$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Quiet Zone

Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by pmorici on Sunday May 22, 2016 @10:41AM (#11748748)

It sounds like it is smack in the middle of a large area where Broadcast TV, WiFi, and cellphones aren't allowed. Given the prevalence of those things in everyday life you wonder how that effects the properties value regardless of the location.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Q...

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by consto on Sunday May 22, 2016 @12:49PM (#11749268)

Broadcast TV can be replaced with cable, WiFi can be (mostly) replaced with a good ethernet network in the home - it would have to be properly wired and I doubt powerline would cut it.

However no cell phones. I'm guessing landlines and VoIP are popular.

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by aab0 on Sunday May 22, 2016 @01:02PM (#11749317)

Kids would go berserk in a setting like that, can you imagine? No Instagram, Snapchat, games, and on and on. Can smartphones even be plugged directly into an Ethernet socket? They only have USB ports AFAIK.

Any parent with kids >10yo who moves there with them will soon wish they had torn down the house and built a Faraday cage they can put Wifi into instead...

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by cfallin on Sunday May 22, 2016 @02:09PM (#11749586)

> Can smartphones even be plugged directly into an Ethernet socket?

Yup. I've done this with my Nexus 5. You need a USB OTG cable and a USB Ethernet adapter. Dorkiest thing ever, walking around the apartment trailing an Ethernet cable, but page-loads were pretty snappy, all right...

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by aab0 on Sunday May 22, 2016 @04:49PM (#11750227)

Neat. I should've guessed that there would be a USB adapter. Is it plug-and-play or does it require additional drivers?

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by cfallin on Sunday May 22, 2016 @05:19PM (#11750329)

I'm pretty sure it was plug-and-play. It's actually kind of cool how many USB peripherals Android natively supports -- keyboards, mice, flash drives, etc...

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by milkey_mouse on Sunday May 22, 2016 @06:05PM (#11750483)

Of course; under the hood it's just Linux. Though Google has replaced most of the userspace drivers and stuff are still the same good old Linux ones.

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by yompers888 on Monday May 23, 2016 @01:54PM (#11755551)

I lived in the NRQZ and had no knowledge of the fact until maybe a year ago, long after I left. Some of the commenters here are ridiculous; we had cell phones, wifi, microwaves, radios, and probably anything else people here have come up with. I'll grant that the cell service was never great, but I always figured that was more a function of living in a pretty rural place (town of 20k).

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by sehugg on Sunday May 22, 2016 @01:26PM (#11749409)

There is wifi at Snowshoe. I'm sure you could get away with home wifi if you kept it low-power. AT&T has even nerfed its network to allow limited cell phone usage. More: http://fusion.net/story/243321/wtf-wifi-in-the-green-bank-wv...

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by tlrobinson on Sunday May 22, 2016 @02:17PM (#11749612)

If you make your house a faraday cage would you be allowed to use WiFi?

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by ryanlol on Sunday May 22, 2016 @04:56PM (#11750256)

If you did it properly, there's no way they could catch you so in practice the answer is probably yes.

EDIT: Looks like anything goes if it doesn't cause unacceptable levels of noise http://fusion.net/story/243321/wtf-wifi-in-the-green-bank-wv...

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by gambiting on Sunday May 22, 2016 @04:14PM (#11750080)

Microwaves are not allowed, because for the fraction of a second between you opening the door and the generator switching off there is always a tiny leakage of microwave energy - and it has actually set off radars in sensitive areas in the past. So to answer your question - probably not.

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by walrus01 on Sunday May 22, 2016 @07:36PM (#11750775)

I don't know where you got this idea, the NRQZ encompasses a huge area and people most definitely do have microwave ovens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Radio_Q...

You think that nobody in a city the size of Harrisonburg VA has a microwave?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrisonburg,_Virginia

It's within a 1 mile radius of the radio astronomy dish that petrol engined cars (spark plugs) and emitters like microwaves are banned.

You can install licensed point to point microwave radio and VHF/UHF radio systems, etc in the NRQZ, you just need to go through a coordination process.

https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/gbt/interference-protect...

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by gambiting on Monday May 23, 2016 @02:22AM (#11752249)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-ov...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11748758

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by gambiting on Sunday May 22, 2016 @06:42PM (#11750606)

I really have no idea why I got downvoted couple times - what I said is perfectly true:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/05/microwave-ov...

Edit: and now downvotes on this post, despite containing nothing else but a link. Would anyone care to explain what is going on?

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by tlrobinson on Sunday May 22, 2016 @07:49PM (#11750830)

I can't speak to why people downvoted the first post (I upvoted it), but it's generally frowned upon to complain about people downvoting you.

> Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by avar on Sunday May 22, 2016 @06:22PM (#11750531)

So using a microwave but always using the timer or stop button is fine?

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Re:$1M will buy 122 acres in part of U.S. National Radio Qui... by gambiting on Sunday May 22, 2016 @06:42PM (#11750605)

Sure, but I guess one wouldn't be allowed in anyway.

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