He'll go to a minimum security prison where security guards ride around in golf carts and "escapes" consist of someone walking away during lunchtime. The only sodomizing has already occurred -- the countless sysadmins that had to patch machines hastily or disinfect machines got the real screwing.
Wifi is not a problem, evidently. Understandable, given its short range.
Ummm, no.
Here's a frequency chart of the radio spectrum. People seem to think everyone uses all frequencies and it's one big radio spectrum blob. Radio spectrum resembles IP space, except in this case you can't create more of it. Print out the chart on a big plotter, hang it on the wall and impress your techie friends, and consult it when a wireless article is posted on Slashdot.:-)
The nodes can also jam cellular communications by trasmitting a signal themselves.
And if that doesn't work, the military sends in guys with bucket trucks to install Broadband over Power Line and it jams everything from DC to daylight.
Is Wednesday RIAA hating day or file piracy advocacy day ? Everyday is Linux kernel announcement day. Mozilla news day is every third Wednesday. I haven't figured out what day is "Amiga has something cool" day, but I think it's every third Thursday.
BPL overcomes some of the distanced traveled on the wire limitations
But it doesn't overcome the distance limitations, have you been listening ? BPL has to be regenerated every couple hundred feet because it's radiated out of the line. This is jury-rigging at its finest. And how anyone can justify a wire-based network rendering an 80 MHz swath of wireless frequencies unusable is beyond me.
After all, the hams have trillions worth of frequencies that have been dead pretty much anytime I've listened
It depends on what bands you were listening to. Was it HF, VHF, or microwave ? If it was HF, what were the K and A indexes at that time and what was the propagation like ? You're not understanding the breadth of the hobby nor the dynamics of the frequencies involved. Also, again, hams hold something like only 10% of the frequencies in question here. Others have suggested to relocate the users in these bands, but this shows a clear lack of understanding of the enormity of that task or the properties of the frequencies which the services that are there now require. It would be cheaper for the government to subsidize DSL deployment than attempt to relocate everyone. I don't even know where to begin with how you would deal with the international treaty implications of all of this.
Since I don't have the spectrum anyway, might as well contribute it to something which actually IS useful to the common man
I think this statement sums it up for the majority of Slashdotters who are against ham radio and for BPL. Translate "the common man" to say "me" . I'm not able to use it because I'm not licensed nor am I interested in learning something that requires some time and thought, so screw the hams, government services, aviation, and ships. I don't care if this violates all common-sense engineering. I want my cheap broadband and I want it now !!! What ? I can get $5 off if I kill my grandmother ? Where's the aresenic ? Get out of my way !
As I've said before, but nobody seems to understand, the frequencies do belong to you now, much like the way national parks below to you. Sure, you can't go in and cut down the trees for your personal use, but it's there for you to enjoy. They are internationally allocated for you to use. All you have to do is pass a test to use them. If a corporation owns them, they are not yours. Paying $40 a month for broadband doesn't make them yours.
There was most certainly both a comment period and public hearings
I'll eat crow on this one. Yes, there were publc forums before it became a public 6 o'clock news issue, courtesy of Copps and Adelstein. Powell still tried to fast-track it in the face of public outcry and congressional inquiries.
Powell is quite smart
Smart, perhaps; a friend of the little guy, ummm, no.
Most of that was utter nonsense, it's a given that bridging the last mile of arguably the most significant technological advance in the history of mankind to date is more important than those services, which can move to other frequencies.
Oh really ? Where in the spectrum do you intend on moving them ? Everyone's a frequency allocation expert until you get down to brass tacks and have to figure out where to rellocate everything and deal with millions of dollars of obsoleted equiment. The spectrum is so congested now it's not funny. Having a wired-based network making a chunk of valuable wireless spectrum is insane. Saying this can all be moved is utter nonsense.
Shielding the cables isn't an option either, that puts this right back in the same spot it is with dsl and cable internet
What ? Basic electronics theory tells you that unshielded cables will radiate. This was discovered in the early 1900s. BPL is a step backwards. To suggest that shielded cable isn't an option is again... utter nonsense. The barriers to cable and DSL deployment are political, while the barrier to BPL is technical.
And don't say ham radio would be useful in some sort of natural disaster, seeing as the internet WAS designed to withstand a nuclear attack!
Saddam Hussein had a TCP/IP network in place during the first Gulf War. It was taken down by the US military by sending a new innocent-looking unlabeled printer with modified firware to a remote Iraqi military office. The personnel connected it to the network and it reeked havoc with the routing tables and dropped the network.... no nuclear devices deployed...
Ask him to help you out. Chances are he'd be happy to work with you to minimize or eliminate the interference. The FCC probably wasn't interested because the ham was operating within regulations and consumer equipment often lacks the proper filtering on power, speaker, and video lines (which costs a few dollars to include, btw).
I'm a ham and got severe interference on my phone line. I wrapped the phone cord going to the telephone through a Radio Shack ferrite core a couple times and the interence was gone.
I'm of two minds whether this will pass or not. Michael Powell, the FCC chair, hasn't made a good decision since he got into office, so I'm thinking this will go through because he's got the power companies all giving him blow jobs under the table. On the other hand, the FAA, NTIA, the military, and the shortwave broadcasters may get through to the FCC that they can't allow this, and maybe somebody will get that lamebrain Powell to do something right.
I thought only the Dems got the BJs:-)
Powell also hammered through the media ownership rule changes without any public hearings or comment period, under the protest of Commisioners Copps and Adelstein. It looks like some legislators have come to their senses and media ownership rules changes will be derailed. But left to his own discretion, Powell would let any corporate interest run rampant over consumers and the spectrum. He didn't inherit alot of brains from the old man.
The way PLC works doesn't add anything new per say to the power line, it just modulates some aspects of the power
Ummmm, how do you modulate a 60 Hz sine wave to carry 30 megabits of data ? If you can do that and stay within the 60 Hz bandwidth, you've defied all laws of physics and have a product that will make you obscenely rich.
The response I got was immediately hostile. First point was no answer in terms of known sources of interference... basically just ignored the question and said it could be anything. Then he goes on this diatribe telling me I have no rights, the 2.4ghz range is unregulated (yes, I already knew all this), he and other Hams have more rights since they are licensed, and how I generally have no expectation of a clear channel.
You hit a bad group. Just like there are hostile Linux folks, ham radio has them, too.
Alot of WISPs using 802.11 spectrum which is shared with ham radio have learned that hams can be a big help, when asked. I'm sorry your experience wasn't so good.
Realize that these frequencies are *yours* as well, and not a corporation's. You can get licensed quite easily if you want to. You say the frequencies are the citizens', but once they go to BPL, they will belong to the utilities.
Is broadband pr0n a necessity ? Don't answer that:-)
Ham radio may just be a hobby, but it is an important one. We provide emergency communications when celular, telco, and power are dead. It promotes international goodwill. It allows many people to learn RF engineering and become great engineers. For the nerds, you can play with high power RF, pass data, send video, bounce signals off the moon, use sattelites, and much more....
For me, I see HAM radio's biggest benefit to society being when disasters strike and nothing works (phone, cell phone, etc) HAM ops are able to get communication going and assist emergency response efforts
Let's not forget about being able to legally handle 1.5 kilowatts of RF power. Nothing like having an 802.11 amplifier that can fry birds;-) But seriously, ham radio allows people to learn and experiment. Some of the best and brightest engineers in various fields got started in amateur radio.
I would react in proportion to the number of users effected and the nature of the uses that are effected. Hams would lose big on both counts
Marine distress frequencies, shortwave broadcasts, military frequencies, various government services, and probably public safety and aviation frequencies will be affected as well. What's the score now ?
Passing data over power lines is irresponsible from an engineering perspective. Power lines were designed to carry very very low frequencies, 60 hertz to be exact. BPL is wideband noise from 1 to 80 megahertz.
Anyone with the slightest electical engineering knowledge knows that a signal of such high frequencies will be radiated and antenuated nearly immediately. The power lines are just awful transmission media for these frequencies. What is needed for the power cables is shielding -- that's what's known as coaxial cable. ( Why don't they pass data on cable ?:-)
This is analogous to the water company trying to deliver water with perforated pipes. The water just spills out everywhere and every couple hundred feet they would have to pump in more water so that you had sufficient water pressure at your house.
BPL was rejected in Japan and Europe, becuase it polluted the spectrum so bad it was pathetic.
For those dumping on ham radio as being obsolete or feel broadband is more important, consider that this will interfere with many other services including international ship distress frequencies, government (including military) allocations, shortwave broadcasts, and most likely aviation and public safety frequencies. Is your ability to get high speed pr0n more important than all this ?
Why is everyone else (like the FCC and utility companies) saying this is great ? The FCC is pro-big business and pro-utility. Equipment vendors are retreading the same technology that was rejected overseas and not informing their clients, the power companies, of the true interference potential. The power companies are dying to get into the broadband race as the telcos have their heads up their butts with DSL.
We need broadband, but this is not the solution. We need to remove the barriers for DSL and cable. Power companies could leapfrog the telcos and cable companies with fiber into the home or unlicensed wireless from their poles.
Not to dis Americans, but if the problem doesn't concern them directly, they don't care about it. At the moment they've got lots of IP's, so they don't care. When the IP's are almost out in the US, then you'll hear a frantic concern about it.
So are we supposed to fix all the problems of the world or not ? The world bitches and moans when we get involved, and then bitches and moans when we don't. We invented the Internet. How about we just shut off the transoceanic lines and you can run your own networks. We have enough of our own pr0n to last a long time without you.
Slashdot Mirror
This article posting is missing a snide comment about Microsoft or how the patch is a Linux CD installation disk.
I thought Tuesday was bash Microsoft day ??!!??
If this truly is exortion, then shouldn't the SCO executive team be sent to federal "pound-me-in-the-ass" prison ?
Is prison rape still not funny as some Slashdotter so adamantly posted last week ?
He'll go to a minimum security prison where security guards ride around in golf carts and "escapes" consist of someone walking away during lunchtime. The only sodomizing has already occurred -- the countless sysadmins that had to patch machines hastily or disinfect machines got the real screwing.
You must be new here...
aaaahhh, forget it..
I, for one, welcome our grammar-challenged Slashdot Editor overlords.
Wifi is not a problem, evidently. Understandable, given its short range.
:-)
Ummm, no. Here's a frequency chart of the radio spectrum. People seem to think everyone uses all frequencies and it's one big radio spectrum blob. Radio spectrum resembles IP space, except in this case you can't create more of it. Print out the chart on a big plotter, hang it on the wall and impress your techie friends, and consult it when a wireless article is posted on Slashdot.
K3NG
The nodes can also jam cellular communications by trasmitting a signal themselves.
And if that doesn't work, the military sends in guys with bucket trucks to install Broadband over Power Line and it jams everything from DC to daylight.
Luckily it's only a microorganism.
Microorgasms are usually a bad thing. It's usually caused by have a small thing or doing it really badly. See a therapist.
ROTFL !!!!!!!
Is Wednesday RIAA hating day or file piracy advocacy day ? Everyday is Linux kernel announcement day. Mozilla news day is every third Wednesday. I haven't figured out what day is "Amiga has something cool" day, but I think it's every third Thursday.
Or anyone for that matter ? If things go awry, the courts will appoint the next President, like our last presidential election. Problem solved.
BPL overcomes some of the distanced traveled on the wire limitations
But it doesn't overcome the distance limitations, have you been listening ? BPL has to be regenerated every couple hundred feet because it's radiated out of the line. This is jury-rigging at its finest. And how anyone can justify a wire-based network rendering an 80 MHz swath of wireless frequencies unusable is beyond me.
After all, the hams have trillions worth of frequencies that have been dead pretty much anytime I've listened
It depends on what bands you were listening to. Was it HF, VHF, or microwave ? If it was HF, what were the K and A indexes at that time and what was the propagation like ? You're not understanding the breadth of the hobby nor the dynamics of the frequencies involved. Also, again, hams hold something like only 10% of the frequencies in question here. Others have suggested to relocate the users in these bands, but this shows a clear lack of understanding of the enormity of that task or the properties of the frequencies which the services that are there now require. It would be cheaper for the government to subsidize DSL deployment than attempt to relocate everyone. I don't even know where to begin with how you would deal with the international treaty implications of all of this.
Since I don't have the spectrum anyway, might as well contribute it to something which actually IS useful to the common man
I think this statement sums it up for the majority of Slashdotters who are against ham radio and for BPL. Translate "the common man" to say "me" . I'm not able to use it because I'm not licensed nor am I interested in learning something that requires some time and thought, so screw the hams, government services, aviation, and ships. I don't care if this violates all common-sense engineering. I want my cheap broadband and I want it now !!! What ? I can get $5 off if I kill my grandmother ? Where's the aresenic ? Get out of my way !
As I've said before, but nobody seems to understand, the frequencies do belong to you now, much like the way national parks below to you. Sure, you can't go in and cut down the trees for your personal use, but it's there for you to enjoy. They are internationally allocated for you to use. All you have to do is pass a test to use them. If a corporation owns them, they are not yours. Paying $40 a month for broadband doesn't make them yours.
There was most certainly both a comment period and public hearings
I'll eat crow on this one. Yes, there were publc forums before it became a public 6 o'clock news issue, courtesy of Copps and Adelstein. Powell still tried to fast-track it in the face of public outcry and congressional inquiries.
Powell is quite smart
Smart, perhaps; a friend of the little guy, ummm, no.
Most of that was utter nonsense, it's a given that bridging the last mile of arguably the most significant technological advance in the history of mankind to date is more important than those services, which can move to other frequencies.
Oh really ? Where in the spectrum do you intend on moving them ? Everyone's a frequency allocation expert until you get down to brass tacks and have to figure out where to rellocate everything and deal with millions of dollars of obsoleted equiment. The spectrum is so congested now it's not funny. Having a wired-based network making a chunk of valuable wireless spectrum is insane. Saying this can all be moved is utter nonsense.
Shielding the cables isn't an option either, that puts this right back in the same spot it is with dsl and cable internet
What ? Basic electronics theory tells you that unshielded cables will radiate. This was discovered in the early 1900s. BPL is a step backwards. To suggest that shielded cable isn't an option is again... utter nonsense. The barriers to cable and DSL deployment are political, while the barrier to BPL is technical.
You're thinking of VHF marine. There are several bands of frequencies scattered below 30 Mhz used by ships at sea. VHF only goes so far.
Regarding no power lines at sea, yes, you're right, but you forget how far HF signals propagate. And ships need to talk to shore stations sometime.
And don't say ham radio would be useful in some sort of natural disaster, seeing as the internet WAS designed to withstand a nuclear attack!
Saddam Hussein had a TCP/IP network in place during the first Gulf War. It was taken down by the US military by sending a new innocent-looking unlabeled printer with modified firware to a remote Iraqi military office. The personnel connected it to the network and it reeked havoc with the routing tables and dropped the network.... no nuclear devices deployed...
Ask him to help you out. Chances are he'd be happy to work with you to minimize or eliminate the interference. The FCC probably wasn't interested because the ham was operating within regulations and consumer equipment often lacks the proper filtering on power, speaker, and video lines (which costs a few dollars to include, btw).
I'm a ham and got severe interference on my phone line. I wrapped the phone cord going to the telephone through a Radio Shack ferrite core a couple times and the interence was gone.
We like to help. Just ask....
I'm of two minds whether this will pass or not. Michael Powell, the FCC chair, hasn't made a good decision since he got into office, so I'm thinking this will go through because he's got the power companies all giving him blow jobs under the table. On the other hand, the FAA, NTIA, the military, and the shortwave broadcasters may get through to the FCC that they can't allow this, and maybe somebody will get that lamebrain Powell to do something right.
:-)
I thought only the Dems got the BJs
Powell also hammered through the media ownership rule changes without any public hearings or comment period, under the protest of Commisioners Copps and Adelstein. It looks like some legislators have come to their senses and media ownership rules changes will be derailed. But left to his own discretion, Powell would let any corporate interest run rampant over consumers and the spectrum. He didn't inherit alot of brains from the old man.
The way PLC works doesn't add anything new per say to the power line, it just modulates some aspects of the power
Ummmm, how do you modulate a 60 Hz sine wave to carry 30 megabits of data ? If you can do that and stay within the 60 Hz bandwidth, you've defied all laws of physics and have a product that will make you obscenely rich.
The response I got was immediately hostile. First point was no answer in terms of known sources of interference... basically just ignored the question and said it could be anything. Then he goes on this diatribe telling me I have no rights, the 2.4ghz range is unregulated (yes, I already knew all this), he and other Hams have more rights since they are licensed, and how I generally have no expectation of a clear channel.
You hit a bad group. Just like there are hostile Linux folks, ham radio has them, too.
Alot of WISPs using 802.11 spectrum which is shared with ham radio have learned that hams can be a big help, when asked. I'm sorry your experience wasn't so good.
Realize that these frequencies are *yours* as well, and not a corporation's. You can get licensed quite easily if you want to. You say the frequencies are the citizens', but once they go to BPL, they will belong to the utilities.
It's more of a hobby than a necessity
:-)
Is broadband pr0n a necessity ? Don't answer that
Ham radio may just be a hobby, but it is an important one. We provide emergency communications when celular, telco, and power are dead. It promotes international goodwill. It allows many people to learn RF engineering and become great engineers. For the nerds, you can play with high power RF, pass data, send video, bounce signals off the moon, use sattelites, and much more....
For me, I see HAM radio's biggest benefit to society being when disasters strike and nothing works (phone, cell phone, etc) HAM ops are able to get communication going and assist emergency response efforts
;-) But seriously, ham radio allows people to learn and experiment. Some of the best and brightest engineers in various fields got started in amateur radio.
Let's not forget about being able to legally handle 1.5 kilowatts of RF power. Nothing like having an 802.11 amplifier that can fry birds
I would react in proportion to the number of users effected and the nature of the uses that are effected. Hams would lose big on both counts
Marine distress frequencies, shortwave broadcasts, military frequencies, various government services, and probably public safety and aviation frequencies will be affected as well. What's the score now ?
Passing data over power lines is irresponsible from an engineering perspective. Power lines were designed to carry very very low frequencies, 60 hertz to be exact. BPL is wideband noise from 1 to 80 megahertz.
:-)
Anyone with the slightest electical engineering knowledge knows that a signal of such high frequencies will be radiated and antenuated nearly immediately. The power lines are just awful transmission media for these frequencies. What is needed for the power cables is shielding -- that's what's known as coaxial cable. ( Why don't they pass data on cable ?
This is analogous to the water company trying to deliver water with perforated pipes. The water just spills out everywhere and every couple hundred feet they would have to pump in more water so that you had sufficient water pressure at your house.
BPL was rejected in Japan and Europe, becuase it polluted the spectrum so bad it was pathetic.
For those dumping on ham radio as being obsolete or feel broadband is more important, consider that this will interfere with many other services including international ship distress frequencies, government (including military) allocations, shortwave broadcasts, and most likely aviation and public safety frequencies. Is your ability to get high speed pr0n more important than all this ?
Why is everyone else (like the FCC and utility companies) saying this is great ? The FCC is pro-big business and pro-utility. Equipment vendors are retreading the same technology that was rejected overseas and not informing their clients, the power companies, of the true interference potential. The power companies are dying to get into the broadband race as the telcos have their heads up their butts with DSL.
We need broadband, but this is not the solution. We need to remove the barriers for DSL and cable. Power companies could leapfrog the telcos and cable companies with fiber into the home or unlicensed wireless from their poles.
Quite simply, BPL is DOA.
Please have a nice hot cup of shut the fsck up !
What more standards do you need ???
Not to dis Americans, but if the problem doesn't concern them directly, they don't care about it. At the moment they've got lots of IP's, so they don't care. When the IP's are almost out in the US, then you'll hear a frantic concern about it.
So are we supposed to fix all the problems of the world or not ? The world bitches and moans when we get involved, and then bitches and moans when we don't. We invented the Internet. How about we just shut off the transoceanic lines and you can run your own networks. We have enough of our own pr0n to last a long time without you.
(Chill out mods, this is not a troll)