Actually, the RCA Scenium TV's that I have seen actually have an ethernet port in the back of them, and it periodically makes software updates available to you for the television. Presumably, this could include new decoders for differing formats.
I believe they are able to keep the analog signal operational in the area until 75-90% or so have upgraded to recieve a digital signal in their market.
That's correct...its pretty unfair. A lot of the students (read: non CS) that live off-campus simply go with cable, because it winds up a bit cheaper than SBC does. Of course, they block servers and are otherwise a bit restrictive with other stuff.
Me on the other hand, I still live on campus so I've got cheap connectivity in my place, with nice fast access to I2 as well.
I know a couple of their techs in the area, but they're not where the problem comes from. It looks to me the problem primarily comes from their corporate arm, the people that cook up this stuff.
Winfield's economy isn't too bad these days. They haven't had quite the hit in jobs that Ark City has taken.
By the way, I'm pretty sure we've met. I was involved for a while with the ham radio club in Cowley County when I was younger and remember hanging around and seeing you do some repeater work on the old 147.00 machine one Saturday morning. Shoot me an e-mail at radio.NOSPAM.bmit.net (replace.NOSPAM. with @, obviously:-) )
Kansas also has a no call list that does not allow telemarketers to call people on the list. You sign up for the list on the internet or call a phone number to have it added. Kansas is far more advanced than most people realize, when it comes to technology.
We may not have DSL service in 90% of the state, but we have wireless, cable and other alternatives.
I am a student at Kansas State University in Manhattan, and my apartment in Manhattan does have DSL service provided by SBC. I am priviliged to live in one of the 24 towns they provide service in. (For 10 months out of the year anyway)
In most cases in KS, the landscape is completely populated by SBC. I live in a town of 14,000 people in rural Kansas.. Its large enough that a complete telecommunications cooperative is not feasible. When you have a situation like that, you can't reasonably wire an area like that, its cost prohibitive, and it would be quite a trick to get permits to hang wire on poles and/or bury the lines.
Luckily, in that same town, wireless is starting to pop up around the state, and that will save us. Wireless will be our answer to this.
There are many areas in Kansas that SBC couldn't care less about. Those areas are served by smaller companies, that many will tell you provide much better service, and customer service than Bell companies typically do.
A few of these are: Southern KS Telephone Company Twin Valley Telephone Company Sprint (Believe it or not, they service Oxford, KS with 455 people in town) among many others.
Not everything is owned by a Baby Bell. One might want to stop and consider that its probably a good thing too.
The issue is, there are not very many DSL capable central offices in the first place, let alone repeaters on the end of their lines. It sounds to me that they are going to refuse to upgrade the rest of the CO's. The bad part is, in a way, the consumers lose something either way.
I live in a town in KS that SBC will not provide DSL service in. A town about 10 miles from here is one of a handful of locations that SBC does provide DSL service in.
There are many alternatives however. Cox Communications has a strong broadband offering in many parts of the state, at least in many towns that SBC serves. There is also wireless broadband popping up in many locations.
They don't realize it, but they are just hurting themselves by not selling broadband here, as by the time they do, it will be too late.
1. Don't allocate a CLEC 10,000 phone numbers if they only need 300. This is solved by thousands nnumber block pooling, giving the CLEC 1,000 numbers with room to expand.
2. Do the same for wireless companies.
3. Begin looking at services where devices do not require unique telephone numbers. How about a phone number that rings my home phone, on no answer, it rings my cell phone, and if I don't answer that, go to my pager. It could be created by an alternate numbering scheme that the end user does not need to care about, but the telephone infrastructure can use to route the calls accoss the network.
It sounds like in your area, using the standard 802.11b frequencies would work for you in the ISM band. If its a rural area, with no broadband access, chances are the frequencies aren't very crowded either.
Just a tip, Linksys WAP11's work great as point to point wireless bridges, I've got them easily spanning 4 miles into town with a couple of grid antennas, using the standard ISM frequencies, none of the HAM frequencies I am licensed to use.
The posting shows the ARRL's name the "Amateur Radio Relay Legue," this isn't quite right. The ARRL is actually the American Radio Relay League, a National Association, primarily for Amateur Radio operators and interesed parties. It now has over 163,000 members and a staff of 120.
In Kansas, there are many rural places that have no cable period. I live on the edge of a small town, but Cox will not run cable the extra 6 blocks to make it to my house. If they did, I could have TV and internet. As it is, Satellite is the only option. Luckily, I have my home made wireless connection to a cable modem further into town that takes care of the internet access part.
Yeah, and nobody's ever going to need more than 640KB of RAM either...
Re:Why should we care?
on
Root Zone Changed
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Without getting extremely technical with it, this mostly affects your ISP. If your ISP does not update their root zone files, when you attempt to resolve a website, your ISP has one less server for it to resolve the root server for and CC top level domains, as well as.com,.org,.net, etc.
Digital television won't affect small towns very badly. Many small towns are still on the 460 mHz band, rather than the higher bands that Digital TV will use. Remember, the FCC is clearing out the lower broadcast bands and moving everything up into the UHF and Microwave bands, where police don't do a whole lot of talking.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the RCA Scenium TV's that I have seen actually have an ethernet port in the back of them, and it periodically makes software updates available to you for the television. Presumably, this could include new decoders for differing formats.
I believe they are able to keep the analog signal operational in the area until 75-90% or so have upgraded to recieve a digital signal in their market.
That's correct...its pretty unfair. A lot of the students (read: non CS) that live off-campus simply go with cable, because it winds up a bit cheaper than SBC does. Of course, they block servers and are otherwise a bit restrictive with other stuff.
Me on the other hand, I still live on campus so I've got cheap connectivity in my place, with nice fast access to I2 as well.
I'm still a couple of years out from graduation so that's going to be a while, but I'm always looking for a good internship :-)
I know a couple of their techs in the area, but they're not where the problem comes from. It looks to me the problem primarily comes from their corporate arm, the people that cook up this stuff.
.NOSPAM. with @, obviously :-) )
Winfield's economy isn't too bad these days. They haven't had quite the hit in jobs that Ark City has taken.
By the way, I'm pretty sure we've met. I was involved for a while with the ham radio club in Cowley County when I was younger and remember hanging around and seeing you do some repeater work on the old 147.00 machine one Saturday morning. Shoot me an e-mail at radio.NOSPAM.bmit.net (replace
My hometown is Winfield, but I'm a computer science student at K-State in Manhattan at the moment.
Kansas also has a no call list that does not allow telemarketers to call people on the list. You sign up for the list on the internet or call a phone number to have it added. Kansas is far more advanced than most people realize, when it comes to technology.
We may not have DSL service in 90% of the state, but we have wireless, cable and other alternatives.
I am a student at Kansas State University in Manhattan, and my apartment in Manhattan does have DSL service provided by SBC. I am priviliged to live in one of the 24 towns they provide service in. (For 10 months out of the year anyway)
In most cases in KS, the landscape is completely populated by SBC. I live in a town of 14,000 people in rural Kansas.. Its large enough that a complete telecommunications cooperative is not feasible. When you have a situation like that, you can't reasonably wire an area like that, its cost prohibitive, and it would be quite a trick to get permits to hang wire on poles and/or bury the lines.
Luckily, in that same town, wireless is starting to pop up around the state, and that will save us. Wireless will be our answer to this.
There are many areas in Kansas that SBC couldn't care less about. Those areas are served by smaller companies, that many will tell you provide much better service, and customer service than Bell companies typically do.
A few of these are:
Southern KS Telephone Company
Twin Valley Telephone Company
Sprint (Believe it or not, they service Oxford, KS with 455 people in town)
among many others.
Not everything is owned by a Baby Bell. One might want to stop and consider that its probably a good thing too.
The issue is, there are not very many DSL capable central offices in the first place, let alone repeaters on the end of their lines. It sounds to me that they are going to refuse to upgrade the rest of the CO's. The bad part is, in a way, the consumers lose something either way.
Check out this map of capable CO's in Kansas, on DSL Reports.
I live in a town in KS that SBC will not provide DSL service in. A town about 10 miles from here is one of a handful of locations that SBC does provide DSL service in.
There are many alternatives however. Cox Communications has a strong broadband offering in many parts of the state, at least in many towns that SBC serves. There is also wireless broadband popping up in many locations.
They don't realize it, but they are just hurting themselves by not selling broadband here, as by the time they do, it will be too late.
damn...can't type.
Netgear equipment has a default password of 1234.
Not netgeat...err
The default password on a lot of Netgeat equipment is also 1234, with a username of admin.
I can solve it today:
1. Don't allocate a CLEC 10,000 phone numbers if they only need 300. This is solved by thousands nnumber block pooling, giving the CLEC 1,000 numbers with room to expand.
2. Do the same for wireless companies.
3. Begin looking at services where devices do not require unique telephone numbers. How about a phone number that rings my home phone, on no answer, it rings my cell phone, and if I don't answer that, go to my pager. It could be created by an alternate numbering scheme that the end user does not need to care about, but the telephone infrastructure can use to route the calls accoss the network.
Yes, as of 32 comments in, its down. Not the record by a long shot, but impressive no less.
My question is, what were 158 hard drives doing with an average of more than 31 credit card numbers each? Sounds a little shady to me.
It sounds like in your area, using the standard 802.11b frequencies would work for you in the ISM band. If its a rural area, with no broadband access, chances are the frequencies aren't very crowded either.
Just a tip, Linksys WAP11's work great as point to point wireless bridges, I've got them easily spanning 4 miles into town with a couple of grid antennas, using the standard ISM frequencies, none of the HAM frequencies I am licensed to use.
The posting shows the ARRL's name the "Amateur Radio Relay Legue," this isn't quite right. The ARRL is actually the American Radio Relay League, a National Association, primarily for Amateur Radio operators and interesed parties. It now has over 163,000 members and a staff of 120.
Yeah, uh, it was a joke. I'm not a dumbass, AND I have a sense of humor.
Oh, and you have to love those x10 cameras with the nice popup ads too...I bet a lot of slashdot knows what those are, whether they'd like to or not.
:-)
Sure makes Mozilla nice...."Open unrequested windows....unchecked!"
Checking on your kids while you're at work my ass...we all know what they're for
In Kansas, there are many rural places that have no cable period. I live on the edge of a small town, but Cox will not run cable the extra 6 blocks to make it to my house. If they did, I could have TV and internet. As it is, Satellite is the only option. Luckily, I have my home made wireless connection to a cable modem further into town that takes care of the internet access part.
Yeah, and nobody's ever going to need more than 640KB of RAM either...
Without getting extremely technical with it, this mostly affects your ISP. If your ISP does not update their root zone files, when you attempt to resolve a website, your ISP has one less server for it to resolve the root server for and CC top level domains, as well as .com, .org, .net, etc.
Digital television won't affect small towns very badly. Many small towns are still on the 460 mHz band, rather than the higher bands that Digital TV will use. Remember, the FCC is clearing out the lower broadcast bands and moving everything up into the UHF and Microwave bands, where police don't do a whole lot of talking.