In fact, in most areas of the country, to participate in WX nets you must have a RACES appointment.)
Define "most". It may be true in some areas but I have a hard time believing it's most. While in many areas you are encouraged to have taken (free) NWS training to become a Skywarn spotter, you aren't required to do so. As an example, the New York City metro area most certainly doesn't require RACES certification to participate in any of the nets, and as a former Skywarn Deputy Coordinator, I can tell you that such a thing was never even discussed.
That said, it is unfortunate that there are some people who seem to have a "control complex" and are more interested in being in control of others than they are of providing service to others.
On "HF" or shortwave radio, you can talk to people around the world with 100watts of RF power. 100w is probably 1/3 or less of the power used to run your desktop computer.
Needless to say, 100w is also about the same power as a 100 watt lightbulb, to make an even simpler comparison.
Although more challenging, you can also communicate around the world with far less power (what us hams refer to as "QRP", meaning low power). Many people enjoy the challenge required to "work the world" with 5 watts or less, sometimes much less. While you can do this with a GSM cellphone with 2 watts of transmit power, it requires an awful lot of infrastructure to make it work, and the aggregate power required by all that infrastructure is substantially higher.
You won't find ham gear or information in your local hobby shop (or at the anachronistically-named Radio Shack, which doesn't sell much in the way of 2-way gear other than cell phones.) However, you can find a lot of information about ham radio at We Do That Radio or the The American Radio Relay League as well as a Google search, Wikipedia, etc.
In addition to the tutorials available on the site, there are a number of interviews with the scientists where they explain specifically they wants humans to look at the images. In fact, they want multiple people to look at each set of images to try to get a more objective opinion.
It's not an IP stack at all (and requires one to function). It replies to a packet that is assumed to be a ping without any error checking. In other words, it's a very short, clever, but minimally functional ping function. The fact that it's short is nice, but that's about it.
The international treaties that required morse code were revised a couple (or more years) ago to remove that requirement. The United States was relatively late in the game to remove code as a licensing requirement. A lot of other countries did it first.
And the code-free license provided privs on bands like 10 meters, which, when open, is truly a global band. I have contacted 162 countries on 10m, at last count, and that's by no means a high total. Granted, before removing the requirement entirely, the no-code licenses were more restrictive on 10m, but they still provided some "long-distance" capability.
If it were built into the holster (which TFA seems to imply), the it wouldn't be another thing to loose.
As other posters have noted, sending wireless notification to the (ex-)owner of the blackberry is pretty useless (since they no longer have it), but notification could be sent to a system administrator (for enterprise use; not sure if this would be useful for personal use), who could send a "kill pill" to remotely wipe out the device.
The "kill pill" isn't new, only the ability to proactively notify someone who can do something about it is.
Perhaps that works for the Comcast recorder, but Cablevision uses a completely different box. Cablevision uses a Scientific Atlanta 8300 (or 8300HD), and apparently the DVR itself does not support that feature; it's not just a question of the remote not being programmed to do so.
Apparently the fee is going to be similar to that for "renting" a physical DVR from them today, and is going to be a monthly charge, not a per-use fee. This is not "official", but is what I heard mentioned on a local news broadcast. It didn't sound like they were planning to charge a per-use fee, but of course until it's actually deployed, we won't know for sure.
Apparently, according to information in some of the local newspapers (sorry, no link), it will act very similar to an "in-home" DVR, which means that you can fast-forward, rewind, etc. The current DVR doesn't have a "skip 30 seconds" button, but you can fast-forward at speeds up to 128x normal speed.
One question that is a bit up in the air is whether HD recording will be supported. Cablevision currently supplies a Scientific Atlanta (er, Cisco?) 8300HD box for users with HD sets, which has dual tuners. It wasn't clear whether the new service would support HD or only SD.
Despite the fact that the US Patent and Technology Office (USPTO) has declared the patents invalid, NTP still has the option of challenging the "invalidity" of those patents in court. Apparently, Judge Spencer won't consider the patents to be non-existant until that happens. The challenge process could take a year or more.
Re:Great! When will it be out of beta?
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Email Turns 34
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If you don't like the free (as in ad-supported) Gmail, feel free to pay for some poorly implemented solution that doesn't have a beta tag on it.
By the way, you don't have to wait to be invited any longer, you can "invite" yourself if you've got a cell phone.
I'm an ARRL VEC Volunteer Examiner, and I'm quite proud of how our team gets things pushed through. Our normal VE sessions are held on a Saturday morning, the paperwork is sent out that afternoon overnight to ARRL HQ in Connecticut (which means it actually gets there Monday morning), and unless there's some really huge influx of test sessions coming in, the callsigns are typically issued the following Wednesday, or sometimes even sooner. We recently did a VE session during which we tested Dr. Greg Olsen, who is scheduled to be the next "space tourist". (An article about it was on the ARRL website). The VE session took place late Friday afternoon, and Greg's callsign was issued the following Tuesday. So, it can happen pretty quickly.
There are specific rules for how quickly the paperwork has to be sent out (which unfortunately, I don't have in front of me), but if the VE team really sat on the paperwork for more than about 4 or 5 days, you might consider sending a note to the ARRL VEC to complain, it's not supposed to work that way.
As for the parent comment, it does normally take a few days for this to happen. Our team happens to be very quick about it, but it isn't unusual for the VE team to take a day or so to verify that the paperwork is correct (it'll take a lot longer if there's a missed signature, etc. and has to come back), then it gets send up to HQ, and not always via overnight mail. When they get it, they have some checking to do, then they have to enter the info into the FCC system which generates the callsigns. I'd give it at least 2 weeks to be reasonable before complaining to the VE team.
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Isn't it ironic that Ham Radio is meant to be a communications system for amateurs?
Amateur has a number of meanings. The relevant one is:
a person who engages in a study, sport, or other activity for pleasure rather than for financial benefit or professional reasons. Compare professional.
In other words, with some extremely limited and very specific exceptions, hams cannot be compensated for their work.
In fact, in most areas of the country, to participate in WX nets you must have a RACES appointment.)
Define "most". It may be true in some areas but I have a hard time believing it's most. While in many areas you are encouraged to have taken (free) NWS training to become a Skywarn spotter, you aren't required to do so. As an example, the New York City metro area most certainly doesn't require RACES certification to participate in any of the nets, and as a former Skywarn Deputy Coordinator, I can tell you that such a thing was never even discussed.
That said, it is unfortunate that there are some people who seem to have a "control complex" and are more interested in being in control of others than they are of providing service to others.
On "HF" or shortwave radio, you can talk to people around the world with 100watts of RF power. 100w is probably 1/3 or less of the power used to run your desktop computer.
Needless to say, 100w is also about the same power as a 100 watt lightbulb, to make an even simpler comparison.
Although more challenging, you can also communicate around the world with far less power (what us hams refer to as "QRP", meaning low power). Many people enjoy the challenge required to "work the world" with 5 watts or less, sometimes much less. While you can do this with a GSM cellphone with 2 watts of transmit power, it requires an awful lot of infrastructure to make it work, and the aggregate power required by all that infrastructure is substantially higher.
You won't find ham gear or information in your local hobby shop (or at the anachronistically-named Radio Shack, which doesn't sell much in the way of 2-way gear other than cell phones.) However, you can find a lot of information about ham radio at We Do That Radio or the The American Radio Relay League as well as a Google search, Wikipedia, etc.
In addition to the tutorials available on the site, there are a number of interviews with the scientists where they explain specifically they wants humans to look at the images. In fact, they want multiple people to look at each set of images to try to get a more objective opinion.
It's not an IP stack at all (and requires one to function). It replies to a packet that is assumed to be a ping without any error checking. In other words, it's a very short, clever, but minimally functional ping function. The fact that it's short is nice, but that's about it.
Newbie. I was 70160,306. And in my day, we really did dial up at 300bps. And liked it, because it was faster than 110.
Before today, 747s didn't fly at that altitude, in circles, around lower Manhattan. Ever.
747s don't fly at that altitude, in circles, around lower Manhattan. Ever. Being trailed by F-16s isn't necessarily a good thing either.
How will this ever outsell the wildly popular "Cat for Dummies"?
Exercise? You're new here, right?
What, no sharks with frickin' laser beams?
The international treaties that required morse code were revised a couple (or more years) ago to remove that requirement. The United States was relatively late in the game to remove code as a licensing requirement. A lot of other countries did it first. And the code-free license provided privs on bands like 10 meters, which, when open, is truly a global band. I have contacted 162 countries on 10m, at last count, and that's by no means a high total. Granted, before removing the requirement entirely, the no-code licenses were more restrictive on 10m, but they still provided some "long-distance" capability.
1. Do some stuff 2. Spin off Thunderbird 3. ??? 4. Profit!!
The last bastion of semi-peace and quiet is gone.
Assuming that your definition of peace and quiet includes high-volume white noise and even higher-volume crying babies.
They only complained because they read on /. that it was supposed to give out $50 bills, not $20s (instead of $5s).
As other posters have noted, sending wireless notification to the (ex-)owner of the blackberry is pretty useless (since they no longer have it), but notification could be sent to a system administrator (for enterprise use; not sure if this would be useful for personal use), who could send a "kill pill" to remotely wipe out the device.
The "kill pill" isn't new, only the ability to proactively notify someone who can do something about it is.
I was surprised that it didn't work on my WM 5 device also, but very happy to discover that it works just fine on my Blackberry 7290 device.
The answer to step 3 is "Sue rich person".
Perhaps that works for the Comcast recorder, but Cablevision uses a completely different box. Cablevision uses a Scientific Atlanta 8300 (or 8300HD), and apparently the DVR itself does not support that feature; it's not just a question of the remote not being programmed to do so.
Apparently the fee is going to be similar to that for "renting" a physical DVR from them today, and is going to be a monthly charge, not a per-use fee. This is not "official", but is what I heard mentioned on a local news broadcast. It didn't sound like they were planning to charge a per-use fee, but of course until it's actually deployed, we won't know for sure.
One question that is a bit up in the air is whether HD recording will be supported. Cablevision currently supplies a Scientific Atlanta (er, Cisco?) 8300HD box for users with HD sets, which has dual tuners. It wasn't clear whether the new service would support HD or only SD.
Despite the fact that the US Patent and Technology Office (USPTO) has declared the patents invalid, NTP still has the option of challenging the "invalidity" of those patents in court. Apparently, Judge Spencer won't consider the patents to be non-existant until that happens. The challenge process could take a year or more.
By the way, you don't have to wait to be invited any longer, you can "invite" yourself if you've got a cell phone.
There are specific rules for how quickly the paperwork has to be sent out (which unfortunately, I don't have in front of me), but if the VE team really sat on the paperwork for more than about 4 or 5 days, you might consider sending a note to the ARRL VEC to complain, it's not supposed to work that way.
As for the parent comment, it does normally take a few days for this to happen. Our team happens to be very quick about it, but it isn't unusual for the VE team to take a day or so to verify that the paperwork is correct (it'll take a lot longer if there's a missed signature, etc. and has to come back), then it gets send up to HQ, and not always via overnight mail. When they get it, they have some checking to do, then they have to enter the info into the FCC system which generates the callsigns. I'd give it at least 2 weeks to be reasonable before complaining to the VE team.