RadioBanter - View Single Post

February 25th 04, 12:59 PM

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...
In article ,

(Brian Kelly) writes:

Point is that the last-mile problem isn't a real problem at all. Run the
fiber down the street on the poles, put a little box every so many poles,
use a
little encoding, no problem.

Certainly. But running fiber optics lines is a very expensive
proposition, much more expensive per unit length than any of the other
utility lines.

It's already all over the place out here in the Principality of Radnor. And TE,
and West Chester, etc.

The really big cost is getting from the pole into people's houses. That's the
really big selling point of BPL: no installation, every outlet in your house is
a broadband connection. As if.

If/when real wideband access comes true in this country
it's most likely gonna at least get started via the cable. That
probability is mixed into Comcast's move to bring the Mouse to Philly.

A lot of "cable" is actually fiber. But it makes no real difference; the big
probelm is getting into every overpriced little box made out of ticky tacky.
The cable and telco folks took their pain upfront.

And if "they" can't find a "solution" then kiss the 2.4 Ghz (got it
right that time) ham band 'bye-'bye. Get comfortable with the concept

More bandwidth than all of HF.

Hare and I touched on that when he was here, it's a classic case of
use it or lose it and it's not being used. I asked him how much ham
activity he knew about on 2.4 Ghz and he answered "What activity?".

I wuz there. And what activity does exist uses highly directional antennas....

btw, I came across some info on the Manassas thing. $20 month for BPL - for
the
first three months! Then it jumps to $50/month. On a good day it might get
up to half of DSL speed. Maybe.

Good. I hope they lose their skivvies on that deal.

They'll ask Uncle Sam to bail them out. "No millionaire left behind".

Didja see where RCN went Chapter 11? The cofounder of Microsoft put 1.65
billion into that outfit and now his piece is worth $2 million. That's like
putting $165,000 of yer IRA/401K in something and having it go down to $200.

In this country standard DSL runs 0.5-1.0 Mb/s and can be found for
$30/month.

Even less if bundled with other services. When the contract on the Southgate
cellphone runs out in June, I'm shopping bigtime.

Cable here runs at around 3Mb/s for $45/month. The JAs have
a flavor of DSL which runs at 26 Mb/sec in heavily-populated areas for
$50/month with the HLs close behind. Manassas BPL for $50/month for
only half of 0.5-1.0 Mb/s you say?

Double check with Ed but I recall half MB as the best they'd ever gotten - and
that was for a single customer on the system. More folks = sharing.

They gotta be kidding . . ! One more dot bomb in the making . .

I sure hope so. Boom dot bust. But it ain't over till it's over.

At this point I'm not in the least bit convinced that Gore would have
been one bit worse that the Shrub.

Izzat the sun coming up over Sugartown Road?

Huh? How did Sugartown Rd. get into it??

It's west of here - as in "sun come up in the west on that day..."

Have you checked the size of the national debt recently?

Yep. But that's not the big problem - the real 800 pound gorilla is how
fast the deficit is making it grow. A few years back we had a surplus....

Yeah, it's the rate which is really scary.

Not just a big hole but digging it deeper as fast as they can.

And now we're supposed to go back to the Moon, and send people to Mars.
Yet the odds on a Shuttle failure are worse than 100 to 1...

I don't see shuttle safety being part of the politics of the upcoming
campaign. As has been the case in all major explorations since Leif
Ericsson's days and millenia before the folk who ride the things know
they didn't buy a seat in a 737 and some are not gonna come back.

That's not how it was sold, though. Ask the McAuliffes if they were told that
there was a 1 in 75 chance of augering in.

Main point is that if it's that risky just ot get to orbit, the Moon is even
more risky and Mars missions lasting years are for the Divine Wind types.

Tell ya what, let's fund Shrub's moon-mars-madness the same way things like
education, mass transit and health care get funded.

How 'bout we just bag the whole stupid Mars camping trip thing and
first build a new version of the Shuttle then put Wideband on the
front burner as a matter of national policy?

That makes way too much sense.

In fact the really sensible thing would be a cheap oneshot big booster for
unmanned payloads and a highly reliable but much smaller human transport
system. Send the big stuff on ahead and the astronauts meet it up there.

Which is what the JAs and
HLs did and explains why this country is years behind them in this
field.

'zactly.

We could have walkathons
and bake sales. Corporate sponsorship in return for advertising space, just
like they do in NASCAR and at Indy. Let groups and individuals send in
money to
buy parts and supplies - a gallon of rocket fuel, coupla resistors for the
computer, etc.

NASA can have anything in the Southgate Radio stockroom for a very nominal
price.

Let's not get carried away here Miccolis . .

Hey - didja see where they're planning a space walk on the ISS where all the
crew will be outside at the same time, with nobody in the station? Didn't they
ever go to the movies back in 1968?

73 de Jim, N2EY

....oh, my God, it's full of stars!...

w3rv