"i realize that someone needs to be in charge of this sort of thing, or else chaos will ensue....but how did the government come to "own" the spectrum?"
The government doesn't own the spectrum, the people of the U.S. do. However, as you point out, someone needs to be in charge of this sort of thing, and when it was decided somewhere back around the 1920s that it shouldn't remain in the hands of the military they put it under the Commerce Dept. or somewhere like that until the Communications Act of 1933 was passed and the Federal Communications Commission was created.
The idea is that the FCC exercises stewardship over the airwaves on behalf of the public, and broadcasters used to be granted licenses to operate "in the public interest" a particular type of service (AM, FM, TV, microwave relay, weather radar, air traffic control radar, amateur radio, citizens band, whatever)within a particular frequency range, at a certain power level, in a specific geographical area, at particular times of day, etc., according to specific technical requirements to prevent interference with other services. If you didn't behave yourself and keep the FCC happy you could find yourself with a lot of money tied up in land and equipment that you no longer could legally use for its intended purpose.
Nowadays, however, the broadcasters have come to believe that they have some divine right to this license to print money, and the auctioning of spectrum space (instead of leasing) means that certain bandwidths are gone forever no matter what may happen in the future that would make it desirable to re-assign them for some other service, including, I suspect, even instances where the military is denied something that they need and our national defense is compromised.
Yes, it is, but according to the article, "...the device is likely to be a non-upgradeable sealed unit...". (Yes, I realize you meant a different kind of expansion.)
At least if I buy a VCR or TV I can buy the service manual or the Sams, even if the unit isn't designed to be modified by the customer. Anybody think Microsoft is going to be any more open source on hardware than they are on software, especially since they can change the subscribed to service a few years later and make all these things obsolete so that you have to go out and buy another one, or maybe even send a little code down the wire to cripple or disable your old unit? And of course if you have to get all the content for this thing from Microsoft, they can raise rates at will in a way that cable companies can only dream about.
Another thing the article says, "The device's launch is heavily dependant on broadband becoming widely available...", makes me think that the slow roll out of fat pipes may have an unexpected benefit, by keeping this thing from achieving critical mass.
I thought that the memorial was the bronze casting of Turing sitting on a park bench holding an apple. It sound as though you're describing the sign behind it.
How 'bout they call it CompaqHP or something stupid like that and let the part of HP that makes test gear (the kind of stuff they started with right after WWII) be Hewlett-Packard again.
Apparently I misunderstood and no one was able to contract with @home (or anybody else) for internet service with their cable company merely supplying the transmission medium. Rather, they contracted with their cable company who subbed it out to @home (although if the cable companies had been thinking faster and farther down the road, they'd have avoided user@home email addresses in favor of user@cableco so as to more tightly bind customers to them and reduce customer awareness of any company other than themselves).
Regardless, the people who own the wire, in this case the cable company, offer one and only one choice for internet service over that wire, and in most cases they are the only company allowed to offer a customer access to that kind of wire.
Sounds like a monopoly to me.
Shouldn't there be some sort of happy medium between only one cable provider available and 8,000 different companies digging up your yard to run lines?
More like they keep "innovating" security problems that allow "innovation" of new worms and viruses, although I wouldn't be surprised if they did manage to come up with an original way to make their products vulnerable.
Are you sure that mine was the post to which you meant to reply? I ask because I didn't use any version of the plural of virus in it. Even the quote only contained the singular.
Do I understand correctly? A cable TV outfit that was letting a separate company sell internet access over their cable is cutting them off and the customers now will have to buy access from the cable company instead?
You won't need the weight, you just have to use a stronger spring on the tension roller, or whatever they call that thing that's not one of the two photo-interrupter disc axles.
Did they actually say that he's an employee or actual member of the board, or just that he's being paid to advise them?
Actually I went ahead and emailed him myself about this and I'll let you know what he has to say when I hear back from him.
Seeing as how ADM and all those others are kicking in a healthy chunk of change to help pay for the making of some of those PBS shows, you may very well be, by your involuntary funding through taxes, unwillingly partnered with those corporations, but if you analyze how much of whose money pays for what I think you'll find that the corporations aren't getting any more airtime for the amount of money they put in than if they spent the same amount on buying ad time on the commercial networks, and are probably getting even less, so it's more like they are the ones doing the subsidising, which is, please remember, a separate issue from that of whether or not tax money should be given to PBS.
His May 17th column doesn't mention his relationship with them, but it's not impossible that at the time he wrote the column he didn't have a relationship with them.
If you examine the page at the second link closely, you'll see that they list all 8 of the 6 members of the actual board of directors (they say there are currently 6 directors and then list 8, you'd think engineers would be better at math), and then it says "Additional key individuals to Eleven are:" and they list some other guy and "Robert X. Cringely, Special Advisor". In other words, he's a consultant, and probably gets a set fee regardless of whether the company turns a profit or not. If he were an actual officer of the corporation they likely would have had to list him under his real name, as Robert X. Cringely is no more his real name than it is the real name of whoever is currently writing under that name for the outfit where the name started.
If you continue to be concerned that he's perpetrating a hoax and a fraud on the entire free world, why not e-mail him and ask?
If you aren't confusing one Cringely with another, to which Canadian company do you refer, and where might one view the terms of Cringely's contract with them?
Slashdot Mirror
The government doesn't own the spectrum, the people of the U.S. do. However, as you point out, someone needs to be in charge of this sort of thing, and when it was decided somewhere back around the 1920s that it shouldn't remain in the hands of the military they put it under the Commerce Dept. or somewhere like that until the Communications Act of 1933 was passed and the Federal Communications Commission was created.
The idea is that the FCC exercises stewardship over the airwaves on behalf of the public, and broadcasters used to be granted licenses to operate "in the public interest" a particular type of service (AM, FM, TV, microwave relay, weather radar, air traffic control radar, amateur radio, citizens band, whatever)within a particular frequency range, at a certain power level, in a specific geographical area, at particular times of day, etc., according to specific technical requirements to prevent interference with other services. If you didn't behave yourself and keep the FCC happy you could find yourself with a lot of money tied up in land and equipment that you no longer could legally use for its intended purpose.
Nowadays, however, the broadcasters have come to believe that they have some divine right to this license to print money, and the auctioning of spectrum space (instead of leasing) means that certain bandwidths are gone forever no matter what may happen in the future that would make it desirable to re-assign them for some other service, including, I suspect, even instances where the military is denied something that they need and our national defense is compromised.
Yes, it is, but according to the article, "...the device is likely to be a non-upgradeable sealed unit...". (Yes, I realize you meant a different kind of expansion.)
At least if I buy a VCR or TV I can buy the service manual or the Sams, even if the unit isn't designed to be modified by the customer. Anybody think Microsoft is going to be any more open source on hardware than they are on software, especially since they can change the subscribed to service a few years later and make all these things obsolete so that you have to go out and buy another one, or maybe even send a little code down the wire to cripple or disable your old unit? And of course if you have to get all the content for this thing from Microsoft, they can raise rates at will in a way that cable companies can only dream about.
Another thing the article says, "The device's launch is heavily dependant on broadband becoming widely available...", makes me think that the slow roll out of fat pipes may have an unexpected benefit, by keeping this thing from achieving critical mass.
This version of the link works, apparently.
http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=dis play&uid=3167 03
Too lazy to do HTML this morning, cut and paste and then remove the space between the 7 and the 03.
I thought that the memorial was the bronze casting of Turing sitting on a park bench holding an apple. It sound as though you're describing the sign behind it.
Assuming that come tomorrow your job still exists.
But this thing is gonna be so long it'll have to be continued on the next forehead over!
Or maybe they'll push a low-end line of machines and call it Hewlett Compaqard Bell.
If this goes through watch Dell brag about moving from the number 4 spot to the number 3 spot and give the people at the very top big bonuses.
How 'bout they call it CompaqHP or something stupid like that and let the part of HP that makes test gear (the kind of stuff they started with right after WWII) be Hewlett-Packard again.
"Paying homage to the porcelain goddess" was one I heard many years ago. (On knees, bowing, etc.)
Apparently I misunderstood and no one was able to contract with @home (or anybody else) for internet service with their cable company merely supplying the transmission medium.
Rather, they contracted with their cable company who subbed it out to @home (although if the cable companies had been thinking faster and farther down the road, they'd have avoided user@home email addresses in favor of user@cableco so as to more tightly bind customers to them and reduce customer awareness of any company other than themselves).
Regardless, the people who own the wire, in this case the cable company, offer one and only one choice for internet service over that wire, and in most cases they are the only company allowed to offer a customer access to that kind of wire.
Sounds like a monopoly to me.
Shouldn't there be some sort of happy medium between only one cable provider available and 8,000 different companies digging up your yard to run lines?
More like they keep "innovating" security problems that allow "innovation" of new worms and viruses, although I wouldn't be surprised if they did manage to come up with an original way to make their products vulnerable.
So the correct plural of virus is slimes? :-)
Are you sure that mine was the post to which you meant to reply? I ask because I didn't use any version of the plural of virus in it. Even the quote only contained the singular.
Anybody know if Time-Warner Cable puts any restrictions on their ISP customers that your average dial-up $20 a month all you can eat ISP doesn't?
Considering Code Red's favorite food, that's pretty much a clean sweep for Microsoft, isn't it?
I guess they do bring something to the total user experience that you can't get from anyone else.
Gotta run. A whole bunch of people hae sent me files they need my advice on.
Monopoly, what monopoly?
You won't need the weight, you just have to use a stronger spring on the tension roller, or whatever they call that thing that's not one of the two photo-interrupter disc axles.
Not only that, but they disguised the mice as human astronauts.
(Now watch some idiot file for a patent.)
Actually I went ahead and emailed him myself about this and I'll let you know what he has to say when I hear back from him.
Seeing as how ADM and all those others are kicking in a healthy chunk of change to help pay for the making of some of those PBS shows, you may very well be, by your involuntary funding through taxes, unwillingly partnered with those corporations, but if you analyze how much of whose money pays for what I think you'll find that the corporations aren't getting any more airtime for the amount of money they put in than if they spent the same amount on buying ad time on the commercial networks, and are probably getting even less, so it's more like they are the ones doing the subsidising, which is, please remember, a separate issue from that of whether or not tax money should be given to PBS.
Make it worth the time and trouble. Go with the original--Al Green.
If you examine the page at the second link closely, you'll see that they list all 8 of the 6 members of the actual board of directors (they say there are currently 6 directors and then list 8, you'd think engineers would be better at math), and then it says "Additional key individuals to Eleven are:" and they list some other guy and "Robert X. Cringely, Special Advisor". In other words, he's a consultant, and probably gets a set fee regardless of whether the company turns a profit or not. If he were an actual officer of the corporation they likely would have had to list him under his real name, as Robert X. Cringely is no more his real name than it is the real name of whoever is currently writing under that name for the outfit where the name started.
If you continue to be concerned that he's perpetrating a hoax and a fraud on the entire free world, why not e-mail him and ask?
Elect Republicans, everyone except the rich get screwed.
I no longer vote for anybody, just against somebody else.
If you aren't confusing one Cringely with another, to which Canadian company do you refer, and where might one view the terms of Cringely's contract with them?