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Nobody really cares that deeply about polls. They are a LITTLE BIT entertaining. Burying them in the news stories... who cares? The only people who feel so strongly about this just can't stand change of any kind. I mean, really, you're going to get all hot and bothered about shifting the poll from where it belongs, outside of the news feed, to now it's inline with the news? Meh. Stupid move, but who really cares that much? It has no effect on the rest of the site usage. If you're going to leave it there, just make it easier to see the total results without taking me to another page. I will just say that Polls are NOT news, no matter what Faux News would have you believe, so why put them into the news "feed"? Dumb. But I don't really care. I'm mainly responding to try and put a LITTLE bit of balance into the usual over-the-top reaction to minor changes around here. I did not like the old "beta" site at all, and I'm glad you scrapped it. That had a direct effect on the news presentation. This one... I'll quote Bruce Willis from "The Kid": "Waah! Waah! Waah! Somebody call the waa-mbulance!!" Sheesh.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov

I think his point was that the majority of new hams no longer construct their own radios from scratch. They buy them commercially made, and the new radios are no more serviceable than your cellphone or any other modern surface-mounted-components electronic device. I don't think he meant commercial as in, commercial band radios. But I could be wrong.

Since you posted as AC I'll say this. You must be an older Ham who got his ticket "back in the day" when you had to know morse code and had to design a radio circuit from scratch during your examan, and now you resent the ease with which an Amateur Radio license can be obtained. There have always been jerks in every endeavor. Why, you may not believe this, but there are even a few here on Slashdot! The FCC continues to cut funding for enforcement, so more and more we hams have to police ourselves. So, do that. If you have a couple of hams in your neighborhood who are violating rules, report them.

As far as getting all sanctimonious, when was the last time you really heard anything about what Hams did in a crisis, other than on vary narrowly focused outlets like Slashdot or Amateur Radio Newsline? It's not like we're parading in the streets crowing about our accomplisments. Just a little acknowledgement is all we want, and then only because Amateur Radio is largely invisible so people think it's dying. It's not. There are more licensed operators world wide now then ever before.

Get a grip, and get real. Seriously.

I know we have to try to make responsible laws for things like the environment, but when has the U.S. government EVER gotten science really right? "Hello, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." Right. We are up to our eyeballs in regulations, many based on bad science due to ignorance and politics, and many others based merely on greed and backroom dealings. So I'm all for transparency. President Obama utterly failed to actually provide any of the transparency he promised when he was campaigning, yet I am not sure this legislation is the way to do it either. Typically, the bill has all the trademarks of politicians who don't know anything about science or the scientific process trying to pass science legislation. There is more political relevance than scientific relevance to this, and some of it just wrong-headed. As stated in the article, "[S.544] would require EPA to base all its rules, assessments, and guidance on data that is ... reproducible" and then later states "many studies, such as longitudinal surveys, are not realistically reproducible" which means they would not be allowed to be used under these rules. I am suspicious of the agendas of all of the various elected officials who are discussing this bill. (FWIW, I am neither a Republicrat nor a Demopublican.)

If more controls are put in place, the work will simply move offshore. I work for a large financial institution, and they decided the best solution for technical labor was to build a large organization offshore, and these are not just call-center folks. These are highly skilled technical workers. And they are doing jobs that could easily be done here, but obviously for a lot more money. This way they avoid the overhead and headaches of H1B sponsoring altogether. Not saying it hasn't and doesn't happen in this company. But the offshore labor is a lot less expensive, and to some, that is of primary importance.

Too bad you posted as AC. Were you involved with the Newport-Mesa Unified School District in Orange County, California in the 70's? I ask because that was my first computer too, and the configuration you mention was the same as ours. Not sure how many other TSS-8 systems there were, but I think the bulk of them did not. I went to Newport Harbor High, and was a system administrator (we called them System Managers) for a year or so.

I went through the whole presentation, and I really want one! I live in California, and we use the 1.25m band (220 MHz) a lot in my area. Nobody includes this band, even in the big expensive All-Band All-Mode mobile radios. You can get a single-band radio, but I don't drive a van or a truck, and my space for radios in the car is strictly limited. I would love to have one tri-band radio with 2m, 1.25m, and 70cm (144, 220, and 440 MHz) bands without using a transverter, and be able to do SSB on 2m. Now THAT would be a radio to have! I already have an SDR, one of the of the greatest radios on the market, the Elecraft K3, and I love it! With this I could have a fantastic mobile and another for base. Very cool! 73, WT6G

They are the same thing. Relax. I suspect the true first occurence of the abbreviation HT to mean "handheld transceiver" or "Handie-Talkie" is lost in the mists of time. The Handie Talkie was probably the first two-way-voice handheld transciever, and it entered service in the US military in about 1941. I have always heard HT means "Handie Talkie" but it obviously means "handheld transceiver" too. FWIW, the term "Walkie Talkie" referred to a radio that was so big it lived in a backpack the radioman had to lug around. It was self-contained so you could walk around with it. The Handie Talkie was a huge improvement, and is the handheld radio you see the US Army soldiers using in all the old WWII movies. 73, WT6G

IANAS but wasn't this one of the big drawbacks to cloning an adult organism? You start with DNA that has already been shortened by this reduction of the telomeres and create a brand new organism but with part of the clock already run out. Didn't Dolly have this problem?