> then why do so many android apps require internet access, and other information, even though they are just a simple game?, note pad, etc.
Precisely. But it goes a little deeper than that to me. I have an LG Ally (with Verizon), which is a lower-priced Android phone. I don't know if this can be applied across the board, but my experience so far has been a little troubling.
Just to use the Market app, "background data" (i.e., constant access) has to be enabled. Why? Why can't that app simply "dial in," fetch the info, let me make the purchase, and disconnect? I keep Background Data disabled on principle, and yet: the You Tube app continually updates. I don't need Skype on my phone, but it's always re-enabling itself, and constantly "pings" the Intertubez.
Most troubling of all to me is the Backup Assistant. (Do a Google on "disable backup assistant" and you'll see I'm not the only one who hates that thing.) Some of us don't *like* the concept of "cloud" computing. I realize that Google loves it, and in retrospect, I should have thought of that before trading my Blackberry for an Android-based phone. But I don't want my personal data stored on a computer somewhere in Alta Vista or Atlanta. That's MY personal data, and I don't want anyone else to have access to it.
Which raises the question: WHY is Verizon/Android so anal about that Backup Assistant, and having constant Internet access, even when I've specifically disabled it? Call me suspicious, but it DOES make me wonder if they are farming marketable data from that stuff. (The only way to get rid of Backup Assistant, Skype and the You Tube apps, from what I've seen in the Android forums, is to "root" my phone, which will void the warranty.)
Thanks. I'll check the Charter offering again. Maybe they have something new, or will be able to provide service to our location. As of April of last year, they couldn't.
By that definition, this entire area isn't "broadband." We can get decent downstroke (6 Mbits is common), but it's very difficult to get anything more than a 768 Kbit upstroke.
We had to move our mail server to a co-location at the ISPs office just to get 1.5/1.5.
I'm aware of that. BP isn't making the full $2.15 per gallon, but they ARE making money off of each individual gas station. That's what the poster was trying to point out, and I agreed with him/her.
He (and I) was responding to the assertion here that BP wouldn't be affected by a boycott of local gas stations. They most assuredly will be.
Yes, sadly, it will hurt the local station owner as well, but it WILL get BP's attention, too. That, combined with the bad publicity in general, might mean that they'll be a little less inclined to cut corners and rush things on the next oil well.
The idea that the gas stations are innocent victims is only true to a certain extent. These gas stations were certainly willing to be associated with the "BP" name, and were happy to enjoy BP's advertising. BP certainly DOES make money off of these stations, as Bigjeff5 points out. A lot of money.
Besides, suppose it's discovered that Toshiba, or Honda, or any other large company is guilty of something that angers a lot of their customers. In that case, the local retailers and dealers will certainly be harmed by a boycott, but that is just part of the cost of doing business. The local guy will change brands, and yes, BP *DOES* lose from that in the long run. It has a DIRECT impact on their bottom line.
Ergo, I have a perfect right to refuse to buy BP gasoline. If it hurts the local guy, oh well, I feel for him/her -- but he/she can simply align the business with some other oil company. That's how it works.
Actually, FWIW, here in Alabama, a lot of people *have* been boycotting BP. A number of gas stations here in Birmingham have changed from BP to some other brand because their business dropped off precipitously after the spill. (Anecdotal evidence alert, no hard evidence, just what I've noticed while driving around.)
As for boycotting BP... well, a lot of people figure the buck had to stop somewhere. To me, it's indisputable that BP made some terrible decisions. The fact that (sadly) they had already determined that the well wasn't economically viable, and BP was planning just to cap it and leave it for the time being, is irrelevant.
I'm a good free market conservative, but I do believe in responsible behavior on the part of those companies that enjoy the benefits of it. If someone were to open a large manufacturing plant in Central Alabama, we'd welcome the jobs ..... but we would NOT welcome them cutting corners and poisoning the streams, for example. Stereotypes aside, we ain't ENTIRELY stupid here.:)
"suspect that Al-Queda sends an idiot through the airlines once in a while to get caught, just to keep the TSA's attention focused there."
I hereby nominate you to be the new head of Homeland Security. (You'd never be approved, because you have a brain, but hey, I can hope.)
I've suspected the same thing for while now -- that either al-Quaida sends the occasional stooge onto an airplane just to keep the waters stirred, or they are incalculably stupid. (Or both.)
Forget the water supplies. As I ride around Alabama, I look at all the power lines and think how easy it would be to put the better half of a state (if not an entire region) in the dark.
Our "infrastructure," to re-use that overused term, is incredibly vulnerable. Cheap power distribution and cheap communications are only available because we can run wires through the countryside and hang satellites in orbit with very little in the way of real (read: expensive) security. All they'd have to do is figure some way to smuggle a couple of dozen guys across the border and they could do it with low tech tools available at any hardware store.
"Moderation is about rewarding discourse contributions"
Absolutely. And for the record, anytime I have mod points I make sure that I find posts with which I personally disagree, but which have been well-argued. I mod them up.
"only liberals who 'deserve it' are shouted down... any reasonable discourse... involves shouting down."
Gosh. This takes me back to my Compuserve days, in the Canopus forum. (Clears throat.) Do you a problem with reading comprehension? I never said that, and only YOUR bias could possibly have interpreted my post in that manner.:)
Yes, in political philosophy, I'm actually more of a libertarian than anything else. The reason why I watch Fox news is because, most of their evening programming (again, ignoring Glenn Beck) presents me with a far wider range of opinion that I could get from most other TV news outlets. If you think that you will get the same balance from the CBS Evening News, for example, then you're the one who is deluded, not me.
(Another aside: our station broadcasts Laura Ingraham, and I just listened to her do an *extremely* interesting and fair interview with Claire_McCaskill, the democratic senator from Missouri. Laura disagreed with her, but was otherwise quite respectful. There was no "shouting." McCaskill even thanked Laura for the fair hearing and said she would be *delighted* to appear on her show again in the future, precisely *because* Laura gave her an honest chance to explain her votes on TARP and healthcare.)
Third, go look up what the Libertarian party actually stands for: very small government and personal liberty. Most of us hold our noses and generally vote Republican, not because we're in love with them (the late Ted Stevens was especially loathsome, in my opinion, just to name one example), but because the alternative CLEARLY leans toward income redistribution ("because it's the right thing to do!") and government intrusion into our private lives (ex., the proposed national government database of ALL my medical records; that is utterly abhorrent to me).
If you agree with either, then yes, you and I are at odds.
"Have you ever seen a left-winger on a fox news show?"
Happens all the time. As a general rule, if they are a thoughtful, well-reasoned liberal, they are allowed to talk. The only time they're "shouted down," as you say, is when they continue to dodge questions, repeat talking points and emit endless spin. But just for the record, the same treatment is given to conservatives who dodge and spin. Those who are "elites" (both liberal and conservative) aren't used to this nowadays. They think they should be allowed to sit and spin and spout the Party Line without being closely questioned. When they are closely questioned, they don't like it.
(Speaking from experience. You would not BELIEVE how snobbish many of these people are nowadays. They view you and I as the unwashed, uneducated masses, and travel in entourages that look like something a rock star would have.)
One lady in particular -- can't remember her name to save my life, sorry! -- has been on Fox a couple of times recently. She's a well-known, self-proclaimed liberal talk show host, and I actually enjoy listening to her. I may not agree with her, but she makes me think. I *like* a well-reasoned argument.
Glenn Beck, now.. ... (cough, cough) ... . well, he's.... Glenn Beck. We won't go there; I'll just concede on that one.:)
"The REAL question is, why are you watching the big news services? You realize they're nothing more than fear, polarization, and embellishment, packaged to sell advertisements...right?"
Sure. They're businesses. They attract viewers/listeners/readers and sell advertising to make a profit. You target it to your listeners/viewers/readers. That's how it works.
Of course it is. I never said otherwise. What I was contrasting, though, was the treatment meted out to employees and their families vs. ordinary "folk" coming in through the public entrance. They pass through scanners, of course, and are told that certain items are prohibited, but that's about it. But the government can't do truly invasive searches on these people because it would cause an outcry.
That's why I used the example of the drunk looking for his keys "where the light is better." Government boffins take the path of least resistance.
There are a number of ways in which security could be enhanced at airports, but many of them are Politically Unacceptable. As a result, honest, ordinary folks like yours truly must suffer. These invasive scanners are a good way to demonstrate that the government is doing something. Obviously, someone (perhaps Napolitano herself) ruled that they were Politically Acceptable -- certainly far more so than stopping and searching a passenger named "Achmed" from Yemen or Iran.
On the "path of least resistance" principle, by the way, it should come as no surprise that Napolitano and her boffins seem to be genuinely puzzled and dismayed by the outcry. I guess they routinely subject themselves to high-radiation scans that render them naked, and figure, "what's the big deal?":)
By the way, the best example of political correctness run amok is the idea of completely random searches. Every "nth" entrant must be stripped to the bone, regardless of the likelihood that they might actually be carrying something nefarious. I guess the idea is that terrorists (who doubtless are capable of instant, high-level math calculations in their heads) realize that there is a small, but finite, chance that they'll be searched. In real life, what happens is that Richard The Shoe Bomber makes it onto the plane, whilst granny is spread-eagled on a steel table being probed by government boffins wearing latex gloves.
(In case you missed that, the intelligence of the average terrorist is approximately equivalent to that of a small pet. If the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different result, then they truly are insane. One almost wishes they'd try something different; the "attack the air travel industry!" angle has been worked to death by these geniuses.)
So, even though my wife and I will be flying over Thanksgiving, I just take all of this in stride. I'm Hawkeye, jibing and joking with Trapper John when the next batch of government lunacy comes down from above. My life goes on, and one's best response is just to laugh at it. (When possible. If they start groping my wife, however, I shall become famous. You will read about ME on the evening news.)
"Uselessness of the technology relative to the risk of attack..." you got it. Well said, and someone mod this guy to +7.
One problem is that the government has to do something to appear proactive. The second problem, though, is that it's limited
1. By intelligence -- most government drones aren't the brightest lights, and politicians are even worse (background concept: imagine that we've placed the guy who thinks the Internet is "a series of tubes" in charge of security). (Or here's a better one, ideal for Slashdot readers: we've put the US Patent office, who can't even decide whether clicking a Web link is a "new and unique invention," in charge of it.)
2. By thousands of restrictions on what it CAN do -- for example, profiling is out, selecting "likely" passengers to be dangerous based on statistics, etc., etc.
My wife works for the government, and we don't know whether to laugh or cry. Every time there's an incident (shoe bomber, underwear bomber, or the most recent, the toner attempt), they go into Code Orange. They have a guy watch me as I wait for her out front at the end of each day (she's unable to drive due to her vision), even though they know me. Why? Because he was Told To Do So(sm). They are Taking Steps(r). They are proving that they are Serious About The Terrorist Threat(c).
(I've often said that, if the government bureau-crazy really had its way, they could stamp out terrorism overnight: they'd simply choke it with paperwork. "Before you may crash this plane into that stadium, you must fill out these forms assessing the environmental impact...")
Better yet, whenever we go to Code Orange, security carefully checks credentials at the employee's entrance.
At the EMPLOYEE'S entrance. Even though they recognize each other. "Good morning, sweetie! How's your husband?" "Just fine" [hands over id card, puts purse on belt to go through the scanner]...
Meanwhile, a milling mass of ordinary citizens wraps around the block, waiting in line at the public entrance, some wearing backpacks and carrying large suitcases.. ... but no one dares do more than a cursory check of these folks, because they'll start screaming and next thing you know, you'll have An Incident(tm) that makes the news.
There you go. A Crisis occurs, government hurls paperwork, makework and completely (and inexplicably) ineffective procedures in place to give the APPEARANCE that they're doing something. They're the drunk who looks for his keys a block away from where he dropped them because "the light is better" -- writ large.
Not necessarily. There are plenty of small businesses for whom $2000 is a significant expense, but nonetheless can't afford to have a key server down for a day while they upgrade.
Case in point: a small corporate mail/groupware server; the salespeople use it constantly and rely on it heavily. You're using a third-party mail/groupware package on that server, so you are NOT guaranteed that it'll run 100% bug-free on the upgraded OS.
For that to be offline for a day or two is one thing. I think it might actually be worse if it was offline for only a few hours, but THEN came back up with serious bugs, or was missing data, or had important stuff that no longer works as expected. NOW you're getting dozens of calls (and in a small business, YOU are the "support team," remember).:)
That's what we Southerners call, "a mess."
I upgrade my desktops at 1-2 year intervals. But my servers? We still have an important (S)FTP server running an older version of RHEL, thank you. It will continue to run just that way until the hardware finally tanks.:)
The thing is, the better pollsters do indeed do this. You're absolutely right.
I've seen left-leaning folks excoriate Rasmussen as just being a "mouthpiece" of the Right, but in fact, Pollster.com (now part of the Huffington Post) has acknowledged that they have generally been very accurate in the past few election cycles. Why? Because Scott Rasmussen knows how to... drum roll, please!... do demographic weighting, accurately determine who is, in fact, likely to vote, correct for cell phone usage and etc., etc.
On the other side of the coin, my right-leaning friends love to dump on Gallup and the New York Times polls, but all that matters at the end of the day is how accurate they are. This can easily be checked after the election: how far off were they? Who was the most accurate? Why were they wrong? Cellphones are just one reason (and just for the record, the first major pollster to claim to adjust for the "cellphone effect" was John Zogby, way back in 2000 and 2002).
From my experience in the past, the polls have generally tended to favor the Democrats by a few points, especially here in the South. The best example was years ago, when I lived in NC, and Jesse Helms was running against former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gant (sp?) for the US Senate. The polls consistently showed a statistical dead heat, but Helms actually won handily by about 8 points. Post-mortem showed that the pollsters had badly guessed probably turnout from rural areas, which tend to be much more conservative in a state like NC.
(Or, in plain English, Ma and Pa Kettle fired up the truck and headed in to vote, but they were never polled!):)
HOWEVER... that WAS in the past. In recent years, the reputable pollsters have slowly become more and more accurate. A good pollster always does a post-mortem after each election to see what he/she guessed wrong and how they can tweak their models to improve for the next election.
realclearpolitics.com keeps a running average of ALL polls. According to their latest results, the Republicans will definitely win the House, and will *possibly* win the Senate. We'll see how right the polls were (and who was the most accurate) in the post-mortem after the election.
>The change in size was due to a move to Digital, NOT just an improvement in reception technology.
Ummm... yes and no. If you listen to talk radio, virtually all of those voices (whether conservative or liberal) have two things in common: (1) they're distributed digitally (typically with some variant of MPEG or AAC, for the curious. and with VERY robust error correction) and virtually all of them are delivered via C-band satellite. Rush, Phil Hendrie, Laura Ingraham, you name it. We have both a 3 meter and a 3.2 meter dish at our radio stations. The satellite providers recommend these dish sizes, even with digital signals.
As others here have pointed out, the higher the frequency, the smaller the dish can be for the same gain. You could use a humongous dish for Ku Band, but it would be a waste, especially with a digital signal. (That's where you're partially correct, which is why I said, "yes and no.")
However, also in fairness to you, there's beamwidth (i.e., the ability to reject other satellites to either side of the one you want). That's one big reason why we still have to use the giant, honkin', hateful, heavy and HUGE 3 meter dishes. The C band is a nightmare and has been for years.
By the way, on the original subject... phased/grid arrays have been around for decades. The fact that someone has developed a better chip is interesting news, but it's hardly earth-shattering.
The real reason why dishes continue to outsell most other types of antennas is cost-vs-benefit ratio. They're cheap, they provide a "good enough" signal, and they get the job done.
On the other hand, I know several people who were hard-core Linux users who have given up and switched back to Windows. One of them was a gunslinger who started out years ago compiling Slack from source. He's the one who introduced me to Linux. I'm still with it, but ironically, he's not.
I think there are reasons for this. I'll just pass on the ones that they've given to me:
1. Updates break things. You'll finally get video and sound working the way you like (which can be a pain in the butt to start with); in comes a kernel update and it breaks. I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me. As I write this, in fact, every time I browse to a Web site with Flash (Firefox on Fedora 13), I get the old, "The Flash Plugin has crashed." I've been trying for a week to get it working again to no avail. Apparently, something weird on my hardware (a Compaq/HP desktop) just doesn't like something else that has changed.
2. Fundamentalist-religious-fervor on the part of Free Software advocates. When faced with facts, they are as recalcitrant as any Young Earth Creationist. Fact: manufacturers WILL NOT reveal the inner details of how their hardware works. Fact: many of these manufacturers will at least, grudgingly, provide a "binary blob" that allows me to use their stuff under Linux... but THIS is why the stuff breaks after a kernel update. It would be painfully simply to provide a simple, *unchanging* interface for drivers (for example, DKMS improved and made a required standard for all serious distros).
Oh, and it doesn't help that, instead of THANKING these manufacturers for bothering to provide at least that "binary blob" to the Linux community, the manufacturer is excoriated and called names by the True Believers In Free Software for not agreeing to provide all of the intimate details of their hardware, without NDAs or other encumbrances, so that the community can develop the driver. Que vicious cycle, yadda yadda. Nuff said.
As an aside, it annoys me to no end that I am a Linux lover: I use Fedora on this laptop, but I prefer OpenSuse on my desktop PC... and *I* suffer some of that same excoriation *MYSELF* for using it! (Something about OpenSuse not being a "pure F/OSS" distro, har, har). I'm not being true to the revolution, according to the Free Software Purists(tm)(r)(c)(sm). I am also scolded by the Purists because I prefer Adobe's Acrobat Reader to all of the free alternatives. How DARE I, say the purists?
Linux is FREE - both as in speech and beer. The fact that it hasn't taken over the computing world begs us to figure out why. It's FREE. What gives?
It would really, really help if we'd explain to my conservative friends just what "Net Neutrality" is. They are convinced that it's some form of Fairness Doctrine for the Web that will limit content.
(The fact that such a "fairness doctrine" might limit Mother Jones and Salon just as much as it does FrontPageMag and World Net Daily, depending on the party in power, doesn't seem to occur to them, either.)
I try to explain to them that it simply means that, if I visit YouTube, I don't want my ISP to limit their bandwidth because Microsoft (or someone else) has paid a premium for priority for *their* bandwidth.
We geeks have several flaws, and one of them is our love of catchphrases and acronyms. We just *assume* that everyone knows what "free software" and "net neutrality" mean. But when you start dealing with the Body Politick At Large(tm), that's not necessarily so. A few minutes to carefully explain just what we're actually talking about will go a long way...
That's true at present, but that can easily be addressed. HD Radio already has an 8-second transmission delay; streaming is even longer (30-60 seconds isn't unusual). People are used to a bit of delay with digital audio. 15 seconds is plenty of time to renegotiate, and RAM is so cheap nowadays, the receiver could easily buffer enough data to cover say, twice that.
Be careful with your assumptions, too. I'm old enough to remember when the CD first appeared; record industry pundits confidently -- *confidently* -- predicted that it would take decades for the CD to completely supplant the vinyl record. In fact, it took less than one decade. There were stacks and stacks of vinyl records sitting in warehouses, unsold, and the CD burners were working overtime to meet demand.:)
Besides, WiFi in automobiles won't just be for radio. It'll need to be optimized for other on-demand services. That's how it will be monetized. Ergo, since there will be demand, there will be incentive to work out the (relatively minor) "hand off" problem between access points.
Good news: In 2022 or so, HD Radio will be patent free and then you don't need to deal with iBiquity any more.
Good news 2: It's probably only a matter of time until somebody hacks the data and reveals the hidden "secrets" so you don't need to pay iBiquity.
In reality, there will probably end up being a court case over it, with iBiquity claiming that such usage is "unlicensed." They're serious about monetizing everything to do with HD-R. Everything.
AM Stereo died because the 1979 FCC did not pick a single standard, which led to 3 different versions of AMS and confused customers.
You'll get no argument from me on that. Our company ran C-QUAM AM stereo up until we made the switch to HD-R, but I only knew a handful of people with receivers for it. I understand that it did better in some other countries (most notably, Australia), but here in the USA, the lack of a single standard definitely hurt.
I was referring to the economic mess that resulted from its failure, not necessarily the failure of C-QUAM itself in the USA. Sadly, there are plenty of stations now -- especially AMs -- who have adopted a "wait and see" attitude toward HD-R, if they're interested at all... and they'll usually throw the example of AM Stereo in your face when you ask them "why.":)
Which is why I brought that up.:)
But I don't think HD-radio compares with HDTV. The latter had a switchover that was mandated by the government. Not only is this unlikely for radio, the real issue (and the thing concerning me) is how fast communication is moving from traditional "transmitter-and-big-stick" technologies to alternatives, such as Internet delivery. Many in our industry have their heads in the sand about this.
Frankly, I think that if HDTV had come along even a few years later, the story would have been different. When my local Telco can deliver HD-quality programming over via Internet, what's the point? Who except those who live in rural areas even bother with an antenna anymore? It's either satellite, cable or Internet delivery now. Radio's ONLY difference, in that respect, is that we're in automobiles.. and once most of the Continental USA is blanketed with decent high-speed Internet access, that's how most content will be delivered, anyway. I just don't see any need to switch to DRM or any other over-the-air delivery method at this date. I say we hang tough, keep fighting for open standards on the Internet, and concentrate on programming.
I think there are different groups with different aims here. The anti-IBOC page given seemed to want to keep it analog-only, they say IBOC causes interference with the analog part. They aren't promoting Digital Radio Mondiale that I can tell. IBOC will at least retain analog compatibility, Digital Radio Mondiale will eliminate any analog compatibility completely, so their antique radio from 1930 won't work anymore. Or for that matter, the radio in my car from just a few years ago, not that I use its radio.
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I've sparred with these people myself, and that's exactly their attitude: keep AM analog. Many of them are DX'ers; they like to see how many AM stations they can receive from across the country (or even around the world).
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I'm ambivalent about it. I don't listen to AM/FM radio anymore, it's podcasts and playlists for me.
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That's because my industry took its greatest strength -- live, local talent and the resources to provide locally-pertinent information around the clock -- and automated it, with playlists containing a couple of dozen songs that are repeated over and over. The industry, by and large, is run by kids in business suits who only care about the bottom line. Thank God my company is different (we still have real live "deejays" on our music stations, with a playlist of literally hundreds of songs!), but sadly, we're the exception, not the rule.
I'm a broadcast engineer who has installed several HD-R systems (two AM, three FM). My biggest complaint, and one that I've shared quite vocally in my own industry, is the *extremely* closed-source nature of HD radio. It's not just, "we've copyrighted it and you must pay for each use," it's, "we own it, the WHOLE THING is a top secret, and unless you pay us a huge fee, you can't even think about making modifications or adding anything to what we deem useful or appropriate."
Just one example of many: the first exciters that we received used a very simple ID3 tagging scheme for the PAD data, sent via UDP to a well-known port. The "exporters" (the non-intuitive name for the devices that allow us to multicast, i.e., put more than one format on a single FM signal) use a closed, proprietary client-server model. I've looked at it with Wireshark and it appears that ID3 is imbedded in the packets, but it just wasn't worth the bother to try to figure out the whole thing. iBiquity ain't tellin' unless you pay them a license fee.
I imagine that iBiquity assumed (and told their investors) that, because they'd have exclusive rights, it would be a Pot Of Gold(tm). That hasn't panned out, so they're desperately trying to monetize every little aspect of the system among those of who bit the bullet and paid (substantial, mind you!) fees to initially install it during the rollout. Want to add multicast channels? You pay for that. Want to add iTunes tagging? Ditto. OH... and you want to write your own stuff to ride in the PAD (program associated data) slot, maybe customize something for your own station? Sorry, we don't support that yet, but we may eventually...
Instead, in this day and age of competition from all sorts of delivery sources (streaming, anyone?), it has simply slowed uptake to a crawl. Ford originally announced that they'd have HD receivers in their cars a few years ago. That slipped; they said it would be 2009 for sure. THAT slipped. Now we're almost in 2011, and there still aren't very many HD receivers in cars. They are supposedly going to do it in 2012, but I'll believe it when I see it.
If iBuiquity had simply patented the delivery method (the "container," for you geeks here:) ) and made the license fees rational, HD-R would be in 80-90% of the stations in the United States. Instead, it languishes, and we (i.e., radio engineers) are looking at another AM Stereo debacle: we paid tons of money up front, promoted it to death, and it died anyway.
As for going with DRM or some other system, that would be asking broadcasters to abandon their (substantial) investment in HD-R and make a completely new investment in a new system. I hope I'm not too cynical now, but I honestly believe that the future is in wireless streaming. Let's keep our streams clean and clear sounding, concentrate on programming, and when the inevitable coast-to-coast wireless coverage finally arrives, we'll already be positioned to survive. I think that moving to DRM now would be a mistake, myself.
... that an idiot with his/her hand on a switch, a breaker or a power cord is more dangerous than even the worst computer bug.
(Judging from the houses that I see on my way to work each morning, some people shouldn't even be allowed to buy PAINT without supervision. And we provide them with computers and access to the Internet nowadays!)
(If that doesn't terrify you, you have nerves of steel.)
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> You should have noticed that the web browser doesn't work without background data either.
Mine does. Works fine.
> then why do so many android apps require internet access, and other information, even though they are just a simple game?, note pad, etc.
Precisely. But it goes a little deeper than that to me. I have an LG Ally (with Verizon), which is a lower-priced Android phone. I don't know if this can be applied across the board, but my experience so far has been a little troubling.
Just to use the Market app, "background data" (i.e., constant access) has to be enabled. Why? Why can't that app simply "dial in," fetch the info, let me make the purchase, and disconnect? I keep Background Data disabled on principle, and yet: the You Tube app continually updates. I don't need Skype on my phone, but it's always re-enabling itself, and constantly "pings" the Intertubez.
Most troubling of all to me is the Backup Assistant. (Do a Google on "disable backup assistant" and you'll see I'm not the only one who hates that thing.) Some of us don't *like* the concept of "cloud" computing. I realize that Google loves it, and in retrospect, I should have thought of that before trading my Blackberry for an Android-based phone. But I don't want my personal data stored on a computer somewhere in Alta Vista or Atlanta. That's MY personal data, and I don't want anyone else to have access to it.
Which raises the question: WHY is Verizon/Android so anal about that Backup Assistant, and having constant Internet access, even when I've specifically disabled it? Call me suspicious, but it DOES make me wonder if they are farming marketable data from that stuff. (The only way to get rid of Backup Assistant, Skype and the You Tube apps, from what I've seen in the Android forums, is to "root" my phone, which will void the warranty.)
Thanks. I'll check the Charter offering again. Maybe they have something new, or will be able to provide service to our location. As of April of last year, they couldn't.
By that definition, this entire area isn't "broadband." We can get decent downstroke (6 Mbits is common), but it's very difficult to get anything more than a 768 Kbit upstroke.
We had to move our mail server to a co-location at the ISPs office just to get 1.5/1.5.
I'm aware of that. BP isn't making the full $2.15 per gallon, but they ARE making money off of each individual gas station. That's what the poster was trying to point out, and I agreed with him/her.
He (and I) was responding to the assertion here that BP wouldn't be affected by a boycott of local gas stations. They most assuredly will be.
Yes, sadly, it will hurt the local station owner as well, but it WILL get BP's attention, too. That, combined with the bad publicity in general, might mean that they'll be a little less inclined to cut corners and rush things on the next oil well.
Mod this up. He said it better than I would have.
The idea that the gas stations are innocent victims is only true to a certain extent. These gas stations were certainly willing to be associated with the "BP" name, and were happy to enjoy BP's advertising. BP certainly DOES make money off of these stations, as Bigjeff5 points out. A lot of money.
Besides, suppose it's discovered that Toshiba, or Honda, or any other large company is guilty of something that angers a lot of their customers. In that case, the local retailers and dealers will certainly be harmed by a boycott, but that is just part of the cost of doing business. The local guy will change brands, and yes, BP *DOES* lose from that in the long run. It has a DIRECT impact on their bottom line.
Ergo, I have a perfect right to refuse to buy BP gasoline. If it hurts the local guy, oh well, I feel for him/her -- but he/she can simply align the business with some other oil company. That's how it works.
Actually, FWIW, here in Alabama, a lot of people *have* been boycotting BP. A number of gas stations here in Birmingham have changed from BP to some other brand because their business dropped off precipitously after the spill. (Anecdotal evidence alert, no hard evidence, just what I've noticed while driving around.)
As for boycotting BP ... well, a lot of people figure the buck had to stop somewhere. To me, it's indisputable that BP made some terrible decisions. The fact that (sadly) they had already determined that the well wasn't economically viable, and BP was planning just to cap it and leave it for the time being, is irrelevant.
I'm a good free market conservative, but I do believe in responsible behavior on the part of those companies that enjoy the benefits of it. If someone were to open a large manufacturing plant in Central Alabama, we'd welcome the jobs . .. .. but we would NOT welcome them cutting corners and poisoning the streams, for example. Stereotypes aside, we ain't ENTIRELY stupid here. :)
"suspect that Al-Queda sends an idiot through the airlines once in a while to get caught, just to keep the TSA's attention focused there."
I hereby nominate you to be the new head of Homeland Security. (You'd never be approved, because you have a brain, but hey, I can hope.)
I've suspected the same thing for while now -- that either al-Quaida sends the occasional stooge onto an airplane just to keep the waters stirred, or they are incalculably stupid. (Or both.)
Forget the water supplies. As I ride around Alabama, I look at all the power lines and think how easy it would be to put the better half of a state (if not an entire region) in the dark.
Our "infrastructure," to re-use that overused term, is incredibly vulnerable. Cheap power distribution and cheap communications are only available because we can run wires through the countryside and hang satellites in orbit with very little in the way of real (read: expensive) security. All they'd have to do is figure some way to smuggle a couple of dozen guys across the border and they could do it with low tech tools available at any hardware store.
What do you consider a "real" news source?
"Moderation is about rewarding discourse contributions"
Absolutely. And for the record, anytime I have mod points I make sure that I find posts with which I personally disagree, but which have been well-argued. I mod them up.
It's that "free marketplace of ideas" thingie. :)
"only liberals who 'deserve it' are shouted down ... any reasonable discourse ... involves shouting down."
Gosh. This takes me back to my Compuserve days, in the Canopus forum. (Clears throat.) Do you a problem with reading comprehension? I never said that, and only YOUR bias could possibly have interpreted my post in that manner. :)
Yes, in political philosophy, I'm actually more of a libertarian than anything else. The reason why I watch Fox news is because, most of their evening programming (again, ignoring Glenn Beck) presents me with a far wider range of opinion that I could get from most other TV news outlets. If you think that you will get the same balance from the CBS Evening News, for example, then you're the one who is deluded, not me.
(Another aside: our station broadcasts Laura Ingraham, and I just listened to her do an *extremely* interesting and fair interview with Claire_McCaskill, the democratic senator from Missouri. Laura disagreed with her, but was otherwise quite respectful. There was no "shouting." McCaskill even thanked Laura for the fair hearing and said she would be *delighted* to appear on her show again in the future, precisely *because* Laura gave her an honest chance to explain her votes on TARP and healthcare.)
Third, go look up what the Libertarian party actually stands for: very small government and personal liberty. Most of us hold our noses and generally vote Republican, not because we're in love with them (the late Ted Stevens was especially loathsome, in my opinion, just to name one example), but because the alternative CLEARLY leans toward income redistribution ("because it's the right thing to do!") and government intrusion into our private lives (ex., the proposed national government database of ALL my medical records; that is utterly abhorrent to me).
If you agree with either, then yes, you and I are at odds.
"Have you ever seen a left-winger on a fox news show?"
Happens all the time. As a general rule, if they are a thoughtful, well-reasoned liberal, they are allowed to talk. The only time they're "shouted down," as you say, is when they continue to dodge questions, repeat talking points and emit endless spin. But just for the record, the same treatment is given to conservatives who dodge and spin. Those who are "elites" (both liberal and conservative) aren't used to this nowadays. They think they should be allowed to sit and spin and spout the Party Line without being closely questioned. When they are closely questioned, they don't like it.
(Speaking from experience. You would not BELIEVE how snobbish many of these people are nowadays. They view you and I as the unwashed, uneducated masses, and travel in entourages that look like something a rock star would have.)
One lady in particular -- can't remember her name to save my life, sorry! -- has been on Fox a couple of times recently. She's a well-known, self-proclaimed liberal talk show host, and I actually enjoy listening to her. I may not agree with her, but she makes me think. I *like* a well-reasoned argument.
Glenn Beck, now .. . .. (cough, cough) . .. . well, he's .. .. Glenn Beck. We won't go there; I'll just concede on that one. :)
"The REAL question is, why are you watching the big news services? You realize they're nothing more than fear, polarization, and embellishment, packaged to sell advertisements...right?"
Sure. They're businesses. They attract viewers/listeners/readers and sell advertising to make a profit. You target it to your listeners/viewers/readers. That's how it works.
"checking an employee's ID ... is good practice."
Of course it is. I never said otherwise. What I was contrasting, though, was the treatment meted out to employees and their families vs. ordinary "folk" coming in through the public entrance. They pass through scanners, of course, and are told that certain items are prohibited, but that's about it. But the government can't do truly invasive searches on these people because it would cause an outcry.
That's why I used the example of the drunk looking for his keys "where the light is better." Government boffins take the path of least resistance.
There are a number of ways in which security could be enhanced at airports, but many of them are Politically Unacceptable. As a result, honest, ordinary folks like yours truly must suffer. These invasive scanners are a good way to demonstrate that the government is doing something. Obviously, someone (perhaps Napolitano herself) ruled that they were Politically Acceptable -- certainly far more so than stopping and searching a passenger named "Achmed" from Yemen or Iran.
On the "path of least resistance" principle, by the way, it should come as no surprise that Napolitano and her boffins seem to be genuinely puzzled and dismayed by the outcry. I guess they routinely subject themselves to high-radiation scans that render them naked, and figure, "what's the big deal?" :)
By the way, the best example of political correctness run amok is the idea of completely random searches. Every "nth" entrant must be stripped to the bone, regardless of the likelihood that they might actually be carrying something nefarious. I guess the idea is that terrorists (who doubtless are capable of instant, high-level math calculations in their heads) realize that there is a small, but finite, chance that they'll be searched. In real life, what happens is that Richard The Shoe Bomber makes it onto the plane, whilst granny is spread-eagled on a steel table being probed by government boffins wearing latex gloves.
(In case you missed that, the intelligence of the average terrorist is approximately equivalent to that of a small pet. If the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different result, then they truly are insane. One almost wishes they'd try something different; the "attack the air travel industry!" angle has been worked to death by these geniuses.)
So, even though my wife and I will be flying over Thanksgiving, I just take all of this in stride. I'm Hawkeye, jibing and joking with Trapper John when the next batch of government lunacy comes down from above. My life goes on, and one's best response is just to laugh at it. (When possible. If they start groping my wife, however, I shall become famous. You will read about ME on the evening news.)
"Uselessness of the technology relative to the risk of attack ..." you got it. Well said, and someone mod this guy to +7.
One problem is that the government has to do something to appear proactive. The second problem, though, is that it's limited
1. By intelligence -- most government drones aren't the brightest lights, and politicians are even worse (background concept: imagine that we've placed the guy who thinks the Internet is "a series of tubes" in charge of security). (Or here's a better one, ideal for Slashdot readers: we've put the US Patent office, who can't even decide whether clicking a Web link is a "new and unique invention," in charge of it.)
2. By thousands of restrictions on what it CAN do -- for example, profiling is out, selecting "likely" passengers to be dangerous based on statistics, etc., etc.
My wife works for the government, and we don't know whether to laugh or cry. Every time there's an incident (shoe bomber, underwear bomber, or the most recent, the toner attempt), they go into Code Orange. They have a guy watch me as I wait for her out front at the end of each day (she's unable to drive due to her vision), even though they know me. Why? Because he was Told To Do So(sm). They are Taking Steps(r). They are proving that they are Serious About The Terrorist Threat(c).
(I've often said that, if the government bureau-crazy really had its way, they could stamp out terrorism overnight: they'd simply choke it with paperwork. "Before you may crash this plane into that stadium, you must fill out these forms assessing the environmental impact ...")
Better yet, whenever we go to Code Orange, security carefully checks credentials at the employee's entrance.
At the EMPLOYEE'S entrance. Even though they recognize each other. "Good morning, sweetie! How's your husband?" "Just fine" [hands over id card, puts purse on belt to go through the scanner] ...
Meanwhile, a milling mass of ordinary citizens wraps around the block, waiting in line at the public entrance, some wearing backpacks and carrying large suitcases .. . .. but no one dares do more than a cursory check of these folks, because they'll start screaming and next thing you know, you'll have An Incident(tm) that makes the news.
There you go. A Crisis occurs, government hurls paperwork, makework and completely (and inexplicably) ineffective procedures in place to give the APPEARANCE that they're doing something. They're the drunk who looks for his keys a block away from where he dropped them because "the light is better" -- writ large.
Not necessarily. There are plenty of small businesses for whom $2000 is a significant expense, but nonetheless can't afford to have a key server down for a day while they upgrade.
Case in point: a small corporate mail/groupware server; the salespeople use it constantly and rely on it heavily. You're using a third-party mail/groupware package on that server, so you are NOT guaranteed that it'll run 100% bug-free on the upgraded OS.
For that to be offline for a day or two is one thing. I think it might actually be worse if it was offline for only a few hours, but THEN came back up with serious bugs, or was missing data, or had important stuff that no longer works as expected. NOW you're getting dozens of calls (and in a small business, YOU are the "support team," remember). :)
That's what we Southerners call, "a mess."
I upgrade my desktops at 1-2 year intervals. But my servers? We still have an important (S)FTP server running an older version of RHEL, thank you. It will continue to run just that way until the hardware finally tanks. :)
The thing is, the better pollsters do indeed do this. You're absolutely right.
I've seen left-leaning folks excoriate Rasmussen as just being a "mouthpiece" of the Right, but in fact, Pollster.com (now part of the Huffington Post) has acknowledged that they have generally been very accurate in the past few election cycles. Why? Because Scott Rasmussen knows how to ... drum roll, please! ... do demographic weighting, accurately determine who is, in fact, likely to vote, correct for cell phone usage and etc., etc.
On the other side of the coin, my right-leaning friends love to dump on Gallup and the New York Times polls, but all that matters at the end of the day is how accurate they are. This can easily be checked after the election: how far off were they? Who was the most accurate? Why were they wrong? Cellphones are just one reason (and just for the record, the first major pollster to claim to adjust for the "cellphone effect" was John Zogby, way back in 2000 and 2002).
From my experience in the past, the polls have generally tended to favor the Democrats by a few points, especially here in the South. The best example was years ago, when I lived in NC, and Jesse Helms was running against former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gant (sp?) for the US Senate. The polls consistently showed a statistical dead heat, but Helms actually won handily by about 8 points. Post-mortem showed that the pollsters had badly guessed probably turnout from rural areas, which tend to be much more conservative in a state like NC.
(Or, in plain English, Ma and Pa Kettle fired up the truck and headed in to vote, but they were never polled!) :)
HOWEVER ... that WAS in the past. In recent years, the reputable pollsters have slowly become more and more accurate. A good pollster always does a post-mortem after each election to see what he/she guessed wrong and how they can tweak their models to improve for the next election.
realclearpolitics.com keeps a running average of ALL polls. According to their latest results, the Republicans will definitely win the House, and will *possibly* win the Senate. We'll see how right the polls were (and who was the most accurate) in the post-mortem after the election.
>The change in size was due to a move to Digital, NOT just an improvement in reception technology.
Ummm ... yes and no. If you listen to talk radio, virtually all of those voices (whether conservative or liberal) have two things in common: (1) they're distributed digitally (typically with some variant of MPEG or AAC, for the curious. and with VERY robust error correction) and virtually all of them are delivered via C-band satellite. Rush, Phil Hendrie, Laura Ingraham, you name it. We have both a 3 meter and a 3.2 meter dish at our radio stations. The satellite providers recommend these dish sizes, even with digital signals.
As others here have pointed out, the higher the frequency, the smaller the dish can be for the same gain. You could use a humongous dish for Ku Band, but it would be a waste, especially with a digital signal. (That's where you're partially correct, which is why I said, "yes and no.")
However, also in fairness to you, there's beamwidth (i.e., the ability to reject other satellites to either side of the one you want). That's one big reason why we still have to use the giant, honkin', hateful, heavy and HUGE 3 meter dishes. The C band is a nightmare and has been for years.
By the way, on the original subject ... phased/grid arrays have been around for decades. The fact that someone has developed a better chip is interesting news, but it's hardly earth-shattering.
The real reason why dishes continue to outsell most other types of antennas is cost-vs-benefit ratio. They're cheap, they provide a "good enough" signal, and they get the job done.
On the other hand, I know several people who were hard-core Linux users who have given up and switched back to Windows. One of them was a gunslinger who started out years ago compiling Slack from source. He's the one who introduced me to Linux. I'm still with it, but ironically, he's not.
I think there are reasons for this. I'll just pass on the ones that they've given to me:
1. Updates break things. You'll finally get video and sound working the way you like (which can be a pain in the butt to start with); in comes a kernel update and it breaks. I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me. As I write this, in fact, every time I browse to a Web site with Flash (Firefox on Fedora 13), I get the old, "The Flash Plugin has crashed." I've been trying for a week to get it working again to no avail. Apparently, something weird on my hardware (a Compaq/HP desktop) just doesn't like something else that has changed.
2. Fundamentalist-religious-fervor on the part of Free Software advocates. When faced with facts, they are as recalcitrant as any Young Earth Creationist. Fact: manufacturers WILL NOT reveal the inner details of how their hardware works. Fact: many of these manufacturers will at least, grudgingly, provide a "binary blob" that allows me to use their stuff under Linux ... but THIS is why the stuff breaks after a kernel update. It would be painfully simply to provide a simple, *unchanging* interface for drivers (for example, DKMS improved and made a required standard for all serious distros).
Oh, and it doesn't help that, instead of THANKING these manufacturers for bothering to provide at least that "binary blob" to the Linux community, the manufacturer is excoriated and called names by the True Believers In Free Software for not agreeing to provide all of the intimate details of their hardware, without NDAs or other encumbrances, so that the community can develop the driver. Que vicious cycle, yadda yadda. Nuff said.
As an aside, it annoys me to no end that I am a Linux lover: I use Fedora on this laptop, but I prefer OpenSuse on my desktop PC ... and *I* suffer some of that same excoriation *MYSELF* for using it! (Something about OpenSuse not being a "pure F/OSS" distro, har, har). I'm not being true to the revolution, according to the Free Software Purists(tm)(r)(c)(sm). I am also scolded by the Purists because I prefer Adobe's Acrobat Reader to all of the free alternatives. How DARE I, say the purists?
Linux is FREE - both as in speech and beer. The fact that it hasn't taken over the computing world begs us to figure out why. It's FREE. What gives?
Well ... I've just listed a few of many reasons.
It would really, really help if we'd explain to my conservative friends just what "Net Neutrality" is. They are convinced that it's some form of Fairness Doctrine for the Web that will limit content.
(The fact that such a "fairness doctrine" might limit Mother Jones and Salon just as much as it does FrontPageMag and World Net Daily, depending on the party in power, doesn't seem to occur to them, either.)
I try to explain to them that it simply means that, if I visit YouTube, I don't want my ISP to limit their bandwidth because Microsoft (or someone else) has paid a premium for priority for *their* bandwidth.
We geeks have several flaws, and one of them is our love of catchphrases and acronyms. We just *assume* that everyone knows what "free software" and "net neutrality" mean. But when you start dealing with the Body Politick At Large(tm), that's not necessarily so. A few minutes to carefully explain just what we're actually talking about will go a long way ...
WiFi is not very good for mobile applications.
That's true at present, but that can easily be addressed. HD Radio already has an 8-second transmission delay; streaming is even longer (30-60 seconds isn't unusual). People are used to a bit of delay with digital audio. 15 seconds is plenty of time to renegotiate, and RAM is so cheap nowadays, the receiver could easily buffer enough data to cover say, twice that.
Be careful with your assumptions, too. I'm old enough to remember when the CD first appeared; record industry pundits confidently -- *confidently* -- predicted that it would take decades for the CD to completely supplant the vinyl record. In fact, it took less than one decade. There were stacks and stacks of vinyl records sitting in warehouses, unsold, and the CD burners were working overtime to meet demand. :)
Besides, WiFi in automobiles won't just be for radio. It'll need to be optimized for other on-demand services. That's how it will be monetized. Ergo, since there will be demand, there will be incentive to work out the (relatively minor) "hand off" problem between access points.
Good news: In 2022 or so, HD Radio will be patent free and then you don't need to deal with iBiquity any more.
Good news 2: It's probably only a matter of time until somebody hacks the data and reveals the hidden "secrets" so you don't need to pay iBiquity.
In reality, there will probably end up being a court case over it, with iBiquity claiming that such usage is "unlicensed." They're serious about monetizing everything to do with HD-R. Everything.
AM Stereo died because the 1979 FCC did not pick a single standard, which led to 3 different versions of AMS and confused customers.
You'll get no argument from me on that. Our company ran C-QUAM AM stereo up until we made the switch to HD-R, but I only knew a handful of people with receivers for it. I understand that it did better in some other countries (most notably, Australia), but here in the USA, the lack of a single standard definitely hurt.
I was referring to the economic mess that resulted from its failure, not necessarily the failure of C-QUAM itself in the USA. Sadly, there are plenty of stations now -- especially AMs -- who have adopted a "wait and see" attitude toward HD-R, if they're interested at all ... and they'll usually throw the example of AM Stereo in your face when you ask them "why." :)
Which is why I brought that up. :)
But I don't think HD-radio compares with HDTV. The latter had a switchover that was mandated by the government. Not only is this unlikely for radio, the real issue (and the thing concerning me) is how fast communication is moving from traditional "transmitter-and-big-stick" technologies to alternatives, such as Internet delivery. Many in our industry have their heads in the sand about this.
Frankly, I think that if HDTV had come along even a few years later, the story would have been different. When my local Telco can deliver HD-quality programming over via Internet, what's the point? Who except those who live in rural areas even bother with an antenna anymore? It's either satellite, cable or Internet delivery now. Radio's ONLY difference, in that respect, is that we're in automobiles .. and once most of the Continental USA is blanketed with decent high-speed Internet access, that's how most content will be delivered, anyway. I just don't see any need to switch to DRM or any other over-the-air delivery method at this date. I say we hang tough, keep fighting for open standards on the Internet, and concentrate on programming.
I think there are different groups with different aims here. The anti-IBOC page given seemed to want to keep it analog-only, they say IBOC causes interference with the analog part. They aren't promoting Digital Radio Mondiale that I can tell. IBOC will at least retain analog compatibility, Digital Radio Mondiale will eliminate any analog compatibility completely, so their antique radio from 1930 won't work anymore. Or for that matter, the radio in my car from just a few years ago, not that I use its radio.
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I've sparred with these people myself, and that's exactly their attitude: keep AM analog. Many of them are DX'ers; they like to see how many AM stations they can receive from across the country (or even around the world).
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I'm ambivalent about it. I don't listen to AM/FM radio anymore, it's podcasts and playlists for me.
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That's because my industry took its greatest strength -- live, local talent and the resources to provide locally-pertinent information around the clock -- and automated it, with playlists containing a couple of dozen songs that are repeated over and over. The industry, by and large, is run by kids in business suits who only care about the bottom line. Thank God my company is different (we still have real live "deejays" on our music stations, with a playlist of literally hundreds of songs!), but sadly, we're the exception, not the rule.
I'm a broadcast engineer who has installed several HD-R systems (two AM, three FM). My biggest complaint, and one that I've shared quite vocally in my own industry, is the *extremely* closed-source nature of HD radio. It's not just, "we've copyrighted it and you must pay for each use," it's, "we own it, the WHOLE THING is a top secret, and unless you pay us a huge fee, you can't even think about making modifications or adding anything to what we deem useful or appropriate."
Just one example of many: the first exciters that we received used a very simple ID3 tagging scheme for the PAD data, sent via UDP to a well-known port. The "exporters" (the non-intuitive name for the devices that allow us to multicast, i.e., put more than one format on a single FM signal) use a closed, proprietary client-server model. I've looked at it with Wireshark and it appears that ID3 is imbedded in the packets, but it just wasn't worth the bother to try to figure out the whole thing. iBiquity ain't tellin' unless you pay them a license fee.
I imagine that iBiquity assumed (and told their investors) that, because they'd have exclusive rights, it would be a Pot Of Gold(tm). That hasn't panned out, so they're desperately trying to monetize every little aspect of the system among those of who bit the bullet and paid (substantial, mind you!) fees to initially install it during the rollout. Want to add multicast channels? You pay for that. Want to add iTunes tagging? Ditto. OH ... and you want to write your own stuff to ride in the PAD (program associated data) slot, maybe customize something for your own station? Sorry, we don't support that yet, but we may eventually ...
Instead, in this day and age of competition from all sorts of delivery sources (streaming, anyone?), it has simply slowed uptake to a crawl. Ford originally announced that they'd have HD receivers in their cars a few years ago. That slipped; they said it would be 2009 for sure. THAT slipped. Now we're almost in 2011, and there still aren't very many HD receivers in cars. They are supposedly going to do it in 2012, but I'll believe it when I see it.
If iBuiquity had simply patented the delivery method (the "container," for you geeks here :) ) and made the license fees rational, HD-R would be in 80-90% of the stations in the United States. Instead, it languishes, and we (i.e., radio engineers) are looking at another AM Stereo debacle: we paid tons of money up front, promoted it to death, and it died anyway.
As for going with DRM or some other system, that would be asking broadcasters to abandon their (substantial) investment in HD-R and make a completely new investment in a new system. I hope I'm not too cynical now, but I honestly believe that the future is in wireless streaming. Let's keep our streams clean and clear sounding, concentrate on programming, and when the inevitable coast-to-coast wireless coverage finally arrives, we'll already be positioned to survive. I think that moving to DRM now would be a mistake, myself.
... that an idiot with his/her hand on a switch, a breaker or a power cord is more dangerous than even the worst computer bug.
(Judging from the houses that I see on my way to work each morning, some people shouldn't even be allowed to buy PAINT without supervision. And we provide them with computers and access to the Internet nowadays!)
(If that doesn't terrify you, you have nerves of steel.)
[obscure reference]
You must be a Pierson's Puppeteer. :)
[/obscure reference]
(Obscure for those who aren't Larry Niven fans, anyway ...)