1. How many WISPs will a single area be able to support, or more specifically, what will be the maximum number of WISP licensees for a given area?
There is not a limit on the number of licenses. This is a break in the usual FCC trend of limiting the nubmer of licenses given based on the number of "channels" that can be defined. They are doing this because of the requirement that users of this new band utilize technologies that would allow automatic interference remediation and channel-sharing techniques. This is how the current 2.4GHz ISM band operates.
The fact that this will be a licensed service allows for higher powers. Fixed stations are allowed 25W per 25MHz of bandwidth, and mobile stations are allowed 1W per 25MHz of bandwidth. (I like this method of power limits, because in today's world of wide-banded radio technologies, this effectively attempts to cap the signal intensity on any frequency slice rather than total output power.
2. Are there limitations on the number of WISP licenses you may hold? That is to say, would it be possible for Clear Channel or SBC or subsidiaries of either to buy up all the WISP licenses for a certain area and then just sit on them, blocking any competition from entering the market?
This question is essentially moot given that there is no limit on the number of licenses available in one geographic location and that frequencies will be shared.
I look forward to seeing how this will pan out in the consumer-gear market. 2.4GHz has been totally trashed because of the near-ubiquity of 802.11 services; a product of the unlicensed nature of the ISM band -- everyone can dump a signal out! (how's that for a runon sentence?)
If the equipment for operating in this band is kept out of the "mass retail" market, this will end up being a great thing. It's when you get a million or so average-joes who may be good to average network operators, but who don't understand squat about RF collision domains that things really start to get mucked up.
From what I understand, it is a very serious felony for a CIA agent to reveal that he or she is a clandestine operator (secret agent) or to reveal the name of another agent.
Someone revealed information that allowed a journalist/reporter to know that Valerie Plame was a secret agent and the "government" is attempting to have the journalist reveal their source of that information so that whoever committed the felony can be convicted.
Nobody is trying to convict the journalist, though he/she may be charged with contempt of court for failing to answer a judge's question.
The questions, in my mind, are: Did the journalist(s) act unethical when they printed information that put the life of a U.S. citizen at risk? My answer: Perhaps, but if so, it does not justify forcing them to break another journalistic code of ethics by revealing and possibly harming their sources.
Journalism has this tradition or precedent of protecting sources. It's an important part of ensuring that the profession can remain balanced in judgement and free from censorship by allowing potential sources to not fear retribution for providing information.
We've reached a clash, though, with the idea of "Trade Secrets" in this Apple case. There are laws protecting trade secrets. Do they trump the "sacred" institution of journalistic integrity? Do journalists and/or bloggers have any responsibility to act ethically? Is there any recourse for those who do not? Is there a difference in protecting someone's livelihood versus the latest info about a chunk of plastic and metal?
Yes, you're right. I don't know the exact calculation, but if we do something like assume that the antenna (dish) gain is something like 80db (equivalent to 25X effective increase power, caused by directional beam, a somewhat unrealistically high gain figure...), you just insert a (*25) factor into the chain and end up not much better off.
I found a free space loss calculator and put in 3 GHz and 100km and it came up with about -142dB, so let's play with that. You've got an +80db gain antenna and -142dB loss due to distance, which totals up to a system loss of -62dB, or -20.67 times loss.
Assuming the aircraft at 100km absorbs the whole beamwidth's worth of energy, that amounts to (6500W / 20.67)=315W. So the total heating of an aircraft illuminated by this particular radar, assuming total absorption of the beam by the aircraft, an unreasonably high 80dB gain of the dish antenna, and the airplane being the target of the beam for an extended period of time would be like putting 3 100W lightbulbs near it.
If the pulse is 6.5uS long and occurs at a rate of 250 Hz, then the total duration that the transmitter is on is 0.001625 seconds for every 1 second of real time. That's a duty cycle of less than 1%.
That would mean the average power (average power would dictate heating effects) is 6500W (4MW * 0.1625%), which is roughly equivalent to 4 decent microwave ovens.
Now take that amount of power and point it at an aircraft 200km away (well within the range of 481km). Without doing the calculation to find out the exact value of the intensity at 200km, I will just say that the intensity of the radar beam at 200km will be 0.000025 times smaller than at 1km. And at 1km it would be 0.000001 times smaller than at 1m, which is comparable to the range of a household microwave. So you want to stack 4 or 5 microwave ovens together, collate their radiators so that all of the energy is radiating in one general beam, and try to heat up an aircraft far away...
In short, radars do not cause significant heating on aircraft, even if the aircraft absorbs every photon that hits it. Radars do not run at 100% duty cycle, or even at 5% duty cycle. When you're generating 4 MW at those frequencies you make a lot of heat in the resonator/amplifier (klystron, twystron, etc.), so you can't just keep it on all the time or it would melt.
The industry tracks down file-swappers using the Internet Protocol addresses attached to their relatively anonymous screen names.
The IP addresses are useful because they identify computers on the Internet. But investigators cannot use the numeric codes to figure out who is using a particular computer. Often, they can only use the IP address to learn who is getting billed for the computer's Internet service.
I think the most amazing thing about this story is that the writer didn't write incorrect infomation about IP addresses. It's so rare that this happens!
I once traveled to Canada (Vancouver) from the U.S. on a business trip and was held for about 3 hours by Canadian customs and interrogated and had my luggage searched, along with my 2 co-workers.
They wouldn't tell us why they were doing it, or what they suspected. We were just going to a couple of business meetings and heading back 2 days later.
That was my first visit to Canada -- I've been back with no problems. It was odd, though.
On a semi-related (to the parent) note: I had a friend who went to Lebanon as part of a college group. He was Canadian, but all of his fellow travelers were American. They took a side trip to Damascus (in Syria) and at the border, the Americans were held and interrogated, but they saw his Canadian passport and said "Canadians are all-right, go on through!" (or something to that effect)
That roll-up keyboard isn't sealed. It can certainly take a spill, but it's not submersible.
It is all one piece of rubber except near the cord entry, so you may be able to use some silicone to seal that up and get an entirely sealed keyboard. But also remember that the rubber on this thing isn't very thick or strong at all.
As a Ham Radio Nerd, I feel I must speak up (if only for myself.)
I like Chairman Powell. However, I do feel that the board, headed by him, is fond of making decisions that promote commerce or industry without understanding the complaints that they hear against those decisions.
Of course, with the way that many Hams complain, you'd probably dismiss them all as raving lunatics:-) Say to a Ham, "they want to put noise on your frequency," and you will hear some of the foulest language on the earth, without so much as a "can you explain what you mean by that?"
A minority of Hams were calling for sane responses like "Allow broadband-over-powerline, but require that the frequencies used are properly and effectively filtered to notch out Ham and other federal-use frequency bands." But you'd never hear them over the "BPL is evil and will kill us all!" crowd.
The big issue that seemed to be stuck in the background was which actual frequencies were going to be used. As I understand it, BPL wanted to use frequencies that essentially covered the entire HF spectrum (1MHz - 30 MHz), ignoring the fact that the powerlines are such effective radiators at those frequencies.
I think the list aren't the offenders, but the offended (those who are competing against commercial interests). In other words, he/she's not complaining about Hams.
Just to add: In this context, "unlicensed" means that the END USER is not required to have a license from the FCC to use equipment which operates in said frequency band.
FRS is unlicensed. GMRS, which shares 7 of the FRS "channels" and allows higher powered radios is licensed. A GMRS license requires nothing more than some money.
An Amateur Radio (Ham) license, on the other hand, requires a test of rules, electronics, etc. in order to be issued. Same with "Radiotelephone" licenses, used by sailing ships, offshore oil rigs, etc.
Also note that unlicensed does not mean unregulated or unlimited (in power, modulation type, etc.)
The established facts are that Bush was skipped out of the Vietnam draft as a favor to his powerful Texas politician father.
Seems likely. Is this supposed to make Bush a bad person or show him in a negative light? It's not like he requested that particular special treatment. Someone unrelated made sure Bush got special treatment because that someone was brown-nosing. That says nothing either about Bush's guard service. There are plenty of other sources for that kind of information. Why CBS chose such dubious sources doesn't make much sense to me.
It would seem that the producers involved in the story either think that the American public are idiots (maybe true to some extent) and will believe what is told to them without question or they themselves (the producers) aren't very bright about things.
Maybe there would be serious ramifications to actually coming out and saying the negative things, but dubious sources gave them a way out of some kind of big trouble and only kicked them out in the street. Who knows...
I read the article (no, really!) and found it to be mildly interesting. What bothered me, though, are the statements that, basically, "the more clients that are uploading pieces, the faster the download gets"
That's all fine and dandy, but the author makes it sound like this gets around the limitation of one's own pipe to the Internet. If you're on a modem, there's no way you are going to cut down a 500MB download from hours to a few minutes, yet the article has a paragraph that implies that an hours-long Kazaa download is cut down to a few minutes with BitTorrent.
Obviously, if the limiting factor is the source pipe, then more sources equals faster download at the destination. This kind of writing bugs me since it doesn't mention such obvious limitations -- it all sounds "miraculous" (or "marketish"?).
How likely is it that Joe Ham in some suburbs is going to be capable of talking to India? Even with perfect weather and a great rig, very unlikely. Even with repeaters, rather unlikely.
Not all Ham radio is in the short-range VHF/UHF bands. HF bands in the 15 meter to 160 meter wavelength range can directly "reach" India from the U.S. There are thousands of Joe Hams in the suburbs with this kind of equipment.
Texas is basically always hot and sunny, so weather is out.
I take exception to that... Texas is often hot and sunny, but almost as often full of severe weather. We get storms all the time, especially in the Spring season.
The $175 billion is the cost for the entire project, which isn't approved yet and consists of up to 10 superhighways criss-crossing Texas.
This first "leg", which is currently the only approved project, will cost much less and if I recall correctly, Cintra's investment is something like 85%, with other, local contractors putting up the rest.
As part of the deal for paying up front, Cintra will collect the tolls and once it's been paid off, the State will then have full control. One of the articles I read said that Cintra has done this successfully with several roads in Spain, but that this would be their biggest project.
And just to be clear "this project" is just the road from East of Dallas to Austin (or is it San Antonio?) The yahoo article linked in the Slashdot summary says it will go from Oklahoma to Mexico, but I remember reading a Fort Worth Star-Telegram article that mentioned the endpoints well inside Texas.
(any factual errors above are entirely mine, as I was too lazy to double-check... Correct me if I'm wrong)
Tolls are expected to be about what current tolls are, which means (according to the Star Telegram, at least) to drive the whole thing will cost about $40. Seems like a lot, but it isn't - truck drivers have to routinely sit in Dallas/Fort Worth traffic, which probably costs an hour's worth of time. Same with Austin.
I read that Star Telegram article. I thought it was pretty good except for the two sentences on the toll rate. They weren't attributed to any source. It was almost like they just threw in a math problem, "If the tolls were $0.20 per mile, a trip from Fort Worth to Austin would cost around $40." I didn't think that was quite honest and didn't fit in with the rest of the article, which was full of attributed quotes and attributed facts.
There appears to be some sort of unwritten rule that you can never decrease income. If faced with a decrease in income the only alternative is to dissolve...
Think about it... All these companies who lay off 200 workers out of the 5000 or so they may have on hand would never even think about reducing the salaries of all of the workers to reduce costs. They'd rather lay off 200 than reduce salaries. Of course, that could also have to do with only 200 people complaining rather than all 5000...
...those morons who brake hard out of friggin' nowhere for no reason except to feel a few gees as they brake.
...and it's not like I'm a slowpoke myself...if they tailgate me there's something wrong with them because I'm going as fast as I can without getting an insta-ticket the next squad car I pass
Perhaps they do it to get a tailgater to back off to a safe distance...
Slashdot Mirror
Speaking of irony... Isn't it ironic that Terri Shiavo's brain condition came about because of an eating disorder...
There is not a limit on the number of licenses. This is a break in the usual FCC trend of limiting the nubmer of licenses given based on the number of "channels" that can be defined. They are doing this because of the requirement that users of this new band utilize technologies that would allow automatic interference remediation and channel-sharing techniques. This is how the current 2.4GHz ISM band operates.
The fact that this will be a licensed service allows for higher powers. Fixed stations are allowed 25W per 25MHz of bandwidth, and mobile stations are allowed 1W per 25MHz of bandwidth. (I like this method of power limits, because in today's world of wide-banded radio technologies, this effectively attempts to cap the signal intensity on any frequency slice rather than total output power.
This question is essentially moot given that there is no limit on the number of licenses available in one geographic location and that frequencies will be shared.
I look forward to seeing how this will pan out in the consumer-gear market. 2.4GHz has been totally trashed because of the near-ubiquity of 802.11 services; a product of the unlicensed nature of the ISM band -- everyone can dump a signal out! (how's that for a runon sentence?)
If the equipment for operating in this band is kept out of the "mass retail" market, this will end up being a great thing. It's when you get a million or so average-joes who may be good to average network operators, but who don't understand squat about RF collision domains that things really start to get mucked up.
From what I understand, it is a very serious felony for a CIA agent to reveal that he or she is a clandestine operator (secret agent) or to reveal the name of another agent.
Someone revealed information that allowed a journalist/reporter to know that Valerie Plame was a secret agent and the "government" is attempting to have the journalist reveal their source of that information so that whoever committed the felony can be convicted.
Nobody is trying to convict the journalist, though he/she may be charged with contempt of court for failing to answer a judge's question.
The questions, in my mind, are: Did the journalist(s) act unethical when they printed information that put the life of a U.S. citizen at risk? My answer: Perhaps, but if so, it does not justify forcing them to break another journalistic code of ethics by revealing and possibly harming their sources.
Journalism has this tradition or precedent of protecting sources. It's an important part of ensuring that the profession can remain balanced in judgement and free from censorship by allowing potential sources to not fear retribution for providing information.
We've reached a clash, though, with the idea of "Trade Secrets" in this Apple case. There are laws protecting trade secrets. Do they trump the "sacred" institution of journalistic integrity? Do journalists and/or bloggers have any responsibility to act ethically? Is there any recourse for those who do not? Is there a difference in protecting someone's livelihood versus the latest info about a chunk of plastic and metal?
Yes, you're right. I don't know the exact calculation, but if we do something like assume that the antenna (dish) gain is something like 80db (equivalent to 25X effective increase power, caused by directional beam, a somewhat unrealistically high gain figure...), you just insert a (*25) factor into the chain and end up not much better off.
I found a free space loss calculator and put in 3 GHz and 100km and it came up with about -142dB, so let's play with that. You've got an +80db gain antenna and -142dB loss due to distance, which totals up to a system loss of -62dB, or -20.67 times loss.
Assuming the aircraft at 100km absorbs the whole beamwidth's worth of energy, that amounts to (6500W / 20.67)=315W. So the total heating of an aircraft illuminated by this particular radar, assuming total absorption of the beam by the aircraft, an unreasonably high 80dB gain of the dish antenna, and the airplane being the target of the beam for an extended period of time would be like putting 3 100W lightbulbs near it.
If the pulse is 6.5uS long and occurs at a rate of 250 Hz, then the total duration that the transmitter is on is 0.001625 seconds for every 1 second of real time. That's a duty cycle of less than 1%.
That would mean the average power (average power would dictate heating effects) is 6500W (4MW * 0.1625%), which is roughly equivalent to 4 decent microwave ovens.
Now take that amount of power and point it at an aircraft 200km away (well within the range of 481km). Without doing the calculation to find out the exact value of the intensity at 200km, I will just say that the intensity of the radar beam at 200km will be 0.000025 times smaller than at 1km. And at 1km it would be 0.000001 times smaller than at 1m, which is comparable to the range of a household microwave. So you want to stack 4 or 5 microwave ovens together, collate their radiators so that all of the energy is radiating in one general beam, and try to heat up an aircraft far away...
In short, radars do not cause significant heating on aircraft, even if the aircraft absorbs every photon that hits it. Radars do not run at 100% duty cycle, or even at 5% duty cycle. When you're generating 4 MW at those frequencies you make a lot of heat in the resonator/amplifier (klystron, twystron, etc.), so you can't just keep it on all the time or it would melt.
I think the most amazing thing about this story is that the writer didn't write incorrect infomation about IP addresses. It's so rare that this happens!
I once traveled to Canada (Vancouver) from the U.S. on a business trip and was held for about 3 hours by Canadian customs and interrogated and had my luggage searched, along with my 2 co-workers.
They wouldn't tell us why they were doing it, or what they suspected. We were just going to a couple of business meetings and heading back 2 days later.
That was my first visit to Canada -- I've been back with no problems. It was odd, though.
On a semi-related (to the parent) note: I had a friend who went to Lebanon as part of a college group. He was Canadian, but all of his fellow travelers were American. They took a side trip to Damascus (in Syria) and at the border, the Americans were held and interrogated, but they saw his Canadian passport and said "Canadians are all-right, go on through!" (or something to that effect)
I second LuxSci. Incredible technical support -- I get 1 hour responses all the time, even on weekends and holidays.
Support is through a web-based ticket system OR regular email OR Instant Messaging!
I use Lux Scientiae, www.luxsci.com, for email-only hosting, though they do offer web hosting as well.
:-)
I've been very pleased with the service. It's inexpensive, and has a very good spam/virus filter provided by MXlogic.
I'd provide my email address so anyone who chooses them could put me as a referral, but that doesn't seem ethical to me
That roll-up keyboard isn't sealed. It can certainly take a spill, but it's not submersible.
It is all one piece of rubber except near the cord entry, so you may be able to use some silicone to seal that up and get an entirely sealed keyboard. But also remember that the rubber on this thing isn't very thick or strong at all.
I understand that Ham has valid uses which will be effectivly killed by BPL...
:-)
Perhaps you should instead say "...has valid uses which will be effectively killed by poorly implemented BPL...".
As a Ham Radio Nerd, I feel I must speak up (if only for myself.)
:-) Say to a Ham, "they want to put noise on your frequency," and you will hear some of the foulest language on the earth, without so much as a "can you explain what you mean by that?"
I like Chairman Powell. However, I do feel that the board, headed by him, is fond of making decisions that promote commerce or industry without understanding the complaints that they hear against those decisions.
Of course, with the way that many Hams complain, you'd probably dismiss them all as raving lunatics
A minority of Hams were calling for sane responses like "Allow broadband-over-powerline, but require that the frequencies used are properly and effectively filtered to notch out Ham and other federal-use frequency bands." But you'd never hear them over the "BPL is evil and will kill us all!" crowd.
The big issue that seemed to be stuck in the background was which actual frequencies were going to be used. As I understand it, BPL wanted to use frequencies that essentially covered the entire HF spectrum (1MHz - 30 MHz), ignoring the fact that the powerlines are such effective radiators at those frequencies.
I think the list aren't the offenders, but the offended (those who are competing against commercial interests). In other words, he/she's not complaining about Hams.
Just to add: In this context, "unlicensed" means that the END USER is not required to have a license from the FCC to use equipment which operates in said frequency band.
FRS is unlicensed. GMRS, which shares 7 of the FRS "channels" and allows higher powered radios is licensed. A GMRS license requires nothing more than some money.
An Amateur Radio (Ham) license, on the other hand, requires a test of rules, electronics, etc. in order to be issued. Same with "Radiotelephone" licenses, used by sailing ships, offshore oil rigs, etc.
Also note that unlicensed does not mean unregulated or unlimited (in power, modulation type, etc.)
And yet all we hear about on the news and many of the blogs are about the 30-year-old events and not the current events...
Seems likely. Is this supposed to make Bush a bad person or show him in a negative light? It's not like he requested that particular special treatment. Someone unrelated made sure Bush got special treatment because that someone was brown-nosing. That says nothing either about Bush's guard service. There are plenty of other sources for that kind of information. Why CBS chose such dubious sources doesn't make much sense to me.
It would seem that the producers involved in the story either think that the American public are idiots (maybe true to some extent) and will believe what is told to them without question or they themselves (the producers) aren't very bright about things.
Maybe there would be serious ramifications to actually coming out and saying the negative things, but dubious sources gave them a way out of some kind of big trouble and only kicked them out in the street. Who knows...
Sorry, I thought Integers were data... ;-)
Just make sure that whatever software you use can handle your volume, unlike ComAir ;-)
I read the article (no, really!) and found it to be mildly interesting. What bothered me, though, are the statements that, basically, "the more clients that are uploading pieces, the faster the download gets"
That's all fine and dandy, but the author makes it sound like this gets around the limitation of one's own pipe to the Internet. If you're on a modem, there's no way you are going to cut down a 500MB download from hours to a few minutes, yet the article has a paragraph that implies that an hours-long Kazaa download is cut down to a few minutes with BitTorrent.
Obviously, if the limiting factor is the source pipe, then more sources equals faster download at the destination. This kind of writing bugs me since it doesn't mention such obvious limitations -- it all sounds "miraculous" (or "marketish"?).
How likely is it that Joe Ham in some suburbs is going to be capable of talking to India? Even with perfect weather and a great rig, very unlikely. Even with repeaters, rather unlikely.
Not all Ham radio is in the short-range VHF/UHF bands. HF bands in the 15 meter to 160 meter wavelength range can directly "reach" India from the U.S. There are thousands of Joe Hams in the suburbs with this kind of equipment.
Texas is basically always hot and sunny, so weather is out.
I take exception to that... Texas is often hot and sunny, but almost as often full of severe weather. We get storms all the time, especially in the Spring season.
The $175 billion is the cost for the entire project, which isn't approved yet and consists of up to 10 superhighways criss-crossing Texas.
This first "leg", which is currently the only approved project, will cost much less and if I recall correctly, Cintra's investment is something like 85%, with other, local contractors putting up the rest.
As part of the deal for paying up front, Cintra will collect the tolls and once it's been paid off, the State will then have full control. One of the articles I read said that Cintra has done this successfully with several roads in Spain, but that this would be their biggest project.
And just to be clear "this project" is just the road from East of Dallas to Austin (or is it San Antonio?) The yahoo article linked in the Slashdot summary says it will go from Oklahoma to Mexico, but I remember reading a Fort Worth Star-Telegram article that mentioned the endpoints well inside Texas.
(any factual errors above are entirely mine, as I was too lazy to double-check... Correct me if I'm wrong)
Tolls are expected to be about what current tolls are, which means (according to the Star Telegram, at least) to drive the whole thing will cost about $40. Seems like a lot, but it isn't - truck drivers have to routinely sit in Dallas/Fort Worth traffic, which probably costs an hour's worth of time. Same with Austin.
I read that Star Telegram article. I thought it was pretty good except for the two sentences on the toll rate. They weren't attributed to any source. It was almost like they just threw in a math problem, "If the tolls were $0.20 per mile, a trip from Fort Worth to Austin would cost around $40." I didn't think that was quite honest and didn't fit in with the rest of the article, which was full of attributed quotes and attributed facts.
There appears to be some sort of unwritten rule that you can never decrease income. If faced with a decrease in income the only alternative is to dissolve...
Think about it... All these companies who lay off 200 workers out of the 5000 or so they may have on hand would never even think about reducing the salaries of all of the workers to reduce costs. They'd rather lay off 200 than reduce salaries. Of course, that could also have to do with only 200 people complaining rather than all 5000...
Perhaps they do it to get a tailgater to back off to a safe distance...