I work as a contractor for a major Cellular company who will remain nameless (Sprint PCS). The service sucks, but they have some kewl thigs i the works. I work on the side of the house that builds new networks, and it takes a lot of time and money to build them. Who has the right technology? Well that's very hard to say. Sprit and Verison (GTE, Airtouch, PrimeCo, Bell Atlantic) all chose CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). PacBell and a few others chose GSM (General Services Mobile) the European standard, and AT&T (Cellular One, Houston Cellular, etc) chose to use IS-95 (D-AMPS? Digital Adanced Mobile Phone System). Then Nextel chose Motorola's IDEN system (A TDMA derivitive. Time Division Multiple Access).
All have their advantages and disadvantages. CDMA is a very elegant and rather efficient way to interface with the air (radio spectrum), however the networks are a little trickier to set up and the technology is the newest. The derivitaves of TDMA require a lot more control centraly but do not require as much inteligence at the Cell Site or the hadset as CDMA.
The advantage of going for something like CDMA is that handoffs between Sectors and Cells is seamless as the phone may actualy chat with more than one Cell at a time, thus creating a form of redundancy. Also as the bandwidth is increased from say 1.5Mhz to 3Mhz the capacity and clarity are increased as CDMA uses spread spectrum. However CDMA suffers from one major problem, Interferance. CDMA is designed to work at the noise floor (The point where the squelch knob on your CB causes silence). When the noise floor is raised the handset must increase power, and if you are away from the site you may not have enough power, and will drop or the forward error correction will go through the roof, causing the lovely digital stutter.
TDMA on the other hand is designed more like the old analog systems, only digital with cooler features and greater capacity. My knowledge in this area is weak at the momet so feel free to correct. You can only chat with one site at a time and there are no soft handoffs, only hard ones (requireing a frequency hop). The problem here is that for a split second you do not exist on the network and your call is very voulerable to be dropped. Also the bandwidth is more fixed than CDMA and the scalability is not as linear. The good side of TDMA and such is that the equipment has been around longer is more tested and cheaper.
I work in the cellular industry and I'm glad I won't have to stand next to my test transmitter during the storm. Not like anything is really going to happen, but It would certinly affect the data I gather from the drive I have to do for that transmitter...:-)
My parents are US citizens working in Moscow and my mom has told me that several times she has picked up the phone to find it dead. When she asks if she has called the correct number she gets a responce "Certinly Not" in a perfect birttish accent. They have also said that they feel that the house is bugged to the point where my father will not discuss goings on in the office at home.
I have to say that when I went there you are under a lot of scuritny. It is not uncommon to be followed wile walking down the street or to have people watch you out of the corner of their eye.
On the lighter side, Moscow is one fun town to party and I very much liked the females.:-)
Isn't this similar to the Ameoba project I remember reading about in DDJ back in '94? I remember you could combine any kind of processor to create a larger "virtual" processor. It seemed like some pretty trick shtuff!
Is it so shameful?? What of the redneck jokes of a comptuer?? You know u're a redneck if your computer has a gun rack... etc... Why not look at it as a joke about the differences of our many unique cultures, not of Race... Nowhere else in the world have I seen so many people get so pissy about race... I'm sorry if this sounds like a flame, but I can't stand it when people say that we must take down this and that because it is "offensive" or is "derogitory to a race" or "racist." No it's CENSORSHIP! Hey I'm a white boy, but I don't mind jokes being made about the fact that I can't dance, can't play sports, and don't attract the ladies as well as people of other cultures.... So what, I'll laugh with you!
Hmmm maybe I have discovered a way to cook ala slashdot...:-)
Slashdot Steak: One juicy steak. BBQ or prefered maranade sauce... place steak on monitor.. post a flame on slashdot apply maranade to steak post a rebuttal flame to the earlier responces to the flame you had ealier. apply more maranade keep tending to the flames... making sure the steak is evenly cooked to the desired level..
How about a robotic penguin... Something where you another party is doin surgery on tux... It would ilustrate the ability for someone to really get under the hood of linux and change things... hmmm then there is the car motif... just a random musing...
that's the funny part to me... I have to reboot windows... well i guess it's no soo funny because it's normal... guess I'm gettin spoiled by linux... months of up time and lots o upgrades in the proces...;-)
I tried to download the move and windows media player poped up... it waited a while and then displayed this error message... I still can't stop laughing...!!! Windows Media Player cannot open 'mms://155.148.58.131/Mission56'. You may need to reboot to complete installation of a downloaded component. Please verify that the path and filename are correct and try again.
It's amazing how whenever I read about this stuff I get a warm fuzzy feeling. All of this great technology close at hand, a computer that uses a natural interface, human voice, and one that helps bring information closer to you at the beckoning of your voice. Then reality slams in. Somehow if and when this eventualy reaches the marketplace I forsee a system that is competative within itself and with another, and where the features are broken due to an upgrade in some obscure module. I could forsee an AOL-Oxygen, but if you decided to breath that then you might poison another person who breaths MS-Oxygen if you try to talk together, but then again, AT&T-Oxygen is really poisonous as they own the network.... The scientists who give these speaches always make it sound so cool......
The terrain is nice around Los Alamos, but I don't know any more. Although Austin Texas isn't bad. There is an AMD fab lab there I believe and a lot of computer companies. Plus there is no State Income tax, and there seems to be better phone competeition there, thus better prices. If California were run like Texas it might be better, just a thought.
I agree you do have massive flamebait there. Last night I met up with some friends in San Fransico, and we bummed around, talked on radios and had an awsome time discussing technology. Later I saw a group of about 200+ rolerbladers just blading through the city. In Houston prices were nowhere near as high as they are here, but there wasn't the diversity. There also weren't hundreds of companies with job openings, granted the Television industry was a little easier to get into in Texas. This place isn't for everyone, but nobody left their heart in Los Angeles, or New York, and wrote a song about it!
I live near the bay area, I state near. It takes me about 45 minutes to get to San Fransico WITHOUT traffic and traveling at 75+mph, and it's still expensive! Out here a house will go for about $450K+ for about 3K sq. ft. Why is it so expensive? Many reasons, one the terrain is beautiful, two demand and three everything is so taxed that prices naturaly go up. A gallon costs $1.69 at Chevron, to make maters worse, oil companies CANNOT buy gas from out of state, so when there is a production problem the gooey stinky smelly stuff hits the fan and evenly distributes. It is so bad I have a friend who is living in Jan Jose with a roomate in about 700sq ft for about 1200 a month (both combined). What really makes things bad is the beautiful terrain, just outside San Jose there are 1K+ ft hills. This terrain makes it difficult to build large plots on, plus people want to keep the hills clean and pretty, so you can't build there. This alone causes a downward spiral. I could rant and rave for a long time with what's wrong with California, but I forget all about it when I go for a drive in the hills not far from where I live or when I go to the Mountains about 2 hours away. It's a strange place!
yep, it looks like once again a site as fallen to the mass flood of hits. Dammit, and I wanted to say yes to stuff form them. I love their developmet environment, and I thought Delphi wasn't bad either.
Hey what about nominating Rob, for his most amazing use of Perl to create this most amazing of sites?! Plus He makes the source available to those at large for their pearl learning.
I agree, Having been to Nigeria twice to visit my parents I can say with experience that this could be a problem. In Nigeria NEPA (Nigerian Electrical Power Authority) really stands for Never Expect Power Again, and NiTel the national phone company has horrible lines in and out. When I was there about 1.5 years ago I stayed in a company compound with 5 leased lines going out. Only two or three of them were capable of handeling 2400 or greater bps! Now granted I think such a thing would be great! I would have loved to have internet access while there! I know that my experience does not talk for the whole of Africa, but it helps to shed some light on some of the potentialy bad problems. Besides let's not forget that many of the countries in West Africa have corrupt governments, and many get rich quick scams come from projects like this!
The most postitive thing I can think of for this would be that it would have the potential to bring Africa closer to the rest of the world, and that it might help to educate the people a little more and encourage grass-roots reform.
Africa is an amazing place and the people are some of the most friendly I have met anywhere in the world, I just don't trust some of the people in power.
Dammit! I'm out of paper towels to clean up the drool! Must download!
I was reading somewhere that NSCP 5 was not going to be derived from Mozilla. Is this true, or was I smoking something really good and need to remember where I stashed it?
Slashdot Mirror
I work as a contractor for a major Cellular company who will remain nameless (Sprint PCS). The service sucks, but they have some kewl thigs i the works. I work on the side of the house that builds new networks, and it takes a lot of time and money to build them. Who has the right technology? Well that's very hard to say. Sprit and Verison (GTE, Airtouch, PrimeCo, Bell Atlantic) all chose CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access). PacBell and a few others chose GSM (General Services Mobile) the European standard, and AT&T (Cellular One, Houston Cellular, etc) chose to use IS-95 (D-AMPS? Digital Adanced Mobile Phone System). Then Nextel chose Motorola's IDEN system (A TDMA derivitive. Time Division Multiple Access).
All have their advantages and disadvantages. CDMA is a very elegant and rather efficient way to interface with the air (radio spectrum), however the networks are a little trickier to set up and the technology is the newest. The derivitaves of TDMA require a lot more control centraly but do not require as much inteligence at the Cell Site or the hadset as CDMA.
The advantage of going for something like CDMA is that handoffs between Sectors and Cells is seamless as the phone may actualy chat with more than one Cell at a time, thus creating a form of redundancy. Also as the bandwidth is increased from say 1.5Mhz to 3Mhz the capacity and clarity are increased as CDMA uses spread spectrum. However CDMA suffers from one major problem, Interferance. CDMA is designed to work at the noise floor (The point where the squelch knob on your CB causes silence). When the noise floor is raised the handset must increase power, and if you are away from the site you may not have enough power, and will drop or the forward error correction will go through the roof, causing the lovely digital stutter.
TDMA on the other hand is designed more like the old analog systems, only digital with cooler features and greater capacity. My knowledge in this area is weak at the momet so feel free to correct. You can only chat with one site at a time and there are no soft handoffs, only hard ones (requireing a frequency hop). The problem here is that for a split second you do not exist on the network and your call is very voulerable to be dropped. Also the bandwidth is more fixed than CDMA and the scalability is not as linear. The good side of TDMA and such is that the equipment has been around longer is more tested and cheaper.
I work in the cellular industry and I'm glad I won't have to stand next to my test transmitter during the storm. Not like anything is really going to happen, but It would certinly affect the data I gather from the drive I have to do for that transmitter... :-)
My parents are US citizens working in Moscow and my mom has told me that several times she has picked up the phone to find it dead. When she asks if she has called the correct number she gets a responce "Certinly Not" in a perfect birttish accent. They have also said that they feel that the house is bugged to the point where my father will not discuss goings on in the office at home.
:-)
I have to say that when I went there you are under a lot of scuritny. It is not uncommon to be followed wile walking down the street or to have people watch you out of the corner of their eye.
On the lighter side, Moscow is one fun town to party and I very much liked the females.
Isn't this similar to the Ameoba project I remember reading about in DDJ back in '94? I remember you could combine any kind of processor to create a larger "virtual" processor. It seemed like some pretty trick shtuff!
Is it so shameful?? What of the redneck jokes of a comptuer??
:-)
:-)
You know u're a redneck if your computer has a gun rack... etc...
Why not look at it as a joke about the differences of our many unique cultures, not of Race... Nowhere else in the world have I seen so many people get so pissy about race...
I'm sorry if this sounds like a flame, but I can't stand it when people say that we must take down this and that because it is "offensive" or is "derogitory to a race" or "racist." No it's CENSORSHIP!
Hey I'm a white boy, but I don't mind jokes being made about the fact that I can't dance, can't play sports, and don't attract the ladies as well as people of other cultures.... So what, I'll laugh with you!
Hmmm maybe I have discovered a way to cook ala slashdot...
Slashdot Steak:
One juicy steak.
BBQ or prefered maranade sauce...
place steak on monitor..
post a flame on slashdot
apply maranade to steak
post a rebuttal flame to the earlier responces to the flame you had ealier.
apply more maranade
keep tending to the flames... making sure the steak is evenly cooked to the desired level..
remove from monitor, and serve..
How about a robotic penguin... Something where you another party is doin surgery on tux... It would ilustrate the ability for someone to really get under the hood of linux and change things... hmmm then there is the car motif... just a random musing...
hmmm a penguin working on his car???
lol
;-)
that's the funny part to me... I have to reboot windows... well i guess it's no soo funny because it's normal... guess I'm gettin spoiled by linux... months of up time and lots o upgrades in the proces...
I tried to download the move and windows media player poped up... it waited a while and then displayed this error message... I still can't stop laughing...!!! Windows Media Player cannot open 'mms://155.148.58.131/Mission56'. You may need to reboot to complete installation of a downloaded component. Please verify that the path and filename are correct and try again.
It's amazing how whenever I read about this stuff I get a warm fuzzy feeling. All of this great technology close at hand, a computer that uses a natural interface, human voice, and one that helps bring information closer to you at the beckoning of your voice. Then reality slams in.
Somehow if and when this eventualy reaches the marketplace I forsee a system that is competative within itself and with another, and where the features are broken due to an upgrade in some obscure module. I could forsee an AOL-Oxygen, but if you decided to breath that then you might poison another person who breaths MS-Oxygen if you try to talk together, but then again, AT&T-Oxygen is really poisonous as they own the network....
The scientists who give these speaches always make it sound so cool......
The terrain is nice around Los Alamos, but I don't know any more. Although Austin Texas isn't bad. There is an AMD fab lab there I believe and a lot of computer companies. Plus there is no State Income tax, and there seems to be better phone competeition there, thus better prices. If California were run like Texas it might be better, just a thought.
I agree you do have massive flamebait there.
Last night I met up with some friends in San Fransico, and we bummed around, talked on radios and had an awsome time discussing technology. Later I saw a group of about 200+ rolerbladers just blading through the city. In Houston prices were nowhere near as high as they are here, but there wasn't the diversity. There also weren't hundreds of companies with job openings, granted the Television industry was a little easier to get into in Texas. This place isn't for everyone, but nobody left their heart in Los Angeles, or New York, and wrote a song about it!
I live near the bay area, I state near. It takes me about 45 minutes to get to San Fransico WITHOUT traffic and traveling at 75+mph, and it's still expensive! Out here a house will go for about $450K+ for about 3K sq. ft.
Why is it so expensive? Many reasons, one the terrain is beautiful, two demand and three everything is so taxed that prices naturaly go up. A gallon costs $1.69 at Chevron, to make maters worse, oil companies CANNOT buy gas from out of state, so when there is a production problem the gooey stinky smelly stuff hits the fan and evenly distributes. It is so bad I have a friend who is living in Jan Jose with a roomate in about 700sq ft for about 1200 a month (both combined). What really makes things bad is the beautiful terrain, just outside San Jose there are 1K+ ft hills. This terrain makes it difficult to build large plots on, plus people want to keep the hills clean and pretty, so you can't build there. This alone causes a downward spiral. I could rant and rave for a long time with what's wrong with California, but I forget all about it when I go for a drive in the hills not far from where I live or when I go to the Mountains about 2 hours away. It's a strange place!
yep, it looks like once again a site as fallen to the mass flood of hits. Dammit, and I wanted to say yes to stuff form them. I love their developmet environment, and I thought Delphi wasn't bad either.
Hey what about nominating Rob, for his most amazing use of Perl to create this most amazing of sites?! Plus He makes the source available to those at large for their pearl learning.
I agree, Having been to Nigeria twice to visit my parents I can say with experience that this could be a problem. In Nigeria NEPA (Nigerian Electrical Power Authority) really stands for Never Expect Power Again, and NiTel the national phone company has horrible lines in and out. When I was there about 1.5 years ago I stayed in a company compound with 5 leased lines going out. Only two or three of them were capable of handeling 2400 or greater bps! Now granted I think such a thing would be great! I would have loved to have internet access while there! I know that my experience does not talk for the whole of Africa, but it helps to shed some light on some of the potentialy bad problems. Besides let's not forget that many of the countries in West Africa have corrupt governments, and many get rich quick scams come from projects like this!
The most postitive thing I can think of for this would be that it would have the potential to bring Africa closer to the rest of the world, and that it might help to educate the people a little more and encourage grass-roots reform.
Africa is an amazing place and the people are some of the most friendly I have met anywhere in the world, I just don't trust some of the people in power.
Dammit! I'm out of paper towels to clean up the drool! Must download!
I was reading somewhere that NSCP 5 was not going to be derived from Mozilla. Is this true, or was I smoking something really good and need to remember where I stashed it?