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Comment Re:Easy life (Score 1) 208

You'd have to browse Pubmed with blinders on to miss all the studies of how weight training leads to injuries. Just picking one author who writes about them, here's 1 2 3 4 studies on it. I only do body weight exercises now, and I count myself lucky that I only have one mild uncorrectable shoulder injury from my lifting days.

Businesses

Under US Pressure, PayPal Stops Working With Mega 136

New submitter seoras sends news that PayPal is now refusing to handle payments for Mega, Kim Dotcom's cloud storage service. A report (PDF) issued in September of last year claimed Mega and other "cyberlocker" sites made a great deal of illicit money off piracy. Mega disputes this, of course, and says the report caused U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy to pressure credit card companies to stop working with Mega. Those companies then pressured PayPal to stop as well. The hosting company claims, "MEGA provided extensive statistics and other evidence showing that MEGA’s business is legitimate and legally compliant. After discussions that appeared to satisfy PayPal’s queries, MEGA authorised PayPal to share that material with Visa and MasterCard. Eventually PayPal made a non-negotiable decision to immediately terminate services to MEGA."
Earth

We Stopped At Two Nuclear Bombs; We Can Stop At Two Degrees. 341

Lasrick writes Dawn Stover writes in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that climate change is irreversible but not unstoppable. She describes the changes that are happening already and also those likely to happen, and compares what is coming to the climate of the Pliocene: 'Even if countries reduce emissions enough to keep temperatures from rising much above the internationally agreed-upon "danger" threshold of 2 degrees Celsius (which seems increasingly unlikely), we can still look forward to conditions similar to those of the mid-Pliocene epoch of 3 million years ago. At that time, the continents were in much the same positions that they are today, carbon dioxide levels ranged between 350 and 400 ppm, the global average temperature was 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher than it is today (but up to 20 degrees higher than today at the northernmost latitudes), the global sea level was about 25 meters higher, and most of today's North American forests were grasslands and savanna.' Stover agrees with two scientists published in Nature Geoscience that 'Future warming is therefore driven by socio-economic inertia," and points the way toward changing a Pliocene future.

Comment Re:fees (Score 2) 391

It depends on your definition of a broadband provider is. In my area, outside of Boise, ID, we have a hand full of choices by a very loose definition. However when it comes down to it, there is only one, maybe two.

CableOne - Best option if you can get it. $60/mo for 30x2. Fast speeds (up to 75x5,) great service (especially with "business" plan) and decent coverage area in town. No enforced data caps on business plans, rate limits when caps exceeded for residential plans.

Century Link DSL - Second best choice, though speeds are nowhere near cable (most areas still get 1.5-7x768 up. A few select areas can get 40x5.) They are just as expensive as cable for the lowest speeds if you don't "bundle" with landline service. Typical telco customer service experience.

Digis - $40/mo for 5/1 speed. Wireless service, so not as stable as wired service.

Safelink - Wireless $25/mo for 1M/256 service, 10 GB limit. $100/mo for 15x2 service, "no limit."

Speedyquick - Wireless $40/mo for 1x1 service, "premium" account for $75/mo 4x1 service.

If you take the FCC's new definition of broadband internet (25x4 minimum,) CableOne is the only option with their most expensive plan unless you happen to live in one of the small areas here that qualify for CenturyLink's 40x5 service. Even if you relax that definition a bit and go to 10x1, you're still limited to CableOne, some CenturyLink areas, and SafeLink's $100/mo plan.

Comment Re:GNUradio? (Score 1) 135

Test equipment is allowed to transmit and receive on those frequencies. If it looks like a radio, it can't. I have a number of cellular testers hanging around here that can act like base stations, mostly because I buy them used as spectrum analyzers and never use the (obsolete) cellular facilities. Government has different rules regarding what it can and can't do in the name of law enforcement, although FCC has been very reluctant to allow them to use cellular jammers.

If you can afford it, something from Ettus would better suit your application.

Comment Re:"Proprietary So I Get Paid", from Bruce Perens? (Score 1) 135

Hi AC,

Matt Ettus has a story about a Chinese cloner of the USRP. The guy tells Chinese customers that it is illegal for them to buy from Ettus, they must buy from the cloner instead. Then, when they have problems and require serivce, he tells them to get it from Ettus. Who of course made nothing from their device sales and can not afford to service them.

This is not following the rules of Open anything. It's counterfeiting.

So, sometimes it is necessary to change the license a little so that you will not be a chump. I discussed the fact that the hardware is fully disclosed but not Open Hardware licensed with RMS, the software is 100% Free Software, and there is a regulatory chip you can't write. We can go for Respects Your Freedom certification that way..

I've paid my dues as far as "Open" is concerned, and Chris has too. This is all we can give you this time.

Comment Re:Why custom punched end panels ? (Score 1) 135

The case selection was so that we'd have at least one case that would work. We did not take much time on it. We'd be happy to have other people designing and selling cases.

The version after this one requires cases that look like real radios. That is going to be a bigger problem. We don't yet have a mold-design partner, etc.

Comment Re:GNUradio? (Score 2) 135

We implement it as a chip that intercepts the serial bus to the VFO chip, and disallows certain frequencies. On FCC-certified equipment we might have to make that chip and the VFO chip physically difficult to get at by potting them or something. This first unit is test-equipment and does not have the limitation.

Comment Re:How about international versions? (Score 1) 135

Anyone who is good at electronics can get around regulatory lockouts. We're not allowed to make it easy. But nor are we technically able to make it impossible.

U.S. regulation only allows Part 95 certified radios to be used on GMRS, and Part 95 requires that the radio be pretty well locked down. But all of those Asian imports are certified for Part 90 and there are lots of users putting them on both Amateur and GMRS. If FCC wanted to push the issue with any particular licensee, they could.

Comment Re:awesome! (Score 1) 135

The D-STAR issue is not really ICOM's fault. JARL designed D-STAR (not ICOM) and put the AMBE codec in it because nobody believed that you could have a good open codec at the time. We now have Codec2 (a project I evangelized and recruited the developer) which is fully open. And we do have a software AMBE decoder in Open Source, although the patents won't let us use it. That is why I am working on the patent issue (as noted in the last slide of the presentation).

I know about the counterfeit FTDI chips, and Matt Ettus told me what has happened with the Chinese clone of USRP. We know what to do.

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