What things do you think shouldn't have been invented?

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i am no engineer, so can you please tell me why it is called an "exciter"? what is it "exciting"?

I’m no engineer either. According to this clip I found on Quora, “ An FM Exciter is the piece of electronic equipment that generates the modulated FM waveform that can be radiated by an antenna and received by a radio receiver. ... An FM exciter can produce a modulated FM carrier of upto 20 - 100 W depending on the particular unit.”

In short, it, for all practical purposes, is a preamp, which generates a signal to be broadcast, then sent to the transmitter and to the antenna, for reception by the public.

In the case of the Optimod, not only was it used as an exciter, but was also a signal limiter (required by FCC rules to prevent trampling on another nearby stations frequency), and signal compressor (similar to your brickwall filter). The settings on the compressor is adjustable.

Unfortunately, most FCC First class engineers (those that Uncle Sugar deemed to be certified to maintain anything past the studio in the broadcast chain) are NOT musicians. They take their orders from station management, in order for the station to take a competitive advantage over their competitors. At the time (remember, this is the late 1970’s broadcasting technology). You could actually hear all the “artifacting” done by the compressor, if you knew what to listen for.

I’m glad I never went into broadcasting after college, because it is pretty much a rat race, and the rats won.

^^^thank you for the explanation, Meister i do have an old aphex aural exciter whose action on trebles is pretty plain, i just did not think that fm would need anything similar.

Predictive text. I suppose spell-checkers serve a purpose after the work is written, but it shouldn't be automatic. Children don't stop to notice their errors when words are written for them.

I got through University with a manual typewriter and had to retype entire pages if I made one typo or error. This was a very good way to learn proper spelling and sentence structure.

Yes I agree with you. There was times I even got the right word I wanted and the predictive text suggested the wrong thing I was looking for.

Plastic vomit and rubber dog poop.

Luxury cars with no road feel - yachts belong at sea not on the highway
Crossover SUVs/cars on stilts - no explanation needed
Automatic transmissions - if you can't learn to drive stick, you should walk or hire a driver
Column-mounted shifters - put it on the floor where it belongs
Mufflers - a loud car is a proud car
Top 40 - a horrible radio format driven by horrible music for people with a horrible lack of taste
Social media - no explanation needed
Hawaiian pizza - pineapple on pizza is a crime against cuisine
Drug prohibition - a foolish notion that criminalizes a behaviour that one is fully within their rights to engage in, addiction can cause problems but prohibition has caused more and larger problems without actually resolving the issue of addiction in any way
The concept of the nation state
Laissez-faire economics
Monotheism
The concept of vulgar language - the problem isn't with people saying words like f**k, it's with the people who whine about it

Sorry blabby, it looks like we can't be friends because of your lack of musical taste.

noise, vibration and harshness.

Whats wrong with Automatic transmissions and the concept of the nation state?

I don't like driving cars with automatics, and since they outnumber manual cars several times over it makes it very difficult to shop for my next car. I won't buy a car with an automatic, I'd prefer the greater degree of control that a proper transmission provides. I'd settle for flappy paddles in a race car, since a few tenths are more important than driving satisfaction, but since I'm not getting paid to drive, I expect my car to be rewarding to drive. That's why it's got a straight pipe, sits low and wears the widest front tires I can fit under the fenders all summer long. I'm not going to do anything too serious to it though, I'm saving to replace my Civic with an FR-S/86 since I'd really prefer a rear wheel drive car. I suppose another option would be to have two cars and just keep one parked to reduce the insurance costs on the car I'm not driving for that part of the year.

The concept of the nation-state is problematic because it allowed for far more centralizing of power than existed in earlier eras, as well as contributing to the growth of nationalism that set off some of the most destructive wars humanity has ever chosen to subject itself to.

I could live in a world wih out automatic transmission.

I used to drive manual, and could learn it again (its not EXACTLY like riding a bike, you can do it again after a long haitus, but it takes a few days practice- have forgotten and relearned it several times in my driving career). And even if I lived under a dictatorship that banned automatic, and found that I couldn't relearn manual this time around, and was forced to take mass transit I might be okay with that if that ban were to also take half of the cars off the road.

But a world without mufflers?

Are you out of your friggin mind????

Even if you halved the number of cars on the road (as anti automatic folks always say would happen) because of your utopian ban on automatic transmission the noise pollution from the remaining cars caused by allowing no mufflers would be insufferable!

i wish the meme had not been invented, of regular cars driving on public roads, should have the brutally stiff and unyielding suspension of race cars and should handle like mario andretti on a tear.

"Fleas".
What was god thinking?

I'm not so sure. If operating cars were more of a general nuissance we wouldn't have built a society so dependent upon them since there would be a more direct and obvious cost to bear. Our transport infrastructure would be built in such a way so as to reduce and redirect the noise, and likely would involve far more car free areas. This would force heavily congested/high population density areas to focus on public transportation and non-motorized and/or electric assisted transportation to deal with local travel, at least if you're too lazy to walk to a communal garage. Public transit would likely end up being forced to go electric sooner, or at least hybrids, so that within built-up areas they can operate; it's possible the same would happen with cars on a quicker timeline too.



Also, I don't call for a ban on automatics, I said I would prefer they not have been invented. The two aren't the same.

Normal family cars are quite soft, and most performance cars these days strike a good balance, even the more 'hardcore' versions. If you want your car to ride like my dad's 510 you should have to do that yourself, but that's a bit extreme even by my standards. It's no longer optimized to perform as a road car because the tires are really sticky (they follow ruts and little imperfections but are s**t in the rain) and the spring rates are so high - basically you need things to be soft enough to allow weight transfer within the envelope it will generally be operated in. Rally cars (amateur level, I mean) and autocross cars can sometimes make a passable everyday car, but a car setup for a road course wouldn't be fun on the actual road.



Fleas weren't invented, they evolved.

Not according to the bibble.
And what's the deal with inventing the mosquito?
Who would do something like that?


https://youtu.be/yEKDYIYMgBc