>>>You seem to be assuming that every channel completely consumes all available bandwidth
No. I'm not that dumb. I'm assuming that the Midatlantic and Northeast US is booked solid. WPVI in Philly recently asked the FCC permission to move from VHF-6 to a UHF channel. They were denied. Reason: The FCC determined there were no free channels. The TV band in this area is already full.
Also ever heard of Adjacent Channel interference? Basically it means if I'm trying to watch channel 45, and some person turns-on their Wireless whitespace gadget on 44 or 46, the "spillover" of his six megahertz signal can interfere and block my TV from receiving channel 45. In fact that's one of the reasons WPVI wanted off channel 6 - they are getting adjacent channel interference
Channels and frequencies are synonymous in the world of television. "I tuned to channel 12 to watch the news." "I tuned to frequency 12 to watch the news." Americans use either interchangeably. Same in radio: "I'm listening to channel FM88." "I'm listening to frequency FM88."
You're nitpicking my word choice, but not addressing my very real question: WHAT open channels?
The whitespace device is supposed to be automatically updated via GPS and the internet to not use Channels occupied by existing and new stations. Basically it keeps a "do not use" channel list in its memory.
MY main concern is this question:
- What happens if I'm trying to watch a station outside my direct market? For example a DC channel 5 when I live in Baltimore's market. I suspect channel 5 will be unprotected and these whitespace gadgets will broadcast directly over the channel.
>>>what we really need is a means to transmit a video and audio signal in a manner which can reach almost our entire population. If only there were a means to do this without us having to lay down thousands of miles of data lines, either hanging on poles, or underground. >>>
What about a centralized antenna that broadcasts 24 hours a day, and homeowners can capture that audiovideo signal with some kind of recording device? Call it a Tape Video Recorder or TVR or some variant thereof. Then people could watch the video when they get home from work, on their own schedule or if they prefer: live (like weather and news updates).
Ahhh... we're just dreaming. Obviously laying millions of miles of lines is the only way to get the AV programs to people. It will be expensive though. Possibly only the rich could afford the ~$1000 a year cost, whereas with OUR idea the cost would be Free. Even the poor could partake.:-|
Not really. They stream ~20 Mbit/s of video to approximately 0.5 million homes per city/market. That's over 6000 gigabytes of television/news per home, or 3,000,000 terabytes total. Show me any internet or cellphone that can do the same, and at $0.00 cost per year. You can't. - (Imo, only a fool pays for watching Supernatural or CSI or whatever else you enjoy, when it's available for free.)
Microsoft, Google, ATT, Verizon, and other internet/cellular/wireless companies.
No more free ride like now (where I can see ~40 channels without charge). By the way I got rid of cable when I realized I was oly watching 5 of the shows. Kinda silly to spend ~$800 a year for just five cable shows. It's cheaper to rent the Season sets on DVD.
>>>I'm glad the FCC is leaning toward unlicensed use of the spectrum instead of selling it to some M$ like concern
Actually the FCC is planning to do both. They hatched the "open channels for wireless gadgets" idea in 2008, but also are planning to sell-off channel 26 and up for cellular usage. The FCC is following both plans. If Congress doesn't stop the FCC from doing plan #2 here's what I predict will happen:
CBS / CW (single multiplexed channel) FOX / MyNetTV (single channel) NBC/Universal sports (ditto) ABC / LiveWellHD ION / qubo PBS / PBSkids
Minor networks like RetroTV, This Movie Channel, Megahertz, and religious stations would probably disappear forever, due to lack of space in the smaller 2 to 25 TV band.
>>>Digital TV is somewhat more imune to interference than analog
False. I've switched to DTV and it's amazing what will block it. I turned on a vacuum cleaner and said goodbye to 50-mile distant channel 6 disappeared. In the old analog world it would have simple added some "fuzz" on the screen but still watchable. And when we have storms, we lose the DTV where the old analog signal never disappeared. DTV can no longer be relied upon for areas with bad weather (think Tornado Alley from Texas to Minnesota) (or Hurricane Alley from Florida to Maryland).
And what open frequencies?
No joking but here is a list of all the channels currently in used along the Mid-Atlantic (near New Jersey). Where the hell does the FCC think Wifi devices are supposed to operate? I suspect what will actually happen is the teen girl next door will turn-on her device directly over top the Baltimore or Philadelphia station I'm trying to watch and make it disappear. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14-21 (reserved for police in NY City and state) 24 26 27 28 29 31 32 33 35 (reserved for radioastronomy) 37 39 41 43 44 45 48 49 50
Plus dozens of low-power "neighborhood" transmitters that serve local communities.
Good point. When I bought my Win7 machine it had MS Security enabled by default, but my brother's had stupid McAfee with an annoying opup window asking for money.
Yeah well.... I'm glad Babylon 5 won the Hugo Award rather than Troopers. If I recall correctly, Starship ended dead last (5th place out of 5 nominees). As for Verhoeven, he said at the time he was mirroring Triumph of the Will, the old propaganda film. Which of course has absolutely nothing to do with Robert Heinlein's original purpose when he wrote his masterpiece.
I don't understand why movie and television writers have such a difficult time adapting SF novels/short stories to the screen. They almost never succeed. They butchered the Martian Chronicles and Asimov's Foundation (or was it Nightfall - I forget).
Hollywood has success with other genres like fantasy, mystery, and thriller novels..... why do they have such a tough time with science novels?
Ditto the US. Unit cost in medium-sized print underneath the actual price.
Pretty soon computers will recognize voices, and then we'll forget how to type. Unless you're Mr. Scott in Star Trek 4 and magically know how to type faster than any secretary that ever existed, even though he's never used a QWERTY keyboard. This is one reason (among many) why I call Trek Fantasy fiction (like harry potter) not science fiction.
>>>heck of a lot of people with calculators in 1990 and even in the 80's
Earlier than that. Sears and other stores sold millions of calculators in the 70s. They used simple processors like Intel's 8008 or 4004 or Commodore's 6502, and lit-up with red glowing LEDs (great for night work). They needed a 9 volt battery to operate and died rather quickly, because the glowing LED drained power quickly. (Not like today where calcs run on watch batteries for years.)
A lot of English spelling is based upon the false belief by ~1500s scholars that English evolved from Greek, so they tried to push greek-style spelling on everyone (prescriptive grammar). Stupid scholars. To me "cof" makes a hell more sense than "cough". And "swimmed" is more logical than "swam" or "swum".
Oh and what's this nonsense about double negatives being verboten? Some of our greatest authors used double or triple negatives, because it's a way to add additional emphasis: ""There was not no man nowhere so virtuous" and "He never yet no villany not said, in all his life unto no weight of man" by Chaucer.
IIRC my college English professors taught the big words actually interfere with communication rather than enhance it. i.e. Follow the KISS principle. Anyway this article sounds stupid. As Einstein once commented, "What is the point of memorizing information when you can look it up in a book?" He thought it was more productive to focus on actual thinking rather than rote repetition.
In theory centralization makes sense, but in practice it's white collar welfare. Half my coworkers (including me) sat around surfing the web all day. I went to my boss and asked for some work and he said he doesn't have any. "So why did you hire 4 engineers instead of, say, just 1?" "I had a million dollars to spend and didn't want to hand it back to Congress at the end of the year, so I hired you guys."
Three hip-hip-hoorays for the inefficiency of big government.
>>>If we take your 0.1% as a figure of cancellation, this means that we would have somewhere from 5-15K people
F
500K-1M diagnosed each year times 0.1% == 500-1000 who get screwed each year when insurance scam artists drop them. And yes it's sad for them but I consider that a very small problem. (For comparison 50,000 die each year just from driving a car.) And I used Pelosicare as a convenient title, and an apt one, since it was basically passed by nothing but democrats. It was a partisan bill and Miss Pelosi deserves full credit for it. .
>>>it does not proscribe raising rates to unsustainable levels once conditions are diagnosed
Actually it does forbid that practice. Try reading the bill sometime. Insurance companies can no longer refuse a customer who has cancer. So if Flybynite Insurance dumps them, they can hop over to Nationwide instead and still get their hospital bills paid. Democrats did what they promised they would do - help these people.
>>>Do you want to be responsible for every lawsuit brought against your company because a new hire did something illegal on company time
Yes because if I've fired the new hire, then I've demonstrated that his practices are unacceptable within my company. i.e. I've held to a moral code. The reason FORD'S CEO should have been tossed into jail is because he, his directors, and his accountants *knew* that Pintos were blowing-up and killing people, but they decided it was cheaper to just pay-off the families rather than fix the problem. That is intentional manslaughter with foreknowledge.
These people should not be sheltered behind a "limited liability" corporate license.
The guy just proved his guilt by demonstrating he had an infringing website under his name, and he gets terminated. Your advice was marked +5 but it's actually incredibly stupid advice. Like walking up to a cop and handing him a bloody knife with your fingerprints and saying, "It wasn't me but here's the evidence you're looking for. I hope you'll find me innocent."
I wonder why Verizon doesn't let customer keep both the old copper POTS and the new FiOS. That way when the network goes down (and it does), you still have POTS for 911 emergencies and simple dialup internet.
I've had my DSL konk-out twice in two years and was glad the plain-old telephone still worked. I could read email and call out.
>>>More to the point the copper network is noisy as hell.
You mean it WAS noisy as hell, until they upgraded from analog to digital. Now it's as clear as a CD (albeit 8-bit not 16). Clear enough that we now use digital rather than analog modems. Please update yourself on the latest phone technologies.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>What I read it as is that you will never hear anything from a government scientist that doesn't support the government agenda.
So it's just like the BBC, PBS, or CBC. ;-)
(ducking and running)
>>>You seem to be assuming that every channel completely consumes all available bandwidth
No. I'm not that dumb. I'm assuming that the Midatlantic and Northeast US is booked solid. WPVI in Philly recently asked the FCC permission to move from VHF-6 to a UHF channel. They were denied. Reason: The FCC determined there were no free channels. The TV band in this area is already full.
Also ever heard of Adjacent Channel interference? Basically it means if I'm trying to watch channel 45, and some person turns-on their Wireless whitespace gadget on 44 or 46, the "spillover" of his six megahertz signal can interfere and block my TV from receiving channel 45. In fact that's one of the reasons WPVI wanted off channel 6 - they are getting adjacent channel interference
Channels and frequencies are synonymous in the world of television. "I tuned to channel 12 to watch the news." "I tuned to frequency 12 to watch the news." Americans use either interchangeably. Same in radio: "I'm listening to channel FM88." "I'm listening to frequency FM88."
You're nitpicking my word choice, but not addressing my very real question: WHAT open channels?
The whitespace device is supposed to be automatically updated via GPS and the internet to not use Channels occupied by existing and new stations. Basically it keeps a "do not use" channel list in its memory.
MY main concern is this question:
- What happens if I'm trying to watch a station outside my direct market? For example a DC channel 5 when I live in Baltimore's market. I suspect channel 5 will be unprotected and these whitespace gadgets will broadcast directly over the channel.
>>>what we really need is a means to transmit a video and audio signal in a manner which can reach almost our entire population. If only there were a means to do this without us having to lay down thousands of miles of data lines, either hanging on poles, or underground.
>>>
What about a centralized antenna that broadcasts 24 hours a day, and homeowners can capture that audiovideo signal with some kind of recording device? Call it a Tape Video Recorder or TVR or some variant thereof. Then people could watch the video when they get home from work, on their own schedule or if they prefer: live (like weather and news updates).
Ahhh... we're just dreaming. Obviously laying millions of miles of lines is the only way to get the AV programs to people. It will be expensive though. Possibly only the rich could afford the ~$1000 a year cost, whereas with OUR idea the cost would be Free. Even the poor could partake. :-|
>>>Imo, TV signals are a waste of bandwidth...
Not really. They stream ~20 Mbit/s of video to approximately 0.5 million homes per city/market. That's over 6000 gigabytes of television/news per home, or 3,000,000 terabytes total. Show me any internet or cellphone that can do the same, and at $0.00 cost per year. You can't. - (Imo, only a fool pays for watching Supernatural or CSI or whatever else you enjoy, when it's available for free.)
Microsoft, Google, ATT, Verizon, and other internet/cellular/wireless companies.
No more free ride like now (where I can see ~40 channels without charge). By the way I got rid of cable when I realized I was oly watching 5 of the shows. Kinda silly to spend ~$800 a year for just five cable shows. It's cheaper to rent the Season sets on DVD.
P.S.
>>>I'm glad the FCC is leaning toward unlicensed use of the spectrum instead of selling it to some M$ like concern
Actually the FCC is planning to do both. They hatched the "open channels for wireless gadgets" idea in 2008, but also are planning to sell-off channel 26 and up for cellular usage. The FCC is following both plans. If Congress doesn't stop the FCC from doing plan #2 here's what I predict will happen:
CBS / CW (single multiplexed channel) /Universal sports (ditto)
FOX / MyNetTV (single channel)
NBC
ABC / LiveWellHD
ION / qubo
PBS / PBSkids
Minor networks like RetroTV, This Movie Channel, Megahertz, and religious stations would probably disappear forever, due to lack of space in the smaller 2 to 25 TV band.
>>>Digital TV is somewhat more imune to interference than analog
False. I've switched to DTV and it's amazing what will block it. I turned on a vacuum cleaner and said goodbye to 50-mile distant channel 6 disappeared. In the old analog world it would have simple added some "fuzz" on the screen but still watchable. And when we have storms, we lose the DTV where the old analog signal never disappeared. DTV can no longer be relied upon for areas with bad weather (think Tornado Alley from Texas to Minnesota) (or Hurricane Alley from Florida to Maryland).
And what open frequencies?
No joking but here is a list of all the channels currently in used along the Mid-Atlantic (near New Jersey). Where the hell does the FCC think Wifi devices are supposed to operate? I suspect what will actually happen is the teen girl next door will turn-on her device directly over top the Baltimore or Philadelphia station I'm trying to watch and make it disappear.
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14-21 (reserved for police in NY City and state)
24
26
27
28
29
31
32
33
35 (reserved for radioastronomy)
37
39
41
43
44
45
48
49
50
Plus dozens of low-power "neighborhood" transmitters that serve local communities.
Good point. When I bought my Win7 machine it had MS Security enabled by default, but my brother's had stupid McAfee with an annoying opup window asking for money.
Yeah well.... I'm glad Babylon 5 won the Hugo Award rather than Troopers. If I recall correctly, Starship ended dead last (5th place out of 5 nominees). As for Verhoeven, he said at the time he was mirroring Triumph of the Will, the old propaganda film. Which of course has absolutely nothing to do with Robert Heinlein's original purpose when he wrote his masterpiece.
I don't understand why movie and television writers have such a difficult time adapting SF novels/short stories to the screen. They almost never succeed. They butchered the Martian Chronicles and Asimov's Foundation (or was it Nightfall - I forget).
Hollywood has success with other genres like fantasy, mystery, and thriller novels..... why do they have such a tough time with science novels?
Professor Gates showed them his ID. They had no cause to arrest him.
"The police acted stupidly" is one of those few times I agreed with Øbama.
Ditto the US. Unit cost in medium-sized print underneath the actual price.
Pretty soon computers will recognize voices, and then we'll forget how to type. Unless you're Mr. Scott in Star Trek 4 and magically know how to type faster than any secretary that ever existed, even though he's never used a QWERTY keyboard. This is one reason (among many) why I call Trek Fantasy fiction (like harry potter) not science fiction.
>>>heck of a lot of people with calculators in 1990 and even in the 80's
Earlier than that. Sears and other stores sold millions of calculators in the 70s. They used simple processors like Intel's 8008 or 4004 or Commodore's 6502, and lit-up with red glowing LEDs (great for night work). They needed a 9 volt battery to operate and died rather quickly, because the glowing LED drained power quickly. (Not like today where calcs run on watch batteries for years.)
Perhaps if the standardized spelling made sense.
A lot of English spelling is based upon the false belief by ~1500s scholars that English evolved from Greek, so they tried to push greek-style spelling on everyone (prescriptive grammar). Stupid scholars. To me "cof" makes a hell more sense than "cough". And "swimmed" is more logical than "swam" or "swum".
Oh and what's this nonsense about double negatives being verboten? Some of our greatest authors used double or triple negatives, because it's a way to add additional emphasis: ""There was not no man nowhere so virtuous" and "He never yet no villany not said, in all his life unto no weight of man" by Chaucer.
>>>embiggen a cromulent vocabulary.
IIRC my college English professors taught the big words actually interfere with communication rather than enhance it. i.e. Follow the KISS principle. Anyway this article sounds stupid. As Einstein once commented, "What is the point of memorizing information when you can look it up in a book?" He thought it was more productive to focus on actual thinking rather than rote repetition.
I used to work for "big government".
In theory centralization makes sense, but in practice it's white collar welfare. Half my coworkers (including me) sat around surfing the web all day. I went to my boss and asked for some work and he said he doesn't have any. "So why did you hire 4 engineers instead of, say, just 1?" "I had a million dollars to spend and didn't want to hand it back to Congress at the end of the year, so I hired you guys."
Three hip-hip-hoorays for the inefficiency of big government.
I'll do even better than that Mr. Anonymous. I'll show you videos AND relevant articles:
http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=police+abuse
>>>If we take your 0.1% as a figure of cancellation, this means that we would have somewhere from 5-15K people
F
500K-1M diagnosed each year times 0.1% == 500-1000 who get screwed each year when insurance scam artists drop them. And yes it's sad for them but I consider that a very small problem. (For comparison 50,000 die each year just from driving a car.) And I used Pelosicare as a convenient title, and an apt one, since it was basically passed by nothing but democrats. It was a partisan bill and Miss Pelosi deserves full credit for it.
.
>>>it does not proscribe raising rates to unsustainable levels once conditions are diagnosed
Actually it does forbid that practice. Try reading the bill sometime. Insurance companies can no longer refuse a customer who has cancer. So if Flybynite Insurance dumps them, they can hop over to Nationwide instead and still get their hospital bills paid. Democrats did what they promised they would do - help these people.
>>>Do you want to be responsible for every lawsuit brought against your company because a new hire did something illegal on company time
Yes because if I've fired the new hire, then I've demonstrated that his practices are unacceptable within my company. i.e. I've held to a moral code. The reason FORD'S CEO should have been tossed into jail is because he, his directors, and his accountants *knew* that Pintos were blowing-up and killing people, but they decided it was cheaper to just pay-off the families rather than fix the problem. That is intentional manslaughter with foreknowledge.
These people should not be sheltered behind a "limited liability" corporate license.
>>>End result?
The guy just proved his guilt by demonstrating he had an infringing website under his name, and he gets terminated. Your advice was marked +5 but it's actually incredibly stupid advice. Like walking up to a cop and handing him a bloody knife with your fingerprints and saying, "It wasn't me but here's the evidence you're looking for. I hope you'll find me innocent."
Hire. A. Lawyer.
Doesn't work on XP? So I have to use an OS that is 3 years old or less?
What is this? A Mac?
(ba da dum)
So I have to use an OS that is 3 years old or less?
What is this? A Mac?
(ba dum dum)
I wonder why Verizon doesn't let customer keep both the old copper POTS and the new FiOS. That way when the network goes down (and it does), you still have POTS for 911 emergencies and simple dialup internet.
I've had my DSL konk-out twice in two years and was glad the plain-old telephone still worked. I could read email and call out.
>>>More to the point the copper network is noisy as hell.
You mean it WAS noisy as hell, until they upgraded from analog to digital. Now it's as clear as a CD (albeit 8-bit not 16). Clear enough that we now use digital rather than analog modems. Please update yourself on the latest phone technologies.