Satellite TV has rain fade because DBS is carried on Ku-band microwaves (and soon to be Ka-band microwaves). The choice of analog or digital modulation makes no difference.
Back in the day people watched satellite TV on those huge C-band dishes. The lower frequency was less vulnerable to rain fade, but it required larger antennas to get the same carrier-to-noise. Back then, there was no digital video compression, so they used analog video. There is still some use of C-band for commercial video distribution, now using modern MPEG-2 digital compression, but I think there are no more end-user services in the US on any C-band satellite (except the nationwide PBS C-band analog service.)
Both VHF and UHF television frequencies used by analog and digital television do not experience rain fade.
This is totally BS. Spectrum is wasted in analog TV because analog NTSC TV has tremendous problems with interference between adjancent channels and same channels in neighboring markets. Digital ATSC is less vulnerable to these kinds of interference, and more channels can be packed tighter, reducing overall spectrum needs.
Also there is absolutely no shortage of spectrum for "first responders." There were communications problems on 9/11, but they had to do with systems that were not tested properly, not interoperational between police and fire, not operational (like a repeater that wasn't turned on), and human error during a trying time. RF bandwidth was not an issue.
Digital ATSC takes up the same bandwidth as analog NTSC, 6 MHz, although channels can be packed tighter on the dial. The 6 MHz provides about 19 Mbps using 8-VSB modulation, and those 19 Mbps can deliver a single-program MPEG2 transport stream, or a multi-program one, including mixes of high definition and standard definition resolution programs, or even multicast IP encapsulated in MPEG2 transport packets.
For example, one school system uses their ATSC transmission to provide 4 SD program channels and deliver IP video-on-demand to classrooms.
Now I won't argue that people are not making money on the digital transition, but they sure are not broadcasters. Right now, digital is a money hole for broadcasters, with their money going to transmitter manufacturers, MPEG transport stream server and multiplexer companies, HD camera and master control switching companies, HD editing software companies, and the consumer money is flowing to HD set manufacturers.
The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill to pay $1 billion for digital set-top-box converters, along with a Dec. 31, 2008 analog TV turn-off.
While not everyone has an HDTV, plenty of people have an SDTV which can receive downconverted analog video...it will look nicer than NTSC analog.
The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill with a Dec. 31, 2008 analog TV turn-off, and just a $1 billion subsidy for digital set-top-boxes ($40 coupons, two per household). This was part of H.R. 4241, "Deficit Reduction Act of 2005"
I'll admit that I haven't looked at Usenet in quite a while, despite founding talk.politics.libertarian nearly 12 years ago, yet when I look at the newsgroup today, it still looks like it has useful information.
For a while I worked at a company that delivered a full Usenet feed over satellite, but they went out of business. I suspect you can't even do a full feed with a single transponder at QPSK 3/4 today. Does anyone still deliver Usenet feeds over satellite?
In 1757, George Washington was charged with a kind of campaign spending irregularity in his race for a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses. With only 391 voters in his district, Washington is said to have purchased and distributed during his campaign more than a quart and a half of rum, wine, beer, and hard cider per person.
France has plenty of innovative, high-tech companies (look at Thales, Alcatel, Airbus, etc.) French workers (the 90% not unemployed) actually are more productive per hour on average than U.S. workers, but the French work fewer hours per year and are less productive on a yearly basis.
What France doesn't have is GDP growth and low unemployment. These are explained by high tax burdens and strong labor regulations.
French GDP per capita compared to the U.S. is now at about 70%, down from about 80% during the early 1980's.
The French model of only allowing the 90% most skilled people to work, and having those people pay big taxes for welfare for the other 10% seemed like a pretty cool idea for a while, until that whole riot thing.
Interestingly, the U.S. has a more equal distribution of income (in terms of Gini inddex) than France - before government income redistribution. Only after government income redistribution does France has a more equal distribution of income than the U.S.
I just stayed at the Hilton New York, and my room had floor lighting activated by passive IR (PIR) sensors. So when you got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, the floor lighting would come on, and then when you were done, it would slowly dim out.
The room also made a lot of use of white LED arrays for reading lights above the bed.
My room had a flat panel LCD TV as well. Unfortunately, it was jammed into an improper aspect ratio (4:3 content was stretched to 16:9, making the ladies in the Victoria Secret show look actually healthy and normal). The TV also took a few seconds to go between channels, yuck!
Do you honestly think that we are in a 'dark ages'?
Agreed, that is not true. 50 years ago, half of the U.S. did not have indoor plumbing. In 1900, only about 1 in 100 homes had a toilet or central heating. Today, 97% of U.S. homes have electricity, central heating, and modern plumbing. And the homes come with many extras unheard of even fifty years ago - storm windows, ample insulation, two car garages, and are larger on a square footage basis. U.S. homeownership is at an all-time high.
The look globally - in the last 25 years, 500 million people have been brought out of absolute poverty (living on under $1 per day).
I'm contemplating a purchase of a hybrid for use in HOV lanes as well. My place of business is relocating to a place with no public transport or carpool hope.
The funny thing about this is that religion is probably an evolved behavior, supported by identical twin studies showing correlated levels of religious feeling of identical twins separated at birth. There are also physiological findings that are localizing spiritual feelings in brain.
I'll add that the most important thing a "programmer" can know is software project management. Even if you are not going to project manage yourself, you still need to know all the steps of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), including models such as waterfall, V, phased development V, and some of the exotics like Extreme Programming (which is often done badly) and spiral development.
Learn how to organize stakeholders, gather requirements, work breakdown structures, budgeting and time predictions, resource management, etc.
I think people are incapable of recognizing that the Internet formed in a self-organizing way. There was no overarching government plan (even the government-funded initial Internet was still a matter of various organizations making choices to be on the Net).
The Net grew up on freedom, both in terms of freedom of speech, and also in terms of economic freedom (the FCC and PUCs controlled local loop and IXC pipe pricing to some extent, but not the general business of Internetworking, peering, and the Web).
The article says "The laptop is not 'for sale' - it's going to be available for students only."
The problem is that handing someone in a country that has limited economic freedom a $100 value product may result in that product being sold for $100, as often the return on education in those countries is negligable because the market is so constrained by government that more skills does not always result in more pay.
On the other hand, I think there may be some niches this fits into, they should develop it and see how it works out, just keeping in mind that until you change anti-market laws, you are dismotivating education.
A friend of mine is currently in a small village in Guinea. People are so poor here that there rarely is currency exchanged, generally just bartering. Her parents thought about sending her a satellite phone to stay in touch, but at $1000, it would be the most valuable item in the whole village, and the risk of theft was very high. She already had her glasses stolen!
I thought it sounded like Very Minimal Shift Keying (VMSK), then I saw this at VMSK.org:
"XG technologies goes on the air with their method in November from an 800 foot tower..."
More info on VMSK here and here. The first paper states "no ultra narrowband modulation method, which includes VMSK and VPSK, can have substantially greater efficiency than conventional methods, such as QAM, in transmission in the same frequency band".
7.4 Mbps per MHz per Watt is a silly way of saying things. The key is signal to noise at the receiver, which depends on signal loss and noise in the received spectrum where you are seeking the signal.
On their site, xG has a plot of bit error rate versus Eb/No (the energy in a bit over the spectral noise power, which is related to carrier-to-noise ratio as Eb/No=C/No - 10log(data rate)). It appears to perform as well as BPSK (binary phase shift keying). Although it doesn't make it clear how many bits per cycle (technically, bits per symbol) xMax is supposed to have.
You can transmit many bits per hertz. You can modulate between multiple amplitudes or multiple phases or a combination of both over a single sine wave phase. But the hit is that the more bits you send per hertz, the higher the bit error rate you get with the same amount of noise.
The invention disclosed in this application uses a method of modulation named Tri-State Integer Cycle Modulation (TICM) wherein a carrier signal, comprised of a continuum of sine waves is modulated such that spectrum utilization is minimal. A modulation event is imposed upon the carrier signal by modifying the carrier frequency at precisely the zero crossing point or the zero degree angle. The method of imposing the modulation event is by increasing the frequency of the carrier for one or an integer number of wavelets then lowering the frequency of the carrier for one or the same integer number of wavelets then returning to the carrier frequency to derive the modulation event. The main carrier frequency is only modulated beginning at the zero degree phase angle and ending at the 360-degree phase angle.
20050007447 Modulation compression method for the radio frequency transmission of high speed data
20040196910 Integer cycle frequency hopping modulation for the radio frequency transmission of high speed data
We've now had thirty years of campaign finance reform.
Would you say things are better now (now that you have to hire a campaign finance lawyer and an accounting firm to run for office)?
Communication technology expansion makes campaign finance reform a joke. It was a joke to begin with anyway, as it has only been used by incumbents to protect their political power, as evidenced by a higher number of incumbents winning races.
Slashdot Mirror
Satellite TV has rain fade because DBS is carried on Ku-band microwaves (and soon to be Ka-band microwaves). The choice of analog or digital modulation makes no difference.
Back in the day people watched satellite TV on those huge C-band dishes. The lower frequency was less vulnerable to rain fade, but it required larger antennas to get the same carrier-to-noise. Back then, there was no digital video compression, so they used analog video. There is still some use of C-band for commercial video distribution, now using modern MPEG-2 digital compression, but I think there are no more end-user services in the US on any C-band satellite (except the nationwide PBS C-band analog service.)
Both VHF and UHF television frequencies used by analog and digital television do not experience rain fade.
This is totally BS. Spectrum is wasted in analog TV because analog NTSC TV has tremendous problems with interference between adjancent channels and same channels in neighboring markets. Digital ATSC is less vulnerable to these kinds of interference, and more channels can be packed tighter, reducing overall spectrum needs.
Also there is absolutely no shortage of spectrum for "first responders." There were communications problems on 9/11, but they had to do with systems that were not tested properly, not interoperational between police and fire, not operational (like a repeater that wasn't turned on), and human error during a trying time. RF bandwidth was not an issue.
Digital ATSC takes up the same bandwidth as analog NTSC, 6 MHz, although channels can be packed tighter on the dial. The 6 MHz provides about 19 Mbps using 8-VSB modulation, and those 19 Mbps can deliver a single-program MPEG2 transport stream, or a multi-program one, including mixes of high definition and standard definition resolution programs, or even multicast IP encapsulated in MPEG2 transport packets.
For example, one school system uses their ATSC transmission to provide 4 SD program channels and deliver IP video-on-demand to classrooms.
Now I won't argue that people are not making money on the digital transition, but they sure are not broadcasters. Right now, digital is a money hole for broadcasters, with their money going to transmitter manufacturers, MPEG transport stream server and multiplexer companies, HD camera and master control switching companies, HD editing software companies, and the consumer money is flowing to HD set manufacturers.
The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill to pay $1 billion for digital set-top-box converters, along with a Dec. 31, 2008 analog TV turn-off.
While not everyone has an HDTV, plenty of people have an SDTV which can receive downconverted analog video...it will look nicer than NTSC analog.
The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill with a Dec. 31, 2008 analog TV turn-off, and just a $1 billion subsidy for digital set-top-boxes ($40 coupons, two per household). This was part of H.R. 4241, "Deficit Reduction Act of 2005"
France's GDP per capita stands at about 95% of the UK's
Yes, but it is down from 122% of the UK's since the 1970's...
This study looks at labor regulation effects on European work hours.
A great historical comparison between other countries and the U.S. on GDP per capita, hours worked, productivity, and workforce participation is here
I'll admit that I haven't looked at Usenet in quite a while, despite founding talk.politics.libertarian nearly 12 years ago, yet when I look at the newsgroup today, it still looks like it has useful information.
For a while I worked at a company that delivered a full Usenet feed over satellite, but they went out of business. I suspect you can't even do a full feed with a single transponder at QPSK 3/4 today. Does anyone still deliver Usenet feeds over satellite?
In 1757, George Washington was charged with a kind of campaign spending irregularity in his race for a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses. With only 391 voters in his district, Washington is said to have purchased and distributed during his campaign more than a quart and a half of rum, wine, beer, and hard cider per person.
France has plenty of innovative, high-tech companies (look at Thales, Alcatel, Airbus, etc.) French workers (the 90% not unemployed) actually are more productive per hour on average than U.S. workers, but the French work fewer hours per year and are less productive on a yearly basis.
What France doesn't have is GDP growth and low unemployment. These are explained by high tax burdens and strong labor regulations.
French GDP per capita compared to the U.S. is now at about 70%, down from about 80% during the early 1980's.
The French model of only allowing the 90% most skilled people to work, and having those people pay big taxes for welfare for the other 10% seemed like a pretty cool idea for a while, until that whole riot thing.
Interestingly, the U.S. has a more equal distribution of income (in terms of Gini inddex) than France - before government income redistribution. Only after government income redistribution does France has a more equal distribution of income than the U.S.
I just stayed at the Hilton New York, and my room had floor lighting activated by passive IR (PIR) sensors. So when you got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, the floor lighting would come on, and then when you were done, it would slowly dim out.
The room also made a lot of use of white LED arrays for reading lights above the bed.
My room had a flat panel LCD TV as well. Unfortunately, it was jammed into an improper aspect ratio (4:3 content was stretched to 16:9, making the ladies in the Victoria Secret show look actually healthy and normal). The TV also took a few seconds to go between channels, yuck!
Do you honestly think that we are in a 'dark ages'?
Agreed, that is not true. 50 years ago, half of the U.S. did not have indoor plumbing. In 1900, only about 1 in 100 homes had a toilet or central heating. Today, 97% of U.S. homes have electricity, central heating, and modern plumbing. And the homes come with many extras unheard of even fifty years ago - storm windows, ample insulation, two car garages, and are larger on a square footage basis. U.S. homeownership is at an all-time high.
The look globally - in the last 25 years, 500 million people have been brought out of absolute poverty (living on under $1 per day).
I'm contemplating a purchase of a hybrid for use in HOV lanes as well. My place of business is relocating to a place with no public transport or carpool hope.
I saw a bird fly into a glass front door and die. Are we going to regulate them?
The funny thing about this is that religion is probably an evolved behavior, supported by identical twin studies showing correlated levels of religious feeling of identical twins separated at birth. There are also physiological findings that are localizing spiritual feelings in brain.
If you had an ISO file, could you reproduce the CD with DRM in effect?
I'll add that the most important thing a "programmer" can know is software project management. Even if you are not going to project manage yourself, you still need to know all the steps of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), including models such as waterfall, V, phased development V, and some of the exotics like Extreme Programming (which is often done badly) and spiral development.
Learn how to organize stakeholders, gather requirements, work breakdown structures, budgeting and time predictions, resource management, etc.
I've seen digital cinema in 2K (2048 pixels wide) and it looks great! But purists insist on 4K (4096 pixels wide).
will want to be able to connect to sites under the American Hegemony
Democracy in Action!
I think people are incapable of recognizing that the Internet formed in a self-organizing way. There was no overarching government plan (even the government-funded initial Internet was still a matter of various organizations making choices to be on the Net).
The Net grew up on freedom, both in terms of freedom of speech, and also in terms of economic freedom (the FCC and PUCs controlled local loop and IXC pipe pricing to some extent, but not the general business of Internetworking, peering, and the Web).
The article says "The laptop is not 'for sale' - it's going to be available for students only."
The problem is that handing someone in a country that has limited economic freedom a $100 value product may result in that product being sold for $100, as often the return on education in those countries is negligable because the market is so constrained by government that more skills does not always result in more pay.
On the other hand, I think there may be some niches this fits into, they should develop it and see how it works out, just keeping in mind that until you change anti-market laws, you are dismotivating education.
A friend of mine is currently in a small village in Guinea. People are so poor here that there rarely is currency exchanged, generally just bartering. Her parents thought about sending her a satellite phone to stay in touch, but at $1000, it would be the most valuable item in the whole village, and the risk of theft was very high. She already had her glasses stolen!
I thought it sounded like Very Minimal Shift Keying (VMSK), then I saw this at VMSK.org:
"XG technologies goes on the air with their method in November from an 800 foot tower..."
More info on VMSK here and here. The first paper states "no ultra narrowband modulation method, which includes VMSK and VPSK, can have substantially greater efficiency than conventional methods, such as QAM, in transmission in the same frequency band".
7.4 Mbps per MHz per Watt is a silly way of saying things. The key is signal to noise at the receiver, which depends on signal loss and noise in the received spectrum where you are seeking the signal.
On their site, xG has a plot of bit error rate versus Eb/No (the energy in a bit over the spectral noise power, which is related to carrier-to-noise ratio as Eb/No=C/No - 10log(data rate)). It appears to perform as well as BPSK (binary phase shift keying). Although it doesn't make it clear how many bits per cycle (technically, bits per symbol) xMax is supposed to have.
You can transmit many bits per hertz. You can modulate between multiple amplitudes or multiple phases or a combination of both over a single sine wave phase. But the hit is that the more bits you send per hertz, the higher the bit error rate you get with the same amount of noise.
20050008087 Tri-state integer cycle modulation
The invention disclosed in this application uses a method of modulation named Tri-State Integer Cycle Modulation (TICM) wherein a carrier signal, comprised of a continuum of sine waves is modulated such that spectrum utilization is minimal. A modulation event is imposed upon the carrier signal by modifying the carrier frequency at precisely the zero crossing point or the zero degree angle. The method of imposing the modulation event is by increasing the frequency of the carrier for one or an integer number of wavelets then lowering the frequency of the carrier for one or the same integer number of wavelets then returning to the carrier frequency to derive the modulation event. The main carrier frequency is only modulated beginning at the zero degree phase angle and ending at the 360-degree phase angle.
20050007447 Modulation compression method for the radio frequency transmission of high speed data
20040196910 Integer cycle frequency hopping modulation for the radio frequency transmission of high speed data
Perhaps the Army can put together a first-person shooter, except you are actually controlling a robot in Iraq shooting people...
One billion people on planet earth make less than $1 per day. Perhaps you are not the target audience...
We've now had thirty years of campaign finance reform.
Would you say things are better now (now that you have to hire a campaign finance lawyer and an accounting firm to run for office)?
Communication technology expansion makes campaign finance reform a joke. It was a joke to begin with anyway, as it has only been used by incumbents to protect their political power, as evidenced by a higher number of incumbents winning races.