18. December 2009 by admin.

I got this by email from a friend…

 How many zeros in a billion?
This is too true to be funny.

The next time you hear a politician use the
word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about
whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending
YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,
but one advertising agency did a good job of
putting that figure into some perspective in
one of it’s releases.

A.
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B..
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C..
A billion hours ago our ancestors were
living in the Stone Age..

D.
A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E.
A billion dollars ago was only
8 hours and 20 minutes,
at the rate our government
is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain…
let’s take a look at New Orleans ..
It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator,
Mary Landrieu (D)
is presently asking Congress for
250 BILLION DOLLARS
to rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number…
what does it mean?
A.
Well… if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans  
(every man, woman, and child)
you each get $516,528.

B..
Or… if you have one of the 188,251 homes in
New Orleans , your home gets$1,329,787.

C..
Or… if you are a family of four…
your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington , D. C

 HELLO!
Are all your calculators broken??

Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax (Fed)
Federal Unemployment Tax (FU TA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax 
State Income Tax 
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax 
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration T ax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
(And to think, we left British Rule to avoid so many taxes)

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago…
and our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt…
We had the largest middle class in the world…
and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?
Can you spell ‘politicians!’

And I still have to
press ‘1′
for English.

I hope this goes around the
U S A
at least 100 times

What the heck happened?????

—

Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net

+1 954 683 3426

communications (at) marinetelecom.net

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18. December 2009 by admin.

Just when you thought it was safe to watch TV…

Blu-ray Disc Group Announces Final 3D Spec

http://www.cable360.net/ct/news/thewire/Blu-ray-Disc-Group-Announces-Final-3D-Spec_39187.html

Image: The HD SMPTE color bars (16×9 aspect ratio)

Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) 

With all of the changes to television recently it’s bad enough to try and keep up with it all on land, much less if you are on a yacht traveling the oceans and ports of the world. A lot of gear out there in the *Real World* is still analog. This after the transition of the US Television System from NTSC (the old long time analog TV System, you know 2-13 and 14-83 channels?) to ATSC - the new Digital TV standard that was pushed in, I think mainly to recover radio spectrum to be auctioned off for other services. Along with ATSC and Digital on Cable, and hopefully you have Digital via Satellite either on land or by sea, comes the HDTV - High Definition Television standards. The aspect ratio of older sets and programs running in the old 4:3 is now relegated to being called SDTV or Standard Definition TV. At Sea it was a bit longer coming for HDTV to become available to sail and motor vessels. At Sea you have to use an Automatic Tracking Antenna in one of those White Radome covers in orde to get Satellite TV. KVH, SEATEL, and others had a problem (like “Houston we have a problem” in Apollo 13) providing the tracking antennas and such to make this possible for ocean going vessels - with an especially interested group in the Sail and Motor Yachting Community. Finally SEATEL did it with what looks like a regular home type (land based) 5 lnb Satellite Antenna modified to go in a big Radome for use on marine vessels. This year, late, KVH came out with an HD Marine Satellite Antenna … and it seems to be quite a bit smaller than the SEATEL one.

Anyway this article wasn’t about that. Yachts have had flat panel, usually very expensive, Plasma TV’s in the 16:9 aspect ratio for quite a few years. Most of them are going to end up being throw-aways as newer, lighter, thinner LCD, Plasma, and even LED TV’s are now out on sale. There’s a big battle over megahertz again - and this time it’s not in computers … it’s in TV’s, and it’s actually Screen Refresh Rates in Hertz - not Megahertz. There’s an argument in some articles as to if having the faster screen refresh rates is really necessary - because maybe people can’t really tell the difference (?)

So now on land, and on a lot of marine vessels, TV’s have been replaced to get rid of older “Picture Tube” NTSC sets, and maybe a Plasma screen as well. But noooo that’s not good enough. Now we have to have “3D”. I heard about this through working associates and such and I thought it was going to just be something in IMAX Theaters or such… because… Do we really need another UPGRADE again so soon to Television Technology? Do we really need 3D in our homes and boats? Or is a bit of HDTV and better screens on some SDTV good enough?

Is Blu-Ray really selling soooo goood that they need to juice it up with 3D as well. And that almost makes all the Blu-Ray players, new recent LCD TV’s not good enough? I think they did, and I hope they did, make 3D backward compatible to regular LCD/HDTV equipment - because I think’s it’s going to be “awhile” before a lot of us want to upgrade yet again. Personally I’m happy with HDTV for now and I think I could go at least 10 or more years being quite happy enough with that. I mean 3D never really went over BIG in theaters anyway, right? Why do we have to have it at home (or on our boat homes) ?

Well… Let’s see what happens. After all it’s a just released specification. No doubt the manufacturers will need awhile to get up to speed on 3D as well. Meanwhile they will continue to sell HDTV/ATSC sets. 3D gear might be quite expensive coming out - they usually slam the consumers with R&D or Development costs for awhile before prices come down. But maybe 3D will help make the HDTV/ATSC prices come down as well?

—

I’ll NTS “See” (or ATS “See”) you later!

* Alan Spicer - Alan Spicer Marine Telecom

http://www.marinetelecom.net

+1 954-683-3426

communications (at) marinetelecom.net

* Note: It is NOT alright to take my contact information, email address, cell phone number, etc. and use it to SPAM me via Cellular Text Messages or Email Spam Messages. Geeze! Can’t I be online without being harvested for this crap? (It SHOULD be illegal to text message a mobile phone without having a prior relationship with that person. IMHO!)

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