I agree with this absolutely. I have a mother-in-law that literally lives across the country from me. I don't get over there all that often to work on the thing and it used to be a malware nightmare no matter how much prophylactic I would install. It's also an older computer, something I built for her almost 10 years ago (a Duron 800mhz, I believe!). Well, last summer, I took a stack of my old computer garbage to upgrade the platform as far as it would go and a XUbuntu disk. At first, my mother-in-law didn't much care for it, but before a couple months were out, she was a huge fan. The fact is that linux requires LESS support than Windows. It just works, works the way I set it up. It isn't tangled with malware or part of a botnet. It hasn't torn itself apart with its own self-loathing (like windows is wont to do). I even installed a fairly staggering selection of games from the humble bundle so that grandkids would still have games to play. I had converted her to firefox & thunderbird years ago, so those applications were still familiar to her, and to be honest, those are almost the only applications that she uses (and I'll bet those are almost the only applications your grandma uses too!). The fact is that the LESS computer saavy the user, the easier it is for them to switch to Linux.

A friend of mine heard the following statement while in law school from a professor: "Lawyers exist basically to slow things down and get paid a lot of money." From my experience as a pro se litigant, I would have to agree. I honestly would never be able to afford to pay a lawyer for the work that I do myself. It's like working on your own car: if you can afford to have someone else do it for you, that's great.. but I've never been that guy. :)

People have been doing BGA in toaster ovens for a while now. I'm not saying I'd try it with stuff this size, but it is doable. http://www.die4laser.com/toaster/index.html

Mod parent up. People that don't understand radio shouldn't comment about radio.

Interesting ideas, to be sure. It sounds like there already exists a framework for 10w FM broadcast (LPFM), but that the FCC stopped offering any licenses in 2003. I do agree that a 10w FM station on a channelized VHF band segment would probably not have too many problems with interference. Especially with the new narrow-band receivers & transmitters. You're right, though. I doubt that the FCC will ever enact such a thing. I'm still waiting for the FCC to move GMRS to an unlicensed service under part 15. There is a petition that has been pending, but I'm not holding my breath.

Oh! You were talking about BROADCASTING. It's too bad you didn't mention anything about broadcasting in your original post. I hold an extra class ticket too. It looked to me like you were mindlessly ranting about how the government doesn't give spectrum to the public, which it in fact does (in spades). The whole silly idea of letting every unlicensed idiot broadcast is nonsense. How in the world would you keep them from interfering with each other? How would you regulate these unlicensed broadcast stations _at all_? I've seen how much the FCC polices GMRS.
Yes, you're right. You can't setup a radio or TV broadcast station out of your house without considerable difficulty. If, however, you'd like to setup a point-point internet over radio service, you're welcome to do that over the ham bands. Folks do it all the time. You can't use them for commercial use, you can't transmit music (although you _can_ transmit video). In actual fact, you can setup a _very_ QRP FM broadcast station according to the FCC regs, but I doubt you could be heard more than a block away at the requisite power levels. In the future, try to be more clear about what you are talking about before getting worked up because you've been misunderstood.

Are you kidding me? You're honestly complaining about the lack of spectrum that is available for public use?
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Hambands_color.pdf

For an example of how goofy these laws can be (and how heavily influenced by the hands-free-headset lobby), take a moment to peruse my state's cellphone-while-driving law: http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.61.667

Things to take note of:
1) It is ok for me to talk on my cellphone (with it held to my ear), provided it is in speakerphone mode.
2) It is ok for me to talk on my cellphone IN FRONT OF MY FACE as long as it is in speakerphone mode.
3) It is ok for me to operate my amateur radio while driving, because dialing in a faint SSB signal from Japan on 10m while driving down the road, swapping callsigns and signal reports and having a FB QSO is apparently safer than holding a cellphone to my head while driving.

Anyways, if anyone wants to call me while I'm driving, I'll be on 146.52

I agree, scanned black & white negatives just aren't the same as printing them optically. Most people prefer a much lower contrast negative for scanning and ICE doesn't work with real B&W film. I'm able to print in my laundry room. I bought a Beseler 23C enlarger with lenses for about $100 a while back and aside from space for the enlarger, all you really need space for is the 8x10 trays. For printing, the room doesn't have to be "perfectly dark" like with inspection film developing. I find that all I need to do is wait until it is dark outside and pull the curtains shut. I still think it is magic when I see the picture start to form in the dektol. :)

There's a lot of good information and good perspective in this post, although I do believe that it is heavily skewed towards wedding photography and to a lesser extent photo journalism. (Which makes sense, consider the poster's admitted background of being a photo lab technician).

Time was, if you saw a wedding photographer with a 35mm camera, you knew they were amateur. The real wedding photographers all shot 645 or 6x6 on 220. This was still the case in 2000. The photo journalists were the first to make a serious switch to digital. This makes sense, since they were the first to switch to 35mm to begin with. In their line of work, being able to haul less gear and take more pictures is all win and they don't mind poor quality.

Fast forward to 2011. DSLR's can now seriously compete with 35mm for quality. Medium format equipment is basically worthless, since the people that used it (wedding photographers) have all switched to digital. Small format (35mm) color photography has effectively been replaced by digital.

This leaves 3 remaining classes of photographer that still seriously shoot film:
1) Landscape photographers. Landscape photographers still use large format view cameras. The difference in effective resolution between a 15mp digital camera and an 8x10 negative is so large that there isn't even an argument. When people sit down to argue "which is better", film or digital, they are always talking about 35mm. Digital can't even come close to competing with the quality of medium format yet, so I think that these folks will be taking their photographs on film for a long time to come.

2) Black & White photographers. Black and white film developing and printing is easy to do at home with minimal equipment. Real black & white printed optically looks gorgeous. We still can't easily reproduce that with digital.. (Full disclosure, my connection to Kodak is that I still buy Tri-X, Dektol, XTOL & Kodak indicator stop bath on a regular basis). Ken Rockwell has a good article on this subject: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/modern-bw.htm

3) "Lomographers". These photographers revel in lo-fi. It's kind of the opposite of the "measurebator" 'photogs'. Although I don't agree with the astonishing prices for some of these garbage cameras ($100 for a diana?!?) I applaud the emphasis on technique rather than chasing the fastest & sharpest lenses.

At last, a like minded individual! All of my most important data is stored on Floptical Diskettes.

GMRS licensees are already authorized to transmit up to 50w and to have detachable antennas and there are repeaters as well. Ta-da! Your wish has been granted!

Seriously.

"Is that some kind of fancy lightbulb, mister? Can I interest you in a cellphone?"
Actually, the last time I was in radio shack, they had a line of small PIC based kits on the shelves. I think that radioshack might be trying to get in on this whole kit building idea too. I'd love it if they did. I order all of my parts from mouser or digikey, but it sure would be nice to have a place to go to buy a few odds and ends when I needed without having them shipped.

Exactly. This comes back to the problem that I _JUST_ ran into with this article. I read that there are some neat accurate emulators I hadn't even heard about (Nintendulator & bsnes).. Cool! Let's see, what are the hardware requirements?

Nestopia 800mhz
Nintendulator 1.5ghz
bsnes 2-3ghz

These values mean absolutely NOTHING performance wise. I have Athlon XP 2500's that clock in at 2ghz. I also have Athlon 64 3700 that clocks in at 2.2ghz. Does that mean that the two processors are roughly equivalent? NO! It doesn't. It just means that the two processors have a similar frequency oscillator attached to them. It doesn't mean ANYTHING about the actual performance requirements to run these games. I still don't know if the kids' computers will push Nintendulator for example, since they are all 2ghz Athlon XP machines. I also don't know if my OWN computer (Athlon64x2 6000+) will push bsnes with its two cores clocked at 2.5ghz each. Oscillator frequency means nothing unless you also include what particular processor (running at that oscillator frequency) the software requires. Even then, I've still got to go through the interesting headgames, trying to decide if my XXX is vaguely equivalent to YYY.