Slashdot Mirror

mjasay writes "According to a recent analysis by IEEE, Microsoft's patent portfolio tops the industry in terms of overall quality of its patents. And while Microsoft came in second to IBM in The Patent Board's 2006 survey, its upcoming 2007 report has Microsoft besting IBM (and even its 2006 report had Microsoft #1 in terms of the "scientific strength" of its patent portfolio). All of which begs the question: Just where is all this innovation going? To Clippy? Consumers and business users don't buy patents. They buy products that make their lives easier or more productive, yet Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to turn its patent portfolio into much more than life support for its existing Office and Windows monopolies. In sum, if Microsoft is so innovative, why can't we get something better than the Zune?"

guddan writes "Running a live wire into a passenger jet's fuel tank seems like a bad idea on the face of it. Still, sensors that monitor the fuel tank have to run on electricity, so aircraft makers previously had little choice. But what if power could be delivered over optical fiber instead of copper wire, without fear of short circuits and sparks? In late May, the big laser and optics company JDS Uniphase Corp., in San Jose, Calif., bought a small Silicon Valley firm with the technology to do just that."

The IEEE spectrum site has up an article written by the author Robert N. Charette describing the 'empowerment of the individual to conduct war' through technology. In the piece, entitled Open-Source Warfare, Charette describes the cheap, inexpensive, but clever ways that militants are adapting to modern warfare. "As events are making painfully clear, [counterterrorism expert John Robb] says, warfare is being transformed from a closed, state-sponsored affair to one where the means and the know-how to do battle are readily found on the Internet and at your local RadioShack. This open global access to increasingly powerful technological tools, he says, is in effect allowing 'small groups to...declare war on nations.' Need a missile-guidance system? Buy yourself a Sony PlayStation 2. Need more capability? Just upgrade to a PS3."

einhverfr writes "According to an article in the IEEE Spectrun, the synergy between batteries and capacitors — two of the sturdiest and oldest components of electrical engineering — has been growing, to the point where ultracapacitors may soon be almost as indispensable to portable electricity as batteries are now. Some researchers expect to soon create capacitors capable of storing 50% as much energy as a lithium ion battery of the same size. Such capacitors could revolutionize many areas possibly from mobile computing (no worries about battery memory), electricity-powered vehicles, and more."

Geoffrey.landis writes "It was only a small news item four months ago: all three of the Russian computers that control the International Space Station failed shortly after the Space Shuttle brought up a new solar array. But why did they fail? James Oberg, writing in IEEE Spectrum, details the detective work that led to a diagnosis." The article has good insights into the role the ISS plays as a laboratory for US-Russian technology cooperation — something that is likely to be crucial in any manned Mars mission.

prostoalex writes "IEEE Spectrum looks at current trends in artificial technology to crack the ancient Chinese game of Go, which theoretically has 10^60 potential endings. Is conquering the game via exhaustive search of all possibilities possible? 'My gut feeling is that with some optimization a machine that can search a trillion positions per second would be enough to play Go at the very highest level. It would then be cheaper to build the machine out of FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) instead of the much more expensive and highly unwieldy full-custom chips. That way, university students could easily take on the challenge.'"

An anonymous reader notes an article up at IEEE Spectrum outlining the history and dangers of the accelerating tendency of music producers to increase the loudness and reduce the dynamic range of CDs. "The loudness war, what many audiophiles refer to as an assault on music (and ears), has been an open secret of the recording industry for nearly the past two decades and has garnered more attention in recent years as CDs have pushed the limits of loudness thanks to advances in digital technology. The 'war' refers to the competition among record companies to make louder and louder albums by compressing the dynamic range. But the loudness war could be doing more than simply pumping up the volume and angering aficionados — it could be responsible for halting technological advances in sound quality for years to come... From the mid 1980s to now, the average loudness of CDs increased by a factor of 10, and the peaks of songs are now one-tenth of what they used to be."

NaijaGuy writes "Facebook has purchased Parakey for an undisclosed sum. We have previously discussed how Facebook recently opened up development opportunities for third-party developers. With this acquisition some observers have noted that Facebook might be trying to become a Google alternative, by providing an application development platform based on Parakey's technology. Facebook's 'Web OS' has also been discussed, and the company has made headlines partly because of the fame of one of its founders. Blake Ross helped launch Firefox, and it was enthusiasm for helping less geeky users like his mom to thrive on the web that got him through the doors of Netscape at the age of 15. A recent interview charts how that same enthusiasm led him to start Parakey, 'a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do.'"

perbert writes "As seen in an interview in IEEE Spectrum: Qualcomm v. Broadcom. Amazon v. IBM. Apple v. seemingly everyone. The number of high-profile patent lawsuits in this country has reached a staggering level. Hoping to curtail the orgy of tech-industry litigation, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is experimenting with reforming the way patents are applied for and processed. Launched on 18 June 2007 was an Internet-based peer-review program whereby anyone (even you) can help to evaluate a number of software patent applications voluntarily submitted for public evaluation. The one-year pilot Peer-to-Patent program is a collaboration between the USPTO and New York Law School's Institute for Information Law and Policy, in New York City. The program's Web site allows users to weigh in on patent applications by researching, evaluating, submitting, and discussing prior art, which is any existing information, such as articles in technology journals and other patents, relevant to the applicant's claims."

newtronic clues us to an article in IEEE Spectrum by Jeff Hawkins (founder of Palm Computing), titled Why can't a computer be more like a brain? Hawkins brings us up to date with his latest endeavor, Numenta. He covers progress since his book On Intelligence and gives details on Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM), which is a platform for simulating neocortical activity. Programming HTMs is different — you essentially feed them sensory data. Numenta has created a framework and tools, free in a "research release," that allow anyone to build and program HTMs.

eldavojohn writes "IEEE Spectrum is running an article on the inventor of the motion sensor that the Wii uses. The microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gives Wii its core ability to sense motion in the controller. What's really interesting is where Benedetto Vigna wants to take this technology. He has plans to make the sensor smaller and tougher, and hope to place it inside of things like shoes, textiles, and medical devices to aid in data collection. He continues, 'Then I want to make a three-dimensional gyroscope, to measure rotation around three different axes. Today, such products are quite big, a cube 10 centimeters on a side. We want to do this in less than a 30-millimeter cube, to serve as an image stabilizer in cameras and to track a person's position in the intervals when he can't get a GPS signal.'"

Edis Krad writes "An CNN Money article previews the Hot Toys for 2007 from this past week's Toy Fair. The article is a great place to start looking through the hundreds of new products that were on display at the annual industry event. Among those featured in the article, I was particularly impressed with the Video Journal (blogging for kids?), the virtual bicycle (apparently, riding a real bicycle isn't cool enough anymore), and last but not least, the robotic parrot, that oddly reminds me of the replicant owl in Blade Runner. For more details on tech toys at the event, IEEE Spectrum has a rundown on the nerdier toys available. Artificial snow and a pre-assembled Mentos/Coke kit were two of that journalist's favorites. For different perspectives Forbes has a look at the toy business as it stands since last week, and Wired's Luddite column crabs that kids have too many techie toys nowadays. Dagnabit."

weibullguy dropped us a link from the IEEE's site. They've voted the CTO of the One Laptop Per Child project as a 'Dream Job 2007'. Held by Mary Lou Jepsen, a former CTO for Intel, the position entails world travel, speaking with heads of state, and dealing endlessly with the technological challenges of a project designed to change the world. In the article, she relates some of the details of her first task on the job - redesigning the OLPC's display. "According to Jepsen, the display her team eventually marshaled into existence requires, depending on the mode, only between 2 percent and 14 percent of a typical laptop display's power consumption. ... To save watts, the display can switch between color with the backlight on, in low light, and black-and-white with the backlight off, in sunlight. OLPC's engineers trimmed battery usage further by, among other things, adding memory to the timing-controller chip, which decides how often a display refreshes. That trick enables the display to update itself continually without using the CPU if nothing changes on the screen."

eldavojohn writes "As far as technologies go, there are clear winners and clear losers. This month's IEEE Spectrum issue contains an interesting list of winners and losers from 2006. Among the winners are a new radio technology, IP phone networks & memory technologies along with ethanol from sugarcane. Among the losers are tongue vision, LEDs in clothes, a flying car and ethanol from corn."

eldavojohn writes "As far as technologies go, there are clear winners and clear losers. This month's IEEE Spectrum issue contains an interesting list of winners and losers from 2006. Among the winners are a new radio technology, IP phone networks & memory technologies along with ethanol from sugarcane. Among the losers are tongue vision, LEDs in clothes, a flying car and ethanol from corn."

eldavojohn writes "As far as technologies go, there are clear winners and clear losers. This month's IEEE Spectrum issue contains an interesting list of winners and losers from 2006. Among the winners are a new radio technology, IP phone networks & memory technologies along with ethanol from sugarcane. Among the losers are tongue vision, LEDs in clothes, a flying car and ethanol from corn."

An anonymous reader writes "The Insomniacs is the cover article in the December issue of IEEE Spectrum, discussing developers ramping up to the PS3 hardware. The article features Insomniac Games, who developed the PS3 launch title Resistance: Fall of Man. Despite mixed reports in the press, the Insomniac folks are delighted to be working with Sony's technology, and describe the process of helping to make or break a console launch." From the article: "Despite the delays, there's something inside the PS3 that burnished Sony's reputation as a hardware company. The heart of the machine is the powerful new Cell Broadband Engine microprocessor. Developed over the last five years by Sony, IBM, and Toshiba on a reported budget of $400 million, the Cell is not just another chip: it is a giant leap beyond the current generation of computer processors into a nextgen muscle machine optimized for multimedia tasks."

prostoalex writes "IEEE Spectrum is running an article on Blake Ross, creator of Firefox, and his new project called Parakey, which will bridge the gap between Web and desktop operating system. From the article: 'As he describes it, from a user's point of view, Parakey is "a Web operating system that can do everything an OS can do." Translation: it makes it really easy to store your stuff and share it with the world. Most or all of Parakey will be open source, under a license similar to Firefox's. There are differences between the two projects, however. Although Ross plans to incorporate the talents and passions of the free-software community, he's building Parakey around a for-profit business model. And he's leading the charge with a simple battle cry: "One interface, not two!"'"

eldavojohn wonders: "In the October IEEE Spectrum magazine, I read an article on backyard windmills and their growing feasibility. With the lowest model's price tag, it's about $9,000 and lasts for around 100,000 kilowatt-hours (20 year life), which results in 9 cents per kilowatt-hour. Now, the article mentions that if the market takes off, that price will drop. However, I was wondering what price range the windmills would have to fall to (or the energy rates have to rise to) before I could consider this? Well, the price of the windmills in the article are out of my price range right now. I don't imagine many Americans have $8k-$11k laying around and the current month's rates for energy in my neighborhood are 2.2 cents/kWh for the first 800 kWh and 1.2 cents/kWh after. I was wondering what are your thoughts on being an early adopter of wind energy? Do you think that if enough people bought these windmills, the price per kWh could compete with the local power grid's? Will it ever?"

nanotrends writes "The IEEE Spectrum is running a piece entitled 'Moore's Law Meets Its Match', about the system-on-package (SOP) approach to technology. The (SOP) approach combines Integrated Circuits (ICs) with micrometer-scale thin-film versions of discrete components, and it embeds everything in a new type of package so small that eventually handhelds will become anything from multi-to megafunction devices. This integration is actually developing at a rate faster than Moore's law." From the article: "SOP technology represents a radically different approach to systems. It shrinks bulky circuit boards with their many components and makes them nearly disappear. In effect, SOP sets up a new law for system integration. It holds that as the components shrink and the boards all but disappear, the component density will double every year or so, and the number of system functions in an SOP package will increase in the same proportion."

Dino writes "There's a good article in the IEEE Spectrum, titled 'Death by DMCA', which talks about how whole classes of devices were eliminated, and how others won't even see the light of day as a result of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. One example is ReplayTV's TiVo-like devices which featured sharing capabilities, along with automatic ad skipping; the company was sued to bankruptcy, and the reincarnated device supported neither sharing nor ad skipping."

cheesedog writes "The IEEE Spectrum proposes a new type of patent that wouldn't require formal examination, would cost significantly less than traditional patents, would last only 4 years from date of first commercial product, and which wouldn't carry a presumption of validity. These 'limited patents' would be attractive to innovators in the fast-moving high-tech industry that can't wait 18-24 months for patent approval, and would help improve patent quality by populating the USPTO's prior-art database more efficiently. Additional commentary on this proposal is available."

Coryoth writes "When you're writing software for an air traffic control system, military avionics software, or an authentication system for the NSA, the delivered code can't afford to have bugs. Praxis High Integrity Systems, who were the feature of a recent IEEE article, write exactly that kind of software. In "Correctness by Construction: A Manifesto for High-Integrity Software" developers from Praxis discuss their development method, explaining how they manage such a low defect rate, and how they can still maintain very high developer productivity rates using a more agile development method than the rigid processes usually associated with high-integrity software development."

Rob the Bold writes "October IEEE Spectrum magazine (print and online) reports on worldwide developments in exoskeleton technology. Applications include mobility for the disabled, increased lifting power for cargo loaders and nurses, and faster running capability. Developments in the US, Europe and Asia are reviewed." From the article: "Today, in Japan and the United States, engineers are finally putting some practical exoskeletons through their paces outside of laboratories. But don't look for these remarkable new systems to bust bricks or spew lightning. The very first commercially available exoskeleton, scheduled to hit the market in Japan next month, is designed to help elderly and disabled people walk, climb stairs, and carry things around. Built by Cyberdyne Inc., in Tsukuba, Japan, this exoskeleton, called HAL-5, will cost about 1.5 million yen (around US $13 800)."

An anonymous reader writes "Development agreement takes shape during the Paris Air Show It's all but official--Russia and Europe will soon embark on a cooperative effort to build a next-generation manned space shuttle. Speaking at the Paris Air Show, in Le Bourget, France, in June, Russian space officials confirmed earlier reports from Moscow that their partners at the European Space Agency would join the Russian effort to build a new reusable orbiter, dubbed Kliper."

The IEEE Spectrum site has an article up discussing the engineering required to keep Norrath running. From the article: "The Death Star is a huge, warm, windowless room containing the rows and rows of servers that run Sony's online games. The whooshing of a massive air-conditioning system is so loud that conversation is almost impossible. A large steel cage surrounds more than 500 servers stacked 32 high in towering racks--and this is just one battalion, albeit the largest, in Sony's 1500-machine army of servers."

petertrog writes "The IEEE has a story showing how you can turn a cheap DVD player into something that sounds a whole lot more exotic. All you need is a small budget, a soldering iron and a desire to void your warranty."

orac2 writes "35 years ago today, the crew of the Apollo 13 mission splashed down in the Pacific, after a harrowing four days following an oxygen tank explosion aboard their spacecraft. If you've only seen the Ron Howard movie, IEEE Spectrum has an article about what really went on in mission control to save the crew, with interviews with Gene Kranz, etc,and including a previously unreported hack the lunar module controllers had to come up with in real-time just to turn on the LM."

babble123 writes "IEEE is thinking about providing everyone with free access to its publication database (which has saved many a grad student from a trip to the library). The problem is, where will they get the money to fund the journals if not from subscriptions? In this article, they discuss one proposed alternative, 'author-pays,' but they certainly aren't enthusiastic about it, and I don't blame them. And yet, the money has to come from somewhere. Any better ideas?"

babble123 writes "IEEE is thinking about providing everyone with free access to its publication database (which has saved many a grad student from a trip to the library). The problem is, where will they get the money to fund the journals if not from subscriptions? In this article, they discuss one proposed alternative, 'author-pays,' but they certainly aren't enthusiastic about it, and I don't blame them. And yet, the money has to come from somewhere. Any better ideas?"

Ant writes "A CommsDesign article reports that China walked out of a wireless standards meeting this week, accusing the International Organization for Standardization of favoring the IEEE's 802.11i ANSI-certified wireless LAN security scheme over its own controverisal proposal, EE Times has learned. The gambit came after China's Wireless Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI) security scheme was withdrawn and placed on a slower track by the ISO." From the article: "China initially agreed last year to refrain from making its WAPI security scheme mandatory for wireless LAN equipment in China. It then approached ISO with a fast-track submission in an effort to make WAPI an international security standard."

Anonymous Slashdotter writes "The IEEE Spectrum has a piece that discusses the proposed encryption scheme for the upcoming HD-DVD standard. 'The key to the spirit of compromise is an agreement that the AACS specification will allow consumers to move the data on an optical disc to the various devices they own, including video servers and portable video players, either directly or via a home network.' AACS will use a so-called strong key, the 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard approved by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology."

Frisky070802 writes "IEEE Spectrum has an interesting article on how to fix the U.S. patent system. It starts with an example of how broken the system is, with Smuckers suing a small company for crustless PB&J. It has a great overview of how the system has evolved and how much it favors the big patent holders, and suggests 3 specific fixes: 'create incentives and opportunities for parties to challenge the novelty and nonobviousness of an invention before the PTO grants a patent,' examine the important patents meticulously; don't waste effort on the unimportant ones that can be ousted early, and for examining prior art, use judges and special masters rather than uninformed juries."

TazMainiac writes "This months IEEE Spectrum is running an article on how a Swedish scientist discovered that the Titan probe Cassini had a communications flaw that would cause it to lose all data sent back from the Huygens lander as it plunges into Titan's atmosphere. The problem - Doppler effect. The fix: go read the article."

TazMainiac writes "This months IEEE Spectrum is running an article on how a Swedish scientist discovered that the Titan probe Cassini had a communications flaw that would cause it to lose all data sent back from the Huygens lander as it plunges into Titan's atmosphere. The problem - Doppler effect. The fix: go read the article."

nadamsieee writes "The good folks at IEEE Spectrum have a news brief about a newly invented method of creating microbatteries using an electrode that looks like a bed of nails. The method was created by a team led by Prof. Marc Madou of UC Irvine. IEEE Spectrum notes that 'according to the researchers, a battery using such an electrode can generate 78 percent more power than a stacked-plate microbattery of the same volume.'"

nadamsieee writes "The good folks at IEEE Spectrum have a news brief about a newly invented method of creating microbatteries using an electrode that looks like a bed of nails. The method was created by a team led by Prof. Marc Madou of UC Irvine. IEEE Spectrum notes that 'according to the researchers, a battery using such an electrode can generate 78 percent more power than a stacked-plate microbattery of the same volume.'"

nadamsieee writes "The good folks at IEEE Spectrum have a news brief about a newly invented method of creating microbatteries using an electrode that looks like a bed of nails. The method was created by a team led by Prof. Marc Madou of UC Irvine. IEEE Spectrum notes that 'according to the researchers, a battery using such an electrode can generate 78 percent more power than a stacked-plate microbattery of the same volume.'"

natural rah writes "A laboratory in India has developed a process for making diesel fuel from an inedible plant which grows in barren wastelands. Although biofuels are mass produced and used in USA and EU, they have been traditionally derived from edible oils like soy bean and rapeseed. Using edible oils to make fuels is evidently not an option in a country like India. This fuel is "carbon neutral" (at least theoretically), has potential to make good use of barren wastelands, is clean and sustainable. Read more here -- could you have a SUV and not put excess carbon into the air?"

An anonymous reader writes "IEEE Spectrum has an article on using radioactive material to create tiny batteries."

IEEEmember writes "The Swiss are claiming the world's first binding Internet vote in a national referendum. Voters were given lottery style scratch-off cards that allowed them to vote either by Internet, snail mail or in person. Internet votes can be cast from any computer accessing the elections site securely over the web. Electronic voting has been implemented to combat declining participation in elections. Stories from The Age, swissinfo and CBS available at Google News. The IEEE is calling attention to the current process for establishing standards for electronic voting. Project 1583 - Voting Equipment Standard and Project 1622 - Electronic Data Interchange are being developed by Standards Coordinating Committee 38 rather than being relegated to a single society to ensure the broad range of electronic voting issues can be addressed adequately. These standards are being written for use in the U.S. however some parties have shown an interest in extending them to other countries."

IEEEmember writes "The Swiss are claiming the world's first binding Internet vote in a national referendum. Voters were given lottery style scratch-off cards that allowed them to vote either by Internet, snail mail or in person. Internet votes can be cast from any computer accessing the elections site securely over the web. Electronic voting has been implemented to combat declining participation in elections. Stories from The Age, swissinfo and CBS available at Google News. The IEEE is calling attention to the current process for establishing standards for electronic voting. Project 1583 - Voting Equipment Standard and Project 1622 - Electronic Data Interchange are being developed by Standards Coordinating Committee 38 rather than being relegated to a single society to ensure the broad range of electronic voting issues can be addressed adequately. These standards are being written for use in the U.S. however some parties have shown an interest in extending them to other countries."

prostoalex writes "IEEE Spectrum magazine is running a feature article on the state of music and current digital formats. They point to an interesting phenomenon in the digital music world that Steve Jobs emphasized as well: for the first time in music history, the next big format was not about better quality (SACD and such) but about better portability (MP3). 'It was only five years ago that the music industry was facing a civil war over the next-generation disc-based music format -- the successor to the wildly successful CD. At that time, hardly anybody doubted that the music would be encoded optically on a round plastic disc the size of a CD.'"

DM_NeoFLeX writes "An article in the September 2004 IEEE spectrum raises some interesting ideas comparing aging in organic organisms to aging in Electronic/Electrical systems. From the article: "The [reliability theory] is so general it can be applied to understanding aging in living organisms...In the ways that we age and die, we are not so different from the machines we build.""

Roland Piquepaille writes "An international group of cosmologists, the Virgo Consortium, has realized the first simulation of the entire universe, starting 380,000 years after the Big Bang and going up to now. In 'Computing the Cosmos,' IEEE Spectrum writes that the scientists used a 4.2 teraflops system at the Max Planck Society's Computing Center in Garching, Germany, to do the computations. The whole universe was simulated by ten billion particles, each having a mass a billion times that of our sun. As it was necessary to compute the gravitational interactions between each of the ten billion mass points and all the others, a task that needed 60,000 years, the computer scientists devised a couple of tricks to reduce the amount of computations. And in June 2004, the first simulation of our universe was completed. The resulting data, which represents about 20 terabytes, will be available to everyone in the months to come, at least to people with a high-bandwidth connection. Read more here about the computing aspects of the simulation, but if you're interested by cosmology, the long original article is a must-read."

misterfusion writes "Looks like the IEEE is warming up to cold fusion with the latest story "Cold Fusion Back from the Dead". This has been a good year for this field with several leading science journals (Physics Today, MIT Technology Review, etc) contributing stories. Things are warming up and if science Research & Development funding can be stimulated with a positive DoE report (due soon), it might be an interesting rebirth."

elgatozorbas writes "The basic color elements of television have not changed much since 1954; a half-century after RCA introduced the first color set, the RGB (red, green and blue) system used then still prevails. But Israeli company Genoa Color Technologies has broken the RGB barrier by adding one to three primary colors such as yellow, cyan and magenta, thus expanding - from 55 to 95 percent - the coverage of the visible color gamut. The promised result of this multi-primary color (MPC) technology is a television picture that, with its truer, more vibrant color and brighter image, looks more like cinema than video. Also covered in IEEE Spectrum."

orac2 writes "The current issue of IEEE Spectrum Magazine is running a special report titled Sensor Nation, about the technology and social issues involved with the rising tide of ubiquitous surveillance and analysis. One of the articles is a short story by Vernor Vinge about what kind of future we could end up living in, titled Synthetic Serendipity. The story is actually adapted from the book Vinge is currently working on, called Rainbows End (and for the grammar nazis, that's right, there's no apostrophe at the end of 'Rainbows.') ObPlug: I'll be talking at The 5th HOPE in New York on Saturday at 4pm in Area B, and I'll bring along a few issues for any interested slashdotters."

orac2 writes "The current issue of IEEE Spectrum Magazine is running a special report titled Sensor Nation, about the technology and social issues involved with the rising tide of ubiquitous surveillance and analysis. One of the articles is a short story by Vernor Vinge about what kind of future we could end up living in, titled Synthetic Serendipity. The story is actually adapted from the book Vinge is currently working on, called Rainbows End (and for the grammar nazis, that's right, there's no apostrophe at the end of 'Rainbows.') ObPlug: I'll be talking at The 5th HOPE in New York on Saturday at 4pm in Area B, and I'll bring along a few issues for any interested slashdotters."

Dozix007 writes "IEEE has approved a new wireless security protocol dubbed 802.11i, intended to finally provide sufficient security for wireless connections that users don't need to rely on alternate security layers. The new specification works by using AES encryption in the transceiver itself, encrypting data directly at the level just above the actual radio pulses themselves. That makes it transparent for applications sending data through the radio, so legacy programs running on new 802.11i-compliant hardware will automatically get the benefits of the new protocol without the need for modification."