This is not a brain dead comment. There are resources that the two collectively have that they both need. It makes sense for them to be one company.
First of all, they need the spectrum. They carry basically the same thing on 2 different sets of spectrum. Eliminate this, and they can use it to provide HDTV and other content.
The bigger issue, for me anyway is that of local channels. I live on the fringe of the Wichita KS market, and satellite reception of local affiliates up there is poor, at best. I would qualify for recieving the national feed, which winds up being a New York affiliate, I believe. The issue at hand is however, some people actually miss the local news, I don't want to watch NYC local news.
This deal was pretty much dead on arrival due to the current political regeme. This really isn't that big of news, considering the FCC already has blocked it. That nailed 9/10 nails in the coffin.
That being said, it would be good for competition, because it would allow better competition with cable companies...the FCC/DOJ look at it totally wrong. SatTV as a whole competes with cable. It should be labeled the same thing.
Analog phones have never had this feature to throttle power up and down, because they have never had a *need* for it. They have a dedicated channel at the tower site, there is no sharing.
There are a few more providers of CDMA service. The main one you have left off is probably Alltel. It is definitely not the largest, with a mere 7 million subscribers, but they do provide good CDMA coverage, mostly in the Southwest, but have recently bought CenturyTel in Michigan, and they are converting their AMPS/TDMA network to CDMA Rather aggreesively.
What makes Alltel significant is that they are one of Verizon's major partners in the America's Choice plans, which give free roaming on Alltel's network to Verizon Customers.
Also, Verizon and Alltel do not lock their CDMA phones. I have a Startac 7868W 800/1900 CDMA phone that I can change whatever I like on. Read the alt.cellular.verizon newsgroups, they all have unlocked phones. I know of people who have taken their phones between the two.
In the v2.2 WAP11, the specifications call for 100mW power output, but in actual testing, this number is shown to be 50-75mW. This is however still an improvement over the 1.1 WAP11, which was only able to transmit at 25-50mW.
The part that makes me wonder what the big deal is, the new firmware releases, and particularly the 2.2 version of the Linksys WAP11 is, there is an access point client mode on them. It works very well. Does anyone know if the AP will act as a client to non-linksys AP's?
I don't particularly like them, but this sounds like the kind of thing Earthlink might do, speaking of other ISP's. I've always been impressed with the privacy policies that they enforce, as well as their new software, which actually includes a popup ad killer. If they had broadband in my area, I would probably switch to them, because I support their ideas.
Part of the problem with this is, many ISP's do not recieve an unlimited amount of bandwidth from their upstream. Metered T-1 and DS-3 lines are available from most Tier 1 ISP's, and at the end of the month, the ISP pays for the average bandwidth utilization on that line, whether the utilization was in the day or at night.
How about bluetooth? Or a USB Dongle to make it wireless. Not one of those big bulky Logitech Dongles, but one of those nice ones that sticks out about an inch off of the usb port?
Hmm...doesn't sound like they're doing anything that the rest of the world has already done. Doesn't GSM do instant messaging, etc? The one thing I don't think is in it as a standard is probably video/picture transfer.
Yeah, SSH can really suck over dialup as well. With at least 180ms latency, usually more, trying to remote admin my linux boxes at work and other places really sucks, especially when I'm used to doing it all day over a LAN, or now, over my 1 mbps fixed wireless connection. SSH/Web/IRC doesn't take very much bandwith and all, I'd love to pay less for it.
Re:out of the technical journal DUH.
on
Kazaa Usability Study
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Actually, the technology is very different. Yes, it will equal the same in the end, eventully it will get crowded and cause collisions, but it will happen less quickly than it did with 802.11b.
802.11a uses a technology called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), which significantly increases channel availability, mostly due to its ability to split them into seperate, more unique channels. It manages to create more independant channels by combining low speed subcarriers into a larger high-speed channel.
802.11a will have an easier time of it than 802.11b will, as it has many more unique frequencies. In 802.11b, the unique ones are 1, 6 and 11, but in 802.11a there are many more channels, eight channels. This means there should be less collisions than on 802.11b as there is much more spectrum to play with.
Actually, according to the article, we are both right. There are two major expenses, routers that route information to the customers, and the cost of buying bandwidth from backbone providers.
"Among the added expenses as more customers use more of the network's capacity are the boxes that route Internet information to individual users and the costs of buying more bandwidth from Internet "backbone" providers such as AT&T Corp. and Sprint PCS Group, which charge Comcast on a volume basis to ship data over long distances."
Which providers, and from where to where? I'll bet that 100mbps probably doesn't include the fiber it takes to get it from the backbone to the ISP's gateway, which will cost almost as much as the bandwidth itself, depending on your telco. Still, $3000 a month is an excellent price for 100mbps of bandwidth. I'd love to hear from who, if you don't mind.
Actually, even on customer-owned CPE, Comcast can still throttle users back. When a modem boots up, it starts listening for its downstream data channel, and gets an IP address, usually via DHCP. there is a DHCP tag in there for the address of the TFTP server, where it downloads its configuration file. This file contains things like upstream and downstream speeds, number of users (MAC addresses) to allow, etc. The modem is not user-configurable, at least legitimately:-) Its normally done by the ISP.
But you are affecting others. This is a problem that not only plagues cable, but DSL providers as well. All traffic is aggregated at some point. Sure, your neighbor uses DSL as well, maybe even from the same provider as you. You're not sharing bandwidth with him in your neighborhood, but he goes out the same pipe to the backbone that you do.
The problem with this idea is, ISP's *must* depend on this idea to succeed. I realize it is frustrating for the end user to have restrictions like this, but say for example, me, the Network Admin of a broadband ISP wants 1.5 megabits of bandwidth. I call my rep at UUNet and say, I want a T-1. Its going to cost me $1400 per month. Now, you, the user, wants this for $50/month. See why we might want to oversell this just a bit? Contrary to popular belief, ISP's do not get bandwidth for free.
I use my Motorola 7868W phone all over the place. It happens to be a Tri-Band phone, with AMPS (Analog) CDMA800 and CDMA1900. My home carrier is ALLTEL Communications which seems to do a fairly good job. I live in the flat plains of northern kansas, so dropped calls are rare. The only problems are busy towers, as trunks get tied up, it gets hard to get incoming calls on occasion.
My phone roams anywhere I need to go. If I want to go down I-35 into Oklahoma, I hop on Sprint's PCS system, which alltel has a roaming agreement with.
There is some interoperability, but I do agree that I should be able to take my phone and put it on whatever carrier I like. The fact that I roam with Sprint, should mean that I can activate my phone with sprint, but sadly, that is not the case.
Ok, I know that there are lots of samba developers here in the U.S., but is this as enforcable in other counties equally as well?
It would greatly hinder development, but what if the protocol work was done overseas? Software is regulated in different ways in different locations.
Just a thought
Re:perl is for freaky people
on
Exegesis 4 Out
·
· Score: 1
Alright, I'll stick up for good 'ol perl.
I started out with my admin career with perl, and I'll tell you, it takes a minimal amount of time to be able to read it, and with a little practice, not very much more time to actually create good time saving tasks with it. I'm sure others can vouch for it better than I can.
I will start out by saying, I'll never switch until I have to. I am far more accurate and faster with a keyboard then I ever will be with a pen. That having been said however, I can understand how this could bring about a new generation of computer users. They will no longer have to take typing in schools, and they will learn pen input from the ground up. I can see where that could have its own set of advantages.
Watch out for the RIAA Flexstorm...a cheaper, easier to handle device that can play music? That doesn't sound like something the RIAA would like to have around to me. Now, if you just added a little bit of encryption to that, maybe some region encoding (DVD's do it, why not CD's), and maybe some new fangled copy protection that won't let you play it in my PC, there you might have a product they'll approve of.
But on a serious note, good luck, hope it takes off, and how soon until I can get a FlexCD-R?
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a brain dead comment. There are resources that the two collectively have that they both need. It makes sense for them to be one company.
First of all, they need the spectrum. They carry basically the same thing on 2 different sets of spectrum. Eliminate this, and they can use it to provide HDTV and other content.
The bigger issue, for me anyway is that of local channels. I live on the fringe of the Wichita KS market, and satellite reception of local affiliates up there is poor, at best. I would qualify for recieving the national feed, which winds up being a New York affiliate, I believe. The issue at hand is however, some people actually miss the local news, I don't want to watch NYC local news.
You could always overlay several of them if you had to. 802.11b allows for 3 completely unique channels to be used 1, 6 and 11.
The thing looks fairly expandable as well, it probably is no trick to add to it.
This deal was pretty much dead on arrival due to the current political regeme. This really isn't that big of news, considering the FCC already has blocked it. That nailed 9/10 nails in the coffin.
That being said, it would be good for competition, because it would allow better competition with cable companies...the FCC/DOJ look at it totally wrong. SatTV as a whole competes with cable. It should be labeled the same thing.
Analog phones have never had this feature to throttle power up and down, because they have never had a *need* for it. They have a dedicated channel at the tower site, there is no sharing.
Acutally, Cingular's network is largely TDMA, with a few select areas upgraded to GSM so far, with the rest on the way.
There are a few more providers of CDMA service. The main one you have left off is probably Alltel. It is definitely not the largest, with a mere 7 million subscribers, but they do provide good CDMA coverage, mostly in the Southwest, but have recently bought CenturyTel in Michigan, and they are converting their AMPS/TDMA network to CDMA Rather aggreesively.
What makes Alltel significant is that they are one of Verizon's major partners in the America's Choice plans, which give free roaming on Alltel's network to Verizon Customers.
Also, Verizon and Alltel do not lock their CDMA phones. I have a Startac 7868W 800/1900 CDMA phone that I can change whatever I like on. Read the alt.cellular.verizon newsgroups, they all have unlocked phones. I know of people who have taken their phones between the two.
In the v2.2 WAP11, the specifications call for 100mW power output, but in actual testing, this number is shown to be 50-75mW. This is however still an improvement over the 1.1 WAP11, which was only able to transmit at 25-50mW.
The part that makes me wonder what the big deal is, the new firmware releases, and particularly the 2.2 version of the Linksys WAP11 is, there is an access point client mode on them. It works very well. Does anyone know if the AP will act as a client to non-linksys AP's?
I don't particularly like them, but this sounds like the kind of thing Earthlink might do, speaking of other ISP's. I've always been impressed with the privacy policies that they enforce, as well as their new software, which actually includes a popup ad killer. If they had broadband in my area, I would probably switch to them, because I support their ideas.
Part of the problem with this is, many ISP's do not recieve an unlimited amount of bandwidth from their upstream. Metered T-1 and DS-3 lines are available from most Tier 1 ISP's, and at the end of the month, the ISP pays for the average bandwidth utilization on that line, whether the utilization was in the day or at night.
How about bluetooth? Or a USB Dongle to make it wireless. Not one of those big bulky Logitech Dongles, but one of those nice ones that sticks out about an inch off of the usb port?
Hmm...doesn't sound like they're doing anything that the rest of the world has already done. Doesn't GSM do instant messaging, etc? The one thing I don't think is in it as a standard is probably video/picture transfer.
Yeah, SSH can really suck over dialup as well. With at least 180ms latency, usually more, trying to remote admin my linux boxes at work and other places really sucks, especially when I'm used to doing it all day over a LAN, or now, over my 1 mbps fixed wireless connection. SSH/Web/IRC doesn't take very much bandwith and all, I'd love to pay less for it.
Looks like someone didn't read the Moderation Guidelines
Actually, the technology is very different. Yes, it will equal the same in the end, eventully it will get crowded and cause collisions, but it will happen less quickly than it did with 802.11b.
802.11a uses a technology called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), which significantly increases channel availability, mostly due to its ability to split them into seperate, more unique channels. It manages to create more independant channels by combining low speed subcarriers into a larger high-speed channel.
Check out this good article about this:
Proxim Article on OFDM and 802.11a
802.11a will have an easier time of it than 802.11b will, as it has many more unique frequencies. In 802.11b, the unique ones are 1, 6 and 11, but in 802.11a there are many more channels, eight channels. This means there should be less collisions than on 802.11b as there is much more spectrum to play with.
Actually, according to the article, we are both right. There are two major expenses, routers that route information to the customers, and the cost of buying bandwidth from backbone providers.
"Among the added expenses as more customers use more of the network's capacity are the boxes that route Internet information to individual users and the costs of buying more bandwidth from Internet "backbone" providers such as AT&T Corp. and Sprint PCS Group, which charge Comcast on a volume basis to ship data over long distances."
Which providers, and from where to where? I'll bet that 100mbps probably doesn't include the fiber it takes to get it from the backbone to the ISP's gateway, which will cost almost as much as the bandwidth itself, depending on your telco. Still, $3000 a month is an excellent price for 100mbps of bandwidth. I'd love to hear from who, if you don't mind.
Actually, even on customer-owned CPE, Comcast can still throttle users back. When a modem boots up, it starts listening for its downstream data channel, and gets an IP address, usually via DHCP. there is a DHCP tag in there for the address of the TFTP server, where it downloads its configuration file. This file contains things like upstream and downstream speeds, number of users (MAC addresses) to allow, etc. The modem is not user-configurable, at least legitimately :-) Its normally done by the ISP.
But you are affecting others. This is a problem that not only plagues cable, but DSL providers as well. All traffic is aggregated at some point. Sure, your neighbor uses DSL as well, maybe even from the same provider as you. You're not sharing bandwidth with him in your neighborhood, but he goes out the same pipe to the backbone that you do.
The problem with this idea is, ISP's *must* depend on this idea to succeed. I realize it is frustrating for the end user to have restrictions like this, but say for example, me, the Network Admin of a broadband ISP wants 1.5 megabits of bandwidth. I call my rep at UUNet and say, I want a T-1. Its going to cost me $1400 per month. Now, you, the user, wants this for $50/month. See why we might want to oversell this just a bit? Contrary to popular belief, ISP's do not get bandwidth for free.
I use my Motorola 7868W phone all over the place. It happens to be a Tri-Band phone, with AMPS (Analog) CDMA800 and CDMA1900. My home carrier is ALLTEL Communications which seems to do a fairly good job. I live in the flat plains of northern kansas, so dropped calls are rare. The only problems are busy towers, as trunks get tied up, it gets hard to get incoming calls on occasion.
My phone roams anywhere I need to go. If I want to go down I-35 into Oklahoma, I hop on Sprint's PCS system, which alltel has a roaming agreement with.
There is some interoperability, but I do agree that I should be able to take my phone and put it on whatever carrier I like. The fact that I roam with Sprint, should mean that I can activate my phone with sprint, but sadly, that is not the case.
Ok, I know that there are lots of samba developers here in the U.S., but is this as enforcable in other counties equally as well?
It would greatly hinder development, but what if the protocol work was done overseas? Software is regulated in different ways in different locations.
Just a thought
Alright, I'll stick up for good 'ol perl.
I started out with my admin career with perl, and I'll tell you, it takes a minimal amount of time to be able to read it, and with a little practice, not very much more time to actually create good time saving tasks with it. I'm sure others can vouch for it better than I can.
I will start out by saying, I'll never switch until I have to. I am far more accurate and faster with a keyboard then I ever will be with a pen. That having been said however, I can understand how this could bring about a new generation of computer users. They will no longer have to take typing in schools, and they will learn pen input from the ground up. I can see where that could have its own set of advantages.
Watch out for the RIAA Flexstorm...a cheaper, easier to handle device that can play music? That doesn't sound like something the RIAA would like to have around to me. Now, if you just added a little bit of encryption to that, maybe some region encoding (DVD's do it, why not CD's), and maybe some new fangled copy protection that won't let you play it in my PC, there you might have a product they'll approve of.
But on a serious note, good luck, hope it takes off, and how soon until I can get a FlexCD-R?