Biden's from Delaware, the credit and banking capital of the U.S. He's the one that sponsored, introduced, and rallied support for the "anti-bankruptcy" bill which caused many families to lose their homes over the last three years. Under the old bill, homes were protected; under the new bill they were not. Under the old bill people had a safety net to start-over with a clean slate; under the new bill they were screwed to the wall with 40-year-long repayment plans.
Please provide the bill number with links to back up your claims of the changes in what is protected (amount of equity in house, car etc. in bankruptcy). Except for unusual no-fault extreme situations like major illness, why shouldn't people be expected to pay back what they owe?
Delaware certainly has credit laws (and credit card terms used nationally) that have gotten many consumers in deep trouble, but that goes back far more than three years and is another issue. (maybe we should pay the portion of the national debt owed to China and the oil nations by giving them a certain part of Delaware???)
Consumer lending laws, both for credit cards and mortgage loans, certainly should be changed. Besides avoiding misleading presentation of terms, the high risk (but profitable for the lender if paid) credit given many people should have never been given in the first place.
Although some inflation of housing prices was a result of people switching investments from stocks to real estate following 9/11, overly lax lending policies also contributed by increasing the pool of qualifying buyers. Low interest rates added fuel to the fire.
I suspect that many in/facing personal bankruptcy would not have had the problem if they'd never been given credit to buy beyond their means. The worst case mortgage payment size shouldn't have been allowed to become an excessive percentage of the qualifying monthly income. (The range 38 - 54% comes to mind). The maximum loan to value ratios should have been kept down also. That means many people would not have qualified.
People resorting to credit to cover the costs day to day life are digging a hole to fall into.
Regardless of bankruptcy law, consumers with variable rate loans will be in major pain when interest rates go back up one of these days. And those who foolishly got 5 year interest-only loans with a high loan to value ratio and a balloon payment thinking they could refinance come judgment day will be hurting too.
There may be problems with bankruptcy law, but it isn't the root of the mortgage crisis. There seems to be deception (at least self-deception), greed, and some stupidity at all levels.
It takes a fairly significant transmit power level and very close proximity for non-receiving equipment to be affected. A cell phone or UHF/VHF walkie-talkie within inches of unshielded electronics might be a problem.
Operating in the same part of the spectrum as 802.11b at 2.4 GHz or so with very low power, it is very doubtful that a bluetooth device could affect anything.
Historically, the concern with passenger electronics operating in aircraft has been interferrence to communications. At least for the U.S., that has generally been at frequencies just above the the F.M. broadcast band. The mostly likely culprits for problems there are consumer F.M. radios. Superhetrodyne receivers have most of the amplification and channel-separating filtering done at a standardized frequency, then shift the desired incoming signal down to the frequency by mixing it with a signal produced by a tunable oscillator in the receiver. In the case of F.M. broadcast radios, that oscillator makes a signal 10.7 MHz higher in frequency than the channel you're tuned to. So if you're tuned to a channel in the top-half of the FM band, the oscillator is making a signal in the aircraft band. It is easy to show the presence of oscillator signals if you have two FM radios. Take one radio and tune it to a quiet spot or weak signal near the top of the FM band. Listen to that radio. Then take a second FM receiver (volume not up) put it close to the first radio and tune it about 10.7 MHz lower and you should hear the other radio go silent from it. (if using a digital radio, you'll have to settle for 10.6 or 10.8 MHz lower)
The selection of Biden with his Hollywood lobbyists doesn't bode well. Look up the kinds of net / technology bills Binden favors and get a taste of the future.
Sounds like FUD to me. Large business interests lobby both parties. If you're concerned about bills, it is the congress and senate that you should be watching.
There are technical regulations that don't come from bills at all, but from the F.C.C. instead. In that case, it is the appointments to the F.C.C. that matter most.
The F.C.C. under the current administration has not been responsive to the public at all over such issues as media ownership consolidation. If you have any evidence that new FCC appointments are more likely under another Republican administration than with a switch to a Democratic one, please provide links.
Considering that most voters don't even know what net neutrality is, and considering the other major issues that do make the headlines, it's very unlikely that either of them will spend any time on the issue now.
There are other serious issues of a technical regulatory nature that also deserve attention. Decisions made by the Federal Communications Commission affect such things as diversity and competition in ISPs, cellular providers, and broadcast stations.
The ownership consolidation that has taken place in broadcasting has reduced stations' serving local community needs. The F.C.C. even did a study proving that and then buried the results.
Much of the questionable behavior that our elected officials engage in is tied to campaign contributions. Most of that cash ends up flowing to broadcasters. If broadcasters were required to provide political time for free, as part of their trustee of the public interest license responsibility, much of the corruption-fueling money could be removed from the equation. Of course details on how time would be given out would need to be worked out to ensure fairness and to ensure that the LOCAL community voices (from the communities of each license area) are heard. As with news coverage, fair-balanced political coverage is also more likely with increased ownership diversity.
Open and fair media are essential to the proper functioning of a Democracy. We should all press for improvements in this area.
This isn't new. The government's sneaky voyeurs have pulled this shit time and time again against nonviolent "subversives".
Speaking of sneaky, there's more than pork added to the bailout bill. Browsing through it I happened to notice "Sec. 201 Permanent Authority For Undercover Operations" on page 296. Not quite sure what that is, but it's a fair guess there was very little time for discussion with it in that bill. Whatever it is may very well be needed, but I have to wonder if it would have been permanent if handled in separate legislation that was more-fully discussed and reviewed before passage.
...But she changed the subject of the questions when she didn't know the answer! That's what a good debater does, right?
Yes, except that it usually goes beyond not knowing an answer. Not answering (or filling in with an off-topic answer) is a method of avoiding speaking honestly about an unpopular, embarrassing or otherwise damaging position on something.
Astroturfing Obama election campaigner, by any chance? 'Insightful' is in any case a stretch.
No lies, campaign connections or pretending here - I'm just another relatively poor middle-class person that has serious doubts about much of what's in the bill.
I'd only seen the vote counts for the 110 page version, which did have almost no Republican support.
I doubt that many voting on this lengthy bill (full 451 page version) had nearly enough time to study it all, but I suspect many knew enough about it to have very mixed feelings.
I think that it is fair to say that it took the additions between the 110 page and 451 page versions to get enough Republicans on board for passage. If you have doubts about that, I suggest comparing the party platforms with what was added. An extension of many of the Bush tax cuts is in there, like for short term capital gains.
I suspect that many of the representatives from both parties had very mixed feelings about the measure. Chances are McCain and Obama have issues with it too. Maybe some of that will come out in discussion during the remaining debates.
If McCain is true to his position about naming names when there is pork, it looks like this gives him plenty of opportunity. Many of the programs (energy, health etc) that Obama has spoken about look increasingly difficult to fund in the presence of so much spending and the revenue cuts in this bill. I'd hope that both candidates would try to overturn portions of it if elected.
No body was found, and was purportedly "eaten by animals". Conspiracy theories live on!
Kudos to hiker that turned in what he found. I suspect many people would not have turned in the thousand dollars or so in cash had they made the discovery.
I wonder how much monitoring/filtering of "charged words" is being done in the U.S.? Protecting us from evil deeds is all fine and good, but I hope it doesn't get to where information online is effectively revisionist history.
We're quick to react to online filtering of the events at Tiananmen Square in China. I wonder how much is filtered in the US?
Thinking on the subject of questionable choices in political selections I tried searching for links relating to that guy a while back that had publicly stated he could safely sprinkle some radioactive pellets on his breakfast cereal. Keywords like Watt (what I though his name was), Interior (department I thought he headed) and Plutonium got me nothing.
Am I just too far off in my vague recollection of events to come up with workable keywords, or is there some filtering going on here? Obviously plutonium is nasty stuff... so there certainly could be related things online where suppression of info is more justified than it would be for embarrassing statements from public figures.
Your logic would work if whatever was sent is deleted from the server as it's sent, but that would be silly.
Data doesn't have to be deleted to be unavailable to the cloud. The number of offline copies of the file will grow, but not the number in the cloud if no one uploads more than they download. Server, what server? Everybody connected contributing anything is a server. They don't delete what they got, let's say they go off on their way (disconnect) and listen to it...Remember, the seeding ratio includes data sent while downloading plus any sent after completion.
Let's say that the original user with the track "A" seeds one copy of the file divided equally among B, C, and D (these must be unique pieces or A would have to seed more than 1:1 for even one copy to exist in the cloud). A has given his limit and disconnected. B, C, and D, would each have to send their third of the track to the other two for everyone to get a complete copy. All would remain connected since they would have only a 2/3 seed ratio. If user T came along, each off the three giving T different pieces (1/3 of track) would reach 1:1 ratio as T completed. They'd disconnect being at 1:1 with the full fill. T would basically now be the new A.
In practice the distribution is different, but the math is always the same. Seeding 1:1 only gives back what you took. If you were D and really uploaded nothing while downloading, A still would have been gone and B and C would only have 2/3 of the track between them.
My point was on the impact of D. His presence downloading actually REDUCES file availability in the cloud unless he seeded 1:1. In that case, the file availability after he's gone is unchanged by his getting it. The availability to T would be the same whether D was there or not in that case. My point, as related to the legal issue, is that at 1:1 D's decision to join in only resulted in him getting a copy of the track, in neither increased nor decreased what other got (or could). That tips either way with a higher or lower seeding ratio. A legal argument that D's participation would result in damages from multiple other getting copies of a track are just wrong if he's seeded 1:1. If he's seeded less than 1:1 he's actually reduced file propagation (to others). At 1:1, the loss-of-sale damage is only for the copy he got.
D can be a real pain. If he's a leech downloading a bunch of things at once with minimal upload bandwidth available per torrent, speeds will suffer as others wait for him to eventually dribble in enough data to reach 1:1. That wait is required if he has any unique pieces. In practice the transfer to others may complete because A seeded over 1:1. A well behaved D can improve life for the cloud. If D had at least twice the upload bandwidth of A, he can give unique pieces he gets from A to both B and C as fast as he gets them. For lack of knowing another name, I'll call that effect bandwidth amplification. He speeds up things for everybody. His ratio would then show above 1:1 while downloading. On file completion his ratio would be above 1:1 and the track availability in the cloud would go up. For the number of complete copies in the cloud of a new torrent to grow, it takes A or some peers seeding more than one copy worth of data. Users with slow upload connections need to be connected longer to reach a given ratio, but the affect on availability is the same.
Properly designed clients favor sending rarest pieces to and in general seeding to those who are uploading to the cloud fastest. That tends to increase availability of rarest pieces, complete copies of the file, and overall swarm speeds.
Copies of the file and bandwidth don't magically come from nowhere. Individual peer behaviour determines if they help, hurt, or are neutral to the overall picture.
By your logic, there's no net gain they've only "replaced copies" yet now five people now have the file where only one did before.
"Thomas will face a new trial, in which the RIAA will have to prove actual distribution"
Even if they do prove distribution, the claims of damages per track should be fought. It's as if the people involved don't understand how file availability works with torrent p2p sharing.
If someone downloads 5 tracks and seeds each to 1:1 ratio, what they've sent out on the net has only replaced copies (in pieces and blocks) that they got instead of someone else. In that case the net increase in copies going to others is ZERO making the damages only the lost-sale revenue for the downloader. At 1:1 seeding ratio, no additional copies go to others as compared with what existing seeding on the net would have provided had the downloader not transfered the files in and out. The lost revenue is certainly no higher than the cost of the same tracks on iTMS or another commercial source. It could be argued that the track value is even lower since a portion of the iTMS price covers bandwidth cost so that amount in not lost profits. It is only when seeding above 1:1 ratio that a downloader/uploader has actually done something to result in an increased number of copies going to others online over what would have occurred had they not participated. For the entire group of peers, each contributes to distribution by their seeding ratio minus one to allow for availability being reduced by what went to them instead of others. It is not reasonable to hold a particular peer responsible for the seeding action of others.
This discussion also illustrates why torrents die off if people fail to seed adequately.
Cases of higher damages should be reserved for cases where material not otherwise available is leaked onto the net in violation of a license or NDA that applies, or material an uploader bought under license violates the license and then distributes a measurable number of copies on the net.
I need an outdoor antenna the size of a 747 to get analog signals as it is, and even so the picture is none too good. What kind of antenna will I need to get a barely viewable digital signal??
Barely viewable doesn't mean the same thing with digital. It's generally all or nothing - no usable snowy stage. If a signal is marginal it'll probably be perfect part of the time, the break up or go away depending on the weather. There's one distant station I watch that's blocked by a large mountain range and a nearby hill. It comes in when the low clouds or fog do (reflecting some signal that goes above the mountain back down on my side). Knife-edge propagation scatters some signal downward going over sharp mountains, but not so much rounded hilltops. Other atmospheric effects can strengthen distant signals, others will bring in some from a thousand miles away. (mostly on VHF channels 2-6, most often spring or summer during the day, sporadic E-layer skip depends on sunspot activity) Even meteor trails can reflect distant signals briefly.
You should determine if the channels you'll be after are on UHF, VHF, or a mixture of both. In general, and especially at UHF, increasing antenna height usually helps a great deal. Put a good preamp AT THE ANTENNA to overcome the losses in the coax and mask the internal noise produced in the first stage of the tuner. Adding a preamp usually makes a huge difference. I've had good luck with the one radio shack sells.
Make sure you've got good coax cable with low loss at UHF like RG-6. Replace old cable! RG-59 coax was tolerable for VHF, but at UHF it loses something like 10db in a 100 foot run. That's 90% of the signal! Generally added coax length to go higher with the antenna always gives a positive net result, but avoid long horizontal runs of cable whenever possible.
This comment probably doesn't apply to you, but may to others: I've had terrible luck finding a good consumer amplifier that can take what comes out of the remote power supply for the preamp and boost the signal another 10 db or so to allow splitting to many rooms (there are antenna outlets all over, even in the kitchen and by the back patio). The previous distribution amp was VHF only but could handle very high levels without saturating. The amplifiers I tried buying just couldn't handle the amount of output level required so they generated severe intermodulation interference easily seen on analog signals. That's in an area with many stations, and the power level goes up with the square of the sum of the voltages, so the required undistorted peak output power gets pretty high. The preamp had no tilt adjustment to compensate for the cable loss reducing level more as frequency goes up, so using a preamp with enough gain for UHF was actually making VHF signals much stronger than needed. That makes life that much tougher for any added distribution amplifier. (That's another good argument for replacing old RG-59 cable!) Without a suitable lower-gain but higher power second amplifier I had to eliminate most of the signal splitting. Most people no amplifiers beyond the antenna preamp. I just had an exceptionally high amount of splitting loss I was hoping I could compensate for. Splitters should be avoided if possible, but many can probably get away with splitting for a couple of sets. The Radio Shack preamp has over 20 db of gain and fairly high output level capability without overload too. If an analog tv shows interference other than snow with the gain adjustment on the power supply up full, try turning it down just to where the interference goes away.
The antenna you have now might be fine, but note that many UHF/VHF combo antennas don't have that great of a UHF section. If you need to combine signals from a VHF and a UHF antenna, you can use what amounts to a UHF/VHF splitter hooked up backwards as a combiner. Being frequency-selective those are a bit lower loss than a regular two-set splitter in reverse. Be sure all outdoor connections are properly protected
Set-top converters bought with the $40 discount cards output a normal TV signal. Obviously the output can't be HD going through an NTSC television, but good signals look very clean comparable with using a DVD player. There are several formats supported by DTV. 1080i and 720p HD are becoming increasingly popular for prime-time shows. Other programs may be SD which some say is comparable to NTSC. SD programs are the most variable in quality. If the local station is just converting analog video on the fly, there may be more motion blur. Some seem to get the black level wrong part of the time (blacks looking grey). When several programs are carried on one transmitter, some may visibly suffer from too low of bitrate. In that case SD may not be as sharp as a good NTSC signal, and artifacts with motion are more noticeable. Many shows saved as 720P can be found as torrents (usually about 1 GB for an hour show minus ads). Most are h.264 in an.mkv container and play well on a recent fast computer with VLC. The 350 MB episodes labled as HDTV actually are scaled down to well below 720p detail, but are good for slower computers, faster downloading/seeding, and still look better than most SD quality programs. In less populated areas where there are few DTV stations, you may get a couple of networks as the primary HDTV program sources, and other networks on the same transmitters as SD. Not getting the shows those networks produce in HD as HD is frustrating (download time ?), but at least they're providing networks they might not have carried at all on their analog transmitters. Hopefully the FCC will have rules preventing a station from keeping exclusive rights to a network in an area if they're not carrying it in HD and someone else is willing to set up a transmitter to do it.
While the large flat panel televisions are still expensive, you can get HD quality out of many recent computers by simply adding a tuner with suitable antenna. On Mac the Eye-TV Hybrid package works quite well, with a tiny tuner plugging into a USB port. Getting full DVR functionality makes the experience much more convenient and enjoyable. There's a simple editor to allow you to save clips, like interesting or favorite HD commercials, or remove the ads from programs for smaller archive sizes. Recompressing makes archive sizes more tolerable if you want to save a set of shows for a while. h.264 with Quicktime takes a while, the faster the computer the better. Third party utilities like Visual Hub (payware GUI using ffmpeg... where's the GPL Mac source to the modified ffmpeg guys??)
Having a PVR frees you from planning life around some broadcasters schedule, and (especially with more than one tuner) gives people that get only a few stations a better chance of things they consider worthwhile to watch. Those that only get a few stations have more of a need to catch what few good things there are so there's something on the drive to watch even when nothing good is on. One can download, but recording is easier for most. And many wanting 720p quality haven't got the bandwidth to get everything they like from the net (and still seed properly too!)
With terabyte drives fairly cheap now, and 24" displays way down in price, a computer makes a very good HDTV/PVR and can still do other duties too. If you're close to the screen, a smaller screen is fine. A laptop (Macbook etc) handles 720p detail fine, and a 24" iMac does 1080i very well. Of course there's Myth TV on Linux systems, and there are some things that work under MS too... but expect those to be more complicated. You can make use of over-the-air HD cheaply if you try.
The coils of wire embedded in the pavement, which are used to monitor freeway traffic and to control traffic lights, could detect the type of car that is passing over by the waveform it produces at the sensor.
That does seem possible, but it isn't the only option for those sensors. Although the sensors are likely far from optimum for the frequencies involved, they could probably be tied to added electronics to scan serial numbers from the RFIDs in the tires. IIRC, Ohio and some other places are already scanning RFIDs to identify some people with prepaid access through tool booths, so using them for ID isn't a far-fetched idea at all.
You see, Neal was born in 2014, he was only allowed to come back in time if he wrote some 'science fiction' novels that would cover up the fact he was a time traveller by just making him look like he made some lucky guesses.
So that's what's going on.... I knew there was something fishy with this...
Stop scaring the sheeple. I know it's kind of fun, but it's bad in the long term.
The first half of the MAC identifies a manufacturer. Many manufacturers have multiple entries which in some cases may make it easy to spot a particular product. That could lead to thieves targeting locations with premium machines (MacBook Pro etc). I saw an online posting indicating that this was happening nearby, but heard no mention of it in the local media so I don't know if it is true. It certainly is possible.
Solution: Assuming all guests are adults, consider having a "clothes off at the door" policy. That'll really make things difficult for thieves, and will weed out those wearing explosives too!
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Biden's from Delaware, the credit and banking capital of the U.S. He's the one that sponsored, introduced, and rallied support for the "anti-bankruptcy" bill which caused many families to lose their homes over the last three years. Under the old bill, homes were protected; under the new bill they were not. Under the old bill people had a safety net to start-over with a clean slate; under the new bill they were screwed to the wall with 40-year-long repayment plans.
Please provide the bill number with links to back up your claims of the changes in what is protected (amount of equity in house, car etc. in bankruptcy). Except for unusual no-fault extreme situations like major illness, why shouldn't people be expected to pay back what they owe?
Delaware certainly has credit laws (and credit card terms used nationally) that have gotten many consumers in deep trouble, but that goes back far more than three years and is another issue.
(maybe we should pay the portion of the national debt owed to China and the oil nations by giving them a certain part of Delaware???)
Consumer lending laws, both for credit cards and mortgage loans, certainly should be changed.
Besides avoiding misleading presentation of terms, the high risk (but profitable for the lender if paid) credit given many people should have never been given in the first place.
Although some inflation of housing prices was a result of people switching investments from stocks to real estate following 9/11, overly lax lending policies also contributed by increasing the pool of qualifying buyers. Low interest rates added fuel to the fire.
I suspect that many in/facing personal bankruptcy would not have had the problem if they'd never been given credit to buy beyond their means. The worst case mortgage payment size shouldn't have been allowed to become an excessive percentage of the qualifying monthly income. (The range 38 - 54% comes to mind). The maximum loan to value ratios should have been kept down also.
That means many people would not have qualified.
People resorting to credit to cover the costs day to day life are digging a hole to fall into.
Regardless of bankruptcy law, consumers with variable rate loans will be in major pain when interest rates go back up one of these days. And those who foolishly got 5 year interest-only loans with a high loan to value ratio and a balloon payment thinking they could refinance come judgment day will be hurting too.
There may be problems with bankruptcy law, but it isn't the root of the mortgage crisis.
There seems to be deception (at least self-deception), greed, and some stupidity at all levels.
It takes a fairly significant transmit power level and very close proximity for non-receiving equipment to be affected. A cell phone or UHF/VHF walkie-talkie within inches of unshielded electronics might be a problem.
Operating in the same part of the spectrum as 802.11b at 2.4 GHz or so with very low power, it is very doubtful that a bluetooth device could affect anything.
Historically, the concern with passenger electronics operating in aircraft has been interferrence to communications. At least for the U.S., that has generally been at frequencies just above the the F.M. broadcast band. The mostly likely culprits for problems there are consumer F.M. radios.
Superhetrodyne receivers have most of the amplification and channel-separating filtering done at a standardized frequency, then shift the desired incoming signal down to the frequency by mixing it with a signal produced by a tunable oscillator in the receiver. In the case of F.M. broadcast radios, that oscillator makes a signal 10.7 MHz higher in frequency than the channel you're tuned to. So if you're tuned to a channel in the top-half of the FM band, the oscillator is making a signal in the aircraft band. It is easy to show the presence of oscillator signals if you have two FM radios. Take one radio and tune it to a quiet spot or weak signal near the top of the FM band. Listen to that radio. Then take a second FM receiver (volume not up) put it close to the first radio and tune it about 10.7 MHz lower and you should hear the other radio go silent from it. (if using a digital radio, you'll have to settle for 10.6 or 10.8 MHz lower)
The selection of Biden with his Hollywood lobbyists doesn't bode well. Look up the kinds of net / technology bills Binden favors and get a taste of the future.
Sounds like FUD to me. Large business interests lobby both parties. If you're concerned about bills, it is the congress and senate that you should be watching.
There are technical regulations that don't come from bills at all, but from the F.C.C. instead. In that case, it is the appointments to the F.C.C. that matter most.
The F.C.C. under the current administration has not been responsive to the public at all over such issues as media ownership consolidation. If you have any evidence that new FCC appointments are more likely under another Republican administration than with a switch to a Democratic one, please provide links.
Considering that most voters don't even know what net neutrality is, and considering the other major issues that do make the headlines, it's very unlikely that either of them will spend any time on the issue now.
There are other serious issues of a technical regulatory nature that also deserve attention.
Decisions made by the Federal Communications Commission affect such things as diversity and competition in ISPs, cellular providers, and broadcast stations.
The ownership consolidation that has taken place in broadcasting has reduced stations' serving local community needs. The F.C.C. even did a study proving that and then buried the results.
Much of the questionable behavior that our elected officials engage in is tied to campaign contributions. Most of that cash ends up flowing to broadcasters.
If broadcasters were required to provide political time for free, as part of their trustee of the public interest license responsibility, much of the corruption-fueling money could be removed from the equation. Of course details on how time would be given out would need to be worked out to ensure fairness and to ensure that the LOCAL community voices (from the communities of each license area) are heard. As with news coverage, fair-balanced political coverage is also more likely with increased ownership diversity.
Open and fair media are essential to the proper functioning of a Democracy. We should all press for improvements in this area.
This isn't new. The government's sneaky voyeurs have pulled this shit time and time again against nonviolent "subversives".
Speaking of sneaky, there's more than pork added to the bailout bill.
Browsing through it I happened to notice "Sec. 201 Permanent Authority For Undercover Operations" on page 296. Not quite sure what that is, but it's a fair guess there was very little time for discussion with it in that bill. Whatever it is may very well be needed, but I have to wonder if it would have been permanent if handled in separate legislation that was more-fully discussed and reviewed before passage.
Don't just go by the news summaries of what is in that bill, check out the 724 K PDF of HR1424, the full bill.
...But she changed the subject of the questions when she didn't know the answer! That's what a good debater does, right?
Yes, except that it usually goes beyond not knowing an answer. Not answering (or filling in with an off-topic answer) is a method of avoiding speaking honestly about an unpopular, embarrassing or otherwise damaging position on something.
Astroturfing Obama election campaigner, by any chance? 'Insightful' is in any case a stretch.
No lies, campaign connections or pretending here - I'm just another relatively poor middle-class person that has serious doubts about much of what's in the bill.
I'd only seen the vote counts for the 110 page version, which did have almost no Republican support.
I doubt that many voting on this lengthy bill (full 451 page version) had nearly enough time to study it all, but I suspect many knew enough about it to have very mixed feelings.
I think that it is fair to say that it took the additions between the 110 page and 451 page versions to get enough Republicans on board for passage. If you have doubts about that, I suggest comparing the party platforms with what was added.
An extension of many of the Bush tax cuts is in there, like for short term capital gains.
I suspect that many of the representatives from both parties had very mixed feelings about the measure. Chances are McCain and Obama have issues with it too. Maybe some of that will come out in discussion during the remaining debates.
If McCain is true to his position about naming names when there is pork, it looks like this gives him plenty of opportunity. Many of the programs (energy, health etc) that Obama has spoken about look increasingly difficult to fund in the presence of so much spending and the revenue cuts in this bill. I'd hope that both candidates would try to overturn portions of it if elected.
I find this statement unfathomably ironic in the light that the majority of Republicans voted against it while the majority of Democrats voted for it.
That was the 110 page version. The 451 page version pretty much got the whole Republican tax plan shoved into it. http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=985597&cid=25257489
If you want to check out all of details directly it's only 724 KB to get the PDF of HR1424, the full bill.
You can find an index to most of the tax break provisions starting around page 261.
Looks like they got the Republican tax agenda in there.
Some may also like to check out the wikipedia entry for HR1424.
Isn't kudos already the plural of kudo?
KUDO is a 10,000 Watt non-directional AM radio station on 1080 kHz in Anchorage Alaska.
Maybe Sarah Palin climbs the tower to watch the Russians?
There's no FM or TV with that call sign, it is singular. So no KUDOs for Sarah?
No body was found, and was purportedly "eaten by animals". Conspiracy theories live on!
Kudos to hiker that turned in what he found. I suspect many people would not have turned in the thousand dollars or so in cash had they made the discovery.
I wonder how much monitoring/filtering of "charged words" is being done in the U.S.?
Protecting us from evil deeds is all fine and good, but I hope it doesn't get to where information online is effectively revisionist history.
We're quick to react to online filtering of the events at Tiananmen Square in China.
I wonder how much is filtered in the US?
Thinking on the subject of questionable choices in political selections I tried searching for links relating to that guy a while back that had publicly stated he could safely sprinkle some radioactive pellets on his breakfast cereal. Keywords like Watt (what I though his name was), Interior (department I thought he headed) and Plutonium got me nothing.
Am I just too far off in my vague recollection of events to come up with workable keywords, or is there some filtering going on here? Obviously plutonium is nasty stuff... so there certainly could be related things online where suppression of info is more justified than it would be for embarrassing statements from public figures.
Your logic would work if whatever was sent is deleted from the server as it's sent, but that would be silly.
Data doesn't have to be deleted to be unavailable to the cloud. The number of offline copies of the file will grow, but not the number in the cloud if no one uploads more than they download.
Server, what server? Everybody connected contributing anything is a server. They don't delete what they got, let's say they go off on their way (disconnect) and listen to it...Remember, the seeding ratio includes data sent while downloading plus any sent after completion.
Let's say that the original user with the track "A" seeds one copy of the file divided equally among
B, C, and D (these must be unique pieces or A would have to seed more than 1:1 for even one copy to exist in the cloud). A has given his limit and disconnected. B, C, and D, would each have to send their third of the track to the other two for everyone to get a complete copy. All would remain connected since they would have only a 2/3 seed ratio. If user T came along, each off the three giving T different pieces (1/3 of track) would reach 1:1 ratio as T completed. They'd disconnect being at 1:1 with the full fill. T would basically now be the new A.
In practice the distribution is different, but the math is always the same. Seeding 1:1 only gives back what you took. If you were D and really uploaded nothing while downloading, A still would have been gone and B and C would only have 2/3 of the track between them.
My point was on the impact of D. His presence downloading actually REDUCES file availability in the cloud unless he seeded 1:1. In that case, the file availability after he's gone is unchanged by his getting it. The availability to T would be the same whether D was there or not in that case.
My point, as related to the legal issue, is that at 1:1 D's decision to join in only resulted in him getting a copy of the track, in neither increased nor decreased what other got (or could).
That tips either way with a higher or lower seeding ratio.
A legal argument that D's participation would result in damages from multiple other getting copies of a track are just wrong if he's seeded 1:1. If he's seeded less than 1:1 he's actually reduced file propagation (to others). At 1:1, the loss-of-sale damage is only for the copy he got.
D can be a real pain. If he's a leech downloading a bunch of things at once with minimal upload bandwidth available per torrent, speeds will suffer as others wait for him to eventually dribble in enough data to reach 1:1. That wait is required if he has any unique pieces.
In practice the transfer to others may complete because A seeded over 1:1.
A well behaved D can improve life for the cloud. If D had at least twice the upload bandwidth of A, he can give unique pieces he gets from A to both B and C as fast as he gets them. For lack of knowing another name, I'll call that effect bandwidth amplification. He speeds up things for everybody. His ratio would then show above 1:1 while downloading. On file completion his ratio would be above 1:1 and the track availability in the cloud would go up.
For the number of complete copies in the cloud of a new torrent to grow, it takes A or some peers seeding more than one copy worth of data. Users with slow upload connections need to be connected longer to reach a given ratio, but the affect on availability is the same.
Properly designed clients favor sending rarest pieces to and in general seeding to those who are uploading to the cloud fastest. That tends to increase availability of rarest pieces, complete copies of the file, and overall swarm speeds.
Copies of the file and bandwidth don't magically come from nowhere.
Individual peer behaviour determines if they help, hurt, or are neutral to the overall picture.
By your logic, there's no net gain they've only "replaced copies" yet now five people now have the file where only one did before.
Again, the total number of copie
"Thomas will face a new trial, in which the RIAA will have to prove actual distribution"
Even if they do prove distribution, the claims of damages per track should be fought. It's as if the people involved don't understand how file availability works with torrent p2p sharing.
If someone downloads 5 tracks and seeds each to 1:1 ratio, what they've sent out on the net has only replaced copies (in pieces and blocks) that they got instead of someone else. In that case the net increase in copies going to others is ZERO making the damages only the lost-sale revenue for the downloader. At 1:1 seeding ratio, no additional copies go to others as compared with what existing seeding on the net would have provided had the downloader not transfered the files in and out. The lost revenue is certainly no higher than the cost of the same tracks on iTMS or another commercial source. It could be argued that the track value is even lower since a portion of the iTMS price covers bandwidth cost so that amount in not lost profits.
It is only when seeding above 1:1 ratio that a downloader/uploader has actually done something to result in an increased number of copies going to others online over what would have occurred had they not participated. For the entire group of peers, each contributes to distribution by their seeding ratio minus one to allow for availability being reduced by what went to them instead of others.
It is not reasonable to hold a particular peer responsible for the seeding action of others.
This discussion also illustrates why torrents die off if people fail to seed adequately.
Cases of higher damages should be reserved for cases where material not otherwise available is leaked onto the net in violation of a license or NDA that applies, or material an uploader bought under license violates the license and then distributes a measurable number of copies on the net.
I need an outdoor antenna the size of a 747 to get analog signals as it is, and even so the picture is none too good. What kind of antenna will I need to get a barely viewable digital signal??
Barely viewable doesn't mean the same thing with digital. It's generally all or nothing - no usable snowy stage. If a signal is marginal it'll probably be perfect part of the time, the break up or go away depending on the weather. There's one distant station I watch that's blocked by a large mountain range and a nearby hill. It comes in when the low clouds or fog do (reflecting some signal that goes above the mountain back down on my side). Knife-edge propagation scatters some signal downward going over sharp mountains, but not so much rounded hilltops. Other atmospheric effects can strengthen distant signals, others will bring in some from a thousand miles away. (mostly on VHF channels 2-6, most often spring or summer during the day, sporadic E-layer skip depends on sunspot activity) Even meteor trails can reflect distant signals briefly.
You should determine if the channels you'll be after are on UHF, VHF, or a mixture of both.
In general, and especially at UHF, increasing antenna height usually helps a great deal. Put a good preamp AT THE ANTENNA to overcome the losses in the coax and mask the internal noise produced in the first stage of the tuner. Adding a preamp usually makes a huge difference. I've had good luck with the one radio shack sells.
Make sure you've got good coax cable with low loss at UHF like RG-6. Replace old cable! RG-59 coax was tolerable for VHF, but at UHF it loses something like 10db in a 100 foot run. That's 90% of the signal! Generally added coax length to go higher with the antenna always gives a positive net result, but avoid long horizontal runs of cable whenever possible.
This comment probably doesn't apply to you, but may to others:
I've had terrible luck finding a good consumer amplifier that can take what comes out of the remote power supply for the preamp and boost the signal another 10 db or so to allow splitting to many rooms (there are antenna outlets all over, even in the kitchen and by the back patio). The previous distribution amp was VHF only but could handle very high levels without saturating.
The amplifiers I tried buying just couldn't handle the amount of output level required so they generated severe intermodulation interference easily seen on analog signals.
That's in an area with many stations, and the power level goes up with the square of the sum of the voltages, so the required undistorted peak output power gets pretty high. The preamp had no tilt adjustment to compensate for the cable loss reducing level more as frequency goes up, so using a preamp with enough gain for UHF was actually making VHF signals much stronger than needed. That makes life that much tougher for any added distribution amplifier. (That's another good argument for replacing old RG-59 cable!) Without a suitable lower-gain but higher power second amplifier I had to eliminate most of the signal splitting. Most people no amplifiers beyond the antenna preamp. I just had an exceptionally high amount of splitting loss I was hoping I could compensate for. Splitters should be avoided if possible, but many can probably get away with splitting for a couple of sets. The Radio Shack preamp has over 20 db of gain and fairly high output level capability without overload too. If an analog tv shows interference other than snow with the gain adjustment on the power supply up full, try turning it down just to where the interference goes away.
The antenna you have now might be fine, but note that many UHF/VHF combo antennas don't have that great of a UHF section. If you need to combine signals from a VHF and a UHF antenna, you can use what amounts to a UHF/VHF splitter hooked up backwards as a combiner. Being frequency-selective those are a bit lower loss than a regular two-set splitter in reverse. Be sure all outdoor connections are properly protected
Set-top converters bought with the $40 discount cards output a normal TV signal. Obviously the output can't be HD going through an NTSC television, but good signals look very clean comparable with using a DVD player. There are several formats supported by DTV. 1080i and 720p HD are becoming increasingly popular for prime-time shows. Other programs may be SD which some say is comparable to NTSC. SD programs are the most variable in quality. If the local station is just converting analog video on the fly, there may be more motion blur. Some seem to get the black level wrong part of the time (blacks looking grey). When several programs are carried on one transmitter, some may visibly suffer from too low of bitrate. In that case SD may not be as sharp as a good NTSC signal, and artifacts with motion are more noticeable. Many shows saved as 720P can be found as torrents (usually about 1 GB for an hour show minus ads). Most are h.264 in an .mkv container and play well on a recent fast computer with VLC. The 350 MB episodes labled as HDTV actually are scaled down to well below 720p detail, but are good for slower computers, faster downloading/seeding, and still look better than most SD quality programs.
In less populated areas where there are few DTV stations, you may get a couple of networks as the primary HDTV program sources, and other networks on the same transmitters as SD. Not getting the shows those networks produce in HD as HD is frustrating (download time ?), but at least they're providing networks they might not have carried at all on their analog transmitters.
Hopefully the FCC will have rules preventing a station from keeping exclusive rights to a network in an area if they're not carrying it in HD and someone else is willing to set up a transmitter to do it.
While the large flat panel televisions are still expensive, you can get HD quality out of many recent computers by simply adding a tuner with suitable antenna. On Mac the Eye-TV Hybrid package works quite well, with a tiny tuner plugging into a USB port. Getting full DVR functionality makes the experience much more convenient and enjoyable. There's a simple editor to allow you to save clips, like interesting or favorite HD commercials, or remove the ads from programs for smaller archive sizes.
Recompressing makes archive sizes more tolerable if you want to save a set of shows for a while.
h.264 with Quicktime takes a while, the faster the computer the better. Third party utilities like Visual Hub (payware GUI using ffmpeg... where's the GPL Mac source to the modified ffmpeg guys??)
Having a PVR frees you from planning life around some broadcasters schedule, and (especially with more than one tuner) gives people that get only a few stations a better chance of things they consider worthwhile to watch. Those that only get a few stations have more of a need to catch what few good things there are so there's something on the drive to watch even when nothing good is on.
One can download, but recording is easier for most. And many wanting 720p quality haven't got the bandwidth to get everything they like from the net (and still seed properly too!)
With terabyte drives fairly cheap now, and 24" displays way down in price, a computer makes a very good HDTV/PVR and can still do other duties too. If you're close to the screen, a smaller screen is fine. A laptop (Macbook etc) handles 720p detail fine, and a 24" iMac does 1080i very well.
Of course there's Myth TV on Linux systems, and there are some things that work under MS too... but expect those to be more complicated. You can make use of over-the-air HD cheaply if you try.
The coils of wire embedded in the pavement, which are used to monitor freeway traffic and to control traffic lights, could detect the type of car that is passing over by the waveform it produces at the sensor.
That does seem possible, but it isn't the only option for those sensors.
Although the sensors are likely far from optimum for the frequencies involved, they could probably be tied to added electronics to scan serial numbers from the RFIDs in the tires.
IIRC, Ohio and some other places are already scanning RFIDs to identify some people with prepaid access through tool booths, so using them for ID isn't a far-fetched idea at all.
Well crap. I'm out of the Voltron job now... Wonder if the Power Rangers need anyone.
It's just as well, chances are you wouldn't like the diet of powdered milk.
One of the current puzzles the LHC is trying to solve is, what happened to all the antimatter?
It was divided up among investment banks and used as collateral.
You see, Neal was born in 2014, he was only allowed to come back in time if he wrote some 'science fiction' novels that would cover up the fact he was a time traveller by just making him look like he made some lucky guesses.
So that's what's going on.... I knew there was something fishy with this...
Stop scaring the sheeple. I know it's kind of fun, but it's bad in the long term.
The first half of the MAC identifies a manufacturer. Many manufacturers have multiple entries which in some cases may make it easy to spot a particular product.
That could lead to thieves targeting locations with premium machines (MacBook Pro etc).
I saw an online posting indicating that this was happening nearby, but heard no mention of it in the local media so I don't know if it is true. It certainly is possible.
Unless I am mistaken, securing a wireless router does not stop anyone from seeing its MAC address.
IIRC, some tools can show the MACs of connected clients (both wired and wireless) on the router as well. Kismet and Kismac come to mind.
Visualizing group of homeless with cardboard signs at freeway offramp...
"Will Endorse Vista for Food"
And no one wants a real-world Zerg rush on the nose.
Zerg detection, possibly another aspect of The Hidden Power of Scent??
Best to keep an authorized-beast-list at the door. Clothing won't help when a scent is just more than a shirt can contain.
Solution: Assuming all guests are adults, consider having a "clothes off at the door" policy.
That'll really make things difficult for thieves, and will weed out those wearing explosives too!