antipaucity

From NBC New York, “NJ Man Sues Over Toll Hikes, Claims Bias“.

A New Jersey man has filed a federal lawsuit in New York over the Port Authority’s toll increase.

Yoel Weisshaus of New Milford claims the increase is an abuse of power and discriminates against him because he is poor.

Cash tolls on the George Washington Bridge, Holland Tunnel, Lincoln Tunnel, Goethals Bridge, Bayonne Bridge and Outerbridge Crossing went up from $8 to $12 on Sunday.

Weisshaus claims the tolls are targeted to restrict minimum-wage earners and will be used to complete the World Trade Center project instead of improving bridges and tunnels.

Sounds like a USA Today story from 3 years ago.

Due to an unforeseen circumstance, the 1430EDT BGLUG meeting today will be at the Tates Creek Public Library.

The library can be found at

3628 Walden Drive
Lexington, KY 40517

The September meeting of the Bluegrass Linux User Group will be this Saturday, 17 Sep.

We’ll be meeting at Collexion’s facilities in Lexington at 2:30p.

I will be presenting on data center automation, specifically on HP’s Server Automation platform (the tool I use on my day job).

Some [limited] history of HPSA is available on the Opsware wikipedia page.

We’ll also briefly touch on some of the OSS alternatives to a full-blown environment like HPSA, such as:

• Puppet
• CFEngine
• Chef
• Cobbler
• xCAT

I have been working on my Connexions submissions again recently, and have a collection ready for use (it will be growing as time goes on): “Debugging and Supporting Software Systems”

I realize there are some small typos in the current text, but I will be addressing that in a upcoming revision

I’d love to get feedback from anyone on how it could be improved/expanded.

The LightSquared situation keeps getting more interesting. InfoWorld has another story on them attacking GPS manufacturers for not being more careful about filtering adjacent frequency bands (per a DoD recommendation from 2008).

LightSquared is at loggerheads with makers and users of GPS (Global Positioning System) over interference between the navigation system and its planned cellular LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network. That network would transmit on frequencies close to those used for GPS. The company has long argued that makers of GPS equipment are to blame for the interference because they don’t use strong enough filters to keep their receivers from searching for signals in LightSquared’s bands. But this is the first time LightSquared has accused the vendors of flouting a specific rule.

The DoD’s GPS Standard Positioning Service Performance Standard called for GPS receivers to filter out transmissions on frequencies adjacent to the GPS band, LightSquared told the FCC in a filing related to the agency’s ongoing consideration of the company’s network proposal. The standard, issued in September 2008, recommends that receivers reject all transmissions on frequencies that are more than 4MHz outside the GPS band, said Jeffrey Carlisle, LightSquared’s executive vice president for regulatory affairs and public policy. That 4MHz buffer is essentially a “guard band” to protect operations on either side, he said.

LightSquared plans eventually to use frequencies adjacent to the GPS band for its LTE network, but after mandatory tests earlier this year showed strong interference in that area, the company said it would start out in a slightly lower-frequency block.

Here’s something that’s a little disturbing, though:

There is no mandatory standard for filtering in GPS receivers, and the FCC does not certify the devices for this

And here:

In addition to the DoD recommendation, the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency, has also warned since 2000 that stronger filtering might be necessary to protect GPS from nearby transmissions

The ‘Coalition to Save Our GPS’ had the following to say:

“GPS receivers incorporate filters that reject transmissions in adjacent bands that are hundreds of millions of times more powerful than those of GPS. What LightSquared is proposing, however, is to transmit signals that are at least one billion times more powerful,” the group said in a statement. “There has never been, nor will there ever be, a filter that can block out signals in an immediately adjacent frequency band that are so much more powerful, nor has LightSquared put forward any credible, independent expert opinion or other evidence that this is possible.”

I’m no expert, but “hundreds of millions” is distinctly not far-off from “one billion” (since one billion is equal to ten hundred million). I also acknowledge not having much domain expertise in radio signals, transmission, etc – but what LightSquared is looking to do seems a lot more useful than worrying about some poorly-built GPS receivers.

The FCC said earlier this week that it would not allow the LTE service to launch unless the interference issue was resolved.

LightSquared has said it is confident the plan will be approved next month.

I’ve taken an interest in LightSquared recently.

Today InfoWorld reports that the FCC “won’t allow LightSquared’s proposed mobile broadband service to interfere with GPS signals, even though the potential interference would be caused by GPS receivers picking up signals outside of their designated spectrum”.

So, the devices are in error, but the FCC is going to prevent LightSquared from interfering?

Sounds like the FCC should be going after the receiver manufacturers to ensure their systems don’t bleed over, rather than after a company not operating on GPS spectrum.

Wait, I forgot: that’d be too logical for a government agency

I’ve been hearing about a new company called LightSquared a lot recently. Both arstechnica and alarm:clock have both had interesting articles on the company in the last week.

The goal of LS is to create from scratch a nationwide 4G wireless network – and funder Philip Falcone thinks they can do it for about $15B. That’s a pretty impressive number, in my book, especially when compared to how much AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint have spent over the last decades building-out their networks.

The ars article points-out that the GPS industry is upset that LS is using a similar spectrum to the one used by the global position satellite system, and are worried it will make GPS receivers act poorly by overpowering the satellite signal.

Personally, I think that if your devices are built so poorly that a non-identical signal can interfere with their functionality, you have an issue on your hands – not on the hands of the folks with the similar signal. Also, LightSquared could take it upon themselves to be a private, terrestrial location service – either by repeating signals from the GPS constellation, or by adding location data to the signal they are broadcasting (40 000 towers with multiple antennae per tower ought to be able to send some useful data over the air along with everything else being carried).

Moving back to the future of the business, it looks like a very exciting time in the telecom industry in the US – like we may finally get some “real” competition to the Big Three already operating. If AT&T’s T-Mobile acquisition goes through, cell phone and wireless broadband competition would be hurt – so I’m thrilled that groups like LightSquared are coming out to play, too.

As a sidebar: Tarus, you should get in front of Philip – they’re going to need some serious monitoring

Thanks to the myriad WordPress developers and contributors, themes are widely available. I just switched to “Dragonskin 1.5 by Angelo Bertolli” from “veryplaintext”.

Go go gadget community!

Saw in a tweet from David Pogue that someone has finally implemented a DVR-for-radio. Only took three years for someone to build

I haven’t started playing with DAR.fm yet, but it looks pretty cool!

I was in Provo UT this week for Moab Con 2011.

It was a great week – got to meet lots of interesting people, learn how different companies and institutions are using Adaptive’s Moab product, and see where the roadmap for the product should bring it over the next 1-2 years.