When I began my electronics career 25 years ago, Motorola was the premeir supplier of semiconductor devices. They also made some of the finest VHF radios available. The first microprocessor I worked with was the 6800. Their applications notes were top notch. To say that I had immense respect for Motorola was an understatement.
By the mid 90s, all this changed when Motorola was taken over by bean counting MBAs who began to jettison less profitable product lines. They all but abandoned the power semiconductor market, announcing their intent to focus on the more lucrative CPU market. This was a harbinger of things to come. Now, it seems they are searching for new ways bolster their profits.
I'll harp on this since a couple have touched on it but nobody has harped on it.
If M$ can update software on your machine, they can do other things like snoop around. How is our apriori Joe Sixpack going to like that?
All his finances are on his computer. He's got online banking. He uses Quicken. He uses TurboTax. He's got some excel worksheets and word files with sensitive info in them.
Not only has he shelled out a couple grand for the the latest computer and is none too happy to find out that his software turns back into a pumpkin after 1 year but now he learns that somebody has been lookin' thru his shit. He'll find out because they will sell this info which might have some tidbit in it that can be found nowhere else. He'll know it had to have come off his hard drive. He will not be able to articulate how it was done but don't take Joe Sixpack for a fool. He may be the salt of the earth but he's not stupid.
Every company and every police organization these days wants to get in your mess. What do you have to hide comrade?
I most certainly do remember dongles. They plugged into the parallel port and were queried when the software cranked up. Microsim PSpice used that back in the late 80s and early 90s. It was jack booted.
1. Drop the groups that are *intended* to carry kiddie porn.
2. Run a filter on the incoming feed that drops articles cross-posted to them.
3. If you get a lot of complaints about misplaced kiddie porn, bitch to the admins at the injection point(s).
Item 1 is viable if only a symbolic gesture. Then comes the matter of exactly what is kiddie porn?
Item 2 won't work because once you thwart kiddie porn posters from posting to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children, they will start posting to other newsgroups. There's no way to filter this.
Item 3 is considerable work. Maybe it would be effective. Hard to say. The key work is complaints.
There is not one thing that a record company can give a band that the band cant get on their own (except airplay, as radio stations can only play music sanctioned by the group owned by them. (I know this... I worked in radio))
It's not just limited to radio airplay. Record companies control shelf space in stores where CD's are sold in much the same way Coke and Pepsi control grocery store shelf space. They dangle financial incentives and punishments in front of store franchise owners. The owners comply with their wishes so upstart distributors can't get a foothold.
As you've stated, record companies control media appearances. They also control advertising or the lack of it.
Why do musicians sign these contracts? They are trying to follow their dreams. The record company hucksters have no shame.
So far, only a small minority of artists have made money. Read their interviews. Watch VH1 behind the music. Learn to play an instrument, get in a band and go see it first hand.
Most musicians do not make much off their music. The vast majority have to do something else for a living. It's been that way for decades. Napster is not picking their pockets; musician's pockets were empty to start with.
The record companies are bagging the money. They are the ones making all the fuss while using this artist's intellectual property argument as a smokescreen. Don't confuse the record companies interests with the artists interests. They're not the same.
When it comes to ripping off the artists, Napster users just can't compete with the record companies.
Artists have fared no worse with Napster and the record companies have sold more CDs.
Napster won't help big name acts but it might help local bands. I doubt there is any way to significantly increase the income of musicians but I do fault the record companies for their disingenuous sanctimony. They gouge consumers, shaft artists and pocket the lion's share of the money. If anything Napster is more of a threat to them than it is to artists since most artists can't make much less than they are making now and many would benefit from the free distribution.
I bet you I can find a piece of electronic equipment which uses the same technique they've patented and was made 15 years ago. For crying out loud! We're just talking about a little go-to-hell fan here. What sort of future litigation will result over design similarities that really DO matter?
1.Since the sound depends on the accoustic qualities of the recording environment professional studios still have a significant advantage, in being able to afford properly accoustically designed and treated rooms.
You're quite right. The room is critical. Acoustics aren't easy to fix in the mix later.
Good mikes are ex$pen$ive. You can spend a small fortune on those alone. Try miking up a drum kit.
It's surely easier to set up a good home studio than ever before but it's still going to cost more than many people are willing to spend. Home studios really became affordable about 20 years ago when the cost of many previously unaffordable pieces of equipment, like 24 track tape machines, became affordable. I helped a friend of mine set up a studio business. Ultimately the business went under. I got my fill of that. I like playing music but not watching grown men in heated arguements over the effects of tweaking the treble boost on one channel of a mixer some fraction of a radian. This type of shit would go on for hours and I couldn't discern any difference. If we'd had one of today's computers back then, it would have been fodder for even more artsy fartsy arguments. Getting material recorded is probably the least of a budding band's worries anyway.
The basic idea of insurance is a risk pool. No one person can afford major medical expenses. If you're working for a living, that means you. Sure, there's going to be healthy and unhealthy persons in the pool. That's the whole point of there being a pool. If they are going to be cherry picking the pool, that obviates the need for insurance. Healthy people don't need insurance but things change. At 26 years old, you may be healthy. At 46, you may not be healthy, through no fault of your own. One car wreck can change your life. Thus, no working person should be without it.
The railroad company is imposing this genetic testing requirement to intimidate employees who file for disability due to carpal tunnel syndrome.This violates the Americans with disabilities act.
What is served by foisting these costs on to employers? PLenty. Individual policies are unaffordable. Without this, an individual who incurs large mdeical expenses becomes a larger finacial burden on us all than they would have been otherwise. In part, this is because they are more likely to forego preventative medicine. On a group plan, the costs are lower.
Say the hell with 'em? let 'em rot? Not likely.
It just boils down to who will pay. Either the companies will have higher overhead, or we all will.
I'd see a lawyer about this if I were you. As a number of other posters have said, calling your present employer is an outrageous act on the part of a former employer. It sounds like some loose cannon on deck is shooting off at the mouth, trying to scare you. However, it's certainly possible that whoever made this threat might be stupid enough to carry it out. Like I said, have a contingency plan.:-)
Look at the number of posts to this piece. Employment issues have a way of touching a nerve.
From there you needed a special tone dialer with access to the special tones. It was the same thing as standard DTMF except with different tones.
You can also dial by interupting the 2600Hz at 10Hz. The digit 3 is 3 interruptions just like the old direct current dial pulsing. That's the old timey way. It's far easier to build a couple oscillators and a switch to cause them to play particular tones together than to build a dial pulsing circuit that works correctly, unless you can cannibalize an old rotary phone. Since you only have about 10 sec to dial your number, you have to be right and fast. It's really tough to dial a 10-13 digit number that quickly. A zero takes a second to dial at 10 interruptions per second. Many of those and you might not finish your number. The MF tone pulser wins hands down on speed dialing and automation. Hence, it's the phreaker's choice.
As for the security being appalling, remember this system evolved over time. The first 2600 Hz oscillators used tubes, inductors and capacitors. They were often stabilized with light bulbs connected in the circuit as positive temperature coefficient thermistors. Some were probably still in service in the early 80's.
This was also known as in-band signaling because the signaling tone was in the voice band (200 Hz to 3400 Hz). It is used to interface microwave based FDM (Frequency Domain Multiplexing) systems to PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) systems. The presence of the 2600 Hz tone signifies "on hook". Thus, dial pulsing was represented by 10 pulse per second interruptions of the tone and ringing was represented by 20 pulse per second interruptions of the tone. In essence, all the foreign exchange subscriber (FXS) and foreign exchange office (FXO) signaling functions were implemented with the tone. If the tone were sent *before* the called party picked up, that signified a WATS line call, a free call.
This caused a Friday afternoon crisis. We bought all the Captain Crunch we could find, since not all the whistles would emit a tone close enough to 2600Hz to activate the detector. We had to increase the selectivity of the LC filters by increasing their Q and increase the voice path cut delay.
Even after doing this, some people could inadvertently "talk-down" the connection. Women with mousy voices and old men who whistled through their teeth as they talked could knock down the connection. "Talk-down" happens when you send the 2600 Hz tone during the conversation, an inherent problem with this signaling scheme.
Why don't they just design this box with a shovel on one end so it can dig it's own grave. I suppose they don't remember laser discs. The ability to record and time-shift is more important to people than video/audio quality. The people voted with their pocketbooks, much to RCA's dismay.
Let's see. The guns were taken. Then, video cameras went up everywhere. Now DNA is becoming the mark of the beast. Jury trials will be history next. Did I miss anything? From the sound of it, the Ruskies have more freedom than the brits. The russian gov't can't afford to spy on it's people like the brits are.
This is more of the cavity search mentality that is sweeping the world.
I refused to sign one which was bundled in with the offer of employment. That was the first I hear or saw of it. It stipulated that I couldn't work in the telecommunications field for 1 year after leaving or being let go for any reason. This was done "because of the difficulties of identifying and potecting proprietary information." I asked pointed questions and eventually the offer was withdrawn. They also wanted to talk to my boss BEFORE they had made an offer.
The 8 percent figure is based on a PC using 1kw, which is about a factor of 5 too high. Most of them draw about 200W.
The booming economy and increasing population are the main reasons for the increase in power comsumption.
This problem did not suddenly develop. It's been festering for years. The ones pointing the finger at the net hope to divert blame from the real culprits: power industry leaders and politicians.
Sue them. It appears in the U.S. the only way to get anything done is to sick lawyers on negligent companies.
It depends on how lucrative lawyers perceive such cases to be. As there doesn't seem to be a flurry of such lawsuits, my guess is many lawyers are reluctant to take these cases. There's just not a very well beaten path yet.
The reason government regulation won't work in this case is the government regulators he thinks are going to save us are already beholden unto those causing the problem.
Re:Why is the war still raging?
on
"Traffic"
·
· Score: 1
... because it's profitable. Not just for the drug dealers but for those waging the "war". Look how much money is being thrown at "fighting" this "war". No doubt 1/3 to 1/2 the budget of any state or local law enforcement agency is justified by the "drug war". Don't forget forfeiture. That's been highly profitable for law enforcement. Then there's the orgy of prison building and the dizzying incarceration rates that have turned the US into a defacto garrison state. Tens of thousands of federal, state and local bureaucrats whose positions exist because of "drug war" money are firmly entrenched.
Does anyone else see a conflict of interest here? If the "drug war" is ever won, that would seem to obviate the need for all this outlay of funding. This is the why the "drug war" is inherently corruptive. It has corrupted many levels of our government. It has corrupted virtually all law enforcement agencies. To the extent our military has become involved, it has become corrupted. They are all addicted to this "drug war" funding and have a vested interest in keeping the "war" going.
I am not optimistic about the prospect of this "war" ending. There are too many people making lots of money off of it.
Slashdot Mirror
When I began my electronics career 25 years ago, Motorola was the premeir supplier of semiconductor devices. They also made some of the finest VHF radios available. The first microprocessor I worked with was the 6800. Their applications notes were top notch. To say that I had immense respect for Motorola was an understatement.
By the mid 90s, all this changed when Motorola was taken over by bean counting MBAs who began to jettison less profitable product lines. They all but abandoned the power semiconductor market, announcing their intent to focus on the more lucrative CPU market. This was a harbinger of things to come. Now, it seems they are searching for new ways bolster their profits.
That bright young lady will learn a whole lot more from this project than she figured on. She's smarter already.
you: What are these?
me: Smartning pills, $5 each
you: They taste like rabbit pellets!
me: You're getting smarter already.
I'll harp on this since a couple have touched on it but nobody has harped on it.
If M$ can update software on your machine, they can do other things like snoop around. How is our apriori Joe Sixpack going to like that?
All his finances are on his computer. He's got online banking. He uses Quicken. He uses TurboTax. He's got some excel worksheets and word files with sensitive info in them.
Not only has he shelled out a couple grand for the the latest computer and is none too happy to find out that his software turns back into a pumpkin after 1 year but now he learns that somebody has been lookin' thru his shit. He'll find out because they will sell this info which might have some tidbit in it that can be found nowhere else. He'll know it had to have come off his hard drive. He will not be able to articulate how it was done but don't take Joe Sixpack for a fool. He may be the salt of the earth but he's not stupid.
Every company and every police organization these days wants to get in your mess. What do you have to hide comrade?
I most certainly do remember dongles. They plugged into the parallel port and were queried when the software cranked up. Microsim PSpice used that back in the late 80s and early 90s. It was jack booted.
1. Drop the groups that are *intended* to carry kiddie porn.
2. Run a filter on the incoming feed that drops articles cross-posted to them.
3. If you get a lot of complaints about misplaced kiddie porn, bitch to the admins at the injection point(s).
Item 1 is viable if only a symbolic gesture. Then comes the matter of exactly what is kiddie porn?
Item 2 won't work because once you thwart kiddie porn posters from posting to alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children, they will start posting to other newsgroups. There's no way to filter this.
Item 3 is considerable work. Maybe it would be effective. Hard to say. The key work is complaints.
There is not one thing that a record company can give a band that the band cant get on their own (except airplay, as radio stations can only play music sanctioned by the group owned by them. (I know this... I worked in radio))
It's not just limited to radio airplay. Record companies control shelf space in stores where CD's are sold in much the same way Coke and Pepsi control grocery store shelf space. They dangle financial incentives and punishments in front of store franchise owners. The owners comply with their wishes so upstart distributors can't get a foothold.
As you've stated, record companies control media appearances. They also control advertising or the lack of it.
Why do musicians sign these contracts? They are trying to follow their dreams. The record company hucksters have no shame.
So far, only a small minority of artists have made money. Read their interviews. Watch VH1 behind the music. Learn to play an instrument, get in a band and go see it first hand.
Most musicians do not make much off their music. The vast majority have to do something else for a living. It's been that way for decades. Napster is not picking their pockets; musician's pockets were empty to start with.
The record companies are bagging the money. They are the ones making all the fuss while using this artist's intellectual property argument as a smokescreen. Don't confuse the record companies interests with the artists interests. They're not the same.
When it comes to ripping off the artists, Napster users just can't compete with the record companies.
Artists have fared no worse with Napster and the record companies have sold more CDs.
Napster won't help big name acts but it might help local bands. I doubt there is any way to significantly increase the income of musicians but I do fault the record companies for their disingenuous sanctimony. They gouge consumers, shaft artists and pocket the lion's share of the money. If anything Napster is more of a threat to them than it is to artists since most artists can't make much less than they are making now and many would benefit from the free distribution.
I bet you I can find a piece of electronic equipment which uses the same technique they've patented and was made 15 years ago. For crying out loud! We're just talking about a little go-to-hell fan here. What sort of future litigation will result over design similarities that really DO matter?
M$ is still doing what they are about. Put out a book like this after they lock up the place.
I'll bet they'd be interested to know about false advertising practices like this.
1.Since the sound depends on the accoustic qualities of the recording environment professional studios still have a significant advantage, in being able to afford properly accoustically designed and treated rooms.
You're quite right. The room is critical. Acoustics aren't easy to fix in the mix later.
Good mikes are ex$pen$ive. You can spend a small fortune on those alone. Try miking up a drum kit.
It's surely easier to set up a good home studio than ever before but it's still going to cost more than many people are willing to spend. Home studios really became affordable about 20 years ago when the cost of many previously unaffordable pieces of equipment, like 24 track tape machines, became affordable. I helped a friend of mine set up a studio business. Ultimately the business went under. I got my fill of that. I like playing music but not watching grown men in heated arguements over the effects of tweaking the treble boost on one channel of a mixer some fraction of a radian. This type of shit would go on for hours and I couldn't discern any difference. If we'd had one of today's computers back then, it would have been fodder for even more artsy fartsy arguments. Getting material recorded is probably the least of a budding band's worries anyway.
The basic idea of insurance is a risk pool. No one person can afford major medical expenses. If you're working for a living, that means you. Sure, there's going to be healthy and unhealthy persons in the pool. That's the whole point of there being a pool. If they are going to be cherry picking the pool, that obviates the need for insurance. Healthy people don't need insurance but things change. At 26 years old, you may be healthy. At 46, you may not be healthy, through no fault of your own. One car wreck can change your life. Thus, no working person should be without it.
The railroad company is imposing this genetic testing requirement to intimidate employees who file for disability due to carpal tunnel syndrome.This violates the Americans with disabilities act.
What is served by foisting these costs on to employers? PLenty. Individual policies are unaffordable. Without this, an individual who incurs large mdeical expenses becomes a larger finacial burden on us all than they would have been otherwise. In part, this is because they are more likely to forego preventative medicine. On a group plan, the costs are lower.
Say the hell with 'em? let 'em rot? Not likely.
It just boils down to who will pay. Either the companies will have higher overhead, or we all will.
or tech people, who can find another job at the drop of a hat, they're a pain in the butt and a barrier to better wages.
... until they're about 35. Then they face very different prospects.
Good tech people can find another job at the drop of a hat
... but have a contingency plan :-)
:-)
I'd see a lawyer about this if I were you. As a number of other posters have said, calling your present employer is an outrageous act on the part of a former employer. It sounds like some loose cannon on deck is shooting off at the mouth, trying to scare you. However, it's certainly possible that whoever made this threat might be stupid enough to carry it out. Like I said, have a contingency plan.
Look at the number of posts to this piece. Employment issues have a way of touching a nerve.
From there you needed a special tone dialer with access to the special tones. It was the same thing as standard DTMF except with different tones.
You can also dial by interupting the 2600Hz at 10Hz. The digit 3 is 3 interruptions just like the old direct current dial pulsing. That's the old timey way. It's far easier to build a couple oscillators and a switch to cause them to play particular tones together than to build a dial pulsing circuit that works correctly, unless you can cannibalize an old rotary phone. Since you only have about 10 sec to dial your number, you have to be right and fast. It's really tough to dial a 10-13 digit number that quickly. A zero takes a second to dial at 10 interruptions per second. Many of those and you might not finish your number. The MF tone pulser wins hands down on speed dialing and automation. Hence, it's the phreaker's choice.
As for the security being appalling, remember this system evolved over time. The first 2600 Hz oscillators used tubes, inductors and capacitors. They were often stabilized with light bulbs connected in the circuit as positive temperature coefficient thermistors. Some were probably still in service in the early 80's.
This was also known as in-band signaling because the signaling tone was in the voice band (200 Hz to 3400 Hz). It is used to interface microwave based FDM (Frequency Domain Multiplexing) systems to PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) systems. The presence of the 2600 Hz tone signifies "on hook". Thus, dial pulsing was represented by 10 pulse per second interruptions of the tone and ringing was represented by 20 pulse per second interruptions of the tone. In essence, all the foreign exchange subscriber (FXS) and foreign exchange office (FXO) signaling functions were implemented with the tone. If the tone were sent *before* the called party picked up, that signified a WATS line call, a free call.
This caused a Friday afternoon crisis. We bought all the Captain Crunch we could find, since not all the whistles would emit a tone close enough to 2600Hz to activate the detector. We had to increase the selectivity of the LC filters by increasing their Q and increase the voice path cut delay.
Even after doing this, some people could inadvertently "talk-down" the connection. Women with mousy voices and old men who whistled through their teeth as they talked could knock down the connection. "Talk-down" happens when you send the 2600 Hz tone during the conversation, an inherent problem with this signaling scheme.
That one where the guy fed the little dog everything in the fridge to make room for the beer had me howling. Yessir.
I guess the companies don't want the unions. If the unions get in, companies will have to treat people better.
OTOH
Q: How many teamsters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: 15. You gotta problem wid dat?
Why don't they just design this box with a shovel on one end so it can dig it's own grave. I suppose they don't remember laser discs. The ability to record and time-shift is more important to people than video/audio quality. The people voted with their pocketbooks, much to RCA's dismay.
Let's see. The guns were taken. Then, video cameras went up everywhere. Now DNA is becoming the mark of the beast. Jury trials will be history next. Did I miss anything? From the sound of it, the Ruskies have more freedom than the brits. The russian gov't can't afford to spy on it's people like the brits are.
This is more of the cavity search mentality that is sweeping the world.
I refused to sign one which was bundled in with the offer of employment. That was the first I hear or saw of it. It stipulated that I couldn't work in the telecommunications field for 1 year after leaving or being let go for any reason. This was done "because of the difficulties of identifying and potecting proprietary information." I asked pointed questions and eventually the offer was withdrawn. They also wanted to talk to my boss BEFORE they had made an offer.
The 8 percent figure is based on a PC using 1kw, which is about a factor of 5 too high. Most of them draw about 200W.
The booming economy and increasing population are the main reasons for the increase in power comsumption.
This problem did not suddenly develop. It's been festering for years. The ones pointing the finger at the net hope to divert blame from the real culprits: power industry leaders and politicians.
It's going to get worse before it gets better.
Sue them. It appears in the U.S. the only way to get anything done is to sick lawyers on negligent companies.
It depends on how lucrative lawyers perceive such cases to be. As there doesn't seem to be a flurry of such lawsuits, my guess is many lawyers are reluctant to take these cases. There's just not a very well beaten path yet.
The reason government regulation won't work in this case is the government regulators he thinks are going to save us are already beholden unto those causing the problem.
... because it's profitable. Not just for the drug dealers but for those waging the "war". Look how much money is being thrown at "fighting" this "war". No doubt 1/3 to 1/2 the budget of any state or local law enforcement agency is justified by the "drug war". Don't forget forfeiture. That's been highly profitable for law enforcement. Then there's the orgy of prison building and the dizzying incarceration rates that have turned the US into a defacto garrison state. Tens of thousands of federal, state and local bureaucrats whose positions exist because of "drug war" money are firmly entrenched.
Does anyone else see a conflict of interest here? If the "drug war" is ever won, that would seem to obviate the need for all this outlay of funding. This is the why the "drug war" is inherently corruptive. It has corrupted many levels of our government. It has corrupted virtually all law enforcement agencies. To the extent our military has become involved, it has become corrupted. They are all addicted to this "drug war" funding and have a vested interest in keeping the "war" going.
I am not optimistic about the prospect of this "war" ending. There are too many people making lots of money off of it.