FRS radios would be illegal. They are regualted and are only allowed to be used for individual purposes. If the FCC catches your school using them you can end up with a hefty fine, and don't think the FCC won't I know several schools that it's happened to.
You obviously have no experiance in theater. Techs are expected to do anything from crawling out over suspended ceilings to crawling under a stage or running up and down stairs during a performance a laptop in any sort of arrangement would get in the way and be easily broken, nevermind that for the price of a few laptops you could buy a real system from someone like Telex or Clear-Com.
I would suggest visiting ControlBooth.com and asking this question in their forums to get some practical suggestions. These are people who actually work with this day in and day out so they have real life experiance.
Here's my idea to do this on the really cheap. It's not that hard to build a private phone network that doesn't actually dial but works like a party line, just put some voltage on the line. Get yourself a bunch of cheap cordless phones that allow headset use and lock the phones on so the line is always open. It's far from perfect but is the closest thing I can come up with off the top of my head. Don't take my word for it visit ControlBooth.com and ask in the forums, they're good people and know what they're doing.
Sounds like trouble for users of Micro$oft's Windows Update. Or for the *NIX users of apt-get and similar utilities. Of course, coming up with prior art should be no problem and the rich Micro$oft will fight this for you.
mapsonus.com is the only mapping service I will use, I have tested all the major sites using an obscure address out in the country in MN where a realitive lives and mapsonus is the ONLY service that even had the right streets in the right places on the map, EVERY other map service had the wrong street names and/or was missing streets.
Analgo boxes weren't designed to be open either. For example you need a box provided by the cable providor to watch PPV or other scrabled channels. Also, most cable systems aren't using an open standard on their digital cable right now.
While an open (but secure for the operators) standard for digital cable be nice and probably better? I think it would. It it going to happen? Probably not. Cable providors have never been very interested in having open systems.
In the past year I've bought over 52 DVDs that works out to at least one a week. In that same time period I bought exactly NO CDs. Why is this? The DVDs are a much better value, many cast as little as $10, few are more than $19, they typically include making of featurettes, director's commentary, music videos, actor interviews, a good story PLUS the movie itself.
I would say that I love listening to music, but at the prices CDs are going for I find that my money is MUCH better spent on DVDs. For the same or less than the price of a CD I can buy a movie with all sorts of extras. The DVD has audio on it and a picture, the CD just has audio and no extras, why should it cost the same? The answer is it shouldn't.
I also have a lot of problems with the way the RIAA is trying to keep hold of their antiquated distribution methods and huge markups. Why should I support thier lawsuits with my money? Granted, the MPAA has not been the best player all along wither (they fought the introduction of the VCR for example) of course they have learned their lesson as the sales of movies in VHS form have made them a bundle of money. The RIAA refuses to see the future of music, not even doing a good job of promoting legal online distribution methods or interested in lowering prices.
I'll continue to add to my DVD collection, but until prices are MUCH more reasonable for a CD (say under $5 for ANY title I'm interested in) I won't be buying very many, if any. If the price and distribution method are right I think the record companies can get people to buy music again. Of course, this assumes the music is worth listening to, but that's another story.
China Moves to Block Spam Servers The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 9, 2003; 11:47 AM
--
In its latest battle against junk e-mail, China has blocked 127 mail servers it identified as responsible for spam, the official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.
"This has been the first large-scale spammer blockade launched by the Chinese Internet industry," Ren Jinqiang, an official with the Internet Society of China, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
The crackdown came as Chinese Internet users complained they were being bombarded daily with hundreds of junk e-mails, Xinhua said.
Ren said e-mail messages from 127 servers will automatically be refused. Xinhua said the sanctions would be lifted after the servers stop sending junk mail for three months.
Ninety of the blocked servers were from Taiwan, eight were from the mainland and 29 were from elsewhere, Xinhua said, without providing other details. It did not say if other countries were being inundated by spam from the same servers.
Internet service providers in the United States and elsewhere sometimes resort to blocking specific servers in their war on spam. Those efforts succeed in curbing the number of junk messages reaching subscribers, though they can kill legitimate e-mail as well.
Ren said the blacklist resulted from a month of monitoring by the state-run Internet Society of China, a group of 140 members drawn from private companies, schools and research institutes. The Beijing-based group aims to promote the development of the Internet throughout the country.
Last month, the group published a list of 225 spam servers around the world.
With 68 million users, China has the world's second-biggest online population after the United States, according to government statistics.
Internet use for business and education is encouraged, although the communist government censors chat rooms and tries to block access to foreign sites run by dissidents, human rights groups and news organizations.
The article has already been posted, if the file becomes unavailible due to the/. effect a temporary mirror of the file is availible at: http://lightntrax.com/ben/wrt54g.tar.tar
If you're a ham and haven't played with Echolink (www.echolink.org) yet check it out, it's becoming quite a popular way of linking hams all over the world on VHF/UHF bands using VoIP (H.323) technology.
I'll be at the Hamvention see you all there. 73s -KC0OJA
I have a friend who used to work for Motorola and another friend who is a pilot and have disscussed this many times with both of them.
The pilot friend has confirmed that in reality there are no issues with cell phones, or almost any other consumer wireless technologies aboard aircrafts. It does introduce some risk when flying under instrument flight only, but cause no problems during normal cruising. With this information I was left wondering why they are banned in most commercial planes.
My friend from Motorola explained that when the cell phone system was designed it was not designed to hand off calls from one tower to another tower for a phone traveling at such great speeds. In fact if you drive too fast on the road (something over 140MPH in testing) you will also have problems. Planes are flying high causing you to access multiple cells at once and you are moving to fast for the handoff to occur from one tower to another. For this reason cell phones have been restricted on commercial planes.
In fact amateur radios which put out far more power than a cell phone or wifi cards are allowed to be used on planes pending the pilots permission, this confirms that it's not an issue as it is not prohibited by FCC rules. It's not reallly an interference problem, it's a policy and cell technology problem.
I was one of the first students through the CISCO Networking Academy, and in the first class at my high school. Out of a class of 20 or so there were only two of us who took, and passed the CCNA (the first version of the curriculem was pretty bad and didn't prepare you nearly as well as the new curriculem does).
I have since moved on to the University of Wisconsin Stout Telecommunications Systems Program. Which is a regional Cisco academy offering even more oppertunities to me along with a four year degree. I now have my CCNA, CCDA, and Amateur Radio licence. By the end of this semester I will have my CCDP, CWNA (wireless), CCAI (Cisco instructor) and MCP. Within a year I will have my MCSA, CCNP, A+ and Network+, all while earning a degree from a state university.
Perhaps I'm not an average student from one of these High School academies, most of them never go further with it However, I am an example of the benefit of creating these academies, inspiring a student with the technical know-how and mental maturity to continue learning and overcoming new challenges.
It's true no one's going to hire you for $40k a year straight out of high school with just the cert, but if you got the cert, got a four year degree in say, greek literature, then found out it was boring you might have somthing to fall back on. It's also a good way to find out if this is something you really want to do when it's still easy to change the direction you're going.
Slashdot Mirror
FRS radios would be illegal. They are regualted and are only allowed to be used for individual purposes. If the FCC catches your school using them you can end up with a hefty fine, and don't think the FCC won't I know several schools that it's happened to.
You obviously have no experiance in theater. Techs are expected to do anything from crawling out over suspended ceilings to crawling under a stage or running up and down stairs during a performance a laptop in any sort of arrangement would get in the way and be easily broken, nevermind that for the price of a few laptops you could buy a real system from someone like Telex or Clear-Com. I would suggest visiting ControlBooth.com and asking this question in their forums to get some practical suggestions. These are people who actually work with this day in and day out so they have real life experiance. Here's my idea to do this on the really cheap. It's not that hard to build a private phone network that doesn't actually dial but works like a party line, just put some voltage on the line. Get yourself a bunch of cheap cordless phones that allow headset use and lock the phones on so the line is always open. It's far from perfect but is the closest thing I can come up with off the top of my head. Don't take my word for it visit ControlBooth.com and ask in the forums, they're good people and know what they're doing.
Sounds like trouble for users of Micro$oft's Windows Update. Or for the *NIX users of apt-get and similar utilities. Of course, coming up with prior art should be no problem and the rich Micro$oft will fight this for you.
mapsonus.com is the only mapping service I will use, I have tested all the major sites using an obscure address out in the country in MN where a realitive lives and mapsonus is the ONLY service that even had the right streets in the right places on the map, EVERY other map service had the wrong street names and/or was missing streets.
If the Apple site gets bogged down it is also availible via BitTorrent at this site. It also looks like Apple is only supporting Windows 2000 and XP.
Analgo boxes weren't designed to be open either. For example you need a box provided by the cable providor to watch PPV or other scrabled channels. Also, most cable systems aren't using an open standard on their digital cable right now.
While an open (but secure for the operators) standard for digital cable be nice and probably better? I think it would. It it going to happen? Probably not. Cable providors have never been very interested in having open systems.
In the past year I've bought over 52 DVDs that works out to at least one a week. In that same time period I bought exactly NO CDs. Why is this? The DVDs are a much better value, many cast as little as $10, few are more than $19, they typically include making of featurettes, director's commentary, music videos, actor interviews, a good story PLUS the movie itself.
I would say that I love listening to music, but at the prices CDs are going for I find that my money is MUCH better spent on DVDs. For the same or less than the price of a CD I can buy a movie with all sorts of extras. The DVD has audio on it and a picture, the CD just has audio and no extras, why should it cost the same? The answer is it shouldn't.
I also have a lot of problems with the way the RIAA is trying to keep hold of their antiquated distribution methods and huge markups. Why should I support thier lawsuits with my money? Granted, the MPAA has not been the best player all along wither (they fought the introduction of the VCR for example) of course they have learned their lesson as the sales of movies in VHS form have made them a bundle of money. The RIAA refuses to see the future of music, not even doing a good job of promoting legal online distribution methods or interested in lowering prices.
I'll continue to add to my DVD collection, but until prices are MUCH more reasonable for a CD (say under $5 for ANY title I'm interested in) I won't be buying very many, if any. If the price and distribution method are right I think the record companies can get people to buy music again. Of course, this assumes the music is worth listening to, but that's another story.
For the predictable /. of the story:
China Moves to Block Spam Servers
The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 9, 2003; 11:47 AM
--
In its latest battle against junk e-mail, China has blocked 127 mail servers it identified as responsible for spam, the official Xinhua News Agency said Tuesday.
"This has been the first large-scale spammer blockade launched by the Chinese Internet industry," Ren Jinqiang, an official with the Internet Society of China, was quoted by Xinhua as saying.
The crackdown came as Chinese Internet users complained they were being bombarded daily with hundreds of junk e-mails, Xinhua said.
Ren said e-mail messages from 127 servers will automatically be refused. Xinhua said the sanctions would be lifted after the servers stop sending junk mail for three months.
Ninety of the blocked servers were from Taiwan, eight were from the mainland and 29 were from elsewhere, Xinhua said, without providing other details. It did not say if other countries were being inundated by spam from the same servers.
Internet service providers in the United States and elsewhere sometimes resort to blocking specific servers in their war on spam. Those efforts succeed in curbing the number of junk messages reaching subscribers, though they can kill legitimate e-mail as well.
Ren said the blacklist resulted from a month of monitoring by the state-run Internet Society of China, a group of 140 members drawn from private companies, schools and research institutes. The Beijing-based group aims to promote the development of the Internet throughout the country.
Last month, the group published a list of 225 spam servers around the world.
With 68 million users, China has the world's second-biggest online population after the United States, according to government statistics.
Internet use for business and education is encouraged, although the communist government censors chat rooms and tries to block access to foreign sites run by dissidents, human rights groups and news organizations.
The Red Team file should be availible using BitTorrent at http://voracity.net/download.php/344/red_team.mpeg .torrent
The article has already been posted, if the file becomes unavailible due to the /. effect a temporary mirror of the file is availible at: http://lightntrax.com/ben/wrt54g.tar.tar
If you're a ham and haven't played with Echolink (www.echolink.org) yet check it out, it's becoming quite a popular way of linking hams all over the world on VHF/UHF bands using VoIP (H.323) technology. I'll be at the Hamvention see you all there. 73s -KC0OJA
I have a friend who used to work for Motorola and another friend who is a pilot and have disscussed this many times with both of them. The pilot friend has confirmed that in reality there are no issues with cell phones, or almost any other consumer wireless technologies aboard aircrafts. It does introduce some risk when flying under instrument flight only, but cause no problems during normal cruising. With this information I was left wondering why they are banned in most commercial planes. My friend from Motorola explained that when the cell phone system was designed it was not designed to hand off calls from one tower to another tower for a phone traveling at such great speeds. In fact if you drive too fast on the road (something over 140MPH in testing) you will also have problems. Planes are flying high causing you to access multiple cells at once and you are moving to fast for the handoff to occur from one tower to another. For this reason cell phones have been restricted on commercial planes. In fact amateur radios which put out far more power than a cell phone or wifi cards are allowed to be used on planes pending the pilots permission, this confirms that it's not an issue as it is not prohibited by FCC rules. It's not reallly an interference problem, it's a policy and cell technology problem.
I was one of the first students through the CISCO Networking Academy, and in the first class at my high school. Out of a class of 20 or so there were only two of us who took, and passed the CCNA (the first version of the curriculem was pretty bad and didn't prepare you nearly as well as the new curriculem does). I have since moved on to the University of Wisconsin Stout Telecommunications Systems Program. Which is a regional Cisco academy offering even more oppertunities to me along with a four year degree. I now have my CCNA, CCDA, and Amateur Radio licence. By the end of this semester I will have my CCDP, CWNA (wireless), CCAI (Cisco instructor) and MCP. Within a year I will have my MCSA, CCNP, A+ and Network+, all while earning a degree from a state university. Perhaps I'm not an average student from one of these High School academies, most of them never go further with it However, I am an example of the benefit of creating these academies, inspiring a student with the technical know-how and mental maturity to continue learning and overcoming new challenges. It's true no one's going to hire you for $40k a year straight out of high school with just the cert, but if you got the cert, got a four year degree in say, greek literature, then found out it was boring you might have somthing to fall back on. It's also a good way to find out if this is something you really want to do when it's still easy to change the direction you're going.
Related Official NASA Links (feel free to repost at other sites):
STS-107 Mission Status Reports
Last Night's Status Report (deals with possible landing times)
Future Scheduled STS Flights
NASA TV Webcasts