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User: Obfuscant

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  1. Re:The right way on Republican Lawmaker Introduces Net Neutrality Legislation (variety.com) · · Score: 1

    You mean Comcast paid for it with either/and/or full monopoly rights, zero taxes, heavy government investment(state/local/city) in many cases.

    While at one point in time Comcast may have had an exclusive franchise for cable television service to an area, they no longer do. Even when they did, they did not pay "zero taxes". They paid corporate taxes on income, AND they paid franchise fees for use of the rights-of-way. AND those franchises often had a lot of freebie stuff written in, like free Internet/cable for schools and government, PEG channels and studios (sometimes with staff to run them).

    and on top of that they fight tooth and nail against any form of competition,

    Of course they do. What company just rolls over and lets the competition come in unfettered? If you run a car repair service and follow all the laws that your city has laid out for such businesses, would you just ignore a new competitor that did everything they could to avoid all those laws, and that was explicitly trying to poach your most profitable services? Of course not.

  2. Re:It will get changed on Republican Lawmaker Introduces Net Neutrality Legislation (variety.com) · · Score: 1

    A 100Mbps connection with throttling sometimes runs at sub-100Mbps (intentionally).

    A 100Mbps connection WITHOUT throttling sometimes runs at sub-100Mbps, too.

    A 100Mbps connection with fast-lanes sometimes runs at 1 Gbps.

    Why yes, fast-lanes can override the laws of physics and the hardware used to provide service. I'm fascinated with your concept here. To whom do I pay for my "fast lane service" so I can turn my 100Mbps switch into a gigabit one? Will it also enable jumbo frames? Does "fast-lane gigabit" squeeze all those bits into the same two pairs that 100Mbps uses, or does it magically change the 100Mbps hardware so it uses all four?

    Since it is my hardware, I guess I just pay myself for "fast-lanes" and I'll see a 10x improvement in bandwidth.

  3. Re:Good for them. on The UK Decides 10 Mbps Broadband Should Be a Legal Right (engadget.com) · · Score: 1

    Making this a priority in terms of national infastructure

    A government mandate that companies provide a specific service is much much more than "a priority". It's a mandate. It's the government telling businesses what they must sell.

  4. If you've ever designed a power supply, you'd see that you must accept low/high voltages, but should expect the frequency to be fairly steady.

    Most power supplies I've seen, and made, will accept anything from below 50 to above 60Hz. The frequency is pretty much irrelevant as long as the transformer (for a linear) is still efficient enough. Now that most of them are switchers, they'll even take anything from about 90 through 240V, and some of them are quite happy running off of DC.

  5. Re:AC frequency on Tesla Big Battery Outsmarts Lumbering Coal Units After Loy Yang Trips (reneweconomy.com.au) · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    First of all, OP isn't talking about injecting frequency.

    I didn't say he did. The summary talks about injecting 7.3MW to "arrest a slump in frequency".

    then maybe you can explain how everyone else is wrong.

    Where did I say everyone else was wrong?

    After all, if frequency fluctuations are impossible--

    And where the fuck did I say that?

  6. Re:AC frequency on Tesla Big Battery Outsmarts Lumbering Coal Units After Loy Yang Trips (reneweconomy.com.au) · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    How about for the benefit of us "Americans", tell us how you inject 7.3MW of frequency. I can see injecting voltage, but if you try injecting a 50Hz AC signal onto a 49Hz power line, you are going to get smoke. You need to sync AC.

  7. Re:Good, but will it pass? on 'There Will Be a [Senate] Vote' To Reinstate Net Neutrality, Schumer Says (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 2

    So both parties, the FCC and congress have changed their mind on who's job it is.

    So pass a law making it so.

    Where it stood a month ago was that the FCC had decided it was their job and were doing it,

    No, where it stood a month ago was that Obama had told them to do it and they hadn't gotten around to reversing it yet.

    presumably because congress had not done it, presumably because it would compromise considerable funding streams

    Whenever Congress doesn't do something you want, it's always because they're corrupt and horrible. It's never because they don't think it is the right thing to do.

    Enforcing net neutrality is actually an important function of government.

    That's an interesting opinion, one which not everyone shares. Some people think keeping government out of the Internet is a good idea.

    I travel a lot and the internet does indeed suck in places that don't have enforced net neutrality laws

    I also travel, and I've seen no such massive problems.

  8. Re:So less banning, more sugar-coating... on CDC Director Says No Words Are Actually Banned At the CDC (pbs.org) · · Score: 1

    Much like we now say "infrastructure investment" instead of "taxes", and "budget cut" instead of "not getting as much of an increase as you wanted".

  9. Re:Then it is proved on CDC Director Says No Words Are Actually Banned At the CDC (pbs.org) · · Score: 1

    Those bureaucrats may not be physically situated in the White House,

    It doesn't matter where they were because ...

    the headline said was the source of the word-ban.

    it wasn't a "word-ban". You've just argued that the irrelevant part of the fake news was indeed true, while ignoring the fake part.

  10. Re:Good, but will it pass? on 'There Will Be a [Senate] Vote' To Reinstate Net Neutrality, Schumer Says (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 3, Informative

    Because it was the FCC's job, which the FCC just chose to stop doing.

    Except for the fact that congress told the FCC not to do it, you're right. From this: "Back in the 1990s, key Democratic senators insisted Congress never intended Title II for broadband." So the people who wrote the laws said that Title II wasn't supposed to be applied to broadband.

    That's why having the FCC decide to do it that way is the wrong way to do it. Congress needs to pass an explicit law. Not just a law telling the FCC to go back to the way they weren't supposed to be doing it, a law that does it the right way. Schumer is wasting everyone's time playing political football instead of trying to actually solve a problem.

  11. Re:Good, but will it pass? on 'There Will Be a [Senate] Vote' To Reinstate Net Neutrality, Schumer Says (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    I suspect if the republicans had come to there senses, and cut Moore loose even a week before the election, and then stuck an inoffensive nobody in his stead, they'd have won Alabama.

    They couldn't do that. The deadline for candidacy had passed. It had already passed when this forty-year-old crisis came to light. Why do you think it popped up when it did?

    As long as the Dem's don't run people that aren't as unpalatable as Roy Moore they should do alright with the swing voters.

    We're in for a new "normal". It won't matter who runs who.

  12. Re:Good, but will it pass? on 'There Will Be a [Senate] Vote' To Reinstate Net Neutrality, Schumer Says (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    If it doesn't pass the Senate, and it's on party lines, then it's clear that the talk about "doing it the proper way"

    "Doing it the proper way" is not having the senate punt the issue back to the FCC to keep doing it the wrong way. It's for the legislature to pass actual laws. So no, sorry, if the senate doesn't just pass the football back where it doesn't belong, it doesn't prove that "do it the proper way" was just smoke. In fact, it's a pretty good sign that those who vote against doing it this way don't think this is the right way.

    If the House takes this up and passes it, great.

    Yes. And the Senate. Make it an actual law that changes the existing law about the FCC not doing this kind of regulation. Please.

    But you might notice that Schumer isn't proposing a net neutrality law that would be the right way to do this. He's grandstanding and playing politics. He wants to keep it a political football instead of solving the problem. Where's Wyden when you need him? This is the kind of thing that Wyden builds his street cred on.

  13. Re:Atlanta is the heart of the US air system on Power Outage Strands Thousands at US Airport. 600 Flights Cancelled (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    United has, or used to have, an advertising campaign where they talk about how great their service is. Here's an example. It shows all flights to one destination, and then one, solitary flight to "friendly". I think they intended to have a smiley face effect, but all I thought when I saw it was that if I wanted "friendly" it was at another airport.

  14. Re:2nd major delay in as many weeks... on Power Outage Strands Thousands at US Airport. 600 Flights Cancelled (cnn.com) · · Score: 1

    Seems like it'd be a hell of alot more efficient to roll some decing trucks and hit the plane while it's at the gate.

    Collecting the deicing fluid before it hits the aquifer or other environmentally sensitive area is the problem.

  15. Re:Patent? on Norway Becomes First Country To Switch Off FM Radio (thelocal.no) · · Score: 1

    The circuit looks identical to a classic AM crystal circuit but is even simpler to build.

    It's called "slope detection". Normal AM detection is based on the amplitude of the received signal. All you have to do to detect AM is rectify the radio carrier and filter off the rectification ripple. What's left is an analog signal that varies in amplitude -- the recovered audio.

    In slope detection, you make use of a selectivity of the receiver to vary the amplitude of the received signal. I.e., the sensitivity of the receiver has a "slope" in the envelope, where a higher (or lower) frequency has more sensitivity than a lower (or higher) one. As the FM signal varies in frequency at the modulated audio frequency, the level of the received RF after tuning varies. Rectify the RF just like in AM detection and you recover the analog.

    It won't be stereo. All you'll get is the L+R baseband audio. The L-R signal is mixed with the 19kHz stereo carrier and appears above normal hearing using this method. A stereo FM radio detects both the L+R and L-R and then adds and subtracts them to produce L and R.

    Because the wavelength for FM broadcast is much shorter than for AM broadcast, the antenna can be more efficient at shorter lengths, and you don't need as good of a ground.

  16. Re:this kills me on Norway Becomes First Country To Switch Off FM Radio (thelocal.no) · · Score: 1

    DRM+ requires switching off analogue FM first, DAB+ uses a different frequency range,

    The MODULATION method uses the frequency being modulated. I.e., DRM+ could be used on a channel at any frequency, as could DAB+. You can have AM at 100.1MHz, or FM at 1.00MHz. That's physics. Licenses are the current limit.

  17. Re:What was broken about FM radio? on Norway Becomes First Country To Switch Off FM Radio (thelocal.no) · · Score: 1

    If you go ask for a land mobile license you won't get it for an analogue transmitter anymore either,

    Uhh, yes. Why not? At least in the US, 11k0f3e is still a quite valid mode.

    and they expect you to make do with frequencies with vastly narrower bandwidth.

    The "frequencies" don't have narrower bandwidth, but yes, the 2013 mandate for narrowband means you cannot get a wideband allocation anymore. But you can get analog.

    The main driving force for digital in the US was because DHS would not grant money to local agencies unless they included P25 in their system. It wasn't because P25 was so much better, it was because DHS thought it was, and because if some had it, then in the name of interoperability everyone should have it.

    So now we have "interoperability" with P25, until someone goes encrypted and poof goes the interoperability.

  18. Re:That's just nonsense on Norway Becomes First Country To Switch Off FM Radio (thelocal.no) · · Score: 1

    Here, the range just above the FM broadcast band is available; it was just cleared out of analog television.

    Actually, no. Just above the US FM BC there 29MHz of aviation, then a large chunk of land mobile military and civilian, along with 4MHz of ham. It's all the way up at 174MHz before TV takes over.

    But VHF was not cleared out. There's digital TV there now, and the auction of UHF spectrum means some stations will be moving there.

  19. Re:Patent? on Norway Becomes First Country To Switch Off FM Radio (thelocal.no) · · Score: 1

    The only advantage FM has is to make it easier to broadcast locally, but if the digital channels are effectively national, and if everyone's just plugging their phone into their car and playing one of the numerous online radio stations, then what need is there for it?

    Local radio has a significant place for keeping the public informed in any disaster or event of local significance. Imagine your national streamed audio feed interrupting every minute or so with notices from Everytown, USA, almost all of which are irrelevant to you. While your locality might be placid and peaceful at the moment, there's always something happening somewhere. "An accident on I5 northbound at the Terwilliger Curves has closed the highway. Plan an alternate route." Do you even know where the Terwilliger Curves are? Residents of Portland, OR do. And residents of PO are very interested in traffic reports, since PO has really bad traffic during the rush hours.

  20. Re:Comcast has been throttling VPN's on ISPs Won't Promise To Treat All Traffic Equally After Net Neutrality (theverge.com) · · Score: 3

    Are you sure you didn't configure your VPN to handle all your network traffic, not just from one device to one destination? This is a common error when using a VPN.

  21. Re:This isn't really about fast lanes on ISPs Won't Promise To Treat All Traffic Equally After Net Neutrality (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    The only reason the ISPs able to get away with it is because local governments have granted them a local Internet service monopoly.

    The government has never granted an ISP a "local Internet service monopoly". Ever. Why does this misinformation keep appearing?

    Name just one, if you can.

  22. It does sound like misplaced outrage to me.

    It is. What this guy is saying is "I forged a prescription and the company I gave it to didn't catch me. They're SO BAD! It's THEIR FAULT! Wah!!!"

    The headline implies that the company is like a large number of online pharmacies that have "online doctors" who will chat with you on the phone and then issue a prescription for their drugs. This company required a prescription from the customer's doctor and didn't catch a forged one. Big whoop.

    The author should be the one going to jail. He forged a prescription. He admits it. Turn the key.

  23. While a "robots.txt" file is unknown, and is intentionally hidden from the user.

    Not "robot users". And hardly unknown, to any reasonable practitioner of the craft.

  24. Re:robots.txt on EFF: Accessing Publicly Available Information On the Internet Is Not a Crime (eff.org) · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yes, a "good bot" should follow robots.txt. But failing to implement a standard is not "hacking".

    Tell that to Volkswagon, who "failed to implement" the standard regarding how their vehicles respond to situations they can interpret as being "testing".

    Robots that ignore the robots.txt standard are not just "failing to implement." They're ignoring the standard for their own gain.

  25. Re:Wait just a minute... on EFF: Accessing Publicly Available Information On the Internet Is Not a Crime (eff.org) · · Score: 2

    And leave a link on your site for search engines you don't know about to request an exception.

    The "automated" "homework" that someone else claimed the website needed to do is already a standard. There's a "robots.txt" exclusion file that is a standard way of specifying what a robot is allowed to do and not allowed to do.

    It used to be very poor netiquette for a robot to ignore that file. Now it seems that the attitude is fuck the website operator, he's got to hide his stuff behind closed doors to keep abusive robots from taking his website down. It's A-OK to do anything that a website physically allows you to do, despite any explicit restrictions.

    One fine morning I found my website unresponsive and essentially broken. A fine robot operator thought that he would index and put into a search engine of some kind the output from a web-based tide prediction program. This was a program that took about 20 seconds to calculate the predicted tides at a certain location at a certain time, and then send back a graph with some text.

    To make it convenient for users, it also had buttons for "tomorrow" and "yesterday", and a menu for selecting other locations. This helpful indexer was making "today" and "tomorrow" requests every ten seconds, for a page that takes 20 seconds to create. I think you can probably guess the obvious result. Should the robot wait until the current request is finished before making the next one? Fuck no, that's too slow and makes too much sense. If the server cannot keep up, fuck it.

    Robots.txt? Who cares, huh? "Please don't abuse my site by running a robot against it" means nothing to some people. It's a shame that we can't have nice things.

    If you hang your laundry out in some place accessible to the public, just accept that people will be able to take snapshots of it.

    If only "take[ing] snapshots" didn't cost the laundry owner time and money and prevent others from being able to glance at the stuff, your analogy would be accurate. People taking snapshots is not, of course, the issue. It's the automated systems that load the servers into a halt.