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Comment Re:Free TV? Who knew? (Score 3, Informative) 564

Make sure your antenna receives UHF in addition to VHF. Lots of older antennas were VHF-only (channels 2-13).

Remember that the digital channel number shown on the screen now doesn't necessarily correlate to the actual radio channel. In our area, digital channel 7 (7.1, 7.2, 7.3) is transmitted at the pre-digital channel 21 frequency band.

An outdoor antenna with an outdoor amplifier is also recommended for fringe or rural areas.

Broadcast TV works pretty well in our rural area. Lots of people have dumped $60-120/month satellite subscriptions.

Comment Zenith Z-100 (Score 1) 857

The Z-100 was an IBM work-alike which ran Z-DOS, an MS-DOS variant. It cost roughly $2,000.
128K RAM we later upgraded to 1 MB for $1,000. Had to add a couple of wires to the motherboard.
Two 5.25 floppy drives. Added a 10 MB drive for $1,000 (yes, MB).
8088 chip. Added an 80287 math chip for around $125.
My wife used it for her master's thesis on fractal worlds at which point we borrowed dual 8" floppy drives so it could run unattended.
IIRC, it booted from 5.25 floppy, then ran the Pascal compiler from the 8" drives and stored results on the hard drive.
Producing one image of a 3D fractal "world" (planet, mountains, tree, etc) took about 8 hours. I'm sure my phone could do it in a few seconds.

Comment Not if you want to enjoy the style of writing (Score 1) 207

I learned to speed read in 5th grade about 50 years ago. A few kids were chosen for some sessions that taught us how to skim for meaning and comprehension. There was a special projector that would scroll a column of text while showing us a narrow window of 1-2 lines. I really worked at it and could "read" most novels in a day or two. This worked okay until I ran into All the Pretty Horses. The weird style made me slow down just to be able to read it. I came to really enjoy the lack of punctuation and occasional long, stream-of-consciousness passages. I know it drove a lot of people crazy, but it brought back a love or reading and is one of my favorite books of all time. It changed the way I read non-technical stuff.
Speed reading is great when you're skimming for information, not so much when you're supposedly reading for enjoyment.

Comment Re:legalism is a crap philosophy. (Score 2) 582

(Unless the law has changed...) California law says that if a high percentage (like 85%) of drivers go at or above a certain speed, then that speed is what the speed limit should be, regardless of the signage.
There was a case in Palo Alto about 25 years ago where the police set up a speed trap on Embarcadero between the 101 freeway and El Camino and one of the drivers caught in it paid to have the traffic monitored (without police presence which obviously influences drivers) and proved that he had been driving at the same speed as most of the traffic. Somehow the driver knew that the law said that most drivers have a natural sense for what is a safe speed and will drive in a safe manner and that speed is allowed.

Comment Re:Debris killed girl in Austrailia (Score 2) 69

As others noted, nobody was hurt.

I worked on the Teleoperator Retrieval System (TRS) which was a small booster with an Apollo docking ring that an astronaut would remotely pilot from the Shuttle. The docking ring was supposed to clamp onto the Skylab docking port and then the booster would either push Skylab to a higher orbit or perform a controlled de-orbit. It was initially scheduled to fly on the 5th Shuttle. Then as the Shuttle main engines were being debugged at Stennis, it was scheduled for the 4th, the 3rd, the 2nd, the 1st and then it was, "Incoming!".

The uncontrolled reentry was pretty much a non-event except that it took a while to find any debris.

Comment Re:Ballsy, but stupid ... (Score 3, Informative) 308

Reminds me of the time in the mid-70's when we were going from Boulder to Arvada via the road south to Golden and mistakenly turned at the entrance to Rocky Flats (where the "triggers" for nukes were made). We pulled up to the security shack and the guard politely told us that we needed to back up, turn around, go back to the highway and take the next turn. We asked if we could pull forward a few feet and make a u-turn around the guard shack and he said that if we moved forward, he'd have to shoot us. We kindly thanked him for his assistance, backed up, turned around and got the hell out of there.

Comment Re:Aaaand there goes the lizard squad (Score 1) 131

Reminds one of the scene in Burn After Reading where Chad tries to blackmail Osbourne Cox:

Osbourne Cox: If you ever carried out your proposed threat you would experience such a shitstorm of consequences, my friend, your empty little head would be spinning faster than the wheels of your Schwinn bicycle back there.

Chad Feldheimer: Y-you think that's a Schwinn?

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