I looked a bit farther on the site and found a spec page for the phones. It says they run in the 240-450Mhz range. And it says the transmit power is 1500mA??? That would mean the unit would be in UHF channels and something in the order of 30x more transmit power then the typical "legal" non-licensed deviced in that band. (correct me if I'm wrong on the 30x more powerful part but it's certainly alot more powerful than your typical comsumer or even pro-sumer wireless gear in that range)
I'm not certain, but in Mexico these things are probably legal. Mexico has much higher caps on max transmit power for certain things.
The technology is available now for cheaply producing a reasonably good internet show. Good video cameras are cheap, powerful editing computers are cheap, and there is plenty of open source software out there for making it all come together. The main bottleneck was always that dialup connection your non-geek neighbors had and their lack of internet awareness. But now that grandma is surfing the net instead of watching TV, and broadband is getting broader; how long will it be till "cable access" is obsolete and everyone just posts their shows as.torrent links to a community bulliten board/wiki/content site?
Actually this is allready being done on a small scale in some networks. The Portland, Oregon Personal Teclo Project http://www.personaltelco.com/ offers free community wireless internet access and also has local content including news,.mp3 music and meeting minutes, common application installers (firefox, openoffice), among other things available on many of the nodes for local distribution (not to metion being fast downloads as you don't have to go over the slower internet backhaul for the content).
I think I have a firm grasp on the meaning of the word. Nessesity is tied to cause and effect. For my body to be nurished, it is NESSASARY for me to eat. For me to drive my car, it is NESSASARY for me to put fuel in it. For me to watch a TV show, it is NESSASARY for me to have some way of recieving the show. I never said that downloading a TV show was nessasary for me to survive. I merely said that downloading the show was nessasary for me to watch it given my circumstances.
I agree, there has to be a competitive download option from the networks. I will admit that I downloaded a couple TV shows. But for me it was out of nessesity. They don't offer cable where I am and Satillite isn't a good option either because of obstructions to the part of the sky where the satillites live. I have DSL though so that was my only option to be able to see the show at all. If I had the option of seeing the original broadcast I would have. My ISP has plans of rolling out fibre at some point and offering digital cable service over the fibre along with internet. When that becomes available I plan to subscribe. But that is probably still a few years off. Certainly if I like a show enough to go through the time and trouble of downloading it off the net, I would be willing to support it with ad revenue or even a small cash donation if such a system were in place.
There are plenty of people who use SIP-only setups. But it seems silly to limit one's self to just SIP. You end up having to rely on other gateways anyway to hit other networks and loose much of the powerful features that other protocals provide. My biggest beef with SIP is that there is no good provision for inter-PBX communication in the protocol. Every SIP channel is a separate voice channel. This has it's place...especially on the client end. But for communicating between PBXs, things like trunking become very valuable. Asterisk's IAX protocol is all about trunking and all the sudden life is good! I like being able to setup one IAX channel to my provider and have multiple simultainious calls come in on that channel which then can be distributed out to the SIP clients attached to my PBX (or routed to voicemail if no-one is available).
Yes, A bunch of fixed wireless nodes wired into their VOIP switches is exactly what they are doing. I have been expecting someone to do this...would have done it myself if I had the facilities & resources to get it started.
It's still a pretty cheesy solution though. What we really need is for the Cellular providers to setup VOIP gateways directly to their private networks (preferably with IAX2 protocol as an option to work with asterisk http://www.asterisk.org/) and then I can broker calls to or from my cell phone, the traditional phone network, or any VIOP network as I please using my asterisk switch. The cell phone provider could charge a small monthly fee to those who want to use the gateway to cover their (relatively minor) costs of providing it and probably make a bit too and everybody could be happy. Are you listening VERIZON...AT&T...NEXTEL? I would think it would be a boon for NEXTEL as their many business & government customers could further integrate their wired and wireless communications making those accounts very happy and almost turnover-proof. Plus NEXTEL could offer services for setting up their clients with this technology integration for a nice hourly rate.
I agree that humans are error prone...Statistically human piloted cars are the most lethal weapons in existance right now killing over 40,000 people and injuring millions each year in the US alone. My arguement is that poorly implimented automation can be even more dangerous and I'm not sure I want to trust a car company to come up with a good implimentation based on their past performance.
Statistical Reference: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/announce/press/pres sdisplay.cfm?year=2002&filename=pr55-02.html
Maybe you don't notice other MP3 devices because the other MP3 players aren't as flashy as the iPod? For instance, my portable mp3 player is a PALM Zire. Totally inconspicuous as an MP3 player...someone might think I was doing actual work on it:P Others are built into watches, pens, or little things you can clip in your pocket...even a swiss army knife:P
Also, I have used a creative HDD based MP3 player and found it quite nice. I haven't used an iPod to be able to compare but the creative unit did the job at least and could also record audio in several formats via a line in jack which I found quite useful at times.
I agree totally with the parent. Faulty sensors or software glitches are a serious concern. Even with a redundant system there could be multiple failures or a switchover failure.
With all the "advanced technology" we currently have, I am frusterated that my girlfriend's car's check-engine light keeps coming on and won't pass DEQ but the car's diagnostic codes are non-helpful and not even the "experts" at the shop can figure out what's going on with it and can only replace sensors and parts randomly in hopes of finding the issue. I don't want to even imagine what would happen if a similar problem manifested in an AI control system's sensors.
...OK so I did imagine and it invovled high speed, an immovable object, death and flashbacks of the flaming toy car in that one Chris Farley scene from Tommy Boy.
What about the telephone calls???? I have had very nice representatives from M$ call me twice in the past couple months offering to send me out materials explaining how Linux will cause the great apocolypse and M$ is our savior. And additionally suggesting that "certain things can be done" to help convince customers they need to stay on windows (IE give them cool gadgets or discount their license purchases). I have a rep I can call at any time to get help when I need to convince companies to stay off linux. Ugh...it's pathetic.
Check out THIS STORE. Click on the "hydropower" link to the left. They have high flow-low head, low flow-high head, and low volume-low flow hydro-turbines for "home use". I didn't see anyone else post this place but if they have feel free to mod me redundant:P
A bit off topic, but yes: The old IH tractors are great. Can't kill there either...always able to fix them up somehow. Don't drink and farm though boys and girls...not safe as the parent poster pointed out:)
Well, with the rising costs of cable/satillite (that still have commercials), I stopped subscribing there. Broadcast has precious few shows that are remotely worth watching these days so there you go. Yes I'm busy and surf the web all the time but I will still make time for a good TV show if it's there (TV tuner on computer:)
There are alot of people that seem to think that choice = freedom. While this is true at some levels, there are deeper issues to be considered. For an American example being that America was founded on the idea of freedom: Is a choice between Busy Kerry Nader really freedom? Sure you have a choice but you are limited to only 3 options. Is that really pure freedom or just a little bit of choice allowed you by a governmental system so you feel like you have freedom.
Going back to the current topic however, it seems like everyone is making this desktop choice issue way too political IMHO. It should be about what the needs are of the users. Isn't that what we as technology professionals are supposed to look to? (tech hippocratic oath if you will?) For some users, we want to limit their options because they don't have the knowledge/experience/brain capacity? to choose the correct option for what they are trying to do. Thank you M$ for aknowledging that. However, there are increasingly more people who DO have the knowledge/experience/... (especially with a whole generation of kids being brought up to use this stuff) that need to have the choices. If the future inventors, artists, and innovators have their tools dictated to them in nice neat little "luser" packages, then how much will that limit their ability to invent, create, and innovate? And how much will the corporation that controls all the tools become in control of the society in dictating who has the tools to do things and who doesn't. [Maybe a caste system of technology dictated by M$ on the horizon?]
-- my random thoughts
I'm sorry but modern HDDs are plenty faster then gigabit over copper. Unfortunately gigabit copper doesn't actually run at 1000Mbs. After chip limitations and overhead, ect. it's only about 400-500Mbs on most implimentations. Do the math and this works out to about 50-60MBs. There are drives faster then that...and raid arrays a hell of a lot faster then that. If you doubt me, just try mapping a drive between two servers that have scsi raid arrays and gigabit ethernet and see how much slower the mapped drive is compared to local disk access. I get about a 66% speed hit on the servers here at work I tried it on:) If gigabit ethernet was "all that" then we might be seeing gigabit IDE drives instead of SATA. I for one am looking forward to these new faster networking technologies so I CAN have a mapped drive perform well enough to say do database access over it at modern speeds:) Not to mention copying those 4-8GB DVD ISOs;)
I live in a rural area outside Portland, Oregon. We have a local Co-op for telecom service that has faithfully served the area since the dawn of telecom. Even though the area is rural, they managed to deploy DSL to most of the service area quite effectively with "remotes" (Small weatherproofed DSLAM banks in the neighborhoods connected back to the C/O via fibre)
While that limits out options (as of now, we have no choice except our co-op), it doesn't matter. Downstream is advertised as 768K but I have noticed near T1 speeds at low use times. Upstream is as advertised at 384K. For $47/mo including ISP, I don't think that's bad. There is also a cheaper plan that's 256/512 for like $35/mo. Service is quite reliable, and since I own the network like all ther other residents, I get a check in the mail if they end up turning a profit:D
As a side note: Back before DSL came about, I had two phone lines and ran a pair of 56K modems bonded ("shotgunned") on a "normal" dialup account with my co-op. Most ISPs will charge you extra to do that or just plain don't allow it.
Just to add my $0.02...
I used XFS with several Mandrake versions running in server configuration and had good success overall. The thing that kept me coming back was just how fast the filesystem worked. I did have an issue once with the whole filesystem blowing up after a power outage. But most of the time the systems would come right back with no problems.
I'll be switching. I have been quite frusterated with my current carrier and would love to switch but my # is on business cards and such and in everybody's address books. Too difficult and expensive to try to update all those.
Certainly 3ware is a very important missing option. At my work we currently run several servers in IDE raid 1 or 0+1 configurations on controllers from HPT (HighPoint), Promise, and 3ware.
HPT used to be pretty crummy but now have adequate, stable drivers and admin software.
Promise has always been good but not great.
3ware invented IDE RAID. Everybody else including promise just copied them and it's obvious once you have used a 3ware controller. 3ware controllers and the related drivers and software kick the others *ss all over the place. For home users I could recommend any of the three depending on budget but for business/enterprise use only 3ware is worthy IMO.
The other options such as silicon image, Acard, adaptec and such are barely worth mentioning as many don't even have unix driver support and summarilly have poor performance. Adaptec's product has lackluster performance and nothing interesting for features but somehow they seem to think they can sell it for big $$$. Acard's product is a very small upstart that has pretty limited features at this point...maybe they will be a contender once they have done some more developement. Silicon image is really the bottom of the barrel. Silicon Image cards are the cheapest, stripped down, basic functionality controllers that are windows-only (Think cheapo win-modems of yesteryear).
Mod parent insightful. That is seriously one of the main reasons for the 2nd amendment... but then I guess people don't much care anymore why the amendments exist but just do their best to "interpet" them to further their own agendas...
***steps off the soapbox for now...***
I work for one of these competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs for short). We offer service under a couple different names depending on if you want pre-paid or post-paid service (and how good your credit is). It's tough to compete but we try to offer good rates and packages to our customers. Depending on the area, some of the plans are pretty good. Other areas it's just impossible to compete much so our plans are not very competitive or we just don't offer service there. As far as the quality of service, it's still the big companies (mostly baby bells) that control the facilities so there is little we can do to improve over any existing conditions in a particular area.
Slashdot Mirror
I looked a bit farther on the site and found a spec page for the phones. It says they run in the 240-450Mhz range. And it says the transmit power is 1500mA??? That would mean the unit would be in UHF channels and something in the order of 30x more transmit power then the typical "legal" non-licensed deviced in that band. (correct me if I'm wrong on the 30x more powerful part but it's certainly alot more powerful than your typical comsumer or even pro-sumer wireless gear in that range)
I'm not certain, but in Mexico these things are probably legal. Mexico has much higher caps on max transmit power for certain things.
The technology is available now for cheaply producing a reasonably good internet show. Good video cameras are cheap, powerful editing computers are cheap, and there is plenty of open source software out there for making it all come together. The main bottleneck was always that dialup connection your non-geek neighbors had and their lack of internet awareness. But now that grandma is surfing the net instead of watching TV, and broadband is getting broader; how long will it be till "cable access" is obsolete and everyone just posts their shows as .torrent links to a community bulliten board/wiki/content site?
.mp3 music and meeting minutes, common application installers (firefox, openoffice), among other things available on many of the nodes for local distribution (not to metion being fast downloads as you don't have to go over the slower internet backhaul for the content).
Actually this is allready being done on a small scale in some networks. The Portland, Oregon Personal Teclo Project http://www.personaltelco.com/ offers free community wireless internet access and also has local content including news,
I for one welcome our new Hobbit-humaniod overl... Oh nevermind.
I think I have a firm grasp on the meaning of the word. Nessesity is tied to cause and effect. For my body to be nurished, it is NESSASARY for me to eat. For me to drive my car, it is NESSASARY for me to put fuel in it. For me to watch a TV show, it is NESSASARY for me to have some way of recieving the show. I never said that downloading a TV show was nessasary for me to survive. I merely said that downloading the show was nessasary for me to watch it given my circumstances.
I agree, there has to be a competitive download option from the networks. I will admit that I downloaded a couple TV shows. But for me it was out of nessesity. They don't offer cable where I am and Satillite isn't a good option either because of obstructions to the part of the sky where the satillites live. I have DSL though so that was my only option to be able to see the show at all. If I had the option of seeing the original broadcast I would have. My ISP has plans of rolling out fibre at some point and offering digital cable service over the fibre along with internet. When that becomes available I plan to subscribe. But that is probably still a few years off. Certainly if I like a show enough to go through the time and trouble of downloading it off the net, I would be willing to support it with ad revenue or even a small cash donation if such a system were in place.
There are plenty of people who use SIP-only setups. But it seems silly to limit one's self to just SIP. You end up having to rely on other gateways anyway to hit other networks and loose much of the powerful features that other protocals provide. My biggest beef with SIP is that there is no good provision for inter-PBX communication in the protocol. Every SIP channel is a separate voice channel. This has it's place...especially on the client end. But for communicating between PBXs, things like trunking become very valuable. Asterisk's IAX protocol is all about trunking and all the sudden life is good! I like being able to setup one IAX channel to my provider and have multiple simultainious calls come in on that channel which then can be distributed out to the SIP clients attached to my PBX (or routed to voicemail if no-one is available).
Yes, A bunch of fixed wireless nodes wired into their VOIP switches is exactly what they are doing. I have been expecting someone to do this...would have done it myself if I had the facilities & resources to get it started.
It's still a pretty cheesy solution though. What we really need is for the Cellular providers to setup VOIP gateways directly to their private networks (preferably with IAX2 protocol as an option to work with asterisk http://www.asterisk.org/) and then I can broker calls to or from my cell phone, the traditional phone network, or any VIOP network as I please using my asterisk switch. The cell phone provider could charge a small monthly fee to those who want to use the gateway to cover their (relatively minor) costs of providing it and probably make a bit too and everybody could be happy. Are you listening VERIZON...AT&T...NEXTEL? I would think it would be a boon for NEXTEL as their many business & government customers could further integrate their wired and wireless communications making those accounts very happy and almost turnover-proof. Plus NEXTEL could offer services for setting up their clients with this technology integration for a nice hourly rate.
"I was a lieutenant in the browser wars..." -Sarge
I agree that humans are error prone...Statistically human piloted cars are the most lethal weapons in existance right now killing over 40,000 people and injuring millions each year in the US alone. My arguement is that poorly implimented automation can be even more dangerous and I'm not sure I want to trust a car company to come up with a good implimentation based on their past performance. Statistical Reference: http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/announce/press/pres sdisplay.cfm?year=2002&filename=pr55-02.html
Maybe you don't notice other MP3 devices because the other MP3 players aren't as flashy as the iPod? For instance, my portable mp3 player is a PALM Zire. Totally inconspicuous as an MP3 player...someone might think I was doing actual work on it:P Others are built into watches, pens, or little things you can clip in your pocket...even a swiss army knife:P Also, I have used a creative HDD based MP3 player and found it quite nice. I haven't used an iPod to be able to compare but the creative unit did the job at least and could also record audio in several formats via a line in jack which I found quite useful at times.
I agree totally with the parent. Faulty sensors or software glitches are a serious concern. Even with a redundant system there could be multiple failures or a switchover failure.
...OK so I did imagine and it invovled high speed, an immovable object, death and flashbacks of the flaming toy car in that one Chris Farley scene from Tommy Boy.
With all the "advanced technology" we currently have, I am frusterated that my girlfriend's car's check-engine light keeps coming on and won't pass DEQ but the car's diagnostic codes are non-helpful and not even the "experts" at the shop can figure out what's going on with it and can only replace sensors and parts randomly in hopes of finding the issue. I don't want to even imagine what would happen if a similar problem manifested in an AI control system's sensors.
What about the telephone calls???? I have had very nice representatives from M$ call me twice in the past couple months offering to send me out materials explaining how Linux will cause the great apocolypse and M$ is our savior. And additionally suggesting that "certain things can be done" to help convince customers they need to stay on windows (IE give them cool gadgets or discount their license purchases). I have a rep I can call at any time to get help when I need to convince companies to stay off linux. Ugh...it's pathetic.
Check out THIS STORE. Click on the "hydropower" link to the left. They have high flow-low head, low flow-high head, and low volume-low flow hydro-turbines for "home use". I didn't see anyone else post this place but if they have feel free to mod me redundant:P
A bit off topic, but yes: The old IH tractors are great. Can't kill there either...always able to fix them up somehow. Don't drink and farm though boys and girls...not safe as the parent poster pointed out:)
Well, with the rising costs of cable/satillite (that still have commercials), I stopped subscribing there. Broadcast has precious few shows that are remotely worth watching these days so there you go. Yes I'm busy and surf the web all the time but I will still make time for a good TV show if it's there (TV tuner on computer:)
There are alot of people that seem to think that choice = freedom. While this is true at some levels, there are deeper issues to be considered. For an American example being that America was founded on the idea of freedom: Is a choice between Busy Kerry Nader really freedom? Sure you have a choice but you are limited to only 3 options. Is that really pure freedom or just a little bit of choice allowed you by a governmental system so you feel like you have freedom.
Going back to the current topic however, it seems like everyone is making this desktop choice issue way too political IMHO. It should be about what the needs are of the users. Isn't that what we as technology professionals are supposed to look to? (tech hippocratic oath if you will?) For some users, we want to limit their options because they don't have the knowledge/experience/brain capacity? to choose the correct option for what they are trying to do. Thank you M$ for aknowledging that. However, there are increasingly more people who DO have the knowledge/experience/... (especially with a whole generation of kids being brought up to use this stuff) that need to have the choices. If the future inventors, artists, and innovators have their tools dictated to them in nice neat little "luser" packages, then how much will that limit their ability to invent, create, and innovate? And how much will the corporation that controls all the tools become in control of the society in dictating who has the tools to do things and who doesn't. [Maybe a caste system of technology dictated by M$ on the horizon?]
-- my random thoughts
I'm sorry but modern HDDs are plenty faster then gigabit over copper. Unfortunately gigabit copper doesn't actually run at 1000Mbs. After chip limitations and overhead, ect. it's only about 400-500Mbs on most implimentations. Do the math and this works out to about 50-60MBs. There are drives faster then that...and raid arrays a hell of a lot faster then that. If you doubt me, just try mapping a drive between two servers that have scsi raid arrays and gigabit ethernet and see how much slower the mapped drive is compared to local disk access. I get about a 66% speed hit on the servers here at work I tried it on:) If gigabit ethernet was "all that" then we might be seeing gigabit IDE drives instead of SATA. I for one am looking forward to these new faster networking technologies so I CAN have a mapped drive perform well enough to say do database access over it at modern speeds:) Not to mention copying those 4-8GB DVD ISOs;)
Wish it was possible to mod a parent article Obvious...
I would be all over this one.
"...Well if we built a large wooden badger..."
I live in a rural area outside Portland, Oregon. We have a local Co-op for telecom service that has faithfully served the area since the dawn of telecom. Even though the area is rural, they managed to deploy DSL to most of the service area quite effectively with "remotes" (Small weatherproofed DSLAM banks in the neighborhoods connected back to the C/O via fibre) While that limits out options (as of now, we have no choice except our co-op), it doesn't matter. Downstream is advertised as 768K but I have noticed near T1 speeds at low use times. Upstream is as advertised at 384K. For $47/mo including ISP, I don't think that's bad. There is also a cheaper plan that's 256/512 for like $35/mo. Service is quite reliable, and since I own the network like all ther other residents, I get a check in the mail if they end up turning a profit:D As a side note: Back before DSL came about, I had two phone lines and ran a pair of 56K modems bonded ("shotgunned") on a "normal" dialup account with my co-op. Most ISPs will charge you extra to do that or just plain don't allow it.
Just to add my $0.02... I used XFS with several Mandrake versions running in server configuration and had good success overall. The thing that kept me coming back was just how fast the filesystem worked. I did have an issue once with the whole filesystem blowing up after a power outage. But most of the time the systems would come right back with no problems.
I'll be switching. I have been quite frusterated with my current carrier and would love to switch but my # is on business cards and such and in everybody's address books. Too difficult and expensive to try to update all those.
Software patents approve Parliament!
Certainly 3ware is a very important missing option. At my work we currently run several servers in IDE raid 1 or 0+1 configurations on controllers from HPT (HighPoint), Promise, and 3ware.
HPT used to be pretty crummy but now have adequate, stable drivers and admin software.
Promise has always been good but not great.
3ware invented IDE RAID. Everybody else including promise just copied them and it's obvious once you have used a 3ware controller. 3ware controllers and the related drivers and software kick the others *ss all over the place. For home users I could recommend any of the three depending on budget but for business/enterprise use only 3ware is worthy IMO.
The other options such as silicon image, Acard, adaptec and such are barely worth mentioning as many don't even have unix driver support and summarilly have poor performance. Adaptec's product has lackluster performance and nothing interesting for features but somehow they seem to think they can sell it for big $$$. Acard's product is a very small upstart that has pretty limited features at this point...maybe they will be a contender once they have done some more developement. Silicon image is really the bottom of the barrel. Silicon Image cards are the cheapest, stripped down, basic functionality controllers that are windows-only (Think cheapo win-modems of yesteryear).
Mod parent insightful. That is seriously one of the main reasons for the 2nd amendment... but then I guess people don't much care anymore why the amendments exist but just do their best to "interpet" them to further their own agendas... ***steps off the soapbox for now...***
I work for one of these competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs for short). We offer service under a couple different names depending on if you want pre-paid or post-paid service (and how good your credit is). It's tough to compete but we try to offer good rates and packages to our customers. Depending on the area, some of the plans are pretty good. Other areas it's just impossible to compete much so our plans are not very competitive or we just don't offer service there. As far as the quality of service, it's still the big companies (mostly baby bells) that control the facilities so there is little we can do to improve over any existing conditions in a particular area.