I recall there was a 60GiB, and a 120GiB version that was also 5-platter.
Considering how drive makers like to market their drives, its's quite likely that these drives were not 60 GiB and 120 GiB, but instead 56 GiB and 111 GiB. (Because the drives were 60 GB and 120 GB, where 1 GB = 1 billion bytes, rather than 60 GiB and 120 GiB, where 1 GiB = 1.07 billion bytes.)
Personally, I dislike the GiB/MiB designations (they just look wrong) but at least they're precise. I wish that the drive manufacturers had just used units of 1024 like everybody else, but then again, I don't like how gas is $2.199 either.
What other possible reason could he have for going looking in videogames for nude people?
Money. Fame. Perhaps some bible thumping, but I suspect it's mostly the first two.
He's a lawyer. He's getting free advertising here. He may also be trying to get people to go in on a class action lawsuit against EA -- and as we all know, the only people who really win a class action lawsuit are the lawyers.
And he may be looking for somebody to be offended by the `nudity' that the Sims has, and to have him be their lawyer as they sue EA. They probably wouldn't win in court, but EA will probably settle out of court to 1) save legal fees and 2) make the bad press go away. Either way, the lawyer wins and EA loses.
because all they have is a little handy talkie that can barely reach the repeater base stations (which are themselves offline).
Even my little IC-Q7A with 0.300 watts of power can reach about half of the major repeaters in the city. My Yaesu with 3 watts can reach them all. Both do this with their little `rubber ducky' antennas, and would probably do better with better antennas.
And even if the repeaters went down, I could talk to other people in the city with these using simplex. The Kenwood in my car can reach most of the city using simplex.
Of course, to be fair, CB radio could be used similarly.
Sure, some repeaters have battery backups. But so does the public telephone network and the Internet.
Power loss is only one danger. Hurricanes for example tend to rip up telephone lines. And what good is the Internet going to do you if your house doesn't have power? Your UPS is only good for 10 minutes, your laptop might do better but the cable modem is out. You might be able to dial into your ISP, but their main T3 is down, so you're stuck...
The Internet is going to be one the first things to break in an emergency, even before the cell phone network.
And what volume of traffic and kind of traffic do you suppose the hams will be transmitting, even if the repeater facilities are operational?
VHF/UHF repeaters are only one small aspect of ham radio.
As for what kind of traffic is sent during an emergency, it's mostly lower priority messages. `Shelter #6 needs more blankets, Mrs Smith needs somebody to call her husband and tell him that she's at the shelter and OK, etc.' Mostly.
The police and such usually have systems very similar to the ham repeaters, and so they usually stay up during emergencies. (But the cell phone network is usually one of the first things to go down.)
Maybe the reality is that ham radio isn't a significant part of the official emergency infrastructure, but only augments it.
Ok, let's assume this is correct for now. What now? What are you proposing we do with this revelation?
In that case, what sense does Morse Code make?
Why does it have to make sense? Emergency communications are but one aspect of ham radio.
In any event, CW (Morse code) works with lower power, cuts through more interference and reaches longer distances than just about anything else, and the equipment needed is very simple. It's not normally used in emergencies, but it certainly could be.
Why not allow anybody at all to access the citizen-use emergency frequencies using a modern encoding system such as voice or data packets, and without needing any license?
They already have access. In an emergency, anybody (ham or not) can transmit on any frequency with any amount of power or modulation type as is needed to resolve the emergency.
However, if you can't use your equipment in a non-emergency, very few people are going to go to the trouble of buying and setting up this equipment, and there will be no opportunity to test it and become familiar with it's use without having an emergency.
On the other hand, if ham radio is just for education and entertainment, why not limit it to exclusively Morse Code transmissions?
Because 1) ham radio is not just for education and entertainment, and 2) why would you want to do that anyways? Education and entertainment can be done with other modes as well.
Or at least that the operators only use "experimental" home-built equipment (which used to be tubes, but nowadays might be mostly-software kits)?
What's wrong with tubes? They're still used a lot in ham radio, and in fact they're used in radio and TV broadcasting as well.
However, 5wpm is easy enough for anyone to learn so it's really not a barrier any more.
That's not true. And repeating that over and over will not make it any more true.
Yes, it's doable for most. I did it. However, it wasn't really easy. I had to spend far more time studying more code to pick it up at 5 wpm than I did studying for all the written tests needed to get to Extra class.
People who are older, or have certain handicaps often just can't learn Morse code at all, no matter how much they try. And why make somebody study something they'll never use? psk31 has most f the benefits of CW with regards to low power and punching through interference, but requires no Morse code knowledge to use.
Personally, I'd have suggested keeping the Morse code requirement for the Extra class, but getting rid of the requirement entirely is the next best thing. Certainly, you don't need CW to work HF, but under the current system, you get no access to HF until you've passed the code test.
How about a broadcaster broadcasting to completely anonymous listeners?
You're thinking of shortwave radio.
At least in the US, the rules for ham radio don't permit broadcasting to the non-ham radio community at all. It's OK for people to listen, but if you're running a newscast or something, it needs to be very amateur radio oriented. You can't just pick a frequency and start broadcasting political programming on it, for example.
Also, the rules prohibit the use of any sort of secret codes or encryption. And you have to ID yourself every 10 minutes. And any sort of `politicial' discussion is frowned upon, especially with those in other countries.
In short, there's little anonymous about ham radio. At least if you're following the law. And if not, the other hams tend to not like you, and will track you down and report you to the FCC.
(Needless to say, this is all US specific, but I suspect that other countries have similar laws.)
Extra Class only required 5 WPM? General used to require 13 WPM, and Extra required 20 WPM.
The 13 wpm and 20 wpm tests were done away with several years ago. Now it's just 5 wpm.
Yes, it used to be faster in the past, but as for now, it's only 5 wpm. Most tests are done with a Farnsworth speed of 5 wpm, but the actual dits and dahs are set at around 13 wpm, with large gaps between letters making up the difference.
I was somewhere in Seattle (I think) visiting my uncle (again, I think.) I'm not sure how old I was, but I doubt I was older than 7. (I was born in 1968, if you want to do the math.)
In any event, my uncle showed me a terminal of some sort, sat me down at it, dialed a number on the phone, put the phone onto the acoustic coupler and words started appearing on the screen. I can sort of remember how fast it was, and it was 50 baud.
And he started Adventure, gave me the run-down on how to play, and let me at it. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I was in awe at it all...
I don't even remember which uncle this was, or how old I was, and I'm not even sure it was in Seattle, but whomever he is, he probably should know what an effect he had on my life in his innocent little thing that was probably done just to get me to stop annoying him:)
Do many pilots actually know morse code? I don't think my dad does, though he's only VFR rated. Is it actually required that pilots learn it? (I see some morse code training aids intended for pilots now that I look for it, but am not sure if it's required or not.)
What speed is it sent at? I learned enough morse code to barely pass the 5 wpm test so I could get my Extra class license, but only barely, and haven't really used it since. (Googling around, it appears to be sent at around 5 wpm. Neat! I might actually be able to copy something! Most amateur repeaters send their station IDs far too fast for me to copy.)
What is the point of amateur radio when the Internet has connected most of the globe?
1) you said it yourself. most of the globe.
2) what is the point of the Internet, since most of the globe was already connected by telephones?
3) how are you going to talk to the rest of the globe (or even the guys across the city) when the power is out? Or a hurricane has taken out all of the cell phone towers?
4) And don't forget that ham radio is also about experimentation and tinkering. It's not just about ragchewing (talking) with people on the other side of the world.
Why should ham radio go away just because there's other alternatives? I can send my dad emails... but that doesn't mean that the telephone is obsolete or useless.
Ultimately, ham radio has two main `points': 1) it's fun, and 2) it's seen as a way to serve the community by providing emergency communication in times of need. Do you really need more than that?
One of the most memorable moments was when I was playing an online BBS game called
Barons.
Basically there was only two of us seriously playing on this BBS door game, and I had the upper hand for a while. But then suddenly I got locked out of the game (presumably due to some bug where I thought I was already playing or something, so it wouldn't let me in) and when I came back, the other guy was whomping on all of my sectors and I was getting my butt kicked.
As I had previously expanded across the map, I'd take all my soldiers on to the next sector, and leave only one man in each square (so I could still `own' it.) Since I found that 50% taxation (use the money to buy mercenaries) and 0% draft worked best, this one man never grew into more. So I had half the map with only one man per square. But since my border towns had more, so it was basically hard on the outside and soft on the inside. I thought I was relatively safe.
So, finally I get back in, and I'm reading how I've lost all these squares, square after square after square that the other guy took over. He had like 30,000 men in one army and he was mopping my squares up. But then suddenly there was a battle that I won. He came in with 30,000 men and I had one man. My one man killed his 30,000 men and had stopped his advance cold, since that was the bulk of his forces.
After that, I sent him a ha ha! (in the Nelson style, but Nelson didn't exist yet) message, and then he sent me back a message about how he'd kill that man, and his family, and his family's family... but by then, I was back to mopping up the map of this guy.
People are still going to learn it and use it as long as there are still QRP operators and people flying planes out there.
Morse code certainly works well with QRP, but so does PSK31. Certainly, morse code is not going away any time soon, but you don't need to know it to make low power connections.
As for flying planes, huh? What does flying planes have to do with morse code?
After the blowjob, you fuck the girl. To uhh, make babies. Little CJ's. Grove Street 4 Life.
Yes, but there's two problems with that --
1) the guy's clothes are still on. So obviously no babies are going to come from THAT union. As far as I understand the process, babies do NOT come from dry humping!
2) He's black. The girl is white. Any babies that they did produce would be... gasp... mixed race! Taboo!
This probably upsets all sorts of people, but they're not willing to actually say why or they'll get labeled (rightfully so) as racists...
Is there any scientific relevance to the layout of this chart whatsoever.
Yes. The same scientific relevance that the original periodic chart has exists here as well.
But as for the galaxy graphics, well, he's just trying to make it pretty (read: this is why people are buying it. It's pretty.) And as for the spiral shape, well, all it does is put Ne next to Na, Ar next to K, Kr next to RB, etc. Which does make sense, as they differ by only one electron and one proton. (We'll ignore neutrons for now.)
But beyond that, it's just a novelty, and I don't see it replacing the traditional period chart of the elements.
And as for neutronium, yes, it gives a convenient place for it, but I'm not sure it even belongs there. I wouldn't call it an atom because it doesn't meet definition 3a, so I wouldn't call it an element at all. So I wouldn't put it on the periodic chart of the elements...
A better movie rating analogy would probably be R, not NC-17.
You don't let them go to R movies, do you?
(And the answer may very well be `yes, you do.' And you may very well let them play `M' rated games.)
Still, it's really something when you've got a game with lots of violence, and it gets a `Mature' rating (which seems appropriate) but when people find that there's a sex scene in there, one that you cannot even find by accident, politicians start grandstanding and saying how the ESRB needs oversight, etc.
What is it about sex anyways that gets our culture's panties in such a twist? It's OK to let a kid see somebody murder an innocent person, but it's not OK to see two consenting adults have sex? (Or is it the problem that the GTA sex involes a white woman and a black man?)
(Ok, I know the answer to that. They don't really care that it interracial sex. It's just that it's sex. Nevermind that it's non-violent and not even that out of the ordinary, except that the guy never takes off his clothes.)
WEP and pre 802.1x wireless security regimens ARE worthless.
Not perfect != worthless. Yes, they can be cracked if you can sniff enough packets, but they'll keep 99+% of wardrivers away. (And `as linked from slashdot' is about as useful as `as seen on TV!'.)
In any event, `WEP and pre 802.1x wireless security' are not the sum total of security systems used with wireless.
One simple way that many business secure WiFi systems is to configure it so the AP feeds directly into (and only into) a VPN server. In that case, your wireless network is as secure as your VPN server is. And there are other systems as well that work well for a business.
how do you identify non-approved AP's =)
Um, that's trivial. You have a list of your approved AP's mac addresses, and if you find an AP that has a mac address not on the list, it's not approved. Walking around your company with a laptop running Kismet will find those for you, and will even give you a very rough idea of where it is (since WiFi doesn't go through walls terribly well, the range won't be that far.)
Unless you meant how to physically find non-approved APs... that would be best done with a directional antenna and some walking around, though if you could actually connect to the AP, you might be able to find it by sending traffic to some specific machines and then tracking the traffic back through your network, eventually finding out which network port it's connected to.
(But that wasn't the question I was originally answering.)
Your goal is to calculate the correct amount of power consumed, and to keep some sort of historical information.
You know that measuring the average current and using that is not going to be accurate when the power factor is something other than one (which is most of the time), so what you do instead is measure the current and voltage 120 (or 240 or 4800 or whatever you like) times per second, and then do that for three seconds, and then use those 360/720/whatever datapoints to calculate the average power used during the last three seconds, and then write one row to your database.
So, you've taken hundreds of readings in that three seconds, but only stored one value into your database. After all, do you really need historical data accurate to the 1/10th or more of the second?
This way, you can make Nyquist happy, and yet not give your DBA fits.
(To be fair, I don't think even 120 Hz sampling would be adequate. Apparantly some commercial units do 4800 Hz, which should be adequate.)
Out of thousands of games that have been reviewed, only 18 have received the AO rating--including such titles as Water Closet: The Forbidden Chamber and Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude Uncut and Uncensored.
Ok, I've seen `Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude' and wasn't terribly impressed, but
Water Closet: The Forbidden Chamber [warning: NSFW] sounded scary enough to actually look up.
Then I realized it was just another mindless henai game. Blech. I guess I should have expected as much.
If only 18 games have been rated AO, that must mean that the vast majority of the hentai games made are never submitted. Which makes sense.
Ultimately, I think the AO designation isn't so scary in that sex is going to corrupt my children more than games where you can kill cops, it's that the game is likely to just be just plain bad, with `have sex!' being the attaction, and actual gameplay being an afterthought. (Though LSL:MCL isn't a great game, it's somewhat entertaining. Which is unusual for it's rating.)
Oh, now I get it. The latest
Leisure Suit Larry must have two versions -- the standard `M' rated version, and the `Uncut and Uncensored' version, which is rated `AO' and probably removes the [censored] marks from the `M' version. Not sure why seeing Larry's schlong makes it adults only, but that's the ratings for you. [I must have seen the `M' version, though I've heard there's a patch for that...]
I recall pulling out
Virtual Valerie 2 at parties for shock value, but back then it was novel. Now it's just boring.
As for `Hot coffee', it actually fits into the GTA game. Yes, it's really poorly simulated sex (I've seen the movie of it) but it does make sense that the hero of the game might have a girlfriend, and might get to have sex with her. (It would make more sense if he at least pulled his pants down, however.)
It's pretty sad that this `easter egg' (one that can't even be accessed without jumping through some serious hoops) has upset all these people so much, so much more than things like getting points for beating a hooker and taking your money back after paying her...
[disclaimer: the original site is down, so I haven't read the article ]
In fact he must sample at greater than 120hz* to get meaningful results.
Well, he could sample 120 times a second, but then only keep one data point for each three seconds, with that one data point being calculated from the 360 readings taken before it. It could save a lot of disk space...
He has neglected the possibility that voltage and current can and will be out of phase for each of the loads in his house.
(Granted, in practice it's almost never a signifigant issue, but still...)
Without determining the phase difference, there is no way to accurately deterimne the average power over any interval.
Ultimately, if you can't figure things out any other way (for example, the current used may be essentially random, but varying so you can't just take the average), you could measure the heat produced by the device and calculate the power usage that way. (Though this probably wouldn't qualify as accurate...)
That method is sometimes used in radio work -- send your complicated signal into a dummy load, and see how much the temperature of the load changes. Sure, there's more accurate ways to do it, but low tech ways are often a lot cheaper.:)
the Kill-A-Watt
I've got two of these -- they were on clearance at Radio Shack for $20. Nice devices. They do tell you the power factor of a given item (in addition to the power used and some other things), though I've never tried to determine how accurate they were.
I've done that just to frustrate the wardrivers near my house! Use the default linksys password and ssid, and watch them try to figure out why it doesn't work. Oodles of fun.
I've done that too. (With all the spare APs I see to have obtained, why not?) (Though from what I've seen, most wardrivers are just making maps, and not actually looking to use any of the APs that they find. It's interesting just seeing how many there are, how many are secured, and how that changes over time.)
Alas, I never actually looked at the logs of the AP to see if anybody actually tried to use it.
But at home, I create the policies. At work, the IT guys (or the suits) create the policies, and it's their job to police them. Putting up an AP that doesn't technically violate any policies, but looks like it does, just sends them on a wild goose chase. It's not likely to make you many friends when they do find it, even if it doesn't violate company policy.
(And yes, I do agree with the policies that prohibit `rogue' APs. It's hard enough to secure your network against your employees who want to install stuff on their computers. It's quite another when they let other people into the network.)
(And it's possible that they may say it violates company policy anyways, even if it's not plugged into anything. It depends on exactly how the policy is written, and how annoyed they are at you.)
The stuff is not plugged in to the network. It's wireless.
Well, yes, it is possible to have an access point that's not plugged into the network, but that's not very likely. (And if it's not plugged into the network, it's not a problem. But it's not always obvious that this is the case until you find it.) It's quite likely that if you find a rogue AP somewhere inside your office building, it's connected to the (wired) network.
(Though if you didn't like your IT department, you certainly could set up an AP in your office -- not plugged into the network at all -- just to mess with them. Power it with a battery if you really want to make sure it doesn't violate any company policies. Howver, if you're going to do this, it may really piss them off when they find it, and it could very well still get you fired. And perhaps rightfully so, since obviously you'd be a schmuck with too much time on his hands.)
Finally, the business should not be running wireless. It's insecure, it's been demonstrated insecure, and it's been demonstrated hard to guard and easy to penetrate.
It can be made reasonably secure easily enough. WEP helps a lot, but by itself it doesn't make it completely secure, and that's probably what you're referring to. But there are other ways to secure wireless networks, and some of them work pretty good. The NSA probably doesn't use them (on their uber-secure networks anyways), but for many companies they're good enough.
But really, the `wireless isn't secure' mantra is getting quite old. There's some truth to it, but it can be made secure. Secure enough, anyways. (After all, IT is always balancing security with usability. Security is not a black or white thing -- it's a huge spectrum.)
Are you trying to imply that the NSA only runs in-house software or FOSS programs? Do you REALLY think Microsoft would allow that?
If the NSA asked Microsoft for their source code, they'd probably get it. And they probably have asked for it, and have probably had it for a long time now.
Microsoft actually does give out their source code (or at least parts of it) to companies who have a serious need for it, and are willing to sign all sorts of NDAs to get access to it.
I certainly do believe that on their most secure systems, the NSA does not run anything that they have not personally written or audited, line by line.
... that's going to put a serious kink in the plans of both of the people using the Alpha NetBSD port!
:)
Seriously though, how many people use NetBSD on Alpha machines? I have an Alpha machine in the garage, but haven't used it in years. (Sorry, it's not 1U, and much slower than what they had.)
(Actually, are there any figures on how many systems are running NetBSD at all available? I haven't run it in a very long time, having discovered that it's just easier to use x86 boxes and run FreeBSD and Linux on them.)
Do I know quantitatively how right I am? No. I just know that in general, I'm usually right. (And if I don't know, I'll say `I don't know', which is also right (unless I do know, I guess.) So yes, the deck is indeed stacked.)
Ok, enough of that sillyness:)
but at NSA's Unix workstations, the version of grep they have is so old it doesn't support the -A and -B flags, and tar doesn't know about gzip.
I believe that only the gnu versions of those utilities have those features/flags.
Certainly, logging into a Solaris 8 box here, tar doesn't know about gzip and grep doesn't have -A or -B flags. Not that this is the newest, or even close, but it wouldn't surprise me if Solaris 10 wasn't any different.
(Linux and to a lesser degree the *BSDs tends to give you the gnu versions of utilities like these, so you may have gotten used to that. I know I have...)
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I dislike the GiB/MiB designations (they just look wrong) but at least they're precise. I wish that the drive manufacturers had just used units of 1024 like everybody else, but then again, I don't like how gas is $2.199 either.
He's a lawyer. He's getting free advertising here. He may also be trying to get people to go in on a class action lawsuit against EA -- and as we all know, the only people who really win a class action lawsuit are the lawyers.
And he may be looking for somebody to be offended by the `nudity' that the Sims has, and to have him be their lawyer as they sue EA. They probably wouldn't win in court, but EA will probably settle out of court to 1) save legal fees and 2) make the bad press go away. Either way, the lawyer wins and EA loses.
Even my little IC-Q7A with 0.300 watts of power can reach about half of the major repeaters in the city. My Yaesu with 3 watts can reach them all. Both do this with their little `rubber ducky' antennas, and would probably do better with better antennas.
And even if the repeaters went down, I could talk to other people in the city with these using simplex. The Kenwood in my car can reach most of the city using simplex.
Of course, to be fair, CB radio could be used similarly.
Power loss is only one danger. Hurricanes for example tend to rip up telephone lines. And what good is the Internet going to do you if your house doesn't have power? Your UPS is only good for 10 minutes, your laptop might do better but the cable modem is out. You might be able to dial into your ISP, but their main T3 is down, so you're stuck ...
The Internet is going to be one the first things to break in an emergency, even before the cell phone network.
VHF/UHF repeaters are only one small aspect of ham radio.
As for what kind of traffic is sent during an emergency, it's mostly lower priority messages. `Shelter #6 needs more blankets, Mrs Smith needs somebody to call her husband and tell him that she's at the shelter and OK, etc.' Mostly.
The police and such usually have systems very similar to the ham repeaters, and so they usually stay up during emergencies. (But the cell phone network is usually one of the first things to go down.)
Ok, let's assume this is correct for now. What now? What are you proposing we do with this revelation?
Why does it have to make sense? Emergency communications are but one aspect of ham radio. In any event, CW (Morse code) works with lower power, cuts through more interference and reaches longer distances than just about anything else, and the equipment needed is very simple. It's not normally used in emergencies, but it certainly could be.
They already have access. In an emergency, anybody (ham or not) can transmit on any frequency with any amount of power or modulation type as is needed to resolve the emergency.
However, if you can't use your equipment in a non-emergency, very few people are going to go to the trouble of buying and setting up this equipment, and there will be no opportunity to test it and become familiar with it's use without having an emergency.
Because 1) ham radio is not just for education and entertainment, and 2) why would you want to do that anyways? Education and entertainment can be done with other modes as well.
What's wrong with tubes? They're still used a lot in ham radio, and in fact they're used in radio and TV broadcasting as well.
Yes, it's doable for most. I did it. However, it wasn't really easy. I had to spend far more time studying more code to pick it up at 5 wpm than I did studying for all the written tests needed to get to Extra class.
People who are older, or have certain handicaps often just can't learn Morse code at all, no matter how much they try. And why make somebody study something they'll never use? psk31 has most f the benefits of CW with regards to low power and punching through interference, but requires no Morse code knowledge to use.
Personally, I'd have suggested keeping the Morse code requirement for the Extra class, but getting rid of the requirement entirely is the next best thing. Certainly, you don't need CW to work HF, but under the current system, you get no access to HF until you've passed the code test.
At least in the US, the rules for ham radio don't permit broadcasting to the non-ham radio community at all. It's OK for people to listen, but if you're running a newscast or something, it needs to be very amateur radio oriented. You can't just pick a frequency and start broadcasting political programming on it, for example.
Also, the rules prohibit the use of any sort of secret codes or encryption. And you have to ID yourself every 10 minutes. And any sort of `politicial' discussion is frowned upon, especially with those in other countries.
In short, there's little anonymous about ham radio. At least if you're following the law. And if not, the other hams tend to not like you, and will track you down and report you to the FCC.
(Needless to say, this is all US specific, but I suspect that other countries have similar laws.)
Yes, it used to be faster in the past, but as for now, it's only 5 wpm. Most tests are done with a Farnsworth speed of 5 wpm, but the actual dits and dahs are set at around 13 wpm, with large gaps between letters making up the difference.
In any event, my uncle showed me a terminal of some sort, sat me down at it, dialed a number on the phone, put the phone onto the acoustic coupler and words started appearing on the screen. I can sort of remember how fast it was, and it was 50 baud.
And he started Adventure, gave me the run-down on how to play, and let me at it. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I was in awe at it all ...
I don't even remember which uncle this was, or how old I was, and I'm not even sure it was in Seattle, but whomever he is, he probably should know what an effect he had on my life in his innocent little thing that was probably done just to get me to stop annoying him :)
Do many pilots actually know morse code? I don't think my dad does, though he's only VFR rated. Is it actually required that pilots learn it? (I see some morse code training aids intended for pilots now that I look for it, but am not sure if it's required or not.)
What speed is it sent at? I learned enough morse code to barely pass the 5 wpm test so I could get my Extra class license, but only barely, and haven't really used it since. (Googling around, it appears to be sent at around 5 wpm. Neat! I might actually be able to copy something! Most amateur repeaters send their station IDs far too fast for me to copy.)
2) what is the point of the Internet, since most of the globe was already connected by telephones?
3) how are you going to talk to the rest of the globe (or even the guys across the city) when the power is out? Or a hurricane has taken out all of the cell phone towers?
4) And don't forget that ham radio is also about experimentation and tinkering. It's not just about ragchewing (talking) with people on the other side of the world.
Why should ham radio go away just because there's other alternatives? I can send my dad emails ... but that doesn't mean that the telephone is obsolete or useless.
Ultimately, ham radio has two main `points': 1) it's fun, and 2) it's seen as a way to serve the community by providing emergency communication in times of need. Do you really need more than that?
Basically there was only two of us seriously playing on this BBS door game, and I had the upper hand for a while. But then suddenly I got locked out of the game (presumably due to some bug where I thought I was already playing or something, so it wouldn't let me in) and when I came back, the other guy was whomping on all of my sectors and I was getting my butt kicked.
As I had previously expanded across the map, I'd take all my soldiers on to the next sector, and leave only one man in each square (so I could still `own' it.) Since I found that 50% taxation (use the money to buy mercenaries) and 0% draft worked best, this one man never grew into more. So I had half the map with only one man per square. But since my border towns had more, so it was basically hard on the outside and soft on the inside. I thought I was relatively safe.
So, finally I get back in, and I'm reading how I've lost all these squares, square after square after square that the other guy took over. He had like 30,000 men in one army and he was mopping my squares up. But then suddenly there was a battle that I won. He came in with 30,000 men and I had one man. My one man killed his 30,000 men and had stopped his advance cold, since that was the bulk of his forces.
After that, I sent him a ha ha! (in the Nelson style, but Nelson didn't exist yet) message, and then he sent me back a message about how he'd kill that man, and his family, and his family's family ... but by then, I was back to mopping up the map of this guy.
Fun!
As for flying planes, huh? What does flying planes have to do with morse code?
It's not perfect, but it works for me. Run in the background, it will pop up a window a few minutes before events happen.
(I also use the cronjob/send email tricks ...)
1) the guy's clothes are still on. So obviously no babies are going to come from THAT union. As far as I understand the process, babies do NOT come from dry humping!
2) He's black. The girl is white. Any babies that they did produce would be ... gasp ... mixed race! Taboo!
This probably upsets all sorts of people, but they're not willing to actually say why or they'll get labeled (rightfully so) as racists ...
But as for the galaxy graphics, well, he's just trying to make it pretty (read: this is why people are buying it. It's pretty.) And as for the spiral shape, well, all it does is put Ne next to Na, Ar next to K, Kr next to RB, etc. Which does make sense, as they differ by only one electron and one proton. (We'll ignore neutrons for now.)
But beyond that, it's just a novelty, and I don't see it replacing the traditional period chart of the elements.
And as for neutronium, yes, it gives a convenient place for it, but I'm not sure it even belongs there. I wouldn't call it an atom because it doesn't meet definition 3a, so I wouldn't call it an element at all. So I wouldn't put it on the periodic chart of the elements ...
You don't let them go to R movies, do you?
(And the answer may very well be `yes, you do.' And you may very well let them play `M' rated games.)
Still, it's really something when you've got a game with lots of violence, and it gets a `Mature' rating (which seems appropriate) but when people find that there's a sex scene in there, one that you cannot even find by accident, politicians start grandstanding and saying how the ESRB needs oversight, etc.
What is it about sex anyways that gets our culture's panties in such a twist? It's OK to let a kid see somebody murder an innocent person, but it's not OK to see two consenting adults have sex? (Or is it the problem that the GTA sex involes a white woman and a black man?)
(Ok, I know the answer to that. They don't really care that it interracial sex. It's just that it's sex. Nevermind that it's non-violent and not even that out of the ordinary, except that the guy never takes off his clothes.)
In any event, `WEP and pre 802.1x wireless security' are not the sum total of security systems used with wireless.
One simple way that many business secure WiFi systems is to configure it so the AP feeds directly into (and only into) a VPN server. In that case, your wireless network is as secure as your VPN server is. And there are other systems as well that work well for a business.
Um, that's trivial. You have a list of your approved AP's mac addresses, and if you find an AP that has a mac address not on the list, it's not approved. Walking around your company with a laptop running Kismet will find those for you, and will even give you a very rough idea of where it is (since WiFi doesn't go through walls terribly well, the range won't be that far.)Unless you meant how to physically find non-approved APs ... that would be best done with a directional antenna and some walking around, though if you could actually connect to the AP, you might be able to find it by sending traffic to some specific machines and then tracking the traffic back through your network, eventually finding out which network port it's connected to.
(But that wasn't the question I was originally answering.)
Your goal is to calculate the correct amount of power consumed, and to keep some sort of historical information.
You know that measuring the average current and using that is not going to be accurate when the power factor is something other than one (which is most of the time), so what you do instead is measure the current and voltage 120 (or 240 or 4800 or whatever you like) times per second, and then do that for three seconds, and then use those 360/720/whatever datapoints to calculate the average power used during the last three seconds, and then write one row to your database.
So, you've taken hundreds of readings in that three seconds, but only stored one value into your database. After all, do you really need historical data accurate to the 1/10th or more of the second?
This way, you can make Nyquist happy, and yet not give your DBA fits.
(To be fair, I don't think even 120 Hz sampling would be adequate. Apparantly some commercial units do 4800 Hz, which should be adequate.)
Then I realized it was just another mindless henai game. Blech. I guess I should have expected as much.
If only 18 games have been rated AO, that must mean that the vast majority of the hentai games made are never submitted. Which makes sense.
Ultimately, I think the AO designation isn't so scary in that sex is going to corrupt my children more than games where you can kill cops, it's that the game is likely to just be just plain bad, with `have sex!' being the attaction, and actual gameplay being an afterthought. (Though LSL:MCL isn't a great game, it's somewhat entertaining. Which is unusual for it's rating.)
Oh, now I get it. The latest Leisure Suit Larry must have two versions -- the standard `M' rated version, and the `Uncut and Uncensored' version, which is rated `AO' and probably removes the [censored] marks from the `M' version. Not sure why seeing Larry's schlong makes it adults only, but that's the ratings for you. [I must have seen the `M' version, though I've heard there's a patch for that ...]
I recall pulling out Virtual Valerie 2 at parties for shock value, but back then it was novel. Now it's just boring.
As for `Hot coffee', it actually fits into the GTA game. Yes, it's really poorly simulated sex (I've seen the movie of it) but it does make sense that the hero of the game might have a girlfriend, and might get to have sex with her. (It would make more sense if he at least pulled his pants down, however.)
It's pretty sad that this `easter egg' (one that can't even be accessed without jumping through some serious hoops) has upset all these people so much, so much more than things like getting points for beating a hooker and taking your money back after paying her ...
(Granted, in practice it's almost never a signifigant issue, but still ...)
Ultimately, if you can't figure things out any other way (for example, the current used may be essentially random, but varying so you can't just take the average), you could measure the heat produced by the device and calculate the power usage that way. (Though this probably wouldn't qualify as accurateThat method is sometimes used in radio work -- send your complicated signal into a dummy load, and see how much the temperature of the load changes. Sure, there's more accurate ways to do it, but low tech ways are often a lot cheaper. :)
I've got two of these -- they were on clearance at Radio Shack for $20. Nice devices. They do tell you the power factor of a given item (in addition to the power used and some other things), though I've never tried to determine how accurate they were.Alas, I never actually looked at the logs of the AP to see if anybody actually tried to use it.
But at home, I create the policies. At work, the IT guys (or the suits) create the policies, and it's their job to police them. Putting up an AP that doesn't technically violate any policies, but looks like it does, just sends them on a wild goose chase. It's not likely to make you many friends when they do find it, even if it doesn't violate company policy.
(And yes, I do agree with the policies that prohibit `rogue' APs. It's hard enough to secure your network against your employees who want to install stuff on their computers. It's quite another when they let other people into the network.)
(And it's possible that they may say it violates company policy anyways, even if it's not plugged into anything. It depends on exactly how the policy is written, and how annoyed they are at you.)
(Though if you didn't like your IT department, you certainly could set up an AP in your office -- not plugged into the network at all -- just to mess with them. Power it with a battery if you really want to make sure it doesn't violate any company policies. Howver, if you're going to do this, it may really piss them off when they find it, and it could very well still get you fired. And perhaps rightfully so, since obviously you'd be a schmuck with too much time on his hands.)
It can be made reasonably secure easily enough. WEP helps a lot, but by itself it doesn't make it completely secure, and that's probably what you're referring to. But there are other ways to secure wireless networks, and some of them work pretty good. The NSA probably doesn't use them (on their uber-secure networks anyways), but for many companies they're good enough.But really, the `wireless isn't secure' mantra is getting quite old. There's some truth to it, but it can be made secure. Secure enough, anyways. (After all, IT is always balancing security with usability. Security is not a black or white thing -- it's a huge spectrum.)
Microsoft actually does give out their source code (or at least parts of it) to companies who have a serious need for it, and are willing to sign all sorts of NDAs to get access to it.
I certainly do believe that on their most secure systems, the NSA does not run anything that they have not personally written or audited, line by line.
OpenBSD would be another matter entirely. It actually sees some signifignat use ...
Seriously though, how many people use NetBSD on Alpha machines? I have an Alpha machine in the garage, but haven't used it in years. (Sorry, it's not 1U, and much slower than what they had.)
(Actually, are there any figures on how many systems are running NetBSD at all available? I haven't run it in a very long time, having discovered that it's just easier to use x86 boxes and run FreeBSD and Linux on them.)
Ok, enough of that sillyness :)
I believe that only the gnu versions of those utilities have those features/flags.Certainly, logging into a Solaris 8 box here, tar doesn't know about gzip and grep doesn't have -A or -B flags. Not that this is the newest, or even close, but it wouldn't surprise me if Solaris 10 wasn't any different.
(Linux and to a lesser degree the *BSDs tends to give you the gnu versions of utilities like these, so you may have gotten used to that. I know I have ...)