low power tv
Tom Poe
tompoe at fngi.net
Fri Apr 18 16:21:20 UTC 2008
Tim wrote:
> 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.
>
>
Tim: You're way too real world for me. Looks like you were at the
Planning Committee meeting on Monday night. You should have let me
know. :)
So, rather than move the discussion forward, the next thing I know, they
had decided to form yet another committee to draft a report on their
findings about FTTH, and its feasibility to complete by 2020.
Ekiga is still a geeky thing for me. What about Skype? Would that be
possible without Internet access? Maybe xten's lite softphone might work?
Tom
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