Unfortunately I have to disagree that gerrymandering is fundamental. How elections are funded is more crucial, IMHO. As long as our "representatives" are working only for corporations and rich people (often equivalent), we'll never get rid of harmful practices such as gerrymandering, parties, and wacko presidents concerned more with enlarging the military industrial complex and oil cartels than the welfare of the country's citizens.
Arizona, Main, and North Carolina have already enacted publicly funded election programs. Also, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) have introduced the Fair Elections Now Act that does something similar for some federal elections. This is the most realistic attempt yet that I've seen at reclaiming control of the government.
Actually, I'd be careful saying that Newton's theories were "disproved" as well. They in fact still work extremely well as long as the objects involved travel less than about 1/3 the speed of light with respect to each other. Saying these equations were disproved seems to me like saying Evolution is "just a theory". It would be more accurate to say Newton's theories were improved upon since you can derive them from the equations of special relativity. As another example, talking about protons and neutrons in chemical theories without reference to quarks doesn't mean the theory is "wrong". It just applies itself to an appropriate scope where more general theories don't have any more influence.
The case with KK theory is entirely different in that a) it conflicts with other popular theories, and b) it has no experimental evidence to support it. This *could* change when the LHC comes on line, though, so certainly I would second the term "unproven" over "failed".
'Cause I'm an idiot? I was extrapolating from my experience with tornados and assumed that Hams would be helping with emergency communications, asking that personal traffic be postponed. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that with such authority. I was more concerned with my real point that one doesn't have to use the only communication method available if he or she doesn't want to. But hey, thanks for being so hostile about correcting me.
Sure, those big house-mounted antennas may be knocked out, but Hams are pretty good at improvising. There are also Hams that train for this sort of thing and have portable equipement that can be setup in minutes. Also, every year we have something called Field Day which is all about practicing our skiils of operating without prior infrastructure. I doubt the cell company does that.
1) Ok, so don't. Hams are usually in an emergency traffic only mode anyway until regular communications are restored. But if they were relaying personal messages, it would be totally up to you whether to bother communicating at all to your family.
2) I think his point is that you don't need local relay towers to establish communications between the entire country. It's a reliability statement. In addition to cell towers, there has to be a direct link from the tower to the phone system. Ham radio has neither of those limitations.
Thanks for the post. That's about the only optomistic news I've heard so far. Hopefully it will make it into the next issue of QST.
That said, I'm not sure what you consider "whining"; but I think it's perfectly valid for people to be apprehensive about this. I'm not surprised that a radio manufacturer is interested in mitigating interference. It's the power companies and government that have been over eager to deploy systems without much regard for testing. If this sort of cooperative effort had been initiated between the ARRL, the FCC, and the power companies from the get go then I think there wouldn't be such a negative bias towards the technology.
I'm a Ham and have been keeping up with the test results through QST, a magazine put out to members of the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL). The ARRL web site has probably all the info you would want at http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/.
I've tried to be objective about the technology, but especially when I see videos of Hams driving around their neighborhoods with an HF rig dialing through the spectrum and hearing nothing but hum from the power lines transfering BPL signals, I can't say I'm very optomistic.
It's also appaling how the FCC has championed this and practically refused to demand BPL trials be shut down when complaints of interference have been filed (and probably every trial has had complaints).
But just think about it. What are antennas but unsheilded wires with a modulated electric current applied to them. That's exactly what BPL is, one giant antenna. How could it not cause interference?
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I agree. Total BS. . o O (Damn that Doom map of my house was cool. Maybe I should go kill my family...)
Unfortunately I have to disagree that gerrymandering is fundamental. How elections are funded is more crucial, IMHO. As long as our "representatives" are working only for corporations and rich people (often equivalent), we'll never get rid of harmful practices such as gerrymandering, parties, and wacko presidents concerned more with enlarging the military industrial complex and oil cartels than the welfare of the country's citizens. Arizona, Main, and North Carolina have already enacted publicly funded election programs. Also, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) have introduced the Fair Elections Now Act that does something similar for some federal elections. This is the most realistic attempt yet that I've seen at reclaiming control of the government.
Actually, I'd be careful saying that Newton's theories were "disproved" as well. They in fact still work extremely well as long as the objects involved travel less than about 1/3 the speed of light with respect to each other. Saying these equations were disproved seems to me like saying Evolution is "just a theory". It would be more accurate to say Newton's theories were improved upon since you can derive them from the equations of special relativity. As another example, talking about protons and neutrons in chemical theories without reference to quarks doesn't mean the theory is "wrong". It just applies itself to an appropriate scope where more general theories don't have any more influence. The case with KK theory is entirely different in that a) it conflicts with other popular theories, and b) it has no experimental evidence to support it. This *could* change when the LHC comes on line, though, so certainly I would second the term "unproven" over "failed".
'Cause I'm an idiot? I was extrapolating from my experience with tornados and assumed that Hams would be helping with emergency communications, asking that personal traffic be postponed. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that with such authority. I was more concerned with my real point that one doesn't have to use the only communication method available if he or she doesn't want to. But hey, thanks for being so hostile about correcting me.
Sure, those big house-mounted antennas may be knocked out, but Hams are pretty good at improvising. There are also Hams that train for this sort of thing and have portable equipement that can be setup in minutes. Also, every year we have something called Field Day which is all about practicing our skiils of operating without prior infrastructure. I doubt the cell company does that.
1) Ok, so don't. Hams are usually in an emergency traffic only mode anyway until regular communications are restored. But if they were relaying personal messages, it would be totally up to you whether to bother communicating at all to your family.
2) I think his point is that you don't need local relay towers to establish communications between the entire country. It's a reliability statement. In addition to cell towers, there has to be a direct link from the tower to the phone system. Ham radio has neither of those limitations.
Thanks for the post. That's about the only optomistic news I've heard so far. Hopefully it will make it into the next issue of QST.
That said, I'm not sure what you consider "whining"; but I think it's perfectly valid for people to be apprehensive about this. I'm not surprised that a radio manufacturer is interested in mitigating interference. It's the power companies and government that have been over eager to deploy systems without much regard for testing. If this sort of cooperative effort had been initiated between the ARRL, the FCC, and the power companies from the get go then I think there wouldn't be such a negative bias towards the technology.
I'm a Ham and have been keeping up with the test results through QST, a magazine put out to members of the Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL). The ARRL web site has probably all the info you would want at http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/.
I've tried to be objective about the technology, but especially when I see videos of Hams driving around their neighborhoods with an HF rig dialing through the spectrum and hearing nothing but hum from the power lines transfering BPL signals, I can't say I'm very optomistic.
It's also appaling how the FCC has championed this and practically refused to demand BPL trials be shut down when complaints of interference have been filed (and probably every trial has had complaints).
But just think about it. What are antennas but unsheilded wires with a modulated electric current applied to them. That's exactly what BPL is, one giant antenna. How could it not cause interference?