----- Original Message ----- From: "David E. Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, April 23, 2007 9:03 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] FCC Admits Mistakes In Measuring Broadband Competition
> Mark Koskenmaki wrote: > > Law? Hell, no. It's the FCC's wishes. And we're discussing how stupid > > the whole damn thing is as well. And here you are defending it. You wonder > > why I'm in a "pissy mood"??? > > > It's indirectly a law - the FCC is granted broad powers under current > law to request things like this. If you think the FCC's authority goes > too far, you're welcome to that opinion (and to try to change others' > minds on the subject, though it doesn't seem like you've had much luck > so far). > > Given that the FCC gives us access to a truckload of unlicensed spectrum > and, so far, only asks me to fill out a ten-minute form twice a year, I > think it's a darn good bargain. It's not a 'favor' from the FCC. I don't owe them a blasted thing for it. It's public spectrum, for public use. It does NOT belong to the FCC, it is charged with regulating it, not doling out in return for favors! It is given the task of regulating it for the best public interest. How well it does that is definitely up for discussion, but that IS the FCC's job. You're acting as if it belongs to them and we're asking for their property. It's not that way. > > $1 and 1 minute is TOO MUCH OBLIGATION. Sorry. Anyone who thinks we OWE > > them anything for our existence is cracked. THEY OWE US GRATITUDE FOR DOING > > THE COUNTRY"S WORK!!!! And they owe us a check for doing work for them. > > THAT's NOT RADICAL, that's nothing other than CIVICS 101! > > > Maybe we went to different schools. Mine had a bunch of classes on how > everyone is responsible for "doing their part" in a participatory > democracy. (I know, this is technically a representative republic, but > bear with me here.) You pay some property taxes, you get to use all > those roads they built. The government doesn't give you stuff for free, > you don't give them stuff for free. It's all trade-offs. Basic > freshman-year-of-college economics. A few minutes to fill out a form is > a pretty darn good price for everything we get from the FCC. I'd say they are sorely overpaid. As far as "everything we get"? In my view, they are derelict in doing what should be done. Hardly a case that I "owe" them my identity, and my business information in return. Even more offensive to me, is the idea that we can brown-nose them into getting stuff. If that's the case, and that's how we want the game played, then we have no chance against the high powered, high dollar efforts by the big boys. We have to appeal to right, wrong, reason, logic, and principle. It's all we have. And it's certainly better to play that game than to get down in the muck where the money tries to buy what they want. > > > So, we can argue and advocate to the FCC about rules changes and > > implementations about RF issues, but God forbid we should tell them that > > CALEA is out of line? It is STILL their ruling and opinions, which is the > > sole reason we're issued network mandates. > > > To be blunt, your opinion is (apparently) in the minority. If you think > CALEA goes too far, I don't think anyone is preventing you from making > FCC filings to that effect. What, you want me to get into a filings fight with WISPA? Geez, man. I was here when WISPA was started, I STILL WANT TO SEE IT GROW. I want it to be the energetic organization that people see value in jumping in and supporting. > > I am not advocating "flaunting the law", for pity's sakes. I am just > > eternally vigilant and VERY defensive of my rights and freedoms as a citizen > > and businessman. Instead, we should have been ADAMANTLY and repeatedly > > saying in forceful language, THIS IS NOT UNIVERSALLY POSSIBLE, and then > > asking the industry what ways they can be accommodated- and educating them, > > NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND - them telling us how our networks have to work. > > > While I'm sure the statement "this is not universally possible" is > technically correct (the best kind of correct!) I believe you're > seriously over-estimating the difficulty. I'd wager most of us already > have, somewhere in our network, a decent managed switch that can be > configured to spit out the requested data. Feed said data into a cheap > PC with a big hard drive (another thing that most of us already have), > filter out the specific bits the government wants, spit it out. If this > takes more than a couple hours to set up, there's something seriously > weird going on with your network. You say this, but yet none of us seem to be able to point to a single WISP not using someone else's services or software to do it, and nobody seems to know if ANY of it works yet. This is hardly "overestimating". Besides, who the heck cares if it's "overestimating". If it forces anyone to change how their products work, then it's wrong. I'm seeing people talking about COMPLETELY restructuring their network, to huge numbers of hours and some cost, in order to make this work. Oh, and I do not. I have NO PLACE within my network where traffic can be tapped. None. Zilch. Not cpe, not ap's, not my gateway at my provider's. You'd actually have to go upstream, to my providers server room to do that. That is as close as I can get. And, we all know the issues that are related to mesh, community supported networks, etc, etc. You know, it's funny, you insist that I"m in the minority (whatever that means, I doubt anyone is in complete agreement with anyone else here, hardly a basis for "majority" or consensus building), but if that were the case, then those people who are trying to wield influence from a position of authority seem to find it necessary to misrepresent or even personally denigrate what I say.. Is what I say some kind of threat? It hardly seems so to me, but yet I see more and more of the "famous" here taking opportuntiy to attempt to marginalize me personally, rather than attempt to determine what people think and moving from there. For all the whining about "my" politics, that's the politics we should be afraid of. This is not an issue to play organizational politics about, and I've tried my utmost to argue about ideas and things and principles, not to try to marginalize individuals. Even more importantly, I don't want to even appear to be attacking WISPA from outside. That is not my wish and certainly is not my attempt. > > David Smith > MVN.net > -- > WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
