Satellite Dishes

A top-secret government scientist who longed to watch Spanish bullfights and dirty movies so badly that he waged a 12-year battle with Baltimore officials to place a large satellite dish on his front lawn has lost his final appeal -- this time, to the U.S. Supreme Court.The court refused to hear the case of Leon Neufeld, a computer analyst at the National Security Agency who for years has argued that the city violated his First Amendment rights by stopping him from putting a 10-by-9-foot dish on his Mount Washington lawn.

For nearly 12 years, Leon Neufeld has been fighting for a piece of the sky, because somewhere up there are Spanish bullfighters and the women his dreams are made of.All he needs is the satellite dish that can pluck their images out of the air and bring them into his Mount Washington home, but the city of Baltimore is battling him all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.The dish, you see, would violate the city's "30-foot setback" ordinance prohibiting residents from putting most large objects on their front lawns, a rule aiming to preserve the beauty of Baltimore's open spaces.

Hughes Network Systems said yesterday that it has introduced a new line of home satellite systems, becoming the third company to sell the equipment needed to receive signals from the increasingly popular DirecTV and USSB direct broadcast satellite television services.The Germantown-based unit of Hughes Electronics Corp. joins RCA and Sony as authorized providers of the 18-inch satellite dishes and related equipment. Hughes Electronics also is the parent company of DirecTV.Hughes said its Insight DSS system will offer more than 200 channels of digital audio and video programming.

The plan is to divide up the sky, then have a different volunteer monitor each patch for radio broadcasts from distant planets as part of the search for alien life.After all, the federal government won't do it anymore. So Paul Shuch, a professor of electrical engineering, is persuading citizens around the country to turn their TV satellite dishes heavenward in search of cosmic company.His plan is to pick up part of the NASA project known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI.

It used to be Thursday night. But now it's Wednesday evening. That's when the bar scene in Fells Point starts getting hot. By Saturday night, man, it's smoking. A virtual cornucopia of co-ed camaraderie for all those who like their entertainment by the bottle.That's great for the bars. It's great for bar patrons looking for the most fun (as in "cheap beer") they can find in town. But it's not good for the people who actually live in Fells Point. Their neighborhood gets treated like some giant patio for every watering hole in the general vicinity.

Regarding your editorial of Aug. 3, "High Cost of Covenant Enforcement":In the case of the Columbia Association versus Darrick Estes, was it a covenant enforcement issue or simply enforcement to restrict satellite placements?Let's review the facts. I contracted with a firm that consistently advertised in the Columbia Flier that the disguised satellite dish meets all zoning and covenant regulations. I contacted the firm, which guaranteed covenant compliance and committed to assist for up to one year from installation should there be a problem.

TEHRAN -- For thousands of Iranians, the Oklahoma bombing was a cliffhanger mystery that was left hanging.A new law banning satellite dish TV antennas took effect two days after the bombing, just about the time of the first arrests."

TEHRAN, Iran -- After surviving U.S. economic sanctions, eight years of war with Iraq and international condemnation for its extremism, Iran's Islamic regime is confronting a challenge potentially greater than all others combined: the satellite dish.After all, it pits the "mullahcracy" against "Oprah" and "L.A. Law.""This is one battle the regime has no hope of winning," said a middle-aged woman addicted to mornings with "Oprah," afternoons with "Santa Barbara" and evenings with "Baywatch."

If you have a satellite TV dish, Bell Atlantic Corp. wants you to pay a tax on the programs you receive.The regional telephone company has written legislation, recently introduced in the General Assembly, that would let Maryland's counties and municipalities impose a 5 percent excise tax on any subscription-based video programming that competes with cable television.In the near future one of the providers of such programming will presumably be Bell Atlantic, which says it is proposing to voluntarily accept a tax on itself for the good of the community.

Vincent Mazza has a new "toy." He was the first on his block to get one. It's small, but he really, really likes it. Now his neighbors are getting them too.And that's grim news for the beleaguered cable television industry.The gizmo in the driveway of Mr. Mazza's Davidsonville home is a direct broadcast satellite (DBS) receiver -- the hottest new consumer electronics product to reach the marketplace since the VCR. With it, a viewer can bring in cable TV programs without paying a dime to the local cable TV monopoly.