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There’s an adage that says if you want to know what's going on, follow the money. A good way to do that is to go to the Maplight web site. Maplight provides a unique window into the connection between money and politics. It provides figures on campaign contributions, and matches those donations with how elected folks in Washington vote.

Here's one example: The telecom industry gave, on average, $10,600 to members of the House of Representatives who voted no, as opposed to just $7,000 to members who voted yes on the House amendment to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. In case you didn't make the connection, the FISA amendment passed on March 14, rejecting retroactive immunity for phone carriers who helped the National Security Agency carry out wiretapping without warrants.

If you find Maplight useful, you'll appreciate Click Here to Read More >>

Unless you work with VHF/UHF radio, microwave technologies, or perhaps radar, you probably don't deal with higher frequency signals much, although now that 2.5 Gbit/s and 5 Gbit/s serial data streams are a part of many systems, that picture is changing for circuit designers.

At UHF (whether it’s 5 GHz or 5 Gbit/s) and into the conventional microwave domain, up to perhaps a few hundred GHz or so, transmission line principles come into play. Striplines, tuned cavities, plumbing-like connectors, waveguides, horns and corner reflector antennas, ultra-low-C probes, and critical-dimension circuit elements are the rule.

If you're lucky enough to work with so-called millimeter-wave systems, this is routine stuff. If you're just making the transition into the Gbit/s domain, confer with the folks at Wavecrest, LeCroy, Tektronix, Agilent, and the like. They'll help you along and sell you some intriguing test-and measurement instrumentation in the bargain.

So...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

As world economies tank, the turbulent panic-stricken tenor of the White House becomes more strident. It's apparent with each passing pronouncement. Anyone who listens to the Bush administration's litany of rubbish about stimulating the economy senses we’re in deep doo-doo, with things about to get a lot worse before they get better.

Like many engineers, I learned about guns versus butter in Economics 101, and it’s as plain as the bump on my nose that George Bush's massive tax cuts and war spending has created a huge deficit. Yes, the White House warned everyone to gird our loins for massive cuts in spending, even indicating which weapons systems would be cut. In truth, the defense budget continues to rise, with a lot more spending for war in the days to come.

This past December, Bush signed the Consolidated Appropriations Bill, providing an additional $70 billion for his wars. It gets worse....  -- Click Here to Read More >>

With petroleum prices through the ceiling, and cries about global warming and climate change in the news, it's interesting to see how politics-as-usual plays a role in America. Campaign contributions reveal how the game is played.

If you look at the statistics (gathered and tabulated by the Center For American Progress)  for the November 2006 elections, you'll see some provocative revelations.

The politicians in both the House and the Senate who won close races (gaining 55% of the vote, or less), and who voted with Big Oil (against a bipartisan-proposed clean energy tax package) received a whopping ten times more in contributions than elected officials who voted for the clean energy tax amendment when it came up in Congress last June.

Keep in mind that the clean energy bill was developed in cooperation with Finance Committee member Chuck Gra...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

My experience with the Internet goes back to the mid-1980s, when transactions using FTP file transfers, Telnet sessions, and SMTP mail transfers were the rule. This was before the advent of the Web browser and today's ubiquitous commercial World Wide Web. Those days were characterized by a lot of file sharing. Folks swapped executables and source code regularly. The best things in TCP/IP life were free.

Fortunately, the spirit of open-source and free distribution is still very much alive and well on the Web, in spite of the preponderance of commercial sites, the eBay phenomenon, and the like. Just last week I discovered some free and open-source code engineering applications that confirmed the good old days are still here.

The first discovery is a Windows design entry and schematic capture program called TinyCAD. Coming from UK-based author Matt Pyne,  the TinyCAD application instal...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

Geesh! What the heck is going on down in Washington over at the Federal Communications Commission? Ever since broadband-over-powerline (BPL) debuted commercially in field tests a few years ago, radio interference has been plaguing the FCC’s Amateur Radio Service, and a report from NATO says BPL now threatens military radio users, too.

BPL technology, referred to in Europe as powerline carrier (PLC) or powerline telecommunications (PLT), uses the ac power infrastructure to transmit data. Running at speeds in excess of 1 Mbit/s, the physics of RFI is unavoidable; radios are picking up objectionable BPL noise. In some case, receivers in BPL test areas are unable to detect signals from distant stations. They’re simply covered by high levels of broadband noise.

With the emerging popularity of triple play service (voice, video, and Internet), BPL has bandwidth limitations. Nonetheless, the FCC continues to promote it as a viable alternative to cable and ADSL (a...  -- Click Here to Read More >>