>>>You have to realize that outside of NYC or LA, there is plenty of open spectrum
Not correct. The downsizing from 69 to 51 has made the spectrm so full that now TV stations are tripping-over one another. For example channel 11 in Baltimore is "colliding" with channel 11 in Scranton PA. It's creating reception problems for viewers in both markets. ----- Meanwhile over in Philadelphia channel 6 is having problems being seen (due to the low frequency) so they asked permission to move up to a higher number. The FCC denied the request because there is NO place for them to move. Washington DC is also experiencing problems with Richmond interference (and vice-versa).
The spectrum might be "open" in Cowtown Wyoming, but all along the east coast the spectrum is packed. There's no more channels to be given up, unless you permanently yank stations off the air.
>>>Free up what used to be the UHF TV spectrum for peer to peer use
Uh, the UHF spectrum is still being used mr ka9dqx (HAM operator?). Channels 14 to 51 are used for the TV I'm watching right now, and channels 52 to 83 were leased to police, fire, cellphone, wireless, and other services. So that's not available either.
If you are suggesting I should lose my UHF-TV then I strongly object. It would drop me from ~40 programs downto just 2 programs. If you thought the Tea Parties were radical, wait til 50 million TV protesters rise up.;-)
DSL or Cable is about $20 a month for ~250 gigabytes. Wireless is much, much, much more expensive for equivalent 250 GB service. So how is wireless "great" for rural reidents??? Hell even satellite internet would be a cheaper option.
I have a friend whose dad is stuck on dialup. I looked at wireless but it's beyond his budget (retired). I also looked at satellite - not available. Meanwhile he has perfectly good phone and cable lines running to his house which could be used for internet. The Congress needs to get off its marble ass and MANDATE that he & other rural residents can get their lines upgraded to DSL and Cable internet service. This could happen in just a few months .
>>>Since they didn't pay any money for it in the first place
-1 Wrong. TV stations pay the FCC over 1 billion *each year* for their frequencies. They are also required to be free-of-charge (i.e. they can't chage you $50 a mont like a cell company, or $1 a month like TNT, USA, et cetera). Providing free service is costly - just ask UPN or WB or CW or NBC. The first two went bankrupt and CW/NBC are on the verge themselves.
>>>after TV stations vacated it (did they get any money back?)
(1) My reading of the article is that this is a NEW taking of spectrum - channels 32 to 51 will be removed and leased to cellphone companies. (2) The TV stations that lost channels 52 to 69 were given new spots, so they didn't lose anything. Some of the poorer "neighborhood" stations received financial handouts to convert from analog to digital but that's it .
If my brother was here he'd probably say he doesn't know how to get TV over the net, and it's "just easier" to flip channnels on the set like he's done the last ~50 years. OTHER people claim watching TV on a computer is not relaxing and they want to be able to watch with their wife & kids on the big screen. Basically they are paying for simplicity and convenience
There's no [digging] required because the lines are already there. If Congress mandated it, phone and cable TV customers could have nearly all rural residents on DSL or Cable broadband by the end of the year. - It might take a little longer for Farmer Bob living in Nowhere Idaho but it would still be faster than waiting for Farmer Bob to get a cell tower installed near his cattle ranch. AND it would get done quickly and cheaply .
Anonymous Coward wrote: Well, when the government GAVE away, for free, those frequencies to networks
Say what? -1 Wrong. Every local station PAYS for their frequency. The FCC collects over a billion dollars each year from TV broadcasters, plus requiring broadcasters to SERVE the public by providing news, weather, emergency and government announcements for Free (rather than charge $50 a month like cellphone providers).
If the government really wants rural residents upgraded from Narrowband dialup to Broadband, the quickest and cheapest answer is use the existing phone lines for DSL. (Or existing cable tv lines for internet.) There's no diffing required because the lines are already there. You might need to add a DSLAM or DOCSIS router to each city block (or equivalent), but that doesn't cost that much. The expense can be taken out of the Universal Service Fee charged each month.
Plus wireless makes little sense. You get ONE spectrum and that's it - why base our future net on a limited resource? With wired internet you can get as many spectrums as you need (one per cable) .
They are taking 120 megahertz from broadcasters, which is equivalent to subtracting 20 slots on the DTV spectrum (where each slot can hold 3-5 channels each). What a crock. I don't want to subscribe to Comcast. They charge $60 a month, plus $5 for each extra TV, plus 6% tax on top of that. AND their prices keep going up and up. (Basically 2.5 times more than what I paid in 2000.)
And the government used taxpayer money - spending almost 1 billion to hand-out subsidzed converter boxes and eduation programs for the June 2009 DTV transition. So what? That money just goes to waste now???
Look at all these channels I get. FREE. I don't understand why they want to take it away. What's next? We lose our Shortwave, AM, and FM Radio too? ABC CBS FOX NBC CW PBS PBSarts PBSworld PBSkids MyNetTV Univision Telefutura TBN ION Wellness Channel thisTV movie channel Retro Network Global (foreign language shows/movies) Link (foreign news) MiND (mostly educational) JCTV Smile-of-a-Child Network Qubo IONlife
plus 9 independents showing syndicated (Rome, Star Trek, Deadliest Catch, etc) and movies
sppeedtest.net and torrenting both confirm I'm getting 750 kbit/s on my DSL
Plus it makes logical sense that if you take Dialup and squeeze the images and text to 10% normal size, you're going to get about 56k times 10 == ~500 kbit/s effective speed. The only time I experience slowdown is on flash-heavy sites like imdb.com, so I simply block the flash.
Poor example. Walter Cronkite was always pro-"we need government to solve our problems" biased. He rarely if ever presented the opposite view of downsizing the government.
No he didn't. He said what if the Precedent (opinion) of the Justices was wrong. Then she should ignore it as contrary to the law. Go back and reread his post and try to understand it.
Since the "left" is anti-freedom and pro-big-government (like a modern form of tyranny), you are spot on. They are trying to restore Feudalism, where the nobles (congress/parliament) run every facet of the serfs' lives. Slowly-but-surely we are becoming a plantation but on a continent-wide scale.
Don't believe? Consider that I am being fined $950 for exercising my Pro-choice right to not buy hospital insurance. What's next? Fines because I bought a normal car instead of a hybrid? Fines because I exceed 200 pounds? "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
>>>There has always been bias in the "mainstream press", but not to the degree we see now.
You're right. It used to be much worse. Newspapers pre-1930 used to proudly proclaim they were biased, sometimes even putting the bias directly in the name: the Philadelphia Republican News or the Pittsburgh Democrat Gazette. You think there's bias now but it's nothing compared to how it was from circa 1700 to 1930.
And that's good. I'd rather have people TELL me their bias (I am pro-make government as large as possible), rather than LIE and say they have no bias.
>>> Factcheck is also liberal (pro-big government) biased
[My opinion. Never once have I seen factcheck take a pro-small government position, such as defending Ron Paul (l-R) or Harry Browne (L) when they were misquoted. It's bias by omission.]
Would you prefer I post an anti-George Duh Bush paragraph instead? It reads pretty much the same as the Obama one. Only a fool thinks there's any REAL difference. Are you such a fool?;-)
>>>Do you *really* think this will be so important to you forever?
Good point. I spent almost a thousand dollars buying the entire Star Trek series on VHS. I loved that show. Fast-forward to the present and I realize how dumb I was. (1) It would have been cheaper to just rent the shows, since I only watched them two or three times, or (2) skip the VHS and wait for the cheap DVD sets.
Ya know that saying? "People may believe your stupid, but there's no reason to open your mouth and prove it."? I think a modification of that appies here:
People may believe you're a nerd, but there's no reason to tattoo equations on your body and prove it. (Talk about making dating even more difficult!) Also consider the long term implications:
- My niece tattooed a rose on her ankle. It was cute on her young high school body. Fast-forward 20 years and now it's expanded into a giant red splotch. (i.e. she gained weight)
Sadly you are correct. The men who TAKE are the ones who get sex and marriage (and maybe even some adultery on the side). Us nice guys finish last because women find us "weak" non-confident and unattractive.
I really hate that scene. Lucas dropped that line to try to move the "force" from being Fantasy Fiction magic (and quell complaints that Star Wars is not science fiction). But it still doesn't explain what "the force" is supposed to be. Are the midichlorians a bunch of tiny wizards ala Harry Potter casing "force" spells everywhere? It's still just nonsense.
This is why I hate Fantasy that tries itself off as "a possible future" science fiction reality. No. No. No. I'm sorry but there will never be magic in our universe..... maybe in some neighboring universe, but not in ours
>>>BitTorrent isn't destroying networks unless you're counting the TV kind.
Since the analog shutoff TV has experienced a revival. Look at all these channels I get... free. A lot of them are clones of cable channels (this==AMC, qubo==nickelodeon), or if not exact clones will offer cable programming like Stargate, Rome, Deadliest Catch, Junkyard Wars, and so on.
ABC CBS FOX NBC CW PBS PBSarts PBSworld PBSkids MyNetTV Univision Telefutura TBN ION Wellness Channel thisTV movie channel Retro Network Global (foreign language shows/movies) Link (foreign news) MiND (mostly educational) JCTV Smile-of-a-Child Network Qubo IONlife
plus 8 or 9 independents showing syndicated (Rome, Star Trek, Deadliest Catch, etc) and movies
Slashdot Mirror
>>>You have to realize that outside of NYC or LA, there is plenty of open spectrum
Not correct. The downsizing from 69 to 51 has made the spectrm so full that now TV stations are tripping-over one another. For example channel 11 in Baltimore is "colliding" with channel 11 in Scranton PA. It's creating reception problems for viewers in both markets. ----- Meanwhile over in Philadelphia channel 6 is having problems being seen (due to the low frequency) so they asked permission to move up to a higher number. The FCC denied the request because there is NO place for them to move. Washington DC is also experiencing problems with Richmond interference (and vice-versa).
The spectrum might be "open" in Cowtown Wyoming, but all along the east coast the spectrum is packed. There's no more channels to be given up, unless you permanently yank stations off the air.
>>>Free up what used to be the UHF TV spectrum for peer to peer use
Uh, the UHF spectrum is still being used mr ka9dqx (HAM operator?). Channels 14 to 51 are used for the TV I'm watching right now, and channels 52 to 83 were leased to police, fire, cellphone, wireless, and other services. So that's not available either.
If you are suggesting I should lose my UHF-TV then I strongly object. It would drop me from ~40 programs downto just 2 programs. If you thought the Tea Parties were radical, wait til 50 million TV protesters rise up. ;-)
DSL or Cable is about $20 a month for ~250 gigabytes. Wireless is much, much, much more expensive for equivalent 250 GB service. So how is wireless "great" for rural reidents??? Hell even satellite internet would be a cheaper option.
I have a friend whose dad is stuck on dialup. I looked at wireless but it's beyond his budget (retired). I also looked at satellite - not available. Meanwhile he has perfectly good phone and cable lines running to his house which could be used for internet. The Congress needs to get off its marble ass and MANDATE that he & other rural residents can get their lines upgraded to DSL and Cable internet service. This could happen in just a few months
.
>>>Since they didn't pay any money for it in the first place
-1 Wrong. TV stations pay the FCC over 1 billion *each year* for their frequencies. They are also required to be free-of-charge (i.e. they can't chage you $50 a mont like a cell company, or $1 a month like TNT, USA, et cetera). Providing free service is costly - just ask UPN or WB or CW or NBC. The first two went bankrupt and CW/NBC are on the verge themselves.
>>>after TV stations vacated it (did they get any money back?)
(1) My reading of the article is that this is a NEW taking of spectrum - channels 32 to 51 will be removed and leased to cellphone companies. (2) The TV stations that lost channels 52 to 69 were given new spots, so they didn't lose anything. Some of the poorer "neighborhood" stations received financial handouts to convert from analog to digital but that's it
.
>>>why any sane person even has Cable TV
If my brother was here he'd probably say he doesn't know how to get TV over the net, and it's "just easier" to flip channnels on the set like he's done the last ~50 years. OTHER people claim watching TV on a computer is not relaxing and they want to be able to watch with their wife & kids on the big screen. Basically they are paying for simplicity and convenience
Correction:
There's no [digging] required because the lines are already there. If Congress mandated it, phone and cable TV customers could have nearly all rural residents on DSL or Cable broadband by the end of the year. - It might take a little longer for Farmer Bob living in Nowhere Idaho but it would still be faster than waiting for Farmer Bob to get a cell tower installed near his cattle ranch. AND it would get done quickly and cheaply
.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
Well, when the government GAVE away, for free, those frequencies to networks
Say what? -1 Wrong. Every local station PAYS for their frequency. The FCC collects over a billion dollars each year from TV broadcasters, plus requiring broadcasters to SERVE the public by providing news, weather, emergency and government announcements for Free (rather than charge $50 a month like cellphone providers).
Good point.
If the government really wants rural residents upgraded from Narrowband dialup to Broadband, the quickest and cheapest answer is use the existing phone lines for DSL. (Or existing cable tv lines for internet.) There's no diffing required because the lines are already there. You might need to add a DSLAM or DOCSIS router to each city block (or equivalent), but that doesn't cost that much. The expense can be taken out of the Universal Service Fee charged each month.
Plus wireless makes little sense. You get ONE spectrum and that's it - why base our future net on a limited resource? With wired internet you can get as many spectrums as you need (one per cable)
.
They are taking 120 megahertz from broadcasters, which is equivalent to subtracting 20 slots on the DTV spectrum (where each slot can hold 3-5 channels each). What a crock. I don't want to subscribe to Comcast. They charge $60 a month, plus $5 for each extra TV, plus 6% tax on top of that. AND their prices keep going up and up. (Basically 2.5 times more than what I paid in 2000.)
And the government used taxpayer money - spending almost 1 billion to hand-out subsidzed converter boxes and eduation programs for the June 2009 DTV transition. So what? That money just goes to waste now???
Look at all these channels I get. FREE. I don't understand why they want to take it away. What's next? We lose our Shortwave, AM, and FM Radio too?
ABC
CBS
FOX
NBC
CW
PBS
PBSarts
PBSworld
PBSkids
MyNetTV
Univision
Telefutura
TBN
ION
Wellness Channel
thisTV movie channel
Retro Network
Global (foreign language shows/movies)
Link (foreign news)
MiND (mostly educational)
JCTV
Smile-of-a-Child Network
Qubo
IONlife
plus 9 independents showing syndicated (Rome, Star Trek, Deadliest Catch, etc) and movies
sppeedtest.net and torrenting both confirm I'm getting 750 kbit/s on my DSL
Plus it makes logical sense that if you take Dialup and squeeze the images and text to 10% normal size, you're going to get about 56k times 10 == ~500 kbit/s effective speed. The only time I experience slowdown is on flash-heavy sites like imdb.com, so I simply block the flash.
Someone lacks a sense of humor. Go watch some Penn & Teller and chill out. "And try laughing mutther fukker! Jeez. My achin' ass." - Penn Jillette:
- Martial Arts are Bullshit - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_3BSk2TbK4 [youtube.com]
- The War on Fast Food is BS- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEkJMGPHiXE [youtube.com]
- Cheerleaders - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbymhQyq5rQ [youtube.com]
Poor example. Walter Cronkite was always pro-"we need government to solve our problems" biased. He rarely if ever presented the opposite view of downsizing the government.
>>>He, however, said what if the law was "wrong"?
No he didn't. He said what if the Precedent (opinion) of the Justices was wrong. Then she should ignore it as contrary to the law. Go back and reread his post and try to understand it.
Since the "left" is anti-freedom and pro-big-government (like a modern form of tyranny), you are spot on. They are trying to restore Feudalism, where the nobles (congress/parliament) run every facet of the serfs' lives. Slowly-but-surely we are becoming a plantation but on a continent-wide scale.
Don't believe? Consider that I am being fined $950 for exercising my Pro-choice right to not buy hospital insurance. What's next? Fines because I bought a normal car instead of a hybrid? Fines because I exceed 200 pounds? "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
>>>There has always been bias in the "mainstream press", but not to the degree we see now.
You're right. It used to be much worse. Newspapers pre-1930 used to proudly proclaim they were biased, sometimes even putting the bias directly in the name: the Philadelphia Republican News or the Pittsburgh Democrat Gazette. You think there's bias now but it's nothing compared to how it was from circa 1700 to 1930.
And that's good. I'd rather have people TELL me their bias (I am pro-make government as large as possible), rather than LIE and say they have no bias.
Let's see what happens when we delete any and all Ad Hominem logical fallacies (i.e. personal attacks).
>>>>>most Americans only watch TV News
>>
>>Boy.....
Well look at that. He has no argument left. ;-)
>>> Factcheck is also liberal (pro-big government) biased
[My opinion. Never once have I seen factcheck take a pro-small government position, such as defending Ron Paul (l-R) or Harry Browne (L) when they were misquoted. It's bias by omission.]
Yeah that's okay.
Would you prefer I post an anti-George Duh Bush paragraph instead? It reads pretty much the same as the Obama one. Only a fool thinks there's any REAL difference. Are you such a fool? ;-)
>>>Do you *really* think this will be so important to you forever?
Good point. I spent almost a thousand dollars buying the entire Star Trek series on VHS. I loved that show. Fast-forward to the present and I realize how dumb I was. (1) It would have been cheaper to just rent the shows, since I only watched them two or three times, or (2) skip the VHS and wait for the cheap DVD sets.
Ya know that saying? "People may believe your stupid, but there's no reason to open your mouth and prove it."? I think a modification of that appies here:
People may believe you're a nerd, but there's no reason to tattoo equations on your body and prove it. (Talk about making dating even more difficult!) Also consider the long term implications:
- My niece tattooed a rose on her ankle. It was cute on her young high school body.
Fast-forward 20 years and now it's expanded into a giant red splotch. (i.e. she gained weight)
Sadly you are correct. The men who TAKE are the ones who get sex and marriage (and maybe even some adultery on the side). Us nice guys finish last because women find us "weak" non-confident and unattractive.
No I'm not bitter. Why do you ask?
I really hate that scene. Lucas dropped that line to try to move the "force" from being Fantasy Fiction magic (and quell complaints that Star Wars is not science fiction). But it still doesn't explain what "the force" is supposed to be. Are the midichlorians a bunch of tiny wizards ala Harry Potter casing "force" spells everywhere? It's still just nonsense.
This is why I hate Fantasy that tries itself off as "a possible future" science fiction reality. No. No. No. I'm sorry but there will never be magic in our universe..... maybe in some neighboring universe, but not in ours
For more info, I recommend this excellent video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDNrnpefGio
>>> 42 is a dumb number..... should have picked a more interesting number, like 389.
I prefer 69 myself.
>>>BitTorrent isn't destroying networks unless you're counting the TV kind.
Since the analog shutoff TV has experienced a revival. Look at all these channels I get... free. A lot of them are clones of cable channels (this==AMC, qubo==nickelodeon), or if not exact clones will offer cable programming like Stargate, Rome, Deadliest Catch, Junkyard Wars, and so on.
ABC
CBS
FOX
NBC
CW
PBS
PBSarts
PBSworld
PBSkids
MyNetTV
Univision
Telefutura
TBN
ION
Wellness Channel
thisTV movie channel
Retro Network
Global (foreign language shows/movies)
Link (foreign news)
MiND (mostly educational)
JCTV
Smile-of-a-Child Network
Qubo
IONlife
plus 8 or 9 independents showing syndicated (Rome, Star Trek, Deadliest Catch, etc) and movies