Re:Spread Spectrum combined with TDMA?
on
Unlimited Airwaves
·
· Score: 2
My original impression wasn't that you were exaggerating but that you didn't know as much about radio as you thought that you did. Perhaps I was mistaken.
Well, that and to pay those free over the air channels a fee to be allowed to do no more than to act as an antenna for the cable subscribers. It's called "must-carry, must-pay".
Back in the day, the 3 networks would schedule shows so that if one of them had something that you wanted to watch, the other 2 had something you probably wouldn't be interested in (but that was of interest to other viewers who didn't share your tastes), and vice-versa, so that they each got the maximum possible audience for each show, and there was usually something you wanted to watch on one of the three channels at any given time. Now, everybody seems to want to arrange their program schedules as much to hurt the other channels as to help themselves, which results in some nights when there's nothing to watch on any of the channels and other nights when you need 3 or 4 separate VCRs for each member of the household. I'm almost convinced that the people choosing when to broadcast which shows are being bribed to increase VCR sales.
"...the idea that CBS is going to determine when I watch `CSI'..."
I thought they did that by pre-empting the CBS shows that I wanted to watch with CSI re-runs.
Re:Spread Spectrum combined with TDMA?
on
Unlimited Airwaves
·
· Score: 2
Perhaps I was confused by your extreme understatement of the amount of time per day a cab company dispatcher is on the air and your extreme overstatement of the usual or necessary amount of geographical separation between transmitters. If you were exaggerating for the purposes of illustration, perhaps you should have said so.
The FM broadcast band runs from (approximately) 88 MHz to 108 MHz, which is only 20 MHz for the whole thing, so yes, it would be mighty tricky to shoehorn 100MHz worth of signal into it (although if you figure out a practical way to do it, how 'bout letting me in on the ground floor, pre-IPO?).
Re:The End of the Anonymous Listener?
on
Unlimited Airwaves
·
· Score: 2
"90% of the channels on your UHF dial are sitting there doing nothing right now because the FCC and Congress prefer THAT to leasing them to nonprofit organizations at a reduced rate."
Those channels aren't leased, they are licensed, just as are the VHF channels. The main thing that keeps those non-profits from applying for a license to use one of those UHF channels in any particular geographic area is most likely that providing a transmitter, tower, and antenna and paying for the operation thereof ain't cheap, and that's before you spend anything on content and studio equipment to get that content to the transmitter as a video and audio signal. And you have to convince the FCC that the broadcasting of that content is sufficiently "in the public interest" (those airwaves belong to us, remember?) to deserve the use of that UHF channel allocation.
Re:Spread Spectrum combined with TDMA?
on
Unlimited Airwaves
·
· Score: 2
Vinnie's probably uses 152.125 MHz a lot more than 15 minutes per day and there's probably another cab company using that same frequency that's located a lot closer to Newark than is Denver.
Unless Vinnie and Joyce are both using transmitters that are powerful enough to reach almost half of the way to each other there's no reason that a lot of other cab companies in cities in between Newark and Denver can't use that same frequency also.
If Vinnie and Joyce were both in Newark they could still both use the same frequency if there were a way to insure that they didn't try to use it at the same time. But then if ABC, FOX, CBS, and NBC would agree to only broadcast for an hour once every 4 hours, they could all use channel 2 or 11 or 37 or whatever.
Now if Joyce and Vinnie were both in Newark and you could connect both of their transmitters to the same timebase and they could alternate using that frequency every one-one millionth of a second and the radios in the cabs gated the tuners at 1,000,000Hz then theoretically Vinnie's messages could get through to Vinnie's drivers and Joyce's messages could get through to Joyce's drivers. But the transmitters and receivers would cost a lot more than they do now. Do you want to be the one to tell Vinnie that he needs to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a new transmitter and recievers 'cause you need more bandwidth so that you can download porn faster?
Although bandwidth and frequency are not the same thing, I suspect that Cat5's 100MHz bandwidth starts somewhere around 0MHz and goes up, topping out somewhere around 100MHz. Just because it has a bandwidth of 100MHz doesn't mean that you could use it for 6789MHz to 7789MHz.
Actually you wind up with (L + R) + (L - R) which gives you 2L and (L + R) + (-L + R) which gives you 2R. The sum (L + R) and the difference (L - R) are added together in one channel and the sum and the inverse of the difference (-L + R) are added together in the other channel.
Whether scarcity of the airwaves is an obsolete notion or a false notion is irrelevant. The FCC exists because the airwaves are the property of the people as a whole and the government, which is charged with the protection of the rights and property of the people, established the FCC to exercise stewardship over the airwaves on behalf of the people.
I have a feeling that spectrum and bandwidth will only be nearly unlimited for those with nearly unlimited amounts of money to spend on electronic equipment or politicians or both.
The failure to include Andromeda Strain indicates that the list was put together by someone who wasn't even born when it came out and further that they really didn't give much weight to the "science" part.
At least credit Ballard if you're going to post stuff from Crash, a terribly disappointing book from someone whose sci-fi short stories I had quite enjoyed.
"The RIAA doesn't give a damn what CD's you bought because of MP3's, but rather the ones you haven't."
Totally off-topic, but your sig gave me a blinding flash of insight and now that I can see again I realize that what the record industry really fears is not that you'll get a copy of the album instead of buying it, but that you'll be able to use computers and the internet to listen to the album before buying it and realize that it ain't worth buying before they get your money instead of after.
Sometimes it is. William of Occam lived long enough ago that spelling was by no means standardized. There are at least three different spellings in use. You can find more about this with google.
"Maybe his lamp is emitting some IR waves, and it is the IR port that is waking it up."
Don't know if his computer has an IR port, but it's pretty much guaranteed that most anything that puts out white light (everything between infra-red and ultra-violet) puts out some UV and IR as well.
Re:I Cancelled My Earthlink Account
on
Disconnecting
·
· Score: 2
"I'm still sticking with my small, local ISP..."
...until they get bought up by a larger company which then sells out to an even larger company which then...
While you still have a "local" (i.e., you can go to their office and talk to the owner and top tech person) ISP, go talk to them about gettting the phone company to connect you and your ISP via DSL. After all, if you're in a small town you ought to be close to the central office. Support your local ISP while you still have one so that they don't have to sell out.
Re:I Cancelled My Earthlink Account
on
Disconnecting
·
· Score: 2
They have to have your credit card number to tell if you're close enough to the central office?
Isn't somebody supposed to get on and complain about this guy asking his question here instead of making google do all the work? All I see (except for the hijacker jokes) are thoughtful, intelligent, and helpful replies. Did I miss the announcement of a "Grown-ups only" day on Slashdot?
Distortion, by definition being something not present in the original, is added, deliberately or otherwise. A filter only lets part of the original through, whether it's everything above sub-woofer frequencies, red and infra-red light, or fresh-brewed coffee. A distortion filter would be something that removes distortion.
Glad to see I'm not the only one who actually understood what the article says. Consider the following-
"Computer manufacturers, blank CD makers, ISPs and software firms such as Kazaa will pool funds and pay artists directly."
In other words, this will be like the "if you buy blank tape you must be using it to copy albums, so we'll just make you pay upfront" levy that goes to the record companies or music publishers, only more so. If you buy a blank CD, if you have an internet account, if you have a computer with any sound transferring capability, you will be prejudged to be a maker of copies of copyrighted audio and will pay upfront, whether you want to or not, and whether or not you actually are downloading and/or burning copies of copyrighted albums. If this gets established, it'll be interesting to see how they determine which artist and/or composers are entitled to how big a slice of the pie. Also, expect the RIAA to try to claim that they deserve a cut as well.
If this gets off the ground, how long until the movie/TV/video industry decides that they should be getting a steady, before the fact, revenue stream from everybody that has a cable or DSL 'modem' or buys blank video tapes, VCRs, or recordable DVDs and DVD recording decks.
You will be considered guilty (of being a 'pirate') until proven pennyless.
MFM isn't a bus, it's a way of encoding the data for writing to the disk. It stands for modified frequency modulation.
Perhaps you're thinking of the pre-IDE system where the controller circuitry wasn't built onto the paddle board on the drive but was on a separate ( 8 bit) controller card that plugged into the ISA bus slot. This was done with both MFM and RLL (run length limited) drives, but even with this setup there was a 34 conductor data cable that could have 2 drives on it. The 20 conductor controller cable could only serve one drive, but there were plenty of controller cards that had 2 20 pin headers so that 2 drives could be connected to one card (and one IRQ, though I've forgotten which one ).
Slashdot Mirror
My original impression wasn't that you were exaggerating but that you didn't know as much about radio as you thought that you did. Perhaps I was mistaken.
Well, that and to pay those free over the air channels a fee to be allowed to do no more than to act as an antenna for the cable subscribers. It's called "must-carry, must-pay".
Back in the day, the 3 networks would schedule shows so that if one of them had something that you wanted to watch, the other 2 had something you probably wouldn't be interested in (but that was of interest to other viewers who didn't share your tastes), and vice-versa, so that they each got the maximum possible audience for each show, and there was usually something you wanted to watch on one of the three channels at any given time.
Now, everybody seems to want to arrange their program schedules as much to hurt the other channels as to help themselves, which results in some nights when there's nothing to watch on any of the channels and other nights when you need 3 or 4 separate VCRs for each member of the household.
I'm almost convinced that the people choosing when to broadcast which shows are being bribed to increase VCR sales.
I thought they did that by pre-empting the CBS shows that I wanted to watch with CSI re-runs.
Perhaps I was confused by your extreme understatement of the amount of time per day a cab company dispatcher is on the air and your extreme overstatement of the usual or necessary amount of geographical separation between transmitters. If you were exaggerating for the purposes of illustration, perhaps you should have said so.
The FM broadcast band runs from (approximately) 88 MHz to 108 MHz, which is only 20 MHz for the whole thing, so yes, it would be mighty tricky to shoehorn 100MHz worth of signal into it (although if you figure out a practical way to do it, how 'bout letting me in on the ground floor, pre-IPO?).
Those channels aren't leased, they are licensed, just as are the VHF channels. The main thing that keeps those non-profits from applying for a license to use one of those UHF channels in any particular geographic area is most likely that providing a transmitter, tower, and antenna and paying for the operation thereof ain't cheap, and that's before you spend anything on content and studio equipment to get that content to the transmitter as a video and audio signal. And you have to convince the FCC that the broadcasting of that content is sufficiently "in the public interest" (those airwaves belong to us, remember?) to deserve the use of that UHF channel allocation.
Unless Vinnie and Joyce are both using transmitters that are powerful enough to reach almost half of the way to each other there's no reason that a lot of other cab companies in cities in between Newark and Denver can't use that same frequency also.
If Vinnie and Joyce were both in Newark they could still both use the same frequency if there were a way to insure that they didn't try to use it at the same time. But then if ABC, FOX, CBS, and NBC would agree to only broadcast for an hour once every 4 hours, they could all use channel 2 or 11 or 37 or whatever.
Now if Joyce and Vinnie were both in Newark and you could connect both of their transmitters to the same timebase and they could alternate using that frequency every one-one millionth of a second and the radios in the cabs gated the tuners at 1,000,000Hz then theoretically Vinnie's messages could get through to Vinnie's drivers and Joyce's messages could get through to Joyce's drivers. But the transmitters and receivers would cost a lot more than they do now. Do you want to be the one to tell Vinnie that he needs to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a new transmitter and recievers 'cause you need more bandwidth so that you can download porn faster?
Although bandwidth and frequency are not the same thing, I suspect that Cat5's 100MHz bandwidth starts somewhere around 0MHz and goes up, topping out somewhere around 100MHz. Just because it has a bandwidth of 100MHz doesn't mean that you could use it for 6789MHz to 7789MHz.
Actually you wind up with (L + R) + (L - R) which gives you 2L and (L + R) + (-L + R) which gives you 2R. The sum (L + R) and the difference (L - R) are added together in one channel and the sum and the inverse of the difference (-L + R) are added together in the other channel.
I have a feeling that spectrum and bandwidth will only be nearly unlimited for those with nearly unlimited amounts of money to spend on electronic equipment or politicians or both.
The reason Zardoz wasn't popular was that it wasn't very good, but then, neither was the book.
The failure to include Andromeda Strain indicates that the list was put together by someone who wasn't even born when it came out and further that they really didn't give much weight to the "science" part.
At least credit Ballard if you're going to post stuff from Crash, a terribly disappointing book from someone whose sci-fi short stories I had quite enjoyed.
Totally off-topic, but your sig gave me a blinding flash of insight and now that I can see again I realize that what the record industry really fears is not that you'll get a copy of the album instead of buying it, but that you'll be able to use computers and the internet to listen to the album before buying it and realize that it ain't worth buying before they get your money instead of after.
Was that a Proview or EMC brand monitor by chance? If so I might know why they worked after being unplugged.
Sometimes it is. William of Occam lived long enough ago that spelling was by no means standardized. There are at least three different spellings in use. You can find more about this with google.
Don't know if his computer has an IR port, but it's pretty much guaranteed that most anything that puts out white light (everything between infra-red and ultra-violet) puts out some UV and IR as well.
...until they get bought up by a larger company which then sells out to an even larger company which then...
While you still have a "local" (i.e., you can go to their office and talk to the owner and top tech person) ISP, go talk to them about gettting the phone company to connect you and your ISP via DSL. After all, if you're in a small town you ought to be close to the central office. Support your local ISP while you still have one so that they don't have to sell out.
They have to have your credit card number to tell if you're close enough to the central office?
What about IE 5.0 and Outlook Express 5.0 ? While any of these patches work on them? Do they even have the vulnerabilities found in 5.01 and up?
Isn't somebody supposed to get on and complain about this guy asking his question here instead of making google do all the work? All I see (except for the hijacker jokes) are thoughtful, intelligent, and helpful replies. Did I miss the announcement of a "Grown-ups only" day on Slashdot?
Distortion, by definition being something not present in the original, is added, deliberately or otherwise. A filter only lets part of the original through, whether it's everything above sub-woofer frequencies, red and infra-red light, or fresh-brewed coffee. A distortion filter would be something that removes distortion.
"Computer manufacturers, blank CD makers, ISPs and software firms such as Kazaa will pool funds and pay artists directly."
In other words, this will be like the "if you buy blank tape you must be using it to copy albums, so we'll just make you pay upfront" levy that goes to the record companies or music publishers, only more so. If you buy a blank CD, if you have an internet account, if you have a computer with any sound transferring capability, you will be prejudged to be a maker of copies of copyrighted audio and will pay upfront, whether you want to or not, and whether or not you actually are downloading and/or burning copies of copyrighted albums. If this gets established, it'll be interesting to see how they determine which artist and/or composers are entitled to how big a slice of the pie. Also, expect the RIAA to try to claim that they deserve a cut as well.
If this gets off the ground, how long until the movie/TV/video industry decides that they should be getting a steady, before the fact, revenue stream from everybody that has a cable or DSL 'modem' or buys blank video tapes, VCRs, or recordable DVDs and DVD recording decks.
You will be considered guilty (of being a 'pirate') until proven pennyless.
Perhaps you're thinking of the pre-IDE system where the controller circuitry wasn't built onto the paddle board on the drive but was on a separate ( 8 bit) controller card that plugged into the ISA bus slot. This was done with both MFM and RLL (run length limited) drives, but even with this setup there was a 34 conductor data cable that could have 2 drives on it. The 20 conductor controller cable could only serve one drive, but there were plenty of controller cards that had 2 20 pin headers so that 2 drives could be connected to one card (and one IRQ, though I've forgotten which one ).