Voting is important enough that we should continue to strive toward the best possible system of handling it.
This assumes that some electronic device is the best means of handling it.
IMHSHO, a polling place where you go prove who you are and that you are authorized to vote, with a paper ballot that is put in a sealed box and counted electronically when the polls close (all the polls, not just the ones in your local precinct -- for the large scale elections like President, so the east coast results don't bias the west) (with no subjective guessing about "is this circle filled in?" or "was this person smart enough to be able to poke a hole in a piece of paper when the hole was pre-scored for him"), seems like a pretty good, simple system.
A system where it doesn't take a Ph.D in computer science or experienced programmer to tell if something has been tampered with or was designed right is a plus. Just using enough normal people keeping an eye on each other to keep them from wanking with the ballot papers.
(If you want to remove all doubt for the voter how a ballot would be counted, put a scantron in the booth that can scan the ballot and show how the other scantrons will count things.)
As I've already said, I think we could really get something good in just a few short years if we really invested in it.
I think we're moving away from a good system into something that will make a man-on-the-street unable to determine if anything has been rigged, making us trust the "smart people" to protect us.
You mean the fact that ballots are distributed to every voter by mail, which allows a husband to vote for his wife, or someone who paws through the trash to vote using discarded ballots?
Only the signature on the "secrecy envelope" (which has your name and address pre-printed on it, along with a place to sign, into which you insert your ballot), which is supposed to be matched against the signature on file for the voter. Of course, if you've sold your vote, you've probably included the signature for free.
This has created the wonderful situation that if the vote checker doesn't like your vote for any reason, they simply claim the signatures don't match and your vote is thrown away without any notice to you at all.
Further, the vote counters can keep your "secrecy envelope" with your ballot so that they can keep track of who voted what way, and you have to trust that they discard the envelope prior to looking at the ballot.
In exchange for these problems, we've given up the need to actually go to a polling place, see your neighbors face to face, prove your identity, and use a fancy electronic box (with or without open source software). I'd say it's a fair exchange. </sarcasm>
The benefits of electronic voting are that it can be cheaper and faster with near instant results and no recounts.
Cheaper, maybe. The machines and people to inspect them and maintain them are not free. A complicated machine with "software" requires a trained inspector. Paper is pretty simple. Paper ballots do, indeed, grow on trees. "Is the box empty when you started" and "is the counter on the scantron 0" are pretty simple concepts that the normal poll worker can comprehend.
"Faster" isn't necessarily a benefit. Why do we need to know withing five minutes of the polls closing who won? I don't know of any election where the winner takes office as soon as the polls close, or even within a month. Maybe special elections to fill a vacancy, but then, it took time to hold the election and if the office can be vacant for two or three months before the election, it won't matter if it takes a week or two to reach a final count.
By "no recounts" you mean 'no possibility of recounts', which I also do not view as a benefit. "We just found seven voting machines we didn't include in the total." Too bad, the result was certified five minutes after the polls closed and there are no recounts.
I also believe that with enough work an electronic system can end up being harder to tamper with than a paper one.
Perhaps. But OTH the training it requires to detect tampering with a paper system is pretty simple and can be accomplished by most poll workers. Tampering with an electronic system, not so easy. The very fact that it may be harder to do means some people will work harder to do it and figuring out that it happened will be harder, too.
Given that you must continue to maintain a paper-based system anyway (absentee, military), there are few benefits to creating an additional system. Here in Oregon we'd find it very hard to mail an electronic voting machine to every voter, and now that nobody has to go to the polling place to vote you aren't going to easily change us back.
If you feel that way, could you explain to me what benefit a paper vote actually has?
If you feel that way, could you explain to me what benefit open source electronic voting actually has?
You can confirm your vote was recorded correctly when you drop it into a box, but how do you know that box doesn't get swapped out? Or that another stuffed box doesn't get set right next to it?
You can confirm that there exists some software in source form that is free of obvious defects and lacks backdoor exploits, but can you confirm that THAT version of software was installed on each and every voting machine, and that the numbers reported by each and every machine were not tampered with after the polls closed? Can you confirm that the compiler itself was not tampered with, or that the dynamic libraries weren't modified, or the OS itself? Can you confirm that a user-mode file system was not installed that intercepts data and modifies it?
I don't see the benefit in knowing it's accurate when you voted if you don't know whether or not it's accurate when it's counted.
I don't see the benefit in knowing it's accurate when you voted if you don't know whether or not it's accurate when it's counted.
The only part of your rant worth responding to is this:
TRUTH: You have corrected someone who was correct, with a falsehood. Universe 1, You -1,000,000
The only "correction" I made was to point out that the First Amendment does not say you may say whatever you wish about someone, which is absolutely true. You: -1,000,000.
As for the rest, the speech leading to ridicule may or may not consist of libel or slander, but can certainly be fodder for lawsuits.
Thanks for the civil discourse. (No, I'm not new here, that was sarcasm.)
"The rule allows local governments, community associations and landlords to enforce restrictions that do not impair the installation, maintenance or use of the types of antennas described above, as well as restrictions needed for safety or historic preservation. Under some circumstances where a central or common antenna is available, a community association or landlord may restrict the installation of individual antennas. The rule does not apply to common areas that are owned by a landlord, a community association, or jointly by condominium or cooperative owners where the antenna user does not have an exclusive use area. Such common areas may include the roof or exterior wall of a multiple dwelling unit. Therefore, restrictions on antennas installed in or on such common areas are enforceable."
Looks like the restriction is probably legal. He doesn't have exclusive use of the south-facing wall (or any use, apparently), and a 117-year-old house is certainly on the Historic Register.
I will attempt to educate the Canadian with regard to this thing we Americans call the First Amendment.
Despite the common misconceptions about it, the First Amendment does not grant people the right to slander or libel. The standard regarding ridicule used to be whether the person was "a public presence", or something to that effect. E.g., a TV performer who puts himself up in the public view deliberately, or a politician.
Have You Tube and ubiquitous camera video devices removed that protection for the normal person? Is everyone now supposed to be considered open to such attacks? Or is it a deliberate decision that police officers in the performance of their duty have lost protection from this, too?
Are they employees? Do they conduct "university business"?
All employees must acknowledge their custodial responsibility for the university information on the computer(s) and associated storage they use in the conduct of university business, whether university property or personally owned. This includes:
* The internal drives of their workstations, both laptops and desktops;
* External drives;
* Mobile devices such as smart phones and PDAs;
* Portable media, such as USB flash drives, used to store or transport university data;
* Email messages and associated attachments, including copies stored on an email server;
* Network file spaces assigned for individual use, such as roaming profiles and personal folders on file servers.
I have, in the past, used my desktop system to order things from suppliers. That is clearly "doing university business". Sometimes I save mail messages on my file servers. I sometimes plug a USB stick into one of them. I have about two dozen USB sticks.
Then "digital basic" would come to refer to the tier with the free-to-air channels and little else, the one that comes effectively free with a subscription to Internet service.
No. The "free-to-air" (must carries) are different than the "digital basic", at least in Comcast's terminology. You cannot buy a digital service for just the must-carries. You can get an analog service, but that's a little more than the musts. It includes Discovery and, of course, shopping channels. Digital basic is nearly identical to what used to be called "expanded basic" in this area, which includes the common set of cable networks.
If you are getting free digital television with your internet, then your company was just too lazy to install the right trap on your line. Give them time.
Prior to the "upgrade" to digital, analog basic was Ch. 2 through 30. Everything above that was trapped. Expanded basic was 2-71, trap removed.
Now the only analog is 2-30, and there are some holes in that.
Traps would still work fine. I had a supervisor in the local office tell me that if I dropped "digital basic" service they'd be out the next day to install a trap so I could not use my CPE to get the digital services that they hadn't start encrypting yet. The laws of physics have not changed over the last year, so if a trap would have blocked the digital video last year it will block it this year, too.
I even had one cable tech support person tell me that traps wouldn't work, and that he'd seen digital signals getting through a trap. Yeah. Right. Traps cut out so much signal that you don't know the channels are there (on an analog system), but they won't disable a digital one. If the connectors on my cable aren't wrench-tightened, I lose digital channels. A trap is going to be much more effective.
In the analog cable days, they used something called VideoCipher.
Not on our cable system. They used traps.
If you've ever heard jokes about "trying to watch scrambled porn", that's what they're referring to.
I know what they're referring to, I understand the different methods of distributing services.
Does trapping signals work well with the upstream channel used by DOCSIS?
The upstreams are all below ch. 2. They can't be in the middle of the downstream because it takes a filter to allow the amps to pass the signal back up the chain without creating a feedback loop. Your "cable internet" is also in that region, for the same reason.
With a little planning and forethought, it would be trivial for Comcast to put all the digital basic channels in, say, 31-40 or less, then trap above 40 to prevent any possibility of theft of premium services. But I'm willing to let them encrypt the premium stuff as long as I get the services I pay for.
FX/USA/TNT == these channels are mostly reruns of old shows,...
USA, for one, has a large number of first-run series, like Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, and used to have Monk. I think one of the Law&Order's moved to USA, as well. TNT has Leverage. Don't know what fX has, don't watch it.
Animal Planet has (had) Whale Wars (one of the funniest shows on cable). History has IRT, and now IRT in Nepal (also pretty funny). Tru has Billy the Exterminator (another hoot), plus Party at the Hard Rock, and a lot more.
AMC is NOT the same as This, AMC is worse. NIK has SpongeBob as well as the other stuff. Cartoon has Robot Chicken...
Now consider that I get exactly TWO OTA channels (with three programming streams on one, all PBS, and two on the other) on a GOOD night, and only the PBS crud normally.
I would much rather be able to USE the digital programming that I'm paying for, and never signed a contract limiting me to three devices, than have to install a bunch of antenna hardware just to see reruns of stuff five years after they appeared first-run on cable networks, if at all.
No big loss. Those extended basic channels were pretty crappy standard def feeds over digital anyway.
No big loss to you, but I have money invested in hardware that USED to be able to pick up SyFy and USA and the other channels I'm paying for. Hardware that USED to be able to record those channels automatically, without me having to change the channel on a cable box, and thus could record from one channel now and a different one later without me having to be sitting there babysitting it.
As for the quality of the feed, I think I'm better off with what you call "crappy standard def" (good enough for me) than nothing at all.
They want you to pay even more to get the quality HD feeds of the same channels.
Of course they want me to pay more money, but for THEIR DVR that they control and own, instead of letting me do with the signal what I want.
What's the quote, Arthur C. Clarke, wasn't it... "any technology, sufficiently advanced, will seem like magic to those who don't understand it". Something like that.
I think "babies" fit the "don't understand" clause; interactive robots the "technology" one.
What's the next scientific study going to prove, that NASCAR crowds are wowed by nitrous funny cars?
Maybe their curve has flattened out now, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that "support for CableCard" "works reasonably well on Comcast (or other cable company)".
This leaves anyone with a non-cableCard device out in the cold. The rules need to be tightened up to force cable companies to provide the digital signals that people are paying for IN THE CLEAR so they can use customer provided equipment freely. At least for any tier called "digital basic", which is the lowest level digital tier. In other words, they can trap the digital signals for anyone who doesn't have "digital basic", so they do not need to encrypt the signals to prevent theft, they just trap them out. Just as they used to do with upper-tier programming in analog form.
Comcast does this. They used to provide all the basic digital signals in clearQAM so my four clearQAM devices could access them. Then one day they simply shut them off. I get the must-carries in digital with those devices now. Just the must-carries.
Even if that's beyond your ability (or anyone else's), I still stand by my statement. If you make an agreement to pay when you go over a certain number of minutes -- and assuming that the money is valuable enough to you that you do not want to go over your limit -- then not keeping track of how much time you've used, by whatever means necessary, is stupid.
So, once upon a time, I went to a country called, for the sake of the story, Oz. I turned my phone on when I got there, which registered it with the local wireless company.
Then I turned it off. It seems, however, that while I was in Oz, my home alarm system detected a problem and started calling me. Had I been near home, I could have gone home and turned it off. However, I didn't know there was a problem BECAUSE MY PHONE WAS TURNED OFF. It didn't ring. Not Even Once. (The calls would have been coming in about 2AM, and that phone rang even when in vibrate mode when attached to the charger, which it was.) Had it been ringing, I could have had someone at home turn the system off.
So, I come home, get my next bill, and lo and behold there are about a hundred calls to my cellphone IN OZ, which, because I didn't answer, were forwarded BACK TO THE USA. Each call to Oz was $1.99. Each forward back to the USA was $1.99. $400 in calls which I never got because my phone was TURNED OFF.
Please, sir, explain to me how I keep track of the number of minutes for such calls, given that nothing on the carrier's website said anything about the system being so stupid as to forward calls where the phone was off and then forwarding them back to voice mail (which recorded nothing, because the calling system hung up before it got to voice mail), and charged both fucking ways.
Now explain to me the charge on THIS month's bill for a "picture message" that the carrier's technical support person asked me to send to myself as a test of the system, and TOLD ME WAS INCLUDED IN MY BUCKET OF 500 TEXT MESSAGE MINUTES. And explain how I was to know, other than through vast experience with this company, that they were lying when they said it wasn't going to cost me anything.
Yes. The patent specifically claims the GPU performs motion compensation, and returns that data to the CPU which subsequently performs everything else.
So, let's say a company now files a patent for doing everything else in the GPU. They do the motion estimation in the CPU, everything else in the GPU.
What you seem to be saying is that now I can come along and take the motion estimation part of MS's patent, and the "rest of the processing" part of the other company's, and do everything in the GPU, and I won't be violating anyone's patent because I'm not doing any part of it in the CPU?
That would be like company A having a patent on making tires, company B a patent on wheels, and I come along making tires on wheels and claim I'm not violating both company's patents because I'm doing BOTH, not just one or the other.
How would any patent that covers a sub-part of anything be enforceable then?
The patent specifically covers offloading motion compensation to the GPU, while running everything else in the CPU. It only covers this limited offload, because of limitations of the programmable shaders of graphics cards at the time. Any modern GPU encoding implementation would offload most, if not all, of the duties to the GPU, and thus would not be covered under this patent.
Hold on a mo', bro'.
How can a patent that covers offloading the motion compensation part of encoding video to the GPU NOT apply to an implementation that offloads motion compensation AND other things to the GPU?
If I get a patent on an encoder chip that does really really fast additions, can someone bypass my patent by using a duplicate of the chip to do multiplications (by doing a lot of really really fast additions)?
Oblig. auto analogy: if I drive from Syracuse to Buffalo on the New York Throughway (I80?) I pay a toll. Are you saying that if I drive from Boston to Chicago and use the Throughway while passing through New York I don't pay a toll? After all, I'm not just driving the throughway anymore, I'm driving the throughway and a bunch of other roads. That's exactly what someone who uses the GPU for motion estimation AND other things is doing: motion estimation, which I've got a patent on, and other things which I don't.
The PBS model. I heard the most amazing admission this weekend. OPB begging for money during Prarie Home Companion. The host actually said "this is the best way to show support for nonprofitable programs." I think he meant "nonprofit", but who knows?
I said: "Like free sidewalk maintenance." I didn't say "let the sidewalks corrode".
In my city, until last week, when a sidewalk falls apart the city comes by and tells the property owner "your sidewalk is broken, fix it." The property owner pays. Last week my city passed a new tax to be used to fix sidewalks. Now it's "free", with "free" used in exactly the context it has been used in here: taxpayer funded. So, you see, the opposite of "free" is NOT "let them fall apart", it's "property owner pays".
As for trash pickup, the city doesn't do that here anyway. We have to pay a private company. Apparently YOU think the government should pay for it, which makes my point for me.
Prior to "free health care", the hospitals picked up the tab for ER use by people who couldn't pay. This eventually got passed on to people who COULD pay but didn't have insurance and those who did have insurance. But not "the taxpayer". It seems like a lot of people think the taxpayers should foot the bill for them.
So no, I actually didn't say any of the words you were trying to put into my mouth. The opposite of each of the things I said were being expected "for free" wasn't "don't get".
This sounds like beamforming. Submarines do this. Works great.
So THAT'S what that large, grey cylindrical object hanging over the heads of the crowd at the last professional basketball game I went to was. I always wondered...
I wonder if they heard me saying "I wonder what that large grey cylindrical object hanging over our heads is", or maybe "I hope those ropes don't break."
Nothing?! They made the digital camera interface usable, and someone finally added a "crop" function to Paint...
My digital camera has a USB interface and appears like a USB disk, which works under just about any OS. The one that doesn't uses a CF card that can be mounted on just about any OS, including XP.
What is this "Paint" thing you refer to? Is it like The GIMP or ImageMagick, just less useful?
Windows 7 is bloatware that doesn't run a lot of the software I already own. I either have to buy updates to everything I run now (if it is still available) or stay with XP. Hmmm...
Well not exactly, but the excuse would be that, "Sorry, we dont have a cable running to/through your place...
Exactly how can you be on DSL or cable for networking and have the telco or cable service people tell you, honestly, that "we don't have a cable running to your place"? Gosh, what have I been paying $110 a month for if you don't have a cable running to my place, and how am I getting cable TV and why did you provide me with a cable box if you don't have cable running to my place?
The point is that IF YOU HAVE CABLE INTERNET, that cable company is responsible for fixing it and cannot claim that you are just "in a dead spot" and can't get reception. There are no "dead spots" in a properly working cable internet system.
There are radio dead spots ALL OVER THE PLACE in almost any radio system. If you can't get the "free" wireless internet your city or whatever is providing, then 1) you are stuck dealing with technologically ignorant city employees when trying to get a problem fixed and 2) they have the easy excuse that you are in one of those dead spots and there is nothing they can do about it.
Even better, they can tell you that you need to move your receiver to get better signal. If the cable company says "move your cable modem a few feet to the left, maybe you'll get better reception" you know they're idiots.
No, I mean like the crap that people think the government ought to give them for free and aren't smart enough to know they're paying more in taxes because of it. Like free bus service. Like free sidewalk maintenance. Like free internet. Like free cheese. Like free health care. Like... well, I made my point.
I didn't follow the link you provided, but I bet it's the story about the county in Tennessee(?) where they don't have their own fire department and people are expected to pay a meager $75/year for that service from a neighboring city in a neighboring county. Well, the people IN THAT COUNTY get to rule themselves on that matter, and THEY DECIDED not to pay for a fire department out of tax dollars, for whatever reason. Their decision. The guy who got burned by this was someone who refused to pay the fee, and as further information goes, had once before "promised to pay" when there was a fire call to his house and then didn't bother.
Maybe if someone were to set up a free municipal wireless system...
The "free municipal systems" aren't really free, you know, they just spread the cost to everyone, even those who have no interest in getting "the internet" and those who already pay for their services. Yes, this is a great deal for those who don't want to pay for their own service, until you consider all the other things that people have the government provide "for free" that they don't want to use.
They also handily remove any real responsibility for service from anyone. Can't pick up the signal? Well, if you're on DSL or cable, nobody can use the excuse "you're in a dead spot, too bad."
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This assumes that some electronic device is the best means of handling it.
IMHSHO, a polling place where you go prove who you are and that you are authorized to vote, with a paper ballot that is put in a sealed box and counted electronically when the polls close (all the polls, not just the ones in your local precinct -- for the large scale elections like President, so the east coast results don't bias the west) (with no subjective guessing about "is this circle filled in?" or "was this person smart enough to be able to poke a hole in a piece of paper when the hole was pre-scored for him"), seems like a pretty good, simple system.
A system where it doesn't take a Ph.D in computer science or experienced programmer to tell if something has been tampered with or was designed right is a plus. Just using enough normal people keeping an eye on each other to keep them from wanking with the ballot papers.
(If you want to remove all doubt for the voter how a ballot would be counted, put a scantron in the booth that can scan the ballot and show how the other scantrons will count things.)
As I've already said, I think we could really get something good in just a few short years if we really invested in it.
I think we're moving away from a good system into something that will make a man-on-the-street unable to determine if anything has been rigged, making us trust the "smart people" to protect us.
Only the signature on the "secrecy envelope" (which has your name and address pre-printed on it, along with a place to sign, into which you insert your ballot), which is supposed to be matched against the signature on file for the voter. Of course, if you've sold your vote, you've probably included the signature for free.
This has created the wonderful situation that if the vote checker doesn't like your vote for any reason, they simply claim the signatures don't match and your vote is thrown away without any notice to you at all.
Further, the vote counters can keep your "secrecy envelope" with your ballot so that they can keep track of who voted what way, and you have to trust that they discard the envelope prior to looking at the ballot.
In exchange for these problems, we've given up the need to actually go to a polling place, see your neighbors face to face, prove your identity, and use a fancy electronic box (with or without open source software). I'd say it's a fair exchange. </sarcasm>
Cheaper, maybe. The machines and people to inspect them and maintain them are not free. A complicated machine with "software" requires a trained inspector. Paper is pretty simple. Paper ballots do, indeed, grow on trees. "Is the box empty when you started" and "is the counter on the scantron 0" are pretty simple concepts that the normal poll worker can comprehend.
"Faster" isn't necessarily a benefit. Why do we need to know withing five minutes of the polls closing who won? I don't know of any election where the winner takes office as soon as the polls close, or even within a month. Maybe special elections to fill a vacancy, but then, it took time to hold the election and if the office can be vacant for two or three months before the election, it won't matter if it takes a week or two to reach a final count.
By "no recounts" you mean 'no possibility of recounts', which I also do not view as a benefit. "We just found seven voting machines we didn't include in the total." Too bad, the result was certified five minutes after the polls closed and there are no recounts.
I also believe that with enough work an electronic system can end up being harder to tamper with than a paper one.
Perhaps. But OTH the training it requires to detect tampering with a paper system is pretty simple and can be accomplished by most poll workers. Tampering with an electronic system, not so easy. The very fact that it may be harder to do means some people will work harder to do it and figuring out that it happened will be harder, too.
Given that you must continue to maintain a paper-based system anyway (absentee, military), there are few benefits to creating an additional system. Here in Oregon we'd find it very hard to mail an electronic voting machine to every voter, and now that nobody has to go to the polling place to vote you aren't going to easily change us back.
If you feel that way, could you explain to me what benefit open source electronic voting actually has?
You can confirm your vote was recorded correctly when you drop it into a box, but how do you know that box doesn't get swapped out? Or that another stuffed box doesn't get set right next to it?
You can confirm that there exists some software in source form that is free of obvious defects and lacks backdoor exploits, but can you confirm that THAT version of software was installed on each and every voting machine, and that the numbers reported by each and every machine were not tampered with after the polls closed? Can you confirm that the compiler itself was not tampered with, or that the dynamic libraries weren't modified, or the OS itself? Can you confirm that a user-mode file system was not installed that intercepts data and modifies it?
I don't see the benefit in knowing it's accurate when you voted if you don't know whether or not it's accurate when it's counted.
I don't see the benefit in knowing it's accurate when you voted if you don't know whether or not it's accurate when it's counted.
TRUTH: You have corrected someone who was correct, with a falsehood. Universe 1, You -1,000,000
The only "correction" I made was to point out that the First Amendment does not say you may say whatever you wish about someone, which is absolutely true. You: -1,000,000.
As for the rest, the speech leading to ridicule may or may not consist of libel or slander, but can certainly be fodder for lawsuits.
Thanks for the civil discourse. (No, I'm not new here, that was sarcasm.)
"The rule allows local governments, community associations and landlords to enforce restrictions that do not impair the installation, maintenance or use of the types of antennas described above, as well as restrictions needed for safety or historic preservation. Under some circumstances where a central or common antenna is available, a community association or landlord may restrict the installation of individual antennas. The rule does not apply to common areas that are owned by a landlord, a community association, or jointly by condominium or cooperative owners where the antenna user does not have an exclusive use area. Such common areas may include the roof or exterior wall of a multiple dwelling unit. Therefore, restrictions on antennas installed in or on such common areas are enforceable."
Looks like the restriction is probably legal. He doesn't have exclusive use of the south-facing wall (or any use, apparently), and a 117-year-old house is certainly on the Historic Register.
Despite the common misconceptions about it, the First Amendment does not grant people the right to slander or libel. The standard regarding ridicule used to be whether the person was "a public presence", or something to that effect. E.g., a TV performer who puts himself up in the public view deliberately, or a politician.
Have You Tube and ubiquitous camera video devices removed that protection for the normal person? Is everyone now supposed to be considered open to such attacks? Or is it a deliberate decision that police officers in the performance of their duty have lost protection from this, too?
Are they employees? Do they conduct "university business"?
All employees must acknowledge their custodial responsibility for the university information on the computer(s) and associated storage they use in the conduct of university business, whether university property or personally owned. This includes:
I have, in the past, used my desktop system to order things from suppliers. That is clearly "doing university business". Sometimes I save mail messages on my file servers. I sometimes plug a USB stick into one of them. I have about two dozen USB sticks.
No. The "free-to-air" (must carries) are different than the "digital basic", at least in Comcast's terminology. You cannot buy a digital service for just the must-carries. You can get an analog service, but that's a little more than the musts. It includes Discovery and, of course, shopping channels. Digital basic is nearly identical to what used to be called "expanded basic" in this area, which includes the common set of cable networks.
If you are getting free digital television with your internet, then your company was just too lazy to install the right trap on your line. Give them time.
Prior to the "upgrade" to digital, analog basic was Ch. 2 through 30. Everything above that was trapped. Expanded basic was 2-71, trap removed.
Now the only analog is 2-30, and there are some holes in that.
Traps would still work fine. I had a supervisor in the local office tell me that if I dropped "digital basic" service they'd be out the next day to install a trap so I could not use my CPE to get the digital services that they hadn't start encrypting yet. The laws of physics have not changed over the last year, so if a trap would have blocked the digital video last year it will block it this year, too.
I even had one cable tech support person tell me that traps wouldn't work, and that he'd seen digital signals getting through a trap. Yeah. Right. Traps cut out so much signal that you don't know the channels are there (on an analog system), but they won't disable a digital one. If the connectors on my cable aren't wrench-tightened, I lose digital channels. A trap is going to be much more effective.
In the analog cable days, they used something called VideoCipher.
Not on our cable system. They used traps.
If you've ever heard jokes about "trying to watch scrambled porn", that's what they're referring to.
I know what they're referring to, I understand the different methods of distributing services.
Does trapping signals work well with the upstream channel used by DOCSIS?
The upstreams are all below ch. 2. They can't be in the middle of the downstream because it takes a filter to allow the amps to pass the signal back up the chain without creating a feedback loop. Your "cable internet" is also in that region, for the same reason.
With a little planning and forethought, it would be trivial for Comcast to put all the digital basic channels in, say, 31-40 or less, then trap above 40 to prevent any possibility of theft of premium services. But I'm willing to let them encrypt the premium stuff as long as I get the services I pay for.
USA, for one, has a large number of first-run series, like Psych, Burn Notice, Royal Pains, and used to have Monk. I think one of the Law&Order's moved to USA, as well. TNT has Leverage. Don't know what fX has, don't watch it.
Animal Planet has (had) Whale Wars (one of the funniest shows on cable). History has IRT, and now IRT in Nepal (also pretty funny). Tru has Billy the Exterminator (another hoot), plus Party at the Hard Rock, and a lot more.
AMC is NOT the same as This, AMC is worse. NIK has SpongeBob as well as the other stuff. Cartoon has Robot Chicken ...
Now consider that I get exactly TWO OTA channels (with three programming streams on one, all PBS, and two on the other) on a GOOD night, and only the PBS crud normally.
I would much rather be able to USE the digital programming that I'm paying for, and never signed a contract limiting me to three devices, than have to install a bunch of antenna hardware just to see reruns of stuff five years after they appeared first-run on cable networks, if at all.
No big loss to you, but I have money invested in hardware that USED to be able to pick up SyFy and USA and the other channels I'm paying for. Hardware that USED to be able to record those channels automatically, without me having to change the channel on a cable box, and thus could record from one channel now and a different one later without me having to be sitting there babysitting it.
As for the quality of the feed, I think I'm better off with what you call "crappy standard def" (good enough for me) than nothing at all.
They want you to pay even more to get the quality HD feeds of the same channels.
Of course they want me to pay more money, but for THEIR DVR that they control and own, instead of letting me do with the signal what I want.
I think "babies" fit the "don't understand" clause; interactive robots the "technology" one.
What's the next scientific study going to prove, that NASCAR crowds are wowed by nitrous funny cars?
Nah. Nail him to the wall and call him Art and people will pay to see him.
This leaves anyone with a non-cableCard device out in the cold. The rules need to be tightened up to force cable companies to provide the digital signals that people are paying for IN THE CLEAR so they can use customer provided equipment freely. At least for any tier called "digital basic", which is the lowest level digital tier. In other words, they can trap the digital signals for anyone who doesn't have "digital basic", so they do not need to encrypt the signals to prevent theft, they just trap them out. Just as they used to do with upper-tier programming in analog form.
Comcast does this. They used to provide all the basic digital signals in clearQAM so my four clearQAM devices could access them. Then one day they simply shut them off. I get the must-carries in digital with those devices now. Just the must-carries.
Bastards.
So, once upon a time, I went to a country called, for the sake of the story, Oz. I turned my phone on when I got there, which registered it with the local wireless company.
Then I turned it off. It seems, however, that while I was in Oz, my home alarm system detected a problem and started calling me. Had I been near home, I could have gone home and turned it off. However, I didn't know there was a problem BECAUSE MY PHONE WAS TURNED OFF. It didn't ring. Not Even Once. (The calls would have been coming in about 2AM, and that phone rang even when in vibrate mode when attached to the charger, which it was.) Had it been ringing, I could have had someone at home turn the system off.
So, I come home, get my next bill, and lo and behold there are about a hundred calls to my cellphone IN OZ, which, because I didn't answer, were forwarded BACK TO THE USA. Each call to Oz was $1.99. Each forward back to the USA was $1.99. $400 in calls which I never got because my phone was TURNED OFF.
Please, sir, explain to me how I keep track of the number of minutes for such calls, given that nothing on the carrier's website said anything about the system being so stupid as to forward calls where the phone was off and then forwarding them back to voice mail (which recorded nothing, because the calling system hung up before it got to voice mail), and charged both fucking ways.
Now explain to me the charge on THIS month's bill for a "picture message" that the carrier's technical support person asked me to send to myself as a test of the system, and TOLD ME WAS INCLUDED IN MY BUCKET OF 500 TEXT MESSAGE MINUTES. And explain how I was to know, other than through vast experience with this company, that they were lying when they said it wasn't going to cost me anything.
So, let's say a company now files a patent for doing everything else in the GPU. They do the motion estimation in the CPU, everything else in the GPU.
What you seem to be saying is that now I can come along and take the motion estimation part of MS's patent, and the "rest of the processing" part of the other company's, and do everything in the GPU, and I won't be violating anyone's patent because I'm not doing any part of it in the CPU?
That would be like company A having a patent on making tires, company B a patent on wheels, and I come along making tires on wheels and claim I'm not violating both company's patents because I'm doing BOTH, not just one or the other.
How would any patent that covers a sub-part of anything be enforceable then?
Hold on a mo', bro'.
How can a patent that covers offloading the motion compensation part of encoding video to the GPU NOT apply to an implementation that offloads motion compensation AND other things to the GPU?
If I get a patent on an encoder chip that does really really fast additions, can someone bypass my patent by using a duplicate of the chip to do multiplications (by doing a lot of really really fast additions)?
Oblig. auto analogy: if I drive from Syracuse to Buffalo on the New York Throughway (I80?) I pay a toll. Are you saying that if I drive from Boston to Chicago and use the Throughway while passing through New York I don't pay a toll? After all, I'm not just driving the throughway anymore, I'm driving the throughway and a bunch of other roads. That's exactly what someone who uses the GPU for motion estimation AND other things is doing: motion estimation, which I've got a patent on, and other things which I don't.
The PBS model. I heard the most amazing admission this weekend. OPB begging for money during Prarie Home Companion. The host actually said "this is the best way to show support for nonprofitable programs." I think he meant "nonprofit", but who knows?
No, actually I didn't.
I said: "Like free sidewalk maintenance." I didn't say "let the sidewalks corrode".
In my city, until last week, when a sidewalk falls apart the city comes by and tells the property owner "your sidewalk is broken, fix it." The property owner pays. Last week my city passed a new tax to be used to fix sidewalks. Now it's "free", with "free" used in exactly the context it has been used in here: taxpayer funded. So, you see, the opposite of "free" is NOT "let them fall apart", it's "property owner pays".
As for trash pickup, the city doesn't do that here anyway. We have to pay a private company. Apparently YOU think the government should pay for it, which makes my point for me.
Prior to "free health care", the hospitals picked up the tab for ER use by people who couldn't pay. This eventually got passed on to people who COULD pay but didn't have insurance and those who did have insurance. But not "the taxpayer". It seems like a lot of people think the taxpayers should foot the bill for them.
So no, I actually didn't say any of the words you were trying to put into my mouth. The opposite of each of the things I said were being expected "for free" wasn't "don't get".
Don't be stupid. I said nothing of the sort.
So THAT'S what that large, grey cylindrical object hanging over the heads of the crowd at the last professional basketball game I went to was. I always wondered...
I wonder if they heard me saying "I wonder what that large grey cylindrical object hanging over our heads is", or maybe "I hope those ropes don't break."
My digital camera has a USB interface and appears like a USB disk, which works under just about any OS. The one that doesn't uses a CF card that can be mounted on just about any OS, including XP.
What is this "Paint" thing you refer to? Is it like The GIMP or ImageMagick, just less useful?
Windows 7 is bloatware that doesn't run a lot of the software I already own. I either have to buy updates to everything I run now (if it is still available) or stay with XP. Hmmm...
Exactly how can you be on DSL or cable for networking and have the telco or cable service people tell you, honestly, that "we don't have a cable running to your place"? Gosh, what have I been paying $110 a month for if you don't have a cable running to my place, and how am I getting cable TV and why did you provide me with a cable box if you don't have cable running to my place?
The point is that IF YOU HAVE CABLE INTERNET, that cable company is responsible for fixing it and cannot claim that you are just "in a dead spot" and can't get reception. There are no "dead spots" in a properly working cable internet system.
There are radio dead spots ALL OVER THE PLACE in almost any radio system. If you can't get the "free" wireless internet your city or whatever is providing, then 1) you are stuck dealing with technologically ignorant city employees when trying to get a problem fixed and 2) they have the easy excuse that you are in one of those dead spots and there is nothing they can do about it.
Even better, they can tell you that you need to move your receiver to get better signal. If the cable company says "move your cable modem a few feet to the left, maybe you'll get better reception" you know they're idiots.
No, I mean like the crap that people think the government ought to give them for free and aren't smart enough to know they're paying more in taxes because of it. Like free bus service. Like free sidewalk maintenance. Like free internet. Like free cheese. Like free health care. Like ... well, I made my point.
I didn't follow the link you provided, but I bet it's the story about the county in Tennessee(?) where they don't have their own fire department and people are expected to pay a meager $75/year for that service from a neighboring city in a neighboring county. Well, the people IN THAT COUNTY get to rule themselves on that matter, and THEY DECIDED not to pay for a fire department out of tax dollars, for whatever reason. Their decision. The guy who got burned by this was someone who refused to pay the fee, and as further information goes, had once before "promised to pay" when there was a fire call to his house and then didn't bother.
So, no, not like "fire service".
The "free municipal systems" aren't really free, you know, they just spread the cost to everyone, even those who have no interest in getting "the internet" and those who already pay for their services. Yes, this is a great deal for those who don't want to pay for their own service, until you consider all the other things that people have the government provide "for free" that they don't want to use.
They also handily remove any real responsibility for service from anyone. Can't pick up the signal? Well, if you're on DSL or cable, nobody can use the excuse "you're in a dead spot, too bad."