My thought on local cable was that you should do a bit like electricity deregulation - have one company that runs the fiber to the house, which requires the massive money investment. They lease out usage to TV, internet or whoever at regulated rates. Have wide open competition for content providers - what you want, you pay for, and nothing else.
You can't do this with cable, there isn't an individual line that goes from your house all the way back to the cable company, the wire in your house is only "yours" to the pole where it combines with everyone else in your neighborhood. The wire coming to your house is capable of carrying approximately 125 channel slots. Those channel slots can be used in 1 of 4 ways...
1. A single analog channel 2. 2 HD Digital Channels 3. 3 or 4 SD Digital Channels 4. Approximately 30mbit of download capacity for data
You might live in an area where the the cable company has started pretty much requiring set top boxes, whats happened there is they have run out of spectrum, and are beginning to put what were analog channels into digital in order to free up 2 or 3 channel slots for other purposes, High definition or Internet are the big drivers.
Oh sure, you could do a frequency split with a 2nd carrier, but that service would, by necessity, be digital only, and both carriers would have a far sub-standard offering because they've only got 62 channel slots to work with.
Bandwidth on the CATV lines is a limited commodity, and even in small systems it is running out.
One other thought is that you could divide the city up into quadrants, and have a separate provider for each of the 4 quadrants, but the nature of the technology is that any given subscriber can only have 1 choice so if you live in quadrant A, you get provider A.
Of course, allowing a 2nd (or even 3rd) provider to overbuild the system would allow for real competition, 3 wires on the pole means there are 3 providers available, but what company is going to go through that expense when they don't have the city issued monopoly to ensure they can pay for the massive investment they just made?
That makes sense to me, Microsoft bought out "Great Plains Accounting" a number of years back, and maintains a fairly decent (I'd estimate 30 to 40 thousand square feet) office complex in Fargo; right on Interstate 29. I drive by it 3 times a year when visiting the in-laws.
Operator error is most likely, especially in the case if the patrol car was moving see Cosine Effect Geometry for information about how this works. The short version is that radar is only 100% accurate when the angle between the target, and the transmitting station is 0 degrees. The further off 0 it is, the worse the error is. Normally this plays out in favor of the motorist, but in certain circumstance the error is added to the actual speed. A little bit if quick trig, and it appears the angle of the radar to the target was between 41 and 42 degrees. Of course, that assumes the GPS speed was in fact correct.
It's easy, a remotely activated cellphone in the cock-pit. According the the FAA and FCC, we turn that sucker on once the door has been closed, and the planes toast!
Bandwidth is of course 1 concern, however the much larger concern is the fact that a HUGE percentage of p2p traffic is out and out infringing. (Notable Exception the WoW BT Downloader)
Before we implemented shaping, I was spending up to 30 hours a week doing DMCA take down's, which of course leads to even more lost revenue because the only way to truly respond to a take down notice when the person is using P2P is to shut the access off. So the tally on the expense side of the equation looks more like
Bandwidth+Full Time Salary for an Employee+Lost Customers
I flippin' hate P2P, its a lose-lose situation for the ISP, killing it completely isn't really an option due to the limited non-infringing uses it has so the only thing left is to throttle it to near the point of uselessness.
Bah, stupid format wars, everyone should just say no and let the damned dual format stuff sit on the shelf and collect dust.
I refuse to buy something that may or may not be obsolete in a year or two (anyone remember DivX, the pay for play DVD competitor?), glad I didn't buy one of those. The difference is this time there isn't a clear guage which one will win.
The manufacturers need to grow up and embrase compatability; this goes for all technology companies, why do I need a fifty dollar cable from Motorolla or Kyocera for a cell phone, a mini-usb interface on the phone would have worked just fine, and fits nicly in small packages like phones and cameras.
That is a very interesting point about Teamspeak, sometimes I'll just surf websites, play a little online poker or whatnot while chatting with my guildies on Teamspeak, for me its not about the games anymore, its about the people.
Thats not to say that both my wife and I have not reached the point of addiction before, when we first started playing EQ, we spent ALL our spare time in game, sacrificing sleep for that final level up or quest item we'd been hunting, but after about 10 or 12 months we discovered it wasn't as much fun anymore, and we both hung up MMORPG's for a couple years. Then we both got Star Wars Galaxies and the familiar pattern set in once again, but not so much so, instead of playing from 6pm when we got off work until 1 or 2am, it was 8 or 9 until 10 or 11, with much more time spent socializing with our guildmates than actually playing the game. Sometimes we would all be logged in sitting in our guildhall just joking and chatting and doing our best to make someone on the other side of the country do a spit-take.
After SOE's butchering of SWG, we moved on to WoW, most of our guild group moved with us, but now instead of it being every night, its pretty much just weekends actually in-game, I get on Teamspeak to chat with my friends more often, but I've found that Teamspeak has really freed us from the game worlds, its only the people, relationships and friends we've made due to the game that truely endure. Occassionally a bunch of us will decide to hit yahoo games and play poker or something because its more conductive to chatting that trying to do something in the persistant world.
I've been using this app for about 2 days now, and initial thoughts... this thing kicks some major ass. I've played with the MSN voice thing, and the yahoo one, and the quality of this is astounding.
I spent like 3 hours chatting with a friend in England yesterday. Other than a couple of program crashes (and it is beta software remember) we were able to talk as easily as being on a telephone.
This is astounding to me considering she's on a crappy dialup connection.
I'd be intersted to hear how dialup-dialup connections work. Oh, and if there is any ad or spyware included, its brand new stuff Ad-Aware doesn't know about it.
I'm not usually one to advocate litigation, but in this case it might be a viable option. Everyone is talking about how they are locked in to a 2 year contract, and the service is awfull, but you have to remember contracts are a two way street.
When you agreed to pay for 2 years of service, there is also a stated or implied commitment on the part of the carrier, to provide service for those 2 years as long as you pay your bill etc.
When they oversell their networks, and dont live up to their end of the bargain, it should be trivial to bring about a breach of contract suit, and either be released from your obligations under the contract, or have an injunction placed on the carrier to get their acts cleaned up.
Of course IANAL, and you should talk to one if my ideas make sense, but I have heard of people using similar logic to be released from a lease.
Actually, about 90% of the time the damned checkout debit things do not work. A typical transaction with my Visa / Checking / Debit card
Choose debit, enter pin.... DENIED
Choose credit, APPROVED
When Wal-Mart and Target can get those systems to work right there might be a chance. For now, checks are easier than having to explain to the condensending looking cashier that there is money in the account, let me hit credit this time.
Actually, forget the class action, thats on giant pain in the neck they can easily swat. Now if 1 million people were to file $200 small claims lawsuites (the cost of a retail version of windows required to view their DVD's) the MPAA would be stretched thin trying to swat this swarm that is suddenly coming at them. Of course, IANAL but it would be funny seeing the MPAA get a taste of their own medicine.
Hardware is something you OWN, you can use it for anything you wish... software is the only thing with this bizarre "we own it and only give you the right to use it" clause. I categorically refuse to accept a "license agreement" on any hardware device. So much so that I paid retail for my cell phone so cell phone company couldn't claim they owned the phone and give me a forced upgrade when the Big Brother we will find you via GPS phones come out real soon now.
Ummm.... on loan from them, I never signed an agreement to that effect, I have a sales receipt for 0.00, and I didn't break shrink wrap on the box... I really dont think thats a loan, gift might be a better word.
Lets all send a polite letter to DC's webmaster, asking him to forward it on to their legal and marketing departments explaining that this type of harassment is intolerable and you'll be removeing the windows software from your system and encouraging others to follow suit as a form of consumer boycott. 100,000 letters should be enough to convince them that their draconian policies might not be in their best interests.
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Good point about the 1000Mhz plant vs. 750Mhz, once you're out of the analog realm you can play with those last 250Mhz, I forgot that.
2HD / 5SD is about where I can start seeing picture degradation, if the big Cable Co's are doubling that, wow, I'm glad I'm not with a big Cable Co :)
I have to agree with the 40mbit too, increasing the modulation density from 64QAM to 256QAM would get you those numbers.
My thought on local cable was that you should do a bit like electricity deregulation - have one company that runs the fiber to the house, which requires the massive money investment. They lease out usage to TV, internet or whoever at regulated rates. Have wide open competition for content providers - what you want, you pay for, and nothing else.
You can't do this with cable, there isn't an individual line that goes from your house all the way back to the cable company, the wire in your house is only "yours" to the pole where it combines with everyone else in your neighborhood. The wire coming to your house is capable of carrying approximately 125 channel slots. Those channel slots can be used in 1 of 4 ways...
1. A single analog channel
2. 2 HD Digital Channels
3. 3 or 4 SD Digital Channels
4. Approximately 30mbit of download capacity for data
You might live in an area where the the cable company has started pretty much requiring set top boxes, whats happened there is they have run out of spectrum, and are beginning to put what were analog channels into digital in order to free up 2 or 3 channel slots for other purposes, High definition or Internet are the big drivers.
Oh sure, you could do a frequency split with a 2nd carrier, but that service would, by necessity, be digital only, and both carriers would have a far sub-standard offering because they've only got 62 channel slots to work with.
Bandwidth on the CATV lines is a limited commodity, and even in small systems it is running out.
One other thought is that you could divide the city up into quadrants, and have a separate provider for each of the 4 quadrants, but the nature of the technology is that any given subscriber can only have 1 choice so if you live in quadrant A, you get provider A.
Of course, allowing a 2nd (or even 3rd) provider to overbuild the system would allow for real competition, 3 wires on the pole means there are 3 providers available, but what company is going to go through that expense when they don't have the city issued monopoly to ensure they can pay for the massive investment they just made?
That makes sense to me, Microsoft bought out "Great Plains Accounting" a number of years back, and maintains a fairly decent (I'd estimate 30 to 40 thousand square feet) office complex in Fargo; right on Interstate 29. I drive by it 3 times a year when visiting the in-laws.
Operator error is most likely, especially in the case if the patrol car was moving see Cosine Effect Geometry for information about how this works. The short version is that radar is only 100% accurate when the angle between the target, and the transmitting station is 0 degrees. The further off 0 it is, the worse the error is. Normally this plays out in favor of the motorist, but in certain circumstance the error is added to the actual speed. A little bit if quick trig, and it appears the angle of the radar to the target was between 41 and 42 degrees. Of course, that assumes the GPS speed was in fact correct.
It's easy, a remotely activated cellphone in the cock-pit. According the the FAA and FCC, we turn that sucker on once the door has been closed, and the planes toast!
Cool, switched from English(US) to English(UK) and back (with pop enabled) and the IMAP tab magically appeared! Thanks for the tip!
Bandwidth is of course 1 concern, however the much larger concern is the fact that a HUGE percentage of p2p traffic is out and out infringing. (Notable Exception the WoW BT Downloader)
Before we implemented shaping, I was spending up to 30 hours a week doing DMCA take down's, which of course leads to even more lost revenue because the only way to truly respond to a take down notice when the person is using P2P is to shut the access off.
So the tally on the expense side of the equation looks more like
Bandwidth+Full Time Salary for an Employee+Lost Customers
I flippin' hate P2P, its a lose-lose situation for the ISP, killing it completely isn't really an option due to the limited non-infringing uses it has so the only thing left is to throttle it to near the point of uselessness.
Bah, stupid format wars, everyone should just say no and let the damned dual format stuff sit on the shelf and collect dust.
I refuse to buy something that may or may not be obsolete in a year or two (anyone remember DivX, the pay for play DVD competitor?), glad I didn't buy one of those. The difference is this time there isn't a clear guage which one will win.
The manufacturers need to grow up and embrase compatability; this goes for all technology companies, why do I need a fifty dollar cable from Motorolla or Kyocera for a cell phone, a mini-usb interface on the phone would have worked just fine, and fits nicly in small packages like phones and cameras.
That is a very interesting point about Teamspeak, sometimes I'll just surf websites, play a little online poker or whatnot while chatting with my guildies on Teamspeak, for me its not about the games anymore, its about the people.
Thats not to say that both my wife and I have not reached the point of addiction before, when we first started playing EQ, we spent ALL our spare time in game, sacrificing sleep for that final level up or quest item we'd been hunting, but after about 10 or 12 months we discovered it wasn't as much fun anymore, and we both hung up MMORPG's for a couple years. Then we both got Star Wars Galaxies and the familiar pattern set in once again, but not so much so, instead of playing from 6pm when we got off work until 1 or 2am, it was 8 or 9 until 10 or 11, with much more time spent socializing with our guildmates than actually playing the game. Sometimes we would all be logged in sitting in our guildhall just joking and chatting and doing our best to make someone on the other side of the country do a spit-take.
After SOE's butchering of SWG, we moved on to WoW, most of our guild group moved with us, but now instead of it being every night, its pretty much just weekends actually in-game, I get on Teamspeak to chat with my friends more often, but I've found that Teamspeak has really freed us from the game worlds, its only the people, relationships and friends we've made due to the game that truely endure. Occassionally a bunch of us will decide to hit yahoo games and play poker or something because its more conductive to chatting that trying to do something in the persistant world.
I've been using this app for about 2 days now, and initial thoughts... this thing kicks some major ass. I've played with the MSN voice thing, and the yahoo one, and the quality of this is astounding.
I spent like 3 hours chatting with a friend in England yesterday. Other than a couple of program crashes (and it is beta software remember) we were able to talk as easily as being on a telephone.
This is astounding to me considering she's on a crappy dialup connection.
I'd be intersted to hear how dialup-dialup connections work. Oh, and if there is any ad or spyware included, its brand new stuff Ad-Aware doesn't know about it.
I'm not usually one to advocate litigation, but in this case it might be a viable option. Everyone is talking about how they are locked in to a 2 year contract, and the service is awfull, but you have to remember contracts are a two way street.
When you agreed to pay for 2 years of service, there is also a stated or implied commitment on the part of the carrier, to provide service for those 2 years as long as you pay your bill etc.
When they oversell their networks, and dont live up to their end of the bargain, it should be trivial to bring about a breach of contract suit, and either be released from your obligations under the contract, or have an injunction placed on the carrier to get their acts cleaned up.
Of course IANAL, and you should talk to one if my ideas make sense, but I have heard of people using similar logic to be released from a lease.
Actually, about 90% of the time the damned checkout debit things do not work. A typical transaction with my Visa / Checking / Debit card
Choose debit, enter pin.... DENIED
Choose credit, APPROVED
When Wal-Mart and Target can get those systems to work right there might be a chance. For now, checks are easier than having to explain to the condensending looking cashier that there is money in the account, let me hit credit this time.
Frontpage automatically downloads a listing of all the files on the server (or subweb in this case). Hundreds of files == hundreds of hits.
This is one of the many reasons I hate frontpage.
Actually, forget the class action, thats on giant pain in the neck they can easily swat. Now if 1 million people were to file $200 small claims lawsuites (the cost of a retail version of windows required to view their DVD's) the MPAA would be stretched thin trying to swat this swarm that is suddenly coming at them. Of course, IANAL but it would be funny seeing the MPAA get a taste of their own medicine.
Hardware is something you OWN, you can use it for anything you wish ... software is the only thing with this bizarre "we own it and only give you the right to use it" clause. I categorically refuse to accept a "license agreement" on any hardware device. So much so that I paid retail for my cell phone so cell phone company couldn't claim they owned the phone and give me a forced upgrade when the Big Brother we will find you via GPS phones come out real soon now.
Ummm.... on loan from them, I never signed an agreement to that effect, I have a sales receipt for 0.00, and I didn't break shrink wrap on the box... I really dont think thats a loan, gift might be a better word.
Lets all send a polite letter to DC's webmaster, asking him to forward it on to their legal and marketing departments explaining that this type of harassment is intolerable and you'll be removeing the windows software from your system and encouraging others to follow suit as a form of consumer boycott. 100,000 letters should be enough to convince them that their draconian policies might not be in their best interests.