Re: The Future's Bright; The Future's Braille!
I sure hope they are successful as tactile displays to this point are simply outrageously expensive and I think most of that cost is due to the nature of the technology. So far, each dot in a tactile display is some sort of mechanical assembly that requires precision manufacturing and individual attention for want of a better word. Normal print displays don't have individual light sources carefully soldered in to place but instead are matrices in which each pixel is a square or rectangle formed by the intersection of horizontal and vertical lines. The electronics to control a Braille display have been with us for decades now, but the mechanics of actually raising and lowering each dot are troublesome when it comes to cost and precision. It will be interesting to see how they solve this problem if they are successful. Mrs. Lynnette Annabel Smith writes: Hello everybody I found this a really interesting read and it bodes well for the future of refreshable Braille technologies for the masses. === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: Remembering a Big Solar Flare March 8, 1989
Unfortunately, things don't work like that. We would all have to have some sort of matching band-stop filters built in to our heads for this to do any good and most of us are immune to incoming radio signals anyway. We should all have a brick-wall bologna filter to discard some of the stuff we hear on the radio after it has been detected and decoded in the normal way but before we start remembering it but that filter is much more sophisticated and should be installed between the pre frontal cortex and hippocampus so as to prevent flooding of our memory with, well, bologna to put it politely. Sarah k Alawami writes: I thought now a days the broadcasting stations put up a brick wall filter at something like 800 or 900 hurts to prevent the public from accidentally picking up stuff like this with their teeth or electrical supplies that are never meant to do this. I can't remember the lecture we had in my class I took on such things and I no longer have all the tapes, but that's the one thing I remember, the brick wall filter that supposedly is on all am and fm transmitters. Broadcast transmittters are loaded with all kinds of filters but 800 or 900 hertz is smack dab in the middle of the human hearing range and not likely to be filtered out. The filters actually in AM transmitters that you might be thinking of are there to prevent the sound that the station broadcasts from covering a wider part of the spectrum on the dial than absolutely necessary for good fidelity. In North, Central and South America and a few other parts, possibly, AM stations are separated every ten kilohertz from 530 to 1700 kilohertz in the AM broadcast band. In most of the rest of the world, they are nine kilohertz apart so more stations can be crammed in to the space that is already so full that night-time listening is an exercise in futility in many places. If you've ever been listening to a weak signal on AM and heard static that was coming from a very strong station just up or down the dial, you were hearing adjacent channel interference which is made worse if the transmitter doesn't filter their audio above 9 or ten kilohertz. Those filters are apt to be extremely tight but it has nothing to do with radio being received on tooth fillings or telephones. Martin === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: Remembering a Big Solar Flare March 8, 1989
The stories about radio stations being received on heaters, electric kettles and tooth crowns are not crazy at all but they are weird all right. Here is a very brief simple explanation. Electricity produces magnetism every time it passes through anything conductive. It could be electric wire, water with salt water being the best, you name it. If it conducts, some magnetism results. Ther are also substances like certain ceramics, bones, teeth and minerals that are said to be piezoelectric which means they produce electricity when force is applied to them and they also bend or twist ever so slightly when electric current is applied. So, what does this have to do with anything we are talking about? Well, everything but you have to think outside the box. While telephones, music players and electronic devices have speakers and buzzers meant to be heard, Your heater or kettle wasn't ever made to be heard but some of the same activity that makes a speaker speak goes on accidentally in just about anything electrical or electronic. How many machines do you have that make some noise as they work but that's not their primary function? The hot wires in an electric heater or cooking appliance are not too different in some ways than the very fine wire in a coil that is called the voice coil in loud speakers and headphones. The voice coil produces magnetism which adds to and subtracts from a permanent magnet and pushes and pulls a thin diaphragm of paper or plastic that turns the vibrations in to sound. In the electric heater or kettle, those wires produce strong magnetic fields that cause the very wire itself to vibrate causing a slight humming sound in some devices and occasionally a fairly loud buzz or hum. Radio signals from strong nearby AM stations can make it on to the power mains or lines leading to your house and, if strong enough, could generate magnetic fields and vibrations just like a voice coil in a speaker though not well. Also, some heaters contain a device called a rectifier or diode that turns alternating current in to direct current for various technical reasons. This would make it even easier to hear music on your heater. See the next paragraph. As for tooth fillings and crowns, etc, we actually have all the ingredients for a radio in our bodies but fortunately, they don't work all that well for most of us most of the time. Teeth and bones are capable of turning electric currents in to vibrations. The saliva in some people's mouths is acidic and that combination can rectify the signal of a radio station like an old-fashioned crystal radio. If you live close enough to the broadcast antenna, the audio of the radio signal will be decoded and vibrate your teeth and skull, making you hear sound. Several years ago, there was a news report about a veteran of the Vietnam War who had bullet fragments in his skull and complained of hearing a local radio station. It was absolutely proved he was telling the truth when another person could also hear it by pressing his ear to the man's head. There is a high-powered AM radio station in South Oklahoma City and people who live near the antenna can hear it on lots of odd objects such as a cooking pan with a fork lying tines-down with a bit of water in the bottom of the pan. Hearing radio stations where you shouldn't be hearing them doesn't happen every day, but I hope I haven't bored too many of you as to what is happening. It has never happened to me as far as tooth fillings but I have certainly heard my share of radio stations on amplifiers that weren't properly filtered. Martin === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Remembering a Big Solar Flare March 8, 1989
I get a bulletin each week of radio propagation-related news from the American Radio Relay League which is an amateur radio organization. This week's newsletter remembered a very large Solar flare which happened in March of 1989. The flare caused auroras in many places that never normally see them and a number of other weird things that let us know that our nearest star can kick up some dust when conditions get right. The Sun is encased in an atmosphere which normally holds in most of what makes up the Sun but can behave like a garbage bag or flour sack that has sprung leaks. The stuff inside which is mostly subatomic particles spews out of the holes and blows off in to space. It is called the Solar Wind and sometimes these streams face toward the Earth and that's when the fun starts. We humans and other living things on Earth aren't bothered directly by these blasts of Sun goo, but they interact with the Earth's magnetic field making it sometimes stronger and other times weaker within the space of a few seconds or minutes. It's these times when the auroras begin to glow in all the colors of the rainbow due to electrically charged particles of the very thin air about 60 miles above the Earth. Radio signals that depend on the ionosphere get clobbered and one can forget listening to the usual stations because nature is not cooperating in reflecting the signals as she usually does. There's even more weird stuff during a big Solar flare. Electric wires, pipelines and any other very long pieces of metal begin to behave like giant generators, producing electric currents along their lengths. This actually can damage communications and power systems because the foreign currents and voltages are sufficient to burn out electrical devices not meant to handle such stresses. It is like a slow-motion lightning strike. In 1989, the city of Montrialle had power failures caused by the flare. In the North Sea, they had to stop oil field activity for a day because magnetic compasses were reading as much as 5 degrees off and the error was variable from second to second so nobody could trust the readings and ships could go off course and collide. We also can loose communications satellites as they get sprayed with the particles that are actually sped up as they get caught in the Earth's magnetic field so these events do cause a lot of expensive disruption when they happen. Fortunately, they don't happen without warning. Astronomers see the flares on the Sun about 8 minutes after they occur. That is how long light takes to reach Earth from the Sun. The subatomic particles are actually solid mass all be it very tiny pieces so they travel a little slower than light and reach us between 12 and 36 hours later so we have that much warning to turn off critical systems so they don't get fried. There was the mother of all Solar flares in September of 1859 which would have done very substantial damage to our world if we had had much in the way of electronics then, but the telegraph networks in developed parts of the world were all that existed then and they were disrupted somewhat during a week or so of Solar fireworks. The chances of having some kind of event like that are to put it mildly, slim. Yes, it could happen, but I don't want to scare anybody. As far as we know, we've never had anything like the flare of 1859 in recorded human history except for that one week. Auroras were visible almost all over the Earth and there would have been accounts of that even centuries ago although people wouldn't have understood what was happening. I know people who actually worry about such things. There are plenty of things to worry about in life and big Solar flares are somewhere in the realm of possibility similar to stumbling over a gold bar with my name engraved on it while walking home today. Martin === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Some of Us Take a Long Time Getting Stuff Done.
About 2 years ago, I told my father I would hook up a circuit to his door bell that would flash a red light when he was watching television with headphones on since he can't hear the bell under those conditions. You can buy light flashers for the deaf and hard of hearing but my father already has a bell that is nice and loud when he isn't wearing headphones so the task was to add this circuit and leave what already worked in place. The problem is that when there is no set deadline, it is easy to procrastinate so this job took about 2 and a quarter years which, considering what I needed to do, was probably about 18 months too long, but it is now done. What it turned out to be was a recycling job with the exception of a hand full of electronic parts, but I made use of a 1980's vintage cordless telephone which can only do pulse or rotary-style dialing. The telephone we get from our cable company doesn't even recognize that kind of signal and pulse dialing is so, so, slo-o-o-ow. I also suspect that the hand set of the phone is partly malfunctioning so it really was ready for the recycle bins except that I had an idea. The previous owner of my father's house had had the house wired to provide Hi Fi sound in every room. There was also an alarm system and cable TV runs going just about everywhere. For your average middle-class house, it was amazing and bordered on over kill but there was not one easy way to get wires from the door bell system in to the room where the television is without crawling up in the attic and even then, I don't know how one could have done any wiring that wouldn't have ended up looking down right ugly due to the places one would have to drill the holes. So, it would be wireless. What I ended up with was a small box that sits on the actual door bell box and wires in to the bell wiring. It gets a small amount of power from the bell transformer and can tell when someone rings the bell. This activates the old telephone hand set for a few seconds. By the television, is another box and the base station for that old telephone. This setup gets its power from the part of the telephone that originally hooked in to the telephone line. I connected what was the phone line connection to the input of a PIC microcontroller which just sits there, waiting for the signal that the phone is off-hook. When it sees that, it begins to pulse an output on the processor which is connected to a red light which is nice and bright. It was meant for installation on trailers and vehicles so it looks like a tail light. I hooked it up Saturday and it all works. My father likes it so mission finally accomplished. I am sorry if this message is a bit long. I could have told you about the fun I had detecting the bell button being pressed, but we'll save that for another time. Any wireless transmitter and receiver capable of closing a pair of contacts would have worked so the old telephone was used because it was there. Martin McCormick === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: Article: Has Microsoft redeemed itself with Windows 8.1?
The answer is a resounding no! but not because it is a bad or different interface, etc. Do you realize that Windows, the most common computer OS in the world, still does not have accessibility built in? It is the only such operating system that at least hasn't tried and this is by design. I may be the only voice left on Earth who still thinks this is the living definition of wrong, but it is wrong with a capital W. For those geniuses in Redmond, it may be a capital R. Apple, Linux and Android have all built screen readers of varying degrees of elegance and functionality but the important thing is that there is a generally usable to good screen reader and Braille support interface on every device that is not using Windows. You not only have to get sighted assistance to un-cripple any Windows device that needs a screen reader but you must make the cash register ring in twelve-part harmony and start a running meter or two to get and keep this fundamental privilege. I am vaguely aware of some of the politics and angst that went in to the way things are, but Microsoft is the copyright holder, therefore, the boss. One suggestion that was made years ago when Windows and commercial screen readers first came out was for MS to buy distribution rights to JFW or Window-Eyes, include it in every version of Windows sold and, of course, pay the developers royalties. This would probably be more money than they get today, maybe a Dollar or two added to the cost of Windows, and a big win for everybody. It is just proof that if you do the wrong thing long enough, people stop asking why or even think this is wrong. They just start accepting it as the way the world came, roll over and play dead. By the way, Microsoft said no to that idea and even some of the blindness organizations said they'd rather have what we have now. That positively makes me scratch my head. There is a short list of questions in my mind that if I should live to be a thousand years old, I will most likely never hear satisfactory answers to. Most of these questions are sociological and philosophical so they don't fit in this discussion list, but one that does is why does the most pervasive computer operating system on Earth not come ready to serve users who can't see the screen? Notice I didn't say users who happen to be blind. When two people are in the dark or not in sight of one another, they speak or shout. It's redundancy which is a concept as old as nature. For all the talk about user interfaces, Microsoft is still missing in action with their inaction on making their flag-ship operating system conform to the laws of nature. By the way, the last money Microsoft made from me was when I bought DOS4.0, I think. That may have been about 30 years ago. Martin Dane Trethowan writes: I'm still using Windows 7 but after reading this article I have to admit to really looking forward to an upgrade to Windows 8 at some stage next year. === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: BlueRay Players
Has anyone loaded the PS3 or any other BlueRay player with speech software to make it possible for a person who is blind to navigate BlueRay disks? There are tons of nice gadgets out there for playing BlueRay disks but most of them display on the screen, only. I would also imagine that a Linux-equipped computer with a BlueRay drive might also be accessible. I have been told that one can play regular DVD's on such a system using mplayer which is an open-source movie player that will play many different formats, even out-of-region disks. I have been told that one must search a bit to find the correct file that contains the version of the movie you want to watch because you do not run the navigation software on the disk, but when you find what you are looking for, you can then play it just fine. Martin McCormick Dane Trethowan writes: Hi! This subject is of great interest to me, I've built a Hi-Fi system for the den and I'm still looking around for a decent and flexible Blueray player. === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
The Good Guys' Technology
I heard somebody on the news recently say that the solving of the Boston Marathon bombing may be one of the first crowd-sourced crime solutions. Technology along with a huge amount of skill answered the question of who did the crime very quickly. The huge amount of skill came from the law enforcement community in that they immediately called for the public's help. In the case of large public events, there are now thousands of amateur as well as professional photographic operations going on and so these events get photographic coverage which was unimaginable years ago. The federal and local police asked for any pictures and then not only began looking at them on a large scale, but began running them through software programs that are built to recognize faces or look for images of interest. One of the things they looked for in the pictures taken at the moment of the blasts was for anybody who didn't seemed to be responding in the way everybody else was. They were also looking for objects just before and after the explosions to see basically what disappeared and or who set it down. I believe this sort of effort was what first discovered the two brothers who appear to have been behind the bombings. One of the things these brothers did last week was to steal a car at gun point (carjack) a fellow near the MIT campus shortly after the murder of the MIT campus policeman. The victim left his cell phone behind in the hijacked car and police were able to track the brothers as they drove the stolen car around. The older brother died when the police caught up with the stolen car and there was an old-fashioned gun battle between the brothers and the police. The older brother was shot and then accidentally run over by his younger brother who escaped for a while. Finally, the way they caught the younger brother was pure modern technology along with a bit of luck. As you probably heard, the surviving brother hid in a man's boat which was stored in plastic tarps in the man's back yard. The home owner had gone outside for a cigarette and noticed his plastic covers were torn loose from the boat. He looked in and saw blood and a man covered in blood lying in the boat. The boat owner immediately ran back in and called 911 at which time a police helicopter equipped with FLIR came overhead. FLIR stands for Forward-Looking Infrared. This is really neat stuff. It is not terribly new but is always being improved. It is a video camera that sees wavelengths of light that are below the threshold of humanly-visible red light. We all glow in the dark at infrared and millimeter-wave frequencies and the near infrared wavelengths behave enough like regular light that one can see a nice sharp picture or at least a pretty good picture if that light is translated in to ordinary light that humans can see. The suspect was hiding under the plastic tarps but the FLIR overhead had a good enough view through the tarp to see what the suspect was doing and he was radioing back to the ground such things as He's sitting up, now. All of this allowed the police to take him in to custody without any further trouble. Boston is over 2000 miles from where I live, but I think we all can breathe a sigh of relief that this first phase is over. As to why they did it, that's another topic for other lists and we'll probably never understand even if the surviving brother tells us anything. Martin === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: Revolutionary OCR Solution
I work on a moderately large uni campus and, trust me, the library is not going anywhere anytime soon. It's a large building full of a few computers and public computer labs and, here it comes, millions of books. The kind that are printed on paper with ink. They are, in fact, always running out of space so will be soon building a high-tech storage facility to store even more books. The main library will be full of the books that students are likely to need most often and the annex will have older volumes that don't circulate as frequently. I recently learned some trivia about library building technology. Libraries are harder to build than parking garages because the collective weight of all the books is more than even the collective weight of all the vehicles that one would find in a parking garage. They have to sink pilons all the way down to bedrock to keep the library building from sinking slowly in to the ground. OCR may not be as necessary now as it used to be, but it is still the only reasonable solution in a lot of situations. As with many technological things, it is cheaper and better than ever. If I lived alone, I would have the best OCR system I could reasonably find. Martin Gordon Smith writes: Hello Sarah Just because you don't use paper at uni, that doesn't mean it's obsolete and, to be blunt, I feel that anybody pretending they don't need to look at this kind of technology is burying their proverbial heads in the proverbial sand. What, for instance, happens if you live alone and if you then start receiving private mail on paper? Guess what! You need to trust somebody else to read it to you because you have no way of doing so. === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: Revolutionary OCR Solution
I haven't been in the market for an OCR device in quite a long time so I actually wonder that myself. I imagine that the next one I get will be my own personal device as the last one I had was through my job. It was a pretty good system back in 1993 and worked well until it finally wore out about a decade later. It used a flat-bed HP scanner and software from a now defunct company called Telesensory Systems Incorporated. I got to compare it to the Kersweil Reading Edge system of about the same time period and both systems had their good points. If the OCR solutions offered for the IPad/IPhone world are really good at the OCR function, this is a game changer because there are no moving parts in the system like there were with the flat-bed scanners. Unless the page one is scanning is very simple and in good condition, OCR systems get confused and misread text. Human beings, for that matter, sometimes get confused and misread text so that is not just a problem with machines. The camera must get a very good picture of the page. The page must be straight and not slanted in the captured image and the OCR software needs to be smart enough to not only decode the print properly but handle layout such as columns and tables in such a way that a person who is blind can make sense of it. A lot of stuff is very artistic these days, and you might hear the text but since it is trying to read in a linear fashion and the page is maybe laid out in columns or some other non-linear manner, you will hear bits and pieces that are all jumbled up in a way that will just drive you crazy. Straight linear text such as what you have in a story book or history textbook usually comes out just fine on any decent OCR system but they are apt to choke on complex pages like newspapers and magazines. I am sure there are others on this list who are more familiar with the cutting edge and have actually tried some of these newer systems. I would like to know, myself which ones are reasonable and which to not even consider. A sort of humorous example of what happens at times occurred when I got my new OCR system in 1993. At that time, OSU still shipped tons of paper-based handouts to staff and students so I used my OCR system a lot for reading mail as well as computer manuals which, in 1993, were still mostly paper-based. The scanner was a black-and-white model which was fine most of the time as I sure didn't care whether the images were monochrome or in brilliant vibrant colors. Actually, I learned to care because the lamp that the scanner used to aluminate the page was a mercury-vapor lamp which is a brilliant blue-green like a lot of mercury-vapor street lights around the world. I soon found out that orange-colored paper with black ink is mostly black to that color of light and the camera always had a tough time seeing enough contrast to render useful text. OSU's school colors are orange and black. A similar situation occurred if the paper was printed with blue or purple ink. A common duplicating technique before Xerox machines got cheap enough to be the preferred method was something called Spirit Master or Ditto sheets. They produced blue or purple letters in varying degrees of clarity which were hard for even sighted people to read with their eyes. Anyway, I remember that a lot of mail was very hard to read and i mainly hoped to get a word or two out of the mess to determine whether to take it home to my wife or just toss it right then and there. Martin stuart young writes: Hi Martin. What would be the best OCR solution to have?. === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: Small World
They actually had a system back then to get an approximation of how far out the break was but I bet it wasn't very accurate. They would try to read the resistance of the wire since the broken end of the cable would be exposed to the sea. It was still pretty hit and miss. In the first place, it would only tell you about the first break. There could be 100 more breaks after that one, but the first break is where it stops as far as electricity is concerned. There really was not a high-quality Transatlantic cable until the middle of the 20TH century. In the fifties, cable was laid that actually had amplifiers every so many miles. These were called repeaters and they contained vacuum tubes. The tubes normally had 6-volt filaments but they were run at 3 volts since they would last almost forever at the lower voltage down there in the cold dark ocean. What they did was to transmit a spectrum of numerous radio frequencies with each frequency supporting upper and lower sideband voice channels or one or two frequency-shift-keying data channels which, back in the late fifties, would have been mostly Teletype services of various kinds for news wires, business and government agencies. The tubes or valves would not have had quite as much amplifier gain running at the lower filament voltage, but they would have had enough for the job at hand so they reportedly gave long and relatively trouble-free service. I understand that when there was a cable break, the ship sent to fix it would drop a weighted probe in to the water which contained a sort of antenna, probably a magnetic pickup of some kind. They would then sweep back and forth and listen for carriers on the frequencies used in the cable and when they heard the signals, they had to be close since sea water does not propagate radio signals well. This was, however, light years ahead of what they had to do before the modern days which, in many respects, started around the time of World War II. If you wonder how communications were handled between Europe and North America before any modern transatlantic cables, it was mostly done by short wave radio. Martin Travis Siegel writes: I read an article somewhere (can't remember where, maybe science news) describing the process of patching the transatlantic cable. They used a ship (a rather large one) and it had hooks that dropped down to the bottom of the ocean, grabbed both ends of the broken cable, and brought it up to the surface. They patched it (don't remember how) then dropped it again. It fixed the cable, though the article didn't say for how long. It's interesting though, how much technology has progressed since then. These days, they can tell you not only that the cable is broken, but where it is broken, and that I find interesting. Anyone know how that's done? === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Small World
Today, I heard the news of Margaret Thatcher's passing and thought how we take for granted how easy it is to communicate around the world. Just for fun, I looked up the first transatlantic cable which is one of those game changers we don't think much about but it shortened the time it took for a message to get from the US to the UK from ten days at best to minutes. You can read about it in wikipedia, but the basic story was that there had been several attempts in the 1850's to string a line from extreme Eastern Canada to extreme Western Ireland and the attempt in 1855-1856 finally worked for a few weeks. Queen Victoria and our president at the time exchanged greetings and the cable was used for message traffic but it took longer and longer to send or receive anything due to the failure of the insulation of the cable. The cable represented the best technology of the time but it was no match for sea water and human mishandling. It took about 2 minutes just to send one Morse character. Those of us who are radio amateurs know that is extremely slow. Continuous runs of wire that long really don't work that well. It had lots of resistance, inductance and capacitance so a clear crisp dot or dash at one end would end up looking like a gentle rise and fall in voltages at the far end. One thing I learned from somewhere was that the cable had only one conductor inside it and that the sea was used as ground. that conductor was 7 strands of copper twisted together and covered with rubber and other substances that were thought to be resistant to sea water. About ten years later, a couple more cables made of better material were run and service was restored. If you read about the early cable, you find a lot of human intrigue and ego problems just like today so it's either glad to know or frustrating to know, depending on your perspective that nothing much has changed in that regard. We sometimes think that back in the old days, people were somehow more pure in spirit than today but they were just as mercenary and cut-throat as folks are today. A fellow named Whitehouse was the chief electrician on the first cable and he, not knowing about inductance and capacitance, thought all that was needed to do was to send higher voltages down the line to get nice clear telegraphy at the other end. All that did was to destroy the insulation and hasten the demise of the wire. He was ultimately blamed for it's failure, but the really sad part was that nobody appeared to gain any fundamental understanding of why very long wires behave in this way. The newer cables were stronger and lasted longer, but they still were slow and dodgy. Martin === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: Is Anybody Up For Testing For Us? Our Radio Project
In my last message, I was joking a little but I am serious, now. I am accessing the shoutcast server via mplayer which is a pretty decent application used in Linux to play movies and internet radio as well as many other file and stream formats. I am not sure if it handles shoutcast streams, however, so my question is should it be working now? If I can't get the stream, it may not mean anything except that mplayer can't play shoutcast. I meant to try it from safari on the Mac I use at work, but I got busy doing what I get payed to do so didn't get around to trying the sparkle link from there. If I get on to the home page using lynx as in L Y N X, the home page message states that the status of the server is currently down. If that is accurate, I'll just try it later. I would be surprised if mplayer can't play the stream. It usually can but getting it the right url is sometimes the fun part especially if a lot of javascript is involved. Martin Gordon Smith writes: Hi Martin I'm just doing technical work, adding more music and most of all, refining the way the station IDs work. On 18 Dec 2012, at 12:31, Martin G. McCormick mar...@server1.shellworld.net wrote: I went there at 6:30 CST or 12:30 UTC today December 18 and the server reported its status as down. This actually does give you something to listen to if you like sixties music. Try The sounds of Silence. I'l give it another try when it is back up. Martin Gordon Smith writes: Hi all I wonder whether some kind sole could possibly spare us five minutes or so of their valuable time. We need a third party to test out our new Shoutcast feed to see how they find the quality. We're not too worried about content just at the moment, as the system is automated and far from totally refined. However, if some kind person would be willing to help, we'd be very grateful. I am setting this up alongside of the hospital radio service in which I am now involved. Part of the reason behind this is that we are hoping to establish a community station for our entire town next year, and I've already been asked to participate. In fact, we take it so seriously that everybody, including myself, has had to undergo a CRV check, (Criminal Record Verification. They check thoroughly into your background and make sure that there is no unlawful history associated with your personal records. Happily I passed the test with flying colours and am now not only a basic member, but an enhanced member. Anyway, I digress. If somebody wouldn't mind please please pretty please just tuning our way for a few very short minutes to let us know how you find the audio quality and whether the signal is solid with you, we would be extremely grateful. I am adding things like playing now and song requesting to our website, all of which will be good experience for when we get the real deal up and running early next year. The URL you'd need to test from is below. Please don't worry about the station IDs. We are aware that they are out of sync with what we are actually playing. That is going to get fixed in the very near future. And finally, to whom ever it may concern, please accept our thanks. OK, the website for Sparkle radio is here but please don't try the song requester, it isn't functioning yet: Sparkle Radio website: http://www.sparkle-radio.net/Index.html please note that the URL is case sensitive. The listen link for the audio can be directly accessed here: http://listen.sparkle-radio.net:8120 To anybody who offers help, please accept our thanks. I plan to do my first live show on that little project in the coming days, but we will also be looking for presenters if anybody fancies having a shot at it. You don't have to be experienced, just up for a lot of fun. Kind regards --- Gordon Smith --- If you wish to contact me privately, please use E-Mail in the first instance, before you try the below. Please also observe time differences. I prefer telephone calls by prior arrangement where possible. E-Mail: gor...@mac-access.net Telephone: United Kingdom: Free Phone: 0800 8620538 Europe and other non-specified: +44 1642 688095 United States Of America And Canada: +1 646 9151493 Australia: +61 38 8205930 Fax: +44 1642 365123 Follow Us On Twitter: http://twitter.com/maciosaccess -- === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html
Re: Is Anybody Up For Testing For Us? Our Radio Project
I went there at 6:30 CST or 12:30 UTC today December 18 and the server reported its status as down. This actually does give you something to listen to if you like sixties music. Try The sounds of Silence. I'l give it another try when it is back up. Martin Gordon Smith writes: Hi all I wonder whether some kind sole could possibly spare us five minutes or so of their valuable time. We need a third party to test out our new Shoutcast feed to see how they find the quality. We're not too worried about content just at the moment, as the system is automated and far from totally refined. However, if some kind person would be willing to help, we'd be very grateful. I am setting this up alongside of the hospital radio service in which I am now involved. Part of the reason behind this is that we are hoping to establish a community station for our entire town next year, and I've already been asked to participate. In fact, we take it so seriously that everybody, including myself, has had to undergo a CRV check, (Criminal Record Verification. They check thoroughly into your background and make sure that there is no unlawful history associated with your personal records. Happily I passed the test with flying colours and am now not only a basic member, but an enhanced member. Anyway, I digress. If somebody wouldn't mind please please pretty please just tuning our way for a few very short minutes to let us know how you find the audio quality and whether the signal is solid with you, we would be extremely grateful. I am adding things like playing now and song requesting to our website, all of which will be good experience for when we get the real deal up and running early next year. The URL you'd need to test from is below. Please don't worry about the station IDs. We are aware that they are out of sync with what we are actually playing. That is going to get fixed in the very near future. And finally, to whom ever it may concern, please accept our thanks. OK, the website for Sparkle radio is here but please don't try the song requester, it isn't functioning yet: Sparkle Radio website: http://www.sparkle-radio.net/Index.html please note that the URL is case sensitive. The listen link for the audio can be directly accessed here: http://listen.sparkle-radio.net:8120 To anybody who offers help, please accept our thanks. I plan to do my first live show on that little project in the coming days, but we will also be looking for presenters if anybody fancies having a shot at it. You don't have to be experienced, just up for a lot of fun. Kind regards --- Gordon Smith --- If you wish to contact me privately, please use E-Mail in the first instance, before you try the below. Please also observe time differences. I prefer telephone calls by prior arrangement where possible. E-Mail: gor...@mac-access.net Telephone: United Kingdom: Free Phone: 0800 8620538 Europe and other non-specified: +44 1642 688095 United States Of America And Canada: +1 646 9151493 Australia: +61 38 8205930 Fax: +44 1642 365123 Follow Us On Twitter: http://twitter.com/maciosaccess -- === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml --- === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: DropBox Folder Organisation
Per hapse we should clarify what an operating system is as I detect confusion afoot. Operating systems are nothing more than rules for doing tasks. The terminology is modern, but operating systems have been with us for centuries even though we didn't use those words. The early computers had operating systems dictated by hardware. Some of the early programs were plugs in jacks that rearranged the components of the system so that they multiplied numbers together or maybe they did repeated subtractions which is one way to simulate division. Dartmouth College in Massachusetts had an electromechanical computer around the year 1920. It was made of telephone exchange components because the telephone switching network which, of course was in its infancy during that time, still did what today we call logical operations. Someone's phone number is nothing more than a giant logical and operation that ends up connecting your telephone to someone else's phone so telephony and computing have long been joined at the hip and are now more like clones of each other. That computer at Dartmouth certainly had no operating system as we know it today, but it had an operating system dictated by what you had to do to get it to do arithmetic. I don't really know much about that system, but I guess lamps were probably used to tell which lines were binary 1's and 0's. Not only did you have to get right in to the hardware to program it, but you had to know how to interpret the blinking lamps which were the output devices. Knowing the rules for how it worked is, in itself an operating system. The term DOS just means disk operating system. It can be anybody's. My first encounter with the term was in 1979 and it covered Apple's disk drives, CPM which was used on minicomputers, and then came the IBM P.C. and Microsoft DOS so operating systems have been with us as long as technology has. Sarah Alawami writes: lol. hey I learned something new as well. I did not know they were around since the 70s. Ok. I did not know operating system were around in the 70s. but yeah they work well and I have a few in my dropbox folders === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: Recycled Electrons
You must be careful not to fixate too much on electrons as this can give a person a negative bias. This is born out in the following scholarly exchange. Two atoms walk in to a bar and one says, Hey! I think I just lost an electron. The other atom says, Are you sure? The first one replies, Yes. I am positive. Sorry. I just couldn't resist. I guess that makes me a good conductor and I should be careful around electricity. Martin Gordon Smith writes: Hi Margin You've being a stickler, :) We say that because everything we do power-wise goes through our UPS machines, which clean up, smooth and recycle all of the electrons we use. Gordon === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
A little victory
We have a couple of old video cassette recorders that still work just fine so we use them for time shifting until the day that either a talking DVR comes out or I happen to get my hands on a system good enough to install a video tuner card on and run Linux as a DVR. Our cable system still feeds several analog channels down the line which are analog versions of the digital transmissions of the local television stations as there is no over-the-air analog TV any longer. About August 1, we started noticing a raucous buzzing sound on every single analog channel but 1, for some odd reason. If you were monitoring through the VCr, the buzz was always there and, of course any recordings made of the signal also contained the buzz. I recognized it as sync buzz, a problem that occurs when the vertical sync pulse is too strong in relation to the rest of the modulation envelope. Back in the analog TV days, television stations actually got warnings from the FCC in the United States and Industry Canada if spot checks showed the vertical sync pulse out of spec, but cable systems are not regulated in that manner so bad analog signals are a lot more common than they used to be. Anyway, I called our local cable provider to complain and a technician came to our house. Fortunately, he appears to be customer-oriented and observed the problem. He was even nice enough to listen to my theory about the vertical sync, but I could tell he was skeptical at first. I had said that I thought the problem is at the head end and is system-wide. He said that they would be getting calls from everywhere if that was so. The thing about sync buzz is that different analog television sets are not equally sensitive to it. Our Sony flat screen can receive both analog and digital signals and had no trouble at all. The two VCR's are made by Zenith and both exhibited the buzz. By the time he left, the technician thought I might be on to something and said he'd check in to it. I was not holding my breath. This afternoon, he called us back and asked me to see if the problems were still there. I checked and they were totally cleared up. He said that they did, in fact, discover an issue at the front end and several more customers had called in today to complain. They didn't have VCR's, but apparently did have TV's that had the same problems with the signals. This is also called AGC buzz and I won't bore you with the details of how it happens, but that's sure one thing you will never see in digital TV. Anyway, the technician thanked me for helping them solve a problem and essentially said I was right. How often does that happen? Martin === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: Jaws Installer, absolutely pathetic!
The question at the top of the list that begs answering is How, on Earth, does Mr. John Q. Public or Ms. Jane Q. Public who happens to also be blind, independently get JAWS installed on a Windows system? I am talking, now, like the teacher I might have been back when I was studying for that profession in the late seventies. One of my very respected instructors had spent several years in the country of Thailand and had helped them set up their electrical worker training program and also had been instrumental in writing a national electrical code for Thailand. What my advisor was surprised about was the fact that there was a major electrical supply house literally right across the street from the vocational school where they tought the electrical trades. There was absolutely no professional contact or networking between the people who worked in the electrical business and the school. They didn't even know each other's names. The point he was making was that you are time and money ahead to network with local resources as they are familiar with the area you are training for. You are having trouble getting a working JAWS installation. There is probably somebody at some place in the UK who can do this in their sleep and does it every day for agencies or clients in the UK who are blind. What if, for example, the school system uses one of their servers to image all the JAWS work stations in a computer lab or similar place? They might let you bring your computer there and image it along with the rest. Freedom Scientific has what they call site licenses where they do these sorts of things for students. The lab instructors, here, don't know JAWS from Adam, but they image computers from a master server and can blow a JAWS installation from cold metal in minutes. You, the student, just walk in and they tell you where the JAWS work station is and you log in. Oklahoma State University has a site license from Freedom Scientific and I bet there is a similar setup in school systems or rehabilitation agencies in the UK. Since you are pressed for time, I wouldn't sweat the details. Since a job is on the line, I'd at least get started with a known good system. You will soon be showing them things they didn't know but first, let's get a working system. Martin === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
Re: Jaws for Windows
I imagine that they have been trying to find somebody with your area of expertise and have been failing to do so. Of course attitude and initiative are like gold, but they also have a need to fill and you may, to use an American saying, be the man. Sorry I don't have anything else brilliant to impart, but this is kind of a test message as well as being a comment. Martin Chris Moore writes: Gordon, I just wanted to say good luck with today. You have a great deal of knowledge and expertise to offer. Let me know how you get on. === The Techno-Chat E-Mail forum is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free To modify your subscription options, please visit for forum's dedicated web pages located at http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/techno-chat You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Techno-Chat group at either of the following websites: http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/techno-chat/index.html Or: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net you may also subscribe to this list via RSS. The feed is at: http://www.mail-archive.com/techno-chat@techno-chat.net/maillist.xml ---
