Jay Talbot’s Ramblings

Amateur Radio enthusiasts here in the U.S. were given a gift from the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC has produced an Report and Order (R&O) for WT Docket 05-235, the “Morse code” proceeding.

In the R&O, they explain how they came to the conclusion how morse code was no longer needed to show an operator’s technical proficiencies. Also, the Commission has refuted a long held notion that morse code was needed to “weed out” bad operators. There is no proof, and never has been. You can read about it all in the linked article.

Tags: Ham Radio, Technology, Technology News by Jay
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Can you believe that? After days of speculation, it finally comes out: AMD is buying ATI.

To me, this is a very good thing all the way around. It means that AMD will be put on a more even playing field with Intel. Why? Well, for years Intel has been making their own motherboard chipset to go along with their processers, now it’s AMD’s turn.

Let me explain. ATI creates more than just excellent video chipsets, they also create chipset for motherboards; think ATI Crossfire. This will allow for better compatability between ATI chipset motherboards and AMD processers. I think this is the real reason AMD and ATI are getting into bed together, and it makes a ton of sense.

Tags: Gaming, Technology, Technology News by Jay
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The Register has a story about Net Neutrality. Actually, it’s a piece that pokes fun at a stupid little cartoon made specifically to confuse people on what Net Neutrality really means.

Note: I’m not directly linking to the cartoon because I don’t want to send them direct traffic. A link is included in the referenced story.

Net Neutrality is a philosophy that revolves around an open and free Internet. It is basically an unspoken rule saying that all providers will allow all Internet traffic to flow through their system unhindered. Ma Bell would like to change this. Not only do they want to charge their customers for the bandwidth they use, but they would also love to charge content providers (Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Joe’s blog and video) for the same bandwidth. This is what I call “double dipping.”

Tags: Technology, Technology News by Jay
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I few weeks ago, Mark Russinovich at Sysinternals.com revealed that there is, infact, a “root kit” and spyware involved in Sony’s DRM’d CD’s. It seems that music enthusiasts, computer security advocates, and some lawsuits, have pretty much forced Sony to rethink it’s protection scheme.

Tags: Entertainment, Technology News by Jay
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A coworker of mine went to Wal-Mart(TM) the other night and said they’d taken all of the IPods out of the display case endcap. I didn’t even put 2 and 2 together at that point, but I did know about the “One more thing” event being put on by Apple at the time. I should have realized that they were getting ready for the new and improved IPods. What we didn’t know, but rather speculated on, was that it has video capabilities!

Tags: Entertainment, Technology, Technology News by Jay
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