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Comment It's about jurisdiction (Score 1) 106

All four dismissals occurred in the Northern District of Illinois.' I don't see how Prenda thinks this is going to make one lick of difference to an already angry Judge."

Prenda believes the California judge does not have the power to compel out-of-state Prenda "employees" to appear. I would bet a dollar that one of the Prenda guilty parties lives either in Illinois, or the 7th Circuit federal jurisdiction. If they don't dismiss cases in jurisdictions where they live, and things unfold as they have in California, they could face arrest.

Comment Could you tell me more about the iOS-ification? (Score 1) 965

I've been thinking that I might like to own a retina Macbook. My reasons are: the good screen, the BSD-based OS, a professionally-made desktop environment.

What is this "iOS-ification" of the Mac you write about? Is Apple making changes to close the platform to non-Xcode development?

Tell me more.

Comment Games with micropayments (Score 1) 369

I don't make micropayments. I appreciate games which make it clear when a player has purchased an item. "You were killed by custom sniper rifle." I think to myself, they paid 30 cents to be superior.

I do sometimes pay per-month fees, if the game itself is good. I think this is justified for MMO games, due to server and bandwidth requirements.

For games such as the sims, I buy the expansions but would not pay for continuous on-line DRM.

It feels so good to play this way, it makes the pay-to-excel games actually more fun. The challenge becomes to counter-snipe the guy with the 30 cent rifle, unless you get a chance to blow up a 50 cent air ship.

Comment Hopefully nobody resigns! (Score 2) 524

When a person resigns, they are not eligible for unemployment insurance. What Yahoo is proposing is a restructuring of their work-force, a "lay-off." Unless they are offering a superior severance package, the ethical thing to do is lay these employees off, so they can collect the unemployment insurance they deserve.

None of them are resigning by choice, and if the alternative is that they will be fired for cause, Yahoo should be deeply ashamed of their new CEO.

Comment Microsoft - DoJ settlement has expired but... (Score 1) 270

You would think that Microsoft could comprehend that repeating their same monopolistic practices might land them in the same hot water. But I guess not. So can we please get the FTC and the DoJ involved in this matter? In the last two years, Microsoft has stooped to some extreme measures in an effort to surpress Linux. At least this time, we can rest easy knowing that they only have Steve, not Bill, and have been headed toward oblivion for a long time.

Comment Re:30 mhz and down (Score 1) 140

Thanks for your post! I appreciate the info.

Exercise for the student: that SmartNet system carries all of information needed to locate every cop car in town, whether they know it or not. Plot 'em with Google Maps in real time!

Sorry, this is incorrect, as far as I know. You might be thinking of various "automatic vehicle location systems" (AVLS), or perhaps there is a smartnet feature I'm not aware of. Our local police and fire use a disjoint AVLS solution from the smartnet. The police AVLS is in the clear, but requires pinging the car, causing a chime in the car. The fire AVLS is always transmitting. There is good reason not to encrypt the police AVLS -- it is only queried during emergencies and at those times it is critical that the request get through. The countermeasure for the lack of encryption is the in-car chime.

Comment Re:30 mhz and down (Score 0) 140

If, as you say, you write your own software, then "linux support" is pretty irrelevant

By "linux support," what I mean is either a working USB driver for it, or a data sheet if there's no USB driver. The bladeRF is open hardware, with even the schematic available and all chips having public data sheets. A device that does not support linux would be a device with no programming information and no driver. I imagine they exist, but maybe I am wrong and there is no such device in the existing market of devices made by hams.

I can't help but notice that I didn't claim there was one. :) You do know what a "straw man" is, right?

You claimed this device wasn't as good as the devices which already exist. That is why my argument is not a "straw man" but a "prove that." I actually have an application for this device, but you claimed that the device was not as good as others already available but intended for the Ham market. As it turns out, the device is a better deal for my application than anything out there.

Are you having a bad day? My sympathies, if so. You seem to be grasping at the idea I'm your adversary. I'm not. I'm just some guy on the Interwebz.

The only negativity I've read toward this project has uniformly been from Hams. From that group, there has been a generally dismissive tone of, "sniff, it doesn't go down to kilohertz..." As a group, you seem to be anti-anything that isn't for Ham applications.

The negative comment you posted is your fault. Yes, it was modded up by dummies, but you posted it. Why do people need to see your negative opinion as the first post? That was pretty lame, in my book. You're not just some guy on the Interwebz when you top-post a fund-raising article with a disparaging comment, you're a negative nancy with some say in the outcome.

BTW, of course "tap" for "trap" was a typo, as you can read in my post there are several other occurences of the word "trap" spelled correctly. Your suggestion that I might have been regurgitating your typo, as if I wouldn't know a "tap" from a "trap", is again an occassion where you are tripping over ego.

Comment Re:30 mhz and down (Score 0) 140

I can't help but notice that you weren't able to come up with an example of a better SDR for my application. "cuteSDR" doesn't seem relevant because I write all my own code to control the radio, demodulate (FSK/NFM) the signals, correct the parity-checked bits so the CRC matches, decode the content, etc. It's really irrelevant, because I asked you to name a piece of SDR receiver hardware which fits my bill and is cheaper than $400. I am all ears on that subject, but I don't need any pointers to software. I was asking you to substantiate your pooping on this project by providing an example of an SDR device that would be better for the fun I am having, not the fun you are having. You seemed to gloss over that for some reason.

So what's at 850-869 mhz of $400 worth of interest to you?

Public agencies trunked radio, with whom I am cooperating on a proprietary application. Sorry I can't say more than that, but the signal of interest is Motorola SmartNet in my case. The application sprang from having fun monitoring it, and observing the potential for an improvement to their system.

Re your success with FM, your dongle may have an FM broadcast band trap. Or your antenna system might be doing it for you.

No, none of the dongles have FM broadcast band traps, and the antennas are directly connected 800Mhz 1/4 wavelength dipoles. These are both purchased and home-built antennas, I have several of these dongles. I think you missed the part where I can easily pick up very weak and distant 120MHz signals (yes, using the 800Mhz antennas) which use the same front-end filter as broadcast FM, when we are talking about e4000-based dongles. The FM station nearby is so powerful that I owned several devices (telephones, computer speakers) which I've had to replace because the station was audible on their output. And yet, I can hear airplanes that are 50 miles out in the 120 MHz... I realize the 800MHz antenna is slightly antenuating the 95MHz FM signal, but it's also attenuating the 120MHz air band.

RF is somewhat tricky unless you're pretty knowledgable.

At this point, don't trip over your ego. I'm knowledgable enough to be sure there is no front-end filter of any sort reducing the FM broadcast stations. I understand there is a culture around talking up the trickiness of RF, but let's get past that for the sake of reality.

Dynamic range is one of the key specs we look at.

So, surely an expert amateur radio operator such as yourself will realize that 8 bits gives 50dB dynamic range? Which of course is awful. Yet this overload problem doesn't seem to be real.

That's aside from what happens if there's an RF front end in there, filter(s), a mixer, etc., which quite often, there is.

Are you aware the e4000 data sheet is "out there" on the web? Between the antenna and the A/D, I've got: an ESD diode with 6pF capacitance, the e4000 front-end filter and LNA, the e4000 mixer, 5 more amp stages, decoupling caps, then the A/D, then, the single worst part, a "mystery" (undocumented without NDA) FIR with 20 taps. Why you would imagine that a $20 dongle could arrive with an FM broadcast tap is beyond me. The dongles aren't even shielded, and I can easily pick up the FM broadcast with a shielded 50-ohm resistor connected across the antenna input...

I'll give you that it is likely that the FM station is always contributing to my noise floor, but, realistically, the noise floor of the e4000-based devices is already horrible, with an 8-11dB noise figure, lots of birdies around the multiples of 28MHz and 5/3 of that. If any signal were going to swamp the dongles, I would expect that to be 480MHz USB emanations -- in particular because there is no way to attenuate them via adjusting the front-end LNA gain -- the signal appears to intrude after that stage. Yet I can receive at 450MHz just fine, and that is in the same front-end filter band as 480MHz.

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