Comment Re:The end for me (Score 1) 937
...scratch that. SoylentNews turns out to be just as bad as
Instead, my last hope rests with pipedot, which is much more like an old-fashioned
...scratch that. SoylentNews turns out to be just as bad as
Instead, my last hope rests with pipedot, which is much more like an old-fashioned
Hm. The covenant of Noah is about two paragraphs before this part (King James Version) which is used for various justifications of slavery and discrimination against all sorts of people because they are said to bear the Curse of Ham. If folks wanted to use the Bible to justify anything ISIS says is justified by God's words in the Koran, they could easily do so.
18 And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan.
19 These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.
20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:
21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.
22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.
23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.
24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.
25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
26 And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.
That is a very astute summary of the issues.
I would love to see residential ISP's make an honest case explaining why the existing system is broken. (Where end-users purchase internet service from their residential ISP and online businesses purchase internet service from their ISP's - both with the understanding that packets will flow between the two, unrestricted. When demand exceeds capacity at peering points, each end will make a reasonable effort to add capacity at peering points providing customers at each end what they have paid for).
I'm not against the idea of residential ISP's turning an honest buck. After all, they really did invest significant dollars in infrastructure, including negotiation for rights-of-way in municipalities. Further, they need to maintain that network, and upgrade the network as demand increases. I think that they deserve a fair chance for an honest return on their investments. However, the idea that residential ISP's should be allowed to double-dip on selling access seems quite insane to me, and is counter to the open principles employed since the foundation of the internet. We can thank Ed Whitacre Jr, former CEO of SBC for coming up with the idea in 2005/2006 (as far as I can tell) that the residential ISP's customers are both customers and products to be resold to content providers. The Internet doesn't work that way, and never has. The idea that content providers are getting some sort of free lunch on the residential ISP's dime is laughable; it's just a shameful distortion of the facts. The residential ISP's bandwidth has already been paid for by their customers, and the content providers have already paid for their own bandwidth. I have yet to hear a compelling argument from any ISP's about how the existing system is broken (other than, to paraphrase, "because we can").
As a freedom junkie and pseudo-Libertarian - part of me believes that government regulation of the internet opens up a can of worms. However, residential ISP's demonstrating their willingness to distort facts and abuse monopoly powers that they have in many markets. Is there any reason why residential ISP's should not be regulated accordingly?
We have them to generate income for the government, specifically local and state government, to the tune of $6.2 billion last year.
While some towns and small municipalities are notorious speed traps, who abuse the law to generate revenue - applying this to all speed enforcement is an outright over generalization.
The fact of the matter is that speed limit enforcement costs our governments more than it takes in. Your assertion only accounts for revenues, and does not take into account the cost of enforcement; such as police, equipment, court costs, collections, and incarceration (states like Virginia criminalize speeding and actually mandate jail time for exceeding the speed limit by greater than 20 MPH).
I posted this reply in another forum in response to a similar claim where I did some quick back-of-a-napkin math in my own county where traffic laws are very aggressively enforced. I'm not trying to pass my post off as especially scientific and of course my statements aren't universal. However, what I wrote does include sources, and I did the same math in another county deeper in the thread. But it does shed significant doubt on the broad generalization that speed enforcement is motivated (either partially or entirely) by governmental revenue enhancement. Here are a few excerpts if you don't feel like reading the whole thread:
Let's take this out of the theoretical and use my own county as a case-study, just to put things in to perspective. (Don't get me wrong, I'm no expert, just a geek who can type things into Google.) Here is my county's revenue's report from 2011. See page 2. Fines and forfeitures came in at $16M in 2011 compared to $2B in real estate taxes. That $16M is a drop in the bucket for state revenues (0.8%). Not a lot of money made, but how does this stack up against what we spend on it?
I'm glad that you asked - here are some more recent examples: In 2014, my county government estimated fines and forfeitures at $14.8M or 0.4% of annual revenues. However, when you look at where the money goes - judicial administration is 0.9% ($33.2M) of the budget and public safety is 12.3% ($442.8M) of the budget...a combined 13.2% of our annual fiscal budget. If you do the math, it simply doesn't add up to a money-making racket for the state. The facts seem to point to a different conclusion - and I don't claim to have the answer as to why and how (although I could probably google for this).
Anyway, hopefully this will shed a bit of doubt on the blanket assumption about speed enforcement for revenue enhancement. That's not to say that speed limits are always correct, or that speed enforcement is usually done with the best of intentions (e.g. to prove that the police are actually doing something - or perhaps for entirely political reasons)...but it should shed reasonable doubt.
Well, this nicely wraps-up my 16 years of involvement with
See you on SoylentNews.
an apartment where she does share the building with up to 15 other families.
That doesn't preclude installing an antenna, it just reduces your options. Multi-floor apartment balconies and/or windows usually get pretty good TV reception. If previous occupants had DBS dishes mounted, you can stick an antenna on that J-channel. And landlords are usually reasonable. You can always ask for permission to install an antenna, explaining the non-destructive mounting option (chimney straps, non-penetrating root mount, etc.) you'd like to use, and promise it'll be less unsightly than what you'll do if they refuse.
It could be technically the landlord's roof, not mmell's.
As long as mmell doesn't share the roof with other tennants, he has the right to mount an antenna up there.
Law of the land since 1996:
Speaking of technical, it was only recently you can easily find actual frequencies used by TV stations (needed if you are using UHF wireless mics). After the DTV transition, I could not find actual frequencies used which drove me nuts because those that say it is same as NTSC are wrong
Umm, tvfool.com has had that info forever.
I linked to the FCC's DTV transition plan in my journal about OTA TV in 2007:
http://slashdot.org/journal/18...
Specifically:
"FCC DTV tentative frequency assigments"
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs...
If you're talking about the center frequency, that's a very simple conversion. The Linux DVB package contains two text files listing center frequencies:
us-NTSC-center-frequencies-8VSB
us-ATSC-center-frequencies-8VSB
ATSC eg.:
A 57028615 8VSB
A 63028615 8VSB
A 69028615 8VSB
A 79028615 8VSB
A 85028615 8VSB
Sadly, even if we move to picocells, the antennas will still need to be "visible" and will still have some "size" to them due to the frequencies they need to handle.
Actually, wavelength at 800Mhz is only about 1ft (~30cm), so that's practical to hide. Hell, you could disguise it as a chimney or some other roof penetration.
My plan would be to mount them on telephone poles wherever available. There, they could just use business-class cable/DSL/FIOS service as the backhaul. Maybe that possibility would encourage Verizon to expand their FIOS deployment, since the big money is in cellular. AT&T's U-Verse fiber network could support it, too. Sprint/T-Mobile would be at a disadvantage, but maybe deals with local cable companies would help both sides compete. After all, where you need several picocells is right where there are already large populations, and already have wired options installed.
With that plan, cellular data could actually be both faster and cheaper than wired internet access.
I certainly don't need the mod points, but it's damn sad to see the ass-backwards moderation on this story.
This factually incorrect nonsense is +5:
* http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
While my correction actually got modded down:
* http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
Similarly with this thread, I'm clearly the only one who has provided information specific to the situation, and my comments get ignored, while generalized rants with terrible info are +5.
It's a crushing disappointment to see just what
dial-up and ISDN have always referred to specific technology. Broadband has meant "not dial-up" and "fast".
Broadband has "always referred to specific technology" too.
VHF frequencies tended to flow around obstructions. UHF frequencies tended to be more "line of sight".
Lower frequencies cast a much longer shadow behind obstacles, where higher frequencies will fill-in the area more immediately behind the obstacle. People might be most familiar with AM radio fading out when driving under a bridge, while FM radio does not.
The flip side of that, which you're talking about, is that lower frequencies will lose less of their power over long distances, diffracting around the curvature of the earth, than higher frequencies.
However, that's largely compensated for by UHF broadcast and consumer receive antennas having much higher "gain" than VHF, as well as the FCC accounting for the difference and allowing UHF broadcasters to crank-up their broadcast power accordingly.
In theory, it's possible to receive VHF stations further away. In practice, you'll have a hell of a time picking up either VHF or UHF more than 50 miles away, and it gets pretty expensive after that (unless you're blessed with ideal terrain).
In my case, with some effort, I can pickup both VHF and UHF stations from 130 miles away, and the UHF stations happen to be stronger than the VHF stations.
So two stations that were previously using 6 MHz bandwidth each, will now share one channel, presumably using 3 MHz each.... and so each will have a 50% drop in picture quality. How is this a good thing for the consumer?
Answer: Because NOTHING you've said has a shred of truth. You might try looking-up KCET and KLCS before ignorantly spouting off next time...
KLCS has been operating on a waiver... They've never been broadcasting any HD channels, but just 4 SD channels. KCET has one HD 720p channel, and 3 SD subs. The two can pretty easily fit in the 19Mbps bandwidth of a single 6MHz carrier, without degrading quality at all. In addition, both could stand to drop some of those sub-channels...
KCET's NHK channel largely duplicates KSCI's carriage of several hours of NHK programming per day, as well as both KCET and KLCS carrying a half hour segments of NHK on their main channels, several times a day. Incidentally, KSCI has been operating with 9-10 SD subchannels in their single 6MHz channel for years, now.
Answer #2: PBS in the greater Los Angeles area is a complete fucking mess.
Before KCET dropped their PBS affiliation (an idiotic move, but that's another topic), they were just one of 5 PBS stations available in the greater LA area: KCET, KLCS, KOCE, KVCR, KPBS (and likely others). Now they're down to a mere 4, which is still frankly 2 or 3 too many. All of which are broadcasting almost the same content as each other, often at or near each others' time-slots. Each covers their own smaller footprint, with their own smaller niche, getting a fraction of the public donations during their pledge drives. Whereas one single PBS broadcaster in could cover a larger area, get a bigger chunk of viewers, get a bigger chunk of the donations, and improve their programming, accordingly.
KCET should just up and die, already. They dropped their PBS affiliation in a dispute over money, complaining they were paying out half their income to get PBS programming. Since then, their income has dropped by far more than half, because they no longer have any content most anyone wants to watch. They're only delaying the inevitable by selling off their assets; first their large and empty TV studio, and now their transmitter.
It's kind-of a good move for KLCS OTA TV viewers in SoCal, because KCET had invested in building several digital repeaters, to provide a very strong signal in areas where it is difficult or expensive to get Los Angeles area broadcasts. A sadly worthless move once they dropped their PBS affiliation and nobody watched their channel anymore, but getting KLCS on there would deliver PBS content again, and get some use out of it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The FCC's "repacking" is a dammed cluster-fuck, screwing over OTA viewers (whose numbers are currently RISING after the digital transition made OTA far more viable). By reducing viewing options, and/or pushing broadcasters into less viable channels (eg. VHF-lo) where their broadcast footprint will be reduced, they're starting to destroy the system they've slowly and painfully built-up over the past 75 years. This just for the benefit of cell-phone companies, who would rather throw more money at buying-up the public's available spectrum (at very cheap, fire-sale prices), rather than investing in picocell sites with smaller horizons and much higher frequency reuse. But the one small advantage it offers is the chance for sick and failing TV broadcasters to cash-out in a cash-positive way.
And we're full circle.
That's what happens when you use circular logic...
For the term broadband to retain its meaning of "fast Internet", it needs to refer to speeds that can be considered fairly snappy in today's reality,
I agree. Let's do that just after we upgrade "dial-up" and "ISDN" to high speeds.
Like "broadband", they meant "high speed" once upon a time. As you're saying, since it meant something once, we must force it to continue to mean the same thing, forever.
One man's constant is another man's variable. -- A.J. Perlis
