A very valid statement. Not one that most hams are willing to accept;-)
But then, hams are pretty vocal about keeping the status quo. The FCC has issued a statement that they intend to remove the morse code requirement from all levels of ham radio licensing.
It's a firestorm in the hams-on-Internet world, as some are extremely vocal (with very poor grammar) about keeping "the rif-raf" out with the hurdle of a morse code test for the HF bands. You'd think the sky was falling...
The FCC is discussing what kinds of tasks show that one is able to safely and lawfully operate a radio. Meanwhile, some curmudgeons want their little hobby to remain "elite" in their minds and I suppose having it die out is about as "elite" as you can get, eh?
The opposition, even with the offer of notching the offending frequencies, is that the notches that have been demonstrated don't do enough.
You could say it lessens the interference by 50% or so, and that's not enough because ANY increase in the "noise floor" (the background signal that exists on a frequency which a signal must overcome in order to be heard) makes it more difficult for ham radio operators to use the frequency spectrum that they are licensed to use.
One solution would be for ham radio operators to just increase the power they use. Unfortunately, most hams operate (on HF anyway) at their full power capacity. Also many hams enjoy the challenge of low-power communications of 5W or less (worldwide communications are possible on under 5W).
The principle of the thing is that why should a commercial venture be able to do the things that, so far, no one has been allowed to do: emit RF across such an immense spectrum of frequencies, including those for which others have what the FCC calls "primary" usage granted to them.
The ARRL has said that they do support a Motorola solution because it does not add any interference to the ham radio frequencies. So not all BPL is bad. Ham radio operators are opposed to those that are bad.
The ISM bands (Industrial-Scientific-Medical, blocks of frequencies in which the FCC does not require each transmitter to be licensed) were created to allow low-power telemetry-like radio systems for commercial use. The idea was that they would be limited to very low power and would likely be physically seperated by a long distance and so interference would be minimized. The FCC says that in these bands, if there is interference, it's your own problem: you cannot complain to anyone -- we gave up micromanaging this stuff.
This is what things were like before the FCC. People transmitted where they wanted, at what power they wanted, etc. It quickly became clear that some coordination was needed, and the FCC is that coordinator.
Most of the FCC's dealings involve licensed operations, where each transmitter (not manufacturer, though they have their own obligations to the FCC) must have a license and a responsible person operating the transmitter. Most consumers only interacted (before the boom) with these systems in the form of TV and Radio, and then only on the receiving end.
It's those ISM bands where consumer-technology companies saw a huge opportunity because they could allow regular folks to use wireless technology without needing to mess with this individual licensing stuff.
One might look at these ISM bands (900 Mhz, 2.4 GHz, 5.8 GHz, etc.) as little unregulated, free-range wireless playpens. The bands aren't that big, but technologies like spread spectrum have allowed much use to be had within the boundaries of the regulation.
Unfortunately, now nearly all consumer wireless equipment operates in the ISM bands, and the interference-mitigating technologies are being pushed to their limits. Hence your telephone and 802.11 system do not always play along. It's not just them talking, it's all the other cordless phones and 802.11 devices, telemetry devices, etc.
The mess that is the ISM bands was not the "existing reality" that the FCC was created to manage. They allowed the mess to occur in a controlled environment (away from licensed transmitters). We should thank the FCC for handling it this way, though we should also probably ask for some bigger ISM bands in the useful spectrum (900 MHz, 2.4 GHz). Unfortunately, almost every slice of radio-land is spoken for by something.
That's just handling of the licenses. Part of the license for public broadcast services (TV, radio) says that the broadcaster must abide by the rules of the license, including prohibiting (profanity|obscenity) from being transmitted.
The FCC is just applying the prescribed remedy for violations of the pre-existing licenses.
If you want the FCC to stop "enforcing clean language", then convince the broadcasters to re-negotiate their licenses so that they don't have such objectionable clauses. The FCC has the power to do that.
When they issue a license, the licensee agrees to the conditions set forth in the license. It doesn't have anything to do with the FCC being the polite-police.
The proper method to dealing with unwanted laws/regulations is not to stop enforcing them, it's to get rid of them and allow the enforcement to follow the law. If the country worked that way, abuses of infrequently-enforced laws/regulations would be less likely to happen, and when they did happen, would be easier to handle, since everything is based on the written law.
(Yes, that won't happen. It takes away too much control from law enforcement, who enjoy the ability to charge alleged offenders of the law in whatever degree they prefer.)
Forget the city. The cows outside of Houston fart and belch more greenhouse gases. Come to think of it, we should probably abolish Taco Bell, chili and beans, cucumbers...
If you're feeding that to your cows, no wonder we have problems...;-)
I have a really nifty little printer for mobile printing. It's dot-matrix! Runs on 12 volts, holds tractor-feed paper (even carbon-duplicate paper). Has a space inside for an internal battery, too.
It's a fun little printer. Originally intended for travelling salesmen to be able to print up sales tickets and receipts out on the job.
I got two for use in any potential emergency, for use in a quick-setup emergency operations base and to be used for passing messages via amateur radio to the various departments handling emergency operations (fire, EMS, news, etc.).
Granted, it's a purpose that would rarely be used, but it's fun to have something old and reliable to play with. Makes me all nostalgic hearing that old scraping sound of pins firing and motors whining.:-)
Hey, since you claim to know about plasma-physics...
From what I know, the ways that we get power (electricity mostly?) from nuclear reactions is to extract the heat produced.
If your hot, fusing plasma is contained in a magnetic field, how do you extract the heat from it?
Obviously our first step is to make a self-sustaining fusion reaction, but I hope (and know, really) that SOMEONE is thinking about how to make it commercially viable.
I just want to know what those people are thinking.:-)
Fusion power plants have neither of these problems. They use water for fuel and produce material that isn't fissionable and is safe after about 50 years.
Is it reasonable to compare current power-generation technologies to Fusion? The reason Fusion power plants don't have either of these problems is that there aren't any fusion power generation plants in existence!
The chances are that once we do have viable fusion power generation, there may be a down-side or two. But we won't know these negative aspects, or even if there will be any negatives at all to Fusion power until we actually have it delivered.
The 5th amendment, which is the part that authorizes emminent domain, says (among other things):
...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Note: "public use" and not "public benefit".
5 of our Supreme Court justices are in serious need of a dictionary!!
The principle that has been established is that you own your land unless the government can think of a purpose for your land that would suit what they identify as the higher economic good.
They are turning the Constitution's wording ("except for public use") into their own wording ("except for public benefit").
Hell 45 baud is still used every day today by amateur radio operators. It's a thriving mode and is essentially teletype voltages/timings "adapted" to audio tones on a radio.
I already read the news that sewer water is being dumped into the Moscow river because of a plant failure.
This is what is supposed to happen. All (nearly all?) sewage treatment plants have a bypass to send the input straight to the output, which is usually a river or lake.
They do it because when a treatment plant cannot accept any more sewage, whether due to excessive water input by rain, or by power loss, the customers are better served by *NOT* letting the sewage back up into their houses. The stuff has to go *somewhere* when all their holding tanks are full. This is the last-resort method of dealing with problems at such plants.
Exactly... The article author seems to point to the fact that the software was old and just waiting to die...
Becase of the fact that NO ONE knew of the particular limit that was exceeded, those who were supposed to calculate risk never knew what the tipping point was.
All they could say was "our software is old, someday it may not work any more, but I cannot say for what reason, because I do not know FORTRAN."
How the hell can you calculate risk if your only input is the chronological age of a software system?
If they refuse to acknowledge that, they are merely setting up an "us against them" situation, and relying on their majority status to be able to have their way. Such people should be ashamed of themselves, especially considering that most of them are Christians, since they are certainly not following the spirit of Jesus Christ on this matter.
It is sad to see that many members of a faith that professes to follow a such statements as "love your neighbor" and "if a man asks you to go with him one mile, go with him two" and follow a man/God who "came into the world not to comdemn the world..." seem to act like they are just part of a big club whose existence is to be big and condemn people for doing things that they would not do themselves (but often do anyway).
But the more I thought about it, the more clever it becomes. It forces people to think about...
Which brings up a point which is both off-topic and unrelated to this story, you, or your post (so please don't take this as a personal attack):
Consider the set of people who think it is clever or just "not wrong" to, as stated, force someone to think about something. Now consider the set of people who get upset and/or offended when someone "forces" them to think about a religious faith. (The reason I use the word "force" is because the commonly heard complaint in this area is that one's beliefs are being "crammed down the throat" of the offended.)
For example, one argument about prayer in school or the phrase, "under God," in the U.S. pledge of allegiance is that the mere hearing of religious words has somehow tainted one's freedom to practice or not practice any kind of ritual or belief.
Consider the intersection of those two sets of people. I wonder how large/small it is.
If we should go to work earlier, do it, don't fake it with the "spring forward, fall back" nonsense.
Amen! Apparently we are all to stupid to realize that the "time" is just a label and isn't inherently connected to "real time". I'm ready to scrap both daylight saving time and time zones in general. Let's all just use UTC.
"Yes, I get up at 18:00, so I'll give you a call at 20:00 on 11-May-2005." No room for ambiguity. You don't care what time zone your communication partner is in -- you just know what time you will receive a call. End of story.
Unfortunately, we are stuck in a nine-to-five world. We all have to go to work at the same "time" (words)...
Where is your proof that this new law will prevent future accounting mis-practice?
Just to note: Laws don't prevent anything from happening, they just provide legal footing for a response/recovery. Murder is illegal, but that doesn't stop people from murdering. It is, in some way, a deterrent to rational people who may contemplate murder.
In the same way, this law provides a framework for prosecution abilities. We will hope that the threat of being held responsible for a hurtful act will act as a deterrent to rational people contemplating such acts...
Slashdot Mirror
A very valid statement. Not one that most hams are willing to accept ;-)
But then, hams are pretty vocal about keeping the status quo. The FCC has issued a statement that they intend to remove the morse code requirement from all levels of ham radio licensing.
It's a firestorm in the hams-on-Internet world, as some are extremely vocal (with very poor grammar) about keeping "the rif-raf" out with the hurdle of a morse code test for the HF bands. You'd think the sky was falling...
The FCC is discussing what kinds of tasks show that one is able to safely and lawfully operate a radio. Meanwhile, some curmudgeons want their little hobby to remain "elite" in their minds and I suppose having it die out is about as "elite" as you can get, eh?
The opposition, even with the offer of notching the offending frequencies, is that the notches that have been demonstrated don't do enough.
You could say it lessens the interference by 50% or so, and that's not enough because ANY increase in the "noise floor" (the background signal that exists on a frequency which a signal must overcome in order to be heard) makes it more difficult for ham radio operators to use the frequency spectrum that they are licensed to use.
One solution would be for ham radio operators to just increase the power they use. Unfortunately, most hams operate (on HF anyway) at their full power capacity. Also many hams enjoy the challenge of low-power communications of 5W or less (worldwide communications are possible on under 5W).
The principle of the thing is that why should a commercial venture be able to do the things that, so far, no one has been allowed to do: emit RF across such an immense spectrum of frequencies, including those for which others have what the FCC calls "primary" usage granted to them.
The ARRL has said that they do support a Motorola solution because it does not add any interference to the ham radio frequencies. So not all BPL is bad. Ham radio operators are opposed to those that are bad.
I agree 100%. It's the little pockets of limited anarchy (a paradox if I ever saw one) that is the ISM bands that allow this great innovation.
It's just too bad that it's too popular for its own good. Watch the cheap, cool, products kill themselves.
The ISM bands (Industrial-Scientific-Medical, blocks of frequencies in which the FCC does not require each transmitter to be licensed) were created to allow low-power telemetry-like radio systems for commercial use. The idea was that they would be limited to very low power and would likely be physically seperated by a long distance and so interference would be minimized. The FCC says that in these bands, if there is interference, it's your own problem: you cannot complain to anyone -- we gave up micromanaging this stuff.
This is what things were like before the FCC. People transmitted where they wanted, at what power they wanted, etc. It quickly became clear that some coordination was needed, and the FCC is that coordinator.
Most of the FCC's dealings involve licensed operations, where each transmitter (not manufacturer, though they have their own obligations to the FCC) must have a license and a responsible person operating the transmitter. Most consumers only interacted (before the boom) with these systems in the form of TV and Radio, and then only on the receiving end.
It's those ISM bands where consumer-technology companies saw a huge opportunity because they could allow regular folks to use wireless technology without needing to mess with this individual licensing stuff.
One might look at these ISM bands (900 Mhz, 2.4 GHz, 5.8 GHz, etc.) as little unregulated, free-range wireless playpens. The bands aren't that big, but technologies like spread spectrum have allowed much use to be had within the boundaries of the regulation.
Unfortunately, now nearly all consumer wireless equipment operates in the ISM bands, and the interference-mitigating technologies are being pushed to their limits. Hence your telephone and 802.11 system do not always play along. It's not just them talking, it's all the other cordless phones and 802.11 devices, telemetry devices, etc.
The mess that is the ISM bands was not the "existing reality" that the FCC was created to manage. They allowed the mess to occur in a controlled environment (away from licensed transmitters). We should thank the FCC for handling it this way, though we should also probably ask for some bigger ISM bands in the useful spectrum (900 MHz, 2.4 GHz). Unfortunately, almost every slice of radio-land is spoken for by something.
That's just handling of the licenses. Part of the license for public broadcast services (TV, radio) says that the broadcaster must abide by the rules of the license, including prohibiting (profanity|obscenity) from being transmitted.
The FCC is just applying the prescribed remedy for violations of the pre-existing licenses.
If you want the FCC to stop "enforcing clean language", then convince the broadcasters to re-negotiate their licenses so that they don't have such objectionable clauses. The FCC has the power to do that.
When they issue a license, the licensee agrees to the conditions set forth in the license. It doesn't have anything to do with the FCC being the polite-police.
The proper method to dealing with unwanted laws/regulations is not to stop enforcing them, it's to get rid of them and allow the enforcement to follow the law. If the country worked that way, abuses of infrequently-enforced laws/regulations would be less likely to happen, and when they did happen, would be easier to handle, since everything is based on the written law.
(Yes, that won't happen. It takes away too much control from law enforcement, who enjoy the ability to charge alleged offenders of the law in whatever degree they prefer.)
If you're feeding that to your cows, no wonder we have problems... ;-)
I suppose it doesn't matter, but Texas uses lethal injection for this.
I have a really nifty little printer for mobile printing. It's dot-matrix! Runs on 12 volts, holds tractor-feed paper (even carbon-duplicate paper). Has a space inside for an internal battery, too.
:-)
It's a fun little printer. Originally intended for travelling salesmen to be able to print up sales tickets and receipts out on the job.
I got two for use in any potential emergency, for use in a quick-setup emergency operations base and to be used for passing messages via amateur radio to the various departments handling emergency operations (fire, EMS, news, etc.).
Granted, it's a purpose that would rarely be used, but it's fun to have something old and reliable to play with. Makes me all nostalgic hearing that old scraping sound of pins firing and motors whining.
VOTES_FOR_UTC++
But it's a dry heat, right? ;-)
Hey, since you claim to know about plasma-physics...
:-)
From what I know, the ways that we get power (electricity mostly?) from nuclear reactions is to extract the heat produced.
If your hot, fusing plasma is contained in a magnetic field, how do you extract the heat from it?
Obviously our first step is to make a self-sustaining fusion reaction, but I hope (and know, really) that SOMEONE is thinking about how to make it commercially viable.
I just want to know what those people are thinking.
Is it reasonable to compare current power-generation technologies to Fusion? The reason Fusion power plants don't have either of these problems is that there aren't any fusion power generation plants in existence!
The chances are that once we do have viable fusion power generation, there may be a down-side or two. But we won't know these negative aspects, or even if there will be any negatives at all to Fusion power until we actually have it delivered.
I guess that's just common sense, though.
The 5th amendment, which is the part that authorizes emminent domain, says (among other things):
Note: "public use" and not "public benefit".
5 of our Supreme Court justices are in serious need of a dictionary!!
They are turning the Constitution's wording ("except for public use") into their own wording ("except for public benefit").
ick
Hell 45 baud is still used every day today by amateur radio operators. It's a thriving mode and is essentially teletype voltages/timings "adapted" to audio tones on a radio.
We call it RTTY - Radio-Teletype.
This is what is supposed to happen. All (nearly all?) sewage treatment plants have a bypass to send the input straight to the output, which is usually a river or lake.
They do it because when a treatment plant cannot accept any more sewage, whether due to excessive water input by rain, or by power loss, the customers are better served by *NOT* letting the sewage back up into their houses. The stuff has to go *somewhere* when all their holding tanks are full. This is the last-resort method of dealing with problems at such plants.
But I thought that in the Soviet Union, it's the piss in the pants that slows the space development?
Exactly... The article author seems to point to the fact that the software was old and just waiting to die...
Becase of the fact that NO ONE knew of the particular limit that was exceeded, those who were supposed to calculate risk never knew what the tipping point was.
All they could say was "our software is old, someday it may not work any more, but I cannot say for what reason, because I do not know FORTRAN."
How the hell can you calculate risk if your only input is the chronological age of a software system?
Gig'em Aggies.
l e.htm
http://soilcrop.tamu.edu/professors/borlaug/profi
It is sad to see that many members of a faith that professes to follow a such statements as "love your neighbor" and "if a man asks you to go with him one mile, go with him two" and follow a man/God who "came into the world not to comdemn the world..." seem to act like they are just part of a big club whose existence is to be big and condemn people for doing things that they would not do themselves (but often do anyway).
So my example wasn't the best example.
I'm just waiting for the UID counter to overflow and hoping it's a signed value :-) Then I can get that elusive negative UID.
Which brings up a point which is both off-topic and unrelated to this story, you, or your post (so please don't take this as a personal attack):
Consider the set of people who think it is clever or just "not wrong" to, as stated, force someone to think about something. Now consider the set of people who get upset and/or offended when someone "forces" them to think about a religious faith. (The reason I use the word "force" is because the commonly heard complaint in this area is that one's beliefs are being "crammed down the throat" of the offended.)
For example, one argument about prayer in school or the phrase, "under God," in the U.S. pledge of allegiance is that the mere hearing of religious words has somehow tainted one's freedom to practice or not practice any kind of ritual or belief.
Consider the intersection of those two sets of people. I wonder how large/small it is.
"Apparently we are all to stupid":
to -> too
(oops)
Amen! Apparently we are all to stupid to realize that the "time" is just a label and isn't inherently connected to "real time". I'm ready to scrap both daylight saving time and time zones in general. Let's all just use UTC.
"Yes, I get up at 18:00, so I'll give you a call at 20:00 on 11-May-2005." No room for ambiguity. You don't care what time zone your communication partner is in -- you just know what time you will receive a call. End of story.
Unfortunately, we are stuck in a nine-to-five world. We all have to go to work at the same "time" (words)...
Just to note: Laws don't prevent anything from happening, they just provide legal footing for a response/recovery. Murder is illegal, but that doesn't stop people from murdering. It is, in some way, a deterrent to rational people who may contemplate murder.
In the same way, this law provides a framework for prosecution abilities. We will hope that the threat of being held responsible for a hurtful act will act as a deterrent to rational people contemplating such acts...