Disqus - Latest Comments for LinearBob

Re: Did China Eat America’s Jobs?

LinearBob — Sun, 19 Feb 2017 06:26:32 -0000

I hope the Freakonomics Radio team will re-examine the terms of the TPP
and the other trade treaties that would place corporations on a par with governments AND move all disputes into "tribunals" that are not encumbered by legal precedent or even the laws of any country. In fact, there is no appeal mechanism to the "arbitration " procedure built into those trade treaties, either. And who are the arbitrators in these tribunals? Why, they are corporate lawyers, of course -- the very same lawyers that represent corporations in other trade disputes. So who do you think they will decide for -- the local government whose environmental regulations their clients want to over-rule, or the corporations whose money they take when they are not wearing their "arbitrator" hats"?

Re: Museum Seeks Aid in Getting Vintage VTR to NAB Show

LinearBob — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 11:22:21 -0000

I remember seeing a pair of these machines in operation at San Jose State University (in the ITV department), and I believe a properly packed VR-1000 probably would survive the trip. The problem is the many vacuum tubes it took to make these beasts work may not survive the trip even with careful removal and separate packing. Finding spares to replace the vacuum tubes that might not survive the trip could be difficult, but Ampex did not use particularly exotic vacuum tubes in the VR-1000, so obtaining the required spares probably can be done.

Ampex was well aware of the reliability problem of using vacuum tubes. The station I worked for in the late 1960s had a pair of VR-1100 machines, which were all solid state, but otherwise equivalent to the VR-1000 machines. In fact, many of the chassis that made up the VR-1100 were built in a manner that allowed them to be used as electrical replacements for the vacuum tube based chassis of the VR-1000.

One of the more common field modifications was to remove the vacuum tube based motor power amplifiers (used for driving the capstan and video head motors) and replace them with the solid state motor power amplifiers designed and built for the VR-1100. This single change significantly reduced the total power consumption of the machine, improved its reliability, and reduced its size because those two motor power amplifiers were actually high power audio amplifiers passing either two phase 60 Hz or three phase 240 Hz sine waves (upwards of 100 watts output) to their respective motors and the germanium power semiconductors of the early 60's were quite capable of this through proper impedance matching transformers. Since the motor drive signals were single frequency sine waves (with slight frequency/phase variations) for driving motors, harmonic and intermodulation distortions were not a significant problem.

Re: From 9/11 to Ebola to ISIS — Here’s why some people’s brains are wired to believe conspiracy theories

LinearBob — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 23:54:41 -0000

I repeat my challenge to you. This is HIGH SCHOOL PHYSICS. Can you not even do the simple algebra involved for yourself? Do you really need a "certified" authority figure, i.e someone with, as you state, "a degree in structural engineering", to tell you what you could easily see and measure for yourself? How did you get out of high school? I'm serious. Are you truly incapable of doing the math to calculate how long the "free fall" of an object dropped from the roof of a 47 story building would take and compare that with a measurement you can also make for yourself with a stopwatchj? (Damn -- I keep forgetting that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.)

Re: From 9/11 to Ebola to ISIS — Here’s why some people’s brains are wired to believe conspiracy theories

LinearBob — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 09:50:02 -0000

So those weren't free fall speed collapses? I mean, from 47 stories to a pile of rubble in about 10 seconds must then be a freak event, and not a planned demolition, despite comments before the collapse of Building 7 about the Fire Department "pulling" that building

Re: From 9/11 to Ebola to ISIS — Here’s why some people’s brains are wired to believe conspiracy theories

LinearBob — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 09:35:44 -0000

And the presence of nanothermite and nanothermate in the dust of the WTC buildings is not evidence? Those are not naturally occurring materials, period. So how did they get to be in that dust?

And while you are at it, have you ever tried to break up some concrete? It breaks into chunks, with very little dust. So how did so much concrete turn into small particle dust?

Re: From 9/11 to Ebola to ISIS — Here’s why some people’s brains are wired to believe conspiracy theories

LinearBob — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 09:23:57 -0000

Where was NORAD on that day? AFAIK, any commercial airliner that 1) goes off course, and 2) does not respond to radio calls by air traffic controllers, will soon have an escort in the air, typically two fighter planes. That is what happens routinely, on every occasion EXCEPT when 4 airliners went off course on 9-11, and NORAD was nowhere to be found. 'Splain to me that, Lucy!

And while you are at it, explain what it was Norman Minetta was talking about, when he described in sworn testimony to the 9-11 commission a series of contacts between Vice President Cheney and a soldier who kept telling Mr. Cheney about an approaching plane, and who kept asking if the orders still stood? What was that testimony about? And what happened to the anti-aircraft missile defence systems based near the Pentagon?

Re: From 9/11 to Ebola to ISIS — Here’s why some people’s brains are wired to believe conspiracy theories

LinearBob — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 08:19:19 -0000

Do you have eyes? Do you have a stopwatch? Can you time the "collapse" of Building 7 and compare that to what a High School Physics textbook will tell you about falling objects and how long it takes for them to fall to the ground from a known height?

Re: From 9/11 to Ebola to ISIS — Here’s why some people’s brains are wired to believe conspiracy theories

LinearBob — Sun, 27 Dec 2015 08:07:11 -0000

Is that why Building 7 buckled slightly in the center, and then collapsed at free fall speed, exactly like a controlled demolition? The problem is that a fire caused building collapse does not happen with this collapse pattern, but controlled demolitions do. Add to that the man who said the NYFD decided to "pull" the building. Since when does a Fire Department decide to "pull" (demolish) a building? And how did they manage to make that "free fall" speed collapse happen? A free fall speed collapse means there is no resistance to the falling objects as they fall. So where did the vertical strength of all those steel beams go, that the upper floors met no resistance as they came down? I do not know who did this, but I do know the "official" story is exactly that, a story.

Re: Golden Age of TRS-80: A Look Back At Radio Shack Computers

LinearBob — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 14:06:26 -0000

I decided to save my money until I could afford a NorthStar Horizon (an S-100 bus, Z-80 machine with all of the 64K of RAM it could possibly use) instead of getting a TRS-80 for exactly these reasons. But when Tandy/Kyocera produced the Model 100, I jumped for it, and I even paid extra to get an M100 with all of the RAM it could use at one time, 32K. I never regretted spending over $1,000 for my notebook sized, battery powered, but truly portable machine, even though in today's dollars, that was a lot of money for an under-employed electronics technician to spend in 1984. If only Tandy/Radio Shack had not been so anxious to "lock-in" their customers, they might have become a much bigger force in computers, and even exist today, instead of becoming a ghost, and the source of many fond memories.

Re: Golden Age of TRS-80: A Look Back At Radio Shack Computers

LinearBob — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 08:57:57 -0000

Actually, Gates wrote his last bit of code for the Model 100, but because the Model 120 was very similar to the Model 100, Tandy was able to re-use it.

Re: Golden Age of TRS-80: A Look Back At Radio Shack Computers

LinearBob — Sun, 06 Dec 2015 08:50:37 -0000

I still have my M100 (s), too! I bought a backup M100 after I decided that I was using mine so much that I could not afford to lose it to a part failure. The M100 was my go-to machine for text and email via CompuServe. Later on, it became my portable terminal for a portable packet radio set-up I had. I can't say enough good about the folks who designed the M100. They were FAR ahead of their time with a laptop/notebook that could run for several hours on a set of AA alkaline batteries. Then came Club 100, and their "backpack" that attached to the back of the M100 with velcro, and held 4 D size alkalines and tilted the M100 keyboard and screen to a nice angle. Too bad Tandy/Kyocera never made a better machine in the same form factor, but able to read and write to CP/M or DOS floppy disks. If they had, I think Tandy/Radio Shack would have OWNED the laptop market. But Tandy/Radio Shack did OWN the personal computer market (and lost it each time) due to their repeated decision to not be compatible in hardware or software with any other company's products (or even with most of their own products!) Their black and white, either you have an all Tandy system or a no Tandy system, policy doomed them because when corporate America picked IBM for their desktops, Tandy apparently never saw that coming, and with their ALMOST IBM compatible machines, which were over-priced for what they were, and built such that commodity memory, audio, and video cards would not fit or function well in them, Tandy lost their computer market share, and never really regained it. But this was not a one time mistake. Tandy shot their corporate feet at least twice. Sorry to see TandyRadio Shack go. 73 from WA6WHT

Re: Why can’t we have a positive State Senate campaign?

LinearBob — Fri, 13 Nov 2015 06:31:21 -0000

I hoped to be able to download this podcast, "Podcast 2, The Tom and Tim show",but for some reason, I cannot ever get an MP3 file when I try the "Right click, Save As" routine. Podcasts 1 and 3 work as advertised, but this one does not. Bummer! All I get when I right click on this podcast download button is, "jnaH0QK.htm" for the file name. and when I try to check this file, it turns out not to be an audio file of any kind. What's up with this?

Re: DNC chair: Critical official focusing 'on herself'

LinearBob — Wed, 14 Oct 2015 14:21:38 -0000

Why did the Democratic party leadership allow their first public "debate" to be put behind a "pay-wall" -- effectively preventing many people from viewing or listening to that debate? Is this another form of "Pay to Play"?

Re: How Ohio’s Energy Economy Became a Radioactive 19th Century Relic

LinearBob — Sat, 04 Apr 2015 03:05:29 -0000

Kevin -- When was Mr. Kaisich "selected" by the Rethuglican owned and
controlled voting and vote counting machines in Ohio? I believe he was
sworn into office as Governor in 2011, some TWO YEARS after the 2009 bi-partisan vote for the green projects. Mr. Kaisich began turning back the clock after he was sworn into office.

Perhaps you should re-read the article so you can get your facts straight
before you lay blame on the Democrats for the "DUHopoly" that scrapped
the wind, solar, and rail projects in Ohio.

As I read the article and other bits of recent Ohio history, this was entirely a GOP / ALEC joint effort.

Re: Wall Street Can Now Disable Your Car When You're Driving on the Freeway

LinearBob — Sun, 09 Nov 2014 16:17:50 -0000

I meant to say GM has been building this into their cars since 2003 -- or even longer, depending on the particular brand/model. This is not a new idea, but it has been flying below the radar for most people because they have not heard much about the negative aspects of this technology. But consider this: Big Brother can track you anywhere you go in your On-Star equipped car. In addition, there is a microphone and loudspeaker in your car connected to the cell phone hardware. What makes you think that you have turned off the On-Star hardware? That microphone MIGHT be continuously transmitting everything you say in your car to some data archiving warehouse (NSA?) without your knowledge or approval.

Re: Wall Street Can Now Disable Your Car When You're Driving on the Freeway

LinearBob — Sun, 09 Nov 2014 16:03:58 -0000

Are you aware that General Motors has been building a system very much like this into every car they make, and have been since They call it "On-Star" and claim it can be used to help you if you have been in an accident and the airbags deployed. But, what else can this system do? Well, consider this: On-Star has 1) an always on GPS receiver, 2) an always on cell data-link radio/phone (even if you THINK you have turned it off), and 3) an interconnection between the data-link radio and the cars control system. That is how On-Star knows that the air bags have deployed and where you were when that happened.

Do you honestly think the flow of data in the On-Star hardware is only from your car to GM? I am willing to bet that GM also has the ability to "cripple" or even "kill" your GM car remotely. In that respect, what we see here isn't new; it is just more public and visible. And, by the way, GM is not the only auto maker building the On-Star hardware into their cars. Several other auto makers have licensed the technology and are building it into their cars, but they may not be calling it "On-Star" so take a close look at the "features" and see if they match most of what "On-Star" claims to offer to the car buyer. You may have one of these system in that NEW car you bought 10 years ago!

Here are some links to more information about On-Star:

http://auto.howstuffworks.c...
http://auto.howstuffworks.c...
http://auto.howstuffworks.c...

http://www.bankrate.com/brm...

Re: Mexico: Researcher Raises Alert About Environmental Risks in Region With Highest Concentration of Wind Farms in Latin America

LinearBob — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 03:20:27 -0000

Paul,

I think you need to do a little more research, unless you misquoted that paper. The reason I say that is the following quotation:

"We exposed subjects to 1 and 5T, 60 Hz while recording electroencephalograms (EEGs) from six derivations...."

Do you have any idea how strong the magnetic fields in that study were? I suggest you check out the following from WikiPedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

The quote said they used AC magnetic fields in the range of 1 to 5 T. You need to see how strong a 1 Tesla field is. Hint, you can find a magnetic field like that inside the gap where the voice coil is in a decent loudspeaker. I suggest that if there were fields like that anywhere near those wind turbines, you would not be able to drive anywhere near those turbines because they would grab your car rather like the electromagnets in metal salvage yards.

Re: Strong liberals and Democratic activists pick Clinton over Warren

LinearBob — Sat, 23 Aug 2014 20:05:40 -0000

Dark -- Apparently you were not paying attention when Saint Ronald cut the income tax, but increased the payroll tax to offset the economic damage (reduced cash flow getting in the way of his amped up military spending) of those tax cuts. Saint Ronald worked out a real "deal" for the Boomers -- not only will You (the Boomers) pay for your parents in their old age, but You will PAY IN ADVANCE for your own old age. That steep increase in the Social Security payroll tax was the genesis of the "surplus" you commented on that is now being drawn down -- exactly as Saint Ronald and his commission to reform Social Security intended. Perhaps you forgot, or maybe never knew, but Social Security was intended to be revenue neutral, and not accumulate either surpluses or deficits. But there is a distorting factor which has tended to lead to deficits as inflation has taken place, and that is the "cap" beyond which additional pay is not taxed at all. Remove that "cap" and the gloomy future you write about goes away.

Regarding Medicare, consider that in our country, something like 15 to 25% of every dollar spent on medicare is taken off the top and is distributed to corporate share holders as profits to those private corporations providing "medical and health care services", leaving 75 to 85% of the payroll tax collected for the actual benefits to be delivered to those in need. In most countries, medical care is not mixed with profit making businesses because medical care is considered to be a "right" and not a "privilege", although if you are wealthy enough, you can pay for additional care or services.

Perhaps Representative Alan Grayson said it best: The Republican health care plan is "Don't get sick!" But if you do get sick, then the Republican plan is, "Die quickly!"

Re: TVFreedom Brands Pay TV Cheaters

LinearBob — Wed, 11 Jun 2014 22:57:14 -0000

I agree that under most circumstances, DTV works -- but it took a long time before the tuners in the sets and the 8VSB demodulators were capable of dealing with the multipath issues we see here in the Bay Area. My station (KTSF-TV26 and KTSF-DT27) had a lot of reception complaints from people in apartments and condos precisely because they could not put up outdoor antennas. In many instances, the solution was to put an antenna in a window facing toward our transmitter and possibly try a newer set, because there has a lot of improvement in the ability of newer sets to handle multipath distortion.

As for the power levels -- KTSF-TV26 (analog) was a 55 KW transmitter (tip of sync) into a gain antenna with an ERP of 3.5 megawatts from an elevation of approximately 1300 feet. Our DTV is 22 KW average into an antenna with a somewhat different pattern (a bent figure 8 instead of a cardioid) with an ERP of 858 KW in the hottest lobe. The antenna gains are similar, but not the same, in part because the cardioid pattern of our analog was wrong for the terrain. We transmit from Mount San Bruno and a cardioid aimed straight east was not the best way to cover the Bay Area. The bent figure 8 we have now does a much better job, although, as I said, early on we had lots of reception complaints.

Today things are a lot better, but being in market number 5 meant we had to heat the hillsides with a DTV RF signal -- before there even were TV sets with DTV tuners available. It was easy to buy a "DTV Ready" set and what that really meant was it came with a set of connectors for the audio and video outputs of an external tuner (that was yet to be built and sold). In other words, those were really computer monitors, and nothing more.

I disagree about one thing -- NTSC died gracefully. You could watch a picture with a lot of multipath distortion, and your eyes would do a fairly good job of making sense of the overlapping images. But a DTV set in the same multipath environment throws up and says "signal not available". Most sets, even today, give you precious little information regarding what you might do to get better reception, while NTSC gave you a picture, even if it was very poor, and you could at least see the improvement that reorienting your antenna might make. But the digital "cliff effect" means either you have a picture or you do not, and if you do not, there is little to no information regarding what might happen if you relocated you antenna a little, until you suddenly find the signal (but you may have to "rescan" several times).... And you can be watching a perfectly good image that suddenly freezes and then winks off for no apparent reason.

When it works (which is now most of the time) DTV looks and sounds good, although I have seen a lot of lip-sync errors across the dial, so I know it isn't limited to any one station.

Re: TVFreedom Brands Pay TV Cheaters

LinearBob — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 21:21:13 -0000

How long has it been since the Cable companies began their "Neighborhood Beautification" campaigns to eliminate those ugly power lines and telephone cables by banning above ground untilties, and oh, by the way, get rid of those UGLY antennas from all the roof tops, too? As far as I know, that "neighborhood beautification" program began 30 to 40 years ago.

Not only did they do that in my part of the country, but they also lobbied city councils and counties to put restrictions put into people's deeds banning outdoor antennas of all kinds. Those total antenna ban restrictions lasted until the Congress got into the act, mandating that people be allowed to put up their own 18 inch "dish" antennas. But even then, those little dish antennas had to be mounted on places like balcony railings and window sills, and if you happen to live on the north side of an apartment buiding or a condo complex, you are SOL. Only licensed amateur radio operators are somewhat exempted from those antenna restrictions.

So, with the radiated RF fields from DTV broadcasting stations reduced by the FCC to about 20 percent of what they were with analog TV, combined with the "digital cliff effect", the result is that set top antennas are relatively useless for many people, especially people located 30 (or more) miles from a DTV transmitter, so why would anyone be surprised to see so many people "subscribe" to Cable TV? Now look at the TV programming available in the "Basic" tier, and tell me that is all you would like to watch when you come home from work. So most people are likely to pay for an improved service "tier", one that is likely to include some "pay-TV" services.

As far as I am concerned, there has been a concerted effort by the Cable industry to eliminate "free" (over the air) TV for a long time. Those wired "service providers" are now profitting handsomely from their "ban those ugly wires (and antennas)!" campaigns.

Now add the FCC, that in their "wisdom", designed the over the air DTV system to require the use of an outdoor antenna 30 feet off the ground, equipped with a rotator, for optimum DTV reception. That requirement has just about finished off "over the air" TV because few people living in urban areas are able to install such an antenna. I don't know what the FCC engineering folks were thinking, but most people I know have no hope of installing an outdoor TV antenna, period, let alone one 30 feet off the ground with a rotator.

And you wonder why so many people "subscribe" to a wired broadband service so they can watch television? Give me a break!

Re: Net neutrality, April edition

LinearBob — Mon, 28 Apr 2014 20:01:05 -0000

What I do not understand is this: inside the fiber backbones of AT&T, Verizon, et. al. everything is a series of bits, flowing at unimaginable speeds. In fact, there can be several different "color" lasers, each pushing several gigbits of data per second through the same fiber at the same time. Some of those lasers carry digitized voice communications, while other lasers carry digital stuff like web sites and email. What is the difference between a digitized voice and digital email, other than the "color" of the laser used to transmit that data stream through the fiber? So why do those telecom folks complain so much about having to treat all bits equally?

I will answer that in one word -- GREED.

Each laser data stream within the fiber is functionally a "zero-sum game" meaning that if some bits get preferential treatment (they go to the head of the que) other bits will be forced to wait while the preferred bits are allowed to go first.

The only way I can think of to "prove" our email or web site bit streams are being degraded by this intentional queing delay might be if the delay becomes excessive, but proving this latency is deliberate will be difficult, at best. Of course, if an email happens to go to the "No Lane" instead of the "Slow Lane" and that happens often enough, maybe then we can say we think this really is deliberate. But even then, proving it is deliberate will not be easy.

Remember, it took a tightly controlled experiment to prove that Comcast was running a "Man in the middle" attack degrading BitTorrent streams carrying digital versions of the King James Bible. Comcast (and the MPAA) claimed all BitTorrent streams consisted of pirated material, so they did not see that "poisoning" a torrent was doing anything wrong.

Re: 1984 Thirty Years On

LinearBob — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 18:23:38 -0000

Gil,

Have you actually read Orwell's 1984 within the last 10 years? Orwell saw a dystopian future as a real possibility for Great Britain (and the U.S.A.). His fictional version of the future he saw was meant a warning. So what does that have to do with your comments raking the leaves or mowing the lawn without your parents asking you to do it?

Perhaps you missed the thread topic started by Dan when he wrote the following; "I suspect that the existence of a totalitarian state will come not from the right but from the left, by raising new generations to be more and more dependent on government rather than their own brains."

Entertainment corporations making 75% profit on, as you said, "the exhorbatantlt priced sale of their gangbanging drug induced popularity with the very persons that berate the corporations supplying thier needs for survival." has little to do with the rise of totalitarian governments anywhere, let alone the totalitarian government(s) here.

Re: Where's my gigabit Internet, anyway?

LinearBob — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 17:49:56 -0000

What happened to all of the money the Baby Bells have collected that was supposed to pay for a nationwide buildout of their fiber networks? Why is the USA so far behind South Korea, Japan, and Finland for Internet connectivvity? I suggest there is a single word answer -- GREED.

Re: 1984 Thirty Years On

LinearBob — Sun, 13 Apr 2014 18:54:03 -0000

Dan,

I disagree. I think the totalitarian state has already arrived, and it came from the "Right" immediately after the events of 9-11.

The Project for a New American Century,
a think-tank including of some of the core policy advisors
for the Bush Administration,
has become notorious for
articulating the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" in its 2000 policy paper Rebuilding America's Defenses.

The U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act was sitting in a drawer, ready to be thrown on the desks of Congress, and that is exactly what happened within days of the events of 9-11. That was the "enabling legislation" under which the spying and surveillance activities of the NSA and CIA (and 15 or so other security agencies) took the ball and ran.

Meanwhile, the country immediately turned to launch a war on Iraq and then Afghanistan (Mr. Cheney kept pushing for attacking Iraq, even though no one could prove the 9-11 hijackers had anything to do with Saddam Hussein or Iraq). Mr. Cheney settled for attacking Afghanistan first, followed by Iraq a few months later. Remember "Operation Iraqi Liberation"? I do. And so should you. And do you recall how quickly that assault on Iraq was renamed after someone noticed the acronym of it was OIL?

And who is defending the NSA now? Looks like a lot of hard right wingers are, because they claim the NSA is protecting us from the terrorists!

Re: All Writers Doubt Themselves – How YOU Can Overcome Doubt

LinearBob — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 04:30:47 -0000

Bryan, I would like an epub version of your book, so I can read it on one of my ebook readers. Is it available in that format? Barnes and Noble (I have a color Nook) does not list it as available. Neither does Kobo (I have one of their e-ink readers I got from Borders back in the day). But both of these ereaders like the epub format, and if I can find it somewhere I would purchase it and download it. If I have to, I would even live with a PDF.

I like your story about how you wound up publishing your memoir. Just because we are not all wired the same, does not mean that those of us in the minority are stupid and unable to do good things. Sometimes the majority opinion is flat wrong. But being true to yourself is rarely wrong -- at least for you.You shouldn't have to "sell out" to succeed.