31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for August 23, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 202 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:32:36 -0400
From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Another chapter in history
Message-ID: <p74oc3nosrci$.19dcsf0q5jqz6.dlg@40tude.net>
On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 20:55:06 -0400, redacted@invalid.telecom-digest.org
wrote:
> Today marks the start of the thirty-second year of continuous publication
> for the Telecom Digest.
All hail this 2^5-year marker :-) ! And may we all reach the next 2^5-year
marker sound in mind and body, and in good health! Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 08:12:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Converting Lat/Long from degrees-minutes-second to decimal degrees
Message-ID: <6b744f6b-bf57-4f0f-870b-da80c813c8a8@n19g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>
On Aug 21, 7:13 pm, Bill Horne <b...@horneQRM.net> wrote:
> On 8/20/2012 5:57 PM, Barry Margolin wrote:
>
> > In article<k0sebh$ld...@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>,
> > woll...@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) wrote:
>
> >> In article<E1T3Iqi-0003JI...@telecom.xen.prgmr.com>,
> >> <b...@horne.VALID-IF-THIS-IS-ELIDED.net> wrote:
> >>> Here's a great FCC site that converts Latitude and Longitude in
> >>> Degrees, Minutes, and Seconds to or from Decimal Degrees.
> >>>
> >>>http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/DDDMMSS-decimal.html
> >>>
>
> >> Of course, with no disrespect to Dale Bickel, it's also trivial to do
> >> with a calculator.
>
> > And if you don't need much precision, it's not too hard to do in your
> > head. 10 minutes is .167, 20 minutes is .333, 30 minutes is .5, etc.
>
> I think you guys want to drag out the slipstick that's on display, IIRC,
> in the M.I.T. AI Lab: the one that's mounted in the fire-extinguisher
> case, with the label that says
>
> "*In*Case*of*Power*Failure,*Break*Glass*".
>
> (Pause for laughter to finish).
>
> Now, I agree that, if I were the captain of a square-rigger rounding the
> Horn (pun intended), I might want to have an Astrolabe on hand, or to
> have the table of logarithms memorized the way Bowditch did it.
>
> I am, however, only occasionally in need of such expertise, and I'm
> content to let a machine do the calculation for me. The late Michael
> Crichton (1942-2008) was on my side: he wrote an essay about why he
> flunked a math course at Harvard Medical school because he refused to do
> calculations by rote after calculators had been invented.
>
> OBTelecom: There was a researcher at Bell Labs who pointed out that
> measures of traffic load for exchanges could be done more simply (and
> faster) by merely recording the power consumed by an office during the
> desired time period. He was told that it would take too much effort to
> retrain workers who were used to tallying call counts and using Poisson
> tables.
>
> Bill
>
> --
> Bill Horne
> (Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
I find it handy to use Wikimapia. Place the "+" over the desired
target, click the coordinates in the lower-left corner, and you get a
table with the coordinates in three formats:
38.8897428, -77.0088561
38.8897428N 77.0088561W
38°53'23.0741''N 77°0'31.882''W
http://wikimapia.org/
Neal McLain
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