Saturday, May 28, 2011

Space Weather

3-day Solar-Geophysical Forecast issued May 27 22:00 UTC

Solar Activity Forecast: Solar activity is expected to be low with a chance for C-class events, and a slight chance for an M-class event, as regions on the disk continue to evolve.

Geophysical Activity Forecast: The geomagnetic field is expected to be predominately unsettled with occasional active periods, including isolated minor storm conditions at high-latitudes for day one (28 May). This is expected due to effects from the recurrent coronal hole high speed stream (CH HSS). In addition there are possible effects from the disappearing filament observed on 25 May. Quiet to unsettled conditions, with isolated active levels, are expected for days two and three (29-30 May) with continued CH HSS effects.  See: Today's Space Weather

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The plots on this page show the current extent and position of the auroral oval at each pole, extrapolated from measurements taken during the most recent polar pass of the NOAA POES satellite. "Center time" is the calculated time halfway through the satellite's pass over the pole.Auroral Activity Extrapolated from NOAA POES

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Community Broadband Networks

So here's the plan.

The CRTC made it's decision.....but we can change that. Municipal television networks? Do we need the integration of big Telecom or can local TV stations newly formed become part of the expression on a international stage by supplying local community news? Local newspapers,  part of the expression of those communities? Access to the internet,  not dictated by cost of usage based billing of Big Telecom that has a monopoly?

Why no development of rural/municipalities communities since wireless already exists? Faster speeds as fiber optic laid in rural/municipalities communities?


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Google Fiber for Communities: Get Involved

Thank you to all of the communities and individuals that expressed their interest in Google Fiber for Communities. The quality and scope of the responses exceeded our expectations, and we were honored by the thought and effort that went into every submission. One message came through loud and clear: people across the country are hungry for better and faster broadband access.Google Fiber for Communities: Get Involved
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Breaking the Broadband Monopoly

Communities that have invested in these networks have seen tremendous benefits. Even small communities have generated millions of dollars in cumulative savings from reduced rates – caused by competition. Major employers have cited broadband networks as a deciding factor in choosing a new site and existing businesses have prospered in a more competitive environment.
Residents who subscribe to the network see the benefits of a network that puts service first; they talk to a neighbor when something goes wrong, not an offshore call center. At the municipal fiber network in Wilson, North Carolina, they talk of the “strangle effect.” If you have problems with their network, you can find someone locally to strangle. Because public entities are directly accountable to citizens, they have a stronger interest in providing good services, upgrading infrastructure, etc., than private companies who are structured to maximize profits, not community benefits. Residents who remain with private providers still get the benefits of competition, including reduced rates and increased incumbent investment.

Some publicly owned networks have decided to greatly increase competition by adopting an “open access” approach where independent service providers can use the network on equal terms. Public ownership and open access give residents and businesses the option of choosing among many providers, forcing providers to compete on the basis of service quality and price rather than simply on a historic monopoly boundary.Published May 2010 Author: Christopher Mitchell

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Municipal Broadband: Demystifying Wireless and Fiber-Optic Options
Quote:
The United States, creator of the Internet, increasingly lags in access to it. In the absence of a national broadband strategy, many communities have invested in broadband infrastructure, especially wireless broadband, to offer broadband choices to their residents.

Newspaper headlines trumpeting the death of municipal wireless networks ignore the increasing investments by cities in Wi-Fi systems. At the same time, the wireless focus by others diverts resources and action away from building the necessary long term foundation for high speed information: fiber optic networks.

DSL and cable networks cannot offer the speeds required by a city wishing to compete in the digital economy. Business, government, and citizens all need affordable and fast access to information networks.

Today's decisions will lay the foundation of telecommunications infrastructure for decades. Fortunately, we already know the solution: wireless solves the mobility problem; fiber solves the speed and capacity problems; and public ownership offers a network built to benefit the community.Published January 2008 Author: Christopher Mitchell

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

An Affirmative Choice by Canadian Government?


In the decision the CRTC ruled that rural and remote broadband access should be left to market forces and targeted government funding with private-public partnerships.

Not necessarily the right one in my opinion. But I have a plan, and within the United States there are those who have already paved the way.  I'll give that information soon, as to get some idea of how Community Broadband systems can be developed with the  help of municipalities without Government and  big business.


Broadband and Community Access in Canada: A Canoe Trip Up North, Featuring a Veritable Cast of Characters.... from Leslie Shade on Vimeo.
Concordia University Media Studies MA students in Professor Leslie Shade’s Fall 2010 Media Policy course considered the issue of whether broadband access should be considered a basic service for all Canadians. They created a video-podcast exploring the issues, in light of the CRTC hearing hearings for 2010-43, "Obligation to serve and other matters" that took place in the Fall.

On May 3, 2011 the CRTC issued its decision on the matter of Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2011-291. In the decision the CRTC ruled that rural and remote broadband access should be left to market forces and targeted government funding with private-public partnerships. The ruling also stated that broadband access will not be a requisite of any basic service objective. In the decision the CRTC established target speeds of 5 megabits per second (Mbps) downstream and 1 Mbps upstream, for all Canadians, by the end of 2015.

Roddy Doucet, a student in the class, commented, “With the decision to allow incumbents the right to charge higher rates for rural telephone lines and its continued reliance on market forces to achieve accessibility goals the CRTC demonstrates its lack of vision for a national broadband network that works to reduce boundaries and unify Canadians.

Our class research demonstrates that access to broadband, at fair and affordable prices, allows unique regionally-based small businesses to flourish, improves quality of life, and allows education and research to flow freely around the country and the world. Canadians look to our regulatory agencies to protect them against price-gouging and also shape the future of our communications networks and sadly the CRTC is failing us.”

The discourse over the state of Canada’s broadband infrastructure illustrates the contentious debates between industry, government, the CRTC and public interest groups over whether and if regulatory intervention can increase competition in the broadband sector. Dominant industry groups contend that too much regulation will merely stifle competition by restricting their ability to innovate and invest in established and emerging markets. Public interest groups argue that only government intervention, whether through a pro-active regulatory environment that requires incumbents to contribute to building out broadband in under-served and remote areas and/or a more fulsome funding structure for community broadband initiatives, can ensure and sustain wider broadband access for Canadians.



References
CRTC 2010-43:
crtc.gc.ca/​eng/​process/​2010/​oct26_ag.htm

CRTC, Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2011-291:
crtc.gc.ca/​eng/​archive/​2011/​2011-291.pdf

Small Big Bangs?

Gamma-ray bursts. We tend to think of them as big explosions - but it has been suggested that they might actually be Small Bangs. Credit: NASA.
Most gamma-ray bursts come in two flavors. Firstly, there are long duration bursts which form in dense star-forming regions and are associated with supernovae – which would understandably generate a sustained outburst of energy. The technical definition of a long duration gamma-ray burst is one that is more than two seconds in duration – but bursts lasting over a minute are not unusual.

Short duration gamma-ray bursts more often occur in regions of low star formation and are not associated with supernovae. Their duration is technically less than 2 seconds, but a duration of only a few milliseconds is not unusual. These are assumed to result from collisions between massive compact objects – perhaps neutron stars or black holes – producing a short, sharp outburst of energy. See: Astronomy Without A Telescope – Small Bangs by Steve Nerlich on May 21, 2011 On Universe Today

See Also: So What Did I mean By Olympics?

Monday, May 23, 2011

The Truth of Symmetry?

Fidel wrote:
Canadian Tom Harpur wrote that modern day religious scholars began to realize that indigenous people in this hemisphere possessed what are some of the most sophisticated and deeply held spiritual beliefs in the world.
I agree with your perspective about the historical perspective with the introduction of the white people assertions toward the beliefs of their spirituality  and that expressed by the indigenous people of that time. The "new culture"  to squashed that belief.

Over all I see in a  sense what you are saying that what could have befell the indigenous peoples is what could have fell upon the generations that exist now upon the planet by some alien society as an act of evolution and change with those same correlative situations as it did in our past. Many fictions written in this context today.

But again these are the finer mental states of existence of belief structures, polarization and centralization of such beliefs are "matter states" in the conquest of how we may perceive that evolution.

Quote:
LEE SMOLIN- Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, The Trouble With Physics

Thinking In Time Versus Thinking Outside Of Time

One very old and pervasive habit of thought is to imagine that the true answer to whatever question we are wondering about lies out there in some eternal domain of "timeless truths." The aim of re-search is then to "discover" the answer or solution in that already existing timeless domain. For example, physicists often speak as if the final theory of everything already exists in a vast timeless Platonic space of mathematical objects. This is thinking outside of time. See:A "scientific concept" may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous conceptual tool that may be summed up succinctly (or "in a phrase") but has broad application to understanding the world.

 Lee Smolin does not obviously like the abstractions in the mathematical realm, and prefers to set the pace for scientific realism by denouncing the historical past with regard to foundational approaches by Plato Thales and others who were our forefathers of expression. Like Hawking,  he is seeking to set foot in the realism of today?
So I am struggling with what we can define as "outside time" is no more then the belief of, while in science we are asking to deal with a methodology that is repeatable by expression, so how can we say spirituality is of a kind of substance or can exist amongst all substances and does not exist outside of time?
In dealing with the opinion of Hawking and Smolin I raise the question of Meno,


Quote:
SOCRATES: But if he always possessed this knowledge he would always have known; or if he has acquired the knowledge he could not have acquired it in this life, unless he has been taught geometry; for he may be made to do the same with all geometry and every other branch of knowledge. Now, has any one ever taught him all this? You must know about him, if, as you say, he was born and bred in your house.SEE:Meno by Plato
 
It relates to the question of how the house boy knew what he knew.

Quote:
MENO: And I am certain that no one ever did teach him.

SOCRATES: And yet he has the knowledge?

MENO: The fact, Socrates, is undeniable.

SOCRATES: But if he did not acquire the knowledge in this life, then he must have had and learned it at some other time?

MENO: Clearly he must.

Quote:
Spectrum wrote: Macdougall's mistake was to believe that spirituality could actually weigh something?
Fidel wrote:
I have no idea except to say that some scientists have said that certain phenomenon may not be detectable by our five senses as developed throughout our evolution. Astronomer Lord Rees suggests that we may need to evolve physically and otherwise a lot further in order to fully understand the universe. And I can see that. If we have evolved in a corner of the universe where atomic matter rules, then of course scientists are going to know a lot about physical matter, which is about 4% of everything that there is.
You actually quoted from a post that dissappeared when providing the links for the cultural Books of the Dead. MacDougall reference and materialism. My point was to supply the Macdougall reference to show how spirituality from my perspective is much lighter and really can't be measured in the way you captured the quoted statement I have suggested.

It goes back to the panel I provided about the weighing of the heart against the feather as truth. To me, it is about Gravity and how we are looking at it. Conceptually modelling according to the questions of a theoretical unification of all the forces. Where gravity actually begins and is inclusive. I really have to be careful here of my statements so as to maintain a mainstream correlative thinking that is current and correct. There is so much to remember.

Fidel wrote:
Apparently some pyramidologists believe that if they substitute years for inches, the great pyramid becomes a prophetic calendar of human events culminating in a forked path to our future. A similar dual future is predicted by prophecies according to Hopis of the Americas. Time is a river that flows and branches into forks and even whirlpools according to Einstein.
That's interesting as it related to my own research on that topic. Developing the concept about our "metal imagery" according to some scale was implemented in the construction of the geometry of the pyramid. I tried scaling the substance of thought as a elementary consideration of where and what we grab onto in life so as to show that the harboring of thought in such a domain, reveals how close indeed we court the matter distinctions of the world we live in.

Newton the Alchemist


Newton's Translation of the Emerald Tablet

Quote:
It is true without lying, certain and most true. That which is Below is like that which is Above and that which is Above is like that which is Below to do the miracles of the Only Thing. And as all things have been and arose from One by the mediation of One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father; the Moon its mother; the Wind hath carried it in its belly; the Earth is its nurse. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into Earth. Separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the gross, sweetly with great industry. It ascends from the Earth to the Heavens and again it descends to the Earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior. By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. So was the world created. From this are and do come admirable adaptations, whereof the process is here in this. Hence am I called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.
Metal should read Mental, but using the analogy of what Gold men/woman are is as much a part of the allure of chymistry as a novel idea of bettering ourselves is an inclusive thought as well.

Quote:
The Errors & Animadversions of Honest Isaac Newton
by Sheldon Lee Glashow


ABSTRACT:
Isaac Newton was my childhood hero. Along with Albert Einstein, he one of the greatest scientists ever, but Newton was no saint. He used his position to defame his competitors and rarely credited his colleagues.His arguments were sometimes false and contrived, his data were often fudged, and he exaggerated the accuracy of his calculations. Furthermore, his many religious works (mostly unpublished) were nonsensical or mystical, revealing him to be a creationist at heart. My talk offers a sampling of Newton’s many transgressions, social, scientific and religious.
Many did not like this part of Isaac Newton's research but to me even with all the failures of Newtons "mental state" he was trying to better himself, and that is what the Books of the Dead represented to me about trying to understand matter creation in the sense of what we gather together to become who we are. That is a consistent feature of living beings that what gathers around our human feature, gathers around all things? Matter gathers around "a spiritual principal" from inside each of us.



Quote:
The standard model of particle physics is a self-contained picture of fundamental particles and their interactions. Physicists, on a journey from solid matter to quarks and gluons, via atoms and nuclear matter, may have reached the foundation level of fields and particles. But have we reached bedrock, or is there something deeper? Savas Dimopoulos
The Sun then becomes a interesting feature of what "rays of creation" may mean as it gives life to all that falls under it's light that such a light could have existed inside of us as well. That we came from such a place as to exemplify that we are being first of the true signs of spirituality and then become all that falls under these rays of creation.

A refractory status of light itself and Thomas Young's question about spectrum of light and being.
Objects like the pyramid were shadow markers and were part of the history and development of concepts of geometers and angles of Euclid in my views. This is a materialistic explanation while the pyramid itself is a model for understanding the matter creation and sub developmental model of such scaling of human thought. This represented in my views as an attempt to help people of the times to understanding the truth and comparison of what values we hold to heart and our own evolution of being.

Newton Prism Experiment



The pyramidal model of refractions is a display of the light representation of the spectrum of possibilities, as a relational experimental model in my mind of something quite ancient in it's notion,  is applicable in the views of the science today. Something that is forgotten, but as a attempt of all our remembrances whether we like to admit it or not, is a universal understanding of our depth of being and our loss of memory as we are immersed in materiality.

To me this is a aspect of understanding how ideas emerge as if from a world Smolin liked to assign toward "outside of time" and a diversion of the quest to understand aspects of materiality as "not in time." That is my disagreement of him and his thoughts as it relates toward. The "idea of symmetry" and how this is assigned as a relational aspect of the idea of "outside of time." We are of such perfection that such a beauty is simplified in our own existence as spiritual beings that we each contain this within ourselves? This possibility of becoming in the world of materiality.

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Life After Death Question



It's obvious that some humour can make light of a dead situation?:)

Stephen Hawking dismisses belief in God in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. Photograph: Solar & Heliospheric Observatory/Discovery Channel
In the interview, Hawking rejected the notion of life beyond death and emphasised the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives. In answer to a question on how we should live, he said, simply: "We should seek the greatest value of our action." Ian Sample, science correspondent

Seriously though how is it Stephen  can invoke the after life in order to concertize what they are saying about their science. Is this just an affirmation of their scientific position? Later on I raise the question even further with Lee Smolin.

In the quoted paragraph above I agree with the writer when he writes of Stephen Hawking that he," emphasised the need to fulfil our potential on Earth by making good use of our lives ."

I must admit the thought of Meno with regard to Lee Smolin creep into my mind. This in regards to Plato's Problem.

LEE SMOLIN
Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, The Trouble With Physics

Thinking In Time Versus Thinking Outside Of Time

One very old and pervasive habit of thought is to imagine that the true answer to whatever question we are wondering about lies out there in some eternal domain of "timeless truths." The aim of re-search is then to "discover" the answer or solution in that already existing timeless domain. For example, physicists often speak as if the final theory of everything already exists in a vast timeless Platonic space of mathematical objects. This is thinking outside of time.

Scientists are thinking in time when we conceive of our task as the invention of genuinely novel ideas to describe newly discovered phenomena, and novel mathematical structures to express them. If we think outside of time, we believe these ideas somehow "existed" before we invented them. If we think in time we see no reason to presume that.

The contrast between thinking in time and thinking outside of time can be seen in many domains of human thought and action. We are thinking outside of time when, faced with a technological or social problem to solve, we assume the possible approaches are already determined by a set of absolute pre-existing categories. We are thinking in time when we understand that progress in technology, society and science happens by the invention of genuinely novel ideas, strategies, and novel forms of social organization.
See:A "scientific concept" may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous conceptual tool that may be summed up succinctly (or "in a phrase") but has broad application to understanding the world.


See Also
: Experiments On Life After Death

Monday, May 16, 2011

Broadband in a Full Democracy

White space in telecommunications refers to unused frequencies in the radio waves portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

National and international bodies assign differing frequencies for specific uses, and in some cases license the rights to these. This frequency allocation process creates a bandplan which in some cases for technical reasons assigns white space between used bands to avoid interference. In this case, while the frequencies are unused they have been specifically assigned for a purpose.

As well as this technical assignment, there is also unused spectrum which has either never been used, or is becoming free as a result of technical changes. In particular, the planned switchover to digital television may free up large areas between 54MHz and 698MHz. Various proposals including those from the White Spaces Coalition suggest using this bandwidth to provide broadband Internet access. However, these efforts may impact wireless microphones and other technologies that have historically relied on these frequencies.

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Wireless spectrum: FAQs by By Peter Nowak CBC News May 26, 2008 | 3:13 PM ET 

  What is spectrum?

Spectrum is a catch-all term for the radio airwaves that many wireless gizmos use to communicate information. Radios use spectrum, as do the rabbit-ear antennas on older television sets. The CBC, for example, is broadcast free to many parts of Canada using a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Cellphones, of course, also use it.

Spectrum is divided into different frequencies and measured in units called hertz.

Why is it being sold?

Spectrum is a public resource that is managed by the government through Industry Canada. The government extracts big revenue from selling spectrum licences to cellphone companies, because those licences are limited while demand is high. Canada's cellphone industry made $12.7 billion in 2006, 95 per cent of which went to the big three providers, Rogers Communications Inc., Bell Canada Inc. and Telus Corp. Other telecommunications providers would like to offer cellphone services but can't, because they don't have a spectrum licence.

The licences are for 10 years and can be renewed by owners within two years of their expiration. The auction is expected to earn the government at least $1 billion, but likely a good deal more.

Who currently holds spectrum licences for cellphone services in Canada?

The nation's big three cellphone providers — Rogers Communications, Bell Canada and Telus — all hold licences. A number of smaller regional companies, including Winnipeg-based Manitoba Telecom Services Inc. and Regina-based SaskTel, also have licences and offer cellphone services.Auction of radio airwaves will influence Canada's prosperity


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The White Spaces Coalition

The White Spaces Coalition consists of eight large technology companies that plan to deliver high speed broadband internet access beginning in February 2009 to United States consumers via existing 'white space' in unused television frequencies between 54-698 MHz (TV Channels 2-51). The coalition expects speeds of 10 Mbyte/s and above, and 50 to 100 Mbyte/s for white space short-range networking.[1] The group includes Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, Intel, Philips, Earthlink, and Samsung Electro-Mechanics.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

The search for cosmic company goes on

One does not meet oneself until one catches the reflection from an eye of another than human. Loren Eiseley



Cross-posted on Huffington Post When 2009 TED Prize winner Jill Tarter wished to “empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company,” we looked to the SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA).

With this telescope, Jill’s vision, and the power of open-source initiatives, we were able to globalize the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Because we don’t know what a new signal will look like, it’s hard to create an algorithm to find it, and our own eyes actually work better than computers.See:The search for cosmic company goes on

Saturday, May 14, 2011

We,ve Come a Long Way.....Have We?

Journalist Hunter S Thompson working at his ranch circa 1976 near Aspen Colorado. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images



The story awoken my own history in the development of the means with which to write. How we write today.  What it means to have this technology limited by the access to media expression that the police state, is indeed a view of George Orwell's future perspective on culture and social regulation.


In the book, Inner Party member O'Brien describes the Party's vision of the future:

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.

See Also: Are We Digital Dummies? - Doc Zone | CBC-TV

Who Are The Gate Keepers?



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The Lawful Access Legislation: Does it Really Criminalize Linking & Anonymity? by Michael Geist

Wednesday May 11, 2011
The government's plans to include lawful access provisions within its omnibus crime bill has attracted mounting attention in recent days as many commentators express concern that the legislation could create criminal liability for linking to content that incites hatred and for using anonymous or false names online. The concerns started at the Free Dominion site and have since spread to Brian Lilley at the Toronto Sun and Jesse Brown's blog at Maclean's


As I have argued for a long time, there are many reasons to be concerned with lawful access. The government has never provided adequate evidence on the need for it, it has never been subject to committee review, it would mandate disclosure of some personal information without court oversight, it would establish a massive ISP regulatory process (including employee background checks), it would install broad new surveillance technologies, and it would cost millions (without a sense of who actually pays). Given these problems, it is not surprising to find that every privacy commissioner in Canada has signed a joint letter expressing their concerns.