A couple of days ago we talked about how the RIAA and NAB are planning on asking US Congress to mandate FM radio chips inside every cell phone. This plan was met with some ridicule, so the NAB decided to write a blog post addressing the critics. Most of the post is overshadowed by an overdose of America’s favourite national pastime: WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. 9/11!
Well.
The blog post by NAB’s Dennis Wharton is very, very weak; if this is all the NAB can muster, then they certainly must be at their wit’s end. They start of with the following gem of an argument: people seem to choose to buy cell phones with FM chips inside them anyway, so why not mandate them? On top of that, the popularity of radio is increasing, so why not mandate FM chips inside cell phones?
Well, Mr Wharton, the popularity of pornography is undisputed. People, whether male or female, like photographic and filmographic material of naked men, women, possibly engaging in the act of intercourse. People might have different tastes (for instance, some prefer filmographic material of two females kissing), but in the end, we all like some good ol’ porn.
Does this mean US Congress should mandate porn on all cell phones?
With that out of the way, Mr Wharton resorts to The One Tactic which almost always works in America (and to a lesser extent, in many European countries): fear. He goes on and on about how the FM radio could prove essential in distributing information during crisis situations. With Katrina and 9/11 fresh in our memories – let alone the current disaster in Pakistan – this does indeed sound like a good argument.
Except, of course, that it’s nonsense. Most FM chips inside cell phones require headphones, since the headphones are used as antenna. How many people will have misplaced their headphones – proprietary jack, of course – when disaster strikes? Is Congress going to mandate all Americans carry cell phone headphones? Internal antennas might be an answer, except that those generally have shoddy reception.
Also, how often will you be out of at least walking distance of a car, which almost always have radios inside them? How often are you out of at least walking distance of a television, a much better medium for conveying crisis information?
As I said in our first item on this subject, I, living in Foreign, look at this with utter, utter amazement. Government influence over something as essential and civilised as healthcare is met with a lot of resistance, yet stuff like this doesn’t seem too much of a problem.
Rare jongens, die Amerikanen.
Government should not be in the business of Mandating features that “consumers deserve”.
That was the essence of the NAB argument, with slight detourt to make a lovely strawman attack on public safety text messages, a service that doesn’t exist.
Some real deep insight there.
If you’re 13 years old.
From the blog:
Choice is great. I am all for choice. If the NAB wants to privately facilitate the choice of having broacast receivers on cell phones, then they have my blessing.
However, if they intend to get government legislation enacted that makes it mandatory for cell phones to have broadcast receivers, then I will fiercly oppose the NAB. Such legislation would remove consumer choice and would use precious public funds and resorces that should go to something more worthwhile.
Edited 2010-08-25 23:24 UTC
You insensitive remarks about what Americans are afraid of really shows a lack of sensitivity and a lack of understanding regarding the proposed mandated chips. I was assigned to the Pentagon when it was attacked and cell phone networks were either overwhelmed by emergency responders and civilians trying to place calls or cell phone towers were damaged and unusable. Cell phones were totally unusable during the event and the ability to send out emergency info via an FM receiver embedded in cell phones would have undoubtedly saved lives and helped diminish the confusion and panic.
The US has required television broadcasters to operate and maintain an emergency broadcast system for years and it’s tested regularly. But most people have moved away from broadcast television and traditional mass media distribution systems so it’s only natural that in times of emergency that state, local and federal officials would want to move emergency broadcasts to the systems the technology almost every American has in their pocket…..the cell phone.
Edited 2010-08-25 23:35 UTC
I can imagine (though I’m not entirely convinced) the need for the government to be able to mass-communicate to people using technological measures. The only thing that strikes me as odd is that there is apparently no better proposal for doing this other than mandating FM chips in cell phones. Not only does this mean that all those that currently have an FM-free phone are either left out of emergency news or are forced to “upgrade” their otherwise perfectly capable phone, it also means that a completely separate infrastructure is to be kept alive and working just for this cause.
For mass communication during emergencies the cell phone is an interesting idea, certainly, but maybe one should look at actually using its normal capabilities? Have the operators build a special mode of functioning into the masts, from what I know of GSM and similar networks, they should be able to override all communication with the chosen communication. Mass-SMS during override mode would come to mind.
Me, I think I’ll just stick to how the Dutch government has done it: air-raid sirens (yes, special infrastructure, but you’re not going to warn people for an air-raid using anything that might not reach someone) and broadcasting using all possible mass media, be it old or new. And you’re not telling me people don’t watch television or listen to the radio, anymore. And even if they do everything over the internet, they usually have a car…
FM has far more bandwidth (since it’s broadcast vs point to point) than SMS or any other cell phone tech. That’s why the networks crash, they’re not designed to work with “everybody” at the same time.
FM is “cheap and primitive”. In Southern California, 20-30 point to point phone calls will pretty much hit every FM broadcaster and their combined megawattage will cover several million people very quickly, and localized in to the different languages. That’s quite efficient. That’s how it would likely go down, even before an Emergency Broadcast alert goes out (that’s what it’s for, to notify other stations, not necessarily the public itself).
Radio works when the power is down, since most radios are battery powered. Only the radio stations need large amounts of power, and most have backup power. Plus the radio stations are (mostly) well distributed, so one can be taken out while others are on the air (downside is many have their antennas concentrated on a few, select mountain peaks…but…not all of them).
A radio is a very convenient thing to have in public emergencies. Folks were glued to radios and TVs during the fire emergencies looking for evacuation news and such. We’ve all seen the foibles of the internet under load (both the good times and bad). Must be fun to see the Cal Tech traffic spike up after every earthquake down here.
And cell phone networks simply are not designed to take the load of a public aroused.
From a Civil Defense point of view, a radio in the cell phone is a good idea. I don’t think we have a radio here our office, for example (our bad, I’ll get that fixed). So if the net and cell towers were down, we’d be pretty much dead to the world, and have to go down to our cars to listen to anything.
That said, I wouldn’t mandate a radio in a cell phone. It would be nice if it were more available. If it’s more popular, than odds are good that there will be better, and probably “enough” penetration of radios in to the population to be effective in a CD scenario, without having to mandate every phone having it.
Part of the problem is the people advocating the solution. It’s like how come all the “HEMP NOW” people seem to hang out in head shops around pot paraphernalia? Kind of hurts the message.
The people in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon didn’t have televisions at their desks nor did they have cars in which they could run to in order to make an escape.
The roads were gridlocked with emergency vehicles so even if you could have made it to a car you wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. And what’s the point of an air raid siren? Are you crazy? Everyone already knew a tragedy was underway and how the heck would anyone hear an air raid siren deep within the bowels of the Pentagon or at the top or bottom of the World Trade Center? An air raid siren would just make it harder for everyone to hear….for those who would be in range to hear it anyway.
I find it hard to believe that people at work don’t have something like a radio, anymore, these days. Can’t be sure about the US, but AFAIK most workplaces here have one around. The reference to the cars would of course be for that very same radio; getting out would naturally not be an option.
As for the air-raid sirens: no, I’m not crazy. They work very well in informing that something is wrong in the first place (which was shown recently when they decided to test 15 minutes late, here). The space issue, as pointed out below, is a painful oversight of mine, though. Indeed I guess it won’t be very practical to try and cover the US with them.
???
And what good is a cellphone without a radio antenna? (For radio antennas you always need special headphones, otherwise reception is not there) And even if you have reception, what good does it do? Yeah it might inform you, but you could always use SMS for that (The cell networks could prioritize SMS over calls and just send out SMS messages to everyone)
But let’s not have a technical discussion. Pentagon, 9/11, yadda, yadda. I only watch FoxNews! Tea party!
Interesting statements you’re making here…
And the existence of an FM receiver embedded within a cellphone would have made a difference? The buildings in question were wrecked, and so is it not a slightly more sane solution to utilize realtime, local communication such as an internal speaker system? Or are people somehow in the midst of chaos going to camp in a corner, wait for a local source to relay information to a public channel, have go through human processing, and being broadcast back? If you find yourself in the middle of a collapsing building you sure as hell are not going to run to the nearest TV for an update – you are getting the f- out of there. In any other case one would probably have to argue for natural selection.
Further it is very interesting that you assume throwing yet another channel into the mix alongside with sirens, TV, radio and word of mouth would somehow lead to less chaos. Complex systems under stress exhibit an even greater degree of chaos the more stimuli it is fed (of any kind.)
… Are you aware that radio is a traditional broadcast medium that predates the television and fell out of favor over decades ago? And further, are you going to force people to use something they don’t want?
Just as a side note, installing a mobile missle platform on every vehicle is likely to lead to less terrorism.
Seriously, it’s time for the USA to have a reality check and realize you are being fed FUD.
I think the major issue here is that this argument is not coming from safety officials or the military and this “need” has never been expressed before. Being highly skeptical of an industry organization is warranted in this case.
There are a few problems with your argument:
1. As stated in the article, in order to use the FM radio in mobile phones, you need the earphones.
2. Unless you design the phone to detect emergency broadcasts, the user would have to be actually listening to the radio at the exact moment the broadcast was sent.
3. Digital radio will soon replace analogue radio, removing the need for separate FM chips. So we are mandating the installation of an already obsolete technology.
4. You are twice as likely to be crushed under a vending machine than to die in a terrorist attack, and far, far more likely to drown in your own bathtub.
If we take the “It would save lives” argument then why don’t mandate the compulsory wearing of life jackets at all times on the off chance you might fall into a river – It would eventually save lives. Good idea? No.
Which, in the event of a national emergency where the phone networks go down, is quite possible (and even feasible).
Large groups of people are not twice as likely to be crushed under a vending machine, or to drown in their own bathtub, at the same time. And in some parts of the country, hurricanes are much, much more likely than either of these events.
Don’t get me wrong; I think this is a stupid, stupid law. But some of the arguments being thrown against it are amazingly bad…
Why does the size of the group matter? Any economic cost from 9/11 was largely psychological; the loss of office space was a small perturbation to the US economy.
The psychological effect can be muted by knowledge that vending machines are more dangerous than terrorism in terms of material economics costs.
the psychological reverberations were costly. unfortunately, the “ills of civilization” seem inherent to human biology. so psychological costs will always statistically exist.
Your argument is circular. You suggest that in an emergency, the user would be more likely to be listening to his phone radio. That would mean he has already been made aware of the emergency from another source. So why have the radio?
Firstly, I was countering the argument that we should be concerned with and introducing measures for terrorist attacks. Hurricanes are another topic entirely. Constrain yourself to the point.
The fact that terrorist attacks are so unlikely as not to warrant concern or countermeasures is perfectly valid.
The number of affected people (while tragic) in the extremely unlikely event that an attack might occur should not be a mitigating factor.
Why must he constrain himself to the point that best makes your argument?
Sure, death by terrorist is less likely than death by bathtub, but there are millions of ways to die and a subset of those can be avoided via emergency broadcasts.
One thing the Blog nailed is the fact that this really is a pro-consumer mandate. Forget emergencies, I have to stream radio over my data plan to catch a sporting event, and when the leagues picked up on this they prevented dissemination.
It’s not like I can just chose a phone with FM either. I’m limited by my funds, my contract with my provider, and what they carry as to what phone I can get. While I could have selected a phone with an FM chip (probably), it would not have been the Moto Droid, which is what I wanted.
Like the blog said, if draining your battery is your concern, then don’t use it. But I want the feature, and I don’t know who wouldn’t for a few pennies (or even a dollar) per unit. Most people round here get their phones for free with the plan anyway.
And how is this any different than mandating seat belts in cars? Seat belts save around 10,000 lives per years. You could argue that an FM receiver won’t save that many, but I could argue that under the right (or wrong) set of circumstances, an FM receiver could save more. I could also argue that, unlike seat belts, no one is forcing you to use the FM receiver.
If you wanna make the argument that the government is too involved in drug use, prostitution, where you can and can’t smoke cigarettes, how runny a restaurant can make an egg, making sure said eggs don’t have pathogens like E. Coli (oops), then I’m with you.
There are so many better things to get all huffy about.
I have a phone with an FM receiver in it (SE w580i). It works well. However, it’s more of a pain to use than anything. It only works with the wired headphones, using the proprietary SE connector, which sticks out almost an inch from the side of the phone, making it really uncomfortable to stick in your pocket.
It doesn’t work with my nice Bluetooth headset. All the other audio functions (including streaming audio from the ‘Net) works, but since there’s no wire connecting the phone to the headset, there’s no FM antenna. So now I’d have to carry around two sets of headphones.
Alternatively, there are Bluetooth headsets that include an FM receiver. Be a lot cheaper than buying a second phone. Or, you can head down to your local dollar store, and get an FM receiver with headphones for $1.
Adding seat belts doesn’t fundamentally alter the way you use the car. Adding an FM receiver would fundamentally alter the way you use a cell phone (require the use of headphones).
.
Edited 2010-08-26 19:08 UTC
Remember the Indonesian Tsunami?
Was it 100K or 200K that died?
Remember the images of of people walking up to the receded shoreline to gather the mysteriously beached fish?
In many cases, NOAA knew what could potentially happen for hours, but almost no one else did.
In the time between the detection of the earthquake by NOAA and the landfall of the first wave, how many lives could have been saved if 90 character blast message were sent out warning resident of possible Tsunamis, and advising them to tune to a local radio station for details?
90 characters alone may not be enough to fully convey the gravity of the situation, and it’s a fallacy to assume that just because you are in your car that you happen to have the radio on and tuned to a station in the know.
Sure, this scenario does not pass the “but-I-don’t-want-Big-Gobment-increasing-phone-prices-by-$0.50” test, but if you are going to take that position you must explain why you are also opposed to the “seat belts in cars” mandate.
It’s estimated that in the US seat belts save about 10,000 lives per year, a tiny fraction of the number that died in the Tsunami, and probably cost at least a hundred times more per unit.
As I said before, under the right (or wrong) conditions, and on a national-annual scale, this technology has the potential to save at least as many lives, if not more.
If you can stay ideologically consistent in this reductio ad aburdem style debate then I can respect your opinion, and agree to disagree.
Remember, it’s quite fashionable to claim libertarianism, but a true libertarian will support the “right” of private or even public institutions to deny equal protection based solely on race, religion, or creed. The true measure of a libertarian, or any other ideologue, is how far he or she will follow the ideology as it approaches the logical extreme.
I for one prefer to first throw ideology out the window, and then grab a hose, when the house is on fire.
Edited 2010-08-26 19:19 UTC
Remember the Indonesian Tsunami?
Was it 100K or 200K that died?
Remember the images of of people walking up to the receded shoreline to gather the mysteriously beached fish?
In many cases, NOAA knew what could potentially happen for hours, but almost no one else did.
In the time between the detection of the earthquake by NOAA and the landfall of the first wave, how many lives could have been saved if 90 character blast message were sent out warning resident of possible Tsunamis, and advising them to tune to a local radio station for details?
90 characters alone may not be enough to fully convey the gravity of the situation, and it’s a fallacy to assume that just because you are in your car that you happen to have the radio on and tuned to a station in the know.
It’s estimated that in the US seat belts save about 10,000 lives per year, a tiny fraction of the number that died in the Tsunami, and probably cost at least a hundred times more per unit.
As I said before, under the right (or wrong) circumstances, and on a national-annual scale, this technology has the potential to save at least as many lives, if not more.
Sure, this scenario does not pass the “but-I-don’t-want-Big-Gobment-increasing-phone-prices-by-$0.50” test, but if you are going to take that position you must explain why you are also opposed to the “seat belts in cars” mandate.
If you can stay ideologically consistent in this reductio ad aburdem style debate then I can respect your opinion, and agree to disagree.
(Remember, being a true libertarian means supporting the rights of private institutions or even governments to deny equal protection based on race, religion, or creed. It’s very fashionable to claim libertarianism, but when push comes to shove how long will you really own it.)
FuriousGeorge trolled…
Nice troll, only it is completely off topic to the issues involved.
The objection over the cost involved is minor compared to the question of why the NAB is insisting on using FM rather than NOAA radio frequencies or other such emergency broadcast channels. The self-interest of the NAB blinds them to how transparent their real motives are. The truth is this has nothing to do with security or emergencies and everything to do with legislating a failed business model.
Their diligent efforts over the last thirty or more years to make the airwaves into their own private club have resulted in their increasing irrelevance in every day life. The NAB has behaved like that bratty kid in the neighborhood with all the cool toys who insisted on having everything their way or they take their toys and go home–and just like the bratty kid they now find themselves alone with their toys as people find something better to do.
Bed. Made. Lie.
In any case I find myself skeptical more due to who exactly it is that is making the recommendation due to the self-interest involved than anything else. As has been said earlier this stinks of the “free hemp now” protesters who always seem to be slightly stoned and spend all their time in headshops. Thanks to whartung for such a perfect analogy to explain the situation to outsiders with!
–bornagainpenguin
Someone seems both cranky and emboldened by the protective anonymity of his little keyboard across the internets.
The only thing off topic was your failure to address the question: why are you against seat belts in cars as a mandate?
And guess what: the only one trolling in this thread is you
Point made, bye!
Edited 2010-08-27 12:02 UTC
… by the way. The notion that radio is a failing business model and people are going away from it is wrong. As a result, your entire argument is a fallacy.
As the article states, the AM/FM radio audience is growing yearly and steadily.
Respectfully, you should stick to talking about things you know.
FuriousGeorge trolled…
O.o; Dude, wait what?
{checks FuriousGeorge’s profile}
Date Joined: 2010-08-26
Ahhh…an astroturfer! Well “Brian” I hope they’re paying good if you’re going to sell your soul to the company like this…
AM/FM radio growing every year…LOL..sure it is.
–bornagainpenguin
Lol @ ad hominem attack.
Isn’t it possible that I’m a long time reader who followed Eugina here from the days of benews.com?
Sure it’s possible. I just find it unlikely that someone who has read OSNews “from the days of benews.com” would just coincidentally register on the day an article about the NAB was posted and then post only in this NAB thread, nowhere else while making such statements as:
and attempting to derail the discussion from how laughable and transparent the self-serving motives of the NAB are in trying to shove this down the throats of the public to yet another rehash of Libertarians vs blah blah blah.
You’re a single issue poster. That, your choice of commentary and the timing of your joining make me suspicious of the motivation behind your posts. If that becomes an ad hominem then so be it.
–bornagainpenguin
Well, believe it
That statement was right out of the article, which were are discussing, so it’s not like I’m introducing original research.
I read the article, I was reading the comments, and thought I had something interesting to add to the debate vis a vis my seat belt analogy.
At the time I was still under the impression that I was entitled to my opinion, EVEN WHEN it is not identical to your opinion. Judging by your very emotional and personal responses to me, I see you find that threatening and offensive.
It is ad hominem and you seem to forget that someone’s first post must start with a single issue right? I can’t post about this and whether or not steam get’s ported to linux at the exact same moment.
XP/Win7 is my primary OS now, so I don’t even care about steam on linux (and no, I’m not knocking any other OS implicitly, so please don’t tell me I have a part time job with MS when I’m not working at the NAB. I’m just procrastinating, and I find political argument more interesting than the prospects of installing and configuring freeswitch on an old gentoo box.)
For the record, I feel certain that I’ve posted comments before over the last few years, but I when I couldn’t guess what my former credentials might have been, I re-registered.
Anyway, perhaps the author of the blog in question was misrepresenting the facts when he said that radio audience grew in the last few years. If you can reference some evidence of that I think it would add more to the discussion than lobbing flames of “troll” at me from behind your keyboard.
Edited 2010-08-30 20:17 UTC
Just some off-topic remarks..
Being a true libertarian is hardly about the rights of governments to do anything, maybe even to exist; it’s all about the rights of individuals to have their natural rights respected by the government, if any government is to be tolerated at all. Bundling together the rights of private, peaceful institutions and the rights of governments is a non-starter for a libertarian.
Yes, freedom of association means I have no right to tell you with which kind of people you may or may not do business or hang around. What’s wrong with that?
And who said mandatory seatbelts are justified? The fact that they save some lives is irrelevant. You own your life, not your government. What, are all those accidents a burden on public healthcare? Well, that’s an example of the wicked character of a public healthcare system.
As for traffic lights, speed limits and the like, privatize roads and cities, and let the market decide.
So, in a sense, I basically agree, the FM chip is just more of the same, namely special interest groups with laughable excuses, lobbying governments to mandate expensive and redundant, or even stupid and wasteful regulations at the expense of everyone else. This case is particularly blatant, that’s all.
I said:
You said:
Actually, I believe libertarians tolerate government as a necessary means to protect individual liberties. That could include the liberty of an individual to discriminate against another based on race, religion, or creed.
It is anarchists that believe there should be no government at all.
Nothing, and I don’t think I implied there was. I was saying that a true libertarian would be opposed to, for instance, the US Civil Rights act, which (among other things) makes it illegal for private business to discriminate based on race, religion, or creed.
Many countries have private health care (like the US), and they still mandate seat belts.
You do realize that most private business fail, right? Also, I have a problem with a profit motive for transportation infrastructure on principal, but I could be wrong.
Do you have an example of a nation with a privatized highway system to serve as a model for the plausibility of this argument?
Also, why would a libertarian abide traffic lights and speed limits to begin with? Shouldn’t you have the right to go as fast as you want?
Why enforce immigration laws? Shouldn’t anyone be able to go anywhere they want, whenever they want to go there?
And how does one privatize a city? What did you mean by that?
I still think it is at least as reasonable or only as absurd as the seat belt mandate. That’s my whole point.
As I said, you can express why you are against it, which you did quite eloquently, and I can still agree to disagree.
Edited 2010-08-27 12:27 UTC
It does. But notice we are talking about the rights of individuals as such, not governments.
Many libertarians are individualist anarchists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism
Agreed.
Well, let’s forget about Medicare, Medicaid, and the massive regulations on private healthcare insurance, and pretend there’s a free market in that sector. Then, a fortiori, mandatory safetly belts are unjustified, which was my point.
When a private business fails, it’s usually bought out by a better manager. If no-opne wants to buy it, that means it has nothing of value to offer, and it should stop wasting resources anyway. It’s not something for end users to worry about.
I’m a bit surprised you are particularly against the profit motive for transportation. Why not for food production, clothing and housing?
Anyway, you can’t change people’s motives with regulation. You only change the means they choose.
Not really. Governments do not let it happen. Private roads were quite common in the US before the nineteenth century, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_highways_in_the_United_States
For more discussion of plans for a private road system, you may want to have a look at Walter Block’s “The privatization of roads and highways”:
http://www.amazon.com/Privatization-Roads-Highways-Walter-Block/dp/…
Also available for free in PDF:
http://mises.org/books/roads_web.pdf
Not if the street is owned, and you are at best a co-owner under a covenant. I would expect that kind of private regulation in private cities to be the norm in a libertarian society. Coexistence rules are useful, and there’s nothing wrong with them if they are freely accepted by individuals.
You hit a point of lively debate among libertarians, but there’s something they all agree on: I have no right to “immigrate” into your house. Another reason to build private cities.
The disagreement is mainly about whether empty, government-controlled land is actually unowned or collectively owned by the host country citizens.
On the other hand, they tend to agree that the economic effects of immigrant workers are possitive for both the immigrants and the host country. It’s just a particular case of free trade, applied to labor.
The problem are the cultural friction effects, and immigrant with no intention to work.
There are many ways to do that, but what I have in mind is to share it out among the citizens. So you have a right to your home and the right of passage to the city border, but any street could be fenced off if all its residents agree on that, as long as no other citizens are trapped inside a ring. I would like to see private neighborhoods with different regulations about noise, traffic, public order and so on. That would be the first step toward all-new private cities.
Fair enough
wannabegeek,
I don’t disagree at all with your interpretation of libertarianism, I just disagree with its overall feasibility in practice.
If we are to privatize roads why stop there? Why not police and fire services? When you dial 9-1-1 you can input your credit card. If a certain neighborhood does not have the capital to keep their police and firefighters out of the red, then they should have none.
I’m just imagining lower quality roads filled with even more pot holes because it increases the profit margin.
Another example that comes to mind is the state of Alaska. My taxes go toward paying for their roads, their water, and their infrastructure in general.
Should the entire state of Alaska be left to fail?
Take the moon landing as another example. What is the role of government but to at least occasionally achieve great things? You may argue the importance of science, and describe the space race with the Soviets as little more than an international pissing contest, but to me it amounts to more than that.
I notice most of the people who disparage the effectiveness of government (while ironically referring to America as the greatest country in the world), are also some of the biggest supporters of the military.
The military is 100% “government-run”.
Finally, what about high speed rail. We have none in this country, and I think it’s a shame.
What private company will put a high speed rail up and down the eastern or western seaboard? That is beyond the scope of any non-governmental institution, and we will never have that as long as this almost irrational fear of government persists.
After all, a good democracy is “for the people and by the people” so the people get the government they elect, and, by extension, the government they deserve.
(P.S. Thanks for being able to disagree without being disagreeable. There is so much more dignity in that than lobbing flames of “troll” from the other side of the web.)
Edited 2010-08-30 05:46 UTC
I’d expect the emergency transmission would interrupt anything the cell was doing. perhaps eventually the system could have a wakeup feature (emergency transmission plays as long as the batteries had enough charge).
I notice (a) my cell phone isn’t working, and (b) power has gone out everywhere around the vicinity. Ergo, there must be an emergency. No one has told me what it is, how long it will last, etc. I have no way of finding out at the moment, except… the FM radio in my phone? This isn’t circular at all.
The original point was an emergency. A terrorist attack is merely one example.
Except that you are downtown, and you left your headphones at home (or you’re using your spiffy BT headphones), thus rendering the FM receiver in your phone completely useless.
How is that any better than not having an FM receiver in the phone?
As much as I loathe government mandated nonsense, you do make an excellent point. Coming from a nearly lifelong amateur radio background myself (growing up around it and getting licensed early in my adult life) I can see where an FM receiver in a phone could come in handy in emergencies, as well as being a nice feature at other times. The phone I want to go to next, the N900, has both a receiver and transmitter on the FM bands.
However, I think if the NAB is going to try to use emergency communications as an argument, they should be willing to consider seeking a mandate on true emergency bands, like 121.5MHz, the international aeronautical emergency band, or better yet 138.225MHz, which is FEMA’s natural disaster broadcast band. Unfortunately, I don’t see the NAB and certainly not the RIAA calling for inclusion of these true emergency bands. That makes their entire “for your own safety” argument suspect in my eyes, and it falls back to their original overt reasons: It’s all about government mandated money in their pockets.
“Receivers” cannot send data. That would require a “transmitter” or a “transceiver”. IOW, an FM receiver in the phone would not have helped for sending data.
And, since you need a wired headphone to act as the antenna, which I doubt many people carry with them at work, I doubt you would have been able to receive an FM broadcast to your phone.
IOW, totally useless in an emergency.
A separate battery-operated AM/FM radio would be much more useful, especially since multiple people would be able to listen to it simultaneously.
Except, how would you get information to it, if the cell systems are jammed, or the towers knocked over?
Only, it wouldn’t work in the stated cases, any more than regular cellphone routing (dutifully ejecting punters, or in actual cell misconfiguration) would it? Why would we want to pressure communications systems to use a system laden with IBOC digital distortion, no particular qualifications, distracting, unstructured, content payment according to LOC designations (you Stalinist toady, by the way) etc? Even so, you say it like a Democrat.
It’s pork stuffed with bacon fat.
(1) Is porn useful in case of a natural disaster?
(2) Is FM radio inherently objectionable to someone who owns a cell phone?
It can’t be that hard to come up with a good analogy, but this is OSNews, where the editors check their brains at the door the moment something outrages them. Seems to me this site was half-intelligent once.
(And no, in the end, some of us don’t like bad ol’ porn.)
Why do non-Americans find it necessary to comment (and not generally favorably) on purely American issues? (Surely you don’t believe this issue will somehow affect Europe?)
Yeah I know, our government has its nose in everyone’s business (which I don’t agree with and vote against accordingly during elections). So that makes it O.K. to make glib comments about Americans in general?
As for the comment about air raid sirens … consider the difference in area of our two countries (Netherlands and USA):
USA is 9,629,090 km2
Netherlands is 41,526 km2
Do you see a difference here? How well do you think that would work, with our population spread across that area (many away from cities)? What is the range (effective range, by that I mean something loud enough to catch a person’s attention right away) of an air raid siren? How many would have to be scattered across the USA?
I suspect the problem is not so much square mileage, but the near-universal inability of urban folk to see outside their very narrow points of view, and imagine just a few of the circumstances that make life very, very different for people who don’t live in cities.
Maybe. I’ve done both, growing up in Boston and then spending much of my life in a rural town (if one could call it that) where everything was more distant (hospital, grocery store, no city water, etc.) and transportation was necessary. But I am not sure what your statement has to do with the area issue? Are you suggesting no one in the cities would vote to spend money to set up sirens for those in rural areas?
You misunderstood my point, partly because I wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean that city folk wouldn’t want to help rural folk; rather that city folk think only within the constraints of their everyday life, and don’t think of how things might work differently elsewhere. That is, the suggestion for air raid sirens makes complete sense in an urban setting — even if the urban setting is giant, presumably the tax base would be more than adequate to pay for it — but not in a rural setting. So the person who dismissed the notion of FM radio in favor of air raid sirens was engaged in that sort of urban reasoning.
Ah. Sorry!
Air raid sirens are not just in urban areas. They are used throughout the midwest for tornado warnings. The siren can heard for many miles, especially in open areas like the midwest. I grew up in NE but not in a particulary urban area and I remember them being tested on a regular basis. The siren was located right outside of my elementary school.
No, I’m saying that I agree with you completely about non-Americans who make snide remarks about a purely American issue and that I also agree that the US government has its hands into far too many things that should be left alone. This site is rife with people who go out of their way to use it as a soap box to poke fun at the US when they have no real understanding or experience with the issue at hand. It’s funny because I NEVER see any negative comments on here from Americans criticizing the EU or its member nations.
O.K. Thank you!
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=242059
Most popular air raid and warning sirens today produce a sound level of 127 dB at 100 feet and provide a typical one-mile radius coverage area. At 138 dB the Chrysler Air Raid Siren is approximately two times as loud and will provide a two and one-half mile radius coverage area with the same sound level at the distant edge. The most powerful siren available for purchase today (American Signal’s Tempestâ„¢ T-135-ACâ„¢) produces a sound level of 135 dB at 100 feet. The 3dB higher output of the Chrysler Air Raid Siren, at 138 dB, represents twice as much sound energy output.
You get my vote if you ever run for office in the US. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Because Americans find it necessary to comment (and generally not favorably) on issues in every other country?
I agree with you though, air raid sirens is obviously only usefull in urban areas. Plus, sirens does not actually inform you what is wrong, only that something is wrong. You’d still have to find a way to listen to a radio or watch a TV so even in this case it could be an advantage to have a radio in your phone.
Really? I just don’t see that. I don’t comment, no one I “hang” with does either. One friend wants to move to Canada. My wife loves (and has stayed there for awhile, twice) Spain. My co-workers never mention Europe or China or any other union or country for that matter in day to day conversation (unless something unfortunate has happened and it is to commiserate, like a plane crash)… mostly if it is politics we concern ourselves with local politics (gun laws, marriage laws, taxes, etc.)
I mean, WHAT would Americans have to say about the PEOPLE in other countries? “Oh those Italians, wow, they have big noses and womanize all day long!” I mean, seriously? Most people I know have enough to worry about here, at home; no need to worry about your problems.
Thank you.
You don’t get anywhere near the same amount of news coverage about Europe that Europeans get about America. If you did, you probably would comment more – especially if you started seeing news items that make you think “what a bunch of ignorant hicks” (which is more or less the impression we get from the news).
The funny thing is, absurd federal mandates like “all cell phones must have FM radios” is just the sort of nonsense the EU occasionally pushes through.
Fine by me, I prefer to stay out of other people’s (sovereign nations) business. Why your news covers American domestic affairs is not under my control.
No I would not. Why should I? Why should I judge what is important to the people of another nation who have been raised in a specific and unique environment of their own.
Well, the news does skew and twist issues. That I understand. Watch the news over here for an hour and you’ll probably want to vomit!
I think in the end, people are people and governments are governments no matter where you go. I get up in the morning, give my daughter a kiss (she’s always first in the room, climbing on us), pet my dogs, play with the cats, feed them, brew a pot of coffee and go to work. I “get home” (in quotes because I work from home) make dinner and hang out with my wife and kids and go to bed.
My government makes mistakes. Sometimes the officials TRY to do the RIGHT thing but mess up in their implementation. Sometimes they are just corrupt, tainted by corporate lobbyists and big money. People are susceptible to such things.
No matter how you slice it, it’s a mess. The political culture has mutated into something I personally don’t like (and others as well) but nothing is instantaneous. Groups try to change the way things are done…
I just don’t see how or why this makes US citizens “ignorant hicks” (I know, not your words). Finally, one last thing to consider… the news agencies HERE love the big or flashy stories and often focus on something that is a minority, fidget with poll numbers by asking questions that force a strange answer, etc.
Most of the news is crap these days.
I’ve had the pleasure to work with Europeans from Ireland, Germany and France. Just regular people like myself. In the couple years I worked with them I’ve had offers to bring my whole family over and stay in their house for a vacation! Very nice people. And what’s surprising about that is we worked in a difficult part of our business, dealing with highly disgruntled customers – so there was generally a high level of stress involved.
If anything I’d expect them to want to club me over the head.
Anyway, my whole point is we really are all the same. The people who live in South Africa, China, Pakistan… are no different from you or me. The people in power might be annoying, but hey…
No, we wouldn’t comment more on European news if more of it was broadcast here. We’d just change the channel. We’re really not interested about what goes in Belgium, or Italy, etc…..I live in Texas. It’s bigger than all of Europe combined and has more than enough news and happenings for me to keep up with.
And the last time I checked my satellite system, I DO get a direct feed from the BBC, several Arabic news channels, 3 channels from China, 1 from Spain and 1 from Germany. Bu I don’t watch them. I have more than enough going on here to keep me busy.
The Europe-America relationsship.. so unidirectional. We love you, but you don’t love us back. We hate you, but you just change the channel. ;P
Seriously though, your music, movies, tv series and shows, fast food chains, brands, fashion, porn, academia, foreign policies, wars, industry, marketing, finance, IT, is everywhere! That’s why everyone has an opinion on you. It’s virtually impossible to avoid American content on (North) European tv. You’re in our face, and for the most part we like it.
Texas: 696,241 km2
EU: 4,324,782Â km2
Europe: 10,180,000 km2
Yikes. Not all Americans are as insular as you. I think most Americans recognize that there is a bigger world out there and it most definitely DOES affect us. If you can’t see that it’s because your eyes are closed as evidenced by your provincial mindset.
No kidding.
Not so good with geography, are you? Good job keeping the stereotype of the ignorant american alive.
Perhaps not the people you know but there certainly are those who do. This is just getting WAY off topic though.
Lets just say it’s a mutual love/hate relationship and move on.
Sure. But I hope I don’t see any more of that kind of thing from the EDITORS and CONTRIBUTORS to an international technology website.
A proper comparison is between the USA and the EU:
EU is 4,324,782 km2
And all of EU uses air raid sirens as their notification tool? Of course even if that is the case, they were likely put in place BEFORE there was an EU. Probably back during WWII, out of necessity.
Edited 2010-08-26 15:00 UTC
I’ll go along with NAB’s suggestion that FM chips in cell phones be mandated. In exchange, the same legislation requiring the chips will also permanently free FM broadcasters from paying royalties on copyrighted material they broadcast. Furthermore, said legislation will repeal the DMCA and software patents.
There you go. A reasonable compromise that I’m sure American industry will support.
I feel safer already.
Edited 2010-08-26 02:50 UTC
My phone comes with a built-in Morse Code chip…
Beep…Boooop…beep…beep
No, wait, that was Lady Gaga!
Americas favorite past-time or not, using FM for emergency broadcast is a good idea and is what pretty much every country actually does, afaik. The reason for this is that FM is basic, simple and just works and pretty much everyone (used to) have a radio. Of course, if you plan on phasing out FM completely in the near future it might be a better idea to use a digital radio chip instead of an FM one.
Wether it should be mandated by the government is a different issue though.
Edited 2010-08-26 04:34 UTC
If their alleged reason for this is public safety, why the blue blazes are they talking FM? I’m sorry, but using that as an excuse is pure bull.
Why? Because I still have a perfectly good working NOAA radio here… and if that’s what they are using as justification, then that’s what it should be set to recieve – NOT FM.
For those of you unfamiliar with it or outside the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
http://www.noaa.gov/
Runs a radio service in the VHF public service band around 160mhz. (that’s in the top end of the marine band, which is at the bottom of the 90mhz gap between TV channels 6 and 7, which you could pick up on older TV’s by manually downtuning channel 6) It is tied directly in most areas to the EAS (Emergency Alert System).
As someone who grew up on the eastern seaboard (Cape Cod) far enough south for hurricanes, far enough north for blizzards I know VHF weather radio all too well. Used to be you could pick them up at radio shack for two bucks and they’d run for a week on a single D battery. (late 70’s/early 80’s for me) Don’t even want to think about how long a modern LiPo could power one if all other services were turned off.
So their pointing at FM as what people should be turning to is just another bullshit reason to further their agenda that isn’t the least bit in the interest of the consumer OR the economy. Much like shoving HD down everyone’s throat it’s just another way for them to spend government money to ship more worth overseas while further depreciating the dollar.
But like many of the things the legislature has it’s hands in like marriage, I really have to ask “How the **** is this any of the governments business?” and of course “War on two fronts and the economy in the shitter, don’t you think you’ve got better things to do than waste time arguing about what cell phones can or cannot do?”
Edited 2010-08-26 04:48 UTC
+1. FM is an extremely poor technological choice in case of an emergency, especially when FM is coupled with modern cellphone technology that a/requires earphones that most people lose within the first month after purchase in order to receive FM and b/generally doesn’t last more than 2 days on battery power, except using some power management trick that most people don’t know or think about.
Edited 2010-08-26 06:55 UTC
Look, health care is the huge thing here in the states, but I would be willing to bet folks would be just as opposed to this if they knew about it. The problem is, there is no media coverage of it, nobody knows about it. … If people knew, they would be opposed (as am I).
I bet most people have a radio of some sort in their house (a clock radio or something), and when you’re away from your house you have your car stereo.
I live in Streator Illinois, where we had a tornado touch down earlier this year and destroy almost half the town. Since the building I live in has no accessible basement I spent the hour and a half while the tornado was on its way in the nearby police station bathrooms. There were air sirens going off every ten minutes or so during the time we waited for the tornado to come and the all clear sign to be given.
In that time the local radio station was entirely oblivious to the drama outside. Instead of broadcasting weather reports they continued to remote broadcast a baseball game two states over. This is not the only time a radio station has dropped the ball in a crisis because their corporate owners have completely divorced it from the community around it…
http://tinyurl.com/3yl67gz
Forgive me if I don’t buy the NAB’s story here. The truth is that they demanded (and got!) total control of the airwaves, effectively locking the public out. Every attempt by the public to add something or to put what they liked on the air was rebuffed by these corporate drones, from pirate radio to community powered radio, to internet radio, to satellite radio, to podcasting and now…they’ve made themselves irrelevant to the average person.
Just like the internet does with censorship people have begun to route around the self-inflicted damage the NAB has done and now the NAB wants to legislate their business model in hopes of clawing one last breath of air…. I say good riddance.
–bornagainpenguin
It shouldn’t be mandated. The NAB should get off their asses and sell their product to the handset manufacturers. If consumers want FM in the mobile phones then they’ll buy the. But mandated? Ridiculous.
My state has a new service that allows you to sign up email addresses, cell phones, land lines/voip phones, fax numbers, instant messager clients, etc for public safety alerts. You can sign up every device/number/program you use if you want to and have all of them recieve alerts. I see no need to REQUIRE FM chips in phones when options like this exist. Just create a national alert system.