I have two apple 30-inch displays (the anti-glare type) on my linux box. I can easily see four or five "pages" of text all at once, either looking at separate documents or one doc showing several pages at the same time.

For spreadsheets, it's amazing how much I can see at once. I guess if I needed a LOT more rows I could go portrait. Right now on one monitor I can see rows 1 through 81, and columns A through AB (at 100% zoom). If I stretch it all the way across both screens, I can see to column BE.

So... yeah I guess if rows were more important I could effective reverse the situation and stack two monitors vertically, each in portrait mode!

Until they explain, in detail, what the harassing was, I'm not buying it.

There is a rather wide range of things that can be considered "harassment" these days, and I think unless you know the specifics you are lowering yourself.

How about this: We take advice and wisdom about device physics from Shockley, and moral advice from someone else. Why is that so difficult?

In my experience, the most vocal student complainers are the ones that are failing courses and not doing homework.

"He's so difficult, he makes us show our work."

That kind of thing. And they are, always, the most sensitive to teacher comments.

So combine the three together: A PC-culture with zero-tolerance policies, a wild out-there-awesome "round peg in a square hole" professor, and a lazy complaining student.

Getting back to your point, "enough for the student to formally complain" doesn't mean shit unless a large amount of students are complaining that he isn't doing his job.

Obligatory:

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

I wish I had more professors like this guy. Just watching him demonstrate physics and talk about how wonderful it is to inspire a student, and how he knows most will forget the thousands of physics equations they learn, but that is not the important part.

We need more professors like Lewin. May this video inspire the teacher in you to appreciate inspiration. And to the physics teachers out there that cannot allow an outside thought or a moment of tactile examples, shame on you!

Of course, people like him do not fit the mold and are bound to be kicked around by society. I am very curious what these alleged emails really contained. Was it merely something not quite PC enough for today's crowd, or was it something truly grotesque and thus damning and beyond recovery?

Well... if you don't have much to talk about I guess you can't complain about not having many folks to talk to.

But seriously, I find it nice to talk on simplex on the way to and from work. It's a good time for a conversation that is confined to a fixed length of time. With the family, my son and I have Baofeng UV-5rs that are very fun.

Not sure where you live, but here in LA there is a fair amount of activity on 146.52, and plenty of activity on the local repeaters. Same goes for the 440 repeaters, there's always someone talking it up.

I would say if you find the amount of traffic disappointing, get up the nerve to call CQ, and make a point out of doing every time you are in the car at least a few times. Stir up the traffic! Tune in to your local repeaters and just ask if anyone is monitoring. There should at least be a control op on each one.

And if you want to see bands packed full of people, get a 20 meter SSB transceiver and a monoband antenna and you will work world-wide DX from your car pretty much whenever you like.

Are there really ambulances in England using the ham bands? For transmitting medical data?

I guess they use their bands differently than we do here in the US...

Why does emergency communication need to be encrypted? If you place yourself in a situation where ham radio would really save the day, the last thing you would want is *less* compatibility with other stations and agencies.

All this will do is allow commercial users to encroach onto the ham bands unnoticed because illegal encrypted traffic is indistinguishable from legal encrypted traffic.

I think it's already questionable why local police departments would use encrypted P25. If the last few months of newsworthy police activity are any hint, we need more opportunities to observe law enforcement, not fewer.

Why the heck does an ambulance need to use ham radio frequencies? Why would they need it encrypted? This argument is simply nonsense. If its an emergency, sorry, loose some privacy in place of saving your life. Hams have enough trouble setting up a PL on a radio, can you imagine them trying to coordinate encryption over the air? In emergency situations, communications networks like ham radio work because they are SIMPLE. They can spring up spontaneously out of nowhere and don't require anything more than a radio, antenna, and battery. This is why ham radio has been helpful in times of emergencies when complex cellular and digital trunking systems fail. There is an elegance to the simplicity of analog.

And if the DOD needs to transmit encrypted information using a ham radio, then can't they just do it anyway?

Furthermore, digital communication does not "need" to be encrypted as some posters here have stated. The protocol needs to be documented and standardized. Encryption doesn't help. Error correction does though, and these are totally different things. WiFi, for example, does not *need* to be encrypted.

Mod parent up, this is accurate. You found the GP's domain name through his slashdot user page and looked it up. Bravo!

I bet that would work. Makes sense. Just ask comcast what SMTP you are supposed to use.

Don't you think though, with a "forever" house, waiting a few years for bigger, faster internet would be worth it?

I think it's inevitable.

http://news.slashdot.org/story...

But still seriously cool. Between this, the entire linux kernel, and DOOM, there is a lot of neat code online to analyze.

Reading code is to coding as reading books is to writing. Essential.

You're right, I've been thinking this for a long time. If we do it right, we will eliminate drunk driving and killed-by-sms. Wouldn't that be nice.

As far as my rights, I'm just fine giving up manually navigating LA traffic... I can't imagine anything better.