Said I: It's inconceivable that broadcasters would simply stick with a single NTSC-quality signal and lease out the remaining bandwidth for wireless data. Who would buy it? It is still a one-way path from the transmitter to you.
Said DH: Um, gee, the wireless communications market is only hotter then the core of the sun right now. I can't imagine what anyone would want all that bandwidth for./SARCASM
Is the wireless market hot for ONE-WAY bandwidth? I can see the possibility for fast downloads for browsing if broadcasters wanted to get into the ISP business and use bandwidth above a single NTCS-quality channel to blast out HTML content.
But, put it in a real situation; take an average-sized TV market, 400,000 people. Maybe they have 6 local TV stations. If any ONE of those stations devotes the other 3/4 of their bandwidth to wireless data, that's enough bandwidth to serve the whole community. The other five stations can't get into the same wireless ISP business and expect to pay the transmitter power bill with that income.
The recurring theme that TV must convert to digital to "pull off the swindle" is ludicrous. The TV industry is making the largest investment in its history to convert. If HDTV should fail, they are screwed. This is not a 'trial balloon' for TV. It's sink or swim, and trying to use the bulk of the band for one-way datacasting won't make it float.
My bookcase is full of TV industry trade pubs and direct mail ads. They are all for HDTV conversion equipment. Not a one of them advertises any kind of wireless datacast service or equipment.
[bobbit] Given the limited initial demand for HDTV, what do you think the broadcasters are going to do? Waste all that bandwidth on a signal most are not going to use, or give us what we currently have and lots of extra money leasing their bandwidth? I know which one I would bet on.
So, if you think you are going to be seeing a better TV picture any time soon, think again. Except to spend lots of money to upgrade your equipment, but with zero reward. [/bobbit]
If you live in a major TV market you can see hi-def TV _right_now_. Last night's X-files was available as hi-def TV to those who had digital TVs in the big markets. More and more programs will be available in HD, just the way color TV slowly took over from black & white.
True, the option of whether to broadcast HD signals or a lesser-grade picture is up to the broadcaster and some stations, especially smaller ones, will opt for the cheaper route of using their NTSC legacy programming to save money; conversion to HD is going to be expensive. At the bare minimum a station has to have a new encoder and transmitter. Most will require much more. (The going rate for the encoder alone is $250,000)
You will have to throw away your analog TV. The station has to throw away their analog cameras, recorders, switchgear and distribution, transmitters and test equipment. The smaller ones will stick with NTSC-quality and lease out the three (not five) remaining NTSC-quality virtual channels to pay the bills.
When the digital TV conversion is complete, you will see either the wide-screen HDTV picture or you will have four channels to choose from instead of one. Either way you DO get more. (Yes, you might have four channels that suck instead of one)
It's inconceivable that broadcasters would simply stick with a single NTSC-quality signal and lease out the remaining bandwidth for wireless data. Who would buy it? It is still a one-way path from the transmitter to you.
Do broadcasters hope the whole idea of HDTV will flop and go away? Not after investing millions of dollars in new equipment. Real world experience proves broadcasters want it to happen; there are far more stations converting to digital than industry forecasts expected and the FCC Orders required.
I've worked in television broadcast engineering for 25 years and have kept abreast of digital TV development during all these years.
As a matter of fact, the Advanced Television System Committee worked on a digital standard that would be backwards compatible with your existing TV for many of the past years.
When a compatible standard that allowed market demand to drive the transition to digital TV was finalized, the way market demand drove the transition to color, THEN Microsoft and several other lesser computer industry manufacturers (having _declined_ to participate in the work until that point) cried foul; that Advanced TV was a closed system and they were left out.
Congress heard M$ and friends, and sacrificed compatibility so that M$ could "embrace and extend" TV, and further realizing that you have no particular reason to throw away your TV, camcorder and VCR, then _mandated_ that NTSC would be turned off to make way for Bill's system.
Bill specified your new TV system. Is it any surprise that you have to throw your old TV away now?
Tech history tells us Dr. Mills would not be the first to make a discovery, but fail to understand why it works. Radio transmission is an example; radio had no known medium of propogation and so the idea of "the ether" became popular. Today we know RF energy does not need an "ether" to propogate.
If what we read on the web is true, and Dr. Mills does indeed have remarkable materials available for analysis and his work is replicable, then critiques of his theory can prove his theory wrong, but they cannot make the material disappear.
My question is, "Where DID the stuff at Blacklight Power come from?"
All we really need is a front end to analyze the web page. I think we need to begin work immediately on a package that runs like a Debian installer, asking you if it the page really looks like its going to be worth the wait.
Wouldn't it be great to have some program, let's call it "dcheckit" that gave you information like this:
dcheckit: analyzing www.fox.com for crap.. wait... runlevel 1: looks like over 1 megabyte... speed: 28 bps whoa! dcheckit recommends: better make some coffee! dcheckit: www.fox.com requires 28 plugins you don't have. Continue? [y/N]:y dcheckit: OK, its your funeral.. switching to runlevel 2 dcheckit: links = 28 alt text = 0 Lynx-vicious site! dcheckit recommends loading nav GIFs. Should I? [Y/n]y dcheckit: found 2,780 GIFs. Get one copy of each and screw the animations? [Y/n]:y dcheckit: wise choice... checking for optional JPGs... dcheckit: 37 JPGs totaling 1.85M.. somebody must be quite mad... your dotfile threshold = 0.25M... switching to user config mode... dcheckit: loading JPGs less than 64x64... done dcheckit: loading JPGs of naked ladies... done dcheckit: done.. Enjoy!
To sum it all as 'parenting' pretty much says it. The purpose of public schools is turn out adult citizens that are very much like the last generation of citizens.
When I graduated with a BS in secondary education, ready to charge out into the public schools and focus on the parts of US History that had relevance in today's world, I was immediately shut down by a system that insisted the subject be taught in the same way it always had been; lesson plans had to follow the approved texts; the texts were approved by elected school boards; the text publishers wrote history the way school boards wanted them to read so they could sell more copies.
In contrast, later I was an instructor at a local university. The choice of curriculum and text was entirely up to me. Needless to say, my own enthusiasm for teaching the material skyrocketed with this newfound freedom to get to the meat of the subject rather than teach from a pre-defined and watered-down outline.
Whether the subject is social sciences, pure science or English composition, the US public education system can never keep up with the explosion of knowledge today, even if it _intended_ to do so. It bores good instructors and it bores good students.
A word processor can be used for illegal purposes, but no one would consider holding the developer responsible for that kind of use, and even a virus is not necessarily destructive in nature. For instance the eicar.com virus exists for the sole purpose of testing virus scanning software.
Where the software was developed for the sole purpose of illegal use, the responsibility is on both the developer and on the user.
If the software was developed for legitimate use, then the responibility is on the user.
The intent of the software may be a grey area; what was Back Orifice _really_ intended to do? Be a tool or a crack? I'm not an attorney (but I play one on web-tv). IIRC, the state of mind of the developer; what he intended the software to do, is a legal point that may determine guilt or innocence.
But, in any case, the user always has the responsibility to use _any_ software only for legal ends.
Slashdot Mirror
Said I:
/SARCASM
It's inconceivable that broadcasters would simply stick with a single NTSC-quality signal and lease out the remaining bandwidth for wireless data. Who would buy it? It is still a one-way path from the transmitter to you.
Said DH:
Um, gee, the wireless communications market is only hotter then the core of the sun right now. I can't imagine what anyone would want all that bandwidth for.
Is the wireless market hot for ONE-WAY bandwidth? I can see the possibility for fast downloads for browsing if broadcasters wanted to get into the ISP business and use bandwidth above a single NTCS-quality channel to blast out HTML content.
But, put it in a real situation; take an average-sized TV market, 400,000 people. Maybe they have 6 local TV stations. If any ONE of those stations devotes the other 3/4 of their bandwidth to wireless data, that's enough bandwidth to serve the whole community. The other five stations can't get into the same wireless ISP business and expect to pay the transmitter power bill with that income.
The recurring theme that TV must convert to digital to "pull off the swindle" is ludicrous. The TV industry is making the largest investment in its history to convert. If HDTV should fail, they are screwed. This is not a 'trial balloon' for TV. It's sink or swim, and trying to use the bulk of the band for one-way datacasting won't make it float.
My bookcase is full of TV industry trade pubs and direct mail ads. They are all for HDTV conversion equipment. Not a one of them advertises any kind of wireless datacast service or equipment.
DragonHawk said -
[bobbit] Given the limited initial demand for HDTV, what do you think the broadcasters are going to do? Waste all that bandwidth on a signal most are not going to use, or give us what we currently have and lots of extra money leasing their bandwidth? I know which one I would bet on.
So, if you think you are going to be seeing a better TV picture any time soon, think again. Except to spend lots of money to upgrade your equipment, but with zero reward. [/bobbit]
If you live in a major TV market you can see hi-def TV _right_now_. Last night's X-files was available as hi-def TV to those who had digital TVs in the big markets. More and more programs will be available in HD, just the way color TV slowly took over from black & white.
True, the option of whether to broadcast HD signals or a lesser-grade picture is up to the broadcaster and some stations, especially smaller ones, will opt for the cheaper route of using their NTSC legacy programming to save money; conversion to HD is going to be expensive. At the bare minimum a station has to have a new encoder and transmitter. Most will require much more. (The going rate for the encoder alone is $250,000)
You will have to throw away your analog TV. The station has to throw away their analog cameras, recorders, switchgear and distribution, transmitters and test equipment. The smaller ones will stick with NTSC-quality and lease out the three (not five) remaining NTSC-quality virtual channels to pay the bills.
When the digital TV conversion is complete, you will see either the wide-screen HDTV picture or you will have four channels to choose from instead of one. Either way you DO get more. (Yes, you might have four channels that suck instead of one)
It's inconceivable that broadcasters would simply stick with a single NTSC-quality signal and lease out the remaining bandwidth for wireless data. Who would buy it? It is still a one-way path from the transmitter to you.
Do broadcasters hope the whole idea of HDTV will flop and go away? Not after investing millions of dollars in new equipment. Real world experience proves broadcasters want it to happen; there are far more stations converting to digital than industry forecasts expected and the FCC Orders required.
I've worked in television broadcast engineering for 25 years and have kept abreast of digital TV development during all these years.
As a matter of fact, the Advanced Television System Committee worked on a digital standard that would be backwards compatible with your existing TV for many of the past years.
When a compatible standard that allowed market demand to drive the transition to digital TV was finalized, the way market demand drove the transition to color, THEN Microsoft and several other lesser computer industry manufacturers (having _declined_ to participate in the work until that point) cried foul; that Advanced TV was a closed system and they were left out.
Congress heard M$ and friends, and sacrificed compatibility so that M$ could "embrace and extend" TV, and further realizing that you have no particular reason to throw away your TV, camcorder and VCR, then _mandated_ that NTSC would be turned off to make way for Bill's system.
Bill specified your new TV system. Is it any surprise that you have to throw your old TV away now?
Tech history tells us Dr. Mills would not be the first to make a discovery, but fail to understand why it works. Radio transmission is an example; radio had no known medium of propogation and so the idea of "the ether" became popular. Today we know RF energy does not need an "ether" to propogate.
If what we read on the web is true, and Dr. Mills does indeed have remarkable materials available for analysis and his work is replicable, then critiques of his theory can prove his theory wrong, but they cannot make the material disappear.
My question is, "Where DID the stuff at Blacklight Power come from?"
All we really need is a front end to analyze the web page. I think we need to begin work immediately on a package that runs like a Debian installer, asking you if it the page really looks like its going to be worth the wait.
Wouldn't it be great to have some program, let's call it "dcheckit" that gave you information like this:
dcheckit: analyzing www.fox.com for crap.. wait...
runlevel 1: looks like over 1 megabyte...
speed: 28 bps
whoa! dcheckit recommends: better make some coffee!
dcheckit: www.fox.com requires 28 plugins you don't have. Continue? [y/N]:y
dcheckit: OK, its your funeral.. switching to runlevel 2
dcheckit: links = 28 alt text = 0 Lynx-vicious site! dcheckit recommends loading nav GIFs. Should I? [Y/n]y
dcheckit: found 2,780 GIFs. Get one copy of each and screw the animations? [Y/n]:y
dcheckit: wise choice... checking for optional JPGs...
dcheckit: 37 JPGs totaling 1.85M.. somebody must be quite mad... your dotfile threshold = 0.25M... switching to user config mode...
dcheckit: loading JPGs less than 64x64... done
dcheckit: loading JPGs of naked ladies... done
dcheckit: done.. Enjoy!
To sum it all as 'parenting' pretty much says it. The purpose of public schools is turn out adult citizens that are very much like the last generation of citizens.
When I graduated with a BS in secondary education, ready to charge out into the public schools and focus on the parts of US History that had relevance in today's world, I was immediately shut down by a system that insisted the subject be taught in the same way it always had been; lesson plans had to follow the approved texts; the texts were approved by elected school boards; the text publishers wrote history the way school boards wanted them to read so they could sell more copies.
In contrast, later I was an instructor at a local university. The choice of curriculum and text was entirely up to me. Needless to say, my own enthusiasm for teaching the material skyrocketed with this newfound freedom to get to the meat of the subject rather than teach from a pre-defined and watered-down outline.
Whether the subject is social sciences, pure science or English composition, the US public education system can never keep up with the explosion of knowledge today, even if it _intended_ to do so. It bores good instructors and it bores good students.
A word processor can be used for illegal purposes, but no one would consider holding the developer responsible for that kind of use, and even a virus is not necessarily destructive in nature. For instance the eicar.com virus exists for the sole purpose of testing virus scanning software.
Where the software was developed for the sole purpose of illegal use, the responsibility is on both the developer and on the user.
If the software was developed for legitimate use, then the responibility is on the user.
The intent of the software may be a grey area; what was Back Orifice _really_ intended to do? Be a tool or a crack? I'm not an attorney (but I play one on web-tv). IIRC, the state of mind of the developer; what he intended the software to do, is a legal point that may determine guilt or innocence.
But, in any case, the user always has the responsibility to use _any_ software only for legal ends.