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As with everything, satellite providers have competition.The great thing to know is that there are only two, Dish Network and DirecTV.Dish Network has not been on the scene as long as DirecTV, but this does not mean the quality is not present.
Dish Network provides over 250 channels to any satellite family.They have several packages so that you can choose if you want movie, sports, and other channels.Like most even cable, Dish Network provides the lower channels such as USA, FOX, NBC, and those like them in every package.This means you can just have these channels or you can add specialty channels like HBO, Starz, and the sports channels.Dish Network also provides Sirius satellite radio channels.
When you are looking to buy satellite tv, keep in mind that you need to have the equipment from Dish Network in order to use their service.Each satellite company has a signal that recognizes the individual dishes.This is how they know which channels you have paid for and which ones you have not.This also tells them that you are up to date on payments and have not cancelled service.If you have a DirecTV dish, but no longer wish to use their service for whatever reason, you will need to buy new equipment.There are deals out there to make this process a little less painful on your pocket book.Another thing to keep in mind is that both satellite providers offer the same types of packages for around the same cost.Often one company has different channels.
The Difference With Cable vs. Satellite TV
You might be wondering what difference there is in cable vs. satellite TV. You might think it is just the way you receive the signal and in large that part it is. There are other differences as well. Let us look at a few of those differences below.
Cable vs. Satellite TV can often seem like a hard question to answer. Cable television is provided by a coaxial cable. This cable actually runs a great distance to reach your television. It is very easy for your cable signal to waver in and out because of this coaxial cable. Interference can be great if there is a storm and it knocks the lines down or if someone is working on the road and accidentally hits the wires in the ground. This is not to say cable is a bad choice. Cable also can be digital, which gives you are better, clearer quality signal than regular TV. You also have to have a cable box if you have digital cable. The cost of cable for channels you receive is usually a little bit more than satellite TV especially if you want to add movie channels.
When considering Cable vs. Satellite TV, you need to consider how you receive the signal; you actually receive an uninterrupted signal from the satellite when you have a satellite dish. You do have to have a receiver and it takes a little bit to get the satellite oriented on the signal, but you only have to worry about the coaxial cable going from the receiver to the television, so the signal is usually clearer on satellite. In addition, the satellite is digital as long as you have a television that receives the digital signal you will be able to receive a digital picture.
Sprint Bolsters Industry-Leading Blackberry Portfolio with Addition of the BlackBerry Curve 8330
Operating on the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network, the BlackBerry Curve 8330 is the smallest BlackBerry smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard and supports exclusive multimedia content via Sprint Music Store and Sprint TV
The BlackBerry Curve 8330 is the smallest BlackBerry smartphone with a full QWERTY keyboard and strikes an attractive balance between functionality, design and usability, giving users access to phone, personal and corporate email, contacts, calendar, tasks, camera, multimedia content, GPS navigation, enhanced Web browsing and other capabilities. Whether customers are interested in advanced capabilities for personal or professional use, the BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone delivers innovative features including a two megapixel camera with video recording*, advanced media player for music, videos and photos, 3.5mm headphone jack, Bluetooth with support for stereo headsets and car kits, microSD/SDHC card slot for expandable memory (8 GB memory cards are available today), voice-activated dialing, voice notes recorder and the ability to be used as a modem with a laptop. Customers can also take advantage of exclusive Sprint services like**:
Sprint Navigation - As the first carrier to have offered a GPS-enabled BlackBerry smartphone, Sprint continues this innovation with the addition of Sprint Navigation, which delivers voice-guided and on-screen turn-by-turn GPS-enabled driving directions, 3-D moving maps similar to an in-car navigation system or personal navigation device, as well as more than 10 million local listings and real-time intelligent traffic alerts with one-click rerouting, anywhere on the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network.
“Powerful core organizational capabilities, sleek and attractive form factors, exclusive multimedia content, flexible international service options and industry-leading push-to-talk service are combined factors that give Sprint one of the most attractive BlackBerry smartphone portfolios in the industry,” said Danny Bowman, vice president of customer equipment for Sprint. “The addition of the BlackBerry Curve 8330 to our lineup gives our customers access to information now, with no compromises.”
“The BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone offers a unique blend of functionality, design and usability that hits a real sweet spot for both personal and professional use,” said Mark Guibert, Vice President, Corporate Marketing at Research In Motion. “It’s as adept at keeping people productive at work as it is with helping them stay connected to friends or entertained and informed with Sprint’s music, video and navigation services.”
The Sprint Difference
Sprint provides true value for its BlackBerry customers with several industry differentiating areas:
– BlackBerry(R) Pearl(TM) 8130 smartphone - includes support for the largest range of exclusive Sprint content including Sprint TV, Sprint Music Store and Sprint Navigation.
– BlackBerry(R) 8830 World Edition smartphone - equipped with international voice and data roaming capabilities offered by Sprint, as well as an unlocked SIM card slot for voice and data services. Customers can sign up for competitive international roaming service plans directly from Sprint or take advantage of service from local providers in other countries.
– BlackBerry(R) 7100i smartphone - equipped with Nextel Direct Connect(R), the industry’s largest and fastest push-to-talk service, allowing instant, efficient and economical means to communicate across the nation and in and between six international locations: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico and Peru.
Network Strength:
Customers who use BlackBerry smartphones from Sprint and subscribe to national calling plans, can make voice calls (with no additional roaming charges) in more places. Sprint provides the largest voice calling area, reaching more than 299 million people in the U.S., Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam. These same customers receive unbeatable value for data services as well. The Sprint Mobile Broadband Network (inclusive of data roaming) reaches more than 234 million people, 13,453 cities and 1,321 airports.
Sprint offers BlackBerry users the convenience of instant push-to-talk communication on the world’s largest push-to-talk network and largest community of users. With Nextel, BlackBerry smartphone users can connect coast-to-coast and country-to-country in under a second with anyone from the world’s largest community of push-to-talk users. The Nextel National Network continues to operate at best-ever status with internal metrics showing double-digit percent improvement year-over-year.
Simply Everything Pricing:
Regardless of whether Sprint customers are using their BlackBerry smartphones with a BlackBerry(R) Enterprise Server or with BlackBerry(R) Internet Service, they can receive great value with Sprint’s new Simply Everything pricing plan. For a flat rate of $99.99 per month the Simply Everything plan offers BlackBerry Internet Service customers unlimited voice and data. Pricing complexity and concerns about overage charges are virtually eliminated, letting customers think more about how they can use their wireless device for work and play, and less about their bill. BlackBerry Enterprise Server users can subscribe to the same plan and receive access to their corporate email, calendar, contacts and firewall protection for an additional $20 per month.
BlackBerry Curve Pricing and Availability
The BlackBerry Curve 8330 smartphone will be available later this month online at http://www.sprint.com, through Sprint Telesales, Sprint business sales channels and retail locations for as low as $179.99 with a two-year service agreement, a $170 instant savings credit and $100 mail-in-rebate.
Rising electricity prices and last summer’s rolling blackouts in California have focused fresh attention on nuclear power’s key role in keeping America’s lights on. Today 103 nuclear plants crank out a fifth of the nation’s total electrical output. And despite residual public misgivings over Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, the industry has learned its lessons and established a solid safety record during the past decade. Meanwhile the efficiency and reliability of nuclear plants have climbed to record levels. Now with the ongoing debate about reducing greenhouse gases to avoid the potential onset of global warming, more people are recognizing that nuclear reactors produce electricity without discharging into the air carbon dioxide or pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and smog-causing sulfur compounds. The world demand for energy is projected to rise by about 50 percent by 2030 and to nearly double by 2050. Clearly, the time seems right to reconsider the future of nuclear power.
No new nuclear plant has been ordered in the U.S. since 1978, nor has a plant been finished since 1995. Resumption of large-scale nuclear plant construction requires that challenging questions be addressed regarding the achievement of economic viability, improved operating safety, efficient waste management and resource utilization, as well as weapons nonproliferation, all of which are influenced by the design of the nuclear reactor system that is chosen.
Designers of new nuclear systems are adopting novel approaches in the attempt to attain success. First, they are embracing a system-wide view of the nuclear fuel cycle that encompasses all steps from the mining of ore through the management of wastes and the development of the infrastructure to support these steps. Second, they are evaluating systems in terms of their sustainability—meeting present needs without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to prosper. It is a strategy that helps to illuminate the relation between energy supplies and the needs of the environment and society. This emphasis on sustainability can lead to the development of nuclear energy–derived products besides electrical power, such as hydrogen fuel for transportation. It also promotes the exploration of alternative reactor designs and nuclear fuel–recycling processes that could yield significant reductions in waste while recovering more of the energy contained in uranium.
We believe that wide-scale deployment of nuclear power technology offers substantial advantages over other energy sources yet faces significant challenges regarding the best way to make it fit into the future.
Future Nuclear Systems In Response to the difficulties in achieving sustainability, a sufficiently high degree of safety and a competitive economic basis for nuclear power, the U.S. Department of Energy initiated the Generation IV program in 1999. Generation IV refers to the broad division of nuclear designs into four categories: early prototype reactors (Generation I), the large central station nuclear power plants of today (Generation II), the advanced lightwater reactors and other systems with inherent safety features that have been designed in recent years (Generation III), and the next-generation systems to be designed and built two decades from now (Generation IV) [see box on opposite page]. By 2000 international interest in the Generation IV project had resulted in a nine-country coalition that includes Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, the U.K. and the U.S. Participating states are mapping out and collaborating on the research and development of future nuclear energy systems.
Although the Generation IV program is exploring a wide variety of new systems, a few examples serve to illustrate the broad approaches reactor designers are developing to meet their objectives. These next-generation systems are based on three general classes of reactors: gascooled, water-cooled and fast-spectrum.
Gas-Cooled Reactors Nuclear reactors using gas (usually helium or carbon dioxide) as a core coolant have been built and operated successfully but have achieved only limited use to date. An especially exciting prospect known as the pebble-bed modular reactor possesses many design features that go a good way toward meeting Generation IV goals. This gascooled system is being pursued by engineering teams in China, South Africa and the U.S. South Africa plans to build a full-size prototype and begin operation in 2006.
The pebble-bed reactor design is based on a fundamental fuel element, called a pebble, that is a billiard-ball-size graphite sphere containing about 15,000 uranium oxide particles with the diameter of poppy seeds. The evenly dispersed particles each have several high-density coatings on them. One of the layers, composed of tough silicon carbide ceramic, serves as a pressure vessel to retain the products of nuclear fission during reactor operation or accidental temperature excursions. About 330,000 of these spherical fuel pebbles are placed into a metal vessel surrounded by a shield of graphite blocks. In addition, as many as 100,000 unfueled graphite pebbles are loaded into the core to shape its power and temperature distribution by spacing out the hot fuel pebbles.
