Sorry, I wasn't clear - I meant they were leasing airtime, not towers. They're still beholden to the price that the 'big ones' place on leasing out their own infrastructure to what could be called competitors. When you lease airtime, you're implicitly leasing the towers, too.
To a point it exists, but there is still separate and competing infrastructure out there. Until every tower has generic transceivers for each allocated band on it and no cellular provider owns their own infrastructure, the big companies still have a huge 'leg up' over the virtual ones that have to lease from one of the biggies.
I never once mentioned the government running the infrastructure COMPANY. My local power company, Dominion, has two separate sides - a power generation side and a power distribution side. Both are heavily regulated by the Va State Corp Commission, and both have to apply for rate increases that are not always approved. The distribution company has strict performance requirements and fixed profit caps in exchange for being the only power distribution company that gets to run lines to your house. You can buy your power from any number of generation providers (including the generation side of Dominion) that all use the same distribution provider. Their rates are separate on my bill.
I could start "Dave's Power and Light" and provide my 'Green power from horse turds' over the same distribution network for not a whole lot of up-front cash. I propose the same structure for all utilities, including cellular.
I can think of lots of things that I'd like to socialize long before telco.
You realize that the same distribution company/provider company situation already exists in the landline telco industry, right? I can get my dialtone from anyone over my local telco's wires to my house.
I suggest we regulate it like most power/water/sewage companies are regulated - there's a single (very profit- and performance-regulated) company that is responsible for the infrastructure - towers, transceivers, and backhaul in this case. Carriers would then be able to lease access to spectrum from that company with little/no barrier to entry.
Just because you can't see most of the infrastructure it doesn't mean that you shouldn't manage it wisely like any other infrastructure, be it water/sewer pipes or power distribution lines.
I'd love to see this model applied to telephone/fiber/CATV and cellular towers - imagine being able to actually select an internet provider from a wide array of competing companies instead of being locked in to the one that your municipality made the best $$$ deal with.
If you're not familiar with Tuvan throat singing, check out the documentary Genghis Blues that follows blind blues musician Paul Pena on his trip to Tuva to compete in their throat singing competition.
Paul first heard a fragment of harmonic singing on a shortwave Radio Moscow broadcast on December 29, 1984 and he was so struck by it, he spent almost eight years trying to track down its source. In 1991 he was finally able to locate a recording of Tuvan music and taught himself the vocal techniques known as 'Khoomei, Sygyt, and Kargyraa'. In addition, he learned a good bit of the Tuvan language using English-Russian and Russian-Tuvan dictionaries and an obsolete 'Opticon' scanning device which translates text into sensations. In 1993, Paul attended a concert sponsored by the Friends of Tuva organization and met Kongar-ol Ondar after the performance. Paul gave Kongar-ol an impromptu demonstration--and astonished him with his talent and mastery of traditional Tuvan singing. The two men formed a strong friendship along with their musical collaboration.
In 1995, Kongar-ol invited Paul to sing at the second international Khoomei Symposium and contest, held in Tuva's capital city, Kyzyl. Ralph Leighton and the "Friends of Tuva" sponsored his trip.
I know everyone hates armchair rocket scientists, but I'd like to leave this here:
A ~0.2 kg block of pure Gd148 (~1 inch^3) initially yields ~120 watts, sufficient in theory to meet the complete basal power needs of an entire human body for ~1 century...
They could've had 120W of heat free for the asking with 200g of Gd148 (a pure alpha emitter). Use 50W of that to keep the wee beastie warm, and the other 50-ish Watts might've been enough to power the lander.
Amateur radio folk have been doing this for years. There are only two countries that don't allow amateur radio for their citizens - Yemen and North Korea. There are no laws in the US that prohibit the exchange of ideas with those in other countries, apart from the standard profanity rules. There are, however, common sense guidelines to prevent the other operator form getting in trouble with their government (don't try to engage a person from Cuba in Castro bashing, for instance).
...we'd have to see a couple of squadrons of Gloucester Old Spots doing aerobatics at Farnborough...
As an American, I've watched just enough UK television to know what that means - "When Pigs FLY!!!" I learned about Gloucester Old Spots from "The Two Fat Ladies" and Farnborough from some other show re: airplanes.
If you want to spend money on student research, why not invest in an actual NASA-sponsored project? Check out spaceweather.com (toward the bottom):
HEY, THANKS! The students wish to thank Sander Geophysics Ltd (SGL) for sponsoring this flight. Note their logo in the upper right corner of the payload. SGL's generous contribution of $500 paid for the helium and other supplies necessary to get this research off the ground. Readers, if you would like to sponsor an upcoming flight and see your logo at the edge of space, please contact Dr. Tony Phillips to make arrangements.
... it's almost easier to boil water than to melt it from 0C ice to 0C water.
Your statement would be true if you'd left out the word boil and simply said "raise it's temperature from 0C to 100C". The heat of vaporization of water is a whopping 2260 kJ/Kg - that's the heat required to turn 100C water into 100C steam.
Here's the problem I have with LED bulbs - Radio Frequency Interference. Many of the cheap bulbs imported do not meet FCC regulations for RF emissions and cause heaps of interference to broadcast AM radio and Amateur radio operations. A fellow ham did a little research, but we need a lot more data from the manufacturers regarding their Part 15 compliance and radiation levels before users of the radio spectrum can switch to LED bulbs.
I would trade your kids in a heartbeat for peace and quiet in restaurants. Oh, and to not have crumb-snatchers kicking the back of my airplane seat.:-)
Duty cycle is your friend. No one's fridge runs 100% of the time. If his fridge runs 25% of the time (which I think is high), your 100W would be about right.
There was once a time when the clothes you wore had to be hand made from start to finish, often involving multiple artisans to create.
It's funny you mention that. I watch the TV show "How It's Made", and it amazes me how often I hear myself appending "BY HAND!!!" to what the narrator says when I hear "The doodad is transferred from conveyor belt A to belt B" and it's a human standing there doing a robot's job. I'm constantly amazed at how much mindless manual labor is still out there.
And you think the Chinese government is incapable or unwilling to forge a certificate or two and act as a MITM as the data traverses their great firewall?
Still have nearly-perfect hearing, minus the really odd gap at 15kHz-16kHz...
Not odd at all. Were you exposed to CRT TVs or old monitors for an extended amount of time? Their flybacks operated at one of several freqs: NTSC is 15,734 Hz, PAL is equal to 15,625 Hz, PAL M is equal to 15,750 Hz I wondered if TV/monitor technology was getting better over the years - the flyback scream got quieter and quieter as I got older. Turns out my ears were losing their sensitivity to it. I have a gigantic notch at those frequencies.
I had to do that in my head when I got a KPH only car in Grand Cayman - the signs are MPH. There were a _lot_ of tourists that didn't notice and were going verrrrry sloooooow. It was pretty easy once you learn a few touchpoints - 25 mph=40kph, 30=50, 40=65, and 45=75ish.
At least I didn't get a left hand drive car in a left side-of-the-road country on top of it. Driving from the ditch is not pretty.
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Nothing in Ham radio requires encryption.
I would allow encryption on amateur satellite command uplinks and perhaps on repeater command functions, but not for general use.
Sorry, I wasn't clear - I meant they were leasing airtime, not towers. They're still beholden to the price that the 'big ones' place on leasing out their own infrastructure to what could be called competitors. When you lease airtime, you're implicitly leasing the towers, too.
To a point it exists, but there is still separate and competing infrastructure out there. Until every tower has generic transceivers for each allocated band on it and no cellular provider owns their own infrastructure, the big companies still have a huge 'leg up' over the virtual ones that have to lease from one of the biggies.
I never once mentioned the government running the infrastructure COMPANY. My local power company, Dominion, has two separate sides - a power generation side and a power distribution side. Both are heavily regulated by the Va State Corp Commission, and both have to apply for rate increases that are not always approved. The distribution company has strict performance requirements and fixed profit caps in exchange for being the only power distribution company that gets to run lines to your house. You can buy your power from any number of generation providers (including the generation side of Dominion) that all use the same distribution provider. Their rates are separate on my bill.
I could start "Dave's Power and Light" and provide my 'Green power from horse turds' over the same distribution network for not a whole lot of up-front cash. I propose the same structure for all utilities, including cellular.
I can think of lots of things that I'd like to socialize long before telco.
You realize that the same distribution company/provider company situation already exists in the landline telco industry, right? I can get my dialtone from anyone over my local telco's wires to my house.
I suggest we regulate it like most power/water/sewage companies are regulated - there's a single (very profit- and performance-regulated) company that is responsible for the infrastructure - towers, transceivers, and backhaul in this case. Carriers would then be able to lease access to spectrum from that company with little/no barrier to entry.
Just because you can't see most of the infrastructure it doesn't mean that you shouldn't manage it wisely like any other infrastructure, be it water/sewer pipes or power distribution lines.
I'd love to see this model applied to telephone/fiber/CATV and cellular towers - imagine being able to actually select an internet provider from a wide array of competing companies instead of being locked in to the one that your municipality made the best $$$ deal with.
Excellent analysis, Mr. Pillow. Thanks!
There's a Secret of NiMH, you know. It'll cost you more than a nickel to get them to talk.
If you're not familiar with Tuvan throat singing, check out the documentary Genghis Blues that follows blind blues musician Paul Pena on his trip to Tuva to compete in their throat singing competition.
From his bio:
Paul first heard a fragment of harmonic singing on a shortwave Radio Moscow broadcast on December 29, 1984 and he was so struck by it, he spent almost eight years trying to track down its source. In 1991 he was finally able to locate a recording of Tuvan music and taught himself the vocal techniques known as 'Khoomei, Sygyt, and Kargyraa'. In addition, he learned a good bit of the Tuvan language using English-Russian and Russian-Tuvan dictionaries and an obsolete 'Opticon' scanning device which translates text into sensations. In 1993, Paul attended a concert sponsored by the Friends of Tuva organization and met Kongar-ol Ondar after the performance. Paul gave Kongar-ol an impromptu demonstration--and astonished him with his talent and mastery of traditional Tuvan singing. The two men formed a strong friendship along with their musical collaboration.
In 1995, Kongar-ol invited Paul to sing at the second international Khoomei Symposium and contest, held in Tuva's capital city, Kyzyl. Ralph Leighton and the "Friends of Tuva" sponsored his trip.
I know everyone hates armchair rocket scientists, but I'd like to leave this here:
A ~0.2 kg block of pure Gd148 (~1 inch^3) initially yields ~120 watts, sufficient in theory to meet the complete basal power needs of an entire human body for ~1 century ...
They could've had 120W of heat free for the asking with 200g of Gd148 (a pure alpha emitter). Use 50W of that to keep the wee beastie warm, and the other 50-ish Watts might've been enough to power the lander.
How about just using the existing ones?
... no majorana fermions ...
Maybe not.
Amateur radio folk have been doing this for years. There are only two countries that don't allow amateur radio for their citizens - Yemen and North Korea. There are no laws in the US that prohibit the exchange of ideas with those in other countries, apart from the standard profanity rules. There are, however, common sense guidelines to prevent the other operator form getting in trouble with their government (don't try to engage a person from Cuba in Castro bashing, for instance).
...we'd have to see a couple of squadrons of Gloucester Old Spots doing aerobatics at Farnborough ...
As an American, I've watched just enough UK television to know what that means - "When Pigs FLY!!!" I learned about Gloucester Old Spots from "The Two Fat Ladies" and Farnborough from some other show re: airplanes.
That's Boron, I'm pretty sure, not Barium.
They're already cutting steel on one that will handle 1000 more containers than the triple-E's.
When I boil water, a fair share of it is turning to vapor. Anything less is a measly simmer.
If you want to spend money on student research, why not invest in an actual NASA-sponsored project? Check out spaceweather.com (toward the bottom):
HEY, THANKS! The students wish to thank Sander Geophysics Ltd (SGL) for sponsoring this flight. Note their logo in the upper right corner of the payload. SGL's generous contribution of $500 paid for the helium and other supplies necessary to get this research off the ground. Readers, if you would like to sponsor an upcoming flight and see your logo at the edge of space, please contact Dr. Tony Phillips to make arrangements.
... it's almost easier to boil water than to melt it from 0C ice to 0C water.
Your statement would be true if you'd left out the word boil and simply said "raise it's temperature from 0C to 100C". The heat of vaporization of water is a whopping 2260 kJ/Kg - that's the heat required to turn 100C water into 100C steam.
Here's the problem I have with LED bulbs - Radio Frequency Interference. Many of the cheap bulbs imported do not meet FCC regulations for RF emissions and cause heaps of interference to broadcast AM radio and Amateur radio operations. A fellow ham did a little research, but we need a lot more data from the manufacturers regarding their Part 15 compliance and radiation levels before users of the radio spectrum can switch to LED bulbs.
I wouldn't trade them for anything.
I would trade your kids in a heartbeat for peace and quiet in restaurants. Oh, and to not have crumb-snatchers kicking the back of my airplane seat. :-)
Duty cycle is your friend. No one's fridge runs 100% of the time. If his fridge runs 25% of the time (which I think is high), your 100W would be about right.
There was once a time when the clothes you wore had to be hand made from start to finish, often involving multiple artisans to create.
It's funny you mention that. I watch the TV show "How It's Made", and it amazes me how often I hear myself appending "BY HAND!!!" to what the narrator says when I hear "The doodad is transferred from conveyor belt A to belt B" and it's a human standing there doing a robot's job. I'm constantly amazed at how much mindless manual labor is still out there.
And you think the Chinese government is incapable or unwilling to forge a certificate or two and act as a MITM as the data traverses their great firewall?
Still have nearly-perfect hearing, minus the really odd gap at 15kHz-16kHz ...
Not odd at all. Were you exposed to CRT TVs or old monitors for an extended amount of time? Their flybacks operated at one of several freqs: NTSC is 15,734 Hz, PAL is equal to 15,625 Hz, PAL M is equal to 15,750 Hz I wondered if TV/monitor technology was getting better over the years - the flyback scream got quieter and quieter as I got older. Turns out my ears were losing their sensitivity to it. I have a gigantic notch at those frequencies.
I had to do that in my head when I got a KPH only car in Grand Cayman - the signs are MPH. There were a _lot_ of tourists that didn't notice and were going verrrrry sloooooow. It was pretty easy once you learn a few touchpoints - 25 mph=40kph, 30=50, 40=65, and 45=75ish.
At least I didn't get a left hand drive car in a left side-of-the-road country on top of it. Driving from the ditch is not pretty.