Perhaps there should be a parallel technical/scientific congress to deal with issues like this, but of course, the constitution doesn't allow that. It certainly seems that the current body is incapable of handling them even with the assistance of "technical advisors".
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I webmaster a site that's been online since 1995 for a health issue. We rank #2 for our search term on google and have consistantly for a couple of years. We get roughly a million page hits a month and I can't find it in the first two pages on MSN. I also get more error messages than results. Pre-alpha testing, IMO. Go back to the lab. Oh, is it because we're on a Linux server?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
EE TImes
E-Week
Baseline News
Electronic Design
EDN
Design News
Electronic Business
Product Design & Development
Industrial Product Bulletin
PC Magazine
Sensors
Scientific American
Discover
Wired
National Geographic
Archaeology
Biblical Archaeological Review
Genealogy
Kiplinger
Linux Format
2600
Architectural Digest
QST
CQ
I'm sure I've left off some. My wife gets some others, too.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
It's a company car with the 3.4 liter engine. I am a fairly assertive driver and put at least 25,000 miles a year on it. I've had 3 very similar cars over the last decade and consistantly get over 25 mpg in a mix of Interstate and light city driving. I think the operative phrase here is "Your mileage may vary".
For some reason I seem to get reasonable good mileage regardless of what I'm driving. At one time, years ago, I had a 1976 Mercury station wagon, totally a battleship with a 460 V-8 and managed to average 14 mpg with that boat hauling my 5 kids and wife. Again, I emphasize that I'm not an economy minded driver. I am a "Get from point A to point B" with a minimum of fuss and delay sort. I never get more than 10 mph over the posted limit, so I mostly go with the usual flow out here in the plaines. A little over a year ago I drove my mom's Buick to Arizona for her. It's got that nice 3.8 liter engine and is not a light car. I drove 1,750 miles in two days and got 28 mpg, but admittedly it's all Interstate driving, but out West traffic moves at 80+ mph. I was reall surprised. I've also driven some larger Chrysler products on long trips with mileages that were similar. I've concluded that modern cars do a pretty durn good job of fuel economy even in some of the larger configurations.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I was a contractor back then, working for T.I. The whole building was controlled by, IIRC, a Honeywell system down to groups of outlets, HVAC and lighting in each and every room. If we wanted to work late, we had to get the utilities timing changed so the room didn't shut down at 5:00. If we wanted to leave something powered overnight, we had to tell the builing control person the room number and outlet.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Lots of buzz words, but exactly how did the coordination reduce power useage? I can clearly see that it could co-ordinate when certain functions like air conditioning ran so as to reduce peak useage, but if X amount of cooling is required, it's going to take Y number of Kilowatt-hours to do it.
Also, what's it have to do with XML? Any method of communicating the information and acting on it would work.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I am a little sad to see this post as number 1..
on
Field Day 2004
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'm an Extra class ham too and have been licensed since 1958 at age 11. While there is clearly truth in what he said, as others have pointed the number of licensees has been increasing over the past few years and we're finding a number of new challenges and that's what ham radio is really about, technical challenges. I've operated with full legal power to a beam on a 125 foot tower and it's not nearly as much fun as the station that I have now which maxes out at 20 watts with a dipole antenna at 30 feet. It's a lot more of a challenge. The MOST fun is my 4 watt rig on 20 meters in the car using a 4 foot antenna. I've made solid contact with all continents using that setup. Now that's really a challenge.
There are lots of other ham radio areas that offer geek challenges, too. You can still "homebrew" your own gear. It doesn't take thousands of dollars to have fun. Microwave distance records fall regularly as do records at the opposite LF end of the radio spectrum. Data communications using packet techniques on VHF/UHF and other digital modes, such as packtor, on the HF (shortwave) bands predate the Internet as we know it we know today. In 1962 I had a teletype machine and a "terminal unit" AKA modem tied to my shortwave setup and was routinely communicating with friends around the world digitally. Now we hook our computers to our radios
Ham radio has been VERY good to me. In 1969 and 70, I got to travel to parts of the world I'd never have seen without ham radio. I was with Project Hope and I used ham radio so that the doctors, nurses and volunteers talk to their family and friends back in the states via phone-patch without it costing $13 for the first 3 minutes via landline.
Being involved with ham radio also encouraged me to go to college and get a degree in Electrical Engineering which has provided me with a very interesting and satisfying career that has consistantly paid me well on top of being fun.
I've watched ham radio evolve over the course of almost 50 years and it's still evolving. I'm not ready to declare it a dinosaur just yet.
73 & CUL
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I guess they don't want Linux/BSD, Etc users to be able to talk to their IM folks. What's the point in that other than to piss us off so we'll hack it again? That's a bit rude, IMO. Another black mark for Yahoo. Who do they think they are? Microsoft?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
There appear to be ways to make e-mail technology much less prone to spam, but I certainly would be uncomfortable with Microsoft running the show. It needs to be a method that does not tie the server or the client to a proprietary piece of software.
Blocking computers that have become spam zombies is certainly one approach that, IMO, has some merit, as does simply imposing limits on an individual computer's number of allowed free e-mails per unit time. That would stop some folks from forwarding as many urban legends and that has to be a really good thing.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
This one is not a distance record, but it did span continents and is an interesting article. Here's an article from last year about longer distances, albeit with higher power gear.
The ham radio record for 2.4 GHz is a lot longer, but it's a great start. Here are some results from Region 1, Europe, including Earth-Moon-Earth.
But I am also a very strong proponent of my right not to provide the venue for speech I don't want. It should be that extremely simple. My computer is my property and, as others have pointed out, another party placing something there without my permission is trespassing.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I don't think my reasoning is off the mark at all, but then it's my reasoning and not yours. Note, too, that appearantly the service pack is not going to be available to all XP installations so it's not going to help secure the machines most likely to be zombied for worm, trojan, virus, spam generation. I'm sure it's a good thing overall and will benefit some users, but it will cause some folks to consider other options in the Open Source segment and I see that as a good thing, too.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Just another reason for folks to migrate away from their closed systems with forced expensive updates and security holes. Someday all Microsoft software will be legacy. Keep up the great work.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
and within my lifetime. I'm 58 so I watched the first sub-orbital shots. This is a great day, but as someone else said, a baby step. It's a long way to orbital velocity and, perhaps even harder, landing from orbital velocity. I'm confident they'll get there. Way to go!!
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
It's been proven over and over so this should come as no big surprise to any of us. It's counter to my existing Fair Use rights. They just keep chipping away at freedom. We're being legislated to death... SIGH..
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I'm still using Eudora Lite 3.05 from the same era on my Windows machine running XP and it does just fine for every e-mail need that I've got. Text only, no "previews" no MS vulnerabilities. KISS principle still works for me.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
It seems that with average driving they aren't quite what you'd expect. The published mileage figures aren't for real world conditions. My properly maintained and driven 2000 Chevy Lumina company car with 92,000 miles gets 26 MPG with a combination of highway and city driving.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Call me old fashioned if you want, but...
on
Big Bang of Convergence
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
If I want a phone, I just want a phone that is reliable and easy to use. Not loaded with so many gadgets that I have trouble using it for the intended main function.
We just put a replacement radio in my wife's car, a '93, and instead of knobs and a few large buttons there are these tiny little buttons that I can't read the labels for without a magnifying glass. WTF is that? Certainly, it's far from user friendly. So instead of just reaching over to change the station, or even to turn the danged thing off, by simply turning a reasonable size knob, I have to keep punching tiny buttons until it does what I want. Yeah, I eventually am learning which is which, but that's not my point. And you think talking on a cell phone is distracting... HA!
IMHO too much convergence is likely to be too much of a possible good thing.
Make a product that does its intended main function and does it well. If I want the best knife or the best scissors, I don't get a Swiss Army knife.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
It's still the best way to produce a program that runs fast and with minimal resources. I wrote my first assembly language program in 1964, probably before a lot of you folks were born. The bulk of my assembly language programming has been for various microprocessors going back to the Fairchild/Mostek F-8, a horrible chip set, but it worked and was relatively cheap at the time (1976). I've done a lot on 8085 and 8051 systems for agricultural control systems and elevator (vertical transportation) controllers which are still supported some 20 years after they were first designed.
If you understand assembly language, then you understand the intimate details of the system you are programming for.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
In fairness, I prefaced my first remark by saying that I'm not an antenna physicist. I do have some credentials to the extent that I have a BSEE degree and have taught electronics at the college level in addition to my 46 years of practical experience as a ham. I also mentioned my using shortened antennae for my mobile hamming. I successfully operate as low as 10.100 MHz with that same 4 foot antenna and 4 watt rig that I mentioned earlier (different loading coil) instead of the roughly 24 foot 1/4 wave that would be normal at that frequency.
I think what I didn't communicate well is that, pending more review, there are some things that I'm wondering about. It just sounds, to this admittedly old sparky like getting something for next to nothing. There have been a number of antennae in the past that have claimed some pretty impressive specs, for instance, there was a commercially manufactured dipole with a mystery sealed device at the feedpoint that claimed less than 2:1 SWR over the range of 3.0 to 30 MHz with a very simple coax feedline. Pretty impressive and it actually did meet that spec when tested, but it turned out that the sealed device was a non-inductive 50 ohm resistor that wasted at least half the radiated power, a trade-off and maybe a good one if bandwidth was important. Anyway, I await, with bated breath, the full story on this new development which I expect, at the very least, to be quite educational.
73 and "Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Sorry if you felt that was out of context. I know from a lot of practical experience that adding "Loading" to antennas means adding inductance to compensate for reduced length. Adding inductance means adding coils which are inherently lossy, both resistively and dielectrically. The loss can be mitigated by using larger conductor and better dielectric materials as insulation, but there are obvious physical limitations to that and, in addition, the effect of increasing the "Q" reduces the useable bandwidth. From my reading of his articles it sounds like a key component of his design is a helix and a loading coil. "but I've been able to put a combination of them together to create a revolutionary way of building antennas. It uses basically a helix plus a load coil." I've used a number of antennae with distributed loading and they work, but are definitely a trade-off as compared to a full sized antenna.
I honestly am not trying to rain on his parade, especially as a brother ham radio operator. I will be very interested to see the details of his design when they become available and hope that he has, indeed, found the "Holy Grail" of antenna design. If he hasn't found it, then I trust that his work will, at least, be a step toward it.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps there should be a parallel technical/scientific congress to deal with issues like this, but of course, the constitution doesn't allow that. It certainly seems that the current body is incapable of handling them even with the assistance of "technical advisors".
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I webmaster a site that's been online since 1995 for a health issue. We rank #2 for our search term on google and have consistantly for a couple of years. We get roughly a million page hits a month and I can't find it in the first two pages on MSN. I also get more error messages than results. Pre-alpha testing, IMO. Go back to the lab. Oh, is it because we're on a Linux server?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
EE TImes
E-Week
Baseline News
Electronic Design
EDN
Design News
Electronic Business
Product Design & Development
Industrial Product Bulletin
PC Magazine
Sensors
Scientific American
Discover
Wired
National Geographic
Archaeology
Biblical Archaeological Review
Genealogy
Kiplinger
Linux Format
2600
Architectural Digest
QST
CQ
I'm sure I've left off some. My wife gets some others, too.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
It's a company car with the 3.4 liter engine. I am a fairly assertive driver and put at least 25,000 miles a year on it. I've had 3 very similar cars over the last decade and consistantly get over 25 mpg in a mix of Interstate and light city driving. I think the operative phrase here is "Your mileage may vary".
For some reason I seem to get reasonable good mileage regardless of what I'm driving. At one time, years ago, I had a 1976 Mercury station wagon, totally a battleship with a 460 V-8 and managed to average 14 mpg with that boat hauling my 5 kids and wife. Again, I emphasize that I'm not an economy minded driver. I am a "Get from point A to point B" with a minimum of fuss and delay sort. I never get more than 10 mph over the posted limit, so I mostly go with the usual flow out here in the plaines. A little over a year ago I drove my mom's Buick to Arizona for her. It's got that nice 3.8 liter engine and is not a light car. I drove 1,750 miles in two days and got 28 mpg, but admittedly it's all Interstate driving, but out West traffic moves at 80+ mph. I was reall surprised. I've also driven some larger Chrysler products on long trips with mileages that were similar. I've concluded that modern cars do a pretty durn good job of fuel economy even in some of the larger configurations.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I was a contractor back then, working for T.I. The whole building was controlled by, IIRC, a Honeywell system down to groups of outlets, HVAC and lighting in each and every room. If we wanted to work late, we had to get the utilities timing changed so the room didn't shut down at 5:00. If we wanted to leave something powered overnight, we had to tell the builing control person the room number and outlet.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Lots of buzz words, but exactly how did the coordination reduce power useage? I can clearly see that it could co-ordinate when certain functions like air conditioning ran so as to reduce peak useage, but if X amount of cooling is required, it's going to take Y number of Kilowatt-hours to do it.
Also, what's it have to do with XML? Any method of communicating the information and acting on it would work.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I'm an Extra class ham too and have been licensed since 1958 at age 11. While there is clearly truth in what he said, as others have pointed the number of licensees has been increasing over the past few years and we're finding a number of new challenges and that's what ham radio is really about, technical challenges. I've operated with full legal power to a beam on a 125 foot tower and it's not nearly as much fun as the station that I have now which maxes out at 20 watts with a dipole antenna at 30 feet. It's a lot more of a challenge. The MOST fun is my 4 watt rig on 20 meters in the car using a 4 foot antenna. I've made solid contact with all continents using that setup. Now that's really a challenge.
There are lots of other ham radio areas that offer geek challenges, too. You can still "homebrew" your own gear. It doesn't take thousands of dollars to have fun. Microwave distance records fall regularly as do records at the opposite LF end of the radio spectrum. Data communications using packet techniques on VHF/UHF and other digital modes, such as packtor, on the HF (shortwave) bands predate the Internet as we know it we know today. In 1962 I had a teletype machine and a "terminal unit" AKA modem tied to my shortwave setup and was routinely communicating with friends around the world digitally. Now we hook our computers to our radios
Ham radio has been VERY good to me. In 1969 and 70, I got to travel to parts of the world I'd never have seen without ham radio. I was with Project Hope and I used ham radio so that the doctors, nurses and volunteers talk to their family and friends back in the states via phone-patch without it costing $13 for the first 3 minutes via landline.
Being involved with ham radio also encouraged me to go to college and get a degree in Electrical Engineering which has provided me with a very interesting and satisfying career that has consistantly paid me well on top of being fun.
I've watched ham radio evolve over the course of almost 50 years and it's still evolving. I'm not ready to declare it a dinosaur just yet.
73 & CUL
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I guess they don't want Linux/BSD, Etc users to be able to talk to their IM folks. What's the point in that other than to piss us off so we'll hack it again? That's a bit rude, IMO. Another black mark for Yahoo. Who do they think they are? Microsoft?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
There appear to be ways to make e-mail technology much less prone to spam, but I certainly would be uncomfortable with Microsoft running the show. It needs to be a method that does not tie the server or the client to a proprietary piece of software.
Blocking computers that have become spam zombies is certainly one approach that, IMO, has some merit, as does simply imposing limits on an individual computer's number of allowed free e-mails per unit time. That would stop some folks from forwarding as many urban legends and that has to be a really good thing.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
This one is not a distance record, but it did span continents and is an interesting article. Here's an article from last year about longer distances, albeit with higher power gear.
The ham radio record for 2.4 GHz is a lot longer, but it's a great start. Here are some results from Region 1, Europe, including Earth-Moon-Earth.
Here's the site for the San Bernadino Microwave Society (Hams). They've been doing this sort of thing for ages.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
But I am also a very strong proponent of my right not to provide the venue for speech I don't want. It should be that extremely simple. My computer is my property and, as others have pointed out, another party placing something there without my permission is trespassing.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
sign the check as "John Doe" and let them try to cash it.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I don't think my reasoning is off the mark at all, but then it's my reasoning and not yours. Note, too, that appearantly the service pack is not going to be available to all XP installations so it's not going to help secure the machines most likely to be zombied for worm, trojan, virus, spam generation. I'm sure it's a good thing overall and will benefit some users, but it will cause some folks to consider other options in the Open Source segment and I see that as a good thing, too.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Just another reason for folks to migrate away from their closed systems with forced expensive updates and security holes. Someday all Microsoft software will be legacy. Keep up the great work.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
to have a country where everyone is a criminal" - attributed to Hitler.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Hmmm... Now where would one find methanol?
I agree about the recharging being desireable. It sounds good but there's some more work to do on it.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
and within my lifetime. I'm 58 so I watched the first sub-orbital shots. This is a great day, but as someone else said, a baby step. It's a long way to orbital velocity and, perhaps even harder, landing from orbital velocity. I'm confident they'll get there. Way to go!!
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
It's been proven over and over so this should come as no big surprise to any of us. It's counter to my existing Fair Use rights. They just keep chipping away at freedom. We're being legislated to death... SIGH..
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I'm still using Eudora Lite 3.05 from the same era on my Windows machine running XP and it does just fine for every e-mail need that I've got. Text only, no "previews" no MS vulnerabilities. KISS principle still works for me.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
common sense and (fiscally) conservative I've ever seen on Slashdot so far. Refreshing.
"If you are not liberal when you are 20, you have no heart. If you are not conservative when you are 40, you have no brain." -Winston Churchill
It seems that with average driving they aren't quite what you'd expect. The published mileage figures aren't for real world conditions. My properly maintained and driven 2000 Chevy Lumina company car with 92,000 miles gets 26 MPG with a combination of highway and city driving.
Read this Wired's story
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
If I want a phone, I just want a phone that is reliable and easy to use. Not loaded with so many gadgets that I have trouble using it for the intended main function.
We just put a replacement radio in my wife's car, a '93, and instead of knobs and a few large buttons there are these tiny little buttons that I can't read the labels for without a magnifying glass. WTF is that? Certainly, it's far from user friendly. So instead of just reaching over to change the station, or even to turn the danged thing off, by simply turning a reasonable size knob, I have to keep punching tiny buttons until it does what I want. Yeah, I eventually am learning which is which, but that's not my point. And you think talking on a cell phone is distracting... HA!
IMHO too much convergence is likely to be too much of a possible good thing.
Make a product that does its intended main function and does it well.
If I want the best knife or the best scissors, I don't get a Swiss Army knife.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
It's still the best way to produce a program that runs fast and with minimal resources. I wrote my first assembly language program in 1964, probably before a lot of you folks were born. The bulk of my assembly language programming has been for various microprocessors going back to the Fairchild/Mostek F-8, a horrible chip set, but it worked and was relatively cheap at the time (1976). I've done a lot on 8085 and 8051 systems for agricultural control systems and elevator (vertical transportation) controllers which are still supported some 20 years after they were first designed.
If you understand assembly language, then you understand the intimate details of the system you are programming for.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
In fairness, I prefaced my first remark by saying that I'm not an antenna physicist. I do have some credentials to the extent that I have a BSEE degree and have taught electronics at the college level in addition to my 46 years of practical experience as a ham. I also mentioned my using shortened antennae for my mobile hamming. I successfully operate as low as 10.100 MHz with that same 4 foot antenna and 4 watt rig that I mentioned earlier (different loading coil) instead of the roughly 24 foot 1/4 wave that would be normal at that frequency.
I think what I didn't communicate well is that, pending more review, there are some things that I'm wondering about. It just sounds, to this admittedly old sparky like getting something for next to nothing. There have been a number of antennae in the past that have claimed some pretty impressive specs, for instance, there was a commercially manufactured dipole with a mystery sealed device at the feedpoint that claimed less than 2:1 SWR over the range of 3.0 to 30 MHz with a very simple coax feedline. Pretty impressive and it actually did meet that spec when tested, but it turned out that the sealed device was a non-inductive 50 ohm resistor that wasted at least half the radiated power, a trade-off and maybe a good one if bandwidth was important. Anyway, I await, with bated breath, the full story on this new development which I expect, at the very least, to be quite educational.
73 and "Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Sorry if you felt that was out of context. I know from a lot of practical experience that adding "Loading" to antennas means adding inductance to compensate for reduced length. Adding inductance means adding coils which are inherently lossy, both resistively and dielectrically. The loss can be mitigated by using larger conductor and better dielectric materials as insulation, but there are obvious physical limitations to that and, in addition, the effect of increasing the "Q" reduces the useable bandwidth. From my reading of his articles it sounds like a key component of his design is a helix and a loading coil. "but I've been able to put a combination of them together to create a revolutionary way of building antennas. It uses basically a helix plus a load coil." I've used a number of antennae with distributed loading and they work, but are definitely a trade-off as compared to a full sized antenna.
I honestly am not trying to rain on his parade, especially as a brother ham radio operator. I will be very interested to see the details of his design when they become available and hope that he has, indeed, found the "Holy Grail" of antenna design. If he hasn't found it, then I trust that his work will, at least, be a step toward it.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain