As a new-ish ham, I hear a lot of "ham radio is dead" stuff, and it's just not true. There are more registered hams now then ever before, and the rate of new licensees is also going up. (i.e. the number of new hams every year keeps going up) But the new young hams are not getting into it for the same reasons the older hams did. Most of the older hams were at least amateur radio electronics guys. Now, nobody (or very very few) builds a radio from bare components, and the first level of license requires only a basic understanding of radio electronics principles. In my book it's still very cool to put up my antenna (I live in an antenna-restricted community) and know that when I contact someone in another country, I'm doing it without relying on somebody else's infrastructure. It's just me, my battery, my radio, and my antenna, and I'm talking to some guy half-way around the world! How cool is that? And emergency communications will always be a valid use. In fact, in a real emergency, cell phones are useless for a variety of reasons, some of which can be failed infrastructure, or even just simple congestion. If an earthquake hits or a hurricane, cell towers go down or everybody jumps on their phone and then nobody can get in on the overcrowded towers. Or EMS blocks all calls except for emergency services to use. I don't know how it's going to evolve, but it always does, and it's most definitely not dead. 73, WT6G

...Christmas. Just sayin'.

...we will see how many people getting the iPhone 6/6+ feel their phones were too big, and opt for a smaller one, assuming smaller formats are still available. Even though Bill Gates never said "nobody will ever need more than 640K of memory" there have been plenty of very intelligent people who just didn't see what might be possible with something that does not appear to be currently useful. For fun and slightly tangential to this conversation, see the 2008 article The 7 Worst Tech Predictions of All Time

The title of the paper is "Circulating Avian Influenza Viruses Closely Related to the 1918 Virus Have Pandemic Potential" and only talks about CURRENTLY CIRCULATING viruses. I have not read the paper, only the abstract, but even the abstract indicates that all they are doing is studying the behavior of currently circulating viruses that are similar to the Spanish Flu of 1918. Sensationalizing a random paper is a great way to make headlines, but the truth will always out. In this case, the sooner the better. This is not to say we don't need to be careful and follow the suggestion to seriously review all "gain-of-function" virus research and don't do it if it can be avoided. But this article is quite flamboyant and inflammatory, probably just to draw attention to this risk. However, credibility has been sacrificed. Too bad.

Everybody knows the technology and even the frequency spectrums in use by the various carriers is mostly all different. You watch. The carriers now will say that they have to raise prices or even completely do away with contract subsidies in order to be competitive. As "do-gooder" efforts go, this is up there. Sounds great on paper, but utterly fails in it's intended consequence and/or has worse unintended consequences.

I live just south of Santa Barbara and I finally weaseled it out of them that Verizon plans no new roll-outs of FIOS anywhere. If you don't have it "in your neighborhood" now, you'll never have it. The "last mile" problem proved too expensive to deal with. (That's the part where they run fiber to each home from the neighborhood "trunk".) I think this is why AT&T U-verse is still growing. They run fiber to a neighborhood and then use the existing copper for the last short run to the home. Definitely a compromise, but it's a helluva lot faster than DSL! Unfortunately, in my area, we don't even have that. Fastest connection I could get was from COX Cable. (DISH was still cheaper for my TV, btw, since we get zero OTA channels where I live.)

See: https://www.overdrive.com/ I don't know how other libraries do it, but this is how ours handles it. Yes, there are limitations, but add up all of the subscriptions we are now being asked to fund every month. Everything is becoming a monthly fee, conveniently charged to your credit card or coming out of your bank account.

Dangerous levels of dihydrogen monoxide! The government needs to protect us! Billions of dollars spent by this industry to make sure every home has a constant supply, exposing our children in ways that sometimes end in death! Read more here: http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html You have been warned!!