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Spectrum as Property
the economist troll writes "An article in this week's Economist argues that overcautious control of electromagnetic spectrum, on the part of regulatory agencies, has resulted in the sheer waste of up to 95% of available spectrum. The article suggests remedies for this sorry state of affairs, including (but not limited to) various methods of privatization. Peppered with history and interesting facts--for instance, did you know only 2% of America's spectrum allocation is determined by auction?--this is one article you won't want to miss."
Its braindead. The RF spectrum is a limited resource, and as such is subject to speculation and fraud -- have we forgotten electricity auctions so quickly?
Four more years for Bush (and Michael Powell)
Don't be so fscking blind. Comments like that are so high school. Look at all the give-aways BOTH parties toss out to their paid clients. If you believe for one second Bush/Republicans are any worse than the Democrats, you're a bigger fool than they ever hoped for. Bush's FCC commissioner, Junior Powell, obviously is a lacky for large corporate interests. But so were his predecessors under Clinton. Hell, go read the USDA rural broadband money rules (from the bill Democrat Senator Harkin sponsored). Would you be surprised it's just a slush fund to give money back to the incumbant phone companies? Yup. If you ain't one, or ain't established old money, you ain't getting money. Funny how it always works that way.
While we're on the propaganda debunking, here's one for you:
1. Go read MoveOn.org's propeganda, especially all the blathering hatred at Bush for sending US jobs offshore to places like India, China, etc.
2. Then read who MoveOn.org is funded by (George Soros).
3. Then read Soros Investments list of holdings. Wow... it's like a list of all the major guilty offshoring companies! How can this be? Maybe Soros doesn't know?
4. Then read the white papers and recommendations by Soros Holdings on offshoring. HINT: If you are a company he invests in and are NOT making him money, he will move to find better management or dump his investment in you.
This country would rock if it wasn't for all you stupid sheep.
The Economist recommends privatisation as a solution. Now what a surprise. Don't get me wrong, it's a great paper and I actually subscribe to it, but there are times when it gets into the realms of market fundamentalism, so you should always read between the lines. Some of their articles also read as if they belong in the Leader section, so thick do they lay it on with the opinions.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I want to purchase all electromagnetic frequencies between 380 nm and 780 nm. Therefore, everything that people could see would belong to me. Or does somebody else already own that part already?
Of course, I'll licence them under the GNU's GPL.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Imagine if you could broadcast anything over the radio without fear of the FCC, as long as your station was popular enough to pay your broadcast bills instead of your fines to the government?
Imagine that, perhaps, not all radio emissions generate money. Imagine that researchers and hams get trampled on by some company because the company has millions to throw at a piece of the spectrum and the researcher/ham doesn't?
Imagine you have a small dinky radio station that broadcasts programs for "friends of the earth" and other ecologists, and Texaco buys out all the spectrum available, and that *oops, too bad* the dinky station can't broadcast anything?
Imagine that. It'd be great wouldn't it? I can't figure out whether you're an idiot, a troll or a convinced republican...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
You do not seem to know what you are talking about. Have you been to any of the places you're mentioning? Could you point to Moçambique on a map without looking it up first?
I'm German. I have been to a number of places in Eastern Europe that have seen the worse side of German occupation, and I have never been met with hate. I've been learning Russian, I've been learning some Hebrew so that I could read Yiddish (basically a dialect of German) and speak to some of the few remaining Jews over there, I did some reading, and then I just went there. People were a bit reserved at first, but after two minutes of talk, we got along very well. When I said I wanted to visit my German occupant grand-uncle's grave on the German military cemetery in Smolensk, we drove there together without them even asking.
My girlfriend is Ukrainian. They are probably the country that got the worst of us in World War 2. Do you think she hates me? We are talking Russian at home because my Ukrainian is too bad, and she gives me 9th-of-May victory postcards as a joke. That's Ukrainian hate for you.
I've spent the better part of the last year in Uzbekistan in the French Research Institute in Tashkent where the librarian is Crimean Tatar, born in the 1930s. We got along very well. She told me about how she got to hate Germans between '42 and '44 during German occupation of the Crimea, how Germans threatened to shoot her father before her eyes. After the war, she said, she refused even to look at Germans because of this. After the collapse of 1991, however, she said the five or ten Germans who came to Tashkent for research were young, interested in the local peopulation and their history, they spoke Russian and/or Uzbek and behaved very civilized and friendly in general. She said that these Germans were difficult to hate, and that she was compelled to relinquish her hate for Germans in general and turn it into bitter memories of the German occupants sixty years ago - an entirely different story.
So "all Africans hate the Europeans"? My brother came back a few weeks ago from eight months of work in Ghana where he lived in Accra with a host family, no running water, but the people were fine. Hated because he is European? Definitely not. I know Brits who worked in Nigeria (colony until 1960), Russians who worked in Central Asia (colony until 1917, Soviet Union afterwards) and a Portuguese who worked in Angola (colony until 1975). The memories they brought back were not ones of hate. If you visit Moçambique, there are places that you don't visit when you look like money, not when you're Portuguese. "Legitimate hate"? If that old Jew in Velizh near Smolensk had hated me, I wouldn't have blamed him, but he didn't.
Make an effort to learn people's languages, to show interest in them, their culture and their history. Respect them, look and behave in a respectable way. Stay in places for more than a couple of days, behave like a civilized person and smile when people show you their family pictures. An American who does just that is not going to be hated anywhere in the world, even in the Philippines (US colony until 1946) or Vietnam for that matter. They may not like your country (as an abstract entity) for what it does, what it did or fails to do, but they will not hate you.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)