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An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

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Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#121

Post by freeopinion »

arjie wrote: post #86
esikich wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, why didn't everyone just get good education, dental care, and healthcare, get a car when they're 16, have their parents help them go to college and work for a VC and get rich. Just can't understand it. Truly, an enigma.

Realistically, if these are the minimum conditions to reduce this kind of low-gain amplified damage, then I suspect that most people will rapidly conclude that the cost-benefit leans in the direction of immediately severing these people from the rest of society. Since the cost to deliver a sequence of events like you describe to everyone is extraordinary (and realistically unavailable even to the richest nations toda…

Incarcerating people is not free.

And the more people you incarcerate the more you normalize incarceration and it loses its power of dissuasion.

Surely it is worthwhile to encourage other ideas. We might have to experiment with a lot of ideas to find some game changers.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#122

Post by SoftTalker »

gacgacgac wrote: post #72
xp84 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe we can just fix poverty and drug addiction with some government program, I have a bridge to sell you. So far, no one has, anywhere in the world. Many people (and once they get themselves addicted to something bad, that rises to "most") are just terrible and care only about their own short-term gain. They'd do any amount of destruction to others for some small temporary profit or fix.

If you think most people "are just terrible", I think you've let cynicism corrupt your thinking, and I don't think we're going to get very far by talking. I believe the opposite -- people fundamentally want to help each other, and we've structurally set up our society to force people out of that mode and into a competitive mode. Read "A Paradise Built in Hell", when push comes to shove, communities care for each othe…

We do this. We have programs for all those things. Anyone who is willing to go through the "process" can get free or reduced housing, food, and medical care. Education through 12th grade has always been free.

I think the GP was talking about addicts and those who for other reasons refuse to go through the "process" to get help. They are content living a life of begging, petty crime, getting high, and rejecting any help that comes with expectations of changing problematic behaviors.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#123

Post by SoftTalker »

razakel wrote: post #97
themafia wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. They have. It's called insurance. The problem here might be the change in copper prices which possibly increased the value of the line and which were never properly reassessed for coverage. > better off by just paying the theif double. You could also just require a license to scrap copper. That people can show up with a suspicious pile of…

>That people can show up with a suspicious pile of metal and convert into cash seems to be what creates the opportunity for the thief. The UK does that - a scrap dealer can only pay by bank transfer or cheque. That way there's a paper trail.

Same in the USA. I had to show my drivers license to sell a couple of old lawn mowers at a scrap yard. The thieves don't sell directly to the scrap dealers. If there's money to be made, there will always be a way to work around regulations.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#124

Post by tshaddox »

jmward01 wrote: post #77
tshaddox wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t the most obvious response from economics that the crime needs to be made more expensive? In other words, the likelihood of being harmed while attempting the crime needs to be much higher. If a quarter of the people who tried a comparable theft got thrown in jail for 2 years and another quarter got shot by a security guard, I suspect attempts would be rare. The financial damage done by the thief is presumably ir…

I highly doubt the people doing this look at crime and punishment stats before they do this. More punishment often just ends up costing society because courts and incarceration aren't cheap and no real rehabilitation so it often just makes the person do more bad things when they get out. I'm not saying 'no jail', but we do need evidence based criminal justice.

I don’t think potential criminals need to research statistics to have a general sense of the ROI of attempting the crime. They probably have a ballpark sense of both the cash value of the stolen property and the likelihood of getting caught.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#125

Post by CamperBob2 »

gacgacgac wrote: post #29
SoftTalker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already are. You need to show ID to sell scrap metal. The thieves use a fence.

Furthermore, going after scrap metal sites makes an important business harder and fails to be inquisitive enough about the reasons why the thefts happen at all. Maybe we should try to understand why people are stealing copper. (Presumably poverty, drug addiction, lack of opportunity)

Sorry, buy we can't build a civilization around people like that, or sustain our existing one by indulging them.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#126

Post by bigyabai »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #125
gacgacgac wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, going after scrap metal sites makes an important business harder and fails to be inquisitive enough about the reasons why the thefts happen at all. Maybe we should try to understand why people are stealing copper. (Presumably poverty, drug addiction, lack of opportunity)

Sorry, buy we can't build a civilization around people like that, or sustain our existing one by indulging them.

But we can build a society around periodically replacing catalytic converters?

I feel like you end up indulging them either way.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#127

Post by sidewndr46 »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #71
sidewndr46 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think exposure to 100 watts at ~100 MHz is going to cause your head to ring?

Are you saying it won't? What sort of RF power density in the FM range can the human body tolerate without noticeable effect?

100 watts at 100 MHz is so low that if you spent an entire lifetime in proximity to it, you would never notice.

At 100 MHz I am unsure if transmitter even exists that can could cause harm indirectly via RF exposure. The FCC has very tight guidelines for FM transmitters at this frequency. This is just an abundance of caution.

The actual story as presented here is obviously fake: "I replaced the 100W FM transmitter on our college radio tower and got in front of the emitter beam for like 10 seconds and my head rung for a week". It's unlikely, but possible that the transmitter is mounted on the tower. In practice, no one does this. They use coax at ~100 MHz since it is so cheap and easy. Let's just assume the transmitter is mounted on the tower. The power cutoff is going to be at the bottom of the tower. You turn it off beforehand because you don't want to get electrocuted inadvertently. You don't disconnect equipment while energized. The phrase 'emitter beam' is also a dead giveaway. That phrase is only used in particle accelerator and other radiation sources.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#129

Post by AndrewKemendo »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #127
fc417fc802 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying it won't? What sort of RF power density in the FM range can the human body tolerate without noticeable effect?

100 watts at 100 MHz is so low that if you spent an entire lifetime in proximity to it, you would never notice. At 100 MHz I am unsure if transmitter even exists that can could cause harm indirectly via RF exposure. The FCC has very tight guidelines for FM transmitters at this frequency. This is just an abundance of caution. The actual story as presented here is obviously fake: "I replaced the 100W FM transmitter on…

Call Dave West who is still a radio engineer in CO and was with me on the roof in 2006 if you care so much about it
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