrays on the SuSE box (running Samba) in the same room.
Sure, tape is hopelessly archaic and slow, but I can take a small box of DAT tapes to my mom's house or work and sleep a little more soundly. I have a dual layer DVD writer too, but that's still only, what, 8gb nominal, vs. 25gb or so I get with compression on the DAT tapes.
I also back up to DLT tapes too, I have 4 drives (3 that work well) but that requires SCSI differential, and I only have one card that does that, and there's not many free slots in other machines to transfer the card from machine to machine. And DLT tapes are bulky.
Aye!
Pirates motto: Always be who ya arrrrr.
Sorry, I should have added that link. I meant to, must have been distracted before hitting "post." I read the "actual thing the article is about" to see if it the current article was still altered. It's not. It's pretty benign list of specs and facts at this moment.
We also used to ride the free ferry at Merrimac, across the Wisconsin River. Great fun. I think my dad only did it because we pestered him about every time we were in the area. It was 45 miles out of the way of our route home from "up north."
Millions of people depend on wheel chairs and personal care workers to do almost everything for them. If this gaze detection could be developed a bit more, these people could type (even those without use of their arms or hands) record conversations selectively, operate home lighting and heating controls, and holler for help if they fall or (as frequently happens) a care person fails to show up.
My wife (and the agency she works for) works with a large population of people for whom technology hasn't quite fulfilled its promise yet. They have great electric wheel chairs and other adaptive technologies, but a real usable interface is still seemingly just around the corner. Except for a few early adopters of substantial means, of course.
In my market area, there have been 3-4 price reductions on DSL service, and one upgrade in speed (384k to 1.5g) in the last 18 months. In each case, there was a promo price, limited time only, and in each case, the price went down, not up, usually long before the promo price expired. Heck, I called up and got my 70-year-old mom signed up for half of whatI was paying. Then I said, gee, I'm still paying $24.95 for that service. The service rep said it was a promo price for new customers, but "would I like that plan too?" No change in features or address. "Um, yeah" was my response.
The response of the rep I spoke with was the most instructive: "The pressure on price is downward, not upward, and it's increasing right now. I can't imaging this price going up in the next 18 months."
Wow, no mail box limits? Really? Sounds really expensive.
I work for the large telco in the US where we get about 20-50 business related messages each a day, if it's a quiet day and there's no crisis in progess. Even here, we have pretty draconian limits in place. We use Micro$oft LookOut! Exceed your limits and you get a message from "System Attendant" saying that your "n" oldest messages have been moved to System Cleanup folder, where your folder hierarchy is duplicated (Inbox, Sent Items, etc). Anything that spends more than a few days in System Cleanup just disappears.
If you want to archive anything, you have to create personal folders on your personal network drive.
Anyone that runs a large organization really has to have size limits and rules in place from the start, along with aggressive education on creating personal folders and automated rules for sort mail based on content and age. LookOut! is pretty menu-driven about buiding mail sorting rules so even mundanes can do it with a little training, and they should!
Even if you send sloppily, the best decoder in the world is the human brain, and it can pick out the meaning in a 30 words-a-minute conversation under difficult conditions where no other communication method can punch through.
I can't speak to its efficiency or lack thereof, but are you aware that Morse did take into account usage frequency when designing the code? The shortest letters are the ones he thought, based on the research he had available at the time, were the most frequently occuring in English, "E" and "T" which are one symbol each (dot, and dash). He made an attempt to follow that plan for the rest of the code as well.
So it's flawed, I grant that. But it's worked pretty darn well for approximately a hundred and fifty years. Saved a few lives. Would have saved many of the souls on the Titantic if it hadn't been for human stupidity.
My $0.02
Did you see our alleged regulatory agency, the FCC, acting the role of cheerleader, praising this technology, when it should be asking some hard questions about how they are going to make it work cleanly?
I hear about other countries all the time, just today, about how the pacific rim is going to be the first big market for the new X-Box online gaming machine. Why????? Because those countries are miles ahead the the good old USA in broadband accessability. And they are NOT using BPL.
See that cool remote weather station widget you got, with the remote outdoor sensor? Probably uses 450 MHz to report the outside temp back to the main unit. Baby monitors. Cordless phones, except maybe digital spread spectrum ones. Wireless burglar alarms. Etc etc etc.
All exist by the grace of FCC rules, part 15, which says, "This device must not cause any interference to any other device, and must accept any interference from any other device." That means that if you pay money for it, get it home, and the RF hash from the BPL outside your window blankets the range used by it, and it's useless, you got nobody to cry to. Refer to part 15, FCC rules.
Ok, now, Ham Radio, licensed under part 95 (or part 97? Can never keep that straight) is DIFFERENT. There are specific portions of spectrum carved out and devoted to amateur radio as PRIMARY use bands. If you are not licensed by the FCC under part 95, and you interfere in one of those bands, YOU are required to shut it down.
Lo and behold! BPL in the US is a Part 15 licensee. Guess what? A ham files a notice with the FCC and East Podunk Power Light & Internet needs to punch the buttons that shift the BPL carrier to another set of bands. Then the country sheriff's non-trunked 435 MHz (or whatever) radios become useless in certain areas. A few more notices, a few more shifts, and if they can't stay out of bands they don't belong in without radiating all over the place, and the FCC shows up and says, "Turn it off."
And how tight and non-radiating do you think those rusty bolts and cable clamps are, out in the weather, some of which were last inspected in 1952? Not very, I'll wager. Ever stand near (not UNDER!) a high-voltage distribution tower in wet weather and hear the continuous sizzle? And you think THATS RFI tight??
Call me dubious.
Nope. You are wrong here. In last month's issue of QST, representatives of the company that makes this stuff, Amperion, invited some folks from the ARRL on a ridealong as they did a small-scale field test. It goes over power lines dude, to 802.11 access points in the neighborhood for the last hundred meters or so.
Hams have their own satellites, for heaven's sake. Talk about long-range, all you need is a handheld and an "arrow" (yagi antenna with a hand grip) and a orbital table. And a decent watch.
I got my wife (N9YKB) a FT1500, a bulletproof little radio for her car. Nice! Tiny speaker, though, she was really glad when I plugged in an outboard one. Small, rugged, alphanumeric display so she doesn't have to remember what frequency is what repeater. And I've seen them on sale for $139.
Most hams have radios both in the house and in the car, plus a selection of handhelds. Those that typically volunteer keep a bunch of batteries charged up for all their handhelds, maintain car chargers and alternate power sources, and etc. They are darn good and ready for this kind of thing, especially a hurricane they've seen coming for over a week.
CB is limited by FCC regs to 4 watts (I think) whereas licensed hams are limited to 1500 watts. We have dozens of bands to choose from and are able to pick a band with local, regional, or national/worldwide characteristics that will work best for situation. Many Hams are volunteers and train for emergencies, allowing them to work right alongside FEMA, Red Cross, National Guard, local government and local emergency management. Hams are usually the first communications on the scene of an emergency and often the only reliable communications for the first half or more of any disaster. Hams repeatedly garner praise from served agencies after the emergency is passed. You don't typically hear similar things CB'ers. Nothing wrong with them. In fact, there's lot's of CB's that have gone the extra step and gotten a ham license, and some have become active volunteers. My $0.02
Gee, I was going to comment on how I hardly ever game any more but used to really like Commander Keen and Wolfenstein, and played both a lot for a while when each came out. Reading this short article, flawed though it may be, reminded me of simpler days. But someone will probably attempt to create me a new orifice. Hmmm, [Post] [Delete] click one to continue...
"Why?"
"You are factually correct, but your answer is of no use whatsoever."
He's right, in that there need be no interference. But we live in the real world, and the overriding concern in the real world, after "does it work?" is "how much does it cost?"
Ask yourself why interference between consumer devices exploded suddenly in the 70's. Why cell phone hands-free kits send loud pulses into stereos, wired phones, computer speakers, etc. Why cordless phones can trash TV reception.
It's because we live in the real world, where TV's, stereos, and all manner of consumer goods used to be built with metal housings or at least metallized components combined with metal. Then manufacturers and industry groups protested that the cost was just too high and that other countries with less stringent regulation were passing us by. So it was all deregulated.
Did you know that the TV/DVD/Camcorder/Wireless phone/etc/etc/etc came with a contract that said it was going to have interference problems, and you agreed to it? Yup, all that stuff is licensed under Part 15 of FCC rules, which clearly state "this device must not cause interference with other devices, and must accept interference from other devices." Deregulation was great for cheap and plentiful electronic widgets, but it came at a price.
Yeah.... Further, in general, the wider you are from the carrier, the better the quality. CW (Morse code) sends nothing but a 1-bit binary pulse train, not even the tone (that's recreated in the receiver) but As Seen in the Movies(tm) on ID4 a CW signal is so narrowband and bounces off the ionosphere that you can talk around the world under the right conditions. Single-Sideband-supressed-carrier punches a voice thru where FM fears to tread- again, narrowband (not as narrow as CW) because they supress the carrier- don't even bother transmitting it. They just send the band of frequencies deviating above (or below) the imaginary carrier. But it ain't KROC-FM. Then there's AM, the gold standard for voice broadcast until the 60's or so. Both sidebands and the carrier, bigger RF footprint, but it doesn't sound like donald duck if you mistune slightly, like SSB. Commercial FM the way its used in US broadcast, is the bandwidth pig. Oddly, FM stereo (twice the information, right?) doesn't have a bigger footprint than the original FM broadcast spec. It's encoded with a 19khz pilot signal. But FM broadcast is limited in frequency (remember that 19khz pilot tone?) somewhat more (limited) than most modern stereo components.
Neal Stephenson, oh yeah. Snow Crash: very good, one of the better reads I've had in the '00's to-date, but also one of the more demanding. Many genuinely new ideas and themes, complex but rewarding. Cryptonomicon: Not really SF, but then again, it sort-of is, I mean... I'm not sure what I mean. Just read it and decide for y'sef.