Slashdot Mirror

... IEEE members should read their own publication more

For one thing, you'll notice that the conspiracy nuts are, well, always wrong.

That's only because when a conspiracy is proven its no longer considered to be in the realm of "conspiracy nuts."

I'm sure there are hundreds like that, I can think of a few off the top of my head - COINTELPRO, Watergate, Iran-Contra. Tuskegee experiments, Greek Wiretapping Scandal.

ECHELON:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_(signals_intelligence)

For one thing, you'll notice that the conspiracy nuts are, well, always wrong.

That's only because when a conspiracy is proven its no longer considered to be in the realm of "conspiracy nuts."

I'm sure there are hundreds like that, I can think of a few off the top of my head - COINTELPRO, Watergate, Iran-Contra. Tuskegee experiments, Greek Wiretapping Scandal.

Aircraft electrics have been WiFi/phone safe for decades, if they weren't then every lightning bolt with 100 miles would be a threat.

The reasons for not allowing those things aren't to do with safety.

Not entirely true. There are documented cases where cellphones have caused navigational systems to lose lock - notably a Samsung phone caused the onboard GPS to lose lock, amongst other things. The following article has some research the IEEE did a few years ago to that effect. It's a bit dated given how far technology's advanced, but you can be sure the problem is still present given how many cellphones and how many models there are.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/unsafe-at-any-airspeed

The more practical matter was to prevent a planeload of cellphones from DoS'ing the cellphone network because each cellphone can suddenly see towers across several states. Yes, the majority of the signal is aimed downwards, but short of parabolic dish antennas, all antennas have unwanted sidelobe radiation. Heck, I'm sure some terrorist group may be contemplating some illegally amplified cellphones flying across a city to effectively kill the cell network in the city as well as the surrounding region (and maybe even states).

And light aircraft carry cellphones all the time. When you file a flight plan the briefer often asks if I'm carrying a cellphone. First, it may help in an emergency. Second, if you lose your radios or electrical system (common issue), you can still maintain communications with an airport tower (you're low enough that multiple towers isn't really an issue).

One other interference issue is the aviation band is smack dab in the middle where it's easy to have unintentional radiators. Inflight systems know to avoid running any bus between 118-140MHz or so (which is an issue when you have DDR RAM running at 133MHz (266DDR), or LCD pixel clocks often rise somewhere in that area).

IEEE Spectrum had a similar article last year. Check out the images for a little better understanding of the tradeoff. It's pretty clever stuff.

An IP and port# doesn't identify a MAC, and a MAC doesn't necessarily identify the hardware, and the hardware doesn't necessarily identify the user.

Save a copy of http://standards.ieee.org/regauth/oui/oui.txt, use the following command to change your MAC to a valid, but fake, address. This doesn't work with all network drivers out there..... my Atheros wifi card doesn't work if I try to change the MAC, but an RALink based USB wifi dongle does.

ifconfig eth0 down hw ether `cat oui.txt | grep \(base\ 16\) | sed 's/\(..\)/:\1/g' | cut -b2-9 | shuf | tail -1``dd if=/dev/urandom count=1 bs=$RANDOM 2> /dev/null | md5sum | sed 's/\(..\)/:\1/g' | cut -b1-9`

When it can play Flight of the Bumblebee

Waseda University has you covered.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/humanoids/this-robot-toots-its-own-flute

When it can play Flight of the Bumblebee

Waseda University has you covered.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/humanoids/this-robot-toots-its-own-flute

linky

There are plenty of techniques to create a one-time code that isn't linked to you personally and can't be traced back

Except all the proposals I have seen call for the unique key being generated by the government (and generally snail mailed to you). So you have no proof that such techniques have been used by the government.

But you can't honestly tell me you're so paranoid about this that you now vote with gloves on because they might trace the fingerprints on the ballot?

I don't wear gloves because I help count the votes so my fingerprints are on all the ballots!

All jokes aside, they don't know which ballot is yours. So they would have to scan the fingerprints on a substantial percentage of the ballots to find out and they would have a hard time doing that in secret. In contrast installing a small 'security' patch that records either the votes or matches the unique keys with your identity would be pretty easy. Much easier than bugging the phone of Greece's prime minister along with those of a hundred other high ranking officials for months without getting caught for instance.

Only problem there is the unique key needs to be disposed for you to remain anonymous... but I guess you could instruct people to do so after casting their vote (if they wish to remain anonymous).

Forcing the voters to take action for their vote to remain anonymous is equivalent to making their votes public. If they erased the proof that they voted right, then they will get get their knees broken all the same. Note that this is not just a theoretical issue, it has real world effects on votes as proven by Chile's switch to secret ballots in 1958.

First this:

you must make your argument in a coherent matter, not raising a red herring argument to any post you disagree with.

You said you saw my post all over this article, but obviously you didn't read them. If you had you would have read coherent arguments such as this one and this one

Okay now this:

I do believe sir, that you have missed the point of the grandparent post entirely.

I did not miss it at all. I have posted dealing with other articles the dangers of walled gardens. Here's a comment I wrote regarding Apple's walled garden for iPads and iPhones. Another comment I made regards broadband walled gardens. In other posts I brought up one method of increasing competition, local groups could do what was done for a Broadband Utopia. In northestern Utah a group of communities got together and built their own broadband infrastructure. Anybody that wants to can use the infrastructure to offer broadband net access, cable TV, and or phone service along with any other service that can use the infrastructure. I may support it but not if the federal government does it.

Falcon

The first person broadcasting on a specific frequency in a specific area has the right to do so. Anybody who comes after that and interferes has to adjust the frequency they broadcast on or stop broadcasting.

There would have to be court actions to resolve disputes

I know this is slashdot but if you had read the article I linked to you would have read where it said the courts were resolving the issue:
"For when interference on the same channel began to occur, the injured party took the airwave aggressors into court, and the courts were beginning to bring order out of the chaos by very successfully applying the common law theory of property rights--in very many ways similar to the libertarian theory--to this new technological area. In short, the courts were beginning to assign property rights in the airwaves to their 'homesteading' users."

If someone were to start broadcasting in an area on a frequency someone else was already broadcasting on the first person was able to sue those who were interfering and win the right to continue while those interfering had to stop.

or an agency could be created to manage the spectrum and license parts of the spectrum to people to radiate, the licensing fees would go towards the cost of managing the spectrum.

So only those with large bank accounts were able to broadcast? There is no need for the artificial limit to who can broadcast. There is no spectrum scarcity, The End of Spectrum Scarcity. There actually was no scarcity when licenses were first required and with improvements in electronics more and more broadcasters were able to broadcast.

• The Case For Liberal Spectrum Licenses: A T Economic Perspective[pdf]
• Questioning the Scarcity of the Spectrum: The Structure of a Spectrum Revolution
• Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology)
• Optimal Abolition of FCC Spectrum Allocation[pdf]
  "Property Rights for Spectrum Markets"
  "Market allocation of radio spectrum was the policy recommendation of Coase (1959). Yet scholars who rst attempted to formulate the enabling mechanism of property rights in frequencies (Coase, Meckling, and Minasian, 1963; Levin, 1968; DeVany, Eckert, Meyers, O'Hara, and Scott, 1969; Minasian 1975) met with limited success. Experience illuminating how such markets would function was scarce. Today, however, data on spectrum rights regimes abound. One body of evidence comes from the U.S. experience with liberal licenses for cellular networks; another from countries that have adopted more general spectrum property regimes."
• The Wireless Craze, the Unlimited Bandwidth Myth, the Spectrum Auction Faux Pas, and the Punchline to Ronald Coase's "Big Joke": An Essay on Airwave Allocation Policy

The FCC needs to be redefined with a much clearer scope

No, the FCC needs to be abolished. It exists only to keep the mass media the mass media reducing competition. Put another way, it's centralized planning with the attending command and control mechanisms. There is no other reason for it to exist.

Falcon

in fact, any student of economic history knows that corporatism, monopolies, oligopolies are greater threats to capitalism than socialism or communism ever could be

the libertarian naivete that a free market of equals is a natural balance and that governments can only interfere in that is nonsense

Where did you get your education so that you know more about economics than Dr Milton Freidman who won the Nobel Prize in Economics?

the truth is that some players in the free market grow and begin to use their heft to suppress smaller players.

Maybe but that happens in other markets too, such as the mixed economy we have now. The large telecos and cablecos got the way they are not in a free market but because governments gave them monopolies. Nearly every large business got there with government assistance.

the way to fight that is to have a government with strong regulatory powers to enforce equality amongst 800 pound gorillas and tiny players. you want to be taxed to do this

No, the way to end it, the 800lb gorilla beating up the tiny players, is by allowing a free market not by granting monopolies.

you want the "bureaucracy" that does this

Again no, a free market needs no bureaucracy. At it needs are the courts. Before first the Federal Radio Commission then it's replacement the Federal Communications Commission licensed the airwaves courts used common law to allow people to homestead the airwaves.

insomuch as the government is merely a tool of the big time players is the extent which corporate dollars warp and infect and corrupt the government that is supposed to regulate them

That is precisely why the airwaves were licensed. Big broadcasters had trouble with the courts siding with those who started broadcasting on a given frequency in specific areas so they went to congress passing out money to buy congressional votes requiring licensing. They had the money to buy licenses while the neighborhood kids didn't. Oh, boo hoo the broadcasters claimed the airwaves were a scarcity, it wasn't true then and it's even less true today.

in other words, if you are a true believer in capitalism, you will lose your libertarian naivete and insist on a strong regulatory government to keep the marketplace healthy

Again no, it's precisely the opposite. The government created the problems we have today and more government won't solve it. What will solve it is a freer market, no government granted monopolies.

and you will recognize the greatest threat to capitalism is not the government, it is corporations and their corruption OF government

Which is why you want less government not more, the more government the more power corporations have. Say I, or you or someone else, runs a small lawn care and landscaping business in town. An 800lb gorilla comes to town but doesn't want to compeat with the local businesses, what is it going to do? Ah, "we've pay off the local government to require testing and licensing, that will reduce the competition."

Falcon

I read an article the other day about some villagers in a remote corner of Afghanistan. There was a large generator which had been given to them years before which was lying unused. Apparently they had used the gas that came with it, calculated that it would cost 20 cents per house per night to run it, and never fired it up again. They couldn't afford the gas, which anyway would have been difficult to transport. A donated solar panel installation, on the other hand, might actually do them some good.

The problem with this, solar panels, is that some sort of storage would be needed. Batteries require maintenance. Sure it's not hard but someone would have to do it.

Actually I support bringing solar power to more remote areas. I read an article in IEEE's Spectrum where people in south/southeast Asia built and put together small solar power systems, creating employment, then sold them to villagers. A villager with a work shop would be able to increase his/her income. Elsewhere I read how children could use lights to read thus increasing their education.

Perhaps serendipitously on the front page Spectrum has a link to the article Batteries That Go With the Flow "A new battery design promises to even out fluctuations in solar and wind power". RTFA though it will require more work.

Falcon

I read an article the other day about some villagers in a remote corner of Afghanistan. There was a large generator which had been given to them years before which was lying unused. Apparently they had used the gas that came with it, calculated that it would cost 20 cents per house per night to run it, and never fired it up again. They couldn't afford the gas, which anyway would have been difficult to transport. A donated solar panel installation, on the other hand, might actually do them some good.

The problem with this, solar panels, is that some sort of storage would be needed. Batteries require maintenance. Sure it's not hard but someone would have to do it.

Actually I support bringing solar power to more remote areas. I read an article in IEEE's Spectrum where people in south/southeast Asia built and put together small solar power systems, creating employment, then sold them to villagers. A villager with a work shop would be able to increase his/her income. Elsewhere I read how children could use lights to read thus increasing their education.

Perhaps serendipitously on the front page Spectrum has a link to the article Batteries That Go With the Flow "A new battery design promises to even out fluctuations in solar and wind power". RTFA though it will require more work.

Falcon

The initial flight ban decision was based on a computer model (which turned out to be flawed) and not based on facts.

From another article on http://spectrum.ieee.org/riskfactor/computing/software/flawed-computer-models-add-to-european-flight-delays:

The FT says that the models used were "based on incomplete science and limited data, according to European officials. As a result, they may have over-stated the risks to the public, needlessly grounding flights and damaging businesses."

If we base our decisions on computer models, and not on actual data gathered by humans (or other methods), then we have gone off the deep end.

The "real danger" isn't youthful indiscretion. It's profiling in a giant model by Government AND commercial interests in ways that will forever affect your ability to get a job, find insurance or even your ability to freely travel.

How do you build a panopticon, a prison for a society in which real power lies outside of government, in the hands of private commercial and financial interests? Honeypots. Google and Facebook and whatnot. Everyone is so anti-Government, like the stupid Reaganites. That's like being against a small-town cop. He's got the gun, alright - but he works for the man in the big house, at the edge of town. Hired. The enemy isn't Barney Fife - It's Old Man Potter.

How does this relate to Facebook?

You present a real, but minor threat, versus the real evil Facebook represent - along with the darkest nightmare of Google.

Remember, Watson, at IBM supplied tabulation equipment for improving the German Census in the 1930's. Technology was welcomed, and was going to modernize, to improve every German life. Except for a minority or two, of 11 million...

Cypher: "All I see now is blonde, brunette, redhead."

Facebook has been gradually boosting its profile in Washington D.C. over the past year and is on the hunt for a second senior lobbyist to add to its office of four. Disclosures released a few days ago show that, on top of lobbying the usual suspects Internet companies reach out to like the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. senators and representatives, the fast-growing social network has also been busy deepening ties to government intelligence and homeland security agencies. ...
What's interesting about Facebook's lobbying in D.C. is what it spends money on despite its small size. It was the only consumer Internet company out of Google, Amazon, eBay, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple to reach out to intelligence agencies last year, according to lobbying disclosure forms. It has lobbied the Office of the Director of National Intelligence -- an umbrella office founded in the wake of Sept. 11 that synthesizes intelligence from 17 agencies including the CIA and advises the President -- for the last three quarters on privacy and federal cyber-security policy. It has reached out to the Defense Intelligence Agency too.

Well, Facebook has always been an "op" http://cryptogon.com/?p=13749

Now, combine those observations with the next two pieces of information:
Virginia Tech Is Building an Artificial America in a Supercomputer

As many as 163 variables, mostly drawn from the U.S. Census, come into play for each synthetic American. Called EpiSimdemics, the model almost perfectly matches the demographic attributes of groups with at least 1500 people, according to Keith Bisset, a senior research associate who works on the simulation's software. The software generates fake people to populate real communities and assigns each person characteristics such as age, education level, and occupation to mirror local statistics derived from the most recent national census. In accordance with the data, some individuals are clustered into families, while others live alone.

Every synthetic household is assigned a real street address, based on land-use information from Navteq, a digital-mapping company. Using data from a business directory, each employed individual is matched to a specific job within a reasonable commute from the person's home. Similarly, actual schools, supermarkets, and shopping centers identified through Navteq's database are also linked to households based on their proximity to the home. When an artificial American goes grocery shopping, the simulation algorithm assigns probabilities that

• Spacecraft subsystems must be tested to all of their requirements before launch (this would have helped Hubble Space Telescope, too).
• Keep engineering model and flight spares operational throughout the mission.
• Documentation of Spacecraft Hardware and testing.
  "It is important to keep proper documentation of all tests so this information is available when something goes wrong."
• Never intentionally throw away data in a deep space mission.
  Spacecraft systems need to have an appropriate level of reconfigurability in flight. "This anomaly would have been easy to solve if there has been even a modest amount of reconfigurability in the PSA."

Doppler Shift? What is this Doppler Shift thing you speak of? :-)

• Spacecraft subsystems must be tested to all of their requirements before launch (this would have helped Hubble Space Telescope, too).
• Keep engineering model and flight spares operational throughout the mission.
• Documentation of Spacecraft Hardware and testing.
  "It is important to keep proper documentation of all tests so this information is available when something goes wrong."
• Never intentionally throw away data in a deep space mission.
  Spacecraft systems need to have an appropriate level of reconfigurability in flight. "This anomaly would have been easy to solve if there has been even a modest amount of reconfigurability in the PSA."

Doppler Shift? What is this Doppler Shift thing you speak of? :-)

IEEE spectrum had a good article in march on display technologies:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/the-electronic-display-of-the-future/0

Go is simpler than checkers? Is that a joke? Have you played those two games? Go is on an entirely different plane of difficulty. It's more comparable to chess. In case you didn't know, checkers is solved.

• Assuming this story is correct. As described in IEEE Spectrum, Intrinsity is an unique company that produces technology capable of significantly boosting the performance of many ARM processors. Considering the ubiquity of ARM, this technology could've potentially benefited a large range of consumers; but, apparently, that benefit will, now, only fall on those purchasing Apple products.
• Apple's suit against HTC: This is an obvious ploy to impede if not completely halt the ascent of Android. Apple sues HTC for infringing on its questionable soft patents while refusing to pay Nokia for the use of its hard patents.
• E-book Price Increase: This is an instance of Apple using its virtual monolopy in the mind share if not the market share of mobile devices to hurt the consumer. Perhaps, previous e-book prices were artificially low; I won't argue that point. The fact remains that Apple's entry into the e-book business has resulted in higher prices for the consumer -- with one concrete instance being the 43% increase in NY Times subscriptions.
• Banning of Google Voice App: In additional to a multitude of other features, Google Voice allow users to make free domestic VOIP calls; so, the adverse affect to consumers of this rejection should be obvious. Furthermore, this isn't an isolated instance: Apple has a history of rejecting apps that compete against its products or those of its business partners.

I didn't know what one of these is until google helped.

The basic idea appears to be that you bounce a signal off the enemy radar array to jam it or generate false images in it, and use genetic algorithms to optimize the signal (a waveform based on a genetically controlled polynomial it seems) based on what it returns.
The fighter jet would include an "ECM Library" of algorithms from which the radar man and the genetic algorithms presumably can select functions to create new waveforms.

The way the article is written, it looks like fighter jets would also be somehow wirelessly hacking into enemy networks but I haven't seen anything in google about that. If there is anything like that, it would be cool if they could somehow "take over" enemy computing systems maybe via induced voltages somehow but the reality is probably more like hacking into a linksys router like some people have mentioned, i.e. war driving at Mach 1. You would have to be able to detect pretty sensitive return signals to know if you're having any effect and would seem like a pretty subtle mission for a fighter jet.

Military ECM concepts
Electronic Combat Systems

A paper
2
3
4
5

Basic concept

Development of successful electronic countermeasure (ECM) techniques against target track radars is a time-consuming and expensive process. Recently, Nunez et al. reported a genetic algorithm (GA) optimization method for ECM techniques generation; this paper outlines the current effort to implement the approach with an operational radar system and to establish a methodology for arbitrary ECM signal generation in a closed-loop system. While this effort employs GA, the method applies equally to other optimization techniques. After defining the GA fitness function for a generic range gate pull off (RGPO) technique, the ECM signal is implemented with a very fast digital arbitrary waveform generator. The RGPO signal is injected into the radar environment, and the tracking radar response is measured and scored for optimization. The method is suitable for more sophisticated ECM signals and will be studied in future work.

Improvement of ECM Techniques through Implementation of a Genetic Algorithm

Abstract : This research effort develops the necessary interfaces between the radar signal processing components and an optimization routine, such as genetic algorithms, to develop Electronic Countermeasure (ECM) waveforms under a Hardware-in-the-Loop (HILS) architecture. The various ECM waveforms are stored in an ECM library, where an operator selects the desired function to use with a particular system. This optimization works with modular components, compared to previous research that embedded a genetic algorithm into the Range Gate Pulloff (RGPO) waveform optimization loop, which can be interchanged based upon the operator's desired hardware/software testing setup. The ECM library's first entries contain the RGPO and Velocity Gate Pull-off (VGPO) signals, developed mathematically for multiple polynomial profiles representing realistic moving false targets. The Lab-Volt training system and jammer pod provided a validation medium for the developed RGPO and VGPO waveforms. These waveforms were optimized using a Simulink model of the Lab-Volt radar system and the MATLAB Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Direct Search toolbox, contained in Version 7.4 (R2007a), using a defined parameter set, specified for the RGPO

Or you'd just pay Chipworks to do it for you

If they can put back together an EEPROM from a data recorder from the Swissair 111 crash where the chip was partially destroyed, they should have no problem whatsoever taking apart a USB key fob to get the data out. Plus their prices for something like this are generally less than the prize that was offered.

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=00922915 ...or if not the Canadians, give it to the Australians:

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1363217.1363243

Or trojan the machine they plug it into and wait for it to be unlocked.

-- Terry

This article covers France's program quite well:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-wasteland

The big takeaway is that without breeder reactors, it doesn't make a great deal of sense. They do significantly reduce the volume of truly nasty waste that they need to manage (mostly by separating out the uranium, which is relatively simple to handle).

The reason it isn't working is not that they process is hard (they run safely), it is that they don't have a use for the plutonium (they do use some MOX in traditional reactors, but that produces even more waste...).

...the ones on the IEEE Spectrum article about the same topic

Wow, flashback from early 2008. Okay, firstly, "if" is not really an issue. It works fine. Also, not a very good article. There are a number of articles about Prof. Parviz's work at this point, most of which are much better. Try the UW News or IEEE Spectrum articles for starters (the first is a good summary, the second is more in-depth).

As to "if their research proves successful" - again, it works fine. The main issue right now is that the existing prototype is a low-budget / small-scale version...in short, it's at the "please insert more funding to continue" stage. As in, the only thing stopping them from building decently high-resolution wireless solar-powered contact lens displays right now is the need for more money to actually build the things. The know-how is pretty much all there.

I can look for you, but it would be on one of a half dozen drives sitting on my shelf.

I was surprised they took it out of public circulation. Now you have to pay for it, or be associated with an institute that has access of the above IEEE digital library.

You should check if you have a document delivery service at your college or university, since they tend to be able to find most anything.

In regards to your comment, divergence is only a problem for ray tracing due to branching with SIMD. But the upcoming GTX 300 is going to have a MIMD hardware architecture, and we will then enter the world of photorealism. There may be some issues for CUDA at first, but I gather OpenCL is more than sufficient for the task at hand.

Here are some good papers on the subject by NVidia:
http://www.tml.tkk.fi/~timo/publications/aila2009hpg_paper.pdf
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1413968

The second link requires access through a university network or personal account.

In regards to your last comment, I believe light fields are more significant for volumetric displays. The day I get to play with an interactive volumetric display is the day I die a happy man.

If you are interested in light fields, check out:
http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DDisplay/
http://scripts.mit.edu/~raskar/lightfields

The scrapped electric vehicles story is well-known and well-documented. That's what happens when fossil-fuel companies own shares in vehicle manufacturing companies.

And, the "100 million lines of code" quote never came from Toyota - it came from Any Chou at Coverity (an software and security analysis company) who got it from Robert N. Charette at IEEE Spectrum.

In the constant presence of a directional current, the iron might migrate. There are already migration problems in lead-free solder -- http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4607147. Depending on the joint and quality of work, your PC might someday wear out, and I am not talking about the fans or disc drives.

Frankly, that statistic doesn't make much sense. In the article it's just a BS number that shouldn't have been quoted by the hack writer and it isn't even referring to Toyota.

This car runs on code.

The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force frontline jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, scheduled to become operational in 2010, will require about 5.7 million lines of code to operate its onboard systems. And Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to be delivered to customers in 2010, requires about 6.5 million lines of software code to operate its avionics and onboard support systems.

These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, "it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code," says Manfred Broy, a professor of informatics at Technical University, Munich, and a leading expert on software in cars. All that software executes on 70 to 100 microprocessor-based electronic control units (ECUs) networked throughout the body of your car.

Here is another fun page: "Most IT experts agree that such failures occur far more often than they should. What's more, the failures are universally unprejudiced: they happen in every country; to large companies and small; in commercial, nonprofit, and governmental organizations; and without regard to status or reputation."

I only question why, when large projects are almost universally over-budget or fail altogether, we persist in being surprised and outraged every time? The simple fact is, we don't know how to do it, any more than we know how to land on mars; that is, we can do it, sometimes, but you better know going in it is likely to end in tears.

(In general, it seems to me that most of the problems in government have direct parallels in private industry because they flow from the same underlying cause; the unaffordability of medicare/medicaid corresponds to skyrocketing premiums in the private market; social security corresponds to slashing pensions and now even 401k matches in private industry. But private industry does hold a trump card - they can always cut their losses by tossing people aside and moving on, whereas government is the safety net.)

I didn't know that non-ionizing RF can burn. I'll have to educate myself a little more. Can you offer a nugget or two to send me in the right direction?

Here's a citation: "Heat Stress Due to R.F. Radiation", Mumford, W.W., Proceedings of the IEEE, Feb. 1969. You can find a nice little synopsis on page 371 here.

Now, then...can you cite ANY studies that support YOUR claim?

Citations, PLEASE?

I also fail to see where this Millions of Lines of code comes from.

IEEE.org.

The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force frontline jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, scheduled to become operational in 2010, will require about 5.7 million lines of code to operate its onboard systems. And Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to be delivered to customers in 2010, requires about 6.5 million lines of software code to operate its avionics and onboard support systems.

These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, "it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code," says Manfred Broy, a professor of informatics at Technical University, Munich, and a leading expert on software in cars. All that software executes on 70 to 100 microprocessor-based electronic control units (ECUs) networked throughout the body of your car.

And unlike most commercial aircraft, which have strict firewalls between critical avionic systems and the in-flight entertainment systems, there is more commingling of information between the electronic systems used to operate the car and those for entertaining the driver and passengers. According to a Wharton Business School article entitled "Car Trouble: Should We Recall the U.S. Auto Industry?," a few years ago, some Mercedes drivers found that their seats moved if they pushed a certain button; the problem was that the button was supposed to operate the navigation system.

Not to mention that there is a real chance this isn't being caused by floor-mats or sticky pedals at all and that it's the software that's causing this in the first place. My gut is to say that their patch is necessary for the same reason why the phone company uses a program whose job it is to go and find memory that is allocated but not being used and free that memory. It's because the system is so complicated that they don't know what's causing the problem and can't find the answer, so this patch acts as a stop-gap to at least cure the symptom if not the disease.

I think you'd have to be nuts not to install it.

I've seen the comment about a modern car having something like 100 million lines of code in articles before. Now, I am not in any way qualified to say that number is to large or to small. But as an embedded systems software developer, that seems like an INSANE amount of code.

Someone posted a link to this article that confirms it. I can't find the comment with the link; someone must have modded him down past my threshhold. But the article linked itself confirms that it is indeed an insane amount of code, insanely implimented.

The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force frontline jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, scheduled to become operational in 2010, will require about 5.7 million lines of code to operate its onboard systems. And Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to be delivered to customers in 2010, requires about 6.5 million lines of software code to operate its avionics and onboard support systems.

These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, "it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code," says Manfred Broy, a professor of informatics at Technical University, Munich, and a leading expert on software in cars. All that software executes on 70 to 100 microprocessor-based electronic control units (ECUs) networked throughout the body of your car.

It gets worse.

And unlike most commercial aircraft, which have strict firewalls between critical avionic systems and the in-flight entertainment systems, there is more commingling of information between the electronic systems used to operate the car and those for entertaining the driver and passengers. According to a Wharton Business School article entitled "Car Trouble: Should We Recall the U.S. Auto Industry?," a few years ago, some Mercedes drivers found that their seats moved if they pushed a certain button; the problem was that the button was supposed to operate the navigation system.

sadly, it appears to be true:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/advanced-cars/this-car-runs-on-code

There are other professional groups that have insurance programs.

For instance, the ACM has insurance programs, though I don't know much about the cost or coverage. The IEEE has a similar set of programs, though it does not look like they have a straight health insurance offering. If you are going on your own, it might help to start a formal business - you might be able to get a small employer program.

You will spend a fair amount on medical care for kids, even if you just do the normal preventive care. The cost of a whole-family plan will reflect that. If I had a young family now, I would seriously consider a high-deductible plan. You pay for most of your own care, but the insurance is there in the event that you have major expenses.

There are other professional groups that have insurance programs.

For instance, the ACM has insurance programs, though I don't know much about the cost or coverage. The IEEE has a similar set of programs, though it does not look like they have a straight health insurance offering. If you are going on your own, it might help to start a formal business - you might be able to get a small employer program.

You will spend a fair amount on medical care for kids, even if you just do the normal preventive care. The cost of a whole-family plan will reflect that. If I had a young family now, I would seriously consider a high-deductible plan. You pay for most of your own care, but the insurance is there in the event that you have major expenses.

Experience helps, but the real killer deal is experience backed by a CS/Eng. degree.

I was expecting something more like these, which use radioisotopes and ambient vibrations to generate power respectively.

Finally! A device that will actually get better performance when you Kick It!

I was expecting something more like these, which use radioisotopes and ambient vibrations to generate power respectively.

Or the IEEE WIE.

4% women engineers is not normal. I know, I married one, she dropped out of the profession not because of lack of capability or interest, but because of the lack of respect.

Graphene is still very much a lab technology which isn't anywhere near ready for commercial production of devices. It may turn out to replace Silicon one day, but guess what, people keep doing amazing shit with silicon because it's still the cheapest material system for fabrication.

Apologies to those without IEEE access, but here is a paper discussing a recent 150GHz Silicon CMOS amplifier: A 1.1V 150GHz amplifier with 8dB gain and +6dBm saturated output power in standard digital 65nm CMOS using dummy-prefilled microstrip lines. That's pretty awesome in my book. It's pushing the amplifier very close to fmax of the actual transistors, but it works and it's in a commercial silicon process.

There are always applications where we can do better systems with more expensive materials like GaAs, GaN, InP, Graphene, etc... but silicon is cheap and easily mass-produced, so lots of engineers work on pushing it to incredible performance.

> There's some kvetching in the NPR story's comments that it's not the first use of cave radios, but that seems to miss the point ..

It is a valid point - not the first ues. It does demonstrate skill for a sixteen-year-old to be ables to design and construpt the device. An amalgam of VLF radio and a digital device. Communication underground has always been a problem. Leaky lines are one such solution, either active or passive.

Parent is correct. The primary market of this kind of weapon is for military and law enforcement because there's a lot of fatalities/serious injuries caused by the bad guy grabbing the weapon from the police officer.

This tech/concept has been is more than a decade old and I used to see it get featured on Discovery Channel/National Geographic every so often for years now.

Here's a paper on it from way back in 1994.

Here's an article on it from WIRED back in 2002

If you Google around, you'll get a lot of results of press releases about similar products since 2000.

You've been watching too much CSI. I believe what they mean is that they can see if a large heat source exists behind a cement wall. Walls are very good insulators and *stop* heat. With an infrared camera, you can barely even see through a sheet of glass! It's a passive sensor, detecting the heat that the object gives off, and giving that temperature a color in the image. To get an idea of heat blocking capabilities, turn on your reflector space heater, which is a incredibly powerful IR source, shine it at a window, and go outside. Chances are, you wont be able to feel *anything*.

Currently, the only way to see through walls, which *is* possible, is to use THz (link 1, 2), Xray, and UWB. These are active devices that transmit and receive reflected signals, then construct and image.

And, before someone brings up that infrared is in the THz band, "Low frequency versions of terahertz waves are known as millimeter waves, and they behave much like radio waves. At higher frequencies, the terahertz waves straddle the border between radio and optical emissions." from space.com. From the IEEE paper, "(0.6 to 3 THz) offer a greater degree of penetration through architectural and textile materials", so they're using the looow range.

If you're worried about people seeing through your walls, maybe you should turn off your wifi! :-o

Look at the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (the leading journal for integrated circuit design), and compare the authorship of the papers in the January 2010 issue with that of, say, the January 1966 issue. The fraction of not just Chinese, but Asian names of all types, has dramatically increased, as has the fraction of papers from Asian institutions (being zero in 1966).

My university experience is similar, and the parent summed it up well: "The students from China tend to be very talented and are willing to work extremely hard." I, too, expect an explosion of quality research coming from China -- the combination of good academics and increasing disposable income (at the national level) from an improving economy will make it so.

Look at the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits (the leading journal for integrated circuit design), and compare the authorship of the papers in the January 2010 issue with that of, say, the January 1966 issue. The fraction of not just Chinese, but Asian names of all types, has dramatically increased, as has the fraction of papers from Asian institutions (being zero in 1966).

My university experience is similar, and the parent summed it up well: "The students from China tend to be very talented and are willing to work extremely hard." I, too, expect an explosion of quality research coming from China -- the combination of good academics and increasing disposable income (at the national level) from an improving economy will make it so.

How about getting around to inventing digital cash?

Look around the internet, or your cryptography textbooks, for Brand's Electronic Cash Scheme (or e-cash scheme).

If you can, have a look at this: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/9746/30738/01423662.pdf%3Farnumber%3D1423662&authDecision=-203

As best I know, the problem isn't that e-cash hasn't been invented. It's that it hasn't been innovated yet. That is, it hasn't been turned into a product or service or thing that regular people can and want to use.

Although, I heard someone chat about being able to store money on our (nation-specific) debit cards.

The purpose I heard was eliminating the delay when the terminals call up the bank and ask whether it should OK a transaction.

The card holder first runs a protocol between him and the bank to store money on the card. When the money is stored on the card, the card holder and the seller can then run a local protocol to transfer the e-cash to the seller, which the seller can then turn into real money (real as in "numbers in a computer") by talking to the bank some other time.

I don't know whether the talk was specifically about Brand's e-cash scheme, but it has the same communication structure (i.e. which pairs of people talk together at which relative point in time).

But as I said: I just heard it sort of passing by. But I think it would take involvement of the state to make changes to what is considered legal tender. And if e-cash isn't, how do you buy anything else than WoW loot (or "faceville" crops, or items from some other isolated virtual world) with it? How does it cross national borders?