I would love to get my hands on some of those old reels lol but I like old stuff likethat I was born too late or too early one or the other
On Mar 22, 2012, at 12:46 PM, Martin McCormick wrote:
> Thanks for one of the more thoughtful messages. I will
> respond to a few points.
> Lloyd Rasmussen writes:
>> A lot more research and negotiation has to be done before anyone would
>> want
>> to file any sort of lawsuit against a magazine publisher.
>>
>> I am pretty sure that ARRL said they also would be using Zimio as their
>> platform. On December 17, Patrick Tyce sent us a link to a page out of
>> World Radio Magazine on the Zimio site. Going to the page with
>> Window-Eyes
>> and either Internet Explorer or FireFox shows a bunch of links and no
>> article text. Some of the links and the help text indicate that they have
>> some iOS apps; I have no idea whether or not they are accessible.
>>
>> But Martin McCormik reported in December that he could read the sample
>> page
>> using good old Lynnx. I downloaded the page and found that it is
>> accompanied by a lot of JavaScript. But the article text is also
>> contained
>> within a <noscript> section in the main HTML file, which explains why Lynx
>> could read it.
>
> In a perfect world, we could all just walk up to
> something and use it but we have the world we live in so we've
> got to figure out how to make it work which, sometimes, means
> finding the alternate ways to skin the proverbial cat.
>
> I will be 61 years old in a bit less than 5 months so I
> know what life was like 40 years ago. "QST" came in a cardboard
> box through my regional lending library. I even worked at that
> library for a few Summers while in college and then full-time
> between 1974 and 76 and I really don't remember if those boxes
> came from Science for the Blind or if we duplicated the tapes
> and sent them out from Oklahoma City, but I think the library
> just signed us up and Science for the blind shipped the tapes.
>
> Anyway, there were usually two 7-inch reels of tape in
> the box and the kicker, here, is that they were usually 6 to 7
> months out of date. The ARRL staff members read the articles on
> to the tapes and then they were duplicated at which point a lot
> of technical difficulty was introduced as dust, wear on the
> tape's oxide coating and rough handling by users took their toll
> on the sound quality.
>
> An old geezer routine on "Saturday Night Live" used to
> describe how rotten things were and ended each description with
> "That's the way things were and we liked it!"
>
> I'm not trying to pull that one, but I recently
> downloaded the February "QST" from bard during the last few days
> of February. No, it's not the same time everybody else gets it,
> but it beats the daylights out of 7 months and wearing out the
> Volume pot trying to keep up with the level changes.
>
> If the digital form of "QST" turns out to be accessible,
> how are we going to follow the circuits described. The present
> NLS reading of "QST" features descriptions of the schematics of
> projects submitted by amateurs. I usually am not interested in
> building these projects, but I have been known to read parts of
> those descriptions to find out how to connect a certain IC or
> other important details. If the day comes when we can read these
> articles on our computers, I bet good money those portions will
> not be easy to get at without help.
>
> Negotiation and discussion will accomplish far more than
> a screaming lawyer fest which would tick off the loosers and
> probably not produce any real winners.
>
> I know of situations where certain web sites are just
> horrible to access using assistive technology yet the argument
> is that they followed all the accessibility guidelines and they
> are telling the truth, but they didn't work with anybody so
> the end result is useless or darn close to useless.
>
> My few experiences with the ARRL have been positive and
> I bet we will end up with something wonderful if we are calm and
> deliberative and do not become litigious. That is an adjective
> which means to resort to legal activity every time one is
> unhappy.
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