It's their obvious strategy. There is absolutely no reason they have to live with us controlling the internet. Just put their own root DNS servers in place, and legally mandate that all of their ISPs switch over. It's not rocket science, but it will fragment the internet a bit.
There's also the issue of IP address assignment and ownership to deal with, but I guess RIPE and the other foreign address assignment organizations have their IP blocks already. And of course if they run out of IPs they can go exclusively with IPv6 and quit whining about the US holding back on IPv6.
Some BPL uses Homeplug chipsets and others use DS2. There's also some other proprietary systems. They currently don't talk with each other and your neighbor's Homeplug system could interfere with your BPL next door that is another system.
It could be done. This is called coaxial cable, and your cable company has been stringing the stuff up for years. They have also been providing broadband for years, too. BPL has been trying to do it for seven years:-)
And by the way, if you shielded the lines, you could use much more efficient modulation methods than BPL does, and get many more bits per hertz than BPL. And, yes, the cable companies are doing this already.
I would beg to differ that broadband is a last mile problem, especially in rural areas. It's easy to put wireless up or BPL if you listen to industry claims. It's a bear getting a couple meg of Internet bandwidth out to a system in the sticks that serves only a couple people, or at least have it be anywhere close to economically viable.
I wouldn't laugh at anyone who uses a ground strap. While there's plenty of folks here that have worked on PCs for 50+ years and never wrecked anything from static (or so they say), the potential is always there. No static protection may not have outright killed equipment, but there's no saying that it hasn't caused damage that showed up later as squirrely intermittent hardware problems.
Re:MOD REVIEW DOWN! TROLL!
on
Pornified
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· Score: 1
Keep the right-wing ideals out of site and off of Slashdot.
Yeah! And bring on some good wholesome, porn!
I want to see more articles on tips for typing with one hand, medicinal crack, how violent video games develop character, and how to increase your gambling budget by becoming homeless.
That is the dumbest question I have ever seen on Slashdot.
Ditto!
Suprise, folks! Your $20 a month plastic device with a camera and MIDI chip isn't a high-powered worldwide NATO-certified communications system. It's a friggin cordless phone that depends on local infrastructure that needs electricity and is just as fragile as telephone lines on poles, and a system that has just enough capacity to handle calls during normal peak hours and be profitable.
If it's possible, why don't we simply say to cell providers "You are required to provide the capacity for 99% of your customers to make one ten-minute call within 3 hours of any major emergency" as a precondition for selling them radio licenses?
Sure it's possible, but it's not just a capacity issue, it's also the fact that they use telco facilities more than licensed microwave these days for cellular backhaul. And many companies are skimping on emergency power systems. Cell sites used to be equipped to run for a week or two without power. Some today just have battery backup for a couple hours.
This can be fixed, everyone just needs to be willing to pay $500 a month for their cellphone service:-)
That's the part I've never understanded about the US. On one hand the US is ultra-religious. But on the other hand helping the poor is totaly unamerican (socialism is baaaaaaaad).
With 295 million people, there's bound to be a difference of opinion on any topic. The last presidential election was split 51%/49%. That should tell you something.
Shortwave broadcasters are already complaining about noisy power lines. Listen to Allan Weiner sometime at 8:00 PM EDT on Friday evening on his station, WBCQ, at 7.415MHz. Even now he has to filter out a lot of garbage.
Interference from BPL and power line transmission noise are two different things. Transmission noise which has plagued wireless services for decades can be cured with good line maintenance. BPL interference occurs even when the system is operating properly.
BPL proponents claimed BPL was good for fixing transmission noise as utilities had to cleanup the lines which reduced the noise so BPL could work (lower noise = higher signal to noise ratio = better BPL data transmission). This in part was true, but they replaced the transmission noise with an often stronger, more concentrated modulated BPL signal that was even worse than the original power transmission noise. Half-truths abound in BPL press releases and articles, and most of the general public doesn't know any better. The industry has claimed to have fixed the interference problems with frequency notching which usually isn't "deep" enough, or precise enough to prevent problems. Unfortunately journalists (like in the recent NPR report) make it sound like the problem is solved.
I like your wording -- THEIR airwaves. Yes, the HAMS have first dibs on much of the contested bandwidth (after the military, of course).
Hams use only 10% of the bandwidth. The rest is military, aeronautical, maritime, government, and shortwave broadcast.
Something to keep in mind is that BPL doesn't actually use the wireless spectrum, it pollutes it because it can't keep the frequencies it uses within its medium (like cable and DSL). Otherwise, BPL could probably vie for a licensed frequency allocation. So, it's really just an intruder in wireless spectrum due to a bad design.
Amazing! How do you know which bits your allowed to change?
Drop Genesis or the whole old Testament if you like. It's irrelevant. Christianity doesn't require a literal interpretation of the Bible, only acceptance of Jesus as your Savior. Whether I believe the literal order or timeframe of Genesis is a non-issue. The gist of the story is that God made it all happen. Science just looks at the aftermath.
This is how PPL Broadband in Allentown, PA does BPL
Actually they don't do it this way. They use Amperion equipment which uses wireless for the delivery into the home, and BPL for the backbone. Motorola uses wireless for the backbone and BPL into the home. The Motorola solution has much more promise of being a viable solution. Amperion has been involved in several interference cases, including two system deactivations that had open interference complaints.
Sorry to inform you, but ID and creationism are both demonstrably bunk: ID, because it consists of nothing but logical fallacies and misrepresentations of known biological fact, and creationism (except for the most watered-down varieties) because it is in direct conflict with known facts about the history of the earth and its inhabitants.
If you're considering ID or Creationism under a strict interpretation of the Bible, yes, it's inconsistent with known facts. That doesn't mean that other interpretations of ID or Creationism are bunk.
There's numerous places in the Bible where things happened for forty days and forty nights. Was that a coincidence, or just a figure of speech for a really long time? Was God's six days for creation really 6 billion years?
It's easy to dismiss ID when you box it into a literal interpretation of Scripture. Some may believe in a strict literal interpretation. I don't.
The job of the scientist is to look at the information at hand and make educated guesses about reality based on the gathered information and only the gathered information. Now, if you find fingerprints on the dominoes or even footprints leading up to where the dominoes are arranged, then Intelligent Design may have a scientific leg to stand on, but the presence of dominoes in and of themselves says jack and shit about how they got there, at least as far as science is concerned.
I agree, but you have those who see the dominoes that want to deny any possibility that the domino arranger exists. Taking your "look at the information as hand" and making "educated guesses", one could come to a scientific conclusion that the domino arranger could exist. Most of the arguments I see here on Slashdot come down to literal interpretations of the "on the seventh day..." and totally dismiss the possiblity that ID and evolution are compatible, but just different chapters of the same story.
So it all really depends o what you mean by Intelligent Design.
I subscribe to ID Version 5.3.Goody-pre-1:-) I don't debate ID anywhere (but here) and I don't subscribe to whatever textbook ID there is out there, although I've heard my theories from others. As soon as I mention this, I usually get beat down on the basis of absolute faith and absolute interpretation of the Bible. I think you can have the former without the latter.
I don't abhor the teaching of Evolution or other scientific theories, but I do deplore the pravailing attitude on Slashdot that religion is a joke or that all ID and Creationism is bunk. I may not have math formulas to back me up, but I have Faith, a good book to live by, events that are recorded to have happened, and the testimony of others.
And anyways, my theory and version of ID ties it all together, so I'm right and you're all wrong !!!:) {/joke}
My beliefs are perfectly valid! I'm not a fool or a moron! Wheee!
Well, I should have seen that predictable response coming:-) So let's go with your theory for the moment. Where did the Shake 'n Bake come from?
At the end of your life of Earth, evolution, the Big Bang and other theories are interesting academic exercises but they don't do anything if you are more than worm food and there is a Creator. Not believing may or may not get you "in". Being a jerk about it and those who believe probably won't score brownie points:-)
Can anybody say how God would have done it? What forces were brought to bear? How the design was formulated?
We're probably closer in position on this that you think. This has been precisely my argument in favor of Intelligent Design. Evolution could have been the product of the creator stacking the dominoes so the right tap made it all happen. Evolution and the Big Bang may have been the implementation of "the Design."
There's a right to believe in whatever preposterous mythological bullshit you want without being called on it?
Yep, and there's also a right to be an inconsiderate idiot about people's religious beliefs and berate them, despite having no positive way to know the origin of life, the Earth, or energy and matter. Forgive the worn-out cliche, but "Welcome to Slashdot."
Now it's the branch of government in charge of enforcing "clean language" by protecting us from hearing any of seven unmentionable words.
This is the perception that the majority of the population has, but it's probably only 2% of what the FCC actually does. The rest is honest to goodness needed regulation of the spectrum and technical issues. Not that they do it well, but that's what they do.
These "let's eliminate the FCC" articles really annoy me. They come around every two months and usually from people who only care about the clean language issue or think they know everything after playing around with unlicensed wireless spectrum. Despite the FCC often being less than stellar, we can't eliminate the FCC and all regulation of spectrum.
"Filthy" novels, pre-code movies, comic books, Rock 'n' Roll, TV, video games... It's just a long line of easy "moral" targets for politicians to act like they're solving something instead of dealing with the actual problems.
There are actual problems to deal with (i.e. lousy parents who don't know what their kids are doing), but there's a problem with this new crop of games. When I was a kid, a video game was having a little round guy eat dots and avoid ghosts. Most of the games I see advertised today have a bunch of guys driving around stealing cars and shooting people.
I about flipped out when the neighbor 10 year old wanted my seven year old daughter to come over and play Grand Theft Auto. Yes, it's a parent problem, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. Luckily, my daughter knew that game wasn't appropriate.
Regardless of your age, something is wrong when your primary entertainment becomes a game centered around crime.
You got it timster. But of course you probably remember when the articles on slashdot were actually interesting and technical. My question is why do I keep coming back to slashdot?
Ahem. Mod parent up!
I keep asking myself the same thing. I'm trying to figure out if I grew up more in the past six years, or if Slashdot has gotten more I-run-Linux-so-I-must-know-everythingish/{insert corporation}-is-evil and the editors have increased crack usage.
Slashdot Mirror
Please place all obligatory anti-religion posts under this parent. Ho hum.
It's their obvious strategy. There is absolutely no reason they have to live with us controlling the internet. Just put their own root DNS servers in place, and legally mandate that all of their ISPs switch over. It's not rocket science, but it will fragment the internet a bit.
There's also the issue of IP address assignment and ownership to deal with, but I guess RIPE and the other foreign address assignment organizations have their IP blocks already. And of course if they run out of IPs they can go exclusively with IPv6 and quit whining about the US holding back on IPv6.
Have at it EU and UN, do it today and STFU!
What if the "meaningless snipits" just happen to have the words "fire", "bankruptcy", "layoffs", "harassment", "pregnant" or "terror" in them?
PPL has about six areas; they are a couple blocks each. A list of BPL locations in the US is here.
Some BPL uses Homeplug chipsets and others use DS2. There's also some other proprietary systems. They currently don't talk with each other and your neighbor's Homeplug system could interfere with your BPL next door that is another system.
Okay. So how hard is it to add shielding?
:-)
It could be done. This is called coaxial cable, and your cable company has been stringing the stuff up for years. They have also been providing broadband for years, too. BPL has been trying to do it for seven years
And by the way, if you shielded the lines, you could use much more efficient modulation methods than BPL does, and get many more bits per hertz than BPL. And, yes, the cable companies are doing this already.
I would beg to differ that broadband is a last mile problem, especially in rural areas. It's easy to put wireless up or BPL if you listen to industry claims. It's a bear getting a couple meg of Internet bandwidth out to a system in the sticks that serves only a couple people, or at least have it be anywhere close to economically viable.
I wouldn't laugh at anyone who uses a ground strap. While there's plenty of folks here that have worked on PCs for 50+ years and never wrecked anything from static (or so they say), the potential is always there. No static protection may not have outright killed equipment, but there's no saying that it hasn't caused damage that showed up later as squirrely intermittent hardware problems.
Keep the right-wing ideals out of site and off of Slashdot.
Yeah! And bring on some good wholesome, porn!
I want to see more articles on tips for typing with one hand, medicinal crack, how violent video games develop character, and how to increase your gambling budget by becoming homeless.
That is the dumbest question I have ever seen on Slashdot.
Ditto!
Suprise, folks! Your $20 a month plastic device with a camera and MIDI chip isn't a high-powered worldwide NATO-certified communications system. It's a friggin cordless phone that depends on local infrastructure that needs electricity and is just as fragile as telephone lines on poles, and a system that has just enough capacity to handle calls during normal peak hours and be profitable.
If it's possible, why don't we simply say to cell providers "You are required to provide the capacity for 99% of your customers to make one ten-minute call within 3 hours of any major emergency" as a precondition for selling them radio licenses?
:-)
Sure it's possible, but it's not just a capacity issue, it's also the fact that they use telco facilities more than licensed microwave these days for cellular backhaul. And many companies are skimping on emergency power systems. Cell sites used to be equipped to run for a week or two without power. Some today just have battery backup for a couple hours.
This can be fixed, everyone just needs to be willing to pay $500 a month for their cellphone service
This can get outsourced to India as well. Last person out of the computer room, turn out the lights. :-(
That's the part I've never understanded about the US. On one hand the US is ultra-religious. But on the other hand helping the poor is totaly unamerican (socialism is baaaaaaaad).
With 295 million people, there's bound to be a difference of opinion on any topic. The last presidential election was split 51%/49%. That should tell you something.
Shortwave broadcasters are already complaining about noisy power lines. Listen to Allan Weiner sometime at 8:00 PM EDT on Friday evening on his station, WBCQ, at 7.415MHz. Even now he has to filter out a lot of garbage.
Interference from BPL and power line transmission noise are two different things. Transmission noise which has plagued wireless services for decades can be cured with good line maintenance. BPL interference occurs even when the system is operating properly.
BPL proponents claimed BPL was good for fixing transmission noise as utilities had to cleanup the lines which reduced the noise so BPL could work (lower noise = higher signal to noise ratio = better BPL data transmission). This in part was true, but they replaced the transmission noise with an often stronger, more concentrated modulated BPL signal that was even worse than the original power transmission noise. Half-truths abound in BPL press releases and articles, and most of the general public doesn't know any better. The industry has claimed to have fixed the interference problems with frequency notching which usually isn't "deep" enough, or precise enough to prevent problems. Unfortunately journalists (like in the recent NPR report) make it sound like the problem is solved.
I like your wording -- THEIR airwaves. Yes, the HAMS have first dibs on much of the contested bandwidth (after the military, of course).
Hams use only 10% of the bandwidth. The rest is military, aeronautical, maritime, government, and shortwave broadcast.
Something to keep in mind is that BPL doesn't actually use the wireless spectrum, it pollutes it because it can't keep the frequencies it uses within its medium (like cable and DSL). Otherwise, BPL could probably vie for a licensed frequency allocation. So, it's really just an intruder in wireless spectrum due to a bad design.
Amazing! How do you know which bits your allowed to change?
Drop Genesis or the whole old Testament if you like. It's irrelevant. Christianity doesn't require a literal interpretation of the Bible, only acceptance of Jesus as your Savior. Whether I believe the literal order or timeframe of Genesis is a non-issue. The gist of the story is that God made it all happen. Science just looks at the aftermath.
This is how PPL Broadband in Allentown, PA does BPL
Actually they don't do it this way. They use Amperion equipment which uses wireless for the delivery into the home, and BPL for the backbone. Motorola uses wireless for the backbone and BPL into the home. The Motorola solution has much more promise of being a viable solution. Amperion has been involved in several interference cases, including two system deactivations that had open interference complaints.
Sorry to inform you, but ID and creationism are both demonstrably bunk: ID, because it consists of nothing but logical fallacies and misrepresentations of known biological fact, and creationism (except for the most watered-down varieties) because it is in direct conflict with known facts about the history of the earth and its inhabitants.
If you're considering ID or Creationism under a strict interpretation of the Bible, yes, it's inconsistent with known facts. That doesn't mean that other interpretations of ID or Creationism are bunk.
There's numerous places in the Bible where things happened for forty days and forty nights. Was that a coincidence, or just a figure of speech for a really long time? Was God's six days for creation really 6 billion years?
It's easy to dismiss ID when you box it into a literal interpretation of Scripture. Some may believe in a strict literal interpretation. I don't.
The job of the scientist is to look at the information at hand and make educated guesses about reality based on the gathered information and only the gathered information. Now, if you find fingerprints on the dominoes or even footprints leading up to where the dominoes are arranged, then Intelligent Design may have a scientific leg to stand on, but the presence of dominoes in and of themselves says jack and shit about how they got there, at least as far as science is concerned.
I agree, but you have those who see the dominoes that want to deny any possibility that the domino arranger exists. Taking your "look at the information as hand" and making "educated guesses", one could come to a scientific conclusion that the domino arranger could exist. Most of the arguments I see here on Slashdot come down to literal interpretations of the "on the seventh day..." and totally dismiss the possiblity that ID and evolution are compatible, but just different chapters of the same story.
So it all really depends o what you mean by Intelligent Design.
:-) I don't debate ID anywhere (but here) and I don't subscribe to whatever textbook ID there is out there, although I've heard my theories from others. As soon as I mention this, I usually get beat down on the basis of absolute faith and absolute interpretation of the Bible. I think you can have the former without the latter.
:) {/joke}
I subscribe to ID Version 5.3.Goody-pre-1
I don't abhor the teaching of Evolution or other scientific theories, but I do deplore the pravailing attitude on Slashdot that religion is a joke or that all ID and Creationism is bunk. I may not have math formulas to back me up, but I have Faith, a good book to live by, events that are recorded to have happened, and the testimony of others.
And anyways, my theory and version of ID ties it all together, so I'm right and you're all wrong !!!
My beliefs are perfectly valid! I'm not a fool or a moron! Wheee!
:-) So let's go with your theory for the moment. Where did the Shake 'n Bake come from?
:-)
Well, I should have seen that predictable response coming
At the end of your life of Earth, evolution, the Big Bang and other theories are interesting academic exercises but they don't do anything if you are more than worm food and there is a Creator. Not believing may or may not get you "in". Being a jerk about it and those who believe probably won't score brownie points
Can anybody say how God would have done it? What forces were brought to bear? How the design was formulated?
We're probably closer in position on this that you think. This has been precisely my argument in favor of Intelligent Design. Evolution could have been the product of the creator stacking the dominoes so the right tap made it all happen. Evolution and the Big Bang may have been the implementation of "the Design."
There's a right to believe in whatever preposterous mythological bullshit you want without being called on it?
Yep, and there's also a right to be an inconsiderate idiot about people's religious beliefs and berate them, despite having no positive way to know the origin of life, the Earth, or energy and matter. Forgive the worn-out cliche, but "Welcome to Slashdot."
Now it's the branch of government in charge of enforcing "clean language" by protecting us from hearing any of seven unmentionable words.
This is the perception that the majority of the population has, but it's probably only 2% of what the FCC actually does. The rest is honest to goodness needed regulation of the spectrum and technical issues. Not that they do it well, but that's what they do.
These "let's eliminate the FCC" articles really annoy me. They come around every two months and usually from people who only care about the clean language issue or think they know everything after playing around with unlicensed wireless spectrum. Despite the FCC often being less than stellar, we can't eliminate the FCC and all regulation of spectrum.
"Filthy" novels, pre-code movies, comic books, Rock 'n' Roll, TV, video games... It's just a long line of easy "moral" targets for politicians to act like they're solving something instead of dealing with the actual problems.
There are actual problems to deal with (i.e. lousy parents who don't know what their kids are doing), but there's a problem with this new crop of games. When I was a kid, a video game was having a little round guy eat dots and avoid ghosts. Most of the games I see advertised today have a bunch of guys driving around stealing cars and shooting people.
I about flipped out when the neighbor 10 year old wanted my seven year old daughter to come over and play Grand Theft Auto. Yes, it's a parent problem, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. Luckily, my daughter knew that game wasn't appropriate.
Regardless of your age, something is wrong when your primary entertainment becomes a game centered around crime.
You got it timster. But of course you probably remember when the articles on slashdot were actually interesting and technical. My question is why do I keep coming back to slashdot?
Ahem. Mod parent up!
I keep asking myself the same thing. I'm trying to figure out if I grew up more in the past six years, or if Slashdot has gotten more I-run-Linux-so-I-must-know-everythingish/{insert corporation}-is-evil and the editors have increased crack usage.