Do you think maybe that might have something to do with the fact that when I was in college, a CD cost $10 - $12. I haven't bought music in a store in a while, but the last time I did, I paid about $18 for a CD. Both situations consider current popular music, not some old Led Zepplin CD's, new releases. This has only been during a period of about 5 or 6 years that these price differences have reared their ugly heads.
Even Best Buy's prices have started edging up over the last couple of years. (Hey, check this grammar out -> ) While still considerably lower (Best Buy that is) than most campus record stores, most college students cannot afford to pay the prices the music industry charges at music stores accessible to non-car-owning college students in order to make margins on their $0.50 production charge and $12.00 "distribution" expenses.
With the wide availability of music, and the low cost of shipping through the mail, the music labels cannot justify the prices of their products in my mind. Especially when I see musicians with gold records going broke.
I live in L.A. now (yuck!) and the few musical artists I've talked to (and most others for that fact) seem to agree that the musicians make about $0.50 per disk sold. Some would even say that that number is high. Granted this is useless anecdotal evidence, but the fact that I've never heard of a musician reaping $5.00 per disk (which would come closer to justifying the price of a $15.00 CD) tells me I cannot be too far from the truth.
Breakdown:
-Burn CD $1 (that's a high estimate) -Pay the artist $1 (another high estimate IMHO) -Ship the CD $3.20 (USPS priority mail, up to 2 pounds...how many CD's in 2 pounds?) -Advertise...lessee here...put the music on the internet for free (not extremely expensive venture when talking about selling thousands of CD's a day)...let radio stations download the music and don't charge them royalties (a BS practice in my mind)...how much can this cost?
Oh, wait a second...I forgot the booze and couches and TV's and stereo equipment that even non-executive management gets at Universal Music Group (I seen it with my own eyes). That's gotta be where that extra $10.00 charge comes from? Duh?
"I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you?" Now therefore there is a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another . . . Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud your brethren. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not decieved; neither . . . idolaters . . . nor theives, nor covetous . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God."
I was able to spend a shitload of my parents money on Q-Link! Does that get me an interview? I seem to remember programming in BASIC on my Dad's TI-94A. I was able to download all kinds of warez on my Commodore 128! Hey, why don't you interview me?
Sorry folks, this is flamebait, but I figure having lots of karma is exactly what stories like this are for. This really sucks Taco. Don't let Jamie post crap like this any more.
Mike, no offense, but being a good coder, or even a smart kid in general, does not make you a good subject for a/. interview. I'm accustomed to seeing Nobel laureates and FSF gurus being interviewed here, and I have yet to meet a 14 year old that has enough life experience to make an interesting/. story. Come back in a decade, and we'll see what you have to say.
Very interesting comment. I do think you are spot on with the choice of the Russians for the living quarters of the station. They've definitely shown that Mir's life support systems have been very resiliant. Haven't they operated 10 years beyond their expected lifetime of 4 years?
It's nice to see some real living, breathing communists left amongst us. We should continue this thought and make all kinds of information illegal to disseminate. I think that if we make it illegal to disseminate information about how to make race cars we might save several lives per year because people cannot race unless they already know how to build a race car. We could even do the same to the auto industry. We could put cars off the road and save 50,000 (I think that's the current stat on motor vehicle deaths in the U.S. per year).
You know what...we could even make brewing of one's own beer difficult to do by making all of Micheal Jackson's beer books illegal.
You know what...let's burn all the copies of the Anarchists Cookbook to cut down on all the insurgency we experience here in the U.S.
I'm sure that there are several educational institutions around the country that are teaching subversive and dangerous information to their students, we should shut them down too.
Oh, and I do *get* your point you boorish fuck. Your argument in the above post is poor...you used the caffine comparison three separate times. And I don't think you get *it*. The author of the quote you used is not comparing caffine to methamphetamine, he is comparing ideas...abstract ideas. If you cannot think in abstraction, you will NEVER get *it*.
This world is never going to be a safe place to live, and you are not going to get your safe little boring utopia by outlawing what others have to say...what you will get is a revolution...and I'm not talking about the kind of governmental overthrow of a revolution, I'm talking about the kind of revolution that happened in the United States after Prohibition was passed. The mindset of the nation changed...and I think we are a long way from changing to what you think is right. Telling others what they can and cannot say is not what this county is about. If you think it is, go somewhere else...move to Cuba. I'm sure Castro will agree with you that providing instructions on the manufacture of methamphetamine should be banned. By the way, I hope your loins are as infertile as your imagination.
I wouldn't be surprised if that were true. I'm betting that Metallica is getting some kind of kickback from the RIAA in order to promote this anti-napster business. I'd really love to hear that come out in the news, that'd kill almost any artist-centric arguement that the RIAA might have.
Instead of automating the removal of advertising, just give users the option of clipping the first 30 seconds off of an mp3 file, or however long the ad is. That way, a user only has to be inconvenienced once and the file is good for further use.
BTW, to hell with the RIAA. Those bloodsucking bastards can all lose their jobs as far as I'm concerned. Recording artists get such a small percentage of the proceeds of record sales that the whole argument of napster and gnutella taking money away from the artists is bullshit.
I think the first thing that we do to make life better for recording artists is give artist 3 or 4 dollars an album sold, instead of 1 or half a dollar. Let the artists produce and sell their own material, either online, or through an online distributor. It's not like anyone needs anything other than a cd burner setup and printer for album covers and an ordertaking web site and UPS or Fedex to ship to record stores.
Record companies can burn. Record execs should not be forcefeeding us what they want us to listen to. If something is good, than it will be rated well on sites like mp3.com and no other advertisement need be made.
I'm with you on this. I've got GTE ADSL and the setup was nothing. I don't even think it took 30 minutes. Hell, I spent more time waiting in line at the UPS parcel pickup counter.
FYI for those of you using routers...don't bother. I can get multiple connections running at once by plugging the DSL modem into an uplink port on a little cheapo hub and use straight CAT 5 to hook up the ethernet cards on my machines.
23. The computer mouse was a brilliant invention, but we can see today that it is a bad design. Like any device that must be moved and placed precisely, it ought to provide tactile feedback; it doesn't.
Hello...ever hear of force-feedback?
This guy postulates and pontificates on a subject that he seems to know little about. Even his lexicon sucks..."cyberbodies"...gimme a break.
He bitches about all the flaws in todays computing environment, but doesn't seem to give us any solutions. I even went back and forced myself to read the article again (yech!) to make sure I wasn't wrong.
This guy is so full of BS it's coming out of his ears...what is this:
32. You shouldn't have to put files in directories. The directories should reach out and take them. If a file belongs in six directories, all six should reach out and grab it automatically, simultaneously.
So he's describing a semi-complicated linking system. BFD.
David Gelernter gives us nothing new here with his "Manifesto". BTW, I think anyone who publishes anything called a manifesto needs to have their head examined.
Perhaps to be considered offtopic by some, but Mr. Lackey did respond to my question and I feel obliged to thank him for his detailed and well thought out response.
It's agreements like this that keep Google from having to place ads on their search page. Hopefully they didn't sign an agreement not to compete with Yahoo!
These people are actors...not real people. Don't be so surprised when they make a nonsensical and selfish decision now and again. They have been doing it for 100 years.
I tried to get to the above link, but my corporate internet connection won't let me for some reason. Is this still alive? I know that this site is a parody/criticism of Bally Total Fitness (the bastards stole over $1000 from me).
I think that this peta thing is remarkably similar to the ballyssucks page. I remember that the ballyssucks page used to be the first link that would come up on a yahoo search of ballys.
Court rulings similar to the peta ruling are a dangerous precedent for the net and all of you should do whatever you can to stop this abuse of the law.
I recently read an article on http://www.slashdot.org concerning background checks and credit records. The discussion by the users that followed concerns me greatly.
The discussion was about whether or not companies that track information about individuals are liable for that information to be correct. Specifically, several anecdotes by the users referred to individuals not being able to secure employment because a background check that was done on the individual mistakenly listed the said individual as having committed a felony.
Currently there is no system in place that holds companies that do background checks (and credit checks for that matter) liable for the information that they provide. There are no penalties in place for companies that provide false or incorrect information. I believe there should be a law that makes these companies liable for the information that they provide to their customers about individuals.
Sincerely,
Joshua Gramlich
Everyone, go here and write your representative concerning this matter.
Jon, does someone just moderate you down every time you post outside of an article. I think these folks here that dislike you so would moderate your articles if they could!
Fear not my opinion, I like to see your articles get this place in a broil now and again. I also appreciate the fact that your most recent has garnered nearly 700 replies...even with all the professed JonKatz haters out here.
BTW, in a last attempt to stay ontopic, I agree that true or not, this post has to be the winner. see if CmdrTaco can pull up who that AC is for the prize!
I know this is really late and most likely redundant by now, but everyone's favorite reference, www.dictionary.com, says this:
virus (vrs) n., pl. viruses.
Any of various simple submicroscopic parasites of plants, animals, and bacteria that often cause disease and that consist essentially of a core of RNA or DNA surrounded by a protein coat. Unable to replicate without a host cell, viruses are typically not considered living organisms. A disease caused by a virus. Something that poisons one's soul or mind: the pernicious virus of racism. Computer Science. A computer virus.
The spread spectrum I am familiar with is the latter. The idea behind the technology we were working with would spread the carrier over a wide band with the "pseudorandom code" (same exact wording as what I'm accustomed to). An advantage was supposed to have been that the signal is very difficult to detect. It sounds like frequency hopping would be easy to detect because the carrier would spike along the spectrum whereas the direct sequenc is spread along many frequencies and on a spectrum analyzer, the signal looks like noise. It is almost undetectable among natural background noise.
Also difficult to jam as the ss modem is built to detect the signal in exactly the right spots.
BTW, thanks for clarifying the freq hopping and direct sequence thing!
"Freq hopping spread spectrum" as you have referred to it is the limit of my experience with spread spectrum technology then. I learned my stuff via the USAF satcom program. The spread spectrum modems that we dealt with were designed to be immune from jamming, eavesdropping and interference. The only problem with them was one needed a rubidium standard timing device to get them to synch up with each other. They were very touchy pieces of equipment. I believe the USAF finally dropped the use of them several years ago because they sucked so much. Not that SS is a bad technology, it certainly isn't, just that particular implementation of it.
As to modem, I mean the RF side of the equation. The modem that converts the data traffic from digital to an analog signal that can be transmitted inside an RF freq. Fer instance, equipment I've worked with in the past would be converted by the modem to a 70Mhz-ish signal to dump into the...ohhh, what was it called....it went: channels -> mux -> modem -> freq converter? -> transmitter and vice-versa.
The ss modems were a little different though. I can't even remember if it was really a modem, or they just called it that (sorry, 8 years of drunken stupor have separated my experience with this stuff from the present) for snicks. I do remember having to program the altitude of the satellite into the ss modem in order to get the timing down. It needed to calculate the propogation delay to the satellite in order to synch up. You'd think that.5 - 1 second wouldn't matter so much....
Frequencies work differently in different media. For instance, high frequency is very good through the atmosphere. It'll blow right through almost anything. That's why FM radio only has a range of 50 miles or so (depends on the power of the transmitter). FM signals will generally pass right through the upper atmosphere, while the lower frequency AM signals will bounce off and extend the range a couple of hundred miles.
Low freqs work well in a more densely packed media, such as water. Sonar and underwater communications devices use low frequencys. Those signals carry over long distances because of the media they are travelling through, rather than because the signals themselves.
Most microwave transmissions use very little power. Line of sight transmissions often use 10 watts or less. Even satellite transmission often use 10-20 watts of power. Do not put microwave communications in the same league with radars that are pumping out 10,000 watts to reach over 100 miles to bounce a signal off of something. Your microwave oven is more likely to kill a bird that a microwave comm link.
I don't know how correct your information is there. Just about all microwave transmission takes place in the Ghz range. Satellite uplink/downlink are frequently in the 8 - 25 Ghz range and line of site microwave is only slightly less.
Shorter wavelengths are better than longer for travelling through objects and over long distances (line of sight). Remember your 900Mhz cordless phone, now pushing up to the 2.4 Ghz range? The reason behind that is farther transmission with less interference.
As to the ISP you mentioned, did they use directional (parabolic) antennas? All microwave transmission is line of sight. You need really low frequencys, like AM to be able to go over the horizon. Unless of course, you've got a couple of thousand watts of transmitting power, and then you can do something called troposcatter. Ranges of over 100 miles are available in that situation.
Without anything blocking your view, you can easily get 30 miles by line of sight. Also consider all of the microwave links you will see the phone companies have connecting small villages and cities out in the boonies. They are much cheaper than stringing enough copper that far.
If you live in a downtown area, if you look to the tops of buildings, you'll see many antenna horns and dishes (look like dinner plates almost) littering the top of the skyline. All of those are high freq microwave links.
I looked into setting up some WAN links such as this with commercial equipment a couple of years ago. I think California Microwave and TRW were a couple of companies that make LOS (line of sight) microwave equipment designed exactly (or close enough) for this purpose.
At the time, the equipment was expensive, but still financially viable over a year or two compared to dedicated T1 lines. I believe in 1997 I was getting quotes of around $10,000 for a single 2 mbps link (anyone, which is it, Mbps or mbps?). The price of the link did not increase significantly as the speed went up. For instance, I belive it was only a couple of grand more for the 10 mbps link. The large initial cost was for the antenna systems and the radios. For instance, 10 mbps data and 2 mbps data traveled over the same frequency, but the 10 mbps equipment had tighter tolerences and was slightly more expensive.
Anyhow, the biggest problem with a system like this is security. To really secure a link like this, one will need a spread spectrum modem. Those aren't cheap. Spread spectrum "spreads" a data signal out over a wide band of frequency. If done correctly, the signal is difficult to detect apart from normal background noise. Also, to eavesdrop on the signal, one would need the right codes that the modem uses to spread the signal out and then put it back together.
For instance, with spread spectrum, one could transmit two different signals on (nearly) the same frequency, but because 2 different codes are used to split up the signals, they could be decoded at the distant end without interfering with each other.
Other advantages to spread spectrum include resistance to jamming and low succeptibility to background noise. One would be less likely to lose a signal due to rain or snow or some jerk with a 300 watt CB radio in his car.
I believe this microwave project will meet with success, but it won't be anywhere near what I would call reliable enough to use in a business environment.
I haven't seen this question yet, so now I ask. In order to do the proper due dililgence on this matter, I would like to know what you will do when you get shut down? I don't think it likely at all that the UK will not take a serious look at what you are doing and disagree with it. They are not going to allow you to operate within their territorial claim and not be subject to their laws. Period.
I've read that you have plans for other locations, but the information was very vague (as is this question;). What do you plan to do when, either the UK invades, the US invades (highly likely from where I sit, there are entirely too many people in this country that think that my business is their business), or some non-governmental organization invades? Why wouldn't some unscrupulous individual bent on corporate espionage and blackmail just hire some mercenaries and come steal your servers?
I love the idea, but this is just ridiculous. Unless you've got unlimited capital coming out of your ears, this is not going to happen. Even if the governments leave the physical location alone, they are bound to shut off your land lines. Satellite bandwidth is beyond prohibitively expensive right now and will remain so for many years. Do you plan to launch your own satellite and man your own ground station in some secret location in order to maintain connenctivity? Even that wouldn't be enough. Governments would find that and shut it down too...
I think the best recouse for something like this is to see the word get out about what a piece of crap their cd-rom drives are. Definitely get your money if you can, but with any luck, HP will get schooled by Johnny Customer and lose some business. That'll teach 'em good.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think maybe that might have something to do with the fact that when I was in college, a CD cost $10 - $12. I haven't bought music in a store in a while, but the last time I did, I paid about $18 for a CD. Both situations consider current popular music, not some old Led Zepplin CD's, new releases. This has only been during a period of about 5 or 6 years that these price differences have reared their ugly heads.
Even Best Buy's prices have started edging up over the last couple of years. (Hey, check this grammar out -> ) While still considerably lower (Best Buy that is) than most campus record stores, most college students cannot afford to pay the prices the music industry charges at music stores accessible to non-car-owning college students in order to make margins on their $0.50 production charge and $12.00 "distribution" expenses.
With the wide availability of music, and the low cost of shipping through the mail, the music labels cannot justify the prices of their products in my mind. Especially when I see musicians with gold records going broke.
I live in L.A. now (yuck!) and the few musical artists I've talked to (and most others for that fact) seem to agree that the musicians make about $0.50 per disk sold. Some would even say that that number is high. Granted this is useless anecdotal evidence, but the fact that I've never heard of a musician reaping $5.00 per disk (which would come closer to justifying the price of a $15.00 CD) tells me I cannot be too far from the truth.
Breakdown:
-Burn CD $1 (that's a high estimate)
-Pay the artist $1 (another high estimate IMHO)
-Ship the CD $3.20 (USPS priority mail, up to 2 pounds...how many CD's in 2 pounds?)
-Advertise...lessee here...put the music on the internet for free (not extremely expensive venture when talking about selling thousands of CD's a day)...let radio stations download the music and don't charge them royalties (a BS practice in my mind)...how much can this cost?
Oh, wait a second...I forgot the booze and couches and TV's and stereo equipment that even non-executive management gets at Universal Music Group (I seen it with my own eyes). That's gotta be where that extra $10.00 charge comes from? Duh?
...on corinthians.com?
"I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you?" Now therefore there is a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another . . . Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud your brethren. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not decieved; neither . . . idolaters . . . nor theives, nor covetous . . . shall inherit the kingdom of God."
Very pointed, I say...
I was able to spend a shitload of my parents money on Q-Link! Does that get me an interview? I seem to remember programming in BASIC on my Dad's TI-94A. I was able to download all kinds of warez on my Commodore 128! Hey, why don't you interview me?
/. interview. I'm accustomed to seeing Nobel laureates and FSF gurus being interviewed here, and I have yet to meet a 14 year old that has enough life experience to make an interesting /. story. Come back in a decade, and we'll see what you have to say.
Sorry folks, this is flamebait, but I figure having lots of karma is exactly what stories like this are for. This really sucks Taco. Don't let Jamie post crap like this any more.
Mike, no offense, but being a good coder, or even a smart kid in general, does not make you a good subject for a
Very interesting comment. I do think you are spot on with the choice of the Russians for the living quarters of the station. They've definitely shown that Mir's life support systems have been very resiliant. Haven't they operated 10 years beyond their expected lifetime of 4 years?
It's nice to see some real living, breathing communists left amongst us. We should continue this thought and make all kinds of information illegal to disseminate. I think that if we make it illegal to disseminate information about how to make race cars we might save several lives per year because people cannot race unless they already know how to build a race car. We could even do the same to the auto industry. We could put cars off the road and save 50,000 (I think that's the current stat on motor vehicle deaths in the U.S. per year).
You know what...we could even make brewing of one's own beer difficult to do by making all of Micheal Jackson's beer books illegal.
You know what...let's burn all the copies of the Anarchists Cookbook to cut down on all the insurgency we experience here in the U.S.
I'm sure that there are several educational institutions around the country that are teaching subversive and dangerous information to their students, we should shut them down too.
Oh, and I do *get* your point you boorish fuck. Your argument in the above post is poor...you used the caffine comparison three separate times. And I don't think you get *it*. The author of the quote you used is not comparing caffine to methamphetamine, he is comparing ideas...abstract ideas. If you cannot think in abstraction, you will NEVER get *it*.
This world is never going to be a safe place to live, and you are not going to get your safe little boring utopia by outlawing what others have to say...what you will get is a revolution...and I'm not talking about the kind of governmental overthrow of a revolution, I'm talking about the kind of revolution that happened in the United States after Prohibition was passed. The mindset of the nation changed...and I think we are a long way from changing to what you think is right. Telling others what they can and cannot say is not what this county is about. If you think it is, go somewhere else...move to Cuba. I'm sure Castro will agree with you that providing instructions on the manufacture of methamphetamine should be banned. By the way, I hope your loins are as infertile as your imagination.
I wouldn't be surprised if that were true. I'm betting that Metallica is getting some kind of kickback from the RIAA in order to promote this anti-napster business. I'd really love to hear that come out in the news, that'd kill almost any artist-centric arguement that the RIAA might have.
Instead of automating the removal of advertising, just give users the option of clipping the first 30 seconds off of an mp3 file, or however long the ad is. That way, a user only has to be inconvenienced once and the file is good for further use.
BTW, to hell with the RIAA. Those bloodsucking bastards can all lose their jobs as far as I'm concerned. Recording artists get such a small percentage of the proceeds of record sales that the whole argument of napster and gnutella taking money away from the artists is bullshit.
I think the first thing that we do to make life better for recording artists is give artist 3 or 4 dollars an album sold, instead of 1 or half a dollar. Let the artists produce and sell their own material, either online, or through an online distributor. It's not like anyone needs anything other than a cd burner setup and printer for album covers and an ordertaking web site and UPS or Fedex to ship to record stores.
Record companies can burn. Record execs should not be forcefeeding us what they want us to listen to. If something is good, than it will be rated well on sites like mp3.com and no other advertisement need be made.
I'm with you on this. I've got GTE ADSL and the setup was nothing. I don't even think it took 30 minutes. Hell, I spent more time waiting in line at the UPS parcel pickup counter.
FYI for those of you using routers...don't bother. I can get multiple connections running at once by plugging the DSL modem into an uplink port on a little cheapo hub and use straight CAT 5 to hook up the ethernet cards on my machines.
23. The computer mouse was a brilliant invention, but we can see today that it is a bad design. Like any device that must be moved and placed precisely, it ought to provide tactile feedback; it doesn't.
Hello...ever hear of force-feedback?
This guy postulates and pontificates on a subject that he seems to know little about. Even his lexicon sucks..."cyberbodies"...gimme a break.
He bitches about all the flaws in todays computing environment, but doesn't seem to give us any solutions. I even went back and forced myself to read the article again (yech!) to make sure I wasn't wrong.
This guy is so full of BS it's coming out of his ears...what is this:
32. You shouldn't have to put files in directories. The directories should reach out and take them. If a file belongs in six directories, all six should reach out and grab it automatically, simultaneously.
So he's describing a semi-complicated linking system. BFD.
David Gelernter gives us nothing new here with his "Manifesto". BTW, I think anyone who publishes anything called a manifesto needs to have their head examined.
Perhaps to be considered offtopic by some, but Mr. Lackey did respond to my question and I feel obliged to thank him for his detailed and well thought out response.
It's agreements like this that keep Google from having to place ads on their search page. Hopefully they didn't sign an agreement not to compete with Yahoo!
These people are actors...not real people. Don't be so surprised when they make a nonsensical and selfish decision now and again. They have been doing it for 100 years.
...or whatever it was called?
http://compupix.com/ballysucks
I tried to get to the above link, but my corporate internet connection won't let me for some reason. Is this still alive? I know that this site is a parody/criticism of Bally Total Fitness (the bastards stole over $1000 from me).
I think that this peta thing is remarkably similar to the ballyssucks page. I remember that the ballyssucks page used to be the first link that would come up on a yahoo search of ballys.
Court rulings similar to the peta ruling are a dangerous precedent for the net and all of you should do whatever you can to stop this abuse of the law.
Excerpt from an email I sent my Congressman:
I recently read an article on http://www.slashdot.org concerning background checks and credit records. The discussion by the users that followed concerns me greatly.
The discussion was about whether or not companies that track information about individuals are liable for that information to be correct. Specifically, several anecdotes by the users referred to individuals not being able to secure employment because a background check that was done on the individual mistakenly listed the said individual as having committed a felony.
Currently there is no system in place that holds companies that do background checks (and credit checks for that matter) liable for the information that they provide. There are no penalties in place for companies that provide false or incorrect information. I believe there should be a law that makes these companies liable for the information that they provide to their customers about individuals.
Sincerely,
Joshua Gramlich
Everyone, go here and write your representative concerning this matter.
Jon, does someone just moderate you down every time you post outside of an article. I think these folks here that dislike you so would moderate your articles if they could!
Fear not my opinion, I like to see your articles get this place in a broil now and again. I also appreciate the fact that your most recent has garnered nearly 700 replies...even with all the professed JonKatz haters out here.
BTW, in a last attempt to stay ontopic, I agree that true or not, this post has to be the winner. see if CmdrTaco can pull up who that AC is for the prize!
I know this is really late and most likely redundant by now, but everyone's favorite reference, www.dictionary.com, says this:
- --------------------------------
virus (vrs)
n., pl. viruses.
Any of various simple submicroscopic parasites of plants, animals, and bacteria that often cause disease and that consist essentially of a core of RNA or DNA surrounded by a protein coat. Unable to replicate without a host cell, viruses are typically not considered living organisms.
A disease caused by a virus.
Something that poisons one's soul or mind: the pernicious virus of racism.
Computer Science. A computer virus.
-----------------------------------------------
The spread spectrum I am familiar with is the latter. The idea behind the technology we were working with would spread the carrier over a wide band with the "pseudorandom code" (same exact wording as what I'm accustomed to). An advantage was supposed to have been that the signal is very difficult to detect. It sounds like frequency hopping would be easy to detect because the carrier would spike along the spectrum whereas the direct sequenc is spread along many frequencies and on a spectrum analyzer, the signal looks like noise. It is almost undetectable among natural background noise.
Also difficult to jam as the ss modem is built to detect the signal in exactly the right spots.
BTW, thanks for clarifying the freq hopping and direct sequence thing!
"Freq hopping spread spectrum" as you have referred to it is the limit of my experience with spread spectrum technology then. I learned my stuff via the USAF satcom program. The spread spectrum modems that we dealt with were designed to be immune from jamming, eavesdropping and interference. The only problem with them was one needed a rubidium standard timing device to get them to synch up with each other. They were very touchy pieces of equipment. I believe the USAF finally dropped the use of them several years ago because they sucked so much. Not that SS is a bad technology, it certainly isn't, just that particular implementation of it.
.5 - 1 second wouldn't matter so much....
As to modem, I mean the RF side of the equation. The modem that converts the data traffic from digital to an analog signal that can be transmitted inside an RF freq. Fer instance, equipment I've worked with in the past would be converted by the modem to a 70Mhz-ish signal to dump into the...ohhh, what was it called....it went: channels -> mux -> modem -> freq converter? -> transmitter and vice-versa.
The ss modems were a little different though. I can't even remember if it was really a modem, or they just called it that (sorry, 8 years of drunken stupor have separated my experience with this stuff from the present) for snicks. I do remember having to program the altitude of the satellite into the ss modem in order to get the timing down. It needed to calculate the propogation delay to the satellite in order to synch up. You'd think that
You're right, horrible example on my part. Here's something VERY interesting though:
Electromagnetic Wave
Frequencies work differently in different media. For instance, high frequency is very good through the atmosphere. It'll blow right through almost anything. That's why FM radio only has a range of 50 miles or so (depends on the power of the transmitter). FM signals will generally pass right through the upper atmosphere, while the lower frequency AM signals will bounce off and extend the range a couple of hundred miles.
Low freqs work well in a more densely packed media, such as water. Sonar and underwater communications devices use low frequencys. Those signals carry over long distances because of the media they are travelling through, rather than because the signals themselves.
Most microwave transmissions use very little power. Line of sight transmissions often use 10 watts or less. Even satellite transmission often use 10-20 watts of power. Do not put microwave communications in the same league with radars that are pumping out 10,000 watts to reach over 100 miles to bounce a signal off of something. Your microwave oven is more likely to kill a bird that a microwave comm link.
I don't know how correct your information is there. Just about all microwave transmission takes place in the Ghz range. Satellite uplink/downlink are frequently in the 8 - 25 Ghz range and line of site microwave is only slightly less.
Shorter wavelengths are better than longer for travelling through objects and over long distances (line of sight). Remember your 900Mhz cordless phone, now pushing up to the 2.4 Ghz range? The reason behind that is farther transmission with less interference.
As to the ISP you mentioned, did they use directional (parabolic) antennas? All microwave transmission is line of sight. You need really low frequencys, like AM to be able to go over the horizon. Unless of course, you've got a couple of thousand watts of transmitting power, and then you can do something called troposcatter. Ranges of over 100 miles are available in that situation.
Without anything blocking your view, you can easily get 30 miles by line of sight. Also consider all of the microwave links you will see the phone companies have connecting small villages and cities out in the boonies. They are much cheaper than stringing enough copper that far.
If you live in a downtown area, if you look to the tops of buildings, you'll see many antenna horns and dishes (look like dinner plates almost) littering the top of the skyline. All of those are high freq microwave links.
I looked into setting up some WAN links such as this with commercial equipment a couple of years ago. I think California Microwave and TRW were a couple of companies that make LOS (line of sight) microwave equipment designed exactly (or close enough) for this purpose.
At the time, the equipment was expensive, but still financially viable over a year or two compared to dedicated T1 lines. I believe in 1997 I was getting quotes of around $10,000 for a single 2 mbps link (anyone, which is it, Mbps or mbps?). The price of the link did not increase significantly as the speed went up. For instance, I belive it was only a couple of grand more for the 10 mbps link. The large initial cost was for the antenna systems and the radios. For instance, 10 mbps data and 2 mbps data traveled over the same frequency, but the 10 mbps equipment had tighter tolerences and was slightly more expensive.
Anyhow, the biggest problem with a system like this is security. To really secure a link like this, one will need a spread spectrum modem. Those aren't cheap. Spread spectrum "spreads" a data signal out over a wide band of frequency. If done correctly, the signal is difficult to detect apart from normal background noise. Also, to eavesdrop on the signal, one would need the right codes that the modem uses to spread the signal out and then put it back together.
For instance, with spread spectrum, one could transmit two different signals on (nearly) the same frequency, but because 2 different codes are used to split up the signals, they could be decoded at the distant end without interfering with each other.
Other advantages to spread spectrum include resistance to jamming and low succeptibility to background noise. One would be less likely to lose a signal due to rain or snow or some jerk with a 300 watt CB radio in his car.
I believe this microwave project will meet with success, but it won't be anywhere near what I would call reliable enough to use in a business environment.
I haven't seen this question yet, so now I ask. In order to do the proper due dililgence on this matter, I would like to know what you will do when you get shut down? I don't think it likely at all that the UK will not take a serious look at what you are doing and disagree with it. They are not going to allow you to operate within their territorial claim and not be subject to their laws. Period.
;). What do you plan to do when, either the UK invades, the US invades (highly likely from where I sit, there are entirely too many people in this country that think that my business is their business), or some non-governmental organization invades? Why wouldn't some unscrupulous individual bent on corporate espionage and blackmail just hire some mercenaries and come steal your servers?
I've read that you have plans for other locations, but the information was very vague (as is this question
I love the idea, but this is just ridiculous. Unless you've got unlimited capital coming out of your ears, this is not going to happen. Even if the governments leave the physical location alone, they are bound to shut off your land lines. Satellite bandwidth is beyond prohibitively expensive right now and will remain so for many years. Do you plan to launch your own satellite and man your own ground station in some secret location in order to maintain connenctivity? Even that wouldn't be enough. Governments would find that and shut it down too...
I think the best recouse for something like this is to see the word get out about what a piece of crap their cd-rom drives are. Definitely get your money if you can, but with any luck, HP will get schooled by Johnny Customer and lose some business. That'll teach 'em good.