Congressman Mike Ross, WD5DVR, Says Stop BPL

That is a past build-out. I was referring to future ones; and ones that are happening as we speak.

Cinci is a wonderful example of cooperation. ALL BPL efforts should be ones in which hams cooperate and work with the BPL folks. Not try to kill the technology. I'm sure the expansion into HF will be just as smooth.

And, BTW, I don't know of any evidence of peril to planes, trains or automobiles, not to mention jolly hams, from the Cinci install. Do you?

Cinci is a modest chunk of the extant BPL revenue, BTW.

73,
Chip N1IR

 

Sorry, but I can't find my eraser.  I think the Governor of the State of California has it. Besides, either your call or fractenna at aol dot com both yield interesting exchanges. A few really good ones.

 

Which ones are these Chip? Are they full, commercial deployments or small tests sites?

According to the WAI Connection (a wired networking trade publication) as of Mar 2005 there were only 5 commercial deployments, Syracuse, NY, Allentown, PA, Manassas and Charlottesville, VA and Cincinnati. The majority of the served customers are in the Cincy and Manassas deployments. No mention was made of pending or planned deployments but trials in 7 states were mentioned. I doubt the article was comprehensive because a number of trial site states were missed and so they may have also missed commercial deployments. I haven't done an exhaustive search but quick search failed to turn up any others.

The article author expects BPL to capture 33% of new broadband customers by 2012 and 13% of existing customers by then. It is hard to tell what the actual market share for BPL will be in 2012 without additional data not in the article.

WiFi/WiMAX are the big unknowns in the mix and will affect all wired broadband providers. BPL will also have to get significantly faster well before then if it expects to compete in the VoIP and digital entertainment service areas which the cable, fiber and wireless providers are already starting to deploy.

None of the above seems to me to support your opinion that BPL is being implemented in a big way. A few pointers to announcements or other indications of commercial deployments starting up would be helpful.

 

Not to hams, but hams do not have any allocations in the 30 - 50 MHz range. I don't know about users such as the Ohio State Highway Patrol, McDonald's Restaurants, Second Church of Christ Scientist, and numerous others with active licenses in that band of frequencies in the Cincinnati area.

McDonald's is interesting. They have licenses for 0.1W transmitters at various frequencies 33 - 34 MHz. These are probably for the wireless headsets used to communicate to drive up customers. They also have frequencies in the 154 MHz area and I do not know which are actively being used. If McDonald's were to get broadband for their restaurants by BPL, I wonder if the operator would be smart enough to find out what frequencies were being used for the wireless headsets and chose a segment well away to avoid interference.

Some of public safety licensees have 100W mobile authorizations in this band with higher power base stations from what I can tell in the FCC databases. Being FM and running at those power levels, BPL may not pose much of a problem. It would be interesting to conduct some real world tests to see if this is indeed true but that is for the potentially affected services to do. I do not think any of the testing submitted during the comment periods or with interference complaints was done with FM equipment. The effect of in-band FM transmissions at the 100W level on BPL performance of close by equipment would also be of interest.

73,
Mike WA3KYY

 

I make my second request to have you remove this link. Use the EDIT button; you know how to use it.

Why you create an e-mail link, when what you really want is to give a search word, is beyond me.

I have no problem with you telling others to search for 'fractenna' or my call. But if I get harrassing e-mails from this link, or my email gets picked up from 'bots, it will create problems for both you and, unfortunately, Fred.

I have no desire to create any problem for our host. Neither should you, IMO.

Thank you.

Chip N1IR

 

Ah, a little fine tuning was needed.  Why don't you correspond to my email which is W6EM at arrl do_t n-et.

Of course, that's listed on the QRZ web base.

Not only is my eraser hard at work in Sacramento, the accuracy of my typing, as you can see, is somewhat inhibited.  So, you receive a form if someone Googles what I posted?  That's a neat trick.  How did you arrange that?

BTW, has the phone rung yet with an offer from your imaginary sponsors?  You might make it to Hollywood yet.

 

Chip, that is ludicrous. If you have a website, it's not private. It's called the worldwide web. Anyone, and everyone has access to it, including automatic webcrawlers. You would have no basis for any lawsuit. Of course you could do it for your amusement, as you do with your posting, but you would never win in court.

 

I have assembled quite a list of your contributions, including items aimed at me and at others.  Fred has already heard from me once, concerning your posts, and will probably again.  I believe others have indicated they will contact Fred as well.

Let me give you a little advice: Why don't you sit back and enjoy another cigar by the fire and stop bashing factual, legitimate posts about this subject? And, most importantly, stop the use of derrogatory language with the intent to defame.

You aren't doing yourself one bit of good.

BTW, if what I posted is your email, it comes up with so many hits when one enters your call sign on Alta Vista and/or Google, that I lost count long ago.

Ciao,

Lee
W6EM

 

Lee,

If I am doing something illegal, immoral, or unethical, please feel free to bring it to my attention.

73,
Chip N1IR

 

I would be delighted to expunge any such posts. I am not aware of any. Feel free to bring them to my attention.

73,
Chip N1IR

 

Acting disrespectful.

Interesting revisit/reality check. Brian K3VR said:

-----------------

"... As an airline passenger I don't want BPL to degrade communications between an aircraft I'm traveling in and the ground tower. ... As a sailor I'd like to be able to contact the Coast Guard if necessary"

----------------

BTW....would you feel UNSAFE flying over Cincinnatti--a major extant BPL deployment-- or sailing on the river near Newport, KY next door)?

73,
Chip N1IR

 

It is dissed or dissing

slang : to treat with disrespect or contempt

As a respectful correction.

 

N1IR wrote:

"I am also a Ph.D. radio astronomer (from Cornell), who taught at Boston University for 16 years; retired from academia; and functions as a successful technologist and entrepreneur. It is within these contexts that I present said advice with respect to the amateur views so expressed on BPL and other technologies. Take it, as it were, as experienced advise.

As for SETI, I confess to also being a pioneer in that field, have published key papers in that effort; and count my Ph.D. advisor and mentor, Frank Drake (of the Drake Equation) as a trusted friend."


Ponder this:

http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html

and this excerpted section:

Aliens Cause Global Warming

A lecture by Michael Crichton
Caltech Michelin Lecture
January 17, 2003

"...Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free.

But let's look at how it came to pass.

Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:

N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL

Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.

This serious-looking equation gave SETI an serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we're clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be "informed guesses." If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It's simply prejudice.

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from "billions and billions" to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. ... The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion.

...But scientists in general have been indulgent toward SETI, viewing it either with bemused tolerance, or with indifference. After all, what's the big deal? It's kind of fun. If people want to look, let them. Only a curmudgeon would speak harshly of SETI. It wasn't worth the bother.

...But that does not relieve us of the obligation to see the Drake equation clearly for what it is-pure speculation in quasi-scientific trappings."



Now, Michael Crichton is a famous author and an MD.  I thought this might be of interest in this thread.

Larry
KC7ULI

 

Thanks, Larry. Quite an interesting testament.

So, if SETI isn't science, and instead more of an art, then those who practice it would be, by definition, artists, would they not?

That paints quite an interesting portrait.

73,

Lee
W6EM

 

Well...,

If not a science then, as Dr. Crichton puts it, a religion.  That means the practioners are more like monks.  Now that's a picture.

73

Larry
KC7ULI