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Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Hello there,
I'm looking for you old tired stack of 73 and Ham Radio Magazines just to read at my pleasure. I'll be scanning some of the better articles into pdf files and making them available to others for free. Many of you have already seen the www.radiowrench.com/sonic web page. If you'd like to donate or sell cheap your old mags, I'd like to have them. Where practical, I'll pay the shipping/postage and a bit for your time. Please take the NOSPAMPLEASE from my email address below and drop me a line if you'd like to part with some old magazines... 73's skipp skipp025 at yahoo.com |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Skipp wrote:
Hello there, I'm looking for you old tired stack of 73 and Ham Radio Magazines just to read at my pleasure. I'll be scanning some of the better articles into pdf files and making them available to others for free. Many of you have already seen the www.radiowrench.com/sonic web page. . . . Have you obtained permission from the copyright owners to do this? Roy Lewallen, W7EL |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Skipp wrote:
Hello there, I'm looking for you old tired stack of 73 and Ham Radio Magazines just to read at my pleasure. I'll be scanning some of the better articles into pdf files and making them available to others for free. Many of you have already seen the www.radiowrench.com/sonic web page. If you'd like to donate or sell cheap your old mags, I'd like to have them. Where practical, I'll pay the shipping/postage and a bit for your time. Please take the NOSPAMPLEASE from my email address below and drop me a line if you'd like to part with some old magazines... 73's skipp skipp025 at yahoo.com I have an old 1950 Radio Experiment magazine with all sorts of tube projects. It's yellowed and falling apart. I'm trying to scan it and wanted to post the scans someplace. I started posting on the alt.binaries.photo.radio and rec.antique.radio+phono newsgroups and got lots of good ideas on how to adjust my scanner and what format to save it in. When I have the time to scan all 160 pages I'd like to make this available (I don't have the web space and the binaries news groups only have a life time of a few days). I have lots of old (1966-1973) pop'tronics magazines and some 1970-1980 CQ and assorted 73's someplace. I know I have the very first 2 73 magazines hidden someplace. Also late 60's electronics illustrated magazines. Eventually, I'd like to scan all of them and make them available. |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Roy Lewallen wrote:
Skipp wrote: Hello there, I'm looking for you old tired stack of 73 and Ham Radio Magazines just to read at my pleasure. I'll be scanning some of the better articles into pdf files and making them available to others for free. Many of you have already seen the www.radiowrench.com/sonic web page. . . . Have you obtained permission from the copyright owners to do this? Roy Lewallen, W7EL I think the ARRL now has the rights to Ham Radio and you can buy CD's from them. I don't know who has the rights to 73, but I suspect Wayne never gave that up. Pop'tronics was part of Gensback up to a few years ago (maybe he only got the right to the NAME and not the original magazine contents.) Of the other electronics magazines which are long out of bussiness .... who knows? |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:46:08 -0500 in rec.radio.amateur.homebrew,
Ken Scharf wrote, I have an old 1950 Radio Experiment magazine with all sorts of tube projects. It's yellowed and falling apart. I'm trying to scan it and wanted to post the scans someplace. I started posting on the alt.binaries.photo.radio and rec.antique.radio+phono newsgroups and got lots of good ideas on how to adjust my scanner and what May I suggest also alt.binaries.schematics.electronic |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Yes, where possible and practical I have. I always try to ask the
original authors direct for permission to repost articles and text and we never sell anything. See you at Dayton Roy... cheers, skipp : Roy Lewallen wrote: : Skipp wrote: : Hello there, : : I'm looking for you old tired stack of 73 and Ham Radio Magazines just to : read at my pleasure. I'll be scanning some of the better articles into pdf : files and making them available to others for free. Many of you have : already seen the www.radiowrench.com/sonic web page. : . . . : Have you obtained permission from the copyright owners to do this? : Roy Lewallen, W7EL |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
In article , Ken Scharf wrote:
Skipp wrote: Hello there, I'm looking for you old tired stack of 73 and Ham Radio Magazines just to read at my pleasure. I'll be scanning some of the better articles into pdf files and making them available to others for free. Many of you have already seen the www.radiowrench.com/sonic web page. If you'd like to donate or sell cheap your old mags, I'd like to have them. Where practical, I'll pay the shipping/postage and a bit for your time. Please take the NOSPAMPLEASE from my email address below and drop me a line if you'd like to part with some old magazines... 73's skipp skipp025 at yahoo.com I have an old 1950 Radio Experiment magazine with all sorts of tube projects. It's yellowed and falling apart. I'm trying to scan it and wanted to post the scans someplace. I started posting on the alt.binaries.photo.radio and rec.antique.radio+phono newsgroups and got lots of good ideas on how to adjust my scanner and what format to save it in. When I have the time to scan all 160 pages I'd like to make this available (I don't have the web space and the binaries news groups only have a life time of a few days). I have lots of old (1966-1973) pop'tronics magazines and some 1970-1980 CQ and assorted 73's someplace. I know I have the very first 2 73 magazines hidden someplace. Also late 60's electronics illustrated magazines. Eventually, I'd like to scan all of them and make them available. Somewhere around I have several old Pop'tronics mags from the 50's -- including the very first from Oct. 1954. Dr. G. |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
From: Ken Scharf on Wed, Feb 15 2006 9:49 pm Roy Lewallen wrote: Skipp wrote: Hello there, I'm looking for you old tired stack of 73 and Ham Radio Magazines just to read at my pleasure. I'll be scanning some of the better articles into pdf files and making them available to others for free. Many of you have already seen the www.radiowrench.com/sonic web page. . . . Have you obtained permission from the copyright owners to do this? Roy Lewallen, W7EL I think the ARRL now has the rights to Ham Radio and you can buy CD's from them. Not quite. Communications Technology, Inc. (parent to Ham Radio Magazine) was sold to CQ in 1990. CQ scanned and produced the 3-volume set of CDs containing all 22 years of HR's articles. ARRL resells a lot of products. That doesn't mean they "own" the copyright. ARRL resells a lot of RSGB publications but doesn't own the copyrights of the Radio Society of Great Britain. I don't know who has the rights to 73, but I suspect Wayne never gave that up. Pop'tronics was part of Gensback up to a few years ago (maybe he only got the right to the NAME and not the original magazine contents.) Of the other electronics magazines which are long out of bussiness .... who knows? Copyrights are valid from the first publication until 50 years after the death of the copyright holder. [death of a corporation presumably is the same as total quitting of it] "Publication" is almost any form of media that is visible to the "public," and that includes anything written on the Internet as an example. One doesn't have to "file papers" to establish a copyright although that is most convenient if some civil court dispute comes to trial. Copyright suits are almost always held in a civil court, not a criminal court; the federal government can bring suit in a federal court for flagrant violations of the copyright law. The "copyright law" is in Title 17, United States Code. One of the big revisions of United States copyright law was Public Law 94-553, 17 October 1976. In the USA, Congress maintains the Copyright Office. Congress has a rather large website which includes much information on copyrights (you can search under "copyright law" to get the URL...nice FAQ on copyrights there). Depending on the terms of a "work" sold to a publisher, the publisher usually has first rights (as in copyrights) to that work. The author may, depending on the contract (the monetary compensation) may have the right to publish/distribute that work AFTER the first-rights holder has published it. In my case, I can repro and distribute any article that I authored in HR as I wish...the conditions of my compensation contract. I cannot do the same with any article I edited for them; such is not considered "original work." In short, you just can't willy-nilly repro any work from a private/civilian-business publisher without their permission. You CAN repro any work done by the United States government; the US government is forbidden by law to hold copyrights. Note: The US government CAN hold a patent, but patents are a different category and handled by a different agency. A grey area is the "fair use" part of the copyright law. A "fair use" item is PART of the original work which can be used by itself as a reference or partial reproduction in a news article or textbook. Almost all textbooks contain such items and it is politely customary to refer to the original if that is done. former Associate Editor at Ham Radio and sometime contributor |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
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Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
- exray - wrote:
Every instance I've had at contacting original writers has said yes and publishers have simply not responded, or responded with unintelligible legalise CYA BS. As has been explained to me that published articles become the domain of the publisher and the original writer has no legal say. Who knows what their 'contributing writer' contract says. Given the small niche of reproduction as compared to 'the law'...just do the drill and if someone says stop, then stop. Keep about $3 in a legal escrow for the one asshole guy who would make a case out of it. I suggest keeping more like $20,000. The last time I checked with my lawyer, that was the maximum penalty for willful copyright infringement, in addition to any monetary damages which could be proved. All that's necessary to get the $20k, I was told, is to prove that the infringement was willful, not that any financial damage occurred. But that was quite a number of years ago, and in any case this shouldn't be taken as legal advice or fact. Anyone contemplating willful infringement would be well advised to check with his own lawyer. Tangling with that "one asshole guy" could be an experience to remember. People seem to have less and less compunction against stealing intellectual property, I suppose because it keeps getting easier to do. Rationalizations are as diverse and original as fertile minds can create. The ultimate result will be that eventually, nobody will bother creating anything original. Incidentally, I was told by the ARRL that authors of articles in all their publications are given blanket permission to put a copy of articles they've written on their own web site, with appropriate acknowledgment that the ARRL owns the copyright and reproduction is by permission. That's generous of them. Roy Lewallen, W7EL |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Hi Roy,
"Roy Lewallen" wrote in message ... I suggest keeping more like $20,000. The last time I checked with my lawyer, that was the maximum penalty for willful copyright infringement, in addition to any monetary damages which could be proved. All that's necessary to get the $20k, I was told, is to prove that the infringement was willful, not that any financial damage occurred. This might be better posted at college libraries in the copy rooms where students routinely Xerox entire books ostensibly because they can't afford the real thing (which I suspect is rarely true, and it's usually more a case of wanting to spend the money on an Xbox rather than a book)... rather than at some ham who's scanning old magazines as a form of public service when the originals are difficult to obtain for an audience that generally would pay for them if they were. People seem to have less and less compunction against stealing intellectual property, I suppose because it keeps getting easier to do. I agree with you in general, although I think that scanning old magazines and books falls into a gray area where one is -- in all likelihood -- breaking the letter of the law but generally not its spirit. I accept rationalizations along those lines, just as I can't really fault someone who decided so travel 100Mph through some utterly uninhabited random road in Eastern Oregon. :-) Still, anyone who is hauled into court can't really complain, but personally I'd hope that some lawyer hoping to make an example would choose someone posting to alt.binaries.e-book.technical (where 99% of the posts are clear violations of the letter and spirit of copyright law) rather than the OP. Rationalizations are as diverse and original as fertile minds can create. The ultimate result will be that eventually, nobody will bother creating anything original. Only in some sort of idealist world. In the real world, original creations will be generated so long as doing so puts bread on the table. Would you rather sell 1,000 copies of a 99% copy-proof program at $10,000 each or 1,000,000 copies of a pretty-readily-copyable program at $100 each? Bill Gates clearly prefers the later. As you're probably aware, Don Lancaster makes a good point that the oft-heralded intellectual property protection device of the patent really doesn't do you much good in the real world, at least until you're a very large company. Tektronix seemed to be using this approach decades back when the comprehensive use of T-coils to obtain wider frequency respones was a well-protected inside secret, no? Incidentally, I was told by the ARRL that authors of articles in all their publications are given blanket permission to put a copy of articles they've written on their own web site, with appropriate acknowledgment that the ARRL owns the copyright and reproduction is by permission. That's generous of them. I suppose it is, but these days you can't make any decent money writing for the ARRL or the magazines, and as such publications have to be pretty generous in what they offer because they're effectively asking for significant donations of intellectual property by their authors. ---Joel Kolstad |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
On Fri, 17 Feb 2006 09:32:52 -0800, "Joel Kolstad"
wrote: This might be better posted at college libraries in the copy rooms where students routinely Xerox entire books ostensibly because they can't afford the real thing (which I suspect is rarely true, and it's usually more a case of wanting to spend the money on an Xbox rather than a book)... rather than at some ham who's scanning old magazines as a form of public service when the originals are difficult to obtain for an audience that generally would pay for them if they were. Just to add some fuel to the fire. Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair Use "Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified in that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." 73, Danny, KMHE email: k6mheatarrldotnet http://www.k6mhe.com/ |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
From: Joel Kolstad on Fri, Feb 17 2006 9:32 am
"Roy Lewallen" wrote in message I suggest keeping more like $20,000. The last time I checked with my lawyer, that was the maximum penalty for willful copyright infringement, in addition to any monetary damages which could be proved. All that's necessary to get the $20k, I was told, is to prove that the infringement was willful, not that any financial damage occurred. People seem to have less and less compunction against stealing intellectual property, I suppose because it keeps getting easier to do. I agree with you in general, although I think that scanning old magazines and books falls into a gray area where one is -- in all likelihood -- breaking the letter of the law but generally not its spirit. I accept rationalizations along those lines, just as I can't really fault someone who decided so travel 100Mph through some utterly uninhabited random road in Eastern Oregon. :-) Unrelated "rationalizations." Breaking a law or rules or other directives is still BREAKING something, purloining someone's original work. Stealing. In the exact words of THE LAW (copyright law in this case), it is okay to make a copy FOR A VERY LIMITED USE such as a personal reference or to help a friend. Where it becomes a BREAKING is if it is done TO MAKE MONEY IN COPYING or gain something that "belonged" to the original author (such as gain a reputation without working for that "rep"). In Roy's case on EZNEC, he put in a lot of work in translation of (totally copyable by law) U.S. government work into a useful program of antenna analysis. Roy gets return on his investment of time and uniqueness of result presentation on a computer by selling copies of his work for money. There SHOULD be some protection for such work by anyone in order to foster and preserve original work...else there wouldn't be any point in doing original work other than uncompensated personal pleasure in doing so. Still, anyone who is hauled into court can't really complain, but personally I'd hope that some lawyer hoping to make an example would choose someone posting to alt.binaries.e-book.technical (where 99% of the posts are clear violations of the letter and spirit of copyright law) rather than the OP. No, such copyright-specialist attorneys wouldn't bother with such small potatoes. They would go after the BIG violators...DVD and CD copiers and those manufacturing firms making knock-off copies of goods, the stealing of imagery (in graphics or words) and trying to imply they are "as good" as a well-known brand. Rationalizations are as diverse and original as fertile minds can create. The ultimate result will be that eventually, nobody will bother creating anything original. ABSOLUTELY TRUE! Only in some sort of idealist world. In the real world, original creations will be generated so long as doing so puts bread on the table. THIS is the real world. There's no "special case" that justifies that idealistic rationalization you made...it is circular logic in itself...in the real world. "Originality" may occur in humans for a variety of reasons, usually done to improve a personal situation, a way of doing things easier, doing it better, so forth. However, the "originality" does NOT, by itself, "put bread on the table." To do that requires much more personal investment and effort to make the money that buys the bread that is put on the table. EZNEC is an example that applies here. The work that Roy did on translation of (free) code, cleaning it up, making it presentable in a meaningful manner to users, was considerable, much more so than just getting the original program code to work. Why should Roy give away such effort? To perform such a service "for the good of hobbyists?" Hardly worth it to Roy. So, who else would do so? Other than someone wanting a return on their investment of time and effort? Anyone can get a copy of the Methods of Moments computer program written for the U.S. government. For free (discounting cost of on-line charges for accessing the few sites having it). I have an older copy. BIG it is! HUGE. My old copy is written in FORTRAN (which I happen to speak). What it does NOT have for free is a way of showing the results in anything but tabular form, no graphics to instantly show the antenna patterns, VSWR of feed point, RF currents, etc. If you don't speak tabular, the original becomes WORK in trying to "see" the results. WORK, mind-sweat, slogging through numbers that are seldom intuitive to everyone without the graphic presentation. Roy MADE the graphical presentation possible through his efforts. So did others in their different adaptations of Method of Moments analysis programs. Would you rather sell 1,000 copies of a 99% copy-proof program at $10,000 each or 1,000,000 copies of a pretty-readily-copyable program at $100 each? Bill Gates clearly prefers the later. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Microsoft are IRRELEVANT here. There's NO SUCH THING as a "copy-proof program." If it is a useable program, then it CAN - eventually - be copied; the only true "copy-proof program" is something that no one can use. Microsoft became a software giant through lots and lots of OTHER kinds of time/effort investment plus savvy in salesmanship...not to overlook their Big Break in selling their operating system (with THEM still owning the copyrights) to IBM for the IBM PC. Without the protection of the copyright law, Microsoft could never have made that Big Break that started their humongous incoming cash flow. As you're probably aware, Don Lancaster makes a good point that the oft-heralded intellectual property protection device of the patent really doesn't do you much good in the real world, at least until you're a very large company. Don Lancaster is a clever writer and marketer of himself, not a guru of electronics. Patent Law is a separate issue from copyright law. The protection of original work is the same in principle. Tektronix seemed to be using this approach decades back when the comprehensive use of T-coils to obtain wider frequency respones was a well-protected inside secret, no? "T-coils?" Wide bandwidth video amplifiers were no big secret in the later 1940s when Vollum got Tektronix started with the first accurate, reproducible oscilloscopes...accurate in their sweep timing as well as vertical volts per division scaling. Note: I began electronics using a Tektronix 511AD after trying to get a Dumont 'scope kluge to yield meaningful results. Not the same animal. Lots and lots of OTHER innovations inside the Tektronix 'scopes that made their reputation in later years. Incidentally, I was told by the ARRL that authors of articles in all their publications are given blanket permission to put a copy of articles they've written on their own web site, with appropriate acknowledgment that the ARRL owns the copyright and reproduction is by permission. That's generous of them. [no, NOT "generous"...see following] I suppose it is, but these days you can't make any decent money writing for the ARRL or the magazines, and as such publications have to be pretty generous in what they offer because they're effectively asking for significant donations of intellectual property by their authors. ARRL is primarily a publishing house in order to make the rest of their organization viable. As such, ALL work for them is on a "first rights" basis. That is, they get first crack at publishing a contracted work...AND the continued publishing of such work for years without ANY extra compensation to authors. It's essentially the same as the "ego press" (private publishers who are just preparer-printers where the author pays for that printing service). The only ones who make any money in hobby publications are the publishers themselves. Look at the author's compensation statements on the ARRL website to see how little money authors receive. Authors get mainly the ego-trip of Being Published. For some that is compensation enough, but ego money doesn't put bread on the table. Been there, done that, got the table and the bread. |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Skipp wrote:
Hello there, I'm looking for you old tired stack of 73 and Ham Radio Magazines just to read at my pleasure. Ham Radio is available by the boxload at every ham radio flea market I've ever been to. It's also available on CDROM from the ARRL. Handy, because it's better-indexed than the paper magazine ever was. "Because I'm a cheap screw" has never been an excuse for copyright infringement. Laura Halliday VE7LDH "Que les nuages soient notre Grid: CN89mg pied a terre..." ICBM: 49 16.05 N 122 56.92 W - Hospital/Shafte |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Interesting stuff. What are some series resonant oscillators besides the
Butler? JJ |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
laura halliday wrote:
Ham Radio is available by the boxload at every ham radio flea market I've ever been to. It's also available on CDROM from the ARRL. Handy, because it's better-indexed than the paper magazine ever was. "Because I'm a cheap screw" has never been an excuse for copyright infringement. I would agree with that. Making copies of available magazines for posting on download sites is a clear violation of copyright. HOWEVER, making copies of out of print, rare, un-obtainable magazines that have a value to collectors might be viewed by some in another light. One could even say we are saving a valuable resource from becoming lost forever. |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Hi Len,
wrote in message ups.com... Unrelated "rationalizations." Breaking a law or rules or other directives is still BREAKING something, purloining someone's original work. Stealing. I agree, I'm just saying that -- being human -- I'm willing to turn a blind-eye towards some violations of various laws, just as real law enforcement officers do every single day. Now if my job is to enforce, e.g., copyright law and somebody makes me _aware_ of a particular violation, clearly I have to go ahead and prosecute, regardless of what my "blind eye" might do otherwise. (Similarly, I don't in any way buy the excuse of the current crop of phramecists who'll refuse to dispense, e.g., "day after" pills because doing so goes against their moral convictions!) In Roy's case on EZNEC, he put in a lot of work in translation of (totally copyable by law) U.S. government work into a useful program of antenna analysis. Given that Roy is alive and well (I saw him walking around in Rickreal on Saturday!) and supporting/selling his product, I can think of no rationalization whatsoever whereby pirating EZNEC could be considered "acceptable." Now, 40 years from now when the situation has changed, I may feel quite differently. Rationalizations are as diverse and original as fertile minds can create. The ultimate result will be that eventually, nobody will bother creating anything original. ABSOLUTELY TRUE! Only in some sort of idealist world. In the real world, original creations will be generated so long as doing so puts bread on the table. THIS is the real world. There's no "special case" that justifies that idealistic rationalization you made...it is circular logic in itself...in the real world. Huh? My point was only that -- regardless of what I or others may rationalize and therefore use to relieve our consciouses while we break some law -- original works will continue to be generated so long as there's some sort of income to be derived in doing so. I do agree that there's less and less income to be derived if more and more people go around rationalizing piracy/stealing/etc. in general, and I personally find it a very distrubing trend that so many people today don't think twice about copying software/music/movies/etc. EZNEC is an example that applies here. The work that Roy did on translation of (free) code, cleaning it up, making it presentable in a meaningful manner to users, was considerable, much more so than just getting the original program code to work. Why should Roy give away such effort? I don't see any reason he should, unless he chooses too. Although it's interesting to contemplate that EZNEC probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for the NEC core that was developed with taxpayer dollars... perhaps the ultimate outcome of piracy running rampant will be that software development will then only be performed by government-employed programmers? Or hobbyists with no expectation whatsoever of monetary gain from their efforts? I think that'd be a horrible situation, although there are plenty of people out there who firmly believe that most all software should be produced under such a model. :-( What it does NOT have for free is a way of showing the results in anything but tabular form, no graphics to instantly show the antenna patterns, VSWR of feed point, RF currents, etc. Not to discount Roy's work -- since, again, he's a talented programmer and his software is clearly worth paying for -- but I do find it disappointing that (in stark constrast to the anecdote in the preceeding paragraph) very little new software comes out of the government today. Why is it that software like OpenOffice has to be developed by 100% volunteers rather than by our government? If you look at universities today, most of the EDA software they use is commercial in nature (donated or provided at a substantially reduced price by the manufacturer) rather than anything written in-house. Heck, back when Roy worked at Tektronix, my understanding was that TekSPICE was the simulation program of the day, whereas now Tek has also switched to commercial SPICE simulators and is very close to completely phasing out the usage of TekSPICE... kinda sad, in a way. Without the protection of the copyright law, Microsoft could never have made that Big Break that started their humongous incoming cash flow. I think that's somewhat speculative. :-) ...but I don't really know enough of Microsoft's history to say for certain. Thanks for your input, Len! ---Joel |
Paid for-against Free Software ; was :Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
An interesting thread.
While following it , my thoughts are with Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation and subsequent development of the Linux Operating System under the GPL = General Public Licence........and the many software developers (world wide), who continue with providing Society with a ever improving free Operating System with umpteen excellent free applications. I am currently using one ,typing/sending this message : SeaMonkey (Mozilla Foundation) Frank GM0CSZ / KN6WH =================================== Joel Kolstad wrote: Hi Len, wrote in message Unrelated "rationalizations." Breaking a law or rules or other directives is still BREAKING something, purloining someone's original work. Stealing. I agree, I'm just saying that -- being human -- I'm willing to turn a blind-eye towards some violations of various laws, just as real law enforcement officers do every single day. Now if my job is to enforce, e.g., copyright law and somebody makes me _aware_ of a particular violation, clearly I have to go ahead and prosecute, regardless of what my "blind eye" might do otherwise. (Similarly, I don't in any way buy the excuse of the current crop of phramecists who'll refuse to dispense, e.g., "day after" pills because doing so goes against their moral convictions!) In Roy's case on EZNEC, he put in a lot of work in translation of (totally copyable by law) U.S. government work into a useful program of antenna analysis. Given that Roy is alive and well (I saw him walking around in Rickreal on Saturday!) and supporting/selling his product, I can think of no rationalization whatsoever whereby pirating EZNEC could be considered "acceptable." Now, 40 years from now when the situation has changed, I may feel quite differently. Rationalizations are as diverse and original as fertile minds can create. The ultimate result will be that eventually, nobody will bother creating anything original. ABSOLUTELY TRUE! Only in some sort of idealist world. In the real world, original creations will be generated so long as doing so puts bread on the table. THIS is the real world. There's no "special case" that justifies that idealistic rationalization you made...it is circular logic in itself...in the real world. Huh? My point was only that -- regardless of what I or others may rationalize and therefore use to relieve our consciouses while we break some law -- original works will continue to be generated so long as there's some sort of income to be derived in doing so. I do agree that there's less and less income to be derived if more and more people go around rationalizing piracy/stealing/etc. in general, and I personally find it a very distrubing trend that so many people today don't think twice about copying software/music/movies/etc. EZNEC is an example that applies here. The work that Roy did on translation of (free) code, cleaning it up, making it presentable in a meaningful manner to users, was considerable, much more so than just getting the original program code to work. Why should Roy give away such effort? I don't see any reason he should, unless he chooses too. Although it's interesting to contemplate that EZNEC probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for the NEC core that was developed with taxpayer dollars... perhaps the ultimate outcome of piracy running rampant will be that software development will then only be performed by government-employed programmers? Or hobbyists with no expectation whatsoever of monetary gain from their efforts? I think that'd be a horrible situation, although there are plenty of people out there who firmly believe that most all software should be produced under such a model. :-( What it does NOT have for free is a way of showing the results in anything but tabular form, no graphics to instantly show the antenna patterns, VSWR of feed point, RF currents, etc. Not to discount Roy's work -- since, again, he's a talented programmer and his software is clearly worth paying for -- but I do find it disappointing that (in stark constrast to the anecdote in the preceeding paragraph) very little new software comes out of the government today. Why is it that software like OpenOffice has to be developed by 100% volunteers rather than by our government? If you look at universities today, most of the EDA software they use is commercial in nature (donated or provided at a substantially reduced price by the manufacturer) rather than anything written in-house. Heck, back when Roy worked at Tektronix, my understanding was that TekSPICE was the simulation program of the day, whereas now Tek has also switched to commercial SPICE simulators and is very close to completely phasing out the usage of TekSPICE... kinda sad, in a way. Without the protection of the copyright law, Microsoft could never have made that Big Break that started their humongous incoming cash flow. I think that's somewhat speculative. :-) ...but I don't really know enough of Microsoft's history to say for certain. Thanks for your input, Len! ---Joel |
Paid for-against Free Software ; was :Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
"Highland Ham" wrote in message
... An interesting thread. While following it , my thoughts are with Richard Stallman and his Free Software Foundation and subsequent development of the Linux Operating System under the GPL = General Public Licence........and the many software developers (world wide), who continue with providing Society with a ever improving free Operating System with umpteen excellent free applications. Linux and all the other GPL projects are a great service to the community at large and have clearly provided products that otherwise either would have cost much more or simply been out of reach of many people. That being said, Stallman and his associates clearly have an agenda as well -- there's a _huge_ difference between true "public domain" software (such as what the government produces and what the original versions of SPICE and NEC are) vs. GPL'd software. This agenda had led to numerous "me too" licenses (e.g., the lesser GPL license) where people tend to pick and choose which pieces of the GPL they like and even occasionally tack on bits of their own agendas (e.g., they restrict their software from usage by those in the military, the government, even just anyone using it for fiduciary gain, etc.). Not that there's anything inherently wrong with this -- commercial software licenses are even more convoluted and variegated! -- but people should be aware of the difference. Ubdoubtedly a poor analogy: Just as when one chooses a religion, there's usually a savior associated with it who performs miracles, promises peace on Earth, etc... but you only get to receive all of those goodies if you buy into the entire package, which sometimes contains all sorts of ideas you oppose! Richard Stallman is then perhaps our modern-day software Jesus/Joeseph Smith/Buddha/etc... ---Joel Kolstad (who, on occasion, has used plenty of GPL software and thinks OpenOffice is very good and would probably serve the purposes of 90+% of all MS Office users just as well... oh... and GNURadio is pretty cool too...) |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
From: "Joel Kolstad" on Mon, Feb 20 2006 2:36 pm
wrote in message In Roy's case on EZNEC, he put in a lot of work in translation of (totally copyable by law) U.S. government work into a useful program of antenna analysis. Given that Roy is alive and well (I saw him walking around in Rickreal on Saturday!) and supporting/selling his product, I can think of no rationalization whatsoever whereby pirating EZNEC could be considered "acceptable." Now, 40 years from now when the situation has changed, I may feel quite differently. Ahem, "40 years from now" may see a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT pardigm for ALL of "radio!" "Radio" - as a communications medium is only 110 years old...look back to how it was back in 1896 with NO true active devices. :-) Only in some sort of idealist world. In the real world, original creations will be generated so long as doing so puts bread on the table. THIS is the real world. There's no "special case" that justifies that idealistic rationalization you made...it is circular logic in itself...in the real world. Huh? My point was only that -- regardless of what I or others may rationalize and therefore use to relieve our consciouses while we break some law -- original works will continue to be generated so long as there's some sort of income to be derived in doing so. I do agree that there's less and less income to be derived if more and more people go around rationalizing piracy/stealing/etc. in general, and I personally find it a very distrubing trend that so many people today don't think twice about copying software/music/movies/etc. "Copying" is a way to keep one's "bread on the table" without putting that "bread" on someone else's table. The general rationalization is that it hurts no one (physically) and intellectual property purloining doesn't involve tangible, physical things (laws on stealing were based on material objects taken). As Roy remarked, without the protection on immaterial property (ideas, creations), there would be NO impetus originate something new...no "ROI" or Return On Investment of new development. EZNEC is an example that applies here. The work that Roy did on translation of (free) code, cleaning it up, making it presentable in a meaningful manner to users, was considerable, much more so than just getting the original program code to work. Why should Roy give away such effort? I don't see any reason he should, unless he chooses too. Although it's interesting to contemplate that EZNEC probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for the NEC core that was developed with taxpayer dollars... We wouldn't have SPICE derivatives if it wasn't for the efforts of the University of California at Berkeley development group deciding it should be available "free." SPICE itself wouldn't have existed without the original, much older predecessor ECAP done by IBM (not exactly free since the FORTRAN code managed to "migrate" out and be distributed by copiers back in the 50s. Ohio State's version (OSUCAD) code was published in a book on the subject by two OSU professors. [irrelevant trivia fact but illustrates just one of many, many works that have all sprung from the original ECAP pioneering work on circuit analysis] The NEC core cranks out numbers, numbers, numbers. [just as ECAP did on circuit analysis] NO intuitive "feel" for the results to most folks. The GRAPHICS and organized tabulations had to be done to make them USEFUL for others. That work is important but usually overlooked. ... perhaps the ultimate outcome of piracy running rampant will be that software development will then only be performed by government-employed programmers? Or hobbyists with no expectation whatsoever of monetary gain from their efforts? I think that'd be a horrible situation, although there are plenty of people out there who firmly believe that most all software should be produced under such a model. :-( I think it will come about as nearly ALL OTHER THINGS in radio and electronics...via the competitive marketplace. The amount of WORK involved to develop something almost demands some kind of ROI to justify it to the developer/innovator. If we look at what exists now, we get blase' about all the effort involved to make a product (almost as if "it always existed...") available for others to use. Too many of us take the THINGS we have for granted. ... very little new software comes out of the government today. Why is it that software like OpenOffice has to be developed by 100% volunteers rather than by our government? If you look at universities today, most of the EDA software they use is commercial in nature (donated or provided at a substantially reduced price by the manufacturer) rather than anything written in-house. Very little actual "government software" was ever done, nearly all was hired, contracted outside work. [see the FBI's debacle over a national database featured in SPECTRUM a few months back] What "the universities" do is NOT NECESSARILY what goes on in the rest of the world! True, despite the self-promoting PR of "the universities!" Note: I used to be a member of SIGGRAPH when I was interested in graphics and animation. The "universities" did some pioneering work there, but the professional animators and graphics folks have gone wayyyyyy beyond that. One can see it everyday on television, principally in advertising spots. SPICE didn't suddenly spring out of nowhere at Berkeley...it had many, many predecessors. That it became the de facto circuit analysis program in use anywhere in electronics is BECAUSE the core was free to use. [I could make a big list out of those predecessors, but that's irrelevant also here] Heck, back when Roy worked at Tektronix, my understanding was that TekSPICE was the simulation program of the day, whereas now Tek has also switched to commercial SPICE simulators and is very close to completely phasing out the usage of TekSPICE... kinda sad, in a way. Before about 1975 there was VERY LITTLE "everyday" use of computer aided design outside of IC development in the electronics industry. Computer time was very expensive and had to be justified to the bean counters (been there, done that, made lots of bean soup). Tektronix was an innovator in electronics from its start. That by itself is no right for their forever claiming such things as the market is the driving force that rules the future. When the market is using SPICE (almost universally), then they too must use it in order to compete. Without the protection of the copyright law, Microsoft could never have made that Big Break that started their humongous incoming cash flow. I think that's somewhat speculative. :-) ...but I don't really know enough of Microsoft's history to say for certain. Not speculation, fact, stated in several books on their history and the TV movie comparing Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. MS got their Big Break at an IBM conference room in Boca Raton back in the very late 1970s. They had the IP lock on the OS and could then parlay that into their enormous fortune. MS took advantage of that and applied some good sales tactics to wind up a virtual monopolist in operating systems of PCs. As far as IP protection on radio hobby magazines, that's still up in the air for many. If everyone wants to sit around and rebuild the regenerative receiver or "design" two-tube (or teeny two-transistor) transmitters, fine, but that is just re-inventing the wheel for the nth time. Much of the output of the radio hobbyist press (other than new product info squibs and "reviews") is the publishers essentially copying their own old works...for their own profit. [the ARRL Handbook has been such for decades, most of their content already published in ARRL works prior...it makes money for the ARRL to keep the organization alive] Yes, yes, I understand that some don't like ARRL criticized, which is not good, but they have no real competitor in the USA amateur radio community and are NOT "perfect." :-) If we don't have IP protection, radio hobbyists will still be at least a half-century behind in most efforts of "radio," the practitioners busy, busy with nostalgic recollection of "the good old days" that were not that "good," just fascinating to individuals (like me) of a long time ago. See "Electric Radio" magazine (not on newsstands, available only by subscription...they have a website for getting such subscriptions), a good magazine but covering only the technology of yesterday (when tubes were the thing). My personal difference with that is that I'm looking forward to tomorrow a LOT more, can't wait to see the new stuff that's about to show up soon. Exciting stuff to me in my racket...and home workshop. |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Hi Len,
Good response; I just have a couple of minor things to add: wrote in message ups.com... If we look at what exists now, we get blase' about all the effort involved to make a product (almost as if "it always existed...") available for others to use. Too many of us take the THINGS we have for granted. When you can run down to the local computer store and buy something like a wireless router containing a 54Mbps digital radio with very sophisticated modulation schemes running from some embedded CPU with the equivalent horsepower of an 80386 with 64MB of RAM, all for $39.99, I can see why. :-) Very little actual "government software" was ever done, nearly all was hired, contracted outside work. I was thinking of programs such as Berkeley SPICE being "government software," actually. What "the universities" do is NOT NECESSARILY what goes on in the rest of the world! True, despite the self-promoting PR of "the universities!" Very true, although I think that many univerisites have found -- in the past couple of decades -- a need to become somewhat more aligned with industry in order to continue to procur funding. As far as IP protection on radio hobby magazines, that's still up in the air for many. If everyone wants to sit around and rebuild the regenerative receiver or "design" two-tube (or teeny two-transistor) transmitters, fine, but that is just re-inventing the wheel for the nth time. It is, although it can serve as a great educational tool for the person doing it. Since ham radio is -- for most people -- a hobby, re-inventing such radios is about the same as someone rebuliding the engine or transmission on a classic car: The end result is still not going to be as, say, fuel efficient or powerful as a modern design, but someone who understands the basics is then a very large way towards understanding the modern design... if they have any desire to do so. When you go to student engineering design expos these days, there's usually plenty of wireless interfaces to robots, data collection devices, etc.; they're almost always implemented with a little wireless module where you feed in digital data, and everything else all the way to the antenna is a black box. What you almost never see is something like a discrete transistor radio design implementing, say, BPSK at 1200bps (which often would suffice for the wireless data transmission needs). Although I find this a little lamentable, I realize that these days indsutry needs a lot more people creating such system- or IC-level designs (rather than, say, 50 years ago when I'd expect that most "electrical engineers" found themselves performing discrete transistor -- or tube! -- design), and I also realize that industry still seems to find graduates who become good RF IC designers, so clearly the problem isn't as bad as I might imagine and is probably more a reflection of just becoming set in my own ways instead! :-) Much of the output of the radio hobbyist press (other than new product info squibs and "reviews") is the publishers essentially copying their own old works...for their own profit. Sure, or someone taking an old design and adding a microcontroller interface/LCD/etc. (Seems to crop up a lot with auto-tuners, power meters, etc... I've been tempted to do one of these myself... something like a mobile 2m amplifier for an HT... 300mW in, 30W or so out, with digital display of SWR or whatever... clearly the "core design" of the amplifier and SWR meter has been around for decades now...) Granted, a lot of any "new design" is just modifying old designs with various new ideas, but the ARRL's standard to publish a "new" article is perhaps rather low. If we don't have IP protection, radio hobbyists will still be at least a half-century behind in most efforts of "radio," the practitioners busy, busy with nostalgic recollection of "the good old days" that were not that "good," just fascinating to individuals (like me) of a long time ago. What's missing is some reasonable means of licensing IP to people who want to use it on a hobbyist basis. A lot of the really good speech CODECs out there are legally protected, and although I'm sure the hobbyist developer would be happy to pay some few dollars to play with one, a large company is (typically) not interested in dealing with a single user to license a single instance of their technology... And even if that hobbyist's software is good, he might sell... what... 100 or 1000 copies of it? The royalties from that pale in comparison to licensing a CODEC to a cell phone manufacturer. As-is, HDTV reception and demodulation by a hobbyist is still legal -- but just barely, as various interests continue to push for "broadcast" flags. HD Radio probably wouldn't be legal at all to sit down and demodulate, but given that it's a proprietary standard, no hobbyist is presently able to do so anyway. I'm all for making sure that owners of IP are fairly compensated, and I believe that most hobbyist are willing to pay to do so, but the commerce models to do it just aren't there yet. How far would ham radio have gotten if it had been illegal to build your own FM radio? Or ATV receiver (since they usually still use NTSC as the baseband format)? On the upside, today it's easy to purchase RF components that allow one to build radios that have better performance and are cheaper to build than ever before. It's the hardware--software interface -- with software defined radios starting to become commonplace -- where you can't just go to DigiKey and purchase a CELP software license off the shelf; this is one of the problems holding back the development of ham radio. Granted, hams could -- and do -- development a lot of these things themselves, but given their technological sophistication, ham radio will now more than ever have to follow commercial standards (as they have with FM, NTSC for ATV, etc. -- it's been a _looonnng_ time since ham radio was _setting_ the standard, although the APRS guys do like to point out that a lot of commercial systems today still aren't as good as they are). ---Joel |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
From: Joel Kolstad on Wed, Feb 22 2006 10:30 am
wrote in message If we look at what exists now, we get blase' about all the effort involved to make a product (almost as if "it always existed...") available for others to use. Too many of us take the THINGS we have for granted. When you can run down to the local computer store and buy something like a wireless router containing a 54Mbps digital radio with very sophisticated modulation schemes running from some embedded CPU with the equivalent horsepower of an 80386 with 64MB of RAM, all for $39.99, I can see why. :-) Microchip Semiconductor will tell everyone the same about their PICs (or Atmel about theirs)...and you have a good analogy! :-) But, as some 1950s-technology hams may grouse, "that's not RADIO!" [I've heard that bs way too often...grrrr] Those folks can go look into the Analog Devices ICs such as their various DDS or log-amp-detectors, all definitely working at RF, not "digital." Or some of the old (pre-split-up) Motorola definitely-analog complex arrays for various functions at RF, some still made and available 30+ years after first introduction. PLL by itself has made "boxes of rocks" (quartz crystal units) relatively obsolete after becoming state of the art in communications electronics around 1970. Look at the 1 GHz RF in cellular telephony and cordless phones operating at 5 GHz...I got into "pro" leagues in microwaves at 1.8 GHz in 1954, thinking that a 6-wide rack of radio relay equipment (using tubes) was "hot stuff"...only to think of regular use of a 2.4 GHz cordless handset as being "ordinary, everyday thing" 50 years later. Hey, the huge electronic supermarket called Fry's is just a mile and a half from my house here. Lots of low-cost, very- high-tech "toys" available in there. What "the universities" do is NOT NECESSARILY what goes on in the rest of the world! True, despite the self-promoting PR of "the universities!" Very true, although I think that many univerisites have found -- in the past couple of decades -- a need to become somewhat more aligned with industry in order to continue to procur funding. If they want to TEACH students what goes on in industry of the day, absolutely. They've gone insular amongst themselves in the last few decades...in the teaching part of their activity. As far as IP protection on radio hobby magazines, that's still up in the air for many. If everyone wants to sit around and rebuild the regenerative receiver or "design" two-tube (or teeny two-transistor) transmitters, fine, but that is just re-inventing the wheel for the nth time. It is, although it can serve as a great educational tool for the person doing it. Since ham radio is -- for most people -- a hobby, re-inventing such radios is about the same as someone rebuliding the engine or transmission on a classic car: The end result is still not going to be as, say, fuel efficient or powerful as a modern design, but someone who understands the basics is then a very large way towards understanding the modern design... if they have any desire to do so. That's true, yes, but those hobbyists have to stay within their own group to praise their work amongst themselves. I like some nostalgic things well enough, but I've already lived through (and worked in) the radio-electronics technology of the 1950s and do NOT think such is very close to state of the "radio" art of NOW. When you go to student engineering design expos these days, there's usually plenty of wireless interfaces to robots, data collection devices, etc.; they're almost always implemented with a little wireless module where you feed in digital data, and everything else all the way to the antenna is a black box. What you almost never see is something like a discrete transistor radio design implementing, say, BPSK at 1200bps (which often would suffice for the wireless data transmission needs). A discrete transistor radio would be too bulky for that purpose. Also a bit higher on the portable power source demand. :-) I finally got around to fixing and cleaning up an "old" Sony AM BC radio that was beloved by my late mother (the D cells had all stayed in and leaked out while she was ill). Great AM radio, very sensitive due to an added RF amplifier stage (rare in designs of 30 years ago and now). [it's so "old" that the push-pull linear AF stages used coupling transformers] About the same time my wife got an under-the-cabinet AM/FM/CD radio for her sewing room station (one wall of a guest room). That radio has a SINGLE IC that does the PLL functions for both AM/FM LO frequency control, all the RF-IF-detector stages, AND includes the time-of-day clock PLUS the LCD display functions! That IC is only available in very large quantities (from Asia) but it shows the tremendous amount of mixed-signal capability of a single IC nowadays. Although I find this a little lamentable, I realize that these days indsutry needs a lot more people creating such system- or IC-level designs (rather than, say, 50 years ago when I'd expect that most "electrical engineers" found themselves performing discrete transistor -- or tube! -- design), and I also realize that industry still seems to find graduates who become good RF IC designers, so clearly the problem isn't as bad as I might imagine and is probably more a reflection of just becoming set in my own ways instead! :-) Well - despite being (originally) a "mustang" EE who DID do discrete tube and transistor stage design - the electronics industry has tons of already-designed ICs for various RF purposes and the folks who thunk them up. The problem is more that they came about for MARKET SPECIFIC applications. Right now one can get almost anything needed for cell phone designs, including the cell site stuff...it has been the market driver for a few years. Maybe automotive electronics is next (some applications using RF for "wireless" things like tire pressure measurement while rolling)? PCs are old hat in the industry since the user market is starting to get saturated. Case in point for HF range transmitters: Asian designs for CB finals were already in production (in lots of thousands-plus per model) and being sold (by the tens of thousands) before 1970. Motorola started pushing power at HF, avoiding CB but going below and above it in frequency, having lots of designs of PA transistors of some power. Helge Granberg of Motorola bossed a lot of detailed, good Appnotes on the how-to and how-come aspects of various power amplifiers. [Communications Concepts has the ANs available and sells most of the "MRF" power transistors now] Motorola didn't sell as many as they thought and eventually dropped that line (before the double split into ON and Freescale). Yet Asian designers were, at the same time, turning out amateur radio power amplifiers in the 100 to 200 Watt category, lesser power outputs on VHF on their own. Nowhere can be found the depth of detail on design of those Asian HF power amp designs, but the Motorola Appnotes are still studied (even if the "MRFs" are getting a bit scarce). The detailed information EXISTS, but it doesn't exist for public distribution. The market doesn't allow it. Much of the output of the radio hobbyist press (other than new product info squibs and "reviews") is the publishers essentially copying their own old works...for their own profit. Sure, or someone taking an old design and adding a microcontroller interface/LCD/etc. (Seems to crop up a lot with auto-tuners, power meters, etc... I've been tempted to do one of these myself... something like a mobile 2m amplifier for an HT... 300mW in, 30W or so out, with digital display of SWR or whatever... clearly the "core design" of the amplifier and SWR meter has been around for decades now...) Granted, a lot of any "new design" is just modifying old designs with various new ideas, but the ARRL's standard to publish a "new" article is perhaps rather low. Well, in my view, there's too much ham emphasis on transmitters and power and mechanical aspect of things. Some other things have been neglected, but taken up by others selling a product. Another case in point: Neil Hecht's neat little frequency displays out of AADE in Seattle. No more than three ICs (all DIP) on a board plus a 2 x 16 LCD character display module. The main ingredient is a PIC microcontroller that does both the frequency counting (!), the display module's input, AND (optionally) a compensation for IF offset in multiple-conversion receiver/transceiver models. It can be mounted IN just about any boat-anchor (or smaller) HF transceiver and functions the same as a many-IC frequency counter. Strangely enough, it was "pioneered" NOT by a ham but a UK experimenter who was interested in getting a simple frequency counter. The Internet allowed the idea to spread all over the world. The microcontroller source code for similar units can be obtained (most places for free) but you need a programmer to stuff the code into the microcontroller. Or, find someone to do the PIC's ROM code burn-in for you. I bought an AADE L/C-Meter recently. Assembled, noting the extra cost wasn't all that much. It saved adding to my hobby workload. It is based on the same PIC microcontroller (but with different code). AADE publishes the schematic and component details. Had I bothered to learn the PIC instruction set (prodigious even if RISC), I could have done the programming myself...after about a thousand hours of fooling around with routines versus hardware. It was much easier for me to BUY the whole works, leaving precious time free for other things. What's missing is some reasonable means of licensing IP to people who want to use it on a hobbyist basis. A lot of that IP is already free. A major problem is that there are too many kinds of programming conventions for source codes. Few can be "expert" in all of them. Usually one can be "good" in only one, realistically speaking. As an example, Microchip has lots of utility routines of various kinds for free on their website...but one needs to know the PIC instruction set to make sense of them. In source code it would be (in my view) better to show the program flow rather than the code itself. That way anyone can translate flow into the particular source code they know. Oddly, most hobbyist programmers don't like to show flow diagrams...those aren't as "cool" as source code statements neatly arranged by the source code development program. :-( On the upside, today it's easy to purchase RF components that allow one to build radios that have better performance and are cheaper to build than ever before. Absolutely! It's the hardware--software interface -- with software defined radios starting to become commonplace -- where you can't just go to DigiKey and purchase a CELP software license off the shelf; this is one of the problems holding back the development of ham radio. I don't quite agree with the gist of your argument. SDR is the new buzzword and it can certainly apply to digital-based communications (cell phones, etc.) but not necessarily to the analog HF world. MOST of the transceivers for amateur radio, HF to UHF, are ALREADY software-controlled, courtesy of a built-in micro- processor or microcontroller. For PLL or DDS frequency control AND display of same, that is a necessity to achieve incredible (to 1950s standards) frequency control. That same little digital subsystem can do myriad other tasks to eliminate the physical mechanics of construction. The multi-wafer rotary bandswitch disappeared from ham transceivers on the market decades ago...and it's hard to get the parts for such rotary switch assemblies now for any electronic purpose except high-current switching. Because that ubiquitous internal micro has become so commonplace, it has led to a "radio box" that is controlled by a PC. That's a natural extension of the internal digital control already present. But, having the PC display the equivalent front panel does NOT make it an SDR! It's a neat selling point, makes it LOOK high-tech and "the latest thing" but the PC-controlled "radio box" is really just another version of the existing manually- controlled HF transceiver. IF - and only IF - amateur radio voice communications goes digital on HF will there be any real need for SDR in ham radio "bands" (the ones on HF). Right now the existing analog-only amplifiers and whatnot are mature and quite good enough. One problem with digital voice is that there isn't even a hint of a standard protocol or of many experimenters yielding any results on same. The Data modes allocated now can make do with peripheral adapters since they are not yet that numerous on HF. Granted, hams could -- and do -- development a lot of these things themselves, but given their technological sophistication, ham radio will now more than ever have to follow commercial standards (as they have with FM, NTSC for ATV, etc. -- it's been a _looonnng_ time since ham radio was _setting_ the standard, although the APRS guys do like to point out that a lot of commercial systems today still aren't as good as they are). Well, if we dwell on such true facts, it will lead to toxic levels of acrimony in here. :-) Back to watching HDTV from the Winter Olympics in Turin... |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
From: Joel Kolstad on Wed, Feb 22 2006 10:30 am
wrote in message If we look at what exists now, we get blase' about all the effort involved to make a product (almost as if "it always existed...") available for others to use. Too many of us take the THINGS we have for granted. When you can run down to the local computer store and buy something like a wireless router containing a 54Mbps digital radio with very sophisticated modulation schemes running from some embedded CPU with the equivalent horsepower of an 80386 with 64MB of RAM, all for $39.99, I can see why. :-) Microchip Semiconductor will tell everyone the same about their PICs (or Atmel about theirs)...and you have a good analogy! :-) But, as some 1950s-technology hams may grouse, "that's not RADIO!" [I've heard that bs way too often...grrrr] Those folks can go look into the Analog Devices ICs such as their various DDS or log-amp-detectors, all definitely working at RF, not "digital." Or some of the old (pre-split-up) Motorola definitely-analog complex arrays for various functions at RF, some still made and available 30+ years after first introduction. PLL by itself has made "boxes of rocks" (quartz crystal units) relatively obsolete after becoming state of the art in communications electronics around 1970. Look at the 1 GHz RF in cellular telephony and cordless phones operating at 5 GHz...I got into "pro" leagues in microwaves at 1.8 GHz in 1954, thinking that a 6-wide rack of radio relay equipment (using tubes) was "hot stuff"...only to think of regular use of a 2.4 GHz cordless handset as being "ordinary, everyday thing" 50 years later. Hey, the huge electronic supermarket called Fry's is just a mile and a half from my house here. Lots of low-cost, very- high-tech "toys" available in there. What "the universities" do is NOT NECESSARILY what goes on in the rest of the world! True, despite the self-promoting PR of "the universities!" Very true, although I think that many univerisites have found -- in the past couple of decades -- a need to become somewhat more aligned with industry in order to continue to procur funding. If they want to TEACH students what goes on in industry of the day, absolutely. They've gone insular amongst themselves in the last few decades...in the teaching part of their activity. As far as IP protection on radio hobby magazines, that's still up in the air for many. If everyone wants to sit around and rebuild the regenerative receiver or "design" two-tube (or teeny two-transistor) transmitters, fine, but that is just re-inventing the wheel for the nth time. It is, although it can serve as a great educational tool for the person doing it. Since ham radio is -- for most people -- a hobby, re-inventing such radios is about the same as someone rebuliding the engine or transmission on a classic car: The end result is still not going to be as, say, fuel efficient or powerful as a modern design, but someone who understands the basics is then a very large way towards understanding the modern design... if they have any desire to do so. That's true, yes, but those hobbyists have to stay within their own group to praise their work amongst themselves. I like some nostalgic things well enough, but I've already lived through (and worked in) the radio-electronics technology of the 1950s and do NOT think such is very close to state of the "radio" art of NOW. When you go to student engineering design expos these days, there's usually plenty of wireless interfaces to robots, data collection devices, etc.; they're almost always implemented with a little wireless module where you feed in digital data, and everything else all the way to the antenna is a black box. What you almost never see is something like a discrete transistor radio design implementing, say, BPSK at 1200bps (which often would suffice for the wireless data transmission needs). A discrete transistor radio would be too bulky for that purpose. Also a bit higher on the portable power source demand. :-) I finally got around to fixing and cleaning up an "old" Sony AM BC radio that was beloved by my late mother (the D cells had all stayed in and leaked out while she was ill). Great AM radio, very sensitive due to an added RF amplifier stage (rare in designs of 30 years ago and now). [it's so "old" that the push-pull linear AF stages used coupling transformers] About the same time my wife got an under-the-cabinet AM/FM/CD radio for her sewing room station (one wall of a guest room). That radio has a SINGLE IC that does the PLL functions for both AM/FM LO frequency control, all the RF-IF-detector stages, AND includes the time-of-day clock PLUS the LCD display functions! That IC is only available in very large quantities (from Asia) but it shows the tremendous amount of mixed-signal capability of a single IC nowadays. Although I find this a little lamentable, I realize that these days indsutry needs a lot more people creating such system- or IC-level designs (rather than, say, 50 years ago when I'd expect that most "electrical engineers" found themselves performing discrete transistor -- or tube! -- design), and I also realize that industry still seems to find graduates who become good RF IC designers, so clearly the problem isn't as bad as I might imagine and is probably more a reflection of just becoming set in my own ways instead! :-) Well - despite being (originally) a "mustang" EE who DID do discrete tube and transistor stage design - the electronics industry has tons of already-designed ICs for various RF purposes and the folks who thunk them up. The problem is more that they came about for MARKET SPECIFIC applications. Right now one can get almost anything needed for cell phone designs, including the cell site stuff...it has been the market driver for a few years. Maybe automotive electronics is next (some applications using RF for "wireless" things like tire pressure measurement while rolling)? PCs are old hat in the industry since the user market is starting to get saturated. Case in point for HF range transmitters: Asian designs for CB finals were already in production (in lots of thousands-plus per model) and being sold (by the tens of thousands) before 1970. Motorola started pushing power at HF, avoiding CB but going below and above it in frequency, having lots of designs of PA transistors of some power. Helge Granberg of Motorola bossed a lot of detailed, good Appnotes on the how-to and how-come aspects of various power amplifiers. [Communications Concepts has the ANs available and sells most of the "MRF" power transistors now] Motorola didn't sell as many as they thought and eventually dropped that line (before the double split into ON and Freescale). Yet Asian designers were, at the same time, turning out amateur radio power amplifiers in the 100 to 200 Watt category, lesser power outputs on VHF on their own. Nowhere can be found the depth of detail on design of those Asian HF power amp designs, but the Motorola Appnotes are still studied (even if the "MRFs" are getting a bit scarce). The detailed information EXISTS, but it doesn't exist for public distribution. The market doesn't allow it. Much of the output of the radio hobbyist press (other than new product info squibs and "reviews") is the publishers essentially copying their own old works...for their own profit. Sure, or someone taking an old design and adding a microcontroller interface/LCD/etc. (Seems to crop up a lot with auto-tuners, power meters, etc... I've been tempted to do one of these myself... something like a mobile 2m amplifier for an HT... 300mW in, 30W or so out, with digital display of SWR or whatever... clearly the "core design" of the amplifier and SWR meter has been around for decades now...) Granted, a lot of any "new design" is just modifying old designs with various new ideas, but the ARRL's standard to publish a "new" article is perhaps rather low. Well, in my view, there's too much ham emphasis on transmitters and power and mechanical aspect of things. Some other things have been neglected, but taken up by others selling a product. Another case in point: Neil Hecht's neat little frequency displays out of AADE in Seattle. No more than three ICs (all DIP) on a board plus a 2 x 16 LCD character display module. The main ingredient is a PIC microcontroller that does both the frequency counting (!), the display module's input, AND (optionally) a compensation for IF offset in multiple-conversion receiver/transceiver models. It can be mounted IN just about any boat-anchor (or smaller) HF transceiver and functions the same as a many-IC frequency counter. Strangely enough, it was "pioneered" NOT by a ham but a UK experimenter who was interested in getting a simple frequency counter. The Internet allowed the idea to spread all over the world. The microcontroller source code for similar units can be obtained (most places for free) but you need a programmer to stuff the code into the microcontroller. Or, find someone to do the PIC's ROM code burn-in for you. I bought an AADE L/C-Meter recently. Assembled, noting the extra cost wasn't all that much. It saved adding to my hobby workload. It is based on the same PIC microcontroller (but with different code). AADE publishes the schematic and component details. Had I bothered to learn the PIC instruction set (prodigious even if RISC), I could have done the programming myself...after about a thousand hours of fooling around with routines versus hardware. It was much easier for me to BUY the whole works, leaving precious time free for other things. What's missing is some reasonable means of licensing IP to people who want to use it on a hobbyist basis. A lot of that IP is already free. A major problem is that there are too many kinds of programming conventions for source codes. Few can be "expert" in all of them. Usually one can be "good" in only one, realistically speaking. As an example, Microchip has lots of utility routines of various kinds for free on their website...but one needs to know the PIC instruction set to make sense of them. In source code it would be (in my view) better to show the program flow rather than the code itself. That way anyone can translate flow into the particular source code they know. Oddly, most hobbyist programmers don't like to show flow diagrams...those aren't as "cool" as source code statements neatly arranged by the source code development program. :-( On the upside, today it's easy to purchase RF components that allow one to build radios that have better performance and are cheaper to build than ever before. Absolutely! It's the hardware--software interface -- with software defined radios starting to become commonplace -- where you can't just go to DigiKey and purchase a CELP software license off the shelf; this is one of the problems holding back the development of ham radio. I don't quite agree with the gist of your argument. SDR is the new buzzword and it can certainly apply to digital-based communications (cell phones, etc.) but not necessarily to the analog HF world. MOST of the transceivers for amateur radio, HF to UHF, are ALREADY software-controlled, courtesy of a built-in micro- processor or microcontroller. For PLL or DDS frequency control AND display of same, that is a necessity to achieve incredible (to 1950s standards) frequency control. That same little digital subsystem can do myriad other tasks to eliminate the physical mechanics of construction. The multi-wafer rotary bandswitch disappeared from ham transceivers on the market decades ago...and it's hard to get the parts for such rotary switch assemblies now for any electronic purpose except high-current switching. Because that ubiquitous internal micro has become so commonplace, it has led to a "radio box" that is controlled by a PC. That's a natural extension of the internal digital control already present. But, having the PC display the equivalent front panel does NOT make it an SDR! It's a neat selling point, makes it LOOK high-tech and "the latest thing" but the PC-controlled "radio box" is really just another version of the existing manually- controlled HF transceiver. IF - and only IF - amateur radio voice communications goes digital on HF will there be any real need for SDR in ham radio "bands" (the ones on HF). Right now the existing analog-only amplifiers and whatnot are mature and quite good enough. One problem with digital voice is that there isn't even a hint of a standard protocol or of many experimenters yielding any results on same. The Data modes allocated now can make do with peripheral adapters since they are not yet that numerous on HF. Granted, hams could -- and do -- development a lot of these things themselves, but given their technological sophistication, ham radio will now more than ever have to follow commercial standards (as they have with FM, NTSC for ATV, etc. -- it's been a _looonnng_ time since ham radio was _setting_ the standard, although the APRS guys do like to point out that a lot of commercial systems today still aren't as good as they are). Well, if we dwell on such true facts, it will lead to toxic levels of acrimony in here. :-) Back to watching HDTV from the Winter Olympics in Turin... |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Hi Len,
You have a lot of interesting history in there! wrote in message ups.com... But, as some 1950s-technology hams may grouse, "that's not RADIO!" Yeah, I'm surprised just how 'neatly' some people seem to be able to decide what is and isn't 'radio.' Hey, the huge electronic supermarket called Fry's is just a mile and a half from my house here. Lots of low-cost, very- high-tech "toys" available in there. I think it's ironic how the cool fashion accessory today is something like a Motorola Razr phone with its associated millions of transistors buried in numerous ICs running software that even relatively few BSEE's would fully understand without a fair amount of additional study (turbo codes, direct sequence spread spectrum systems, psychoacoustic codecs, etc. not usually being a large part of the undergraduate curriculum...), yet 30 years ago anyway hauling around a brick-sized ham radio or CB was quite the nerdy thing to do... Incredible how times change... If they want to TEACH students what goes on in industry of the day, absolutely. They've gone insular amongst themselves in the last few decades...in the teaching part of their activity. IMO one of the biggest problems universities face is that everyone is "expected" to get a 4 year degree these days, and yet the reality of the marketplace is that relatively few jobs truly require anything approach that level of "hard core" education. Hence, engineering courses get watered down, and a lot of BSEE of BSCS students end up performing straightforward programming or digital design using techniques that a 2 year technical college could have easily provided them with. Industry has often contributed to this problem, requiring even technical sales people to now have those 4 year degrees... sheesh! Maybe automotive electronics is next (some applications using RF for "wireless" things like tire pressure measurement while rolling)? I think we're just about there -- I've seen chipsets that'll provide, e.g., some tens of bytes of data once every second or so and consume mere tens of microwatts (on average) to operate; that seems like the kind of thing some clever person can generate just from the rotation of the tire itself using some horribly crude & dirt cheap implementation of a "generator." Well, in my view, there's too much ham emphasis on transmitters and power and mechanical aspect of things. What would you like to see more of? Another case in point: Neil Hecht's neat little frequency displays out of AADE in Seattle. I haven't used one, but I'm aware of their existance. I bought one of Neil's L/C meters years ago now and put it together myself -- I don't recall if an assembled version was even available as an option then. I came across his web site again recently while tracking down a copy of his filter designer (which includes some very useful hints and tips on various transforms), and was pleased to find that he now gives it away for free, stating that he was selling so much more hardware than software anyway, it wasn't worth his effort to keep charging for the software! Oddly, most hobbyist programmers don't like to show flow diagrams...those aren't as "cool" as source code statements neatly arranged by the source code development program. :-( I always figured they just didn't want to go to the extra effort. :-) I agreee that source code alone usually isn't as good as a clear flow diagram. I don't quite agree with the gist of your argument. SDR is the new buzzword and it can certainly apply to digital-based communications (cell phones, etc.) but not necessarily to the analog HF world. I did mean "true" SDRs, such as GNU Radio, Flex Radio, etc. I think it has plenty of application to the HF world (indeed, the development of digital modes for HF seems much more active than on VHF/UHF, which has always struck me as kinda bizarre given how much less bandwidth is available there in the first place... but of course the fact that you can get a signal to the other side of the planet on 100W in good condition is always a big motivator...) IF - and only IF - amateur radio voice communications goes digital on HF will there be any real need for SDR in ham radio "bands" (the ones on HF). I agree with you on this (in that, with analog HF modes, you don't really gain that much by using SDR), but I hasten to point out that there's no "real need" for the analog modes either :-). Whether or not that means Yaesu/Icom/Kenwood/etc. actually make a full-blown HF SDR that supports both the traditional analog modes and some set of newer digital ones, I don't know. One problem with digital voice is that there isn't even a hint of a standard protocol or of many experimenters yielding any results on same. Have I mentioned how some of the best low-bit rate CODECs are proprietary and/or patented and not licensable by a single lowly hobbyist? ;-) Back to watching HDTV from the Winter Olympics in Turin... We have an HDTV tuner but only an "EDTV" TV (an older plasma set), and it still looks fantastic; I've been most impressed. ---Joel |
Fry's Electronics ,was : Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
Len Anderson wrote:
Hey, the huge electronic supermarket called Fry's is just a mile and a half from my house here. Lots of low-cost, very- high-tech "toys" available in there. ============================== Indeed an amazing place,(I visited the Manhattan Beach CA store 2months ago) It is also a place with a limited selection of (pre-packaged)discrete components (Rat Shack style) However they only sell semiconductors under the NTE designation code ,so if you need semiconductors ,it is wise to bring a cross-reference table. Frank GM0CSZ / KN6WH |
Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines
From: Joel Kolstad on Wed, Feb 22 2006 7:54 pm
Hi Len, You have a lot of interesting history in there! I feel fortunate to have experienced (first-hand) the electronics technology revolution of the last 60 years. Truly remarkable times! I think it's ironic how the cool fashion accessory today is something like a Motorola Razr phone with its associated millions of transistors buried in numerous ICs running software that even relatively few BSEE's would fully understand without a fair amount of additional study (turbo codes, direct sequence spread spectrum systems, psychoacoustic codecs, etc. not usually being a large part of the undergraduate curriculum...), yet 30 years ago anyway hauling around a brick-sized ham radio or CB was quite the nerdy thing to do... Incredible how times change... Don't forget that MARKETING has been responsible for setting "the public's" definitions of "cool" things. Lots of the products on today's market are the work of specialists together in one product family. It is difficult for anyone to be a guru in more than one discipline within electronics (and radio). Take the general MPEG4 compression that enables HDTV to work within a 6 MHz bandwidth (and enabling 4-channel sound and assorted whatnot to coexist there). Having been slightly involved in some test equipment design for same, the concept is mind-boggling to me. "Tylenol time" to attempt under- standing it. I'd rather sit back and watch, enjoying the MUCH better picture of HDTV as compared to the old 4:3 aspect ratio analog TV. As far as I'm concerned, the compression techniques are complicated enough that they don't seem to need any IP protection... If they want to TEACH students what goes on in industry of the day, absolutely. They've gone insular amongst themselves in the last few decades...in the teaching part of their activity. IMO one of the biggest problems universities face is that everyone is "expected" to get a 4 year degree these days, and yet the reality of the marketplace is that relatively few jobs truly require anything approach that level of "hard core" education. Hence, engineering courses get watered down, and a lot of BSEE of BSCS students end up performing straightforward programming or digital design using techniques that a 2 year technical college could have easily provided them with. Industry has often contributed to this problem, requiring even technical sales people to now have those 4 year degrees... sheesh! I would "blame" personnel departments for the "degree required." Hey, it's hard enough for them (now called "Human Resources") to try to sort out applications in all the myriad specialties typical of an electronics house in the industry now. Over 30 years ago RCA Corporation used to give two-level interviews to applicants; initial screening in personnel, final screening by engineering department folks (not necessarily liking the task). That was a better, quicker way to separate the good from the bad and ugly. I got hired by them that way and later wound up as one of those who did the second-level final screening. It works. In practical matters, academia just doesn't have the familiarity with "industry practice" so it can't get a good handle on what they really need to stuff in a curricula. That's academia's problem..."industry" is going to go ahead and do its thing anyway, regardless of title-rank-status blinged into minds by academicians. "Industry" exists to stay in existance, make products, make profits. "Industry" ALSO winds up as the general inventor-innovator-creator of new technology...they just don't allot a lot of time to write up much of it a la academicians, only for marketing purposes to get folks buying their new stuff. I think we're just about there -- I've seen chipsets that'll provide, e.g., some tens of bytes of data once every second or so and consume mere tens of microwatts (on average) to operate; that seems like the kind of thing some clever person can generate just from the rotation of the tire itself using some horribly crude & dirt cheap implementation of a "generator." Well, I'd point out the simple little "fob" transmitter for the "keyless entry" system. A single IC in there that both generates the "rolling code" digital sequence AND the tiny UHF transmitter. The code sequence is flexible enough, simple enough to set up for tens of thousands of different combinations, low-power enough to last for years without a battery change, can work in sub-zero and desert temperatures. And be relatively cheap to make as well as small enough to carry in a trouser pocket. One heckuva set of specs there! The "keyless entry" receiver is as complicated, yet is only a small part of the overall electronics in a modern auto. My wife's (she picked it out, I okayed it) new Malibu hatchback has ten kinds of bells and whistles on its dash display, a relative drop in the bucket compared to its normal housekeeping computerized chores of checking things, adjusting carburation, alert warnings, light control, etc., etc., etc. It's made possible by the ubiquitous microcomputer (now just thirty- something old). Wonderful stuff in my view! Takes some of the worry about cross-country driving as well as everyday driving. Well, in my view, there's too much ham emphasis on transmitters and power and mechanical aspect of things. What would you like to see more of? Receivers, subjects that don't emphasize the new buzzwords of the industry. Oscillators, some practical skinny that doesn't mirror the current industry need for "low phase noise" (applicable to FM and PM yes, but not many DSSS high-speed data communications going on in amateur radio). Practical simple test equipment for Rx and Tx that doesn't need some specialty component part or unobtainium. Most authors use what they had (leftovers from work or other projects) and don't mention what could be substituted. Some better theory and practical uses of complex quantities that involve impedance and admittance...especially how to measure them good enough for a home workshop environment. A vector impedance meter and vector analysis system is just now (in the last few years) appearing in the ham scene. Some practical stuff on making inductors, Q affected by what, how to measure approximate Q with workshop gear. Some APPLICABLE (not product-specific promotional-based) information on making things in the home workshop, whether it is "manhattan-style" PCBs or even better soldering techniques. [RoHS is with us, like it or not, an tin solder without the lead doesn't handle as the old solder did] How to work with materials properly, metal to fiberglass-epoxy sheet or whatever. Even something on standard screws, fasteners, things that can hold something together. Avoid the TV craft-show techniques of most of the show content concerned with promoting some latest maker's new stuff...while it is momentarily interesting it is also obviously a part of marketing pushing this new craft stuff. ["product reviews" are a gross example of this kind of PR] A "tuna-tin two" two-transistor Tx is cute, but crammed into an Altoids box? QRP is kind of a specialty niche and probably deserves a special issue of some magazine for that, but the lure of "simplification" (in size and complexity) for simplicity's sake doesn't TEACH much of anything except serve as a real test of dexterity on the part of the builder. "Simplicity" in ham radio was very popular from the 30s to the 50s because ready-built was expen$ive then. Simple things could be built in a few weekends, provided some enjoyment, but not a great deal of real learning (other than assembly) into theory. Today it is possible to build a "simple" single-conversion HF superhet receiver with zilch problems of image response yet have fine selective IF response for AM voice. Takes all of six ICs on a PCB size less than 6" x 8" in size. Frequency control in tuning can be simple or complex as desired. I did mean "true" SDRs, such as GNU Radio, Flex Radio, etc. I think it has plenty of application to the HF world (indeed, the development of digital modes for HF seems much more active than on VHF/UHF, which has always struck me as kinda bizarre given how much less bandwidth is available there in the first place... but of course the fact that you can get a signal to the other side of the planet on 100W in good condition is always a big motivator...) IF - and only IF - the ionosphere is kind to you... :-) In digitized "data" modes for amateur use, there's only ONE new, innovated-for-ham-use mode: PSK31. All other modes involving "data" are adaptations of commercial-use modes. One mountain-states small company had their first product as a "beginner's HF PSK31 transceiver." It didn't sell despite having some neat, modern microcomputer and display screen, keyboard included. It wasn't "traditional ham" gear, wasn't pushed by a big company. Peter Martinez (G3PLX) had his PSK31 up, running, and being tested by others using it in Europe for a few years without any real details of it appearing in USA ham magazines. There just isn't much of anything else in "data" comms standards here in the USA unless it is already developed and debugged by "the industry." Digitized voice IS possible in narrowbandwidths on HF but there don't seem to be any amateur experimenters trying it out. What would SDR do without any standards to adapt to? One can PROCESS an IF today and do things like make a digital spectrum analyzer (I don't see much effort spent on that). That isn't really a Software DEFUNED radio system. Firmware-software already CONTROLS most of the functions in modern ready-built amateur radios. That isn't really Software DEFINED radio either. OK, the quibble is a minor thing. Software/firmware/digital-control is definitely on the scene today. One problem with digital voice is that there isn't even a hint of a standard protocol or of many experimenters yielding any results on same. Have I mentioned how some of the best low-bit rate CODECs are proprietary and/or patented and not licensable by a single lowly hobbyist? ;-) Yes, you did. :-) I also mentioned that there's not much of a hint of anyone in the USA experimenting on their own to make a trial or two at their prospective standard. Someone must BEGIN, be the flag-bearer, the amateur pioneer. What is bizarre (to me) is that a modern PC has much more computing power than big mainframes I connected to 30 years ago to do ordinary synthesis-analysis of circuitry. The tools for experimentation on coders-decoders EXIST NOW. Perhaps the biggest bottleneck to all this possible pioneering is the current mindset of radio amateurs. If it doesn't "look" like "radio" (of their time), it "isn't real radio." :-( The editors of the few remaining ham publications have the paper-version control over what everyone sees for new things. THEY are the ones needing to look into the future and do gauging on what THEY think is "good" for readers. Meanwhile, the Internet is busy, busy showing lots and lots of new things that ARE done, can be done, to anyone who bothers to search. [there's quite a bit of material on CODECs and general DSP out there once you get the right key search words] Most of what we see on the Internet is not locked up in truly enforceable copyrights. |
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