I made it quite clear why companies want access to the UHF frequencies, and not VHF (antenna too large), or gigahertz frequencies (travel distance is too short).
No, you made some incorrect claims about why the 700 MHz band is so valuable compared to other spectrum space. It is not much different than 600 or 800, and the antennas are actually LARGER than those used at 2.4GHz, not smaller.
That you are misleading the readers with false information with you claims that that TV band has not shrunk in size,
I've made no such claim and I tire of you misreading what I have said and then jumping down my throat for it.
or that UHF is not a desirable piece of the spectrum.
Nor did I say that. I said that the "700 MHz band" is no more valuable than the 600 or 800 bands, your claims to the contrary notwithstanding. (That means "despite what you have claimed"). The reason people are scrambling for allocations in "the 700 MHz band" is not because of it's technically outstanding qualities, it's because THAT'S THE SPECTRUM AVAILABLE. 600 and 800 are taken. 700 is now available. It's available not because 700 MHz has such great propagation compared to 600 or 800, nor because the antennas are smaller than 2.4GHz (they aren't), but simply because it was possible to MOVE THE EXISTING STATIONS USING IT. The NUMBER of stations did not go down, and when the claim is made that "a few" stations were doing something, that's a claim about NUMBERS. Please buy a clue, ok?
Nor is it true that you can plop two stations right next to each other physically and in frequency space. The guard bands can be less than they used to be simply because we've had decades of experience designing receivers and better components. They still can't sell a TV that prevents interference from signals that are too close and too strong, though, because people won't pay for the metal chassis and extra filtering that would take.
UHF can fulfill the goal that WiFi failed to do, due to WiFi's poor location on the spectrum.
That depends on what you think WiFi's goal was. No, it wasn't to provide long range networking. WiFi was intended to be short range. Period. That's why it is perfectly at home at 2.4GHz, even though people are trying to extend it beyond design limits. That's why WiFi cards in computers are limited in the power they put out -- power levels that preclude any serious long range connections.
Now, there ARE people working with long-range "WiFi", but they've mostly stopped as far as I can tell. They didn't stop because it didn't work, but because they are legally prohibited from encrypting their traffic over those links and there are too many assholes who love breaking what other people are doing and ruining things for decent people. Look up the term "HSMM" if you want more info.
Nor is 700 MHz necessary for providing cellular internet connections. We already HAVE cellular internet connectivity. The part that is missing is the cell tower coverage, not the frequencies. You don't need more frequencies to put towers out in the vast untapped wilderness. You need money from people who want the service. Guess what? A lot of people who live in the wilderness do so because they eschew big-city nonsense -- like wireless internet.
You are akin to those people who think we should still be using horses-and-buggies instead of cars. A Luddite.
Your inability to read a simple declarative sentence does not make me a luddite. Now if you have something constructive to add, please do so. As it stands, my statement that the numbers of stations have not gone down, and were effectively doubled during the transition, are a fact that you've yet to counter. I did not speak to the size of the band allocated to broadcast TV, nor did I claim that the spectrum that was freed by moving some stations around was worthless. If all you want to do is argue with me about those latter two concepts (that means "the last two things I said"), then please stop. You're winning an argument that I'm not disputing.
They aren't squatters. They have FCC issued licenses to use the channels to which they have been assigned. You may not like broadcast TV, but that doesn't make them unethical for simply existing.
For you to sit here and pretend that the TV band has not shrunk...
I didn't pretend any such thing. I said the NUMBERS OF STATIONS DID NOT GO DOWN. Please look up the words you don't understand before posting to/., ok?
The "700 MHz band" is no more valuable than the 800 MHz band which has just about the same properties as the 700 MHz band, which has about the same properties as the 600 MHz band.
If you want to argue the size of antenna, well, you lose there, too, because 700 MHz band antennas are more than three times the size of a 2.4GHz antenna of the same kind. You can fit an 18dB Yagi for 2.4GHz into about the same space as a half wave dipole at 700 MHz, and the dipole has 0 dBd gain.
You're discussing number of stations inside the TV band.
That's right. That's because the statement I replied to said:
The UHF spectrum was simply to [sic] valuable for society to continue to allow a few analog TV holdouts to continue squatting on some of the most valuable parts of the EM spectrum for free or minimal cost.
"Few" is a statement of number. One, ten, one hundred. The same number of squatters are there using the same sized pieces of the "most valuable" spectrum. And, as I pointed out, during the changeover, since each analog station had a digital counterpart (except for a few exceptions), there were twice as many chunks being used as before. And, as I pointed out, after the changeover completes, whether that is 2009 or 2900, there will be the same number of six megahertz chunks being used as before. And, as I already pointed out, the only difference is that some of the users have moved to a different channel. They didn't go away or give up space.
Further, I didn't point out but will now, these "analog holdouts" were broadcasting in analog because THAT IS WHAT WAS LEGAL. That's what their licenses said they were supposed to broadcast in. Nobody was broadcasting digital television until the FCC decided that the change was going to happen and these are the technical standards to use. Calling them "analog holdouts" and squatters is simply ridiculous.
If you're still confused, reread what the guy said:
I suggest you reread what I replied to. When you figure out how the NUMBER of squatters has changed, you let me know, ok? Otherwise, give it a rest. If your only goal is to prove that stations MOVED AROUND, well, I said that from the start, so what are you arguing about? It's a fact.
When I said "twice the amount", I was referring to the fact that there were twice the number of 6MHz chunks being used for television, not that the spectrum suddenly went from 50 to 1400 MHz. I thought that would be obvious from the context.
>>>the switch to digital didn't remove any stations, just moved their channel allocations around a bit?
Again false. The TV band post-June shrinks from 67 channels downto just 49 channels.
No, quite true. The number of STATIONS is the same. Nobody lost their licenses to transmit. The only thing that happened was they may have moved which 6 MHz chunk of spectrum they were authorized to use after Feb. 17. I didn't say the "number of channels", I said very explcitly the number of STATIONS.
While the amount of spectrum used in total has gone down by overlaying stations, the NUMBER of those awful squatters sucking up spectrum has not. That's the comment I was replying to.
The "700 MHz band" is no more valuable than "the 600 MHz band" or "the 800 MHz band." It's still 100 MHz of bandwidth, it is still bandwidth being used by those awful analog squatters who get it for almost nothing. It is only valuable because someone (Nextel, Sprint, etc.) will pay for it.
There's a problem with your posting. What is trademarked about whatever it is you are referring to?
In late December, we switch to Constant Contact to email the newsletter.
Oh, that's rich. Complain about being branded a spammer, and then hire a professional spammer to send your email for you.
I have never been able to get off a "constant contact" email list once some idiot gave them my address. Never. They take their responsibility (constant contact) quite literally. I now simply route all email that has a "constant contact" in the headers to the wastebasket. That includes an email newsletter that one department in the college has chosen to hire Constant Spammers to send, even though we have professionally maintained in-college mailing lists just for such purposes and pay people to maintain them.
Good luck keeping your customers once they find out you have given their email addresses to a spammer.
The UHF spectrum was simply to valuable for society to continue to allow a few analog TV holdouts to continue squatting on some of the most valuable parts of the EM spectrum for free or minimal cost.
You do realize, don't you, that for the last five years or so twice the amount of spectrum has been used? The old analog signal and a different channel for the digital?
You do also realize, don't you, that the switch to digital didn't remove any stations, just moved their channel allocations around a bit?
I.e., the same stations taking up the same bandwidth -- I mean, squatting on the same bandwidth.
Analog TV lost because other uses are worth more to more people, plain and simple.
No, analog TV lost for the same reason that analog tv on cable is losing: broadcasters realized they could make more money by selling more advertising on more channels than they currently had available. Instead of ONE PBS channel begging for money every other week, we can now have FOUR PBS channels begging for money every other week. Instead of ONE Ginsu knife infomercial, a station can run a Ginsu infomercial, a "purge your colon of all the nasty gunk" infomercial, a Jack LaLane Miracle Juicer infomercial, and a rerun of the Beverly Hillbillies, all at the same time.
And cable isn't far behind in following the lead. Our wonderful Comcast is dropping all analog service from 31 to 71, replacing it with scads and scads of new digital content. Some of their digital channels have TWELVE channels on them now. They're also upping the price, just after telling all their customers who converted to digital that they were doing to at "no additional cost".
If I read the rules correctly, the same "must carry" rules that apply to the broadcast stations in a cable service area also apply to the HD signals of those broadcast stations. In our area, we get both local big cities broadcast network feeds, but apparently only one of the HD feeds. Even the "limited basic" analog cable service gets the HD.
Yeah, I doubt it could change the computer to provide more, but it might be telling the phone "ok to charge at 5V". Dunno. Stupid to have to install a driver to do that anyway.
I would suspect that the moto charger does 5.2 and that's how the phone detects "dumb" charger.
Though I've got no actual hard evidence to back it up, I seriously believe there's some sort of ultra-cheap DRM built into the chargers and phones to prevent you from buying reasonably priced travel/home replacement chargers.
I have a Moto W490. The charging light does not come on when I plug it into one of the two USB wall-wart chargers I have, but it does for the other. Neither is the Moto charger, which does also light the charging light.
It APPEARS that the difference is that some USB chargers put out 5.2 volts instead of 5. The phone likes 5.2V. It doesn't appear to like the 5V, but I think it is charging ok anyway. I've never run it down far enough to know for sure, so I can't swear that it does.
Everything else I charge on both warts charges ok, so I just swap the two if the green light on the phone doesn't come on.
Being able to go away and only pack one wall wart, plus have the confidence that even if you lose it you can get a local replacement without any hassle at all is about as good as it gets for portable devices.
Belkin even makes a three outlet surge protector with two USB charging ports in a small form factor for travelers. Unfortunately, it appears to support only 120VAC. All the USB wall warts I have otherwise are 100-250VAC units.
c) Have some sort of method to signify the presence of a "dumb charger" to the device. THIS IS NOT COVERED BY ANY CURRENT USB SPECIFICATION. As a result it is at best covered by "de facto" standards.
Here's a pretty reasonable "de-facto" standard that says you are talking to a "dumb charger": if there is no data on the data wires and nothing connected to them at the other end, you're talking to a dumb "power only" supply.
Manufacturers could easily adopt this outside the USB spec, since there is nothing preventing them from doing so. They must follow the spec when attached to a real USB source, but if there are no termination resistors on the data lines at the other end, then they aren't talking to a USB source and can do what they want.
In fact, there is already a (pseudo?) standard for how to connect earphones/handsfree hardware using the same mini-USB connection, apparently based on the ability to detect the difference between handsfree hardware and a true USB source.
Most of the devices I now have have mini-USB for charging and communication. The Sansa MP3 player I have has some oddball connector, so it's the odd man out.
BUT, the Sony PRS-505 I have, even though it has a mini-USB connection for data, is, IMNSHO, broken because it will only charge via that connection IF is it connected directly to a primary USB host adapter and can enumerate itself on the bus. No hubs. No "dumb power supplies". Even if the hub is externally powered -- no charge! It will actually DISCHARGE the device completely in such a situation, because it will stay powered on attempting to communicate with the USB host while it is not charging from the USB connection, even if there is no USB host to talk to.
So, count me in the camp that considers mini-USB to be the defacto standard for connecting anything to anything, and that manufacturers that require proprietary cables for simple things should buy a clue.
Yes, but not to provide a way to look up a number and find the owner (reverse lookup). This is a relatively recent innovation and one that I doubt people considered twenty years ago...
Reverse lookup has been around for ages. Phone companies have published the reverse lookup books, but generally they were not available to users, only to telco staff and police agencies.
Considering the number of people in my home town, it was not an impossible task to scan the entire forward listing looking for a number (i.e., a manual reverse lookup using forward data), and I remember doing it several times.
... only to find that the PDFs were composed of full page scans of hard copy documentation (no OCR).
Ditto. Many of the books on archive.org are scanned no-OCR versions, typically HUGE, and the color versions don't work on my Sony 505. Some of them have bad PDF about ten pages in, which makes the reader reboot.
Because if he was a friendly and respectful salesman who was simply trying to sell a car to an interested customer...
He wasn't a salesman, he was the manager. He was stepping on his saleman's turf by calling me. He was pushy and rude, refusing to take "no" for an answer. He was pushy in person, trying to get me to decide instantly whether I wanted to buy the car while I was in the showroom, and pushy on the phone reminding me of his great offer.
The salesman was ALSO pushy, but I expect that from car salesmen. He did his very best to get a deal, but I knew what his tactics would be and responded accordingly. His MANAGER, however, was stepping over the line.
(many customers say no and mean yes)
I am not "many customers", and when I say "no" I mean "no". In addition, since he spoke with me in the showroom, he knew that I was not a motivated buyer, just looking. I didn't actually buy a new car for four more years, IIRC.
If you were truly giving me the benefit of the doubt, you wouldn't be questioning my evaluation of him.
As far as bait, peanut butter works great for attracting rodents,...
Apparently, the rodents in my garage got the memo about PCA and salmonella and avoid peanut butter completely.
They DO love Nutella. Mmmmmmmm.
Your advice about smearing it and not just putting a dollop on the trigger is spot on. Make them work, and they'll set the trigger off. Let them be gentle consumers and they'll clean it off for you.
He was the manager. I looked at a used car, said I wanted a few days to think about it. Manager threw in 50% off the service contract fee as enticement.
I thought about it a day or two, called the salesman. Told him no. Too big, too expensive, but a good deal for someone.
The manager called me the next day reminding me of the offer and pushing for a sale. I told him I'd already said NO once and that I wasn't going to change my mind by being badgered. (Ratted?) I called the salesman and told him that his manager had cost him any future possibility of a sale to me, and I never went back to that dealership again.
I have my LifeDrive in my pocket right now, one sitting in a box ready to serve as a backup when this one dies, and one to play with (installing flash to replace the hard disk, e.g.)
It does everything I need in a PDA, has wireless and bluetooth, plays videos and music, keeps track of my appointments. While the screen is small, it is still usable as a book reader (I'm in the middle of the Tom Swift series, completed the Sherlock Holmes, and suffered through one of Doctorow's novels -- the suffering was not the fault of the LifeDrive.)
Yeah, it is hard to program in C, but I have Quartus Forth and Mathpad on it for small tasks. Chess, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Monopoly, SimCity, backgammon, pool.
It's a full entertainment center the size of a deck of cards.
and do not say 'get those FRS radios they sell at walmart' because those are worthless little pieces of junk without any decent wattage on TX (1/4 watt) and the speaker audio is not good for a noisy environment like the inside of a tractor or an 18 wheeler, many truckers and farmers would benefit from a decent UHF CB radio...
Ok, I won't say "get those FRS radios." Get those GMRS radios and the license. Or get those MURS radios without a license (VHF). There are already solutions to the problem you want solved.
Maybe we aren't, but the general public (for whom TFA was written) are probably quite impressed that someone who isn't a professional space radio engineer can actually do something like this.
Which is kind of sad.
No, what is REALLY sad is that "school officials" are so stupid to believe that it was a special accomplishment. That's a very large condemnation of the school they attend.
Secondly, if the sole argument you are going to present is "It's hopeless! Just give up!", then frankly I wish you would.
Yes, I know it is easier to put words in someone else's mouth and then argue about those, but it's not productive. If I wanted to argue that, I would have. Since I did not, you are wasting everyone's time by pretending I did.
But at the end of the day, the only thing you have presented so far is pessimism. That doesn't prove your case or make your point.
The fact that there are so many ways of getting around every proposed technical solution is not "only pessimism". It's a realistic evaluation of the probability of success. The fact that so many things that have been tried have resulted in no long term solution is what makes my point. (Anecdotal: I get more spam phone calls NOW than I did before the Feds created the DNC list, and they are more pernicious and determined. The DNC list stops some; others saw it as a challenge to be overcome.)
And regarding the "now people will trust spam more" malarky. Stupid people do stupid stuff.
Yes, they do. Guess what percentage of email users are "stupid people" when it comes to understanding the underlying concepts of email transmission? I think "99.9%" is an optimistic number. (Have you ever had to convince someone that they didn't actually get email from Santa Claus after they were sent an email claiming to be from him? I have.)
Of course the smart people who know that email isn't secure won't be fooled. Smart people know what spam is and don't respond to it with money, either. And yet, spam is still a money making proposition. Must be the stupid people.
So, the answer to spam has to not only make the smart people happy, it has to protect the stupid people, too. If you create a system that hints that email is authenticated (SPF, e.g.) then stupid people will see that as "email is authenticated" and thus this latest message from Mrs. Ubangi who is trying to get $456 million out of Kenya MUST be valid. That's going to make the problem worse FOR EVERYONE. Not only will spammers work around your solution, they'll be finding more victims and have more reason to keep spamming.
The point of SPF isn't to ensure the email is trustworthy, it's to ensure the email was meant to come from example.com.
No, it's to ensure that the client handing this specific email to the server is authorized to handle email that claims to come from example.com. "Meant to come from" is meaningless. If I hijack a machine that is in example.com's SPF records, then I
can create all the spam I want using example.com addresses, even though none of it was MEANT to come from there. So see, even smart people don't have a full understanding of what it means to pass the SPF test. How can you expect Joe User to know better?
... cutting the volume of what we are receiving...
Ahh, all is clear now. Solutions to spam aren't intended to lessen the loads of servers around the world and free up bandwidth for other services, they are intended only to cut the volume of what YOU get in YOUR mailbox.
There is no system that will result in a 99% reduction in spam.
There may be systems that will stop spammers temporarily, until they figure out how to get around those systems and then we'll be right back where we are.
No, we'll actually be worse off, because we will have lost one more technique from the "what if" pool, and the spammers will work just that much harder to send more than they did before.
SPF won't solve it, because, as others have already said, all the spammer has to do is register a domain and set the SPF records. Anyone who thinks the system is now more trustworthy will treat that spam in a more trustworthy manner, a worse result than we have now.
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No, you made some incorrect claims about why the 700 MHz band is so valuable compared to other spectrum space. It is not much different than 600 or 800, and the antennas are actually LARGER than those used at 2.4GHz, not smaller.
That you are misleading the readers with false information with you claims that that TV band has not shrunk in size,
I've made no such claim and I tire of you misreading what I have said and then jumping down my throat for it.
or that UHF is not a desirable piece of the spectrum.
Nor did I say that. I said that the "700 MHz band" is no more valuable than the 600 or 800 bands, your claims to the contrary notwithstanding. (That means "despite what you have claimed"). The reason people are scrambling for allocations in "the 700 MHz band" is not because of it's technically outstanding qualities, it's because THAT'S THE SPECTRUM AVAILABLE. 600 and 800 are taken. 700 is now available. It's available not because 700 MHz has such great propagation compared to 600 or 800, nor because the antennas are smaller than 2.4GHz (they aren't), but simply because it was possible to MOVE THE EXISTING STATIONS USING IT. The NUMBER of stations did not go down, and when the claim is made that "a few" stations were doing something, that's a claim about NUMBERS. Please buy a clue, ok?
Nor is it true that you can plop two stations right next to each other physically and in frequency space. The guard bands can be less than they used to be simply because we've had decades of experience designing receivers and better components. They still can't sell a TV that prevents interference from signals that are too close and too strong, though, because people won't pay for the metal chassis and extra filtering that would take.
UHF can fulfill the goal that WiFi failed to do, due to WiFi's poor location on the spectrum.
That depends on what you think WiFi's goal was. No, it wasn't to provide long range networking. WiFi was intended to be short range. Period. That's why it is perfectly at home at 2.4GHz, even though people are trying to extend it beyond design limits. That's why WiFi cards in computers are limited in the power they put out -- power levels that preclude any serious long range connections.
Now, there ARE people working with long-range "WiFi", but they've mostly stopped as far as I can tell. They didn't stop because it didn't work, but because they are legally prohibited from encrypting their traffic over those links and there are too many assholes who love breaking what other people are doing and ruining things for decent people. Look up the term "HSMM" if you want more info.
Nor is 700 MHz necessary for providing cellular internet connections. We already HAVE cellular internet connectivity. The part that is missing is the cell tower coverage, not the frequencies. You don't need more frequencies to put towers out in the vast untapped wilderness. You need money from people who want the service. Guess what? A lot of people who live in the wilderness do so because they eschew big-city nonsense -- like wireless internet.
You are akin to those people who think we should still be using horses-and-buggies instead of cars. A Luddite.
Your inability to read a simple declarative sentence does not make me a luddite. Now if you have something constructive to add, please do so. As it stands, my statement that the numbers of stations have not gone down, and were effectively doubled during the transition, are a fact that you've yet to counter. I did not speak to the size of the band allocated to broadcast TV, nor did I claim that the spectrum that was freed by moving some stations around was worthless. If all you want to do is argue with me about those latter two concepts (that means "the last two things I said"), then please stop. You're winning an argument that I'm not disputing.
They aren't squatters. They have FCC issued licenses to use the channels to which they have been assigned. You may not like broadcast TV, but that doesn't make them unethical for simply existing.
For you to sit here and pretend that the TV band has not shrunk ...
I didn't pretend any such thing. I said the NUMBERS OF STATIONS DID NOT GO DOWN. Please look up the words you don't understand before posting to /., ok?
If you want to argue the size of antenna, well, you lose there, too, because 700 MHz band antennas are more than three times the size of a 2.4GHz antenna of the same kind. You can fit an 18dB Yagi for 2.4GHz into about the same space as a half wave dipole at 700 MHz, and the dipole has 0 dBd gain.
Just what is it that you are trying to prove?
That's right. That's because the statement I replied to said:
"Few" is a statement of number. One, ten, one hundred. The same number of squatters are there using the same sized pieces of the "most valuable" spectrum. And, as I pointed out, during the changeover, since each analog station had a digital counterpart (except for a few exceptions), there were twice as many chunks being used as before. And, as I pointed out, after the changeover completes, whether that is 2009 or 2900, there will be the same number of six megahertz chunks being used as before. And, as I already pointed out, the only difference is that some of the users have moved to a different channel. They didn't go away or give up space.
Further, I didn't point out but will now, these "analog holdouts" were broadcasting in analog because THAT IS WHAT WAS LEGAL. That's what their licenses said they were supposed to broadcast in. Nobody was broadcasting digital television until the FCC decided that the change was going to happen and these are the technical standards to use. Calling them "analog holdouts" and squatters is simply ridiculous.
If you're still confused, reread what the guy said:
I suggest you reread what I replied to. When you figure out how the NUMBER of squatters has changed, you let me know, ok? Otherwise, give it a rest. If your only goal is to prove that stations MOVED AROUND, well, I said that from the start, so what are you arguing about? It's a fact.
>>>the switch to digital didn't remove any stations, just moved their channel allocations around a bit?
Again false. The TV band post-June shrinks from 67 channels downto just 49 channels.
No, quite true. The number of STATIONS is the same. Nobody lost their licenses to transmit. The only thing that happened was they may have moved which 6 MHz chunk of spectrum they were authorized to use after Feb. 17. I didn't say the "number of channels", I said very explcitly the number of STATIONS.
While the amount of spectrum used in total has gone down by overlaying stations, the NUMBER of those awful squatters sucking up spectrum has not. That's the comment I was replying to.
The "700 MHz band" is no more valuable than "the 600 MHz band" or "the 800 MHz band." It's still 100 MHz of bandwidth, it is still bandwidth being used by those awful analog squatters who get it for almost nothing. It is only valuable because someone (Nextel, Sprint, etc.) will pay for it.
There's a problem with your posting. What is trademarked about whatever it is you are referring to?
In late December, we switch to Constant Contact to email the newsletter.
Oh, that's rich. Complain about being branded a spammer, and then hire a professional spammer to send your email for you.
I have never been able to get off a "constant contact" email list once some idiot gave them my address. Never. They take their responsibility (constant contact) quite literally. I now simply route all email that has a "constant contact" in the headers to the wastebasket. That includes an email newsletter that one department in the college has chosen to hire Constant Spammers to send, even though we have professionally maintained in-college mailing lists just for such purposes and pay people to maintain them.
Good luck keeping your customers once they find out you have given their email addresses to a spammer.
You do realize, don't you, that for the last five years or so twice the amount of spectrum has been used? The old analog signal and a different channel for the digital?
You do also realize, don't you, that the switch to digital didn't remove any stations, just moved their channel allocations around a bit?
I.e., the same stations taking up the same bandwidth -- I mean, squatting on the same bandwidth.
Analog TV lost because other uses are worth more to more people, plain and simple.
No, analog TV lost for the same reason that analog tv on cable is losing: broadcasters realized they could make more money by selling more advertising on more channels than they currently had available. Instead of ONE PBS channel begging for money every other week, we can now have FOUR PBS channels begging for money every other week. Instead of ONE Ginsu knife infomercial, a station can run a Ginsu infomercial, a "purge your colon of all the nasty gunk" infomercial, a Jack LaLane Miracle Juicer infomercial, and a rerun of the Beverly Hillbillies, all at the same time.
And cable isn't far behind in following the lead. Our wonderful Comcast is dropping all analog service from 31 to 71, replacing it with scads and scads of new digital content. Some of their digital channels have TWELVE channels on them now. They're also upping the price, just after telling all their customers who converted to digital that they were doing to at "no additional cost".
If I read the rules correctly, the same "must carry" rules that apply to the broadcast stations in a cable service area also apply to the HD signals of those broadcast stations. In our area, we get both local big cities broadcast network feeds, but apparently only one of the HD feeds. Even the "limited basic" analog cable service gets the HD.
It must depend on the phone, because my W490 charges just fine from a generic wall wart. The only difference I've found is the .2V difference.
I would suspect that the moto charger does 5.2 and that's how the phone detects "dumb" charger.
I have a Moto W490. The charging light does not come on when I plug it into one of the two USB wall-wart chargers I have, but it does for the other. Neither is the Moto charger, which does also light the charging light.
It APPEARS that the difference is that some USB chargers put out 5.2 volts instead of 5. The phone likes 5.2V. It doesn't appear to like the 5V, but I think it is charging ok anyway. I've never run it down far enough to know for sure, so I can't swear that it does.
Everything else I charge on both warts charges ok, so I just swap the two if the green light on the phone doesn't come on.
Belkin even makes a three outlet surge protector with two USB charging ports in a small form factor for travelers. Unfortunately, it appears to support only 120VAC. All the USB wall warts I have otherwise are 100-250VAC units.
Here's a pretty reasonable "de-facto" standard that says you are talking to a "dumb charger": if there is no data on the data wires and nothing connected to them at the other end, you're talking to a dumb "power only" supply.
Manufacturers could easily adopt this outside the USB spec, since there is nothing preventing them from doing so. They must follow the spec when attached to a real USB source, but if there are no termination resistors on the data lines at the other end, then they aren't talking to a USB source and can do what they want.
In fact, there is already a (pseudo?) standard for how to connect earphones/handsfree hardware using the same mini-USB connection, apparently based on the ability to detect the difference between handsfree hardware and a true USB source.
Most of the devices I now have have mini-USB for charging and communication. The Sansa MP3 player I have has some oddball connector, so it's the odd man out.
BUT, the Sony PRS-505 I have, even though it has a mini-USB connection for data, is, IMNSHO, broken because it will only charge via that connection IF is it connected directly to a primary USB host adapter and can enumerate itself on the bus. No hubs. No "dumb power supplies". Even if the hub is externally powered -- no charge! It will actually DISCHARGE the device completely in such a situation, because it will stay powered on attempting to communicate with the USB host while it is not charging from the USB connection, even if there is no USB host to talk to.
So, count me in the camp that considers mini-USB to be the defacto standard for connecting anything to anything, and that manufacturers that require proprietary cables for simple things should buy a clue.
Reverse lookup has been around for ages. Phone companies have published the reverse lookup books, but generally they were not available to users, only to telco staff and police agencies.
Considering the number of people in my home town, it was not an impossible task to scan the entire forward listing looking for a number (i.e., a manual reverse lookup using forward data), and I remember doing it several times.
Ditto. Many of the books on archive.org are scanned no-OCR versions, typically HUGE, and the color versions don't work on my Sony 505. Some of them have bad PDF about ten pages in, which makes the reader reboot.
He wasn't a salesman, he was the manager. He was stepping on his saleman's turf by calling me. He was pushy and rude, refusing to take "no" for an answer. He was pushy in person, trying to get me to decide instantly whether I wanted to buy the car while I was in the showroom, and pushy on the phone reminding me of his great offer.
The salesman was ALSO pushy, but I expect that from car salesmen. He did his very best to get a deal, but I knew what his tactics would be and responded accordingly. His MANAGER, however, was stepping over the line.
(many customers say no and mean yes)
I am not "many customers", and when I say "no" I mean "no". In addition, since he spoke with me in the showroom, he knew that I was not a motivated buyer, just looking. I didn't actually buy a new car for four more years, IIRC.
If you were truly giving me the benefit of the doubt, you wouldn't be questioning my evaluation of him.
Apparently, the rodents in my garage got the memo about PCA and salmonella and avoid peanut butter completely.
They DO love Nutella. Mmmmmmmm.
Your advice about smearing it and not just putting a dollop on the trigger is spot on. Make them work, and they'll set the trigger off. Let them be gentle consumers and they'll clean it off for you.
Yes.
He was the manager. I looked at a used car, said I wanted a few days to think about it. Manager threw in 50% off the service contract fee as enticement.
I thought about it a day or two, called the salesman. Told him no. Too big, too expensive, but a good deal for someone.
The manager called me the next day reminding me of the offer and pushing for a sale. I told him I'd already said NO once and that I wasn't going to change my mind by being badgered. (Ratted?) I called the salesman and told him that his manager had cost him any future possibility of a sale to me, and I never went back to that dealership again.
So yes, there are rats at car dealerships.
It does everything I need in a PDA, has wireless and bluetooth, plays videos and music, keeps track of my appointments. While the screen is small, it is still usable as a book reader (I'm in the middle of the Tom Swift series, completed the Sherlock Holmes, and suffered through one of Doctorow's novels -- the suffering was not the fault of the LifeDrive.)
Yeah, it is hard to program in C, but I have Quartus Forth and Mathpad on it for small tasks. Chess, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Monopoly, SimCity, backgammon, pool.
It's a full entertainment center the size of a deck of cards.
Ok, I won't say "get those FRS radios." Get those GMRS radios and the license. Or get those MURS radios without a license (VHF). There are already solutions to the problem you want solved.
No, what is REALLY sad is that "school officials" are so stupid to believe that it was a special accomplishment. That's a very large condemnation of the school they attend.
Yes, I know it is easier to put words in someone else's mouth and then argue about those, but it's not productive. If I wanted to argue that, I would have. Since I did not, you are wasting everyone's time by pretending I did.
But at the end of the day, the only thing you have presented so far is pessimism. That doesn't prove your case or make your point.
The fact that there are so many ways of getting around every proposed technical solution is not "only pessimism". It's a realistic evaluation of the probability of success. The fact that so many things that have been tried have resulted in no long term solution is what makes my point. (Anecdotal: I get more spam phone calls NOW than I did before the Feds created the DNC list, and they are more pernicious and determined. The DNC list stops some; others saw it as a challenge to be overcome.)
And regarding the "now people will trust spam more" malarky. Stupid people do stupid stuff.
Yes, they do. Guess what percentage of email users are "stupid people" when it comes to understanding the underlying concepts of email transmission? I think "99.9%" is an optimistic number. (Have you ever had to convince someone that they didn't actually get email from Santa Claus after they were sent an email claiming to be from him? I have.)
Of course the smart people who know that email isn't secure won't be fooled. Smart people know what spam is and don't respond to it with money, either. And yet, spam is still a money making proposition. Must be the stupid people.
So, the answer to spam has to not only make the smart people happy, it has to protect the stupid people, too. If you create a system that hints that email is authenticated (SPF, e.g.) then stupid people will see that as "email is authenticated" and thus this latest message from Mrs. Ubangi who is trying to get $456 million out of Kenya MUST be valid. That's going to make the problem worse FOR EVERYONE. Not only will spammers work around your solution, they'll be finding more victims and have more reason to keep spamming.
The point of SPF isn't to ensure the email is trustworthy, it's to ensure the email was meant to come from example.com.
No, it's to ensure that the client handing this specific email to the server is authorized to handle email that claims to come from example.com. "Meant to come from" is meaningless. If I hijack a machine that is in example.com's SPF records, then I can create all the spam I want using example.com addresses, even though none of it was MEANT to come from there. So see, even smart people don't have a full understanding of what it means to pass the SPF test. How can you expect Joe User to know better?
Ahh, all is clear now. Solutions to spam aren't intended to lessen the loads of servers around the world and free up bandwidth for other services, they are intended only to cut the volume of what YOU get in YOUR mailbox.
Rindercella.
There is no system that will result in a 99% reduction in spam.
There may be systems that will stop spammers temporarily, until they figure out how to get around those systems and then we'll be right back where we are.
No, we'll actually be worse off, because we will have lost one more technique from the "what if" pool, and the spammers will work just that much harder to send more than they did before.
SPF won't solve it, because, as others have already said, all the spammer has to do is register a domain and set the SPF records. Anyone who thinks the system is now more trustworthy will treat that spam in a more trustworthy manner, a worse result than we have now.