Distance isn't relevant... Could be near by but low power, or far away and high power. I'd need a lot more info to give you a specific reason. I already listed a number of possible causes.
Either way, you can't argue with physics.
"According to a recent survey of 1,000 U.S.-based software developers, 56 percent expect to become millionaires in their lifetime.
That's not difficult if you're earning 6-fixgures, aren't staying in a very expensive area, and are just good with money.
<Insert joke about nerds being single>
66 percent also said they expect to get raises in the next year, despite the current state of the economy.
I personally expect to get a raise every-single-year. Inflation stays around 3% every year. If my company doesn't give me AT-LEAST a 3% increase in salary each year, I consider it a slap-in-the-face. A pay cut by another name. And worse, a pay cut after a sterling annual review, and a year of hard work.
Inflation/cost-of-living year-over-year was only at zero for ONE year, during the depths of the recession. It's not an ongoing excuse to withhold annual raises.
There's little that pisses me off more than hearing that "company policy" limits raises to no more than 3% (or 2%, or 1%). That's institutionalizing yearly pay-cuts for all employees, including top-performers. Even when I make a stink and get more than that, it makes me look at that company with utter disgust, as they show how much they HATE and want to be at war with their (good, long-term reliable) employees. Nothing makes a company better than the few long-timers, who have everything about the company and all the systems in their head. "Company policy" that punishes them for staying instead of job-hopping is the most utterly moronic thing I could imagine... But this rant is getting off the rails, quickly...
84 percent said they believe they are paid what they're worth, 95 percent report they feel they are 'one of the most valued employees at their organization,'
Well, obviously people don't stay at a company where they feel ignored and undervalued (see above). And when your work will determine whether the company hits or misses a deadline, you speak to CxOs on a regular basis, or you're responsible for many millions of dollars of equipment, it's easy to feel highly valued, even if perhaps you are not.
I know I've occasionally been the highest paid person in some medium-sized companies. With the higher contractor rates, and overhead of contracting firms, it's not too difficult to end up costing the company more than the CEO's salary, even if not all of it goes into your pocket, and some of it is government taxes/fees/programs that get stuffed into salary for contractors but not regular staff.
I should have enough by mid 60s, assuming Congress doesn't raid my 401K, Social Security still exists, and the entire economy hasn't collapsed. Hmm, now I'm depressed.
:(
Hell, my retirement plan DEPENDS on the world economy collapsing!
I'm stocking up on shotgun shells, shiny bits of metal, and cans of pork & beans.
Nope, others and I were able to watch and hear unclear pictures OTA on TV compared to digital.
This misconception comes from broadcasters making changes to their transmissions at the same time they switched to digital. Broadcasters on VHF channels 2-6 switched to UHF channel, which obviously aren't received by VHF antennas. Some chose to cut their broadcast power to save power, and more. It even goes as far as some HDTV manufactures including weak and noisy POS tuners. I've seen this with lesser-known brands all the time.
Side-by-side, digital is FAR better. I can get digital stations with no breakup from 130mi away, with regular consumer level antennas... The low-power analog stations from 10 miles away look like crap.
You don't need to take my word for it. Look at something like tvfool.com, and see how they sort DIGITAL stations higher than ANALOG stations, even when they have up to 10dBm lower signal levels than the analog versions. I've been watching OTA on the fringes in various cities since long before the switchover, and I've seen first-hand how things have vastly improved.
*indistinguishable*
Stupid autocorrect.
That's BS. You can get a perfect digital picture, when analog signals would have been so weak as to be incorrigible from static. Seen it first hand.
The previous spectrum auction made sense.. Cut of channels 52-69 and sell them off. Broadcasters were required to have two channels during the DTV transition, so if one of them was on a terminated frequency, they'd just have to use the other on a permanent basis.
But this one is psychotic... Everybody, everywhere, has to put their entire operation up for bids. The FCC gets to evaluate on a massive scale how to build a contiguous and nation-wide band out of the cheapest broadcasters on offer, with the real possibility they will end up with a patchwork of frequencies in different areas used for cell phone traffic, but still TV (and radio) in others.
This is the most complex mess I've ever seen, and worse, it reeks of devaluing, and largely throwing away nearly a century of public infrastructure, in exchange for some short-term cash, from companies who are simply doing a piss-poor job of spectrum-reuse because old TV frequencies are going for *cheap*. Honestly, this is blatant big-money lobbying against public interest, almost as bad as LightSquared, trying to leagalize their misuse of frequencies that would knock out GPS, and later trying to trade their frequencies for military channels that have never been on offer for any companies to use.
You're quite wrong about broadcast television. With the switch to digital, it has gotten vastly more useful and practical.
Now, putting-up an antenna is the best picture quality you can get. Most stations have 2+ subchannels, so instead of 7 channels, you get 21+, and hence a proliferation of minor networks... "AntennaTV" "THIS" "MeTV" and more come to mind. And they have a far greater signal-to-noise ratio than cable channels, due to limited space and the demands of a massive broadcast audience. In some secondary (ie. old UHF-only) markets, major networks were entirely missing, due to limited space, but are now able to be carried as sub-channels on competitor's broadcast towers.
OTA broadcast viewership is increasing, mainly with young households opting for an antenna rather than cable/satellite, ssince those have lost their technical edge, and the price is hard to justify. And OTA is critical for TV-related companies... Those TV-tuners for computers wouldn't have a. big enough market without it, and no reason to exist. DVR companies also probably wouldn't be able to make it without the OTA crowd. Startups like Aereo would be gone, with no possibly legal source of content.
And tell me this... Where can you find daily national/world news with the same quality as the approx. 4am newscasts on CBS/NBC/ABC? BBC World Service looks like crap by comparison, though easily better than CNN/MSNBC/FauxNews of course. How about educational content like the broadcast networks are required to air for children? We absolutely do get a hell of a lot from broadcast OTA TV.
then why the recent decision
Because it'a a SUPREME COURT decision. We have three branches of government and only two are elected.
The supremes are appointed, for life (subject only to impeachment for high crimes, like the president). They have no re-election issues and can vote their mind without affecting their own tenure.
The court has repeatedly struck down campaign spending restrictions, because they're limits, not just on free speech, but on the POLITICAL speech that is the reason it is an enumerated right in the first place.
But it takes a while for a law to produce enough damage to give someone standing to challenge it, and to bring it to the supremes, and then they rule narrowly. Then, once a piece is struck down, Congress just turns around and does another version of it to evade the details of that decision, and the cycle starts over.
There are under 700 people that hit the max last time around, do you seriously think that decision will benefit the grass roots? Sounds to me like it's aimed squarely at giving the oligarchs more influence.
Of course it's the rich are the first who are bit and who have the resources to bring the suit. That's part of why the limits end up off the rich (like Soros) first, while they're still hobbling everybody else.
It isn't just the limits themselves that are an issue. There's all the reporting requirements, publication requirements, time limits, and maze of details that make compliance hard.
It's hard for candidates: They need a substantial political machine right off the bat. Getting dinged for campaign finance violations is costly, may involve jail time, DOES involve court time, and produces publicity that tarnishes the candidate's image and hurts his chances in future elections. This gives the professional politicians, especially incumbents with the machine in place, a massive advantage over any grass-roots upstarts trying to replace them.
And it can bring on reprisals against donors - including carreer-killing or physical retaliation. Who contributed to what political campaigns is public record and searchable online. This is an invitation to people with opposing views to exert social pressure or take revenge. (Within the last couple weeks we saw the CEO of Netscape forced to resign by just such pressure, as a result of the McCain-Feingold reporting of a past political contribution to a "politically-incorrect" campaign.)
It's the exact opposite of a secret ballot, which is secret to prevent such reprisals so the vote can be cast in safety. Why should financial support be any different? Why would publishing the amount and beneficiary of each contributor's political contributions be any less of a bias on the political system than publishing the way each voter voted?
Further, risking a job is far more of a hardship for a little guy living hand-to-mouth than a rich executive with millions in the bank and a golden parachute. So it's another force to suppress grass-roots opinion in favor of those who are independently wealthy or well-off.
There are no reliable metrics that indicate FOSS is safer. None.
Can you propose a metric that would compare the "safety" of FOSS versus closed-source/proprietary software?
(I thought not.)
When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for,
I'm curious about what "organized interest groups" were "controlled for". Did that include things like the AARP and the NRA, the two largest public pressure groups in the country? How about the various organizations called The Tea Party?
When a lot of people at the grass roots level want to redirect the government, they often join together and form orgizations to lobby for their interests. These groups are generally what gets things done. If the study counts such organizations as "organized interest groups" and subtracts their policy impact from the impact of the "Average American", it's no wonder the latter's impact is measured as " minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant".
Also: What counts as the policy desires of the "Average American"? Are they averaging out people with opposing oppinions on government policy?
You lift the limits on campaign spending, declare that corporations have the right of political speech and are now surprised that the rich people have all the say?
Actually, the campaign spending limits are aimed squarely at the grass roots.
The McCain-Feingold act of 2002, for example, was passed in reaction to the massive volunteer efforts that took down Mike Roos from the California legislature in 1991 (and caused trouble for David Roberti in 1994), and Tom Foley from the House in 1994. It makes the equivalent value of volunteer work and supplies (such as paper, envelopes, and stamps) subject to the spending limits and reporting requirements, as if they were contributions, but provides no caps for campaign spending for such people as labor unions, media conglomerates, and billionaires such as George Soros.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.
