I think they cost around $5K, all-inclusive. I'd wager that most schools that purchase these are not the same schools with ancient computers for the students. We had one at the high school where I taught, and although our school didn't have much money, the administration was (sometimes) relatively smart about technology spending.
Of course, the students who got to use the gee whiz high tech equipement were most likely the students who would learn using any method for learning from reading a text to listening to a lecture to self discovery. This isn't necessarly a bad thing, but I'm sure that the salesman who makes the presentation that will kill off the marching band makes sure he points out test scores and attentiveness of the students as justification for the capital costs associated with the displays.
I'd really like to see these priced at a level that would encorage installation in the bottom 1/3 of the classrooms as well as the top. Then, maybe they'll have something.
The rest will be auctioned off to help pay the government.
At the time this was all proposed, spectrum auctions weren't an option. Auctions are the most likely outcome, unfortunatly. Too bad, since most "first responders" still can't communicate with each other, even though congress mandated and allocated money for communications.
The ghosting problems have been resolved. Someone introduced a chip/settop at this year's NAB show that acheves a lower BER (bit error rate) if there is ghosting of the carrier. Amazing stuff.
If you want real quality, you need a 1 inch VTR with component video out.
Can you point to a model? I wasn't aware that there ever was a 1" that recorded component video. Are you sure you aren't talking about D1 or Betacam?
Sony did come out with a 1" digital HD (native 1080p, uncompressed) recorder in the early 90's, but it was more of a test piece, not so much a production unit. However, that is not the same as the analog 1" Type C machines (omega wrap) that Ampex introduced in the 80's. It used a D1 type component output at a much higher data rate (still in use today). Those old 1" machines were in use until Sony finally crushed them with the 1/2" Betacam SP format, driving the final nail into Ampex, a once-great american company.
An interesting side note, one of the last places to see a 1" tape in use was on remote trucks at football games, because it is very easy to recue and run them in slow motion. The tape operator could just lean on the tape reel flange and slow down the playback.
The FCC created the 800 MHz cellular and two-way radio bands by chopping off the top of the UHF TV band.
And the NAB (TV station lobby) is still mad about loosing that one. Even though there never were any stations on the air above channel 70, and even though the UHF stations never made a dime until cable and the Fox Network.
Once a business gets something from the.gov (for free in exchange for "serving the public interest" whatever that means), it becomes something they are entitled to, much like welfare. I'm not so sure modern "local" television meets the FCC requirement for free bandwidth anymore, but the day the FCC charges a broadcaster for spectrum is the day we'll all need descramblers for our televsion.
The only reason there was so much spectrum allocated in the first place was because of RCA's influence over Washington after WWII. If the broadcast stations would have allowed some flexibility in spectrum management, this mess may have been avoided.
Because the FCC, who represents the public interest, has decided that the switch to digital TV will be a better use for the public airwaves.
Well, the FCC and Zenith and RCA, who wanted to come up with a new system that they would hold the patents to, thus destroying the foreign competition (IE Sony). Great how all that worked out just as they planed.
By moving to DTV, the viewers get better reception, higher resolution pictures and better sound quality, and the FCC has additional bandwith that can be allocated to other uses or more television channels.
Actually, the FCC doesn't get more bandwidth, just different. Analog TV takes up 6MHz. HD/DTV takes up 6MHz. The broadcasters wanted to get 12MHz for HDTV, but the FCC said no. In fact, HD/DTV might make things worse, because digital carriers really don't like interference, and because the broadcasters want the same footprint, they have to run at much higher power. During periods of great propegation, such as early summer and when tropospheric ducting is going on, the recievers in between transmitters simply will not work. Right now there will be interference, but depending on your tolerance for bad pictures, you'll be able to get something. This may cause the FCC to rethink channel allocation and make it much harder to put up a new transmitter in the future.
Well, that's what they want you to believe. The reality is, the FCC wanted to allocate unused adjacent channels (like, if you have a channel 6 in your area, you'll also have a channel 8, but not a channel 7 -just like Springfield) for PUBLIC SERVICE, such as POLICE and FIRE radio service. The reason for the spaces was because early tuners were to wide-banded. When cable ready TVs were designed to handle adjacent channels, the rule was seen as not necessary from an engineering standpoint. So, the local broadcasters (through the NAB) went apeshit on the FCC and congress and threatened to make sure the congresspeople didn't look good on camera and would be investigated to death if 1 Hz of bandwidth was taken away from them. The FCC didn't buy it, so they said that they needed the bandwidth for HDTV. At the time, NHK in Japan was running HD programming on a 12MHz analog carrier. The NAB convinced the FCC to allow a similar, but incompatible (screw you Sony!) system for the US. The FCC said sure, but it has to work in 6MHz instead of the 12MHz of the NHK system. Several manufacturers and MIT began work on a HD video system that nobody wanted. RCA/Thompson came out with a somewhat NTSC compatible system, MIT had a variable compression/aspect ratio system, and General Instruments had a digital transport system, but the compression didn't work so good. The FCC held a bake off so each system could be evaluated. The RCA system didn't look so good, and took up several racks and required the testing center to upgrade their power. The MIT system really didn't go so well either, but they had the best idea of how it would work. the GI system worked very well, and took up one rack. MIT and GI joined forces and started seeing positive results. So the FCC made them all join forces in what became the Grand Alliance. The HD system on the air today is the result. The FCC really wants to get rid of those analog transmitters, just because they've started down this road, and they have to get to the end. The spectrum will still be going away, so that our police and fire departments will be able to communicate in a much better band, with modern comms systems.
A really good book about the whole HDTV system is Defining Vision. Visit your local library, and read more about it.
I print rather than write with it, and I find the accuracy is great.
I found that cursive writing (neatly) increased the accuracy for me, along with making sure I used the suguestions all the time. It really did get better. The problem with mine was that it was stolen. The cops recovered it, but it had been wiped clean (and the protective case was damaged - the stupid jerk removed the metal LCD protection). Too bad, it had the best vehicle expense application I've ever used.
The thing that I remember about the MP was that if you wanted a box, just draw a box. It would make the sides straight. Then write some text. Put the text in the box. Draw another box. Draw a line between them. Now drag the whole thing down the page. Put a title at the top.
Finally, plug the MP into your HP Laserjet 4M and print it out (without loading up drivers). Try that on your Palm/WinCE device.
Don't hold your breath. WiMax will take a while to work out the bugs. The hype level on WiMax is incredible -much higher than the 3G hype a few years ago.
We've been hearing about all the chipsets. Does anyone have a link to actual gear that can be bought today? How about a link to an ISP that has announced a rollout? I'm not being sarcastic. I really have an interest in the technology, and would like it to suceed, but I just don't see it happening.
but I think what really killed it was the direction. Actors never seem to know what they're doing, where they are, or what they're supposed to be feeling and this makes their delivery poor and wooden.
Lucas is not known for being able to direct people. Watch some of the behind the scenes/making of interviews. Harrison Ford basically had no idea what to do, but since he's such a good actor, he was able to pull it off.
Excellent examples of awesome direction are the "SHE'S LOST THE WILL TO LIVE!" line announced by a med-bot. (SNIP) Another is the "Noooooooo!" that Vader screams when discovering this fact.
Yep. I laughed out loud at that point. Also, the lame "what have I done?" after killing off Mace Windu. Why not have Anikin cry, or get very very scared. No dialog necessary
A few things are left unexplained too. The Death Star. Why?
It was shown in the first one (or was it Clones?) in a hologram during a metting, but no other mention after.
iPod - market = anyone in whole world who wants an MP3 player iPod w/Sirius - market = subset of above who are US-based Sirius subscribers.
iPOD U2 special edition = subset of the above who think Bono is cute. Now, I realize it is just a different skin, but big difference in price. Keep in mind, there is an XM radio with a recorder built in, and a really cool adaptor for the small receiver that can be used as a walkman. Sirius is just keeping up, and why not try to get a better receiver (which is a refreshing change from the junk they have now). Besides, they're just talking. There's a very good chance they won't get anywhere.
Don't forget, it was a long time ago. They had to reserve tons of mainframe time for getting the engineering drawings plotted. Once the drawings were properly filed and coppied, the second one was a piece of cake.
Yep. And real HAMs know morse code. That's why they're dieing off, and other wireless communication is thriving. But, most of the conversations on cell phones and FRS seem to be things that are inapproprate for the amateur bands, (it seems pre-teen kids REALLY like saying cuss words into their FRS radios).
Having said that, I think there's a real future in mentoring/elmering linux into the greater world. Sure, it's not for everyone, but neither is amateur radio. It is very easy and cheap to run out and get an FRS radio, charge it up and be communicating with a few friends at the ski slope. That's what most people do with 2-way radio. For the folks who need better coverage, there is GMRS. But, if you want to be able to talk to the world with a very high quality radio and the oppertunity to experiment, you have to use amatuer equipment.
However, it is more than the equipment. The HAM community will elmer new folks, and this keeps the SNR high in most cases. If the Linux world wants to keep its world pristine, it will have to start a real elmer plan. Otherwise, we'll just end of with the same sort of problems the Windows world faces. It starts with programmers: When I did my taxes this year (with TerriboTax on WinXP), I was unable to install with my normal user rights, which is fine. However, I was also unable to run the program without admin rights. What the heck is that all about? There's lots of other examples, but that is the one that springs to mind. In my daily dealings with users, I often see PCs that look like they've been through the trash heap of software hell. Much of this stuff is installed by people who should know better, but for some reason, think that adding 1 second to the startup justifies 10% of the available memory. Once I educate the user and show them how to disable/uninstall some of this trash, I know they will be able to do it themselves. Of couse, there are people who will never understand it. Thankfully, many of those people have high incomes and are more than willing to part with their hard earned dollars.
You say science can overcome just about anything, but it can't right now. If that were true, infant mortality rates would be about zero. They are not. And let us not forget that a very large part of the world's population doesn't live in world similar to your typical/. poster where medical care is top notch.
This is an economic problem, not a scientific one. Witness, for example, the terrible case of the late Terry Shively, where she was kept alive through artifical means. As long as the money kept comming in, they could keep her alive. I'm not arguing the morality of the situation, but let's say the insurance comapany decided that she was no longer technically alive, and cut off the checks. How fast would the feed tube be removed by the doctors? Or, a less heartless example: What if Terry lived in Haiti and had no insurance?
Nope. I typed papers for beer money in college. Many people cannot write coherently. Granted, I didn't go to Harvard, but still, being able to write a complete sentence seems to be a lost art at the state school level.
Well, yea, but you have to have some way to transmit it. If you're going to use morse over a cell phone, you might as well just hook up a laptop and connect to a private chatroom. And it would be hard to mask/encrypt a morse transmission. I'm learning morse now using a random letter generator program, and it is very very hard to transcribe because there is no pattern. They tell me it gets much easier when you start transcribing real words, because you can fill in the gaps much easier.
Ya, Morse can be quite fast if you train it up and use it regularly, but it's not easy. You aren't going to have some amature that can send a message at any reasonable speed because they'll ahve to keep checking the code sheet to see what to send.
Back in olden times, here in the US we had this group of amateurs called the boy scouts. The main purpose of the boy scouts was to prepare young men for military service through the use of merrit badges and the promise of hunting knives. One of the merrit badges was for communication. You could learn morse code or semiphore flags. Lots of old ham radio operators learned morse to get their badge, then later got thier amateur radio ticket, just in time for WWII, and the smaller, less popular conflicts afterword. Of course, they're all dead or dying now, so we're hearing less and less code on the air now.
Now we have a push button military that has no idea what is going on inside their high tech devices. Just like the German Radar operators in WWII, who couldn't retune their radar transmitters to counteract the effects of CHAFF.
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Of course, the students who got to use the gee whiz high tech equipement were most likely the students who would learn using any method for learning from reading a text to listening to a lecture to self discovery. This isn't necessarly a bad thing, but I'm sure that the salesman who makes the presentation that will kill off the marching band makes sure he points out test scores and attentiveness of the students as justification for the capital costs associated with the displays.
I'd really like to see these priced at a level that would encorage installation in the bottom 1/3 of the classrooms as well as the top. Then, maybe they'll have something.
At the time this was all proposed, spectrum auctions weren't an option. Auctions are the most likely outcome, unfortunatly. Too bad, since most "first responders" still can't communicate with each other, even though congress mandated and allocated money for communications.
My point exactly. RCA was bought by Thomson, and Zenith is now just a nameplate for LG.
Can you point to a model? I wasn't aware that there ever was a 1" that recorded component video. Are you sure you aren't talking about D1 or Betacam?
Sony did come out with a 1" digital HD (native 1080p, uncompressed) recorder in the early 90's, but it was more of a test piece, not so much a production unit. However, that is not the same as the analog 1" Type C machines (omega wrap) that Ampex introduced in the 80's. It used a D1 type component output at a much higher data rate (still in use today). Those old 1" machines were in use until Sony finally crushed them with the 1/2" Betacam SP format, driving the final nail into Ampex, a once-great american company.
An interesting side note, one of the last places to see a 1" tape in use was on remote trucks at football games, because it is very easy to recue and run them in slow motion. The tape operator could just lean on the tape reel flange and slow down the playback.
And the NAB (TV station lobby) is still mad about loosing that one. Even though there never were any stations on the air above channel 70, and even though the UHF stations never made a dime until cable and the Fox Network.
Once a business gets something from the .gov (for free in exchange for "serving the public interest" whatever that means), it becomes something they are entitled to, much like welfare. I'm not so sure modern "local" television meets the FCC requirement for free bandwidth anymore, but the day the FCC charges a broadcaster for spectrum is the day we'll all need descramblers for our televsion.
The only reason there was so much spectrum allocated in the first place was because of RCA's influence over Washington after WWII. If the broadcast stations would have allowed some flexibility in spectrum management, this mess may have been avoided.
The recovered bandwidth will be used for Police and Fire/resuce radio services.
Well, the FCC and Zenith and RCA, who wanted to come up with a new system that they would hold the patents to, thus destroying the foreign competition (IE Sony). Great how all that worked out just as they planed.
Some links...
http://www.zenith.com/sub_about/about_corp_histor
http://www.thomson.net/EN/home
Actually, the FCC doesn't get more bandwidth, just different. Analog TV takes up 6MHz. HD/DTV takes up 6MHz. The broadcasters wanted to get 12MHz for HDTV, but the FCC said no. In fact, HD/DTV might make things worse, because digital carriers really don't like interference, and because the broadcasters want the same footprint, they have to run at much higher power. During periods of great propegation, such as early summer and when tropospheric ducting is going on, the recievers in between transmitters simply will not work. Right now there will be interference, but depending on your tolerance for bad pictures, you'll be able to get something. This may cause the FCC to rethink channel allocation and make it much harder to put up a new transmitter in the future.
A really good book about the whole HDTV system is Defining Vision. Visit your local library, and read more about it.
I found that cursive writing (neatly) increased the accuracy for me, along with making sure I used the suguestions all the time. It really did get better. The problem with mine was that it was stolen. The cops recovered it, but it had been wiped clean (and the protective case was damaged - the stupid jerk removed the metal LCD protection). Too bad, it had the best vehicle expense application I've ever used.
Finally, plug the MP into your HP Laserjet 4M and print it out (without loading up drivers). Try that on your Palm/WinCE device.
That was a line from _Undercover_Nerd_.
We've been hearing about all the chipsets. Does anyone have a link to actual gear that can be bought today? How about a link to an ISP that has announced a rollout? I'm not being sarcastic. I really have an interest in the technology, and would like it to suceed, but I just don't see it happening.
Lucas is not known for being able to direct people. Watch some of the behind the scenes/making of interviews. Harrison Ford basically had no idea what to do, but since he's such a good actor, he was able to pull it off.
Excellent examples of awesome direction are the "SHE'S LOST THE WILL TO LIVE!" line announced by a med-bot. (SNIP) Another is the "Noooooooo!" that Vader screams when discovering this fact.
Yep. I laughed out loud at that point. Also, the lame "what have I done?" after killing off Mace Windu. Why not have Anikin cry, or get very very scared. No dialog necessary
A few things are left unexplained too. The Death Star. Why?
It was shown in the first one (or was it Clones?) in a hologram during a metting, but no other mention after.
iPod w/Sirius - market = subset of above who are US-based Sirius subscribers.
iPOD U2 special edition = subset of the above who think Bono is cute. Now, I realize it is just a different skin, but big difference in price. Keep in mind, there is an XM radio with a recorder built in, and a really cool adaptor for the small receiver that can be used as a walkman. Sirius is just keeping up, and why not try to get a better receiver (which is a refreshing change from the junk they have now). Besides, they're just talking. There's a very good chance they won't get anywhere.
Having said that, I think there's a real future in mentoring/elmering linux into the greater world. Sure, it's not for everyone, but neither is amateur radio. It is very easy and cheap to run out and get an FRS radio, charge it up and be communicating with a few friends at the ski slope. That's what most people do with 2-way radio. For the folks who need better coverage, there is GMRS. But, if you want to be able to talk to the world with a very high quality radio and the oppertunity to experiment, you have to use amatuer equipment.
However, it is more than the equipment. The HAM community will elmer new folks, and this keeps the SNR high in most cases. If the Linux world wants to keep its world pristine, it will have to start a real elmer plan. Otherwise, we'll just end of with the same sort of problems the Windows world faces. It starts with programmers: When I did my taxes this year (with TerriboTax on WinXP), I was unable to install with my normal user rights, which is fine. However, I was also unable to run the program without admin rights. What the heck is that all about? There's lots of other examples, but that is the one that springs to mind. In my daily dealings with users, I often see PCs that look like they've been through the trash heap of software hell. Much of this stuff is installed by people who should know better, but for some reason, think that adding 1 second to the startup justifies 10% of the available memory. Once I educate the user and show them how to disable/uninstall some of this trash, I know they will be able to do it themselves. Of couse, there are people who will never understand it. Thankfully, many of those people have high incomes and are more than willing to part with their hard earned dollars.
Well, yea, and evolution takes hundreds of generations to be noticed.
This is an economic problem, not a scientific one. Witness, for example, the terrible case of the late Terry Shively, where she was kept alive through artifical means. As long as the money kept comming in, they could keep her alive. I'm not arguing the morality of the situation, but let's say the insurance comapany decided that she was no longer technically alive, and cut off the checks. How fast would the feed tube be removed by the doctors? Or, a less heartless example: What if Terry lived in Haiti and had no insurance?
(Stud to hot chicks) "Hey good lookin' We'll be back to pick you up later!" (family gathering) "We got a mighty convoy 'cross the USA! Convoy!"
(announcer) Just tune your radio to an unused AM station and speak into the lamp post. Fun for all ages!
Seriously, isn't New York and LA already using something like this for detecting gunshots?
Back in olden times, here in the US we had this group of amateurs called the boy scouts. The main purpose of the boy scouts was to prepare young men for military service through the use of merrit badges and the promise of hunting knives. One of the merrit badges was for communication. You could learn morse code or semiphore flags. Lots of old ham radio operators learned morse to get their badge, then later got thier amateur radio ticket, just in time for WWII, and the smaller, less popular conflicts afterword. Of course, they're all dead or dying now, so we're hearing less and less code on the air now.
Now we have a push button military that has no idea what is going on inside their high tech devices. Just like the German Radar operators in WWII, who couldn't retune their radar transmitters to counteract the effects of CHAFF.