"Over-subscribed does not NECESSARILY mean congested."
FIFY
The power gen analogy doesn't really work here. A congested ATM network doesn't crash just because it's congested. But 575 customers configured for a minimum of 1.5M service to as much as 7M routed over a single T3 IS congested. No, the network doesn't crash. But the first few on with their 7M streaming videos burst, and everyone else's packets get discarded. Everyone else times out before they even reach the edge router.
I didn't pull that example out of... thin air. I saw it, when troubleshooting dozens of simultaneous customer complaints of "can't get on Internet". It wasn't the only example, either; just the most extreme I personally worked at that company.
Even b/e/t/t/e/r/ worse was the T1 interswitch admin channel that some effin' moron provisioned a couple of hundred DSL customers to. (And why the hell that admin channel even showed up as provisionable... -shudder-)
Then there's the ATM network side. Sure, there was an OC12 fiber run to the DSLAM. But the network side of the switch routed 575 DSL customers (sold up to 7Mbps connections) over... a...
...45Mbps T3. (For the mathematically-challenged, that's a whopping 78Kbps per customer when they all came home in the evening and tried to download YT videos at once.)
I kid you not. The contract fine print only specified the customer would see [insert arbitrary number up to 7] on the local loop. Network, not so much.
I wonder if this model is cost effective in the long run, what with the expense of feeding a million monkeys and training to them to operate typewriters.
"ensure that we are delighting our customers at each touch point."
Sounds like they plan to add sexual molestation to the murder/explosion/kitty-torture repertoire. Perhaps someone should explain to them that "customer service" differs somewhat from the animal husbandry sort.
"Cell tower" is pretty vague. What's actually happening in cell phone location is this:
There are three separate processes used to locate a cell phone: 1) cell (tower) the phone is connected to (I think this is what Masnick is referring to), 2) Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) "triangulation," and GPS.
[Many people think of "triangulation" as directional antennas being used to take bearings on a source, based on signal strength, as in seen in movies. TDOA doesn't do this because cell towers do not have moveable directional antennas (you're reasonably safe in thinking of the array as an omnidirectional antenna). TDOA simply measures the time a cell phone signal takes to reach multiple towers. All the towers have their own GPS-based synchronized timing, so they can "confer" and agree that the signal each saw was the same connection attempt from the same phone, and compute the TDOA. Time gives distance. Distance gives a circle around each tower. The phone is where the arcs intersect.]
Number 1 is the easiest to derive (if the phone connects to the network, they perforce know what tower it's coming from), but least accurate; the phone could be anywhere in the circle area where they can get a signal.
Number 2 is reasonably accurate to several tens of meters, which is good enough for E911 work.
3 is quite accurate. If you have enough GPS birds in view. And you haven't had a glitch that puts you 100 kilometers off the Florida coast as you head into Chi-town.
I think most modern smart phones incorporate GPS (some years back, a bright company finally built complete GPS receivers on a single chip), but not all phones have it, and GPS doesn't always yield a good location. Cell companies adopted TDOA location both as an interim measure before GPS-capable phones became common and as a backup to GPS.
I don't see a problem with Disney's action. Clearly they've nothing more than create a remix of Wilson's short work. I'm sure that will simply drive views and sales for her. In fact, she should be overjoyed that an advertising giant like Disney is throwing its weight behind her work.
Specifically... I was helping out as a studio cameraman in a little New Mexico independent TV station back in the mid '80s. I had to run a camera during a live interview with some woman explaining how evil D&D is. She had little lead figures of "demons", some plastic commercial dolls. She spent a great deal of time telling the interviewer and audience how gamers gather around the table to worships strange and evil gods, and how the game spells are real.
As an active gamer at the time, I had just a wee bit of trouble containing the laughter. Finally had to wait for camera cuts to reposition my cam as fast as possible, then get the hell away from it so I wouldn't make it shake.
She had very clearly never even talked to a gamer, much less seen a session. Yet she was an expert traveling the country to lecture and grant interviews about it.
For some reason I didn't get to run a camera for live work after that.
They/you can call it "5G", but the ITU hasn't defined 5G yet. If you've actually gone and spent ?3.5bn on your own proprietary version of what you hope will be 5G in a few years, odds are you're really just going to build a multi-billion Euro network that can't talk to anything else. (That's generously assuming your "5G" is really a new system and not just "new capabilities are still being grouped under the current ITU-T 4G standards," in which case you'll still need to shell more billions.)
The survey was supposed conducted by or for a company that specializes in viral marketing. Last I checked, they finally released what they claim were the actual questions, but nothing on the methodology.
Maybe I'm not human then. [grin] The only time I assumed that I was being referenced in a work of fiction was a novel by someone who knows me... and the name was my own not-terribly-common name. Oh, and the author said it was me.
--- No, I didn't sue. I laughed. A lot. It was an inside joke regarding firearms preferences; pretty darned funny to those who know me.
Why would Gravano want people to think that's her? (Aside from the money that she isn't going to get anyway, that is.)
Oddly enough, I've had my own run-ins with folks who think I'm writing about them. A woman was apparently convinced that one of my characters was her. But she never said which one, leaving me to hope it wasn?t the the pissed off lady with the .357 Magnum and a box of explosives.*
At least she didn't sue me.
----- * "Point of Honor", which those interested can find in The Anarchy Belt (freebie).
I'm most often in the "suspicious of government motives, but doubtful of conspiracy to the point of ridicule" camp, but my quick read of the proposal (I haven't gone through all 78 pages yet) suggests that what folks feared is exactly what the survey was going to do.
The three listed main goals of the study could be/are met without the newsroom interviews that were proposed.
1. "the access (or potential barriers) to CINs as identified by the FCC": The proposed news census would have done that,
2. "the media that makes up media ecologies...": Doesn't matter. The media is a black box; you ddon't need to know what's inside in order to observe the CIN "output" which they claim was their concern.
3. "the use of and interaction between media that makes media ecologies...": Reading further, you'll discover this translates into "Where do people get their news?" That question is answered through the news census and surveys of the users.
Nothing in those goals requires grilling media management or staff as proposed. To the extent that anyone is interested in the process of ensuring that outlets provide what the consumers want, that's marketing research conducted by the media so they can sell more advertising.
THIS is crap; and I can understand why people are worried about the big license grantor walking in and demanding access and answers:
Page 10, "Qualitative Analysis of Media Providers" is the tricky section, with the real kicker on page 11:
"The final component of this qualitative piece involves the execution of in-depth interviews with corporate management, local management, and support staff. We suggest a maximum of 56 media provider sites (radio and television stations) be surveyed. Within that maximum, interviews will be conducted within each market, stratified by market size. We propose that interviews be conducted at six sites in each of the selected small markets, ten sites in the selected medium markets, and 12 sites in large markets. Five interviews will be conducted at each media site. The selection of the type of staff to interview within each market shall be largely dependent on the number of properties within each market. The maximum number of interviews will be capped at 280."
And on page 12: "The purpose of these interviews is to ascertain the process by which stories are selected, station priorities (for content, production quality, and populations served), perceived station bias, perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the eight CINs, and perceived responsiveness to underserved populations. Due to the highly sensitive nature of information collected (particularly among reporters and anchors of television news stations), demographic information will not be reported. Additionally, confidentiality will be assured among all participants interviewed."
"[H]e thinks it would be a nifty idea if all b/r/o/a/d/b/a/n/d/ s/u/b/s/c/r/i/b/e/r/s/ healthcare users had to pay a monthly f/i/n/e/ premium for the behaviors of other people."
"[A]ny company taking over that provided a minimum of competence and care would likely have seen the same level of improvement."
A-hem. Not necessarily. Google (ootb alert!)"FairPoint New England bankruptcy". Astonishingly as it may seem, it's possible to out-do Verizon in customer abuse.
(If you really dig into the FairPoint fiasco, you'll find a another [recently] familiar name popping up: CapGemini/CGI Federal; something I happened to write about a week ago: http://www.bussjaeger.org/index.html#cgi-capgemini)
Re: Re: Still Bullshit numbers game...
"Over-subscribed does not NECESSARILY mean congested."
FIFY
The power gen analogy doesn't really work here. A congested ATM network doesn't crash just because it's congested. But 575 customers configured for a minimum of 1.5M service to as much as 7M routed over a single T3 IS congested. No, the network doesn't crash. But the first few on with their 7M streaming videos burst, and everyone else's packets get discarded. Everyone else times out before they even reach the edge router.
I didn't pull that example out of... thin air. I saw it, when troubleshooting dozens of simultaneous customer complaints of "can't get on Internet". It wasn't the only example, either; just the most extreme I personally worked at that company.
Even b/e/t/t/e/r/ worse was the T1 interswitch admin channel that some effin' moron provisioned a couple of hundred DSL customers to. (And why the hell that admin channel even showed up as provisionable... -shudder-)
I'm rather happy out of the telecom field now.
Re: Still Bullshit numbers game...
Then there's the ATM network side. Sure, there was an OC12 fiber run to the DSLAM. But the network side of the switch routed 575 DSL customers (sold up to 7Mbps connections) over... a...
...45Mbps T3. (For the mathematically-challenged, that's a whopping 78Kbps per customer when they all came home in the evening and tried to download YT videos at once.)
I kid you not. The contract fine print only specified the customer would see [insert arbitrary number up to 7] on the local loop. Network, not so much.
I blame...
... the magical amino acid fairies.
Well, damn.
There goes my popcorn budget.
Cost Effective?
I wonder if this model is cost effective in the long run, what with the expense of feeding a million monkeys and training to them to operate typewriters.
"ensure that we are delighting our customers at each touch point."
Sounds like they plan to add sexual molestation to the murder/explosion/kitty-torture repertoire. Perhaps someone should explain to them that "customer service" differs somewhat from the animal husbandry sort.
Cell location vs TDOA vs GPS for nontelecom types
"Cell tower" is pretty vague. What's actually happening in cell phone location is this:
There are three separate processes used to locate a cell phone: 1) cell (tower) the phone is connected to (I think this is what Masnick is referring to), 2) Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) "triangulation," and GPS.
[Many people think of "triangulation" as directional antennas being used to take bearings on a source, based on signal strength, as in seen in movies. TDOA doesn't do this because cell towers do not have moveable directional antennas (you're reasonably safe in thinking of the array as an omnidirectional antenna). TDOA simply measures the time a cell phone signal takes to reach multiple towers. All the towers have their own GPS-based synchronized timing, so they can "confer" and agree that the signal each saw was the same connection attempt from the same phone, and compute the TDOA. Time gives distance. Distance gives a circle around each tower. The phone is where the arcs intersect.]
Number 1 is the easiest to derive (if the phone connects to the network, they perforce know what tower it's coming from), but least accurate; the phone could be anywhere in the circle area where they can get a signal.
Number 2 is reasonably accurate to several tens of meters, which is good enough for E911 work.
3 is quite accurate. If you have enough GPS birds in view. And you haven't had a glitch that puts you 100 kilometers off the Florida coast as you head into Chi-town.
I think most modern smart phones incorporate GPS (some years back, a bright company finally built complete GPS receivers on a single chip), but not all phones have it, and GPS doesn't always yield a good location. Cell companies adopted TDOA location both as an interim measure before GPS-capable phones became common and as a backup to GPS.
"Right, but what product have they made that is actually on the market? We'll wait. And wait."
I hear they got a patent on something called "vaporware" and will have it in full production real soon now.
And if that doesn't work... we... we... we'll...
Write another petition!
Like this one:
"We petition the obama administration to: respond in a timely manner to the petition to respond to petitions in a timely manner."
That'll teach 'em. Right?
But, but...
I don't see a problem with Disney's action. Clearly they've nothing more than create a remix of Wilson's short work. I'm sure that will simply drive views and sales for her. In fact, she should be overjoyed that an advertising giant like Disney is throwing its weight behind her work.
Do it for the innovation.
Ah, memories!
Specifically... I was helping out as a studio cameraman in a little New Mexico independent TV station back in the mid '80s. I had to run a camera during a live interview with some woman explaining how evil D&D is. She had little lead figures of "demons", some plastic commercial dolls. She spent a great deal of time telling the interviewer and audience how gamers gather around the table to worships strange and evil gods, and how the game spells are real.
As an active gamer at the time, I had just a wee bit of trouble containing the laughter. Finally had to wait for camera cuts to reposition my cam as fast as possible, then get the hell away from it so I wouldn't make it shake.
She had very clearly never even talked to a gamer, much less seen a session. Yet she was an expert traveling the country to lecture and grant interviews about it.
For some reason I didn't get to run a camera for live work after that.
Re: Re: Re:
Sure, there are field tests. Conveniently for the cops, all those field tests are prone to lots and lots of false positives. Instant probably cause!
Re: EU leads 5G investment - do your research
Thank you for making Mr. Bode's point.
"Although updated standards that define capabilities beyond those defined in the current 4G standards are under consideration, those new capabilities are still being grouped under the current ITU-T 4G standards." (emphasis added)
They/you can call it "5G", but the ITU hasn't defined 5G yet. If you've actually gone and spent ?3.5bn on your own proprietary version of what you hope will be 5G in a few years, odds are you're really just going to build a multi-billion Euro network that can't talk to anything else. (That's generously assuming your "5G" is really a new system and not just "new capabilities are still being grouped under the current ITU-T 4G standards," in which case you'll still need to shell more billions.)
Hoax
Can you say "hoax"?
The survey was supposed conducted by or for a company that specializes in viral marketing. Last I checked, they finally released what they claim were the actual questions, but nothing on the methodology.
Re: Re: I've long been fascinated by the willingness of people to identify with unsavory, unsympathetic, fictional characters.
Maybe I'm not human then. [grin] The only time I assumed that I was being referenced in a work of fiction was a novel by someone who knows me... and the name was my own not-terribly-common name. Oh, and the author said it was me.
---
No, I didn't sue. I laughed. A lot. It was an inside joke regarding firearms preferences; pretty darned funny to those who know me.
I've long been fascinated by the willingness of people to identify with unsavory, unsympathetic, fictional characters.
Why would Gravano want people to think that's her? (Aside from the money that she isn't going to get anyway, that is.)
Oddly enough, I've had my own run-ins with folks who think I'm writing about them. A woman was apparently convinced that one of my characters was her. But she never said which one, leaving me to hope it wasn?t the the pissed off lady with the .357 Magnum and a box of explosives.*
At least she didn't sue me.
-----
* "Point of Honor", which those interested can find in The Anarchy Belt (freebie).
Not so ordinary
I'm most often in the "suspicious of government motives, but doubtful of conspiracy to the point of ridicule" camp, but my quick read of the proposal (I haven't gone through all 78 pages yet) suggests that what folks feared is exactly what the survey was going to do.
The three listed main goals of the study could be/are met without the newsroom interviews that were proposed.
1. "the access (or potential barriers) to CINs as identified by the FCC": The proposed news census would have done that,
2. "the media that makes up media ecologies...": Doesn't matter. The media is a black box; you ddon't need to know what's inside in order to observe the CIN "output" which they claim was their concern.
3. "the use of and interaction between media that makes media ecologies...": Reading further, you'll discover this translates into "Where do people get their news?" That question is answered through the news census and surveys of the users.
Nothing in those goals requires grilling media management or staff as proposed. To the extent that anyone is interested in the process of ensuring that outlets provide what the consumers want, that's marketing research conducted by the media so they can sell more advertising.
THIS is crap; and I can understand why people are worried about the big license grantor walking in and demanding access and answers:
Page 10, "Qualitative Analysis of Media Providers" is the tricky section, with the real kicker on page 11:
"The final component of this qualitative piece involves the execution of in-depth interviews with corporate management, local management, and support staff. We suggest a maximum of 56 media provider sites (radio and television stations) be surveyed. Within that maximum, interviews will be conducted within each market, stratified by market size. We propose that interviews be conducted at six sites in each of the selected small markets, ten sites in the selected medium markets, and 12 sites in large markets. Five interviews will be conducted at each media site. The selection of the type of staff to interview within each market shall be largely dependent on the number of properties within each market. The maximum number of interviews will be capped at 280."
And on page 12: "The purpose of these interviews is to ascertain the process by which stories are selected, station priorities (for content, production quality, and populations served), perceived station bias, perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the eight CINs, and perceived responsiveness to underserved populations. Due to the highly sensitive nature of information collected (particularly among reporters and anchors of television news stations), demographic information will not be
reported. Additionally, confidentiality will be assured among all participants interviewed."
Perspective
"[H]e thinks it would be a nifty idea if all b/r/o/a/d/b/a/n/d/ s/u/b/s/c/r/i/b/e/r/s/ healthcare users had to pay a monthly f/i/n/e/ premium for the behaviors of other people."
I feel so much safer now
Yeah, yeah. And I remember how the feds shut down Total Information Awareness, ensuring forever that the gov would never, ever snoop on us.
...rename/relocate/recycle... Ever wonder why they tried to slip a national surveillance program into ICE... where it might get overlooked?
I beg to differ
"[A]ny company taking over that provided a minimum of competence and care would likely have seen the same level of improvement."
A-hem. Not necessarily. Google (ootb alert!)"FairPoint New England bankruptcy". Astonishingly as it may seem, it's possible to out-do Verizon in customer abuse.
(If you really dig into the FairPoint fiasco, you'll find a another [recently] familiar name popping up: CapGemini/CGI Federal; something I happened to write about a week ago:
http://www.bussjaeger.org/index.html#cgi-capgemini)