I say it every time someone mentions this... How is Tivo's fast forwarding different than my VCRs?
This is a tired point.
Comparing a PVR to a VCR is like comparing a 747 to a Cessna 172 (for all you pilots out there). Yes, they both fly. Yes, they both can carry passengers.
However, the Cessna is far more user friendly.
Yes, you could record shows with your VCR. Yes, you could even fast forward through commercials.
But let's not kid ourselves... just how often did you do that? I recorded probably three shows on my VCR every week (and that's being generous) before I had a PVR.
To be fair, let's be REALLY generous for all those couch potatos out there... let's say I record 10 shows a week on my VCR. Those 10 shows are 30 minutes each, so that's five hours.
Five hours of programming where I'm obliterating the commercials. That ain't much.
On top of that, most people watch more than 5 hours of programming a week. Those additional hours are spent watching LIVE programming, where there's no facility for commercial skipping.
Looking on my PVR right now, I have at least 30 hours of programming on there. That's 30 hours where I'm obliterating commercials, or 6 times more. Even if I double my original VCR estimate, it's still 3 times more!
Although my PVR provides a mechanism for watching live programming, I regularly pause at the first commercial break, get a snack, a beverage, whatever, then return so I can skip commercials.
It's really not a red herring, although its probably not as big a threat as they make it out to be.
But whether or not it's a big threat doesn't mean anything... is it a large enough "perceived" threat to motivate programmers to change their advertising tactics? You bet your ass it is.
If statistics come out that say, for instance, "PVRs reduce commercial viewership by 10%," you'd better believe the advertisers will use that against the programmers. Everybody wants to make money and advertisers rely on their ads to generate interest which translates into revenue. If there's a perceived drop in value by the advertisers, they'll push for a real reduction in price.
The programmers rely on the revenue from the ads to finance the costs required to keep the whole machine running. Now the ads aren't worth as much and the books start falling out of balance.
So, what do you do? You have to change how you advertise, do business, or otherwise alter how much you're spending. Changing how you do business is real tough and noone likes to spend less money.
That's the point I was trying to make. It's all interconnected.
They're exploiting this to their advantage only because the advertisers are doing the same.
With Nielson tracking viewership on PVRs, all the sudden there are real statistics available on just how many commercials we're skipping.
This is bad.
On the other hand, it's a sign the programmers have at least partially embraced the concept of PVRs because otherwise why would Nielson be motivated to track it?
This is good.
As for sharing content, they've been doing that for years... it's called syndication.
Friends is owned by NBC, but now it's over the place. It's in syndication.
A PVR isn't going to hurt syndication all that much (although you could argue there is an impact) because there's absolutely no way for me to record everything. There's always something I've missed or some show I didn't bother with when it was a first run.
However, even when the show's in syndication, my PVR still lets me skip commercials.:)
The good news is that PVRs are gaining acceptance in the broadcast industry. Rather than being undermined, they're being recognized.
It also means that there are enough PVR systems (TiVo specifically) in the world that the audience is significant.
The bad news is that the various networks use the ratings to price advertising and make scheduling choices.
Since one of the major features of a PVR is to be able to rewind and fast-forward at will, an obvious side-effect is you can simply skip commercials. This is bad for advertisers for obvious reasons.
There has already been reported discussion of a higher level of product placement and "text crawl" type advertising rather than traditional commercials. PVR-based ratings will either confirm or refute the speculation that PVR users view few or no advertisements.
This in turn could motivate programmers (broadcast, not code:) ) to find new and creative (and likely very annoying) ways to advertise to their audience.
Unfortunately, both of these switches require large, boxy power adapters, the kind that don't tend to fit well in most surge protectors. Ideally, I'd like to see power pulled directly from one of the connected computers, but I'd settle for a power connector that moves the box away from the plug itself.
Perhaps my version of the Belkin KVM switch is different from the one they reviewed, but mine requires no external power. It works exactly as they wished it would... using power from the systems themselves.
I have a Windows PC using PS/2 plugged into port 1, an Apple G4 using USB into port 2, and a Linux box using PS/2 in port 3. The keyboard and mouse are PS/2 and the Belkin box effortlessly translates between them.
The problems they mention with USB peripheral disconnect is likely because the reviewer has connected the USB peripherals to the keyboard. You have to think of the KVM as its own USB device and not a hub. It's a KVM switch not a KVM-CD Burner-Digital Camera switch.
I can't comment on the other switch they review, but I love my Belkin KVM switch and I'd recommend it, especially if you have a mixed installation as I do. It works great with very few problems.
TDMA simply stands for Time Division, Multple Access. This is in contrast to systems that use CDMA, or Channel Division, Multiple Access.
The only real incompatibility between traditional TDMA and GSM is the protocols used. The underlying transport layer is essentially the same.
A phone capable of TDMA should be just as easily capable of GSM (as it's just a protocol change). In fact there are many iDen phones out there that can speak GSM for use in Europe and elsewhere. CDMA is a bit more challenging as it's a patented technology by Qualcomm.
The biggest obstacle is frequencies... traditional TDMA and CDMA use the standard cellular ranges. GSM (in the United States) uses 1.9 GHz. In order to be "universal" you'd need to talk 800MHz, 900MHz, 1.8GHz, and 1.9GHz (have I missed any?).
This'll never make it and Forgent is setting out on a potentially very embarassing road.
It is irrelevant who owns the patent (and I thought JPEG was a standards committee that owned the patent) on the JPEG compression method. The method itself is so widely used in so many devices it seems unenforcable.
By not enforcing their patent initially, they gave up the right to do so. This is an argument/.ers should know well as it comes up about every other day because of a lame patent somewhere.
Patents are granted monopolies and if you don't defend your grant, you make it very difficult to do so in the future.
Re:Ham Radio Dead?
on
Field Day 2002
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I think you missed the point... perhaps that's why you don't operate anymore.
I mean sure, if you just want to talk to other people there are easier (and better) ways to do so. We lost a lot of folks to the Internet revolution because they simply liked to chat with people. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm an Internet junkie myself.
There's more to it than that, though. For one, it's a challenge. If you like challenges, it's a great hobby. Trying to talk to someone in France while both of you are coping with an unusual accent and bouncing a weak signal off of the atmosphere is very challenging (and VERY exciting). If that doesn't satisfy your desire to be challenged, try to do morse code by bouncing a signal OFF THE MOON.
Or maybe you'd prefer to talk via satellite. There are dozens of amateur radio satellites in orbit right now and YOU CAN USE THEM TOO.
To truly understand how radio waves bounce around is also very difficult (indeed, impossible in some respects... it's very voodoo). Once you sort of get it straight in your head, it's exciting when you're right. Especially if you're trying a little experiment to see if it helps matters.
Most people take cell phones, radio stations, satellite TV, walkie talkies, and other wireless items forgranted. Learning what makes all that work is VERY exciting (to a geek, anyway).
Even better than learning, though... YOU CAN DO IT TOO. Ever wondered how television transmitters get a signal from a camera onto your TV? Or, better yet, have you ever researched the subject and wished you could experiment with it? YOU CAN.
That's just scratching the surface, too. It's a big onion and the more you peel away the more there is.
Sure, there are some "old farts" out there... but those are the nicest and most helpful people you will ever meet.
As for 9/11, yes Amateur Ops were in huge demand. I'm not sure if you noticed, but there was a large antenna on the top of one of the WTC towers... almost all of lower Manhattan's public safety stuff was on that tower. Not to mention television transmitters, radio transmitters, and so on. It was not only a loss of public safety communications but general public communications as well.
To be honest, I hadn't even considered Part 18! So few devices qualify for Part 18 I don't really even think about it.
These lights could very well be Part 18, although RF lighting isn't mentioned specifically in the section.
I don't know the specifics of the design of these lights, so it's really hard to say. Shooting RF energy through a glass tube to excite a gas doesn't seem like it should radiate so much energy as to wipe out wireless networks for half a mile in any direction.
Personally, I'd have reservations about sitting under such lighting all day if it did!
Part 18 devices are limited to 2.4 GHz - 2.5 GHz, which unfortunately wipes out the entire Part 15 subband. They're also authorized a much higher field strength... at less than 500 watts (which we can assume these lights will be) it's 25 microvolts per meter measured at 300 meters.
However, I still don't see these fixtures being a problem for reasons aside from the Part 15/18 argument.
Properly designed, these lights should only emit spurious emissions at very low power and at specific frequencies and harmonics within the ISM band. Spread spectrum devices should see around this interference. Perhaps the range or speed would be a little more limited, it shouldn't be a huge impact unless your base station is sitting right under one of these lights (which is possible).
Also, you must consider market pressures. If they hope to sell these devices to businesses (the largest consumer of flourescent light bulbs) they simply have to consider wireless networks. By the time these fixtures are available on the market, wireless networking will only be more common.
No enterprise is going to purchase lighting devices that wipe out their wireless infrastructure.
I find it incredibly hard to believe that one of these low power lights can radiate so much field strength in the 2.4 GHz band that it will knock out wireless networks for a half mile.
These lights are governed by the same standards as WiFi networks with regard to field strength. Namely, FCC Part 15.
These light fixtures would likely be considered "incidental radiators" by FCC Part 15.
An incidental radiator must use "good engineering" practices and must not cause harmful interference to radio services.
It seems to me that wiping out a half mile of wireless networks is harmful.
Just for sake of argument, let's bump these lights up a notch to "unintentional radiators," which means they generate radio energy internally for whatever use but do not by design radiate it into space. In this category, they are limited to 500 microvolts per meter of radiated field strength as measured at 3 meters distance.
This is exactly the same field strength limitation placed on intentional radiators in the 2.4 GHz band.
This means that these lights may only produce as much radio energy as a WiFi base station/client card with a unity gain antenna.
The FCC has also classically ruled against unintentional radiators which cause interference with intentional radiators due to their excessive field strength, regardless of whether they meet the requirements of Part 15 or not.
The FCC normally requests that unintentional radiator manufacturers show good faith by being far below the legal limits permitted in Part 15.
I'm not even going to go into the fact that WiFi is a spread-spectrum system and is very immune to traditional forms of interference. Unless these are spread-spectrum, intentionally radiating low power lights, I don't think we've got much to worry about.
Also, whomever thinks the FCC just doesn't care what goes on in the unlicensed portions of the spectrum is wrong. They certainly don't chase down every Part 15 violation, but they do randomly sample finished products from a variety of manufacturers to determine their compliance.
The manufacturer gets into trouble if these things don't meet Part 15 requirements, so these lights will simply never get off the ground if they interfere as much as it has been said they do.
I have been to the World Trade Center many times. I had clients in the building that I would visit whenever I was in the New York area.
Walking around lower Manhattan, it's hard to miss the towers... they're easily visible from nearly everywhere.
I would see them every day, in absolute awe at first and then taking them for-granted, as is so easy to do.
From this moment forward, every time I am in New York I will have a constant reminder of this day. Every time I look in the direction of those familiar towers, they will not be there.
I sincerely hope the towers are rebuilt as a testament to our resolve as a nation.
We must not and cannot let those who perished today do so in vain.
Why is it people think that Windows is free because it was already loaded on a PC?
Windows isn't free. The PC manufacturer paid something for it and passed that cost, plus a markup, onto you. Granted, it's far less than what you'd pay in a store, but there is a real cost associated with it.
So, let's say that a PC manufacturer pays about $100 for a Windows 2000 license on a new PC.
Each Linux distro costs about $39 for the plain installation. So, you can buy almost three copies of a distribution before you're paying more than you did for Windows.
They key point you're missing here is that you don't have to pay for the distro. Most of them can be had for only what it costs you to download the boot images and the various packages the installer retrieves. Or, if you're a real purist, you can download the entire ISO instead.
IANAL, but I remember a precedent being set where someone using a C-band dish was sued by HBO for illegally descrambling their signal and the judge stated that if HBO didn't want this person to descramble the signal they should not deliver it to his property.
Anyone else remember this?
Also, if I recall correctly, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 says you're not allowed to receive a signal not intended for your receipt if you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Since DirecTV is blanket-beaming this to essentially the entire hemisphere, there's no expectation of privacy.
Maybe I'm a total ninny, but it seems like SafeDisc was doomed from the start.
Think about it... they rely upon the data-correction system within RedBook CD Players to cancel out their intentional twiddling with the data. They're counting on computer players in raw data mode to send these errors, without correction, onto the software.
Problem is, when you read in raw mode, you also get the correction data. So it's a simple matter of taking the data you got and correcting it in software. Thus, you end up with the corrected data stream.
Am I missing something here? Seems like MacroVision was really grasping at straws with this.
Dimitry was not arrested for creating and selling anything. Go back and read what he's accused of.
The only crime Dimitry commited within the United States was reverse-engineering an encryption system designed to protect copyright. This is a DMCA violation.
If he is/was selling something in Russia, that's not the point here because United States laws do not apply in Russia. If Dimitry had commited a crime in Russia, then the Russian authorities would petition the United States to arrest him and return him to Russia for trial. That isn't the case here.
I also can't see why you're turning this into a Democrat/Republican issue. Who cares who passed the DMCA?
Vote your conscience instead of standing on "your side" of the isle.
Ashcroft may be upholding a standing law, but he should use some common sense. What does it say about our foreign relations if someone comes to our country, gives a speech about an encryption system, and is then arrested? To make matters worse, a United States corporation, not a law-making entity, was the catalyst to the arrest! --
I've used WebVan several times and I thought they had wonderful service. In fact, I don't think I've ever talked to anyone who's used the service and wasn't satisfied.
The problem WebVan had was just atrocious management. I've never worked for WebVan, but it's obvious from how they were doing things that they were doomed from the very beginning.
For instance, they never gave their Bay Area delivery service time to become profitable before expanding into other areas.
As another example, WebVan purchased warehouse space in several locations they didn't service in anticipation of setting up shop there.
I really believe in the idea WebVan had. If properly managed, I think it could be very successful. Now if only I had some capital to start things up with.:) --
I've thought about this a bit, and it's just plain anti-competitive any way you look at it.
Microsoft has essentially said "you may use our toolkit as long as you don't use any other toolkits that we don't like."
I just can't find any way to look at this except as a deliberate anti-competitive move by Microsoft. Since they have such a large market share (or monopoly, if you choose to use that word) on OSes, stating you are not allowed to use code that they do not agree with in your products is just completely ludicrous.
They're attempting to squash the competition by giving you no other choice and are smoke-screening the whole matter with this attack upon the GPL. Seems to define "anti-competitive" to me. --
IPIX is in death throes right now... just wait about six months and offer them $1.95 for their fish-eye conversion patent, donate it to the EFF, and go home happy. --
Don't let Felten distract you from the real DMCA issue. Newspaper headlines translate directly into departmental funding at major universities. This isn't about freedom of speech, it's about grant money.
You're right... newspaper headlines are certainly free publicity to the university. The road runs both ways, however... a university bringing a frivilous lawsuit forward would just result in an academic backlash, to say the least.
This suit has merit... it directly challenges the DMCA's ability to surpress the free release of information regarding how to defeat a copyright protection scheme. This directly relates to 2600's lawsuit, which is for, fundamentally, the same thing.
Can we speak freely about how to defeat a copyright protection scheme? The first amendment says yes, the DMCA says no.
So what if the university gets some free press... this could be the weapon against the DMCA we've been waiting for. --
It has a higher tensile strength, yes. This means, for example, you could hang more weight from a fiber strand than you could from a steel strand of the same weight. Since fiber is much lighter than steel, this seems obvious. People seem to miss the weight piece of the equation, though. --
Fry's Linux Technology Center has 200 programmers working full-time to improve Linux, and he estimates 10 times that number are working within the company on Linux when other activities such as sales or server design are included.
Perhaps this scientific panel is using deadly viruses as a cover for their real goal: keep life on Earth from contaminating the samples from Mars.
If you wanted to prove whether or not Mars contained life, you'd want to avoid any contamination what-so-ever from Earth.
So, the samples come back and we treat them as if they'd kill the whole of the population simply to avoid doubt if we do indeed find some form of life within them. --
Slashdot Mirror
I say it every time someone mentions this... How is Tivo's fast forwarding different than my VCRs?
:)
This is a tired point.
Comparing a PVR to a VCR is like comparing a 747 to a Cessna 172 (for all you pilots out there). Yes, they both fly. Yes, they both can carry passengers.
However, the Cessna is far more user friendly.
Yes, you could record shows with your VCR. Yes, you could even fast forward through commercials.
But let's not kid ourselves... just how often did you do that? I recorded probably three shows on my VCR every week (and that's being generous) before I had a PVR.
To be fair, let's be REALLY generous for all those couch potatos out there... let's say I record 10 shows a week on my VCR. Those 10 shows are 30 minutes each, so that's five hours.
Five hours of programming where I'm obliterating the commercials. That ain't much.
On top of that, most people watch more than 5 hours of programming a week. Those additional hours are spent watching LIVE programming, where there's no facility for commercial skipping.
Looking on my PVR right now, I have at least 30 hours of programming on there. That's 30 hours where I'm obliterating commercials, or 6 times more. Even if I double my original VCR estimate, it's still 3 times more!
Although my PVR provides a mechanism for watching live programming, I regularly pause at the first commercial break, get a snack, a beverage, whatever, then return so I can skip commercials.
It's really not a red herring, although its probably not as big a threat as they make it out to be.
But whether or not it's a big threat doesn't mean anything... is it a large enough "perceived" threat to motivate programmers to change their advertising tactics? You bet your ass it is.
If statistics come out that say, for instance, "PVRs reduce commercial viewership by 10%," you'd better believe the advertisers will use that against the programmers. Everybody wants to make money and advertisers rely on their ads to generate interest which translates into revenue. If there's a perceived drop in value by the advertisers, they'll push for a real reduction in price.
The programmers rely on the revenue from the ads to finance the costs required to keep the whole machine running. Now the ads aren't worth as much and the books start falling out of balance.
So, what do you do? You have to change how you advertise, do business, or otherwise alter how much you're spending. Changing how you do business is real tough and noone likes to spend less money.
That's the point I was trying to make. It's all interconnected.
They're exploiting this to their advantage only because the advertisers are doing the same.
With Nielson tracking viewership on PVRs, all the sudden there are real statistics available on just how many commercials we're skipping.
This is bad.
On the other hand, it's a sign the programmers have at least partially embraced the concept of PVRs because otherwise why would Nielson be motivated to track it?
This is good.
As for sharing content, they've been doing that for years... it's called syndication.
Friends is owned by NBC, but now it's over the place. It's in syndication.
A PVR isn't going to hurt syndication all that much (although you could argue there is an impact) because there's absolutely no way for me to record everything. There's always something I've missed or some show I didn't bother with when it was a first run.
However, even when the show's in syndication, my PVR still lets me skip commercials.
This is both good and bad news.
:) ) to find new and creative (and likely very annoying) ways to advertise to their audience.
The good news is that PVRs are gaining acceptance in the broadcast industry. Rather than being undermined, they're being recognized.
It also means that there are enough PVR systems (TiVo specifically) in the world that the audience is significant.
The bad news is that the various networks use the ratings to price advertising and make scheduling choices.
Since one of the major features of a PVR is to be able to rewind and fast-forward at will, an obvious side-effect is you can simply skip commercials. This is bad for advertisers for obvious reasons.
There has already been reported discussion of a higher level of product placement and "text crawl" type advertising rather than traditional commercials. PVR-based ratings will either confirm or refute the speculation that PVR users view few or no advertisements.
This in turn could motivate programmers (broadcast, not code
The article states:
Unfortunately, both of these switches require large, boxy power adapters, the kind that don't tend to fit well in most surge protectors. Ideally, I'd like to see power pulled directly from one of the connected computers, but I'd settle for a power connector that moves the box away from the plug itself.
Perhaps my version of the Belkin KVM switch is different from the one they reviewed, but mine requires no external power. It works exactly as they wished it would... using power from the systems themselves.
I have a Windows PC using PS/2 plugged into port 1, an Apple G4 using USB into port 2, and a Linux box using PS/2 in port 3. The keyboard and mouse are PS/2 and the Belkin box effortlessly translates between them.
The problems they mention with USB peripheral disconnect is likely because the reviewer has connected the USB peripherals to the keyboard. You have to think of the KVM as its own USB device and not a hub. It's a KVM switch not a KVM-CD Burner-Digital Camera switch.
I can't comment on the other switch they review, but I love my Belkin KVM switch and I'd recommend it, especially if you have a mixed installation as I do. It works great with very few problems.
GSM is a TDMA system.
TDMA simply stands for Time Division, Multple Access. This is in contrast to systems that use CDMA, or Channel Division, Multiple Access.
The only real incompatibility between traditional TDMA and GSM is the protocols used. The underlying transport layer is essentially the same.
A phone capable of TDMA should be just as easily capable of GSM (as it's just a protocol change). In fact there are many iDen phones out there that can speak GSM for use in Europe and elsewhere. CDMA is a bit more challenging as it's a patented technology by Qualcomm.
The biggest obstacle is frequencies... traditional TDMA and CDMA use the standard cellular ranges. GSM (in the United States) uses 1.9 GHz. In order to be "universal" you'd need to talk 800MHz, 900MHz, 1.8GHz, and 1.9GHz (have I missed any?).
This'll never make it and Forgent is setting out on a potentially very embarassing road.
/.ers should know well as it comes up about every other day because of a lame patent somewhere.
It is irrelevant who owns the patent (and I thought JPEG was a standards committee that owned the patent) on the JPEG compression method. The method itself is so widely used in so many devices it seems unenforcable.
By not enforcing their patent initially, they gave up the right to do so. This is an argument
Patents are granted monopolies and if you don't defend your grant, you make it very difficult to do so in the future.
I think you missed the point... perhaps that's why you don't operate anymore.
I mean sure, if you just want to talk to other people there are easier (and better) ways to do so. We lost a lot of folks to the Internet revolution because they simply liked to chat with people. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm an Internet junkie myself.
There's more to it than that, though. For one, it's a challenge. If you like challenges, it's a great hobby. Trying to talk to someone in France while both of you are coping with an unusual accent and bouncing a weak signal off of the atmosphere is very challenging (and VERY exciting). If that doesn't satisfy your desire to be challenged, try to do morse code by bouncing a signal OFF THE MOON.
Or maybe you'd prefer to talk via satellite. There are dozens of amateur radio satellites in orbit right now and YOU CAN USE THEM TOO.
To truly understand how radio waves bounce around is also very difficult (indeed, impossible in some respects... it's very voodoo). Once you sort of get it straight in your head, it's exciting when you're right. Especially if you're trying a little experiment to see if it helps matters.
Most people take cell phones, radio stations, satellite TV, walkie talkies, and other wireless items forgranted. Learning what makes all that work is VERY exciting (to a geek, anyway).
Even better than learning, though... YOU CAN DO IT TOO. Ever wondered how television transmitters get a signal from a camera onto your TV? Or, better yet, have you ever researched the subject and wished you could experiment with it? YOU CAN.
That's just scratching the surface, too. It's a big onion and the more you peel away the more there is.
Sure, there are some "old farts" out there... but those are the nicest and most helpful people you will ever meet.
As for 9/11, yes Amateur Ops were in huge demand. I'm not sure if you noticed, but there was a large antenna on the top of one of the WTC towers... almost all of lower Manhattan's public safety stuff was on that tower. Not to mention television transmitters, radio transmitters, and so on. It was not only a loss of public safety communications but general public communications as well.
Doh, just need to revise my previous post.
RF lighting IS specifically mentioned in Part 18 (it's early, sorry).
To be honest, I hadn't even considered Part 18! So few devices qualify for Part 18 I don't really even think about it.
These lights could very well be Part 18, although RF lighting isn't mentioned specifically in the section.
I don't know the specifics of the design of these lights, so it's really hard to say. Shooting RF energy through a glass tube to excite a gas doesn't seem like it should radiate so much energy as to wipe out wireless networks for half a mile in any direction.
Personally, I'd have reservations about sitting under such lighting all day if it did!
Part 18 devices are limited to 2.4 GHz - 2.5 GHz, which unfortunately wipes out the entire Part 15 subband. They're also authorized a much higher field strength... at less than 500 watts (which we can assume these lights will be) it's 25 microvolts per meter measured at 300 meters.
However, I still don't see these fixtures being a problem for reasons aside from the Part 15/18 argument.
Properly designed, these lights should only emit spurious emissions at very low power and at specific frequencies and harmonics within the ISM band. Spread spectrum devices should see around this interference. Perhaps the range or speed would be a little more limited, it shouldn't be a huge impact unless your base station is sitting right under one of these lights (which is possible).
Also, you must consider market pressures. If they hope to sell these devices to businesses (the largest consumer of flourescent light bulbs) they simply have to consider wireless networks. By the time these fixtures are available on the market, wireless networking will only be more common.
No enterprise is going to purchase lighting devices that wipe out their wireless infrastructure.
I find it incredibly hard to believe that one of these low power lights can radiate so much field strength in the 2.4 GHz band that it will knock out wireless networks for a half mile.
These lights are governed by the same standards as WiFi networks with regard to field strength. Namely, FCC Part 15.
These light fixtures would likely be considered "incidental radiators" by FCC Part 15.
An incidental radiator must use "good engineering" practices and must not cause harmful interference to radio services.
It seems to me that wiping out a half mile of wireless networks is harmful.
Just for sake of argument, let's bump these lights up a notch to "unintentional radiators," which means they generate radio energy internally for whatever use but do not by design radiate it into space. In this category, they are limited to 500 microvolts per meter of radiated field strength as measured at 3 meters distance.
This is exactly the same field strength limitation placed on intentional radiators in the 2.4 GHz band.
This means that these lights may only produce as much radio energy as a WiFi base station/client card with a unity gain antenna.
The FCC has also classically ruled against unintentional radiators which cause interference with intentional radiators due to their excessive field strength, regardless of whether they meet the requirements of Part 15 or not.
The FCC normally requests that unintentional radiator manufacturers show good faith by being far below the legal limits permitted in Part 15.
I'm not even going to go into the fact that WiFi is a spread-spectrum system and is very immune to traditional forms of interference. Unless these are spread-spectrum, intentionally radiating low power lights, I don't think we've got much to worry about.
Also, whomever thinks the FCC just doesn't care what goes on in the unlicensed portions of the spectrum is wrong. They certainly don't chase down every Part 15 violation, but they do randomly sample finished products from a variety of manufacturers to determine their compliance.
The manufacturer gets into trouble if these things don't meet Part 15 requirements, so these lights will simply never get off the ground if they interfere as much as it has been said they do.
I have been to the World Trade Center many times. I had clients in the building that I would visit whenever I was in the New York area.
Walking around lower Manhattan, it's hard to miss the towers... they're easily visible from nearly everywhere.
I would see them every day, in absolute awe at first and then taking them for-granted, as is so easy to do.
From this moment forward, every time I am in New York I will have a constant reminder of this day. Every time I look in the direction of those familiar towers, they will not be there.
I sincerely hope the towers are rebuilt as a testament to our resolve as a nation.
We must not and cannot let those who perished today do so in vain.
So we can just selectively decide who has rights and who doesn't because of their citizenship? That's absurd.
The majority of my objection to this is that it should be a civil matter and not a criminal one.
Why is it people think that Windows is free because it was already loaded on a PC?
Windows isn't free. The PC manufacturer paid something for it and passed that cost, plus a markup, onto you. Granted, it's far less than what you'd pay in a store, but there is a real cost associated with it.
So, let's say that a PC manufacturer pays about $100 for a Windows 2000 license on a new PC.
Each Linux distro costs about $39 for the plain installation. So, you can buy almost three copies of a distribution before you're paying more than you did for Windows.
They key point you're missing here is that you don't have to pay for the distro. Most of them can be had for only what it costs you to download the boot images and the various packages the installer retrieves. Or, if you're a real purist, you can download the entire ISO instead.
Windows has never been free.
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IANAL, but I remember a precedent being set where someone using a C-band dish was sued by HBO for illegally descrambling their signal and the judge stated that if HBO didn't want this person to descramble the signal they should not deliver it to his property.
Anyone else remember this?
Also, if I recall correctly, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 says you're not allowed to receive a signal not intended for your receipt if you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Since DirecTV is blanket-beaming this to essentially the entire hemisphere, there's no expectation of privacy.
Maybe I'm a total ninny, but it seems like SafeDisc was doomed from the start.
Think about it... they rely upon the data-correction system within RedBook CD Players to cancel out their intentional twiddling with the data. They're counting on computer players in raw data mode to send these errors, without correction, onto the software.
Problem is, when you read in raw mode, you also get the correction data. So it's a simple matter of taking the data you got and correcting it in software. Thus, you end up with the corrected data stream.
Am I missing something here? Seems like MacroVision was really grasping at straws with this.
Game development companies will write code to the lowest common denominator that allows them to turn their projected profit.
If this means using ASCII on a VT100, that's what they'll do.
Oy. I don't even know where to begin.
Dimitry was not arrested for creating and selling anything. Go back and read what he's accused of.
The only crime Dimitry commited within the United States was reverse-engineering an encryption system designed to protect copyright. This is a DMCA violation.
If he is/was selling something in Russia, that's not the point here because United States laws do not apply in Russia. If Dimitry had commited a crime in Russia, then the Russian authorities would petition the United States to arrest him and return him to Russia for trial. That isn't the case here.
I also can't see why you're turning this into a Democrat/Republican issue. Who cares who passed the DMCA?
Vote your conscience instead of standing on "your side" of the isle.
Ashcroft may be upholding a standing law, but he should use some common sense. What does it say about our foreign relations if someone comes to our country, gives a speech about an encryption system, and is then arrested? To make matters worse, a United States corporation, not a law-making entity, was the catalyst to the arrest!
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This isn't a particularly funny article... it's just plain sad.
Looks like, at this rate, the HDTV system will be simply zip-tied and duct-taped together in 2007.
Kinda like my NOC.
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I think the real cause was something like...
Error:
MsgrSvr.exe caused an invalid page fault in module KERNEL32.DLL at 015f:bff9dba7.
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I've used WebVan several times and I thought they had wonderful service. In fact, I don't think I've ever talked to anyone who's used the service and wasn't satisfied.
:)
The problem WebVan had was just atrocious management. I've never worked for WebVan, but it's obvious from how they were doing things that they were doomed from the very beginning.
For instance, they never gave their Bay Area delivery service time to become profitable before expanding into other areas.
As another example, WebVan purchased warehouse space in several locations they didn't service in anticipation of setting up shop there.
I really believe in the idea WebVan had. If properly managed, I think it could be very successful. Now if only I had some capital to start things up with.
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I've thought about this a bit, and it's just plain anti-competitive any way you look at it.
Microsoft has essentially said "you may use our toolkit as long as you don't use any other toolkits that we don't like."
I just can't find any way to look at this except as a deliberate anti-competitive move by Microsoft. Since they have such a large market share (or monopoly, if you choose to use that word) on OSes, stating you are not allowed to use code that they do not agree with in your products is just completely ludicrous.
They're attempting to squash the competition by giving you no other choice and are smoke-screening the whole matter with this attack upon the GPL. Seems to define "anti-competitive" to me.
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IPIX is in death throes right now... just wait about six months and offer them $1.95 for their fish-eye conversion patent, donate it to the EFF, and go home happy.
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Don't let Felten distract you from the real DMCA issue. Newspaper headlines translate directly into departmental funding at major universities. This isn't about freedom of speech, it's about grant money.
You're right... newspaper headlines are certainly free publicity to the university. The road runs both ways, however... a university bringing a frivilous lawsuit forward would just result in an academic backlash, to say the least.
This suit has merit... it directly challenges the DMCA's ability to surpress the free release of information regarding how to defeat a copyright protection scheme. This directly relates to 2600's lawsuit, which is for, fundamentally, the same thing.
Can we speak freely about how to defeat a copyright protection scheme? The first amendment says yes, the DMCA says no.
So what if the university gets some free press... this could be the weapon against the DMCA we've been waiting for.
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optics are glass! Is glass stronger than steel?
It has a higher tensile strength, yes. This means, for example, you could hang more weight from a fiber strand than you could from a steel strand of the same weight. Since fiber is much lighter than steel, this seems obvious. People seem to miss the weight piece of the equation, though.
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Fry's Linux Technology Center has 200 programmers working full-time to improve Linux, and he estimates 10 times that number are working within the company on Linux when other activities such as sales or server design are included.
Fry's has a Linux Technology Center?!
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Perhaps this scientific panel is using deadly viruses as a cover for their real goal: keep life on Earth from contaminating the samples from Mars.
If you wanted to prove whether or not Mars contained life, you'd want to avoid any contamination what-so-ever from Earth.
So, the samples come back and we treat them as if they'd kill the whole of the population simply to avoid doubt if we do indeed find some form of life within them.
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