The ground stations will use phased-array antennas to track the satellite(s) as they pass overhead.
Presumably the system will be smart enough to load balance users across the satellites visible to them to keep the load on any particular satellite as low as possible, though this only speculation.
It seems that Pioneer 10's antenna pointing mechanism is not working well enough at the moment to accurately point its high-gain antenna at Earth. (It's apparently more than 1.4 degrees off, but we'll move into its beam again as the earth continues to orbit the sun -- projected time of reacquisition is December.) Once signal is reacquired, we'll see if JPL is able to fix the problem somehow, or if we'll be reduced to contacting Pioneer 10 only during certain times of the year when we happen to be within its signal cone.
EFF DVD Update: July 21, 2000 Universal City Studios v. 2600 Magazine
REVEALED: DeCSS Led to Competing Linux DVD Player
EFF's defense team landed a surprising blow to the MPAA in Court on Friday when it revealed that the Livid Project has built an open source DVD player for Linux machines using DeCSS. Livid (short for Linux Video) Project leader Matt Pavlovich testified for the defense that his group had been working for months to create a way for Linux users to watch the DVDs they own on the machines that they own. Pavlovich testified that DeCSS was an important step in creating the Linux DVD player and offered to perform an in-court demonstration of his important new innovation. Although the studios' lawyers objected to the Livid player demonstration as "irrelevant," the MPAA conceded they would not contest the existence of the independently created DVD player.
Pavlovich stated the Livid Project's DVD player was created by lawful reverse engineering under the open source development model, which relies upon dozens to thousands of programmers around the globe working collaboratively. DVD players such as Livid's, manufactured independently from DVD-CCA and the MPAA, are not legally required to restrict consumer player features because they are not subject to a CSS license. Through this litigation the studios were hoping to ban DeCSS before independent groups used the code to create consumer-friendly DVD players that could compete with DVD-CCA's monopoly on players.
EFF's defense team will continue on Tuesday to present its witnesses including Chris DiBona, President of the Silicon Valley Linux Users' Group and VA Linux Evangelist. Judge Lewis Kaplan's court is in recess on Monday July 23, 2000. Other witnesses EFF plans to call include Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer science professor and Michael Einhorn, Columbia University economist. EFF may recall MPAA anti-piracy official Mikail Reider who testified last week against Journalist Emmanuel Goldstein and his publication 2600.com. Carnegie Melon computer science professor Dave Touretzky and Olegario Craig of the University of Massachusetts may also be called to testify in the trial which should end Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.
USWest RADSL has always allowed you to self-install, and though they only provide Windows and Mac instructions, chances are that if you have a *NIX box you have the knowledge to set it up in the first place.
You need to get the Cisco 675 external router instead of the Intel 2100 PCI card to use it with *NIX, but that's what you would want anyway. This uses PPPoverATM, which terminates on the router. Thus, it's very easy for the ISP to assign routed netblocks over it without having to jump through hoops! There are definitely times when I'm glad USWest is using CAP RADSL instead of DMT ADSL...
One thing that everyone seems to be missing, is that Vorbis supports bitrates of 16kbps-128kbps per channel! Since it uses better algorithms than MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3), it has the potential to sound much better. It's not done yet, and the development team is still making changes to it that will affect the quality. I'm going to wait and see how it works, but it sounds like it will be excellent when it gets done.
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The ground stations will use phased-array antennas to track the satellite(s) as they pass overhead.
Presumably the system will be smart enough to load balance users across the satellites visible to them to keep the load on any particular satellite as low as possible, though this only speculation.
It seems that Pioneer 10's antenna pointing mechanism is not working well enough at the moment to accurately point its high-gain antenna at Earth. (It's apparently more than 1.4 degrees off, but we'll move into its beam again as the earth continues to orbit the sun -- projected time of reacquisition is December.) Once signal is reacquired, we'll see if JPL is able to fix the problem somehow, or if we'll be reduced to contacting Pioneer 10 only during certain times of the year when we happen to be within its signal cone.
REVEALED: DeCSS Led to Competing Linux DVD Player
EFF's defense team landed a surprising blow to the MPAA in Court on Friday when it revealed that the Livid Project has built an open source DVD player for Linux machines using DeCSS. Livid (short for Linux Video) Project leader Matt Pavlovich testified for the defense that his group had been working for months to create a way for Linux users to watch the DVDs they own on the machines that they own. Pavlovich testified that DeCSS was an important step in creating the Linux DVD player and offered to perform an in-court demonstration of his important new innovation. Although the studios' lawyers objected to the Livid player demonstration as "irrelevant," the MPAA conceded they would not contest the existence of the independently created DVD player.
Pavlovich stated the Livid Project's DVD player was created by lawful reverse engineering under the open source development model, which relies upon dozens to thousands of programmers around the globe working collaboratively. DVD players such as Livid's, manufactured independently from DVD-CCA and the MPAA, are not legally required to restrict consumer player features because they are not subject to a CSS license. Through this litigation the studios were hoping to ban DeCSS before independent groups used the code to create consumer-friendly DVD players that could compete with DVD-CCA's monopoly on players.
EFF's defense team will continue on Tuesday to present its witnesses including Chris DiBona, President of the Silicon Valley Linux Users' Group and VA Linux Evangelist. Judge Lewis Kaplan's court is in recess on Monday July 23, 2000. Other witnesses EFF plans to call include Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer science professor and Michael Einhorn, Columbia University economist. EFF may recall MPAA anti-piracy official Mikail Reider who testified last week against Journalist Emmanuel Goldstein and his publication 2600.com. Carnegie Melon computer science professor Dave Touretzky and Olegario Craig of the University of Massachusetts may also be called to testify in the trial which should end Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.
Transcript of July 21, 2000 trial: http:/ /www.eff.org/IP/Video/MPAA_DVD_cases/20000721_ny_t rial_transcript.html
An index of the DVD updates can be found at: http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/dv d_updates_archive.html
USWest RADSL has always allowed you to self-install, and though they only provide Windows and Mac instructions, chances are that if you have a *NIX box you have the knowledge to set it up in the first place.
You need to get the Cisco 675 external router instead of the Intel 2100 PCI card to use it with *NIX, but that's what you would want anyway. This uses PPPoverATM, which terminates on the router. Thus, it's very easy for the ISP to assign routed netblocks over it without having to jump through hoops! There are definitely times when I'm glad USWest is using CAP RADSL instead of DMT ADSL...
One thing that everyone seems to be missing, is that Vorbis supports bitrates of 16kbps-128kbps per channel! Since it uses better algorithms than MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3), it has the potential to sound much better. It's not done yet, and the development team is still making changes to it that will affect the quality. I'm going to wait and see how it works, but it sounds like it will be excellent when it gets done.