Slashdot Mirror
No Wi-Fi Around Huge Radio Telescope
JG0LD writes "Students at a tiny Appalachian public school can't use Wi-Fi because any such network can throw the radio equivalent of a monkey wrench into a gigantic super-sensitive radio telescope just up the road. GBT's extraordinary sensitivity means that it's very susceptible to human-generated radio interference, according to site interference protection engineer Carla Beaudet. 'If there was no dirt between us and the transmitter, a typical access point ... would have to be on the order of 1,000,000 km [more than 620,000 miles, or about two and a half times the distance from the Earth to the Moon] distant to not interfere. Fortunately, we have mountains around us which provide lots of attenuation, so we're not seeing everything from everywhere,' she said. A standard Wi-Fi access point would wipe out a significant range of usable frequencies for the observatory. 'It simply ruins the spectrum for observations from 2400-2483.5MHz and from 5725-5875MHz for observational purposes,' wrote Beaudet."
The National Radio Quiet Zone has been there since 1958. It's not like it was just discovered yesterday. People living in this zone have always had to live without radio transmitters. Not having 802.11 is just another of the services they cannot use, like wireless garage-door openers and cell phones.
Just hope that the aliens aren't using the same Wi-Fi as us, and this won't be a problem.
I think the point is that the telescope is so sensitive that it's likely that no matter how much you crank down the dBs, it would still splatter too much.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Just let FedEx handle all your data transfer needs.
Even with a fairly low transmission power (1 W) you can reach hundreds of meters. So yeah, it'll extend far beyond the school unless your intended range of use is 1 cm.
Not far for a crude mobile receiver to have two-way communication maybe but still noisy for a super sensitive listener.
She'll leave the lights on for ya.
This is also a huge problem for spaceborne radiometers that observe the Earth's surface (example paper). A radiometer is essentially a very sensitive receiver, and there are portions of the UHF and microwave spectrum reserved specifically for scientific research so that terrestrial stations don't interfere with the measurements. Unfortunately, interference may occur from transmitters directly in the band, from adjacent channels, or inadvertent harmonics from poorly-filtered transmitters. Pinpointing and correcting these sources is a logistical nightmare, especially when you have to deal with every individual country's RF regulators.
"here is a technological solution to the problem in the pipeline -802.11ad, a next-gen wireless standard that uses 60GHz frequencies to send and receive information, instead of the usual 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. At 60GHz, according to Beaudet, radio energy essentially just bounces off the atmosphere -meaning that the frequency is useless to the Green Bank Telescope in the first place. Signals to and from 802.11ad access points, then, would have no effect on the work taking place at the GBT, allowing for the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, 802.11ad is very much a technology of the future, not of the present -experts at an Interop New York panel last year predicted that devices using the standard wouldn't hit the market until 2014."
Bluetooth. Finally a reason to put up with it.
So some kids can't get Wi Fi. A vast majority of people around the world grew up without WiFi and of those most who went to school did so without WiFi.
What ever happened to that wifi blocking wallpaper?
NSF plans to cut the funding for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank. So I guess the kids will soon have WiFi and cell phones. This is a good thing, right?
One watt is up near the top end of transmit power for Wi-Fi. Most Wi-Fi hardware transmits at a quarter watt or less so that when the end user couples it with a moderately directional antenna, they don't hit the maximum ERP.
But the point is well taken.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
When you said "very much a technology of the future" I was thinking 5+ years maybe, 2014 isn't too bad. But very interesting.
Well neither you nor the article understand 802.11ad... This will have bluetooth-esqe range. It is meant for high speed wireless communication between servers and switches on the same rack and the like. This will not and cannot replace 802.11a/b/g/n/ac. People complain that 5ghz wifi doesn't have enough range now...
... they can eavesdrop on wifi from a million KM away.
There is also no issue today.
Cat5 wires to every computer. Its not that big of a deal.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If conditions are right, I can have a contact with someone on CW running 5 watts, on the other side of the globe.
Such is the sensitivity of tuned circuits. For untuned interference, like your cell phone trying to interfere with your TV, rejection is great. But when you're specifically tuned to receive a frequency, you've got such a high sensitivity to that specific frequency, (and very high rejection of any other frequencies) that a cricket fart of a signal a long ways away can sound like a lightning strike on your house, if it's on the same frequency you're straining to hear.
They're a little better off than my CW example, being on a high frequency that's mainly line-of-sight, for which surrounding mountains would be a pretty effective shield, but still their receivers are just incredibly sensitive at their design frequencies. They just can't have anything anywhere near them or you will be all they can hear. It'd be like trying to listen to someone talking to you from a table at the other end of the restaurant, while you are seated right next to a table full of loud party animals. You'd have no chance.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Isn't the antenna so focussed it's not likely to receive anything except in a small beam width? I know my large aperture communications terminals have a beamwidth of 0.1 degrees or less or are they concerned about reflections? How sensitive are those radio telescopes and how tight are their beams?
Are they afraid people will trip over the wires? Can they not afford to string cable?
When Greenbank was built this "high tech modern society" stuffe didn't exist. It's been there for about 50 years. People can choose not to live there. It was remote initially. People moved in.
I don't see what this has to do with the GBT or the National Radio Quiet Zone.
They want the same organization who steps in to solve their connectivity problem to also buy each student a laptop.
I would like to see a cost analysis of the wired vs. (prohibited) wireless solution. I expect they could afford neither.
And if the instruments predated the widespread use of those frequencies by 50 or so years?
Why is anyone even making an issue of this?
Then as the use of those frequencies started to become prevalent, they should have either started change the way they look for things or else move.... or else buy out all of the surrounding land so that they *CAN* dictate the terms of technological operations on it.
If they don't own the nearby land, then I can see no reason why they should be able to dictate what goes on nearby when those activities are otherwise legitimate and very common elsewhere.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I have an iPad, you insensitive clod!
They would except flux capacitors would cause interference too.
The article doesn't explain why the tablet computers must have a network connection to be used to read digital textbooks. Is there any reason why the digital textbooks can't be loaded from a hardwired connection and then used when the tablets are offline?
The article also doesn't explain why every student in the entire school must have simultaneous internet access in order to take the online standardized tests. It should be possible to set a computer lab with enough computers to allow every student in a single grade to take the online standardized tests.
The article mentions that there is a highly restricted NSA facility near the school. I'm sure that the NSA knows how to limit signal leakage and radio frequency interference. Perhaps the NSA facility can find a solution to this problem that doesn't require a wireless network.
Breaking news.... advancing technology sometimes breaks older technology. It's a fact of life... we either live with it, or move further away from other people so that we don't have to deal with it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The summary is restating the obvious but the actual article is about how the school district and state are moving to use ebooks and online testing so this school needs a lot of additional networking gear to keep everything wired only. They also mention how 802.11ad would work since it's signal range is too high to get through the atmosphere so the observatory doesn't care about it, but 802.11ad isn't readily available yet.
This is why the proposal to build a radio telescope array on the far side of the Moon has been around for so long. Having the moon between us and it is one helluva lot of dirt for blocking stray signals. Plus no atmosphere to get in the way. All you have to worry about then is reflection of Earthly signals off of other bodies in the solar system.
Too bad about the expense...
Then as the use of those frequencies started to become prevalent, they should have either started change the way they look for things or else move....
Because all the quasars in the galaxy decided to stop emitting radio waves just because it wasn't technologically feasible to detect them otherwise.
You realize how fucking dumb what you just suggested was, right?
Do you understand what the purpose of a radio telescope is? How it is tuned to receive frequencies emanating from many light years away? And the frequency of those em waves can't be changed unless you somehow go back in time and fundamentally alter the laws of physics?
Maybe I'm missing some obscure humor in your posts. Pray, do tell.
It's in the middle of a national park, they DO own the land. When people moved there they damn well KNEW the restrictions. These instruments are not something you load on a truck, they built directly into the mountain!
This is the second post I've seen in as many days on Green Bank, and no mention of the fact that the NSF is planning on closing the facility to save money. Green Bank is the largest movable radio telescope in the world. If you feel--like I do--that this would be a detriment to the nation, please sign the petition or, even better, write your Congressperson.
>I have an iPad, you insensitive clod!
Use it to soak up your menstrual flow, you elitist clod! Break the glass first, it works better that way.
Yes, of course I realize what the purpose of a radio telescope is. But if commonplace technology in a nearby town is going to start interfering with that purpose, then it stands to reason that they should relocate.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Still seems to me like something has to change.... either the people need to relocate or the facility does. If they own the land, then why did they allow development there in the first place? Such interference was *inevitable*.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If they really need to use the frequencies that a technologically developed society uses all the time, then they should build their instruments in a remote enough location that regular use of technology would not be likely to interfere with them, instead of building it near enough to a town or city that a school could reasonably pose a threat just by using wifi.
Well now, aren't we the social experts all of a sudden? The National Radio Astronomy Quiet Zone, aka the NRAQZ, was setup in the 1950's as someone has already pointed out, and it is a natural bowl with 3 to 5 miles of real estate that is shielded from a lot of earthy interference because of the surrounding hills.
In 1950, there may have been some daytime AM radio in the area, which is not much of a problem because they don't listen to much below 300 mhz, 300 times the frequency of a Ma & Pa radio station. Its (the ma & pa radio) still there too.
Interesting side effect was that distant tv stations were forced to either be low band vhf, or if high band, more limited in power output. WTDV, on channel 5, about 80 Mhz, built their original facility on Fisher Hill, which was actually about 2 miles inside this designated areas borders, and was put there by the FCC's rules & regs when it was built in the later 50's because it was the highest point, and could not be moved more than 2 or 3 miles from where it a was at without being short-spaced to some other station. But was allowed to use the full 100kw sync tip peak power that any low band vhf can us as a maximum ERP.
WBOY, 17 miles north in Clarksburg and assigned to channel 12, was not allowed the high band vhf's max power of 330 kw ERP. but was limited to 100kw because of the slightly above 200Mhz frequency.
So, in the run up to the digital conversion, they wanted to recover all the low band stuff for use by Law Enforcement & because their assignment program was written by an idiot that wasn't aware of the NRAQZ, and proceeded to assign both stations new channels in the 56-58 range. That's in the high middle of the 700Mhz range. So I called the enforcement/compliance officer at Green Bank and asked him how much noise I could make on channel 58. 58 don't mean nothing so I had to translate to the actual frequency, which he plugged into his program and which said that the maximum power I (WDTV, I was the C.E. at the time) could send from 270 degrees true to Green Bank was 4.78 watts. Anything more than that he would have us shut down. I said send me a letter to that effect, and he did.
So I went to the NAB a couple months later and had a ball going around to the various transmitter makers showing that letter and asking for bids on a 4.78 watt transmitter. IOW, I had a ball poking fun at the commishes obvious stupidity.
Eventually, along with some heavy duty prompting by our Washington legal people, they saw fit to let us stay on our low band frequency. Quite a few of the tv broadcasters in the more mountainous areas have also stayed on our original channels.
As for de-funding or de-protecting the area from interference from the broadcasters, no way. 90% of what we know about the radio universe around us, came from Green Back, and to a certain extent, Aricebo. But while Aricebo can hear farther, it isn't nearly so steerable, nor as sharply focused as Green Bank's big dish. The new dish they built to replace the 300 meter that fell from rust & corrosion way back when, is performing at a level the old dish only dreamed about. It can move faster too in the event of a gamma ray burst, it can slew and be looking at the source of that burst in just a couple minutes. That facility is IMO a national treasure. FWIW, you have to take the bus into the place is your car has spark plugs. So everything that moves in that valley moves in a diesel bus, or by muscle powered bicycles.
Like Paul Harvey would say, and that's the rest of the story.
Cheers, Gene
Your better off running a wire network in the first place. I may be wrong ( which I'm not ) but couldn't you just put the school in a magnetic cage so to speak there for blocking it from giving off / taking unwanted fields.
Lol. Bet you're the type that gets your opinions from cable news, rush and wnd.com.
Then why on earth is there any civilian development inside of that bowl in the first place? No wifi in the school is one thing... what about nearby homes? What about interference caused by cell phones? What about interference caused by passing automobiles running sophisticated electronics?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Can they not use lower power wifi so that their signal does not extend that far beyond the school?
It's a great pity you can't network computers together with copper wire, isn't it?
iPads don't have USB ports
Of course it does, and both genders at that.
or any sort of removable storage whatsoever
Come again?
There is not any living quarters other than what may be a dorm for interns doing research, that I know of "inside the bowl", but Davis (I think that's the name) is only 2 or 3 miles away, south on the blacktop, and there are farms all around it.
I don't live there obviously, but have been down to play tourist a couple times. At my age now, 78 & diabetic, the walking would get me down quickly as the hip joints are about shot, and the better half has COPD, so I expect we have been there for the last time. We stopped for a sandwich & cup in that town (maybe 300 on Saturday night) the last time, and with the relative quiet on the car radio, you got the impression you were transported back to a simpler, slower time, and one that I, after all the years in broadcasting, could easily enjoy the contrast. People there seem to actually talk to each other! The hills there aren't quite as 'in your face' as they are locally. Here, you leave by the same road that got you into this little cul-de-sac, or you rappel from tree to tree just to get to the top of the hill 100 yards away from my front deck.
Cheers, Gene
The main beam is very narrow. However, all directional antennas have sidelobes.
They allowed development with the understanding that no wireless devices be used. The people that developed knew, and know, full well what they are allowed and not allowed to do there.
Fortunately this situation is not a problem since it is in Appalachia, as when a guy there talks about his "WiFi" it merely means his spouse is back on the methamphetamine. That does not interfere with telescopes or modern electronic devices, unless she gets too high and disassembles them.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
Most cell carriers do not have coverage at Snowshoe Mountain Resort just down the road from it. When I go skiing there I don't expect to use my cell phone.
They could always use a huge antenna at the radio telescope to provide spatial filtering of unwanted signals...
Oh, they do!
Actually I would take this one further and say that they would be better off using fiber optic for networking and convert it to and from ethernet on either end.
Fiber won't absorb or radiate any RFI from any point as long as you install it properly.
The solution to this is ironically already being rolled out over the world, fiber.
Bluetooth range is fine for one-AP-per classroom or one-AP-per library desk. But yes, you can't ever hack 60 GHz to work at 20+ miles like people do with 2.4 GHz. But 10 ft radius will be easy, and one AP in the middle of the ceiling of a classroom should hit everyone. Should be good enough for many 802.11 applications today, even if the model of a single AP covering a 3-story building won't work anymore.
Learn to love Alaska
But if commonplace technology in a nearby town is going to start interfering with that purpose, then it stands to reason that they should relocate.
They were there first. And it is not like the people in that area didn't know about the radio quiet zone and it suddenly snuck up on them while they were napping.
Wow, a small schoolhouse has to use wired networking. What a shame. Maybe they can pick up their cellphones and call their senators to complain. Oh wait, no they can't. They have to use a landline. I wonder why that is?
So I went to the NAB a couple months later and had a ball going around to the various transmitter makers showing that letter and asking for bids on a 4.78 watt transmitter.
Kewl. QRP commercial television station. Do you QSL?
I think a lot of the "mountain area" VHF TV stations haven't been forced to digital is because, at least in Oregon, they are translators put up by a group of local residents so they could get ANY TV. Those groups are long gone and nobody has much money to buy new equipment, so the residents got their legislators to exempt them. I think.
Nice story. Thanks.
For untuned interference, like your cell phone trying to interfere with your TV, rejection is great.
Funny, but TVs are one of the most common places I hear the "brrzzzztt brrrrzzzzzt" from my GSM cellphone. When I have the ringer off, it's how I know I just got an SMS or someone tried to call me. Rejection not so hot, I think.
It still seems to me, however, that in the 21st century, such a prohibition is not particularly reasonable in a technologically developed nation. It may have seemed quite reasonable 50 years ago, but times change.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
According to wikipedia, this dish was started in 1991 and and became operational in 2000. While I'll grant that wifi wasn't ubiquitous in the early part of that time frame, it was much more prevalent toward the end. Plus there were other kinds of radio technologies gaining common currency in that time frame (cell phones for example). It's a little disingenuous to hark back an additional thirty years in support of your argument, because this dish hadn't been built then.
Anyway, it seems to me it would have been reasonable to build this is a place less likely to be affected by consumer tech than on the east coast. Was it a pork project? What other sites were considered? There really isn't much info on these aspects.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I'm a radio astronomer who frequently uses the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, and I really wish we had an exclusion zone around it like the one around Green Bank. It's not really something you can put in place retrospectively, though: you need to write the exclusion zone into law when you build the telescope, and fight to keep it from then on. At least we've been smart enough to put an exclusion zone in place around the new ASKAP telescope in Western Australia.
I've got to say, though, that
90% of what we know about the radio universe around us, came from Green Back, and to a certain extent, Aricebo.
is a bit of an exaggeration. Even just in the US, you've got the VLA, which is arguably a more important radio instrument than Green Bank; and then you've got Effelsberg, Lovell, LOFAR and the WSRT in Europe, the GMRT in India, Parkes and the ATCA in Australia ... None of them are quite as good as Green Bank at what it does - broad frequency coverage and excellent point-source sensitivity - but each of them has something that it can do better than any other instrument in the world. Parkes, for example, is good at high-time-resolution surveys - it's found more radio pulsars than every other telescope put together.
'It simply ruins the spectrum for observations from 2400-2483.5MHz and from 5725-5875MHz for observational purposes,' wrote Beaudet.
Brought to you by the mindless tautology department of mindless tautology.
Just my $0.03 (At current exchange rates, my £0.02 is worth more than your $0.02)
But Hell, isn't every facility in the USA better at everything than any other focussed facility anywhere else in the word. You obviously haven't studied the US facilities sufficiently - Geeze man get with the fucking program - the USA RULEZ !!! . Yes I live in Australia ......(PS I love Parkes and the new "scope" in WA will be mind blowing! )
This folks is what we call "entitlement". Entitled people move onto the domain of others then whine about how it needs to be changed to suit their needs, no matter what the land was used for before they got there. If you can't survive with a wired network, move! Otherwise, deal with it.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
So I went to the NAB a couple months later and had a ball going around to the various transmitter makers showing that letter and asking for bids on a 4.78 watt transmitter.
Kewl. QRP commercial television station. Do you QSL?
Not that I know of. Used to be fun back in the late 40's when you could pick up a Miami FL station running an Indian Head test pattern at 3 in the afternoon in rural Iowa. :)
I think a lot of the "mountain area" VHF TV stations haven't been forced to digital is because, at least in Oregon, they are translators put up by a group of local residents so they could get ANY TV. Those groups are long gone and nobody has much money to buy new equipment, so the residents got their legislators to exempt them. I think.
Nice story. Thanks.
Humm, quote parent doesm't quote it all, come on /., get with it!
Actually, translator rules are under a different section in 47CFR, and I believe they can stay by getting one of those digital to analog boxes they gave out coupons for back in 2008 so we didn't force everyone to buy a new tv when the old one was still working. We are doing it too, putting the converted to analog signal on one of the low uhf channels, but it doesn't get very far on 10 watts, I am 16 miles away and I can see its on the air is about the best I can say about it. West of the river, I think the translator power limit is lower, but some of that stuff is pretty bad technically, so trying to get a digital signal thru them undamaged can be pretty frustrating. Power is measured differently too, for digital its average, the old analog rules were peak, so 100kw sync tip peak, took 26.3kw (IIRC) peak out of the tx, which actually measures 16.7 as heat in the dummy load. the 26.3kw to 100kw was the 4 bay antenna gain. That same power amplifier, when linearity corrected for the digital signal, can make about 4 or 5kw of usable digital power since it has to operate nominally 12 db below its peak ability in order to have room for the peaks of the digital signal. Which still generates 35kw worth of hot water or hot air, whatever the cooling method used.
Most of those translators are owned & licensed to the parent tv station they carry. Maintenance too is generally by the tv station engineering staff. Cost is justified by the additional eyeballs in the ratings. :)
earth is too polluted with all kinds of pollutants including radio.. put it on the far (or dark) side of the moon!
It's a great pity you can't network computers together with copper wire, isn't it?
They know that. Just it will cost more to wire the classrooms to spec. And no one wants to pick up the tab. The astronomers aren't obligated to and are starved for budget already. The education department similarly. Probably it'll be resolved by some private donor or company sponsor.
So many devices come with 802.11? and Bluetooth, it's not possible to control or police it. Some laptops have hardware switches for wireless, some have software swithches (thanks to airplane regulations), but many just leave it running. There's a lot of things which operate in the 2.4 GHz band, which the residents will not even think about, even if they are well-meaning and diligent. Thermostats, weather stations, cordless phones are some examples.
On the other hand, this place would be a haven for those people who are afraid that RF radiation can cause health problems.
They should have built the telescope on the back side moon if they wanted quiet.
Really, it has much less to do with entitlement than it does with the fact that the people who ran that institution made a very poor judgement call when they agreed to allow development on their property in the first place. While it's one thing to bind someone to an agreement to not use particular technologies, it's quite another to expect the such bindings should somehow automatically apply to future generations, effectively restricting future technological progress.
But yes... if the institution has more right to be there than the town, then the town *SHOULD* move.... because with the principles involved, there's infinitely more at stake here than just whether or not these people can use wifi at school. As technology advances, the prohibitions against the use of electronics which might cause radio interference with the telescope are only going to become increasingly difficult to manage as such new technology becomes ubiquitous. This story is only the beginning.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Right... and why should you have to decrypt that dvd movie you bought to watch it on your Linux computer, when you could have chosen to buy an unencrypted dvd instead? Oh, wait...
You see? This isn't just about whether or not a school or community can use wifi. it's about arbitrarily creating restrictions around technology that define what kinds of technologies people, especially future generations, are going to be permitted to use simply so that *YOU* can continue your work. This issue is only going to get worse as time goes on, and wireless technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous. Today it's a school having to use a wired lan instead of wifi (a restriction that, alone, I think is unreasonable in the 21st century), but what will end up being affected 50 years more from today? If the radio telescope institution has more right to be there, then the town needs to get the hell out... now. Before the problems get any worse.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Because all the quasars in the galaxy "
There are no quasars in this galaxy - fortunately for us.
Google up "sidelobes". You can beat them way down, but you cannot eliminate them.
Plus then - the astronomical payload signals are measured in Jansky's (10^-26 W/m^2), which is propably still ten orders of magnitude weaker than the 1 W gadget at the local town. Throw in a huge sidelobe rejection, and you'd still end up with corrupt data on the telescope.
Funny, but everyone knows that's an AM signal at 217Hz being picked up by audio amplifiers, not the TV anytenna picking up the mobile's signal. So if pedantry is your thing fuck off and die, but his point, as intended, clearly stands.
For untuned interference, like your cell phone trying to interfere with your TV, rejection is great.
Funny, but TVs are one of the most common places I hear the "brrzzzztt brrrrzzzzzt" from my GSM cellphone. When I have the ringer off, it's how I know I just got an SMS or someone tried to call me. Rejection not so hot, I think.
That's not coming in through the tv tuner. That interference comes from the audio circuitry on the TV not being properly sheilded - a pulsing relatively high power radio transmitter close to a non-linear circuit. GSM phones are the worst culprits because of the frequency range (800-900MHz).
I think the point is that the telescope is so sensitive that it's likely that no matter how much you crank down the dBs, it would still splatter too much.
The problem would be as much in the fact that the remote units are probably going to be COTS and therefore not especially cranked down themselves. And travelling off-campus with the radio units still on.
RFI isn't the only case where nearby people can be a problem. The cryogenics lab at the University of Florida is (was?) located just about directly across the street from the football stadium, which is larger than many NFL stadiums. I was told that on game nights when the lights all went on and a 100+ thousand people filed in that the increased temperatures could be felt by some of the the more sensitive cryo experiments, even inside the brick building.
I'm detecting a bit of a red herring in the article. Seems that the school is complaining about the cost of the required laptops in addition to the cost of the cat5 drops in the school rooms due to the shift to digital text books.
The cost of the laptops would have to be spent regardless of the school's location due to the shift to digital text books, so the only "additional" cost would be that of the cat5 drops in each room. However, the following quote from the article:
Green Bank Elementary/Middle has a strong and long-standing relationship with the scientific facility up the road - the NRAO installed Cat-5 cable throughout the school years ago, and Beaudet says the organization provides as much support as possible.
Rather strongly implies that the school is fairly well wired already. But even if they weren't, the only additional cost to the school due to its location would be that of adding the cat5 drops in each room.
Ok, seriously. This is a SMALL piece of a HUGE country and was chosen specifically because it was A) almost 100% uninhabited B) Had high mountains so they wouldn't need as big of a quiet zone C) Out in the middle of fucking nowhere. Maybe the people that moved there and developed there should have thought about whether it was a sustainable place to develop.
I think we need a flying car analogy. Many towns and large cities are currently build near or around airports which all have "no fly zones" that extend into the surrounding developed area (ie: over peoples' homes just like the radio quiet zone). If we suddenly developed a cheap personal flying cars (usable for short-distance flight), should the airport move so that they are not affecting the surrounding houses who's occupants want to fly to work or should people that want to get flying cars move somewhere away from the airport?
After all, if the Appalachian kids can't get access to the Internet that all of the good schools in America are getting, that can't possibly prevent them from competing on an equal level with all of the kids who went to good schools. Companies couldn't possibly discriminate on the basis of not having decent technological knowledge, right?
There's a WiFi transmitter within 100 miles of that dish, with nothing but plain air separating, at least 14 hours a day.
Like it or not, the school has a point. Networks are becoming ever more important to public schools and the vast majority of school districts simply have to come up with the money for a few industrial routers. They cannot. Ethernet is considerably expensive to deploy to every damn desk in a public school, let alone an entire school system. There was no foreseeing this effect when the schools were initially built, when the people began living there and it is in the government's interest that the students be educated with modern technology. The school district asking the public and/or the government for a work around is not outlandish, and a news article trying to shed light on the matter neither wrong or frivolous. Goodness.
The new telescope seemed sort of "porky" when I noticed its genesis at the time. The old telescope rusted out and fell over. Money was allocated for the new one really quickly because of (in my opinion) the pull of the two very senior senators from WV, especially Robert Byrd. That doesn't mean there wasn't scientific merit, just that with Byrd as senator there was no doubt that lots of millions of $$ would be sent there to rebuild. Which brings up a point I haven't seen yet -- this observatory must have brought hundreds of millions of federal dollars to WV over the years, dollars which that state couldn't easily do without. I would think that the residents nearby would appreciate that and not complain or make it hard for the site to operate. Those federal research $$ (what few there will be in the future) could easily end up going elsewhere. Robert Byrd isn't senator anymore.
They cannot.
The telescope has been recommended for defunding by the NSF's radio astronomy committee (along with five other radio telescope programs) according to this six-month-old article at Physics World. It's been around and doing great science for over half a century. For me, as a nerdy kid in the Sixties, Green Bank was the stuff of legends, with the added bonus of being real. A sensitive, steerable antenna is an amazingly powerful tool for doing radio astronomy, and it has more than justified its existence. I'll be sad if and when it is defunded by the NSF, but why the sudden concern over RF emission constraints that people near the site have been *voluntarily* living under for the last fifty-odd years? The GBT and the other five programs (including the VLBA!) that have been recommended for defunding by the NSF can (in theory, anyway) still get alternative funding from other sources than the NSF. This controversy over the RF emission constraints doesn't make any sense to me, unless there is somebody trying to discourage those other sources of funding, by creating a public controversy. Tin foil hat aside, who stands to benefit by seeing GBT closed down?
griffin, in their less than infinite wisdom, based the 30 pin opening on the charger cable
Complain to Griffin, or use a Dremel product.
[With] the 30pin to USB converter [...] Cameras can be used. But hard drives are right out
How does the iPad tell the difference between a camera that implements USB mass storage and a hard drive that implements USB mass storage?
Kluges on top of kluges. Sometimes, when you use an ipad, the walls are enshrouded in fog.
I agree. I was just trying to make sure that all participants in this discussion have something to agree on.
About 35 years ago over beers some of us in Military "A" school conjectured it would be really funny to sneak in the middle of one of those radio-telescopes under cover of darkness with a walkie-talkie and start spouting gibberish. Good times.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
omitting the many, many caveats isn't true, isn't informative, and isn't useful.
That interference comes from the audio circuitry on the TV not being properly sheilded - a pulsing relatively high power radio transmitter close to a non-linear circuit.
And the rejection at that point is ... not so great. Like I said.
Rejection is not limited to rejection in the first amp or even the first IF.
Right... and why should you have to decrypt that dvd movie you bought to watch it on your Linux computer, when you could have chosen to buy an unencrypted dvd instead? Oh, wait...
What the hell does that have to do with people living in a place where they know the law says they can't do a lot of things using RF? The law CAME FIRST. But you actually prove my point. I have to "decrypt" (I actually don't do anything, it happens automatically) the DVD because that's the way it is sold. I have no right to demand that they sell the DVD without encryption, although you assume the right to demand that the radio telescopes move.
If the radio telescope institution has more right to be there, then the town needs to get the hell out... now. Before the problems get any worse.
If the people there want to use radio for things, then yes, they need to get out. The radio telescope was there first. The law came shortly thereafter.
I want to smoke at work. The law says I cannot. Should the workplace change, or should I?
My point is that it's not a matter of "if", it's a matter of when. Right now they still have the readily available option of land lines and wired LANs. But, as the saying goes, but it's all too true, the one constant in progress and technology is change. You cannot assume that ANY type of technology that we might use at one point in time is going to be just as viable in the future as it is at that moment. The technologies themselves might well continue to be available, but they may not only be rendered wholly obsolete by future technologies, but as different technologies come out, what was fairly easy to come by at one time may well get prohibitively difficult to obtain in the future. The error, I maintain, was on the part of the managers of the radio telescope, believing that allowing a community to develop there while maintaining a radio-free zone could somehow ever hope to be perpetually viable.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Hi Gene, I just want to say thank you for your wisdom in this thread. 78 and Slashdotting, I love it. We need more like you!
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
Many thanks for the flowers.
I guess you could say I was a nerd before the word was invented, but not quite as old as dirt. I quit school after the 8th grade in the late '40's, and went to work fixing electronics. Switching to broadcasting in '62, the sign plate on my office door has said Chief Engineer at a broadcast facility since 1977, much of that time, the only engineer, and less than 1% of the stuff was 'sent in' for factory service. My interests are 'eclectic', currently putting the finishing touches on a CNC conversion of a small metal working lathe, and my tabletop mill has been CNC'd for years. Unforch, health issues, like diabetes, are making the retirement years a bit of a PIMA. The alternative however...
FWIW, there are no windows machines here either, everything is running linux. Even the CNC stuff, linuxcnc, which is free for the downloading.
Cheers, Gene
The technologies themselves might well continue to be available, but they may not only be rendered wholly obsolete by future technologies,
This exhibits the fallacy that newer technology "wholly obsoletes" older. It demonstrates just one reason why wired networking will not be "wholly" obsoleted by wireless. There are simply too many places where wireless cannot do the job no matter how much bandwidth wireless comes up with, either because wireless signals interfere with other stuff or they interfere with each other. I can run 100 cat6 cables in a conduit all operating at full duplex gigabit speeds. How many channels are there that don't overlap at 2.4 and 5GHz? Can you add frequencies as easily as I can run more cable?
And when you transmit your private data and technology has improved to the point that you might as well transmit it in the clear, my wires will still limit the ability of casual listeners to intercept that private data.
The error, I maintain, was on the part of the managers of the radio telescope, believing that allowing a community to develop there while maintaining a radio-free zone could somehow ever hope to be perpetually viable.
You don't know they believed that, nor do you consider the issue of "allowing" or "not allowing" people to do things under known limitations. Should all human activity that "is allowed" under certain restrictions be prohibited altogether instead?
Well, today you can buy a wireless router for about half of what you'd pay for for a 1gb hub with 16 ports, for example. As people ditch wired in favor of less expensive wireless, the latter will become increasingly ubiquitous, while the former will only become increasingly difficult to acquire, being considered ever more special purpose and niche interest, and raising its prices relative to more common technologies even more. I might dare suggest that in less than 20 years, they may not be commercially available at all for most people without having to special order them from a manufacturer... and certainly nowhere nearly as affordable. Almost as obsolete as the vacuum tube.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'