Posts by roger stillick

H1B visa a red herring..

Here in the good old USA any spouse holding a H1B residence visa can simply BUY an EXISTING BUSINESS and get on with making money.. Here on the NW Oregon Coast failed restaurant and motel franchises are sold on the cheap to just those folks.. If they are any good at milking a cash cow they are legally working without the Green Card (their employees work, owners pay themselves first)..

IMHO= Being successful in a Business seems to Trump any immigration laws (the joke)..RS.

DARPA SWARM TECH software??

Tested recently by US military.. mini drone swarm launched by an FA-18 connected to each other.. forming a distributed hive mind and "did things using GPS for position info..

IMHO= this sounds like an Electric Smart Road to me.. the inferred FFT imaging over all who participate gives everyone participating an extremely fine grain picture of the vehicles, the road, and each vehicles intentions..

Sadly this will never be implemented as each Manufacturer will want to "own" the process.. RS.

Rural USA has no Level 3

Out here on The NW Oregon Coast we had QWEST w/corroded out copper DSL and a cable service offering oversold internet service 56-300 Kb.. QWEST merged with Century Link 10 years ago and we now have 7 Mb DSL on fiber to the hub with aerial fiber to hubs in every place there is a group of customers.. Hubs in RV parks, Apartment complexes, rural subdivisions, and Subscriber Carrier terminals feeding local pots lines..

Q= how does Level 3 get better than this ?? Do they really have universal fiber to the curb ?? Or, do they pick the available low hanging fruit ??

IMHO= VOIP is not broadband, and Century link is a world spanning broadband carrier.. merging the 2 is simply synergy, or the combo will be much better than each alone.. RS.

caveiat= i am a retired QWEST comm tech..

Streaming Video ??

Using Ubuntu - Mate= lost the ability of the Netscape Browser to support Streaming Video..

Or, no NHK-TV, no NPR-TV, no streaming video of any kind.. HTML-5 stuff works ok..

a technical complaint to NHK-tv staff resulted in a reply last month= "they were looking into it'..

IMHO= global TV folks finally realized a large percentage of their audience couldn't view them..

Those same TV folks probably asked Adobe to "fix it'.. RS.

Mason Bees do some of this, NOT Apis bees...

The NW Oregon Coast has few flowers and fewer veg gardens... so no Apis honey bees...

To get plant pollination, we have to buy tubes of Mason Bees, most do not survive the winter...

The housing areas 5 miles inland have 5 types of Apis bees to work their gardens, with some working beehives...

AFIK= most hive failure here due to AG insect control chemicals... RDS.

Cosmography of the Local Universe ??

ESA several years ago made this 17 min video map..

Parks and 300 others redid all of the ESA's Space telescope data...

Seems the WMAP data seemed to be bogus, after 18 months we got the map...

Joke Alert= Parks is in Stage 1 of the Benchly Park Historical Archiving System,

OR, take a few pictures and bin it... IMHO=most astro-boffins know this stuff...RS.

Do Forever= Launch better Starships yearly, Return...

Sarcasm alert= better check out the TV series "the Expanse" b/f doing anything...

Apparently even nearby space exploration with humans on board is next to impossible...

Traveling anywhere w/ hundreds of tons of nukes on board is even less of a good idea...

IMHO= Launch an "out there" improved robot interstellar probe yearly w/ lessons learned...

Joke Alert= Hope our robot explorers remember us until we develop workable Star Gates...RDS.

CISCO 15454 Fiber Terminal

Ref Google Images= CISCO 15454 manual...

IMHO= every fiber terminal similar to the CISCO 154454 fiber transmux / terminal has had a direct fiber to electrical interface chip assembly... these folks have a single chip processor version with similar functions that unfortunately look like the 10 year old stuff... great for hobby and makers kit, just not patentable as new teck stuff...RDS.

WIKI= Azolla Event...

My Son told me about this when he was in Botany class at NAU many years ago... it is common knowlege by most Biologists / Bio Chemists, but kept a quiet subject as it upsets grant funders.

Seems 49 MY ago CO2 levels went from 3500 ppm to 650 ppm, over an 800k year span... Azolla weed sequesters CO2 very efficiently and later becomes crude oil... YUM, my car loves that stuff.... RDS.

Blame it on the Atlatl and natural selection

IMHO= the Atlatl w/it's unique bone launching hook and twin-holed stone weight has been found in every cave site on every continent that pre-history man lived in as far back as 50k years ago.

This simple weapon allowed man to kill just about everything else for food... got us out of the caves...spears and bows n arrows MUCH later for warefare use...RDS.

Deus ex Machina ??

We seem to get a lot of these "ah-ha" momemnents, that, when looked at a second time are simply a plot fix in the unwritten book of everything...

Simply combine Deus ex Machina with the Anthropic Principle and you get the current 'Big Bang' view of the universe...

IMHO= the 800 Pound Gorilla in the room is simply= what is Hydrogen, and, how is it apparently being formed ?? Hydrogen or lack of it seems to be the basic problem of everything...

caveiat= i am a Buddhist techno historian... RS.

IBM Power 8 or better interal busses...

address this quite nicely... sorry Intel, my Haswell chipped Chinese Laptop has the port... nothing fast to hook to it... so it's a workstation-nothing more... Apache server ?? sure, just like my long gone IBM PC.

IMHO= hubris heard here does not equal a server solution... RS

IBM Power 8 or better, Apache n Websphere... done.

might actually work too...

NTSC to HD n bye bye...

We lease a whole household full of DirecTv obsolete wired NTSC set top boxes (3) hooked to a mix of NTSC and HD screens... we now have enough LED screens to go wireless HD... with the exception of "Days of Our Lives" soap (watched since day one, worked nites at ATT) everything we watch is either off air on UHF or on the internet via HULU or NETFLIX... or might just stop using DirecTV.

Joke Alert= have not signed up for any upgrade as we heard ATT wants to buy DirecTV and kill it in 2 years after making their cell phone video tv a USA standard... one of our relatives tried that ATT tv set up the next town over and it failed miserably when a 2nd or 3rd set was added wirelessly... had to go to the master to reboot the slaves... they went back to basic cable w/ Netflix... the joke's on DirecTv= we really do not need their product, especially if it is being groomed for a sale to ATT w/ plans to kill it in 2 years... RS.

Source of positrons ?? man made n observed in Cosmic Rays since the 1930's...

Currantly being used in Medical Imaging, called PET / CT... positrons were the first man made radioactive sources in the 1930's, cosmic Rays from Earth's Lightning strikes n hi energy galactic sourced particles both decay into positron emmission n other particles... we have been looking at these things since 1934.

IMHO= ISS positron detecter ?? sure... seeing some positrons and calling dark matter is similar to calling any newfound object a UFO, which by definition it is... just no LGM's looking out of viewing ports on the Real UFO's that aren't there.

Please Note= positrons are part of the VISIBLE, countable, Universe and Not by anyone's definition= "Dark Matter"... RS.

Base Station on Mast ?? Cool, Q= where does the power come from ??

Last time i checked... power needs batteries, AC power converters and backup Solar or Gen Sets... all of this stuff on top of poles is just too funny for words... or are we all going to play "Wind Generator Repair Person" from here on out ?? Perhaps those AI robots can climb poles or maybe we get to sit on a 'copter skid while we change out corroded batteries... personally, i'm voting for robots , i did my 3 'copter crashes and i'm done w/ that nonsense... RS.

my obsolete DirecTV system uses IR...

from the controller to the NTSC settop box and coax to the hub... the current DirecTV is WiFi HD... will repl the boxes n sets w/ WiFi HD's this summer... the optical free space thingy was hosed from day one as my hard surfaced walls gave freespace multipath to the IR rcvr on the set top box (making sweet spots n dead zones).

At work we tried IR connected laptops a long time ago n it was a joke, went back to the sneaker net or the Cat-5 test cable... couldn't use WiFi as we were afraid of spoofing a data stream.... ditto cell fones... Cisco, Alcatel, Nortel Networks stuff... metro ring mulispectral transport stuff...base rate oc-3, oc-12, oc-48 fiber cross-connect cabeling between stuff.

IMHO= reality... a simple city telco comm center uses about 500 fiber cables fiber cables to hook all the stuff together... all at the same optical wavelengths, fiber is needed to avoid cross-talk... the proposed freespace system here might work as a CDMA headset n pad comm system but not much more...as a possible replacement for Bluetooth... it would probably work just fine - for a single room.

Note= Model railroaders have 2-way IR train controller systems, but, they need repeaters everywhere to keep in contact w/ engine as it travels over the tracks...RS.

Cosmography of the Local Universe by ESA ??

IMHO=might want to Google this and watch it , especially the last 4 minutes...Seems that a recompilation of the entire run of data yielded this 17 minute video map...this happened after the data for this article was crunched several years ago...CMB ?? sure, just watch the video... it's a keeper...RS.

Carl Sagan championed "Carbon Chauvanism"

the very idea that life has to be like here on Earth is so very chauvinastic as to be laughable... however combining it w/ the Anthropic principal and you get a mindset of the 19th century Natural History expert... finding Aliens that look and act like WASP's is highly unlikely.... what wasn't stated in this piece is doorknobs, door handles, and door latches just might be Alien observation tools...we will never know... this and all other stuff that is truely Alien...is not in our thought process or viewed as make believe...RS.

Welcome to 2015....USA...

"Shopping" or druggies using stolen cars to smash into store fronts off hours and grab what they can is the latest crime thing here...

"Working" or druggies ripping copper wiring out of vacent houses and back alley phone cables is a crime that started 10 years ago...

Scrap copper can legally be turned into a recycler in California w/o a bill of sale by the scrapper from the origional owner... not so in Oregon, wire theft is a felony, the wire cannot be sold to a recycler w/o paperwork... so the druggies steal bronze grave markers and aluminum truck rims... those folks go to jail here in Oregon, not so in California...

IMHO= it is a law enforcement thing... or at least a law thing.

Q= why can't we get fiber cable w/ CS- copper-steel line wire n hubs everywhere... no one wants that stuff (CS wire has no scrap value)... at this point it isn't copper anymore, but still cheaper than copper.

note= 100 percent of commercial AC power cabling is aluminum, both overhead or buried, just not used in buildings or homes where copper rules...RS.

Desktops ??= Bring back the SS-100 Buss...

Or perhaps a 4U Blade Server cheapened up to be a super desktop with all the peripheral thingies in psuedo blades (my old 32bit MSI AT-type gaming system comfigured as a Workstation worked as well as a SGI workstation at Work)... played w/ a SS-100 industrial control system b/4 ordering a MSI grey box mule from a Guru in Gearhart, OR... best workstation ever using MS-98 SER-2... obsolete years ago, but definately the way to go for a desktop (actually lived on an extra printer table's paper shelf).

lots of space for extra plug in's... was going to add video cards when a Korean Business 64 bit laptop was chosen for DVD authoring on the then new Win-XP OS... moved photo pix stuff off mule to laptop... years ago.

IMHO= Over the years it has been shown that desktop actually means a Work Station of a size that is affordanle and highly expandable and re-configurable just for the heck of it... No Gallon Can full of packed mystery parts... No Grade School lunch box w/ ATX card n pwr supply... Desktop means Workstation + Linux OS / IBM Lotus Sympony / Apache open office / tons of application software / database lashup's...RS.

Missed GTL Conversions and Dewatered Alge oil...

GE and Royal Dutch Shell are quietly getting rich selling pollution free bus diesel made from natural gas at a cost off less than USD $40.00 per barrel crude oil equivalent... Saudi Arabia and Housten has plants running for the last few years wide open making clean synthetic diesel diesel... South Africa has been doing this since WW2.

The US Navy and the USAF has verified F-15 engines run ok on Synthetic Jet-A made from Dewatered Alge oil... US Commercial airlines are starting tests this year... excess heat from power plants is used to dry the Alge oil and then it is proessed into Jet-a by conventional methods, also a USD $40.00 per barrel crude oil equivalent.

Modular plant equipment results in 200K barrels / day capacity units that can be placed anywhere, land or sea... excess heat from our USN Nuclear Fleet can make "free" Jet-A, likewise excess heat from our US Military bases powered by fuel cells (most now are for money reasons)...

IMHO= decent laptops are going for USD $300.00, tablets for USD $100.00, 16 GB usb chips for USD $10.00... we all win in 2015...YUM...RS.

re- i must be old= Lotus Smart Suite redux

Win-98, Ser-2 had us running Smart Suite as a business platform for our non-profit... worked just fine.

Foward many years, we are now a 100 percent Linux shop..Enter the link to IBM Lotus Symponany site.

Hello 2004, Lotus Lives again !! w/ Apache Open Office Compatability and ODF compatability...ouch !!

We standardized on PDF's for Archive documentation of our IP...

IMHO= might be too late for that ODF thingy... PDF's are stable enough for forever media shifting (archival media only lasts 5 years or so).

caveiat= cannot comment on MS as i no longer use it, can comment on ODF's as i convert a lot of them to PDF's for Archiving...RS.

Jason 7 is right= BUY NAS BOX...

tried 2 different USB extension hubs... neither would support more than 1 pocket drive on 5 different laptops, MS or LINUX Os...

IMHO=they need to be externally powered if you need more than 1 pocket drive... and if you are really using it to keep ANY data off the laptop, Q= do you really need encription it if it never gets off your person ?? how about a NAS box for backup, and a pocket drive for daily use w/laptop ??

The Steampunk folks hollow out a book and totally shield that pocket drive in foam, adding an extermal extension cable ( available at L-COM ) and keep the "book" in their shoulder Messinger bag along w/ the laptop or pad / tablet...

caveiat= dropped my laptop AND my external Pocket drive and killed both drives... lost everything that wasn't backed up on my 3 16GB flash drives...a lot went South, (now have pocket drive duck taped to side of printer table) need a real NAS...RS.

Tried on a 1956 Plymoth Hemi... still doesn't work...

At least it's PRNDL, as mandated by the USDOT for vehicles sold in the USA... the old "Christine" pushbutton drives killed a lot of people= until banned.

2012 brought a USDOT 2015 mandate to get drive controls off touch screens and brought back the PRNDL (Lincoln tried to comply= they forgot the adjacent stop button)...so all 2015 cars have the stop button at least 1 hand span away from the PRNDL ... some luxury cars use a rotary encoder to shift gears.

IMHO= Yet again we get more USDOT mandated uniform driving controls...RS.

Came with the TV bought this Dec...

Set the TV on top of the sub-woofr W/sound bar in front of sub woofer, all on top of a dresser in her bedroom (quad sound, HD TV and no wall mount)...Yum...all AC powered and on sale st Costco.

Note= only thing needed was a coax cable from DirecTv box to TV, all else was plug n play...total time from box to on air= 5 min...RS.

USA warefare in the 21st Century...

Is not about Boots n Guns... it's more about the bad guys having to huddle in a cold, dark room, hungry and wondering what tomorrow will bring (along w/a bunch of new refuges).

a fact= we pay Russia to supply the folks we say we will supply arms to... Russia actually supplies arms to both sides. a-la the Krups of WW1 Germany, only Russia is going broke doing so... the USA controls their money.

IMHO= Present USA monitery policy works just fine= when Russia or anyone else behaves, they prosper... Carrot and Stick policy works for everyone that isn't inherently evil, and eventually those evil folks will just have to evolve or stay unhappy (ask Cuba how things are going)...RS.

the handset to tower data chan is NOT p/o SS7...

the low-speed data channel, handset to tower, that makes the "cell phone" system actually function was never meant to be seure... with that being said please remember the handset transmits it's "Serial Number", not it's "phone number" and that "phone number" is found in a lookup table in the reigional SS7 rate,route, setup, takedown, call authentication computer (used for EVERY call in the entire reigion= local, toll, or mobile).

Sorry= after a 3rd reading n looking at comments= i got sidetracked on a SS7 rant when a simple "yes, handsets are not secure, Do Not say or send anything you don't want on page 1 of the local newspaper" would have been more appropriate...RS.

Q= what real life does to these magnetic arrays...

Electronic devices in the homes around me has rendered AM /SSB Radio reception at any frequency useless due to all the noise generated by those uncountable digital devices operating 24x7x365...

Joke Alert= random electromagnetic noise has a voltage component by any of Maxwell's Field eqiations...

Q= how is the voltage component of background noise different from a programming voltage that is advertised as very low ??

IMHO= we went from ferrite everything to get the ferrite out of everything as non-linear magnetic devices were inherently unstable...RS.

Waited 6 years for 7Mb service on copper... Done.

Joke Alert= Here in the USA some telco's have finally discovered that aerial fiber to the hub is infinately cheaper than any copper pair lash up CO to customer... those hubs could also serve any lash up of cell tower wireless, currently being fed on short haul, point to point, digital microwave (subject to loss of siginal due to weather or solar storms)... Verizon and AT&T seem to be unwilling to lease facilities from local Telcos (FCC law allows it)... we continue to have areas of our country that actually have NO internet service due to lack of even useable dial-up service. It is simply Satellite internet or nothing.

IMHO= TV ads show great coverage areas for wireless services... Areas of Coverage does NOT equal being able to actually use wireless due to overloaded facilites due to overselling service.

Caveiat= My nephiew lives 50 miles from a major Hydro power dam in NE Washington state, his one and only dial-up local ISP has a 2Mb monthly data cap... he barely gets email (uses text only browser) and there is no cell service (next to Collville Indian Reservation)...so we all correspond by USB Data Sticks in the mail (visions of C-64 and mailing floppies worldwide 30 years ago)...RS.