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At least that is what members call IEEE.

From their web site.

The IEEE (Eye-triple-E) is a non-profit, technical professional association of more than 377,000 individual members in 150 countries. The full name is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., although the organization is most popularly known and referred to by the letters I-E-E-E.

I had an article on this awhile back ago (toasted like AlaskanUnderachiever's previous four AMD's), but with the site now gone, I can't seem to find it in either google or wayback.

Anyhow, I think it is important that even hardware move over to the open source world. There are three requirements for this to kick off:

An inexpensive system for creating them

Knowledge and understanding of the standards involved

A central repository for updating and dissemination

If a common public utility for creating wafers could come out at fair cost (say, atleast equal to a computer, estimate $800 or so) that would be a major step for the first part. If the group involved at the IEEE for processor standards could freely distribute some or all of the necessary information, similar to as PARC did with POSIX, that would assist in the second. Finally, we would need a FreshMeat equivelant for hardware designs.

Processors are only a beginning...solid state technology, drives and cards would come fast thereafter. Is it an emerging field or something that will remain in the hands of the elite few who actually know the difference between a PSU and an FPU? I can wait you people out...I've been waiting out for the creation of massively distributed Open Source Software before many of you were born!

I had an article on this awhile back ago (toasted like AlaskanUnderachiever's previous four AMD's), but with the site now gone, I can't seem to find it in either google or wayback.

Anyhow, I think it is important that even hardware move over to the open source world. There are three requirements for this to kick off:

An inexpensive system for creating them

Knowledge and understanding of the standards involved

A central repository for updating and dissemination

If a common public utility for creating wafers could come out at fair cost (say, atleast equal to a computer, estimate $800 or so) that would be a major step for the first part. If the group involved at the IEEE for processor standards could freely distribute some or all of the necessary information, similar to as PARC did with POSIX, that would assist in the second. Finally, we would need a FreshMeat equivelant for hardware designs.

Processors are only a beginning...solid state technology, drives and cards would come fast thereafter. Is it an emerging field or something that will remain in the hands of the elite few who actually know the difference between a PSU and an FPU? I can wait you people out...I've been waiting out for the creation of massively distributed Open Source Software before many of you were born!

While I realize that Americans are taught that nothing exists outside of the US's borders, I feel I should nitpick.

The US government may not be building or using nuclear power plants or technology or what-have-you, but other countries, such as Canada, are going full steam ahead, and have for a long time. Americans aren't the only ones who know how to make modern nuclear reactors. Just because your country is lagging behind doesn't mean everyone else is too.

--Dan

As you may know if you've been following recent IEC and IEEE standards (or if you've ever bothered to figure out exactly how large a terabyte is), what disk manufacturers call a terabyte and what this article calls a terabyte differ slightly.

When used in the standard way, the "tera" prefix means 1 * 10^12, so a terabyte would be 1 000 000 000 000 bytes. Unfortunately, computer systems don't use base 10 ("decimal"), they use base 2 ("binary"). When trying to express computer storage capacities, somebody noticed that the SI prefixes kilo, mega, giga, tera, and so on (meaning 10^3, 10^6, 10^9, 10^12, ...) were about the same as 2^10, 2^20, 2^30, 2^40, and so on, so used the terms as multiples of 1024 rather than the usual 1000. On the other hand, many hardware manufacturers (especially hard disk manufacturers) use these prefixes in the standard way to mean exactly multiples of 1000.

This discrepancy causes some confusion. For instance, if you could afford to purchase such a 2 terabyte hard disk, you might well be annoyed when your system tells you your disk is almost 200 gigabytes (2 * (2^40 - 10^12)) smaller than you thought it would be (most systems would report a 2 terabyte disk as a 1.8 terabyte disk).

The moral of the story is one of:

1. don't buy 2 terabyte hard disks (blame the hard disk manufacturers)
2. complain about it then continue the current ambiguity
3. use the standard terminology for binary units
   

Interestingly the Slashdot community seems to think it should be a combination of 1 and 2.

Hey! I honestly resent that remark. I have not one but two codes of ethics that I adhere to strictly. I know that the majority of programmers out there are only in it for the money, but I am not.

I hold myself as having more of a burden than almost any other profession, because let's face it: while a surgeon can maim one person at a time on the operating table, the nature of software makes it so that everything I do can affect the lives of hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions.

As for what I think of them, since I am a member of ACM and IEEE, I stand by them. This may sound a little idealistic; I believe I am just being realistic and trying to set an example for the rest of industry. And for those that say "good luck getting a job", think about a couple of things: 1) If enough people do it, it will work and 2) I work for the US government. One of the big things is that you have to be responsible with your client's (the military) information, or else you are fired and put on trial for treason. A bit ironic that the US government is leading the way in this area.

On a side note, I think it would be great if we could create an organization that functioned as both a union/lobbying group and one that certified people and held them to a higher standard of ethics and excellence. It might seem like it would be too hard for one group to cover so many goals, but think of the power that group would have if it worked: Want good software that doesn't violate people's rights? Then treat us with respect!

• Medicine is a field which requires certification. Writing code is not a profession in that sense. There is no body analagous to the American Medical Association or the IEEE that regulates best practices, standards,ethics. There is no journal of the American Coders Association
• Certification is a tricky business for technical, rapidly changing fields; any sysadmin aware of the SAGE Certification program should know about the long, hard road to determining what makes a certified sysadmin.
• Most coders don't even participate in the Association for Computer Machinery, the first computer professional organization.
• The low barriers to entry for coders make regualtion damn near impossible. It's a lot like the repeated attempts to unionize sex workers: there's always another eighteen year old waiting in the wings to take the work and do a miserable job. I have way more respect for the average sex worker than coders - competetion makes them good at what they do. Most coders get paid either way. But that's a different rant.
• Who determines the public good? This is ostensibly the work of the government, but occasionally falls to non-governmental organizations like the AMA. This is not a job for the self-righteous /. community. Is spyware harmful? I think so, but most people either aren't aware or are indifferent. This isn't a technocracy, which despite what some readers might think is a good thing - technical people can't govern any better than anyone else, and frequently do worse.

• Nice idea, but you can't get there from here.

  Some days it's horribly obvious that too many /. readers really don't know any serious computer professionals. These aren't new issues, but they've never been brought to the attention of this community.

Because most of the 'really well known' and yet APPROPRIATE standards bodies require you to be a member to submit or make changes to a proposed spec and it costs money to be a member.

Well, yes, that's probably true, but I think the hurdle is a bit lower than you would make it out to be.

I agree with the original question--the choice of the IETF seems a strange starting point. It would be nice to get them, but perhaps starting "smaller" would be easier.

For instance, there's the Audio Engineering Society, who have tons of published standards. Membership is $80. I'm betting Xiph could swing that.

Or there's the the IEEE, who charge a cool $132 per year.

Anyway, yeah they cost money, but come on, don't you think a hundred dollars US to get a standard published would be a decent investment? I imagine they could get the community to chip in. Hell, I'd kick in $10 if the standards body they joined said they had a chance of getting Ogg published as a standard.

adéu,
Mateu

The Ogg reply says that the only two standards bodies they know about are IETF and W3C. Well, what about IEEE? What about SMPTE? Those are technical bodies that deal with these kinds of standards all the time.

Goes back to 1884 (AIEE and IRE formed the basis of what is now the IEEE -- the two merged in the early 60s). There are Societies for almost every engineering discipline and chapters all over the world.

Just wanted to point out that the statement that there is no significant professional organization for engineers (i.e. the actual people -- not just the large companies with interests and deep pockets) is definitely not true. Of course, the IEEE is more technical than political in nature -- which, by the general content of your post, could be the reason you leave them out.

You can learn more at their website.

Learn the truth about IEEE!

They are located in Piscataway, New Jersey, on Hoes Lane!

Hoes Lane!

They are near the Busch Campus of Rutgers University!

Busch!

Hoes and Busch. Now we know what IEEE is really about.

I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again: From what I know, IEEE International as a whole tries to avoid getting involved with local politics. I can understand them trying to maintain a legal distance.

The United States branch of the IEEE, IEEE-USA, *does* get involved with local legal and politics. See their public policy section, which has a number of position statements.

In summary: If you want to know what IEEE International thinks about the DMCA, etc., you're in for a long wait. Look to see what the IEEE-USA branch is doing instead.

I guess the link to the IEEE IPR Office could be put to good use to let them know what you think about this move.

For the record the IEEE presents itself as an international organization, with chapter is many countries. The problem is that its headquarters are in the US and it is very much US centered, and run by a purely US management, with a US legal counsel. For exemple IEEE-USA was the only national chapter to voice their opinion (against!) on the extension of H1-B quotas, which might be detrimental to US engineers but probably not so much for foreigners. Oh, and it also gave an award to Microsoft for "Outstanding Contributions in Technology"...

I guess the link to the IEEE IPR Office could be put to good use to let them know what you think about this move.

For the record the IEEE presents itself as an international organization, with chapter is many countries. The problem is that its headquarters are in the US and it is very much US centered, and run by a purely US management, with a US legal counsel. For exemple IEEE-USA was the only national chapter to voice their opinion (against!) on the extension of H1-B quotas, which might be detrimental to US engineers but probably not so much for foreigners. Oh, and it also gave an award to Microsoft for "Outstanding Contributions in Technology"...

I guess the link to the IEEE IPR Office could be put to good use to let them know what you think about this move.

For the record the IEEE presents itself as an international organization, with chapter is many countries. The problem is that its headquarters are in the US and it is very much US centered, and run by a purely US management, with a US legal counsel. For exemple IEEE-USA was the only national chapter to voice their opinion (against!) on the extension of H1-B quotas, which might be detrimental to US engineers but probably not so much for foreigners. Oh, and it also gave an award to Microsoft for "Outstanding Contributions in Technology"...

If you download the PDF version of the form, open it in Acrobat Reader and choose Document Info, you'll see that this form was actually created back in October 24, 2001. Plus, the name of the form NewCRform101901.htm should also hint that it was done a pretty long time ago (the date is right there).

However I don't know whether the form was already up there all along, or perhaps the Newsforge submitter just spotted it recently and thought it was new.

Q.
What does IEEE stand for?

A.
The initials I-E-E-E represent the legal name of the IEEE, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. IEEE is pronounced "EYE triple E." The IEEE is a global technical professional society serving the public interest and members in electrical, electronics, computer, information & other technologies.

I is not for international. Personally I don't think that an institution which only accepts membership fees in $ and has no decent payment sheme for non-USians besides credit cards is hardly international.

As a body that tries to appear International without explicitly saying so, shouldn't they also adhere to the Icelandic Indecency Act of 1536 or the Samoan Code Against Sodomy as well as the Kansas Internet Cleanup Code?

Bzzzzzt. Wrong.

Microsoft would be providing a common 802.11 MAC implementation. IEEE 802.11 is well-documented fully-open standard that ANYONE can download and implement

If MS made their implemtation with windows-only quirks, they wouldn't interoperate with every single card already out there.

And we're talking several million WiFi devices easily.

Manufacurers would be *more* likely to release specs, because the hardware and thus the programming interface would be much simpler.

- Pizza

The IEEE Standards Association, home to the 802 family (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, etc.) and legions of others, has a more enlightened IP policy, IMHO, as described in their bylaws and operations manual. From the bylaws:

IEEE standards may include the known use of patent(s), including patent applications, provided the IEEE receives assurance from the patent holder or applicant with respect to patents essential for compliance with both mandatory and optional portions of the standard. This assurance shall be provided without coercion and prior to approval of the standard (or reaffirmation when a patent becomes known after initial approval of the standard). This assurance shall be a letter that is in the form of either

a) A general disclaimer to the effect that the patentee will not enforce any of its present or future patent(s) whose use would be required to implement the proposed IEEE standard against any person or entity using the patent(s) to comply with the standard or
b) A statement that a license will be made available without compensation or under reasonable rates, with reasonable terms and conditions that are demonstrably free of any unfair discrimination.

This assurance shall apply, at a minimum, from the date of the standard's approval to the date of the standard's withdrawal and is irrevocable during that period.

This seems to provide a good compromise; patented technology may get into a standard, but only after disclosure and subsequent approval of the standard by the organization. In addition, while I can't speak for the IEEE-SA as a whole, 802 voters vote as individuals--there are no "corporate votes." Individual consultants have the same voting power as a corporate VP: While the VP may spend corporate $$ to have a collection of subordinates attend enough meetings to become eligible voters, members of the EFF, or any other collection of people, could also attend and vote. While the 802 process isn't perfect, and abuses have been known to occur, this aspect of the IEEE standards process also works to get the best technical standard produced.

The IEEE Standards Association, home to the 802 family (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, etc.) and legions of others, has a more enlightened IP policy, IMHO, as described in their bylaws and operations manual. From the bylaws:

IEEE standards may include the known use of patent(s), including patent applications, provided the IEEE receives assurance from the patent holder or applicant with respect to patents essential for compliance with both mandatory and optional portions of the standard. This assurance shall be provided without coercion and prior to approval of the standard (or reaffirmation when a patent becomes known after initial approval of the standard). This assurance shall be a letter that is in the form of either

a) A general disclaimer to the effect that the patentee will not enforce any of its present or future patent(s) whose use would be required to implement the proposed IEEE standard against any person or entity using the patent(s) to comply with the standard or
b) A statement that a license will be made available without compensation or under reasonable rates, with reasonable terms and conditions that are demonstrably free of any unfair discrimination.

This assurance shall apply, at a minimum, from the date of the standard's approval to the date of the standard's withdrawal and is irrevocable during that period.

This seems to provide a good compromise; patented technology may get into a standard, but only after disclosure and subsequent approval of the standard by the organization. In addition, while I can't speak for the IEEE-SA as a whole, 802 voters vote as individuals--there are no "corporate votes." Individual consultants have the same voting power as a corporate VP: While the VP may spend corporate $$ to have a collection of subordinates attend enough meetings to become eligible voters, members of the EFF, or any other collection of people, could also attend and vote. While the 802 process isn't perfect, and abuses have been known to occur, this aspect of the IEEE standards process also works to get the best technical standard produced.

The IEEE Standards Association, home to the 802 family (Ethernet, Wi-Fi, etc.) and legions of others, has a more enlightened IP policy, IMHO, as described in their bylaws and operations manual. From the bylaws:

IEEE standards may include the known use of patent(s), including patent applications, provided the IEEE receives assurance from the patent holder or applicant with respect to patents essential for compliance with both mandatory and optional portions of the standard. This assurance shall be provided without coercion and prior to approval of the standard (or reaffirmation when a patent becomes known after initial approval of the standard). This assurance shall be a letter that is in the form of either

a) A general disclaimer to the effect that the patentee will not enforce any of its present or future patent(s) whose use would be required to implement the proposed IEEE standard against any person or entity using the patent(s) to comply with the standard or
b) A statement that a license will be made available without compensation or under reasonable rates, with reasonable terms and conditions that are demonstrably free of any unfair discrimination.

This assurance shall apply, at a minimum, from the date of the standard's approval to the date of the standard's withdrawal and is irrevocable during that period.

This seems to provide a good compromise; patented technology may get into a standard, but only after disclosure and subsequent approval of the standard by the organization. In addition, while I can't speak for the IEEE-SA as a whole, 802 voters vote as individuals--there are no "corporate votes." Individual consultants have the same voting power as a corporate VP: While the VP may spend corporate $$ to have a collection of subordinates attend enough meetings to become eligible voters, members of the EFF, or any other collection of people, could also attend and vote. While the 802 process isn't perfect, and abuses have been known to occur, this aspect of the IEEE standards process also works to get the best technical standard produced.

JPEG allows arbitrary headers; one such header is the EXIF header which most digital cameras will include. This includes stuff like date and time taken, focal length, etc. The problem is that since it's an
extension of JPEG rather than a mandatory part of the standard, any software is free to ignore the EXIF header, and neglect to preserve it when modifying the image. For example, take a JPEG from a digital camera, with date and time helpfully included in the EXIF header... run ImageMagick "mogrify" on it; perhaps to resize it or to change the JPEG compression ratio -- EXIF header disappears (you can use jhead to get around this.)

My understanding of JPEG2000 is that the standard specifies a header containing XML metadata. Evidence here.

I'm very keen on the concept. It makes sense that in a single (standard format) file I should be able to store a picture, technical details about it, free text annotation, etc. such that for example, a really simple bit of CGI could present it as an album.

On the other hand, the article also has some (thin) technical details:

For the technically inclined, this facility measures 6m x 6m x 5m; the eight channel system is based on a Texas instruments tms320c32 processor using a two tap filter and a circular buffer technique to implement the delayed version of the update algorithm. This allows easy algorithm implementation in software and significantly reduces computation time for a large number of channels a 16 - input, 8 - output. PC 16108 provides a 12-bit interface with the external equipment. This board contains three selectable levels of gain: 1,10,100.

Has anyone had any experience doing programming of this nature? Bear in mind that response time would have to be very low to cancel noise that you didn't predict (such as low-frequency hums, fan noise, etc).

NaN isn't just MatLab-speak - it's part of the IEEE 754 standard for floating point numbers, used for representing non-numeric values.

Not a troll, but why would you want to do 3d interlacing? AIUI (as I understand it), normal 2d interlacing was done to work around the limitations of phospher, TV scan rates, and bandwidth. The phospher needed to be scanned at 60 Hz (either there was no long-persistance phosper available so it would flicker, or long-persistance phospher was available and had a ghosting problem), but horizontal scan rates were limited to too few lines at 60 Hz.

With a new technology, and especially with all the cool stuff we can put into receivers today (full-frame buffers, image enhancement, MPEG decompression), it wouldn't make sense to be bound to a 1941 standard. (see also)

One is on the boosters used and the other is on the Shenzhou spaceship and other space projects

One is on the boosters used and the other is on the Shenzhou spaceship and other space projects

One is on the boosters used and the other is on the Shenzhou spaceship and other space projects

There is an interesting article in IEEE Spectrum magazine regarding a similar case.

People with no technical education often think they can participate sensibly in a technical enterprise. They often use an immense amount of energy hiding the fact that they cannot.

The acting performances by Academy Award winners are, literally, bland and unconvincing compared to the acting performances of managers trying to pretend that they can manage a business they don't understand.

Here is an article about that subject: An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists

802.3 is fixed ethernet, see this page ...

Try this link instead, as it actually works. (The "Preview" button, and the left mouse button, are your friends.)

(BTW, the top-level 802.x page has links to a lot of information about 802.x standards, including a page of links to pages for the working groups for each 802.x standard (I'm amused to find that the 802 standards committee appears to be supersititious - they say 802.13 wasn't used), as well as a link to the Get IEEE 802(TM) page from which you can download, for free, PDFs for 802.x standards that were published 6 or more months ago.

802.3 is fixed ethernet, see this page ...

Try this link instead, as it actually works. (The "Preview" button, and the left mouse button, are your friends.)

(BTW, the top-level 802.x page has links to a lot of information about 802.x standards, including a page of links to pages for the working groups for each 802.x standard (I'm amused to find that the 802 standards committee appears to be supersititious - they say 802.13 wasn't used), as well as a link to the Get IEEE 802(TM) page from which you can download, for free, PDFs for 802.x standards that were published 6 or more months ago.

802.3 is fixed ethernet, see this page ...

Try this link instead, as it actually works. (The "Preview" button, and the left mouse button, are your friends.)

(BTW, the top-level 802.x page has links to a lot of information about 802.x standards, including a page of links to pages for the working groups for each 802.x standard (I'm amused to find that the 802 standards committee appears to be supersititious - they say 802.13 wasn't used), as well as a link to the Get IEEE 802(TM) page from which you can download, for free, PDFs for 802.x standards that were published 6 or more months ago.

802.3 is fixed ethernet, see this page ...

Try this link instead, as it actually works. (The "Preview" button, and the left mouse button, are your friends.)

(BTW, the top-level 802.x page has links to a lot of information about 802.x standards, including a page of links to pages for the working groups for each 802.x standard (I'm amused to find that the 802 standards committee appears to be supersititious - they say 802.13 wasn't used), as well as a link to the Get IEEE 802(TM) page from which you can download, for free, PDFs for 802.x standards that were published 6 or more months ago.

I have three numbers for you, my friend:

• 44.1 kHz
• 16 bit
• 12 cm

I'm just pointing out that standards often become very well entrenched and do not evolve. So whatever technology the market gathers around this year may define what we have to look at for many years (if not decades) to come.

The article in this month's IEEE Spectrum magazine, experimentation with modular robotics, seems more worthy of the label "ground-breaking."

VHDL for Programmable Logic by Kevin Skahill is an oldie but goodie (ISBN 0201895730).
Peter Ashenden's The Designer's Guild to VHDL 2nd Edition (ISBN 1558606742) is also good...
Smiths... HDL Chip Design (ISBN 0965193438)is a good VHDL/Verilog language reference but many of the examples are not synthesizable...

use your IEEE discount! I think all of the books are available through http://shop.ieee.org

I see that currently that Wellington wireless speed is 11Mbps. This leads me to suspect that they are using the 802.11b standard, which is pretty widespread at this point (Airport, and numerous PC solutions). However, if they plan on going to 56 I wonder which one they will be using. 802.11a supports the much higher speed, but at a price of greatly reduced range. I guess it seems most likely that they will use one of the new standards, such 802.11g, info on which can be found here. This one runs in the 2.4GHz band, and is supposed to support 54Mbps. However, a final draft hasn't been approved.

Yes, of course is does, but that does not make POSIX a Microsoft funded standard. It's a standard that was developed purely to give a high level of interoperability between the various unixes from different vendors. It's also been around since the mid 80's and back then Microsoft didn't give a damn about being compatible with unix. And to go even further, it's worth noting that the name POSIX was suggested by the one and only RMS.

802.3ae, as the IEEE lovingly calls it, is backed by the 10GEA (10 Gbps Ethernet Alliance). The founding members of the 10GEA are small companies you might have heard of such as 3Com, Cisco, Intel, Nortel or Sun.

I think we're talking about two different things here. You are correct that MAC addresses will not propogate past a router, so the ISP will only ever see a single MAC address as long as you don't change your NAT hardware or configuration.

However, I read this part of the original post: The first six octets will id card / firewall / router / NAT box maker, as meaning that the ISP could capture the MAC address being used on their network segment (i.e. the NAT box's WAN interface), and then identify the vendor to whom the OUI is assigned (yes, I realize that the OUI is only 24 bits, but I'm assuming that the original poster got confused). For example, this useful application tells us that Linksys is assigned the OUIs 00-04-5A and 00-06-25, and D-Link is assigned 00-05-5D, 00-80-C8 and 00-50-BA (the last one may or may not be the same D-Link). Presumably, this could be used by the ISP to identify subscribers likely to be running a NATed LAN, as long as the NAT device isn't spoofing another MAC address.

Unfortunately (for the ISP), as has been noted below, a major problem with this method of identification is that at least some Cable router/NAT devices will spoof the MAC address of a device attached to the LAN interface. My NetGear RP114 does this by default, for example.

Actually, Ethernet is now being revised to provide power over two of Cat 5's four pairs. It's called 802.3af and you can find information about it here

Currently, Cisco is making wireless 802.11b hubs with Inline Power over the Ethernet cable. The wireless hub will need only one physical wire cable to provide both power and network connectivity.

I believe that main issue with GEthernet is that the FireWire protocol was meant to control devices and so does bus arbitration and such, and that the Ethernet protocol (with its CSMA/CD for dealing with collisions of packets, collisions being something you wouldn't want in FireWire) deals more with non-deterministic network access.

Now a token-based FireWire would be something else. Deterministic access that could scale. One of my favorite networking quotes is, "Ethernet works in practice, but not in theory"

http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/802.11.html

Most of the rest of the information around the 'net just paraphrases or simplifies the content from this document. Check this out for the real meat.

I agree, the currently available hardward description languages out there (nearly nothing but VHDL & Verilog) are sorely behind the curve. Unfortunately, you're not going to get the support of the big EDA vendors (Synopsys,Cadence,etc.) if you go with an academically developed language like the one you mentioned. There are new languages coming down the pipe, however. A new Verilog standard was approved last year, which makes a few steps in the right direction. Also, there has been a good bit of momentum behind some newer languages, such as Superlog from Co-Design Automation, which is still under NDA, but looks like it has promise. HDLs develop very slowly. Companies invest millions of dollars in EDA software that only support the big two languages, and nobody is willing to budge unless everybody moves at once (sounds familiar!)

It's called POSIX

The IEEE 802.3ah Ethernet in the First Mile Task Force Web site has stuff on various first-mile-Ethernet proposals; I don't think they've chosen any of the proposals (LRE, or any of the others) as the Official 802.3ah Standard yet.