I live in Manassas, Virginia which is the first US city to deploy BPL technology. The city has partnered with a company called COMTek, Inc. to supply the equipment and run their billing.
I went to a demonstration with City officials and COMTek engineers and it was VERY impressive. Their technology will interoperate with any other TCP/IP transport (cellular radio, fiber, copper, etc.) and, in fact, Manassas uses fiber for their long haul.
Comtek said that you can currently get 4 megabit to end users and with repeaters can push about six miles. At least, I think it was six miles, it's been a little while. Buy anyway, you can use radio to bridge long line of sight gaps, then stick a BPL inducer on a nearby transformer and light up any house within a mile of it, easily.
One thing they did in downtown Manassas was light up a building w/ BPL and put a wifi hot-spot on the roof which gives downtown strollers high speed wireless Internet (as long as you are a subscriber:o)
The technology is very flexible and very stable in a wide range of temperatures which is ideal for New Mexico. The BPL "modems" (for lack of a better term) cost around $200 a piece retail and the inducers can be installed on power transformers in about 30 minutes, so it is a very rapid deployment.
Oh, and COMTek had installed some hardware that looked for amateur radio operators and dropped pieces of their spectrum so that they wouldn't interfere with them. I thought that was pretty cool of them as it does slightly lower their overall capacity, but not by much.
Think any of the researchers are fans of Cory Doctrow?
This sounds akin to the highway networks described in his fiction novel Eastern Standard Tribe
From the book:
"Drivers on the MassPike who used traffic jams to download music from nearby cars and then paid to license the songs. Only they didn't. They circumvented the payment system in droves, running bootleg operations out of their cars that put poor old Napster to shame for sheer volume..."
I find it rather ironic that with the "legal to share!" hyperbole you have to buy a friggin magazine to get it!?
Where are the download links on the site, Wired!? sheesh
I know, I know "It's a business, they need to make money", yadda yadda - but one of the biggest points of opening intellectual property in music is that the Internet makes so much more sense as a distribution medium, rather than shipping CDs.
I think that Dark Age of Camelot would be way better than EverQuest. Just in the number of animated emotes alone:o)
I love a previous poster's idea of auctioning off the characters to defray the monthly subscription costs.. plus, if you used your real name in it, you'd be a celebrity!
Of course, I'm sure it breaks the EULA in some way, so you'd prolly get banned if you were to reveal your "true" identity.
A few people have pointed to telnet BBSes, but are there any that support SSH? I encrypt my e-mail and (some) web surfing - why wouldn't I want to encrypt my BBS session?
The first digital recording on a computer I remember was a disk I downloaded from the Dune BBS (Orange County California) circa 1985. It was called "Florida Jam" and included clips of songs like Tom Petty's "You Got Lucky", and Rush "Spirit of the Radio".
Man, that was the coolest thing on the planet when I heard it -- even if it was mostly static and scratch. I was just in awe that my little apple could play real audio!
I think the first MP3 I ever downloaded was Hole's "Celebrity Skin" around '98.
I think it's great that employees are getting computers and net access, but we should not loose sight of the fact that Ford did not do this out of the kindness of it's heart - it was part of their latest negotiation with the United Auto Workers!
Not sure if I'm the first to point this out, and I think it's great that employees are getting computers and net access, but we should not loose sight of the fact that Ford did not do this out of the kindness of it's heart - it was part of their latest negotiation with the United Auto Workers!
When my aDSL was installed I was not getting the full throughput. I paid for 384k but tests showed transfers at about 256k. I called my ISP and they said I was being correctly throttled on their end. I called GTE and they said I was throttled wrong on their end (they set me at Silver when I should be receiving Gold. A few hours later I was up to full speed, and pegged out at exactly 384k. No freeby extra bandwidth out here:(
So in my setup (Portland, Oregon) I am definately throttled at the CO and most likely by the ISP as well. ....... Choochus
Hands down Dish Network rocks. Most programming for the buck and always on top of the latest technology. 32bit processor, MPEG2 audio/video, last month they started broadcasting Dolby AC3 (very limited, just on one PPV channel so far) and with their current rebate program you get a base system totally free. They frequently bring on new channels and the receivers get frequent software updates. Internet access is coming with the launch of their new satellites and with their Dishmovers program they give you a free dish when you move so that you don't have to take your old one down. Any way you slice it, Dish Network rocks!
Slashdot Mirror
I live in Manassas, Virginia which is the first US city to deploy BPL technology. The city has partnered with a company called COMTek, Inc. to supply the equipment and run their billing.
:o)
I went to a demonstration with City officials and COMTek engineers and it was VERY impressive. Their technology will interoperate with any other TCP/IP transport (cellular radio, fiber, copper, etc.) and, in fact, Manassas uses fiber for their long haul.
Comtek said that you can currently get 4 megabit to end users and with repeaters can push about six miles. At least, I think it was six miles, it's been a little while. Buy anyway, you can use radio to bridge long line of sight gaps, then stick a BPL inducer on a nearby transformer and light up any house within a mile of it, easily.
One thing they did in downtown Manassas was light up a building w/ BPL and put a wifi hot-spot on the roof which gives downtown strollers high speed wireless Internet (as long as you are a subscriber
The technology is very flexible and very stable in a wide range of temperatures which is ideal for New Mexico. The BPL "modems" (for lack of a better term) cost around $200 a piece retail and the inducers can be installed on power transformers in about 30 minutes, so it is a very rapid deployment.
Oh, and COMTek had installed some hardware that looked for amateur radio operators and dropped pieces of their spectrum so that they wouldn't interfere with them. I thought that was pretty cool of them as it does slightly lower their overall capacity, but not by much.
Good luck!
Think any of the researchers are fans of Cory Doctrow?
This sounds akin to the highway networks described in his fiction novel Eastern Standard Tribe
From the book:
"Drivers on the MassPike who used traffic jams to download music from nearby cars and then paid to license the songs. Only they didn't. They circumvented the payment system in droves, running bootleg operations out of their cars that put poor old Napster to shame for sheer volume..."
Sounds like fun ;-)
I find it rather ironic that with the "legal to share!" hyperbole you have to buy a friggin magazine to get it!?
:o)
Where are the download links on the site, Wired!? sheesh
I know, I know "It's a business, they need to make money", yadda yadda - but one of the biggest points of opening intellectual property in music is that the Internet makes so much more sense as a distribution medium, rather than shipping CDs.
OK.. I'm done bitching
Here is another Slashdot story posted in 2001 about a micro gas turbine: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/2 6/2011228&tid=134
I think that Dark Age of Camelot would be way better than EverQuest. Just in the number of animated emotes alone :o)
I love a previous poster's idea of auctioning off the characters to defray the monthly subscription costs.. plus, if you used your real name in it, you'd be a celebrity!
Of course, I'm sure it breaks the EULA in some way, so you'd prolly get banned if you were to reveal your "true" identity.
A few people have pointed to telnet BBSes, but are there any that support SSH? I encrypt my e-mail and (some) web surfing - why wouldn't I want to encrypt my BBS session?
The first digital recording on a computer I remember was a disk I downloaded from the Dune BBS (Orange County California) circa 1985. It was called "Florida Jam" and included clips of songs like Tom Petty's "You Got Lucky", and Rush "Spirit of the Radio".
Man, that was the coolest thing on the planet when I heard it -- even if it was mostly static and scratch. I was just in awe that my little apple could play real audio!
I think the first MP3 I ever downloaded was Hole's "Celebrity Skin" around '98.
SLab is an excellent multitrack recorder/mixer. It is not up to snuff with ProTools yet (though no program is on any platform).
Other Linux audio related links include (sorry if some links are bad, I haven't updated this list in awhile):
Multitrack audio recording/mixing:
Ardour
Slab
Snd
Midi Sequencing:
Jazz++
Rosegarden
Brahms (I THINK this is a sequencer)
Sound editing / effects processing:
MixViews
ecasound
Audio creation (synth emulators):
Ultramaster RS-101 and Juno6 CSound
Cecilia (requires Csound)
Notation:
Lilypond
Rosegarden
Mup
Awesome pages with links to everything you wanted to know about Linux audio:
Applications for Open Sound System
Sound and MIDI software for Linux
I think it's great that employees are getting computers and net access, but we should not loose sight of the fact that Ford did not do this out of the kindness of it's heart - it was part of their latest negotiation with the United Auto Workers!
Not sure if I'm the first to point this out, and I think it's great that employees are getting computers and net access, but we should not loose sight of the fact that Ford did not do this out of the kindness of it's heart - it was part of their latest negotiation with the United Auto Workers!
So in my setup (Portland, Oregon) I am definately throttled at the CO and most likely by the ISP as well.
.......
Choochus
Hands down Dish Network rocks. Most programming for the buck and always on top of the latest technology.
32bit processor, MPEG2 audio/video, last month they started broadcasting Dolby AC3 (very limited, just on one PPV channel so far) and with their current rebate program you get a base system totally free.
They frequently bring on new channels and the receivers get frequent software updates. Internet access is coming with the launch of their new satellites and with their Dishmovers program they give you a free dish when you move so that you don't have to take your old one down.
Any way you slice it, Dish Network rocks!