Has PO and/or GW changed your career plans?

[clv101]

The unlicensed bands are rapidly becoming interference limited, think of clean spectrum as a finite resource when gone it's gone... short of removing millions of privately owned bits of kit. Upping the transmit power is a signal to noise arms race, one that always ends with reduced overall capacity.

So yeah, sure, in your rural example clean spectrum isn't a problem and you're noise limited rather than interference limited. The Ofcom proposal would be a good idea - but allowing 10W WiFi equipment onto the market would trash the unlicensed band indefinitely.

It seems Ofcom did listen to the responses:

After careful consideration of the evidence presented to us by stakeholders we have concluded not to progress with allowing higher powers at 2.4GHz in rural areas.

They did give a little power bump in the 5.8GHz band... this isn't as much of a problem as there is much more bandwidth available at that frequency and the free space attenuation is faster so interference inherently isn't as much of a problem

[Vortex]

... I bet it was COMMERCIAL stakeholders who killed it ....

[Bandidoz]

Is it technically, politcally or commercially stupid?

Technically (for the same reason as Chris pointed out). Not to mention possible health impacts of living in a microwave fog. Trust me, I'm an engineer.

[Vortex]

Upping the transmit power is a signal to noise arms race, one that always ends with reduced overall capacity.

Minor nit pick: surely as you increase power you clear the natural noise floor ... an improvement.

Any further power increase is simply, as you say. an arms race - nobody wins ... but ON AVERAGE nobody loses either ... except in battery consumption!

Or does some other effect kick in to reduce performance at higher powers?

[Adam1]

Wikipedia is your friend:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permaculture


Thanks for that, brought back memories of the taster session!

Last summer, I went on a short (five-day) permaculture course down in Hampshire run by Patrick Whitefield. He explains permaculture very well. I'd describe permaculture, as it relates to growing things, as low energy, high intensity food production. Permaculture attempts to learn from and mimic/adapt the beneficial relationships between plant and animal species that exist in natural systems like woods.

It emphasizes design and pre-planning to optimise energy and effort expended. Also, it draws both on old or traditional knowledge and new or scientific knowledge. It is very practical and pragmatic rather than prescriptive. It stresses the importance of knowing your specific patch of land rather than solutions and methods that can be applied anywhere.

I'd recommend going on one of Patrick Whitefield's courses and reading his book: http://www.permaculture.co.uk/PP/whats_new.html#Anchor1.

[stumuz]

permaculture is the hip,cool and funky new word for basic gardening.

Keep your salads and herbs by ther back door, veg garden well rotated to attract plenty of predators, orchard with indigenous trees.Don't try growing asparagus in the wet part of your field etc etc etc

It's nothing that different to what my grandfather did. It seems everyone these days have to have a new philosophy. Permaculture it's basically rhubarb!!

[Aurora]

permaculture is the hip,cool and funky new word for basic gardening.

Keep your salads and herbs by ther back door, veg garden well rotated to attract plenty of predators, orchard with indigenous trees.Don't try growing asparagus in the wet part of your field etc etc etc

It's nothing that different to what my grandfather did. It seems everyone these days have to have a new philosophy. Permaculture it's basically rhubarb!!

Bring back (or should that be dig up) Percy Thrower!

[Bandidoz]

Or does some other effect kick in to reduce performance at higher powers?

Yes. It's called intermodulation. When transmitters are exposed to other frequencies, the non-linearities produce "sum and difference" products.

The higher the transmit powers involved, the greater the non-linearities, and consequently the greater the distortion.

[Erik]

Unsustainable cross subsidies between business units, the shift from being a hi-tech "luxury" product to a commodity, the technology shift away from the circuit switched networks (including 3G) where billions have been invested to packet switched networks, the fact that most traffic and therefore revenue potential occurs in a tiny fraction of land area and never more than a few 10s of meters from a fixed, high bandwidth, low latency connection, the rapidly falling revenue per bit in the face of fixed backhaul cost per bit... The existing architecture of the traditional telco just isn't what's needed.

Evidence can be seen from the equipment suppliers. Last year Nokia and Siemens merged into one, Alcatel and Lucent merged, Nortel sold off their 3G infrastructure business

Cheers for this response by the way. Now I'm really confused!
I'll let you know how it goes.

[kenneal - lagger]

This is quite a multi facetted thread, looking at the last five or six contributions and the title!!

[Erik]

This is quite a multi facetted thread, looking at the last five or six contributions and the title!!

We need a system administrator to come along with a big axe, to cut it into meaningful threadlet chunks.

[tristan]

Dare I move this back to the original topic?

I'm 26 and not quite sure whether my current path is PO sensible. Whilst I have no debt and no dependents, being a young 'un I'll have to try and survive a bit longer in a post peak world.

I have politics BSc/MA, mixed work experience, but for the past few months working for a barrister which I very much enjoy, and plan to go to law school in September to become a solicitor, paid for by a city law firm. Is this mad?

Will I have long enough to have a meaningful career and then use my legal skills in a post peak world? Should I use my savings to buy a couple of acres of farmland, or will ownership be irrelevent?

[kenneal - lagger]

By all means become a solicitor and make shed loads of money, while it lasts, but be ready to learn something useful to a post PO society (any society? I'm not a great fan of lawyers and accountants, more into useful things like engineering and farming) later.

[stumuz]

Tristan,

If you have been offered a training contract by a city firm then grab it with both hands. Even if they are only willing to pay your fees for the PGDL (I assume that is what you will do) whether you think it is post PO sensible decision none of us can answer that. I had a chuckle with you describing yourself as a young un?, if you are 26 then you have a 2 year pgdl? 1 year LPC then the supervision bit to go, you are going to be in your 30?s before you start on the bigger fees. The vast majority of law grads , from my year, were below 23!
From a personal viewpoint the law has been very good to me ( LLB HONS) London , MSc Manchester, but bear in mind the law is based on the economy so if that goes down so will 70% of the law jobs. A good case in point being one of my clients is a management consultancy, which specialises in stripping out layers of salaried middle management from organisations. A trend which is defiantly y on the up.
So a difficult choice but if you are getting the fees paid ..go for it!

KENNEAL?. Less about the lawyers!!? As Lionel Hutz ( The Simpson?s) states ?? the world needs more lawyers, can you imagine a world without lawyers, everyone living in peace and harmony?shudders

[Erik]

I have no debt and no dependents

For as long as you stay this way, then the world is your oyster (though a future de-globalized world might never again be anyone's "oyster", hopefully!).

I would agree with Kenneal: do become a solicitor - it's important to do something you like, afterall - but also learn something more practical in your spare time. Also, as you don't have dependents yet, you probably have a lot more spare time on your hands than you realise, believe me!!