low power tv

[Tim]

On Fri, 2008-04-18 at 07:59 -0500, Tom Poe wrote:
> So, I'm out in the middle of the corn fields.  Our town is roughly 3
> miles by 4 miles.  There's a population of less than 8,000.  Everyone
> can "see" the nanostation2 from their homes.  The community wireless
> network is not connected to the Internet.  So, let's assume everyone
> has a computer and webcam.  Couldn't they use something like Ekiga,
> and participate in a videoconference across that network?  I don't see
> where the telcos/cablecos thugs have anything to do with it.  Do
> they? 

It's different people, but a similar situation.  

Who's going to put it together, work out the wrinkles, help people make
use of it?  I doubt one transceiver is going to work, apart from
reception issues, there's the issue of how many can use one thing at
once.  RF is a black art, and networking isn't far behind.

And it's not just the hardware, the software's in the same boat.  Ekiga
is far from simple to use, it still requires some technical nouse to
figure it out.  Then you'll have to deal with Windows users wanting to
use something incompatible with anything but itself.  Who's going to
help those people, or who's going to find or build something more
user-friendly?

You're going to either need a band of willing volunteers, which will
probably tail off rather quickly once they've found out they're in over
their heads, had to deal with nitwits and late night bitching over the
telephone.  Or pay people to do it.

Ever worked with community TV people?  I have.  You end up with one or
two who know what they're doing, plenty who don't (some will admit it,
the others think they know what they're doing, some will cause you legal
problems with what they do - copyright, libel, defamation, etc.), quite
a few wierdoes, lots of in-fighting, a small proportion of outsiders
who're interested, some insiders and outsiders who'll sabotage or try
and take over (often entailing nasty legal wrangles), ISPs and telcos
which'll try and derail you, and a great majority of the public who
won't care about any of it.  And that's without any of the technical
issues...

It sounds like you're keen, so you're going to be the first one to
invest time, effort and money.  If you're not willing, it's already dead
in the water.  You'll have to convince your town to put in the
equipment, even if they don't have to pay for doing so.  Then you'll
have to start generating interest.  You'll get a few friends involved,
and some will go away after a little while.  You'll get a few strangers
involved, and you'll wish you'd never met them.  And somewhere along the
line you'll have to fight off someone who wants to take over and screw
it all up.

-- 
(This computer runs FC7, my others run FC4, FC5 & FC6, in case that's
 important to the thread.)

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