Pretty easy to request your own file. Check out the DOJ's FOIA Guide. It will tell you where to send the request and what forms to fill out (Form DOJ-361 for instance, the Certification of Identify).
The Ethnologue is a great language resource with information about pretty much every language spoken on the planet organized by language family and also by country. If you enjoy learning about languages and how they relate to each other it's a great resource.
For those who want to read the full text of the bill, it's H.R. 395. You can go to the Library of Congress's Thomas website to look it up but I've also pasted a copy here.
And for those who don't understand how laws work in the US, this just means that now it gets to go over to the Senate, who then may or may not approve it, who can then approve it with amendments, send it back to the House for further approval in a committee or two, and eventually send it off to the President to sign into law.
And this has little to do with H.J.Res. 2 which is the Omnibus Appropriations Bill that is currently in committee. Well, other than dealing with money.
AN ACT
To authorize the Federal Trade Commission to collect fees for the implementation and enforcement of a `do-not-call' registry, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Do-Not-Call Implementation Act'.
SEC. 2. TELEMARKETING SALES RULE; DO-NOT-CALL REGISTRY FEES.
The Federal Trade Commission may promulgate regulations establishing fees sufficient to implement and enforce the provisions relating to the `do-not-call' registry of the Telemarketing Sales Rule (16 CFR 310.4(b)(1)(iii)), promulgated under the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act (15 U.S.C. 6101 et seq.). Such regulations shall be promulgated in accordance with section 553 of title 5, United States Code. Fees may be collected pursuant to this section for fiscal years 2003 through 2007, and shall be deposited and credited as offsetting collections to the account, Federal Trade Commission--Salaries and Expenses, and shall remain available until expended. No amounts shall be collected as fees pursuant to this section for such fiscal years except to the extent provided in advance in appropriations Acts. Such amounts shall be available for expenditure only to offset the costs of activities and services related to the implementation and enforcement of the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other activities resulting from such implementation and enforcement.
SEC. 3. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION DO-NOT-CALL REGULATIONS.
Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Federal Communications Commission shall issue a final rule pursuant to the rulemaking proceeding that it began on September 18, 2002, under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 U.S.C. 227 et seq.). In issuing such rule, the Federal Communications Commission shall consult and coordinate with the Federal Trade Commission to maximize consistency with the rule promulgated by the Federal Trade Commission (16 CFR 310.4(b)).
SEC. 4. REPORTING REQUIREMENTS.
(a) REPORT ON REGULATORY COORDINATION- Within 45 days after the promulgation of a final rule by the Federal Communications Commission as required by section 3, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission shall each transmit to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate a report which shall include--
(1) an analysis of the telemarketing rules promulgated by both the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission;
(2) any inconsistencies between the rules promulgated by each such Commission and the effect of any such inconsistencies on consumers, and persons paying for access to the registry; and
(3) proposals to remedy any such inconsistencies.
(b) ANNUAL REPORT- For each of fiscal years 2003 through 2007, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission shall each transmit an annual report to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate a report which shall include--
(1) an analysis of the effectiveness of the `do-not-call' registry as a national registry;
(2) the number of consumers who have placed their telephone numbers on the registry;
(3) the number of persons paying fees for access to the registry and the amount of such fees;
(4) an analysis of the progress of coordinating the operation and enforcement of the `do-not-call' registry with similar registries established and maintained by the various States;
(5) an analysis of the progress of coordinating the operation and enforcement of the `do-not-call' registry with the enforcement activities of the Federal Communications Commission pursuant to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 U.S.C. 227 et seq.); and
(6) a review of the enforcement proceedings under the Telemarketing Sales Rule (16 CFR 310), in the case of the Federal Trade Commission, and under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 U.S.C. 227 et seq.), in the case of the Federal Communications Commission.
Passed the House of Representatives February 12, 2003.
I dunno if anyone mentioned this, but the Cool Devices series is pretty cool if you're looking for fucked up porn and uh.. well, naughty tenticles a la Urotsukidoji. It's 13 episodes I think. You can get it on 6 VHS tapes. I'm not sure if it's on DVD or not. It would probably be a two disc set. Not for the squeemish. I think it's pretty funny though.
Did Nick Park do this one? Aardman Animations != Nick Park all the time. Just for distributing Wallace and Gromit. I'd sort of be surprised if Nick Park did this one since he's been working on the feature length movie Chicken Run which is coming out June 23. It looks pretty cool and in his style. Has Mel Gibson doing the lead voice. I can't find any mention of Angry Kid in IMDB so who knows.
Hardly. The Sherman Act (15 USC 1-7) dates from about 1890. Late 19th Century. Heck, in the 18th Century, you could still buy monopolies from the King in England.
Something else to keep in mind... saying the FCC should disappear is like saying the ITU and the NTIA should disappear as well. The ITU are the ones who have allocated the various frequency bands for the three world regions. The NTIA (check out http://www.ntia.doc.gov) does US specific stuff. They're part of the DOC (Dept. of Commerce) too BTW. The FCC is I think more of the enforcer and regulator. A lot of people are against regulation in many areas, but I think in this type of media, you really need to have tons of regulation just to make sure that people aren't stepping on other people's feet.
If you've ever looked at what goes into placing a broadcast radio or TV antenna, you'll have a new found respect for what the FCC does. Also look at Title 47 of the US CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) (check out http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfr-table-searc h.html). They really do a lot more than most people realize.
You want open information exchange? Packet radio? AX.25? It's called Amateur Radio (that's what the A in AX.25 is for anyway). You can find tons of packet radio transmissions on the amateur bands. Plus you have the added benefit of being able to use frequencies that will get you farther than the FM broadcast ones, you can use a lot more power (1 kW or more), and it's sanctioned by the FCC. Plus, you're going to find a lot more people with packet equipment that works on the amateur bands than on broadcast bands.
None of what I said is very specific. Check out the ARRL website for lots more info and links (www.arrl.org).
Is FM too high in the spectrum for packetized radio?
I think you might be getting a couple things confused here. FM = Frequency Modulation, a method of modulating an audio frequency (AF) onto a radio frequency (RF) carrier. It just happens that FM is used as a modulation type in the higher radio broadcast band of 88-107 MHz. You could just as easily use the various types of Amplitude Modulation (AM) at those frequencies or any of the plethora of digital transmission types.
The type of transmission that you use has little to do with what frequency you are broadcasting at. The FM broadcast band is actually relatively low compared to most other actively used transmission bands. For instance, many TV satellite uplinks are in the C-Band (about 4-6 GHz) and the Ku-Band (about 15-17 GHz). The only problem with working at such high frequencies is that your range of transmission is pretty much limited to line of sight. This is a problem (or a benefit depending on how you look at it) with the FM broadcast band, but it is much more apparent as you move up in frequency.
One of the problems you'll run into if you want to do some sort of packet radio is FCC regulations that prohibit or specifically allow only some types of transmissions at various frequencies. But from the technical viewpoint, pretty much anything goes.
Another thing to keep in mind is the amount of bandwidth a FM transmission takes up. Down in the lower bands, you won't find much FM because the bandwidth usage is very prohibitive. You can often fit 10 AM transmissions (or more) in the space of 1 FM transmission. When you're working with kHz, every way you can save bandwidth counts.
Something a lot of people don't know about is FCC Part 15 (of Title 47 of the US CFR). This covers Low and Medium Frequency Experimental radio. Basically, the FCC has said that with some limitations, anyone can broadcast unlicensed on 160-190 kHz and 510-1705 kHz. You can do 1 watt with a 15 meter antenna on the low band, and only 1/10 watt with a 3 meter antenna on the medium freq. band (which if you didn't notice is the broadcast AM band as well).
So what you might say. Well, yeah, I guess if you want to broadcast, 160-190 kHz is pretty useless. You can't do much in the way of voice down there (a decent quality full carrier double sideband AM signal takes up about 10 kHz at least) and forget about FM. There's also a lot of interference down there from natural electrical phenomena. There are some people running beacons down there, and the range can be phenominal.
On to the second band, that's the AM broadcast band like I said before. While 1/10 watt is just a trickle of power, people have reported distances of over 300 miles. Radio wave propagation can do wonders. At night, if you use a silent frequency set aside for local broadcasts, you could easily get a decent coverage area, especially with a decently designed antenna.
Anyway, this obviously isn't as lucrative as broadcasting way up in the FM broadcast band with tons of power (relatively), but for those who have that desire for experimentation and learning, this is a great opportunity.
For more info on this stuff, check out: this link.
Thought I'd make some comments since I was directly involved in this project.
This wasn't just a one time deal, it was actually a series of scheduled lectures, some originating in Japan, others originating in the US. On the US side, the professor teaching the class was Prof. Larry Landweber at the University of Wisconsin Madison, one of the people who helped create CSNet back in ArpaNet days. On the Japan side it was Prof. Jun Murai at Keio University who is often refered to as the Internet guru in Japan. Larry and Jun are good friends and had been wanting to do something like this for a while.
The lectures themselves were basically video-conferences. Using Sony DV equipment, the audio and video streams were sent across Internet/2 infrastructure. Someone mentioned that they didn't see what this has to do with IPv6. The Internet/2 on its own doesn't, however, this project utilized IPv6 going over ATM. There was no compression used in this, so bandwidth usage was around 35-40 Mbps. For the most part, it worked very well with amazing video and audio quality.
I've been told that this was the first time that regularly scheduled video content was sent from the US to Asia over the Internet/2. It was amazing to see it work. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to e-mail me.
Having just received my no code tech license a couple weeks ago, I'm sort of happy about this, but also a bit apprehensive. 5 wpm code should be very easy to learn and that makes me happy since it seems it should be pretty easy for me to get an extra class license now (the written tests really aren't that hard).
However, I don't know if this is the greatest thing. I have the highest respect for someone who's been in the art for decades and can do CW at 30-40 WPM. When I do get my extra license, I'll sort of feel like a jerk compared to the people who know CW like a pro. However, IMHO, the real fun is in the lower frequencies (40M and below) and I'll be damn happy to be able to use those frequencies with more ease.
And no matter what anyone says, when you're trying to get that DX QSO at very low power levels, CW is the way to go.
Something that I don't think anyone has mentioned (my fault if they did...) A quick search of the US PTO online database shows no registered or pending trademarks for LinuxOne. I don't think it's illegal, but I think it's pretty poor for someone to claim a trademark on something they haven't even bothered to file with the US gov't. Unless of course it's a foreign trademark. But that's murky waters. Anyway.. I'm not one to cry wolf about stuff I don't know 100% about, but I'm just a bit apprehensive about this company... we'll see what happens when and if it ever does IPO.
Yeah the patent is pretty general. To answer your question, from Newton's Telecom Dictionary: MASER - Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. A device that generates electromagnetic signals in the microwave range, known for relatively low noise.
Yeah.. I can imagine low noise would be a Good Thing.
It's an interesting site, but I think it would be a lot more interesting if they referenced at least some of the laws to the ordinance number or section of state law, etc. What's to stop me from submitting a fake law that says "It is illegal for anyone in Madison WI to not be drunk on a football game day." Of course, you're stupid not to be, but that's a different story.
Slashdot Mirror
The bill is S. 877. However it's not up on the Library of Congress's Thomas server yet. Usually takes a couple days for the text to show up.
Pretty easy to request your own file. Check out the DOJ's FOIA Guide. It will tell you where to send the request and what forms to fill out (Form DOJ-361 for instance, the Certification of Identify).
68 FR 14140. Direct link to the Federal Register. PDF format. Enjoy.
PS: Request your FBI file regularly. It's really easy.
The Ethnologue is a great language resource with information about pretty much every language spoken on the planet organized by language family and also by country. If you enjoy learning about languages and how they relate to each other it's a great resource.
I think the scope, size, and impact on the world of the Internet as it is today is far greater than anyone at ARPA imagined back in the late 1960s.
For those who want to read the full text of the bill, it's H.R. 395. You can go to the Library of Congress's Thomas website to look it up but I've also pasted a copy here.
And for those who don't understand how laws work in the US, this just means that now it gets to go over to the Senate, who then may or may not approve it, who can then approve it with amendments, send it back to the House for further approval in a committee or two, and eventually send it off to the President to sign into law.
And this has little to do with H.J.Res. 2 which is the Omnibus Appropriations Bill that is currently in committee. Well, other than dealing with money.
AN ACT
To authorize the Federal Trade Commission to collect fees for the implementation and enforcement of a `do-not-call' registry, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Do-Not-Call Implementation Act'.
SEC. 2. TELEMARKETING SALES RULE; DO-NOT-CALL REGISTRY FEES.
The Federal Trade Commission may promulgate regulations establishing fees sufficient to implement and enforce the provisions relating to the `do-not-call' registry of the Telemarketing Sales Rule (16 CFR 310.4(b)(1)(iii)), promulgated under the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act (15 U.S.C. 6101 et seq.). Such regulations shall be promulgated in accordance with section 553 of title 5, United States Code. Fees may be collected pursuant to this section for fiscal years 2003 through 2007, and shall be deposited and credited as offsetting collections to the account, Federal Trade Commission--Salaries and Expenses, and shall remain available until expended. No amounts shall be collected as fees pursuant to this section for such fiscal years except to the extent provided in advance in appropriations Acts. Such amounts shall be available for expenditure only to offset the costs of activities and services related to the implementation and enforcement of the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and other activities resulting from such implementation and enforcement.
SEC. 3. FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION DO-NOT-CALL REGULATIONS.
Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Federal Communications Commission shall issue a final rule pursuant to the rulemaking proceeding that it began on September 18, 2002, under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 U.S.C. 227 et seq.). In issuing such rule, the Federal Communications Commission shall consult and coordinate with the Federal Trade Commission to maximize consistency with the rule promulgated by the Federal Trade Commission (16 CFR 310.4(b)).
SEC. 4. REPORTING REQUIREMENTS.
(a) REPORT ON REGULATORY COORDINATION- Within 45 days after the promulgation of a final rule by the Federal Communications Commission as required by section 3, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission shall each transmit to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate a report which shall include--
(1) an analysis of the telemarketing rules promulgated by both the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission;
(2) any inconsistencies between the rules promulgated by each such Commission and the effect of any such inconsistencies on consumers, and persons paying for access to the registry; and
(3) proposals to remedy any such inconsistencies.
(b) ANNUAL REPORT- For each of fiscal years 2003 through 2007, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission shall each transmit an annual report to the Committee on Energy and Commerce of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate a report which shall include--
(1) an analysis of the effectiveness of the `do-not-call' registry as a national registry;
(2) the number of consumers who have placed their telephone numbers on the registry;
(3) the number of persons paying fees for access to the registry and the amount of such fees;
(4) an analysis of the progress of coordinating the operation and enforcement of the `do-not-call' registry with similar registries established and maintained by the various States;
(5) an analysis of the progress of coordinating the operation and enforcement of the `do-not-call' registry with the enforcement activities of the Federal Communications Commission pursuant to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 U.S.C. 227 et seq.); and
(6) a review of the enforcement proceedings under the Telemarketing Sales Rule (16 CFR 310), in the case of the Federal Trade Commission, and under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (47 U.S.C. 227 et seq.), in the case of the Federal Communications Commission.
Passed the House of Representatives February 12, 2003.
Attest:
Clerk.
"How big of a monkey?"
Woo Simpsons!
I dunno if anyone mentioned this, but the Cool Devices series is pretty cool if you're looking for fucked up porn and uh.. well, naughty tenticles a la Urotsukidoji. It's 13 episodes I think. You can get it on 6 VHS tapes. I'm not sure if it's on DVD or not. It would probably be a two disc set. Not for the squeemish. I think it's pretty funny though.
Oh yeah.. forgot .int, .in (India), .it (Italy)
Yeah.. but that already exists:
Did Nick Park do this one? Aardman Animations != Nick Park all the time. Just for distributing Wallace and Gromit. I'd sort of be surprised if Nick Park did this one since he's been working on the feature length movie Chicken Run which is coming out June 23. It looks pretty cool and in his style. Has Mel Gibson doing the lead voice. I can't find any mention of Angry Kid in IMDB so who knows.
Hardly. The Sherman Act (15 USC 1-7) dates from about 1890. Late 19th Century. Heck, in the 18th Century, you could still buy monopolies from the King in England.
Something else to keep in mind... saying the FCC should disappear is like saying the ITU and the NTIA should disappear as well. The ITU are the ones who have allocated the various frequency bands for the three world regions. The NTIA (check out http://www.ntia.doc.gov) does US specific stuff. They're part of the DOC (Dept. of Commerce) too BTW. The FCC is I think more of the enforcer and regulator. A lot of people are against regulation in many areas, but I think in this type of media, you really need to have tons of regulation just to make sure that people aren't stepping on other people's feet.
c h.html). They really do a lot more than most people realize.
If you've ever looked at what goes into placing a broadcast radio or TV antenna, you'll have a new found respect for what the FCC does. Also look at Title 47 of the US CFR (Code of Federal Regulations) (check out http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/cfr-table-sear
None of what I said is very specific. Check out the ARRL website for lots more info and links (www.arrl.org).
I think you might be getting a couple things confused here. FM = Frequency Modulation, a method of modulating an audio frequency (AF) onto a radio frequency (RF) carrier. It just happens that FM is used as a modulation type in the higher radio broadcast band of 88-107 MHz. You could just as easily use the various types of Amplitude Modulation (AM) at those frequencies or any of the plethora of digital transmission types.
The type of transmission that you use has little to do with what frequency you are broadcasting at. The FM broadcast band is actually relatively low compared to most other actively used transmission bands. For instance, many TV satellite uplinks are in the C-Band (about 4-6 GHz) and the Ku-Band (about 15-17 GHz). The only problem with working at such high frequencies is that your range of transmission is pretty much limited to line of sight. This is a problem (or a benefit depending on how you look at it) with the FM broadcast band, but it is much more apparent as you move up in frequency.
One of the problems you'll run into if you want to do some sort of packet radio is FCC regulations that prohibit or specifically allow only some types of transmissions at various frequencies. But from the technical viewpoint, pretty much anything goes.
Another thing to keep in mind is the amount of bandwidth a FM transmission takes up. Down in the lower bands, you won't find much FM because the bandwidth usage is very prohibitive. You can often fit 10 AM transmissions (or more) in the space of 1 FM transmission. When you're working with kHz, every way you can save bandwidth counts.
Hope that was helpful!
So what you might say. Well, yeah, I guess if you want to broadcast, 160-190 kHz is pretty useless. You can't do much in the way of voice down there (a decent quality full carrier double sideband AM signal takes up about 10 kHz at least) and forget about FM. There's also a lot of interference down there from natural electrical phenomena. There are some people running beacons down there, and the range can be phenominal.
On to the second band, that's the AM broadcast band like I said before. While 1/10 watt is just a trickle of power, people have reported distances of over 300 miles. Radio wave propagation can do wonders. At night, if you use a silent frequency set aside for local broadcasts, you could easily get a decent coverage area, especially with a decently designed antenna.
Anyway, this obviously isn't as lucrative as broadcasting way up in the FM broadcast band with tons of power (relatively), but for those who have that desire for experimentation and learning, this is a great opportunity.
For more info on this stuff, check out: this link.
Enjoy!
This wasn't just a one time deal, it was actually a series of scheduled lectures, some originating in Japan, others originating in the US. On the US side, the professor teaching the class was Prof. Larry Landweber at the University of Wisconsin Madison, one of the people who helped create CSNet back in ArpaNet days. On the Japan side it was Prof. Jun Murai at Keio University who is often refered to as the Internet guru in Japan. Larry and Jun are good friends and had been wanting to do something like this for a while.
The lectures themselves were basically video-conferences. Using Sony DV equipment, the audio and video streams were sent across Internet/2 infrastructure. Someone mentioned that they didn't see what this has to do with IPv6. The Internet/2 on its own doesn't, however, this project utilized IPv6 going over ATM. There was no compression used in this, so bandwidth usage was around 35-40 Mbps. For the most part, it worked very well with amazing video and audio quality.
I've been told that this was the first time that regularly scheduled video content was sent from the US to Asia over the Internet/2. It was amazing to see it work. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to e-mail me.
Sam Etler
UW Madison
CSL Networking
However, I don't know if this is the greatest thing. I have the highest respect for someone who's been in the art for decades and can do CW at 30-40 WPM. When I do get my extra license, I'll sort of feel like a jerk compared to the people who know CW like a pro. However, IMHO, the real fun is in the lower frequencies (40M and below) and I'll be damn happy to be able to use those frequencies with more ease.
And no matter what anyone says, when you're trying to get that DX QSO at very low power levels, CW is the way to go.
Sam Etler - KB9VPB
Something that I don't think anyone has mentioned (my fault if they did...) A quick search of the US PTO online database shows no registered or pending trademarks for LinuxOne. I don't think it's illegal, but I think it's pretty poor for someone to claim a trademark on something they haven't even bothered to file with the US gov't. Unless of course it's a foreign trademark. But that's murky waters. Anyway.. I'm not one to cry wolf about stuff I don't know 100% about, but I'm just a bit apprehensive about this company... we'll see what happens when and if it ever does IPO.
Yeah.. I can imagine low noise would be a Good Thing.
It's an interesting site, but I think it would be a lot more interesting if they referenced at least some of the laws to the ordinance number or section of state law, etc. What's to stop me from submitting a fake law that says "It is illegal for anyone in Madison WI to not be drunk on a football game day." Of course, you're stupid not to be, but that's a different story.