Before clicking the link I was trying to imagine how a trapezoidal shape could help and I could not. Well, that's because it is a hexagon.

Doesn't matter. You clicked on the link. Dice's job is done...

The difference there is that Socialism, its various types, & the path to Communism, were all clearly defined by Marx, Engels, et al. well before it actually happened - while the excuse of 'crony Capitalism' is a post-facto excuse for the failures of Capitalism.

Your examples - the Societ Union, Maoist China, and Cuba - while bastardised implementations of Communism (not Socialism; forget your propaganda-based US-influenced "education"), were not the natural outcome of the Socialist progression. Crony Capitalism is one of the natural outcome of Capitalism without regulation...

This seems to hold true for most broad-interest sites like newspapers and magazines where comments can be downright awful, as opposed to sites like Slashdot with a self-selected and somewhat homogeneous audience ...

... where, as this thread amply demonstrates, comments can also be downright awful.

(p.s. and no, the /. mod system doesn't improve it - unless by 'improve' you mean 'hide away by the lowest common denominator of consensus groupthink, nope, nothing to see here at all, move along, move along ...")

That is a newer generation of the same thing, but if you notice they decode DVB-T2, which is High-Definition. The cheap RTL dongles decode about 3 MHz of spectrum space which is enough for a Standard-Definition DVB signal, but not enough for HD. The newer ones that do DVB-T2 have a wider chunk of spectrum space they translate, wide enough for an HD signal. In the US, an ATSC or "digital TV" High-Definition signal is about 6 MHz wide, for reference.

These newer generation dongles must have internal improvements that allows them to grab a bigger hunk of RF spectrum. The professional SDR devices that cost upward of $1000 can grab much larger chunks of spectrum, some can do 20 MHz wide swaths of RF.

What utter bullshit.

DVB-T occupies 5/6/7/8 MHz (depending on country). The transmission is COFDM spread-spectrum, the data is interleaved across all subcarriers, and (ignoring hierarchical transmissions, which are rare) the whole ensemble needs to be retrieved to demux a single channel. So, regardless of whether the content is SD or HD, DVB-T dongles always have received the whole 5/6/7/8 MHz wide channel to work (decoding is done in software).

DVB-T2 occupies 1.7/5/6/7/8/10 MHz (depending on purpose & country - e.g. 1.7MHz is meant for mobile, while afaik 10MHz isn't in use anywhere yet). The transmission is an extended version of DVB-T's COFDM spread-spectrum, the data is likewise interleaved across all subcarriers, and (ignoring hierarchical transmissions, which are rare) similarly the whole ensemble needs to be retrieved to demux a single channel. So, regardless of whether the content is SD or HD, any DVB-T2 dongle needs to receive the whole 1.7/5/6/7/8/10 MHz wide channel to work. I don't know of any offhand, but presumably decoding is similarly done in software.

Raw mode - typically used by SDR software when using chep DVB-T dongles - is different. That has limitations, but it's got nothing to do with the channel bandwidth when using the dongles for DVB-T/DVB-T2.

... especially since Linksys is a subsidiary of Cisco who are the NSA's bitch.

No they're not. Cisco flogged Linksys off a year or more ago to Belkin - which, granted, is an even bigger reason to avoid them.

Mod parent up.

If you haven't looked at the links, you may think he's being unnecessarily harsh.

He's not.

Apart from the winning entry, there's the usual collection of poorly-composed & poorly-lit random sub-happy-snap photos. Then there's the poorly-composed & poorly-lit random sub-happy-snap photos with crappy filters applied. And then there's the poorly-composed, poorly-lit, random sub-happy snap-photos with crappy filters & fake HDR.

All taken with a cheap sub-smartphone quality camera & lens.

Use of the word "buss" to refer to electrical or mechanical power distribution predates the Bussmann company by a good 30 years or more (it's used in engineering documents and handbooks from the 1880s). It probably derives from the Germanic / northern European / Scots gaelic of the time, since they were big engineering regions.

But don't let that stop your misplaced outrage. Why not turn it to the common mispronunciation of "router" (i.e." rowt-er") instead? "Rout" (pronounced "rowt") means " to turn aside; a disorderly retreat or decisive defeat", while "route" (pronounced "root") means "a way or course taken in getting from a starting point to a destination". Which does your router do?

Hence, the device used in networking should be pronounced "root-er"...

(Notwithstanding the fact that most of them should be pronounced "gateway", since that's the correct networking term for a device that interfaces between different physical transports or protocols...)

A Fortune 500 company was interviewing for a CFO, and narrowed the field down to 4 candidates - a mathematician, a market researcher, a statistician, and an economist. Because they were so close in every other respect, they brought all 4 in together for an executive panel interview.

The CEO asked the interviewees "What's 2+2"?

The mathematician replied "Four".

The market researcher said "Ha! I heard you asked the tricky questions! So..." - and here he rustled through the pile of paperwork he'd brought with him - "...yesterday I surveyed 100 second grade teachers, and the most common answers ranged between 3 and 5".

The statistician looked sideways at the columns of figures in front of the market reseacher, spent a few minutes jotting on a napkin, and said "I can state with 95% confidence the answer is four".

The economist glanced at the rest of the candidates with barely-disguised pity, leaned over the desk, and whispered in the CEO's ear...

"What would you like it to be?"

Nothing wrong with Windows 2...

Overlapping windows! A control panel! VGA support! The first Windows versions of Excel & Word! The first use of 'minimise' and 'maximise' for windows controls! An Apple lawsuit!

Not to mention 2.10, which brought Windows/386 and a proper protected mode (and Windows/286, which brought ... ummm, something, I'm sure).

As far as Windows goes v2 was actually alright, and at least equalled (if not surpassed) the competition of the time (e.g. GEM, DeskMate).

Personally I'm waiting for the news of proprietary extensions certain BSD codebases by Apple...

GPL to BSD: "Dad, you're doing it wrong!"

Go home Xenu, you're drunk...

I'm curious if this is the same troupe of monkeys that were recently laid off from Microsoft, after they completed Windows 8.

It doesn't matter how much poo they've flung in the past - please, they still deserve to be called "Developers".

I wonder if they have opportunities to teach these behaviors to wild monkeys who will someday destroy all the bird nests in China.

"No soup for you!"

Were you expecting him to fab his own chips? Maybe he should grow his own silicon wafers while he's at it. Although, if he really wants to make a DIY phone, he must first invent the universe.

Oooh, sarcasm!

You're being stupid, but yes - I do expect a bit more from a so-called tech site than "Man Builds Cellphone By Plugging Together Bits From Adafruit & Micro4You". Maybe a little bit of soldering, or at least a reasonable bit of commentary on how it all plugs together & works?

In case you didn't realise, the GSM module is pretty much the complete phone by itself; it's got the radio, controller, mic input, & speaker output all on one board. All that's missing is something to send it AT dialling commands.

And it's not like the same thing hasn't been done several times before, using everything from arduinos and MSP430s up to ARM chips...

$40 for the rPi, $35 for the 320x240 touchscreen, $15 for the LiPo battery, $48 for the GSM module, and about $20 for miscellaneous other minor parts.

So, really this is "Man Builds DIY Cellphone Using DIY Cellphone Module".