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Which US-controlled root servers are required to look up, say, "news.bbc.co.uk" or "news.independent.co.uk" or "www.guardian.co.uk", for example?

...and please indicate in your answer what means would prevent, say, RIPE's root server in London from responding to US queries, or prevent hosts in the US from using that root server (i.e., indicate how the US has sufficient control over non-US root servers that this allows the US to "control the internet").

I.e., what means do they have to enforce their ability to "[authorize] changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file", as per the U.S. Statement of Principles 06-30-2005? (Or even force changes that make, say, ".uk" or ".fr" or... no longer valid.)

So if something is developed in the US using US resources, and becomes an indispensable international asset because of its quality and/or usefulness, then the US government should retain control over said asset?

I didn't say that, and that's already not the case. There is significant international presence among the root servers, but the contract administrator will continue to be the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a component of the US Department of Commerce. There are already international organizations administering root servers.

Would it really kill us to at least allow other countries to have some input on how these assets are managed?

No, and they already do.

And turning control over this asset over to an organization where other countries have input into that control (along with the US) would definitely impact our economy negatively?

I didn't say it "definitely" would. The NTIA statement itself says it best:

Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure. As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.

We have an established, secure, stable system, chain of command and accountability, and administrative and technical infrastructure built to administer the root servers. Any changes to this system have a potential for unacceptable disruptions in service.

There's smart people in other countries too. It's not just in the US where a growing chunk of the economy is reliant on the Internet's operation; other countries have a "vested interest" in keeping it up and running as well.

They may have a "vested interest", but that doesn't mean they have the same capability. Further, there is a lot of political angling going on for such control - a heck of a lot more political motivated than any US political motivations for keeping control centralized here. This political angling for expansion of other nations' or international bodies' control over internet infrastructure has a potential for grave consequences, not to mention the possibilities for miscommunication, misunderstandings, and misapplication in such a transition. However, what is already known at present is our proven ability to properly and securely administer the root servers in a stable and predictable fashion.

First of all, it's pretty ignorant of you to assume that an organization that has an international scope definitely can't manage an asset as well as the US government.

The current management capability is already proven. It has nothing to do with whether someone else might or might not be able to functionally do the job. The point here is that we already KNOW we can do the job. This is a technical, mechanical process. And yes, the proportion of our control over the processes most certainly should be somewhat proportional to our historical and continuing contributions.

Secondly, nobody can say for sure how well ICANN will manage this asset.

Touché. That is *exactly* the issue.

it might do a BETTER job than the existing arrangement, since it has a larger talent pool to draw from.

And it might not (and probably wouldn't, given the fact that there would be a lot more political game-playing and posturing, a la ITER, going on, whereas the current system's mission is only stable, secure, and accountable management of DNS.)

And as for "talent pool", anyone with anything significant to contribute to the internet at large is welcome to do so. The US's transparent administrat

with the kneejerk slashdot reactions that come from pulling shit out of your asshole, rather than actually considering the truth, such as the actual NTIA statement itself:

U.S. Principles on the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System

The United States Government intends to preserve the security and stability of the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS). Given the Internet's importance to the world's economy, it is essential that the underlying DNS of the Internet remain stable and secure. As such, the United States is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorizing changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.

Governments have legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains (ccTLD). The United States recognizes that governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns with respect to the management of their ccTLD. As such, the United States is committed to working with the international community to address these concerns, bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure stability and security of the Internet's DNS.

ICANN is the appropriate technical manager of the Internet DNS. The United States continues to support the ongoing work of ICANN as the technical manager of the DNS and related technical operations and recognizes the progress it has made to date. The United States will continue to provide oversight so that ICANN maintains its focus and meets its core technical mission.

Dialogue related to Internet governance should continue in relevant multiple fora. Given the breadth of topics potentially encompassed under the rubric of Internet governance there is no one venue to appropriately address the subject in its entirety. While the United States recognizes that the current Internet system is working, we encourage an ongoing dialogue with all stakeholders around the world in the various fora as a way to facilitate discussion and to advance our shared interest in the ongoing robustness and dynamism of the Internet. In these fora, the United States will continue to support market-based approaches and private sector leadership in Internet development broadly.

You may also take note that there are plenty of "international organizations" already involved with the root servers.

Don't interact w/ a summarized article. Read the actual statement from the US government. I wish these news sites would link to their sources when they're available.

NAT doesn't seem to completely solve the addressing problem. According to this report by Cisco to Congress (warning: pdf), we're going to run out of addresses for real somewhere between 2015 and 2025.

Yeah, I know they're a vendor, but this is a really reasonable report. They counter a lot of the hype, but they say we're going to need IPv6 eventually, so let's start now, before the Japanese and Koreans have built all the infrastructure and Americans are left to buy from them.

Why do people automatically assume that if it is outside the 2 well known broadcast bands that it is amateur radio bands? This is why there has been such a problem with BPL. It seems like most people think that there are the AM broadcast, FM broadcast a handful of TV stations and the rest of the spectrum is in the possesion of the amateurs. Please look at http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.html
and tell me what 42.8 has to do with amateur radio.

North Korea is a recognized terrorist state

Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism

This page is over 4 years old but still seems to be official as it is still 'up' at the time of this post.

Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria are also on this list for various reasons. Read the page for more information if you want to.

P.S. Want to export crypto outside USA/Canada and are in the USA? Read this first!

Crypto is (ultimately?) math.

Why treat a reversible mathematical transformation as a 'dangerous weapon' just because it can be used to hide secrets?

The 'terrorists' are using strong crypto in defiance of any countries rules on the subject. Why hamstring e-commerce and computer programmers world wide because of it?

Well, as a last resort, there is always Chaffing and Winnowing: Confidentiality without Encryption Let's see governments worldwide outlaw that!

Use of Foreign National's Country of Birth as Criterion for Deemed Export License Requirement

Current BIS deemed export license requirements are based on a foreign national's most recent citizenship or permanent residency. The OIG expressed concern that this policy allows foreign nationals originally from countries of concern to obtain access to controlled dual-use technology without scrutiny if they maintain current citizenship or permanent resident status in a country to which the export of the technology would not require a license. For example, transfer of technology to an Iranian who has established permanent residency or citizenship in Canada would be treated, for export licensing purposes under the existing guidelines, as a deemed export to a Canadian foreign national. This policy is described in the deemed export guidance provided on the BIS Web site at: http://www.bis.doc.gov/DeemedExports/DeemedExports FAQs.html.

The OIG recommended that BIS amend its policy to require U.S. organizations to apply for a deemed export license for employees or visitors who are foreign nationals and have access to dual-use controlled technology if they were born in a country where the technology transfer in question would require an export license, regardless of their most recent citizenship or permanent residency.

some governments and large organizations have switched to the free Linux system or have threatened to do so to get discounts.

For as rich as that seems, for some reason the thought simply never occurred to me that people actually got away with this :P.

As for Cuba switching OS's, it's a smart move only in terms of the fact that the nation is far from wealthy. With a total national GDP roughly the size of Alaska's (33.2b in Cuba according to the CIA vs 31.4b for Alaska according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis), any cost savings they could get would be obviously welcomed, Communist or otherwise.

I see a lot of people badmouthing BPL or Amateur Radio over one-another. I'm an amateur radio operator, and I'd oppose BPL even if it didn't interfere with the amateur service (as some implementations don't: they notch out the amateur bands since the ARRL has been so vocal).

It really is a silly idea. Let's run MF/HF/VHF signals over this really long, unshielded wire to deliver internet to people's houses. Of course we can't actually get it to the house because of those pesky transformers, so we still need to retrofit our grid and use something else (like wifi) for the last 100 yards. Then there's that pesky issue of power lines being really bad transmission lines at those high frequencies (they're definately not constant impedence), so we'll have to throw a lot of power into those lines (at RF) to get the signal where we want it. What? It radiates? Hum, oh well.

The obvious solution is to string real transmission lines (like coax, twisted pair, or, obviously, fiber) along those poles (protected in some kind of harder casing) and underground. But that's expensive? Duh, retrofitting something meant to deliver huge amounts of energy at one frequency (50 or 60Hz, depending on your side of the pond) to deliver data at high rates of speed isn't going to be cheap. At least don't be half-assed about it.

Also, just so people know. The amateur service doesn't really have all the bandspace people make it out to have. Some bands are surprisingly small: the voice section of 17m, for example, is from 18.110MHz to 18.168MHz - only 58kHz of bandwidth, or enough for 20 single-sideband voice conversations if everyone plays *really* nice and lines up perfectly. There are giant posters like this one that show the major service to which each frequency band is allocated to in the US (many of which are also assigned internationally by ITU, at least down in HF). The first 3 rows (3kHz-30MHz) are the bands likely to be given problems by BPL. The amateur service is teal-green colored on that poster. Look for yourself how little is actually given to the service on many bands. 80m (3.5MHz) is about the only one that you're likely to even spot quickly below 30MHz!

The US and Canada have incredibly tightly integrated economies. BOTH countries export and import 80% of their goods with each other. Mutual dependance.

While about 80% of Canada's exports go to the US, it's not that high the other way. About a quarter (23%) of US exports are to Canada. This makes Canada the main importer of US goods. Mexico, Japan, the UK, and China round up the top five (in that order).

Disclosure: I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The US and Canada have incredibly tightly integrated economies. BOTH countries export and import 80% of their goods with each other. Mutual dependance.

While about 80% of Canada's exports go to the US, it's not that high the other way. About a quarter (23%) of US exports are to Canada. This makes Canada the main importer of US goods. Mexico, Japan, the UK, and China round up the top five (in that order).

Disclosure: I live in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The fuel regulations apply to the average fuel economy of all the cars sold by a particular company, not to every particular car. So manufacturers can sell a few station wagons that exceed the average, so long as they sell enough subcompacts to make up for it. You can find the specifics of the regulation here.

Car buyers wanted a certain amount of room. It was hard to provide that much room in stylish cars with a gas mileage better than 27.5 mpg. Redefining most station wagons as trucks solves the problem of meeting the CAFE standard, because light trucks and vans have a much lower fleet average target -- 20.7 mpg.

Average fuel economy was increasing before the CAFE standards were passed and it had the perverse effect of lowering them. If CAFE were repealed we would probably see more station wagons, fewer SUVs and faster increases in fuel efficiency due to fewer people buying more car than they need.

From http://www.ntia.doc.gov/pubintadvcom/octmtg/tatalk .htm:

VI. Return of Analog Spectrum

1996 Act required that broadcasters' agree to surrender one of their licenses as a condition of receiving a second DTV license. ( 336(c))

FCC set 2006 as the target date for return of the analog license on which broadcasters currently operate. Fifth Report and Order, 99. It pledged, however, to monitor deployment of DTV and to modify the surrender deadline if necessary. ( 100)

The Balanced Budget Act specified that no analog broadcast license may be renewed beyond December 31, 2006. (143 Cong. Rec. H6032-H6033, adding new section 309(j)(14)(A) to the Communications Act). At the same time, Congress directed the FCC to extend that deadline in any television market:

if any ABC, NBC, CBS, or Fox affiliate in that market is not broadcasting a DTV signal, assuming that the FCC finds that the station has exercised "due diligence" in trying to deploy DTV;

if digital-to-analog converter technology is not generally available in the market; or

if 15 percent or more of the households in the market do not subscribe to a multichannel provider (e.g., cable, MMDS, DBS) that retransmits at least one digital programming service from each DTV station in that market and those households do not have a digital television set or digital-to-analog converter.

Wasn't the reason to switch over to digital was to conserve radio frequencies? If you take a look at the current United States Frequency Allocations - The Radio Spectrum, you'll notice that there's several really big chunks taken up by tv broadcasting. and with the fact that cable companies are required to provide basic cable tv service for a minimal price (~$8/month), which isn't much imo, they can free up those blocks of frequencies for something more useful/important.

less ability to "write off" time spent on important examining related activities, such as maintaining search files (classifying foreign patents and the mass of non-patent documents into the Patent Classification scheme, which amounts to a way of "tagging" such documents, a valuable supplement to full text searching, and historically, the primary means to search)

ever increasing requirements to justify making rejections; they have to discuss in bloody detail how each element of the claim is shown by the prior art, used in the same way, and, for obvious rejections, why it is proper to used disclosures from two or more references, the "motivation" to do so having to be derived by statements actually in the references, and not just by the examiner's deductive reasoning. Indeed, a rejection can be judged to be improper for not being properly supported by the cited prior art, counting as an error against the examiner.

lots of other, constant distractions, procedures, and requirements encountered on a daily basis that have only multiplied over the years.

When management is confronted with the complaints from influential "patent system users" such as IBM here, their typical response is to institute "quality review" programs where people who can't be as expert as the typical examiner who regularly works in the art of the application being reviewed is making judgements on issues like search quality, relevance of prior art to the claims, etc. The reviewers can do additional searches, basically spending more search time on the application, but with the consequence that the examiner will be charged with an error and suffer a decreased performance rating, rather than having more time to search the application and find the relevant art in the first case. What PTO management tries to do is like what PHBs in programming shops try to do by demanding more bug free code by increasing the QA department and then firing programmers who wrote the buggy code without changing the ever shorter deadlines. And, remember, that patent examination is not project work, but production work, that just on and an with no breaks until retirement, resignation, firing, or death.

AI systems proved their strategic value in support of operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. For example, DART (Dynamic Analysis and Replanning Tool) solved the logistical nightmare of moving the U.S. military assets to the Saudi Desert. The application was developed to schedule the transportation of all U.S. personnel and materials such as vehicles, food, and ammunition from Europe to Saudi Arabia. This one application alone reportedly more than offset all the money the Advanced Research Projects Agency had funneled into AI research in the last 30 years.

America is a country where companies don't make anything anymore.

Agriculture, entertainment and industry account for a huge chunk of the US economy.

It's twilight of the empire, folks. If you're young, start learning another language.

Half empty, eh?

Here's the email I received from Godaddy.com regarding this issue:

"Today I have the unfortunate responsibility of informing you that there has been a decision made by bureaucrats of a Federal agency that takes away your right to privacy as guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

This decision was unilaterally made by the National Telecommunications and Information Association ("NTIA") www.ntia.doc.gov without hearings that would determine the impact on those affected, and delivered without notice -- in short, the NTIA decision was made without due process of any kind. This is exactly how our government is not supposed to work.

The effect of this decision is to disallow new private domain name registrations on .US domain names. In addition, if you already own a private .US domain name registration, you will be forced to forfeit your privacy no later than January 26, 2006. By that time, you will need to choose between either making your personal information available to anyone who wants to see it, or giving up your right to that domain name.

I personally find it ironic that our right to .US privacy was stripped away, without due process, by a federal government agency -- an agency that should be looking out for our individual rights. For the NTIA to choose the .US extension is the ultimate slap in your face. .US is the only domain name that is specifically intended for Americans (and also those who have a physical presence in our great country). So think about this for a moment. These bureaucrats stripped away the privacy that you're entitled to as an American, on the only domain name that says that you are an American. I am outraged by this -- you should be also.

If, like me, you are outraged at the NTIA's decision to strip away our constitutional right to privacy, www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com will provide you with a petition to sign. (Only your name will be published, your address and email information will be kept private.) This Web site also provides a very easy way for you to send either a fax or an email, expressing your outrage, to your Congressperson and Senators. This is all provided at no cost to you. All that is required is for you to take the time to visit www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com sign the petition, and send the fax or email to your legislators.

On my personal Blog, www.BobParsons.com there are a number of articles where you can learn more about the NTIA's unfortunate decision and what you can do to help get it reversed.

I also will be talking about our right to privacy on Radio Go Daddy, our weekly radio show that debuts today, March 30, at 7 PM PST. To find out how to listen in, please visit the Web site dedicated to the show, www.RadioGoDaddy.com.

You can be sure that I, and everyone at GoDaddy.com, will do everything in our power to get the NTIA decision reversed. However, we need your help. Please visit www.TheDangerOfNoPrivacy.com to sign the petition and express your feelings to your Congressperson and Senators.

Sincerely,

Bob Parsons
President and Founder
GoDaddy.com"

"It seems most people love to bitch piss and moan about ICANN/IANA, but they can't pick up a damned phone or write an email"

If you'd actually tried this you know how non-productive this idea is. I wasted 10 years of my life doing exactly this, only to watch a bloated and corrupt ICANN emerge in spite of everything hundreds of people did and now watch all our predictions about their future potential wrongdoings come true. I do not feel good about this.

When the US government was handing over IANA to "the new corporation" (ICANN), open-rsc (ORSC) was invited to "advise" them in the early days. What this amounted to was every time ICANN had a truly horrific idea and we pointed out what a bad idea this was ICANN simply took our adive by using it against us and found ways to work around our criticism by adding enough spin to makie it appear it wasn't a problem and of course they were prepared now to hear this criticism and had stock nonsensical answers for their PR machine.

The list of reasons why ICANN is an utter and abject failure is miles long. Put as succinctly as I can, ICANN is supposed to measure consensus and enact policy based on it. Anybody who as at or saw the Marina del Rey 2000 selection of the 7 new tlds knows how far from reality this actually is.

The video of this is still, I believe, available at the Berkman center. Worth a look...

As for conspiracy, I can give you names of people who have first hand evidence of it. Names you will recognize. It runs in the tens (hundreds) of millions of dollars and is he reason there are so few, and so lame, new tlds.

ICANN was born "behind the scenes" and has always operated that way. It gets more distane from reality every day. At some point it will implode.

Keep in mind ICANN, a $50M+ (and climbing) organization replaces what Jon Postel used to do as a part time "task" for about 30K a year. Except Jon could not be bought. Pity he died right before ICANN was formed. For the record, I first called him in 1994.

"It seems most people love to bitch piss and moan about ICANN/IANA, but they can't pick up a damned phone or write an email"

If you'd actually tried this you know how non-productive this idea is. I wasted 10 years of my life doing exactly this, only to watch a bloated and corrupt ICANN emerge in spite of everything hundreds of people did and now watch all our predictions about their future potential wrongdoings come true. I do not feel good about this.

When the US government was handing over IANA to "the new corporation" (ICANN), open-rsc (ORSC) was invited to "advise" them in the early days. What this amounted to was every time ICANN had a truly horrific idea and we pointed out what a bad idea this was ICANN simply took our adive by using it against us and found ways to work around our criticism by adding enough spin to makie it appear it wasn't a problem and of course they were prepared now to hear this criticism and had stock nonsensical answers for their PR machine.

The list of reasons why ICANN is an utter and abject failure is miles long. Put as succinctly as I can, ICANN is supposed to measure consensus and enact policy based on it. Anybody who as at or saw the Marina del Rey 2000 selection of the 7 new tlds knows how far from reality this actually is.

The video of this is still, I believe, available at the Berkman center. Worth a look...

As for conspiracy, I can give you names of people who have first hand evidence of it. Names you will recognize. It runs in the tens (hundreds) of millions of dollars and is he reason there are so few, and so lame, new tlds.

ICANN was born "behind the scenes" and has always operated that way. It gets more distane from reality every day. At some point it will implode.

Keep in mind ICANN, a $50M+ (and climbing) organization replaces what Jon Postel used to do as a part time "task" for about 30K a year. Except Jon could not be bought. Pity he died right before ICANN was formed. For the record, I first called him in 1994.

As usual that segment of the population for whom the cost of internet access is prohibitory remains unrepresented and undiscussed on Slashdot.

There exists in the United States a major digital divide (and let's not even get started on the international situation). Seems to me that one of the reasons among many for this is the cost of internet connectivity vis-a-vis income levels. The people who make the least money (and often the struggling school districts their tax dollars support) cannot afford what all of us technocrat/intelligentsia types take for granted - a good consistent internet connection.

This in turn only exacerbates a growing polarization of wealth in this country. Children of the less educated (and hence of generally lower income class) are less likely to be exposed to computers early in the home or school, and are less likely to excel in many of the increasingly technical jobs available. And so they make less money and so on and so on...

It also seems to me that you could alleviate this problem by allowing municipalities to get into the ISP biz - just as they have with electricity, water and the like - to offer a low cost alternative. Indeed, the quality may be lower, the beauracracy slogging and the elite class may not want to use it, but this is often the case with municipal utilities. Walk by any yoga studio in SF and you will find that most of the folks eschew the tap water in favor of some Euro-themed overpriced bottled water. Yes, water is different in that no clean municipal water supply results in a tremendous public health problem, but I would argue that allowing the class division to continually widen will result in all sorts of civic problems - from health threats, soaring welfare costs, and, eventually, violent uprising.

A municipal ISP could level the playing field by bringing acess to those who might not otherwise afford it, as well as reducing costs to schools, government programs, and other affiliated public service organizations. So isn't this bill just about corporate interests protecting their profits and in the process driving a wedge between the rich/educated and the poor/uneducated?

The unemployment rate is 5.4%, The american dollar is losing value because of the weak economy, to the point that it's dangering the Canadian economy. America has been cutting its interest rates to spur growth, and avoid deflation. I have no vested interest in American politics, but America is in a recession- wake up.

I think you've been reading too many Paul Krugman articles. I'll address your points specifically:

the unemployment rate is 5.4%
I am assuming you are making the assertion this is a doom and gloom number. However, historical facts eliminate this assertion.
Notice how the peak is two years gone, and all of 2004 has been a downward slope since then.

The american dollar is losing value because of the weak economy,

I think you should provide evidence of this weak economy. I've written on slashdot several times about this before, but I'll say it again. Economics is not a zero sum game. People are currently calling the dollar "weak". This means that people trading with US companies get MORE goods for their money than they would with buying from other countries. This causes people to buy MORE American goods, infact European businesses were scared about the holiday shopping season because so many were buying American goods rather than European ones.

America has been cutting its interest rates to spur growth, and avoid deflation.

Growth like the productivity of American non-farm workers that is skyrocketting.

Growth like Real GDP(inflation adjusted) has been on the rise for 4 years and is currently it's highest since 1999.

but America is in a recession- wake up.
ah yes, but I digress... we are in a recession. I'll just sweep the numbers under the table, those can't possibly mean anything.
I know it's popular to be "down on/with America" these days. But the least you could do is actually take a position that has some facts to support it.

according to: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

6.8 GHZ: Fixed Satelite
10.7 GHZ: Fixed Satelite(above 10.7), Radio Astronomy, Space Research, Weather Satelites (below 10.7)
23.6-24 GHZ: Radio Astronomy, Space Research, Weather Satelites

In the USA at least, those spectrums are already set asaide that they talk about.

The FCC didn't assign 802.11b/g or cordless phones to 2.4GHz, it's an unlicensed band that anyone can do whatever they want in within certain limits on power and such.

Its not an unlicensed band - amateur radio operators have primary access, part 15 devices (which include phones, wifi etc) have secondary access on the 2.4 ghz band.

Knock yourself out its on the right hand side of the fourth row from the top.

Second, while wireless speeds do continue to increase, there are hard physical limits on the throughput, and only one spectrum, mostly already allocated for various purposes. While there may be some reallocation, this will mostly just keep per-user bandwidth more-or-less where it is now. Moore's law applies tollerably to many aspects of system performance, until the physical limits get close. But wireless technology has been working on those limits for a long time, just not from a computer standpoint.

And if you don't believe the impact of those limits, tell me: which do you watch more of these days, broadcast television... or cable TV?

No way do those areas account for 30% of the world's GDP. In fact, doing a little research reveals that if you assume that the wave would totally destroy the economies of all of Great Britian, France, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Spain, New York, Florida, South Africa, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, Portugal, Connecticut, Morocco, South Carolina, Ireland, Washington DC, Delaware, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island, it only accounts for 23% of the world GDP. That's the top 25 jurisdictions that would be affected, and the smallest of those is 0.07% of world GDP.

Once again, that is if all production in all of those areas were totally destroyed, not just the 1-10 miles nearest the coast. In addition, if everyone in all of those areas were killed, it would still only be 10% of the world population.

Admittedly were talking about just over 661 million people, but once again that covers all of Brazil, all of Mexico, all of New York, etc., not just those within whatever arbitrary distance of the coast you want to assign.

So as I said in my first post,
Would it be bad? Yeah. But not a world or humanity ending event.

Spectrum allocation is a large, time-varying, multivariable optimization problem. This document is an outline of some of the service requests/requirements, and how they need to mesh with each other, present and future technology availability, and physical limitations (like attenuation due to water at 24 GHz). Note that this document is only U.S. interests; every other country has a similar list, and all have to be coordinated. It's like the guy who goes into a store with three lists: What he wants to buy, what he needs to buy, and what he can afford to buy. Compromise is the name of the game, and reasonable people will make reasonable tradeoffs differently.

The radar this article is discussing is a proposed future use of 24 GHz for collision-avoidance radar in passenger cars. 24 GHz is a popular frequency choice for short-range applications like this specifically because of the atmospheric attenuation. Note that the attenuation at 24 GHz, while higher than at other nearby frequencies, is still relatively low, only a few tenths of a dB per kilometer (although much higher in rain). This makes 24 GHz a good compromise for short-range devices on the Earth's surface, especially low-powered devices with very directional antennas pointed horizontally, away from satellites. (A better choice from this standpoint would be the oxygen absorption band at 60 GHz, and there is indeed another radar band there.)

Meterologists are merely expressing their concern over how their measurements will be corrupted if millions of car radars are in operation, and their cumulative power is enough to be detected by their sensors. My personal opinion, however, is that 24 GHz is too low of a frequency to make a market-successful car radar; the antennas are too big. I think 60 or 77 GHz is a better bet; if so, that would preserve 24 GHz for water vapor measurements.

In general, though, the interests of meterologists and others performing microwave sensing of the earth should be considered in the frequency allocation process; the publicity due to this article is one way of accomplishing this.

Spectrum allocation is a large, time-varying, multivariable optimization problem. This document is an outline of some of the service requests/requirements, and how they need to mesh with each other, present and future technology availability, and physical limitations (like attenuation due to water at 24 GHz). Note that this document is only U.S. interests; every other country has a similar list, and all have to be coordinated. It's like the guy who goes into a store with three lists: What he wants to buy, what he needs to buy, and what he can afford to buy. Compromise is the name of the game, and reasonable people will make reasonable tradeoffs differently.

The radar this article is discussing is a proposed future use of 24 GHz for collision-avoidance radar in passenger cars. 24 GHz is a popular frequency choice for short-range applications like this specifically because of the atmospheric attenuation. Note that the attenuation at 24 GHz, while higher than at other nearby frequencies, is still relatively low, only a few tenths of a dB per kilometer (although much higher in rain). This makes 24 GHz a good compromise for short-range devices on the Earth's surface, especially low-powered devices with very directional antennas pointed horizontally, away from satellites. (A better choice from this standpoint would be the oxygen absorption band at 60 GHz, and there is indeed another radar band there.)

Meterologists are merely expressing their concern over how their measurements will be corrupted if millions of car radars are in operation, and their cumulative power is enough to be detected by their sensors. My personal opinion, however, is that 24 GHz is too low of a frequency to make a market-successful car radar; the antennas are too big. I think 60 or 77 GHz is a better bet; if so, that would preserve 24 GHz for water vapor measurements.

In general, though, the interests of meterologists and others performing microwave sensing of the earth should be considered in the frequency allocation process; the publicity due to this article is one way of accomplishing this.

Just as I predicted. In Buying the latest build comment in the Half-Life 2 Finally Activated thread. Posters bemoaned the *cost* of steam compared to the boxed set in stores. "Why is the cost the same?" was a common question. Well the cost reflects the latest build.

It is great to see a e-version superior product compared to the boxed version. With the uptake of broadband resellers beware. Your power is being eroded by metcalf, moore and coarse.

Oh. and you can go back to setting your clocks by hand. Atomic clocks use those frequencies too.

Amazing what you can find on the internet, eh?

While the frequency allocation chart linked from the article was very nice in my high school physics book, this chart (beware: PDF) from the NTIA is much more informative.

As for the various notions of privatizing or opening up large swaths of the spectrum, it must be done very carefully, if at all, as there are too many users that absolutely must have clear channels to operate safely (aircraft navigation and communication come to mind), but at the same time do not have the financial resources to compete for even a small slice of their current frequency ranges.

Your computer emits EMPs?

No wonder the BXA classifies encryption as a munition!

( Cue Keanu Reeves: Whoa! )

If NAFTA fit into this in anyway...

BTW in Chapter 10, article 1007 prohibits specifying a specific vendor or product in a tender. In other words any tenders specifiying cruft like M$, M$-Windows, M$-Exchange, etc. is in direct violation of NAFTA.

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/roosa2.html

military and gov use a ton.

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/roosa2.html

military and gov use a ton.

In any situation like this, someone invariably gets picked as a 'test case.' Jim just happened to be the one.

What he experienced in terms of RF 'noise pollution' would become all too common if BPL were to be widely deployed. The NTIA report and the ARRL's own technical committee have demonstrated this in gruesome detail.

Want some more real-life examples of the kind of crap BPL is capable of spreading? Go here.

There are plenty of existing ways to deliver broadband to homes without polluting the HF spectrum. BPL exists only to serve the pocketbooks of its equipment manufacturers, and the shareholders of power companies, at the expense of EVERYONE (not just amateur radio ops) who uses the HF spectrum. If it becomes widespread, commercial aviation, military, and the federal government's HF users will ALL be affected in short order, and it will probably get shut down anyway as a result.

Why waste any more time on it at all?

For more information on the problems with BPL than you'd ever want, read the NTIA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Comments and the Phase One Study.

For more information on the problems with BPL than you'd ever want, read the NTIA Notice of Proposed Rulemaking Comments and the Phase One Study.

In an ideal world, the FCC would realize that 99% of current and future communications needs would be better served by a standard high-speed wireless IP network instead of the amazing mishmash of specialized protocol bands we have now. It would rearrange current spectrum allocation to phase out legacy systems and give almost all the useful communications bands to a new protocol (or small set of protocols) based around IP communication. This new wireless network would become part of the Internet. Efficient compressed digital data could replace jillions of old inefficient analog technologies (police radios, CB radios, AM/FM radio, TV, etc) and unify tons of existing digital standards (HDTV, CDMA/TDMA/GSM/3G cell phones, DirecTV/Dish network satellite TV, 802.11x, etc). With all of those bands available to it, the new IP network would have insane amounts of raw bandwidth to play with.

Before this could become a reality, some work would have to be done to adapt the ideas of IP QoS and multicasting to the realities of radio transmission so that things like TV and radio could be done efficiently over a wireless IP network. I haven't been following developments in IP multicasting technologies; are they mature enough to be useful for things like TV?

I do get annoyed by peakoil scaremongerers who ignore the fact that people continue making new finds around the world - even in bizarre places where we've never even thought of looking before, such as granite basement rock (????... ok, someone explain to me how that one works ;) And yet, look at Vietnam, and all of its granite fields like White Tiger...).

Here is what ExxonMobil has to say about the matter. Hardly scaremongering.

Add to the mix the fact that some oil companies have been overestimating their oil reserves, and you have a looming problem that is notscaremongering. Are we adapting (using our oil resources more wisely/conserving)? Not really.

The total fleet fuel economy peaked in 1987 at 26.2 mpg when light trucks made up a mere 28.1 percent of the market. By 2001 with light trucks making up 46.7 percent of the market total fleet fuel economy fell to 24.4 mpg.

The standards for all light trucks manufactured is set at 21.0 mpg for MY 2005, 21.6 mpg for MY 2006, and 22.2 mpg for MY 2007. This rule is effective May 5, 2003.

BTW, none of theses views are from "liberal environmentalist caremongerers" (whoever the heck they are.)

Cheers- raga

If the big kilowatt and megawatt FMs don't leak into my TV channels I can't see milliwatt WiFi being a problem either. The fact that there's a considerable gap in frequency between channels 6 and 7 that allows the room for FM radio. See this chart for more information (you may have to scroll and zoom a bit; you're looking for the third row down about halfway across) is what keeps the FM radio stations off of channels 6 and 7. Broadcast TV channels 2-4 run 54-72 MHz, there's a break between 4 and 5, 5-6 run 76-88 MHz, there's another (bigger) break where FM radio--and a whole bunch of other stuff--goes. Channel 7 doesn't pop up until 174 MHz.

Yeah, even though a bit off-topic, I'd like to know why is every other chunk of spectrum marked for aeronautical navigation or maritime mobile?

Source

How feasable would it be to do the same with the AM radio spectrum? A look at the US radio spectrum shows that a huge portion is allocated twards AM radio.

I love this PDF of the Radio Spectrum. If you look carefully you'll see that there really isn't an amazing amount of space in the FM spectrum so it wouldn't take too many unlicensed channels to cause problems.
Incidently, I feel that the AM spectrum is a greater waste of radio spectrum then all other wastes combined. Heck, FM and HAM combined use less then half the spectrum of AM. I know that lower frequencies don't carry as much information, but surely there is a better use for that low frequency space then AM radio... I wouldn't mind if they killed AM radio and allowed wireless internet using the AM band. Might be slow, but you'd have coverage from all over.

Your not alone with taking your money elsewhere. When they 1st started this, a friend of mine was cuaght up in the stupididty and she changed the tickets for about 20 people to go to Europe the other way.

I was just talking to a friend about going to Orlando in June. After this nonsense, it looks like Europe is going to get the tourist money.

Any one want to bet what happens the 1st time the US finger prints an Aussie whos on the jet fighter selection comitteee? I'm betting that will sway the decision about the Euro-fighter. The decision has already been made about buying Boeing jets by two of the local airlines and they declined.

Tourism in the US is just starting to recover in the US (www.bea.gov) but international tourism is flat and its the 4th largest "import" of money into the US. The US Gov't is spending $50 mil tring to get more tourist. Germany, Japan, UK, Canada and Mexico account for about 3/4 of all visitors in to the US. France used to be major contributor but they seem to be going elsewhere.

Outsourcing is nothing more than a natural market reaction to overpriced labor in certain areas of the economy. It is clearly in the interest of corporations to find the cheapest labor skilled enough to do a job. Outsourcing is a market-driven hint to some in the labor pool to expand their skills, find new opportunities, invent, completely change career paths, or otherwise find a way to make themselves valuable.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the US enjoys a trade surplus in services, to the tune of $60 billion. A large portion of that surplus is computer services. This bears repeating: we import more programming/analysis/consulting than we export. The the overall service balance is shrinking, from $64B in 2002 to $60B last year, but is still a large surplus. The shrinking is easy to explain: as more nations/laborpools develop the skills to do certain jobs, companies are given greater selection. Salaries in the computer services secotr in the US will trend downward, while they will be pulled up overseas. They will meet in the middle somewhere

Not all jobs will be outsourced. There will still be many jobs, especially in emerging markets, that cannot be outsourced because laborers overseas do not yet have the skills needed to do the jobs. This is a great opportunity for those left without a job to improve their skills and enter these 'safe' markets.

There is no sence in complaining about outsourcing. "Evil" corporations are going to do it whether you like it or not. Government protection is not the answer, mainly because it isn't the government's responsibility to ensure you have a job. That onus lies on you. If you are unemployed, stop reading Slashdot and find a way to be valuable to the economy. Self-reliance, innovation and hard work are what made this country what it is and will continue to keep it great.

As the US labor pool is forced to become more skilled, the standard of living in countries like India will rise, creating a larger market for US produced goods, thus creating more jobs is the US.

I repeat: THE ANSWER IS NOT GOVERNMENT HANDOUT, SUBSIDY OR PROTECTION!!!! IT'S AMERICAN INDUSTRY AND HARD WORK!!!

"the physical movement of all hardware and/or technical data to another country for any purpose, whether or not the hardware and/or technical data is explicitly listed on the Commerce Control List (CCL). It includes domestic disclosures of technical data and software to foreign nationals, and domestic transfers with the knowledge or intent that the transferred hardware, software, or technical data will be provided to a foreign party."

• Category 0 - Nuclear Materials, Facilities and Equipment and Misc
• Category 3 - Electronics
• Category 4 - Computers
• Category 7 - Navigation and Avionics
• Category 9 - Propulsion Systems, Space Vehicles and Related Equipment

• Export Administration Regulations
• BIS -- Policies and Regulations

It's an excuse to pad the pockets of the fat shareholders at the expense of the middle class.

According to the Bereau of Economic Analysis, shareholders dividends amounted to just 4.7% of income in the US.

Employee compensation plus government transfer payments (social security, etc) amount to 82% of income in the US.

So the idea that all this money churning around out there is going into the "pockets of the fat shareholders" is a myth.