[rescue] advice on rescuing an e10k

[Ethan O'Toole]

> Actually I'm talking about collecting and processing Doppler radar data
> from 89 NWS radars across the country. The raw data is transmitted as it
> is observed at the site and then broadcast to archive sites. If I don't
> catch it and save it as it comes in I lose the data permanently. At some
> radar sites the raw data is still being written to 8mm Exabyte tapes,
> but NWS is moving over to a pure broadcast system. I gave up on Linux
> and am running  x86/freebsd and Sparc/Solaris systems in parallel now,.

Ah. I worked at NASA Langley at a facility that was doing something
similiar, and now work at a different place that has requirements
similiar. In both cases there is enough cache between instrumentation and
storage to cover a short outage... but yea.

Speaking of weather radar... I had an idea some time ago. Basically, a
reciever and an antenna pointed at the local news channel's doppler radar
dome. The idea being, a program running on a computer clocks itself to the
radar, as it rotates. Then transmits "interference" ... the goal would be
to print text/graphics on the TV as the radar spun... so the weatherman is
standing there talking, and as the sweep goes down a funny picture or text
shows up. How possible is such a thing? My assumption was that being close
to the radar antenna array you could cause the intereference with very low
power (as I'm sure the radar array has to be sensitive)....

Perhaps easy in theory, hard in real life... a prank I've wanted to pull
off for a while.

				- Ethan