They are SUPPOSED to be re-certified regularly. But, just like vehicle safety inspections, people don't always test everything they're supposed to test. And when a tech finds a unit out of calibration, do they mark recent tickets as suspect? H*** NO.
... not an exact tool--b/c the beam is so wide, you can pick up a lot of things and an untrained officer can get some misleading speeds
Yet you'd except radar over GPS because "it's just a simpler tool, with less hoops to jump through (and fewer things to go wrong)." Not showing any bias towards the toys you make now are we? GPS technology is just as complex as a radar gun. Depsite that, they are nearly idiot proof... turn it on, it finds a few sats, and starts tells you the time and your location. There's no training. And there's no guessing about the target.
Just because they've been used and accepted for decades does not make them perfect. In fact, they are very sensitive devices that are easily screwed up. If that gun is even slightly miscalibrated, the reported speeds could be very wrong. (In high school (over a decade ago), we got one to read a wall as 100mph... just by hitting it a few times -- ala. bouncing around in a car floor.) They aren't pinpoint accurate either -- unlike "laser radar guns". So, the options are: b0rked gun, ticketed the wrong car, or someone is lying.
As for TFA's sample rate issue... that's a very weak argument. First off, how's the driver to know the exact point(s) where samples are being taken? Second, just how fast do you think that car can accelerate and break within 60s? Finally, do you think that 17yo is doing the math in his head to keep the 60s average below the speed limit? (the GPS doesn't measure instantanious speed; it samples positions (quite accurate) at exact points in time (VERY accurate.))
According to WSUS, there have been 3 revisions of this "update"... 101 on 2/27, 102 on 3/27, and 105 on 10/23. 102 claims to be a "change in title or description". 105 lists "Detection or applicability rules have changed" and "Installation behavior has changed"./me clicks the "Decline Update" button.
It's VERISIGN, not VERIZON. And the lookups for domains will fall up the tree to the root servers. Even if an ISP caches the answer -- which they do -- the original request still made it to the root. No, Verisign will not know every request, but they don't really need to.
Comcast can't currently afford to intercept all SSL connections, inspect the certificate to see if they can forge it, and proxy the connection just to do packet inspection.
Actually, they can, but I'm not saying they will. SSL is a little more complicated than that... they won't know what certificate to present to you until after they've arlready presented one (i.e. the wrong one) to you. Some proxy systems get around this little issue by presenting a "*" wildcard certificate that your browser has already been setup to accept without question. (NO CA will sign such a wildcard certificate.)
You think a human is heavily involved in the process? I doubt anyone even notices the handwritten date on a paper check these days.
And to be clear on what they're doing... they aren't preventing connections; they are breaking already open connections. So, a more apt analogy is a dropped call... you can always call them back, right?
They obviously aren't the "exact" same cards... The cards in your boxes work all the time, every time. The cards you rent to customers are flaky, unstable junk. How many cards does a tech take to a single install? 3? 4? Because he knows he's going to have to try a half dozen to get one to work. And how often do those rented cards simply "malfunction" (lost channels, go into never ending firmware updated, etc.) vs. your own hardware?
Tivo's (and just about everything else on the market) are UNIDIRECTIONAL. They cannot talk to the headend to request anything. SDV, while not explicitly mentioned in the license, is not workable without an upstream channel to the headend.
They are legally allowed to encrypted everything but broadcast stations. And generally, that's exactly what they do. It's much easier to controll what channels each customer receives this way. The old analog way of installing signal traps was time consuming, expensive, and ineffective. Now, even if you mooch cable from a neighbor, you won't get anything you wouldn't have anyway.
More power does not necessarily mean better. The reflections will be stronger as well. Multipath issues (ghosting for analog TV) are what causes most problems with ATSC reception.
Proprietary technology has been the standard operating proceedure for over 30 years in the US. One might call it security through obscurity, but that would assume it was secure at all. (speaking as someone who made a cable descrambler ~20 years in high school with basically an op amp, an eeprom, a counter, and sync seperator... all out of a broken RCA TV:-)) They're still falling into this trap... they won't design protocols; they design applications that, again, lock them to a specific vendor and their (crappy) implementations.
It's not about the customer, the experience, the technology (HD oooh and ahhh), or the content... in my opinion, having dealt directly with the cable industry here and there spanning a decade, they care about exactly one f'ing thing: busting the seams of their pockets with cash.
Depends on the bug. Sometimes they'll listen; sometimes they don't. The real problem comes after they fix the bug. If you're not a customer, you're not likely to get the fix.
(And they really hate people logging bugs that have already been fixed.)
... The FCC's ruling today allows cable operators to comply with the viewability requirement by choosing to either: (1) carry the digital signal in analog format, or (2) carry the signal only in digital format, provided that all subscribers have the necessary equipment to view the broadcast content.
Translation: a) convert the digital signal to analog for your analog only customers, or b) do away with the analog tier entirely. (aka. convert your analog customers to digital.)
Obviously, the FCC would like option (b). However, many "basic" cable subscribers will take issue with the need for a STB -- and the associated perpetual rental fee.
The infrastructure in most cable systems does not need a rebuild for digital...
Keyword here: most. From what I've seen from complaints all over the place, the largest issue for cablecard failures is low signal quality. The coax cable plant across the country tends to be rather old. If your analog cable channels aren't spot-on perfect, odds are digital cable will have issues. The cable to my previous apartment -- built in 1995 -- needed to be replaced once due to bad signal quality. The cable in my house -- built 1983 -- was replaced when I moved in, again, due to low signal quality. (and it's 20ft from a fiber node.)
Firstly, ALL TV's without a digital tuner go dark.
They don't need a new TV. They need a digital tuner. A new TV would have a digital tuner already in it. OTA doesn't have an "separable security", so I'm not sure wtf your going one about here.
The compaint about cable stb's is that the charge never goes way. You keep paying for the box over and over again. When you cancel, they hand that box to the next person, who continues to pay for it over and over. If it weren't such a revenue source, why would cable operators claim it'll cost them $600mil in lost reveunes if people stop renting cable boxes? (And I don't know where you get your cable boxes, but the one's I've seen aren't remotely $300... SA8300HD's were on the shelves at Best Buy for $199 a year ago.)
They certainly can but to access encrypted channels, the box will need CableCards, the abomination of technology that they are.
Cable companies can bitch all they want. They designed that damn thing. Obviously, they never had any intention of using them. Well, now the FCC is forcing you to use the tainted dog food you're making everyone else use.
And I wouldn't say the problems are entirely the technology. A lot of the issues can be attributed to limited experience and near zero training for those that have to deal with cablecards -- both the techs in the field and the people they call. We have the same mess when cable modems were first rolling out.
Why aren't their more 3rd party digital cable boxes? Easy. Very few people want to deal with the BS of CableLabs certification. Those that are are building entire TVs. Remember, it took Tivo, Inc. over(?) 2 years to get the S3 on the market. It was demo'd at CES in '04(?) but not on sale until Q4'06. And it's taken even longer to get HMO features rubber-stamped. (yet, cable operators don't even appear to need to email CableLabs to do anything.)
There's a $200 rebate from Tivo on the S3's now, so you can get them for a more-or-less reasonable price. The Tivo HD is marginally better (newer) hardware, but the S3 looks better and is more mature (i.e. 1 year of bug shake out over the HD); they're functionally identical.
Actually, it can pull exactly 38.8Mbps (well, very slightly more than that.) But then, no one else on that channel would be getting a single bit. An ATSC channel is 19.9Mbps. 2-3 stations per channel (they'll put more than that) * 134 channels (54-850MHz) - minus a few for cable modems (10) = 248 to 372 "high quality" HD stations. SD stations take a lot less (~5Mbps), that's 8 per channel or 992 stations.
Bottom line... cable operators have plenty of capacity, if they used it. It's more profitable to make everyone think otherwise... and push "lockin" technologies like SDV.
The, well entrenched, digital cable standard is MPEG-2. I don't see that changing anytime in the next 20 years. High quality realtime MPEG-2 encoding hardware is readily available today. And it's not even that expensive for any commerical operation. (The 300$ Tivo HD has a realtime transcoding chip in it.)
The bandwidth of a single analog channel (6MHz) is 38.8Mbps (using 256QAM.) That's enough space for two full rate HD stations -- btw, nobody transmits at that rate; they all use sub-channels (X.1, X.2, etc.) TW/Raleigh is putting between 6 and 12 SD stations in a single channel. Get a HDHomeRun and have it scan for channels. It won't be able to display them, but it can see they're there. (all non-broadcast stations are encrypted. And FTR, ch.50 (WRAZ) has it's PSIP data stripped.)
So, they can consolidate a half dozen analog channels into one digital channel. 6 stations (all analog) vs. 36+ stations (digital), or 6 SD + 10+ HD stations.
Amazon Unbox... however, they don't tend to offer current episodes -- at least until after they've normally been aired. Once MRV is finally enabled, you'll be able to send stuff from your PC(s) directly to the Tivo for watching, which is my preference.
You are dismissing the greed of all cable companies. The reason analog cable still exists is because it props up charges for "digital cable". If the analog tier(s) weren't there, those charges would also be gone. They'd also have an additional capacity of a few HUNDRED channels, making SDV point-blank unnecessary. (but that's another story.)
Look at things from their pocket book... you pay them $60(?) per month but end up costing them thousands in lost customers and support phone calls. 1 account or 20 accounts, it's the same issue: your activities are disruptive to all the other customers on that node. If you want to use that kind of constant bandwidth, then *buy* it. Most cable ISPs have a commercial side ("business cable") that will gladly sell you SLA'd connectivity. It'll be significantly more expensive than what you pay now.
Your "residential cable" connection was not intended to be used as you are using it. It's not a matter of "unlimited", or "unmetered"; you can use as much bandwidth as you want AS LONG AS IT ISN'T DISRUPTIVE TO OTHERS. That bar isn't at a fixed level, so "reduce to X" isn't an option.
The one thing almost every appears to be unaware of these days is the simple fact that drive firmware (the software run on the drive's circuits) is stored on the spinning platers. To save a few pennies, drive manufacturers have been doing this for many years. The (ee)prom on the board are as small (and cheap) as possible; it has just enough brains to get the firmware off the plater(s). To quote Maxtor, that's why it is impossible to field upgrade drive firmware.
Take the board off an AAE drive and put it on an AAK drive. It'll power up just fine. It'll report "AAK" because the firmware is on the drive. (Note: I've not actually done this with these drives. I have done this with other Maxtor and Seagate drives... "the poor man's data recovery":-))
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Just because they've been used and accepted for decades does not make them perfect. In fact, they are very sensitive devices that are easily screwed up. If that gun is even slightly miscalibrated, the reported speeds could be very wrong. (In high school (over a decade ago), we got one to read a wall as 100mph... just by hitting it a few times -- ala. bouncing around in a car floor.) They aren't pinpoint accurate either -- unlike "laser radar guns". So, the options are: b0rked gun, ticketed the wrong car, or someone is lying.
As for TFA's sample rate issue... that's a very weak argument. First off, how's the driver to know the exact point(s) where samples are being taken? Second, just how fast do you think that car can accelerate and break within 60s? Finally, do you think that 17yo is doing the math in his head to keep the 60s average below the speed limit? (the GPS doesn't measure instantanious speed; it samples positions (quite accurate) at exact points in time (VERY accurate.))
According to WSUS, there have been 3 revisions of this "update"... 101 on 2/27, 102 on 3/27, and 105 on 10/23. 102 claims to be a "change in title or description". 105 lists "Detection or applicability rules have changed" and "Installation behavior has changed". /me clicks the "Decline Update" button.
Indeed. Mine WSUS server auto-marked it "Detect Only" (like all the other Desktop Search's)
You think a human is heavily involved in the process? I doubt anyone even notices the handwritten date on a paper check these days.
And to be clear on what they're doing... they aren't preventing connections; they are breaking already open connections. So, a more apt analogy is a dropped call... you can always call them back, right?
This is actually illegal. If it's a certified device, they must make a cable card work in it.
They obviously aren't the "exact" same cards... The cards in your boxes work all the time, every time. The cards you rent to customers are flaky, unstable junk. How many cards does a tech take to a single install? 3? 4? Because he knows he's going to have to try a half dozen to get one to work. And how often do those rented cards simply "malfunction" (lost channels, go into never ending firmware updated, etc.) vs. your own hardware?
Tivo's (and just about everything else on the market) are UNIDIRECTIONAL. They cannot talk to the headend to request anything. SDV, while not explicitly mentioned in the license, is not workable without an upstream channel to the headend.
They are legally allowed to encrypted everything but broadcast stations. And generally, that's exactly what they do. It's much easier to controll what channels each customer receives this way. The old analog way of installing signal traps was time consuming, expensive, and ineffective. Now, even if you mooch cable from a neighbor, you won't get anything you wouldn't have anyway.
More power does not necessarily mean better. The reflections will be stronger as well. Multipath issues (ghosting for analog TV) are what causes most problems with ATSC reception.
Proprietary technology has been the standard operating proceedure for over 30 years in the US. One might call it security through obscurity, but that would assume it was secure at all. (speaking as someone who made a cable descrambler ~20 years in high school with basically an op amp, an eeprom, a counter, and sync seperator... all out of a broken RCA TV :-)) They're still falling into this trap... they won't design protocols; they design applications that, again, lock them to a specific vendor and their (crappy) implementations.
It's not about the customer, the experience, the technology (HD oooh and ahhh), or the content... in my opinion, having dealt directly with the cable industry here and there spanning a decade, they care about exactly one f'ing thing: busting the seams of their pockets with cash.
Depends on the bug. Sometimes they'll listen; sometimes they don't. The real problem comes after they fix the bug. If you're not a customer, you're not likely to get the fix.
(And they really hate people logging bugs that have already been fixed.)
Obviously, the FCC would like option (b). However, many "basic" cable subscribers will take issue with the need for a STB -- and the associated perpetual rental fee.
Keyword here: most. From what I've seen from complaints all over the place, the largest issue for cablecard failures is low signal quality. The coax cable plant across the country tends to be rather old. If your analog cable channels aren't spot-on perfect, odds are digital cable will have issues. The cable to my previous apartment -- built in 1995 -- needed to be replaced once due to bad signal quality. The cable in my house -- built 1983 -- was replaced when I moved in, again, due to low signal quality. (and it's 20ft from a fiber node.)
They don't need a new TV. They need a digital tuner. A new TV would have a digital tuner already in it. OTA doesn't have an "separable security", so I'm not sure wtf your going one about here.
The compaint about cable stb's is that the charge never goes way. You keep paying for the box over and over again. When you cancel, they hand that box to the next person, who continues to pay for it over and over. If it weren't such a revenue source, why would cable operators claim it'll cost them $600mil in lost reveunes if people stop renting cable boxes? (And I don't know where you get your cable boxes, but the one's I've seen aren't remotely $300... SA8300HD's were on the shelves at Best Buy for $199 a year ago.)
Cable companies can bitch all they want. They designed that damn thing. Obviously, they never had any intention of using them. Well, now the FCC is forcing you to use the tainted dog food you're making everyone else use.
And I wouldn't say the problems are entirely the technology. A lot of the issues can be attributed to limited experience and near zero training for those that have to deal with cablecards -- both the techs in the field and the people they call. We have the same mess when cable modems were first rolling out.
Why aren't their more 3rd party digital cable boxes? Easy. Very few people want to deal with the BS of CableLabs certification. Those that are are building entire TVs. Remember, it took Tivo, Inc. over(?) 2 years to get the S3 on the market. It was demo'd at CES in '04(?) but not on sale until Q4'06. And it's taken even longer to get HMO features rubber-stamped. (yet, cable operators don't even appear to need to email CableLabs to do anything.)
There's a $200 rebate from Tivo on the S3's now, so you can get them for a more-or-less reasonable price. The Tivo HD is marginally better (newer) hardware, but the S3 looks better and is more mature (i.e. 1 year of bug shake out over the HD); they're functionally identical.
If it's a tivo, go to the diag screen and see. If the modulation is QAM, then it's digital.
Actually, it can pull exactly 38.8Mbps (well, very slightly more than that.) But then, no one else on that channel would be getting a single bit. An ATSC channel is 19.9Mbps. 2-3 stations per channel (they'll put more than that) * 134 channels (54-850MHz) - minus a few for cable modems (10) = 248 to 372 "high quality" HD stations. SD stations take a lot less (~5Mbps), that's 8 per channel or 992 stations.
Bottom line... cable operators have plenty of capacity, if they used it. It's more profitable to make everyone think otherwise... and push "lockin" technologies like SDV.
The, well entrenched, digital cable standard is MPEG-2. I don't see that changing anytime in the next 20 years. High quality realtime MPEG-2 encoding hardware is readily available today. And it's not even that expensive for any commerical operation. (The 300$ Tivo HD has a realtime transcoding chip in it.)
The bandwidth of a single analog channel (6MHz) is 38.8Mbps (using 256QAM.) That's enough space for two full rate HD stations -- btw, nobody transmits at that rate; they all use sub-channels (X.1, X.2, etc.) TW/Raleigh is putting between 6 and 12 SD stations in a single channel. Get a HDHomeRun and have it scan for channels. It won't be able to display them, but it can see they're there. (all non-broadcast stations are encrypted. And FTR, ch.50 (WRAZ) has it's PSIP data stripped.)
So, they can consolidate a half dozen analog channels into one digital channel. 6 stations (all analog) vs. 36+ stations (digital), or 6 SD + 10+ HD stations.
Amazon Unbox... however, they don't tend to offer current episodes -- at least until after they've normally been aired. Once MRV is finally enabled, you'll be able to send stuff from your PC(s) directly to the Tivo for watching, which is my preference.
You are dismissing the greed of all cable companies. The reason analog cable still exists is because it props up charges for "digital cable". If the analog tier(s) weren't there, those charges would also be gone. They'd also have an additional capacity of a few HUNDRED channels, making SDV point-blank unnecessary. (but that's another story.)
Look at things from their pocket book... you pay them $60(?) per month but end up costing them thousands in lost customers and support phone calls. 1 account or 20 accounts, it's the same issue: your activities are disruptive to all the other customers on that node. If you want to use that kind of constant bandwidth, then *buy* it. Most cable ISPs have a commercial side ("business cable") that will gladly sell you SLA'd connectivity. It'll be significantly more expensive than what you pay now.
Your "residential cable" connection was not intended to be used as you are using it. It's not a matter of "unlimited", or "unmetered"; you can use as much bandwidth as you want AS LONG AS IT ISN'T DISRUPTIVE TO OTHERS. That bar isn't at a fixed level, so "reduce to X" isn't an option.
The one thing almost every appears to be unaware of these days is the simple fact that drive firmware (the software run on the drive's circuits) is stored on the spinning platers. To save a few pennies, drive manufacturers have been doing this for many years. The (ee)prom on the board are as small (and cheap) as possible; it has just enough brains to get the firmware off the plater(s). To quote Maxtor, that's why it is impossible to field upgrade drive firmware.
:-))
Take the board off an AAE drive and put it on an AAK drive. It'll power up just fine. It'll report "AAK" because the firmware is on the drive. (Note: I've not actually done this with these drives. I have done this with other Maxtor and Seagate drives... "the poor man's data recovery"