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There is something in her hand. And the object in her hand is...

An early model Siemens hearing aid. While they gave a great boost in hearing quality, they tended to have feedback whine issues. You may notice that the person's mouth doesn't move until right at the end. Likely she is reacting to a feedback, possibly caused by someone yelling at her to "GET OUT OF THE SHOT YOU OLD BAG!"

So despite all the hullaballo, it's just an ugly old lady with a hearing aid. Yeah, they had them then too.

This was released in 1924:

http://hearing.siemens.com/sg/10-about-us/01-our-history/milestones.jsp?year=1924

Seems like it could easily be that.

Siemens has a support and advisory page on Stuxnet, which is infecting their Simatic WinCC / PCS7 systems.

This has nothing to do with "default passwords". It's worse than that. The Windows-level part of the attack was signed code signed with a Microsoft-issued key. The signing keys involved has been revoked. US-CERT isn't saying who had them.

At the controller level, Siemens has issued a bulletin: Previously analyzed properties and the behavior of the virus in the software environment of the test system suggest that we are not dealing with the random development of one hacker, but with the product of a team of experts who must have IT expertise as well as specific know-how about industrial controls, their deployment in industrial production processes and corresponding engineering knowledge. ... The behavioral pattern of Stuxnet suggests that the virus is apparently only activated in plants with a specific configuration. It deliberately searches for a certain technical constellation with certain modules and certain program patterns which apply to a specific production process. This pattern can, for example, be localized by one specific data block and two code blocks. This means that Stuxnet is obviously targeting a specific process or a plant and not a particular brand or process technology and not the majority of industrial applications.

So this is an attack on a specific industrial plant. But whose? Neither Seimens nor US-CERT is saying.

This is cyber-warfare. Someone is trying to sabotage a specific plant somewhere.

SCADA systems are the type of things that control nuclear reactors, power generation, power distribution, water distribution, and many more.

For this reason the Siemens attack used a USB method, as typically SCADA systems are either heavily firewalled and/or air-gapped. Sneaker-net should be the only way to get into those networks when done right, and even then sneaker-net methods should be very restricted.

Siemens HMI/SCADA.

So looking at some of the linked info it appears that this is targeting a Siemens SIMATIC WinCC Database. It appears that the database uses a hardcoded username and password combination that end users are told not to change. I found some forum postings from people who made the mistake of changing the password only to have the software fail.

Server=.\WinCC;uid=WinCCConnect;pwd=2WSXcder (+1 for what appears to be a reasonably random looking password, -1 for being short, -1 for not including symbols, -100 for hardcoding it into the app and forcing all users to have the same exploitable entry point into their embedded database that this worm can use to read and inject code into the database)
https://www.automation.siemens.com/forum/guests/PostShow.aspx?PostID=16127&Language=en&PageIndex=2

Product being targeted:
http://www.automation.siemens.com/w2/automation-technology-distributed-control-system-simatic-pcs-7-1075.htm

Seems pretty clear that this was a targeted attack. (Launched by Competitor, former employee, etc)

So looking at some of the linked info it appears that this is targeting a Siemens SIMATIC WinCC Database. It appears that the database uses a hardcoded username and password combination that end users are told not to change. I found some forum postings from people who made the mistake of changing the password only to have the software fail.

Server=.\WinCC;uid=WinCCConnect;pwd=2WSXcder (+1 for what appears to be a reasonably random looking password, -1 for being short, -1 for not including symbols, -100 for hardcoding it into the app and forcing all users to have the same exploitable entry point into their embedded database that this worm can use to read and inject code into the database)
https://www.automation.siemens.com/forum/guests/PostShow.aspx?PostID=16127&Language=en&PageIndex=2

Product being targeted:
http://www.automation.siemens.com/w2/automation-technology-distributed-control-system-simatic-pcs-7-1075.htm

Seems pretty clear that this was a targeted attack. (Launched by Competitor, former employee, etc)

The internal combustion engines that currently exist are so much cleaner and more efficient than the powerplants that that currently exist that electric vehicles are an environmental nightmare.

You are completely and totally wrong. Internal combustion engines used in automobiles top out around 25% efficiency. Electric motors used in cars top out around 95% efficient, and they're even over 90% efficient when acting as a generator (during regenerative braking.)

We can talk again in 30 years, m'kay?

In thirty years, you might be right; we might be driving EVs.

But how efficient is the engine that was used to generate the electricity in the EV? You need to also take that into account. These folks say 31% on average, and Siemens reckons they can get 58% from a modern fossil fuel power plant.

So, an EV running on leccy from a modern power plant is more efficient (in terms of fossil fuel usage) than a regular car (and you have the bonus of all the emissions being in one place). But an EV running on leccy from an average fossil fuel plant is about equivalent or only marginally better (and you still have that bonus of collecting emissions in one place)

Million kilovolt transformers?

They're probably talking about the new (created within the last year by various manufacturers) 800-kV transformers (in other places 750kV is listed) that were made specifically for China's new electricity distribution projects. All prior transformer substations are rated somewhere south of 500kV.

That's a billion volts, into fantasy and beyond.

Well, first, these things are rated by their manufacturers at 800kV, which might be a conservative rating, for all we know they might be able to handle 1000kV right now, albeit with some risk, and second, since it won't be that big of a jump to go from 800kV to 1000kV (going from 500 to 800 was a relatively bigger jump), my response would have to be: "welcome to the future". :)

Here's a picture of one of them, made by Siemens. Those tiny figures you see in the bottom left of the picture aren't ants, they're humans! The thing is the size of a house!?!

I have been hearing about indium and platinum shortages from chicken littles for a couple of years now. In fact, there is 3 times more indium than silver in the Earth's crust and I haven't heard anyone shouting about a silver shortage - especially since digital camera's became popular. When the price goes high enough, more money will go into mining, extracting, and refining both minerals. And only solar cells, out of the currently common "sustainable" technologies, require these rare minerals.

The Indium Corp couldn't be biased.
It's an open market, so it must be true.
Back in 2006 this blogger noticed we use indium. Scroll down a bit.
The price is going up, but hey, copper prices sure fell.

I'm not worried. This just someone wanting some attention and web page hits.

(velocity^3) so at 55mph you could do 900mph we already have 46% effecent powerplants. And nothing is stopping us from hitting 50%. http://w1.siemens.com/innovation/en/news_events/ct_pressemitteilungen/index/e_research_news/2008/index/e_22_resnews_0814_2.htm

As a side note at highway speeds drafting can significantly increase fuel efficiency by moving to a computer controlled highway system we could increase average fuel economy above what simple drag calculations would suggest.

PS: I don't think you will see out highway system getting this good but saying it's breaking some laws of physics is a different argument.

Presumably a high power system could move solar power just as effectively. Given the growth curves of solar power in the US, we need to start building these lines for wind and solar now.

Current transmission losses are in the 7% range (averaged). Long haul lines are possible, but it doesn't seem any have been built that are ultra high capacity. From my perspective, yea, we may not be able to reach the far fringe consumers (Seattle, NYC) without a higher than average loss rate, but it can be done (coastal production could help offset this, tidal, wind, etc).

One of Picken's point is that this isn't the big bang solution. He says we need to get started somewhere and do something to 1) Just get the ball rolling and 2) Simply buy time for a complete solution. Waiting for a knee jerk reaction once oil hits $200 a barrel won't help.

If it's in AUTOCAD, then NASA needs to really get out of the 80's and into the 21st century. It's all NX5 and CATIA now a days.

As a Siemens Field Engineer I can confirm that Siemens MRI systems do run on Windows, they left SunOS back in the 90's for WindowsNT and have evolved up to Windows XP64. There have been challenges with windows running MRI systems yet the major benefit is that users can be productive very quickly since they are familiar with the GUI. Recently Siemens changed the OS on the image reconstruction computer from Windows to Suse Linux. The image reconstruction computer takes the raw digitized signals, up to 32 channels of 24bit data at 10M samples/sec from the scanner and crunches them to create your image. Previously we used Windows and it made little but no sense to continue since Linux is much more efficient, the image reconstruction computer is not interfaced by anyone it simply hands off the completed image to the Main Console computer.

Since your exam was research they usually take liberties to tweak the system which could make a bit unstable, your average hospital scanner is pretty well locked down and it clearly communicated to the techs that the intent of the scanner is to scan. Any extracurricular activities should not be done on the scanner, like web surfing, although a MRI scanner could have the capacity to browse the Internet it's just stupid considering the amount of lost revenue and patient care just because someone was to lazy to find another computer nearby to surf.

Updates have been a challenge as well, we could not have the system stop and do an update and reboot in the middle of your exam, it has fallen on Engineers to go onsite and do the update although we are moving to having the update downloaded and asked if it is o.k. to do during startup.

There have been rumors Linux may be running the MRI Scanner in the future, also I've seen some well made image review stations running Apple OS.

Yes MRI scanners have to close to the patient and in the middle of a magnetic field. Image quality is based on how even the magnetic field is made, the sound is actually the result of rapid changes in the magnetic field, which by the way is the same principle your average speaker works, a permanent magnet with a voice coil to make sound, the difference in MRI is we do not intend to make sound, just rapidly change the magnetic field to focus on the image slice. Siemens has made wider "tubes" in the Espree and Verio MRI scanners, the Espree is full power MRI 1.5T and the Verio is Ultra High Field 3T, which makes high quality images compared to regular open magnets. I'm a little biased but if you need a bigger magnet to be comfortable you should seek out the Siemens Espree or Verio. As for the running Windows on a MRI you are preaching to the choir here, for now it's a necessary evil.

As a Siemens Field Engineer I can confirm that Siemens MRI systems do run on Windows, they left SunOS back in the 90's for WindowsNT and have evolved up to Windows XP64. There have been challenges with windows running MRI systems yet the major benefit is that users can be productive very quickly since they are familiar with the GUI. Recently Siemens changed the OS on the image reconstruction computer from Windows to Suse Linux. The image reconstruction computer takes the raw digitized signals, up to 32 channels of 24bit data at 10M samples/sec from the scanner and crunches them to create your image. Previously we used Windows and it made little but no sense to continue since Linux is much more efficient, the image reconstruction computer is not interfaced by anyone it simply hands off the completed image to the Main Console computer.

Since your exam was research they usually take liberties to tweak the system which could make a bit unstable, your average hospital scanner is pretty well locked down and it clearly communicated to the techs that the intent of the scanner is to scan. Any extracurricular activities should not be done on the scanner, like web surfing, although a MRI scanner could have the capacity to browse the Internet it's just stupid considering the amount of lost revenue and patient care just because someone was to lazy to find another computer nearby to surf.

Updates have been a challenge as well, we could not have the system stop and do an update and reboot in the middle of your exam, it has fallen on Engineers to go onsite and do the update although we are moving to having the update downloaded and asked if it is o.k. to do during startup.

There have been rumors Linux may be running the MRI Scanner in the future, also I've seen some well made image review stations running Apple OS.

Yes MRI scanners have to close to the patient and in the middle of a magnetic field. Image quality is based on how even the magnetic field is made, the sound is actually the result of rapid changes in the magnetic field, which by the way is the same principle your average speaker works, a permanent magnet with a voice coil to make sound, the difference in MRI is we do not intend to make sound, just rapidly change the magnetic field to focus on the image slice. Siemens has made wider "tubes" in the Espree and Verio MRI scanners, the Espree is full power MRI 1.5T and the Verio is Ultra High Field 3T, which makes high quality images compared to regular open magnets. I'm a little biased but if you need a bigger magnet to be comfortable you should seek out the Siemens Espree or Verio. As for the running Windows on a MRI you are preaching to the choir here, for now it's a necessary evil.

I can tell you from experience that train controls do not run on windows. The external plug-in management does, as you mentioned, for convenience. But the actual locomotive control systems (there are 3 of them) are embedded systems.

I have worked at companies where manufacturing controls were Windows based. It used a program called WinCC. Worst idea ever! This was about the time the Sasser and Blaser worms were floating around. All of the machines in the offices started rebooting, so the plant manager calls the head of IT into a meeting and asks him if the worm can spread to the manufacturing computers. He informs the plant manager that the manufacturing computers are behind a separate firewall and they should be fine. The very moment after he said that the foreman walks into the meeting and informs us that all of the manufacturing computers just started rebooting themselves.
 
The company took pride in it's technology, but in an effort to stop the worm from spreading the IT department unplugged all switches and routers until they could patch every machine by hand. We couldn't do anything for a day, not even make a phone call because we used VoIP.

Posting AC for obvious reasons.

It's actually Siemans, a French company, that owns Westinghouse' name.

My next project is a field test of a XMPP based Single-Number-Service-System for Siemens phone system, the OpenScape 3.0. Seems that there is really some XMPP around right now.

This subject is actually quite up my alley. Siemens Medical Solutions are offering a combined proton and carbon therapy facility. They use a synchrotron based accelerator that can accelerate protons and carbon (and also oxygen). The accelerator part is made by the Danish company Danfysik - where I'm employed as an accelerator physicist - based on a heavily modified version of the Heidelberger Ionenstrahl-Therapie (HIT) facility.

Most proton therapy machines are cyclotron based, making them cheaper than synchrotron based accelerators. However, they cannot produce beams of different energies (corresponding to different penetration depths), and one has to use energy degraders to obtain lower energies, which unfortunately also degrades the beam quality (increases its emittance).

Being a physicist and not a medical doctor this is not my area of expertise, but as I see it carbon is increasingly interesting and believed more effective than protons because the mean free path for carbon is around the distance between the two DNA spirals increasing the likelihood of a double-strand break - almost certainly killing the cancer cell.

Yes, besides the plethora of stupid responses to your question, DC power transmission has a major advantage of not losing as much power into its surroundings when submerged underwater (long lines = high capacitance, which causes the AC power loss.)

Some reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC (Several more advantages listed under heading: 'Advantages of HVDC over AC transmission')
http://w1.siemens.com/en/whats_new/features/expert_feature_new_york.htm
http://www.electricalportal.co.uk/electrical_article292.html

PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) are the traditional way to solve the interface between software and hardware sensors. This is done in industrial computing and control all the time (Factories, manufacturing machines, robotics, etc). The sensors and actuators are connected to the Digital/Analog Inputs and Outputs of the PLC. The input signals are converted into variables (with ADC) that can be read like any other variables. The output variabels are converted back into the appropriate valtages and currents (0-10 VDC or 4-20mA). The I/O modules also do error, short circuit, wire break, etc. checks. Basically PLCs take out the hassle of having to build the hardware interface between the real world to the software.

Most of them are programmed in a graphical language called Ladder diagram (like relay logic dagrams in software). Some of the more advanced ones can be programmed in C or other 3rd generation languages. There is actually a standardised set of languages to program them, Structured Text is the one that is most C/Pascal/Basic like (see IEC 61131-3). There are libraries etc to support all the conventional control issues and yes you can build your own.
See companies like Siemens Automation and Drives http://www.siemens.com/, Rockwell Automation http://www.rockwellautomation.com/, Bernecker & Rainer Industrial Automation http://www.br-automation.com/, Schneider http://www.schneider-electric.com/ for more information.

Here: http://www.powergeneration.siemens.com/en/fuelcell s They are actually hydrocarbon-air fuel cells (or indeed a range of other suitable reductants). And they exist (I've held one in my hand).

Do you have any idea how much schedule 40 pipe it takes to get those calls to India and back?

A significant amount less than it would if you used sturdier schedule-80. (Hint: it's the thickness of the pipe wall.)

tube switches

You mean valves? The controls are orange if you buy that particular brand. To get blue, you would need to buy Siemens or JCI valves.

All M$ bashing aside (which is why I expect this was posted to Slashdot), the ECU is not completely in Microsoft's hands. The project is a colloboration between Microsoft and Siemens called MES - the latter of which have a great deal of expertise in ECUs.

I am quite surprised that so few other MP3 players support it. Some Sony-Ericcson phones do, as do Nokia, Motorola, Siemens and the Sony PSP.

Maybe the reason why Creative, iriver, Rio and others don't support AAC is because they are too busy supporting proprietary formats like WMA.

siemens makes almost everything.
to be more precise, siemens had a child company named kraftwerk union (kwu) which used to build lots and lots of nuclear powerplants. a couple of years ago though siemens sold kwu to a french nuclear reactor maker but afair kept the turbine making business.

ah, yes, here it is

p.s. i used to live in a town where kwu had one of their main sites.

The average coal plant produces 600 megawatts of electricity Link. The entire output of an Ovionics Solar Cell assemply plant is enough electricity to produce 30 megawatts a year if all solar cells are used simultaneously, in sunny weather, during the day Link. That means that you have to have 20 years worth of production from that plant to get enough solar cells to equal a coal plant. Wind is a little better with the largest onshore turbines producing 2.5megawatts Link.
Or about 240 needed to reproduce a coal plant, when the wind is blowing. There are about 62 gigawatts of new generating capacity in the works, according to the CS monitor story, for the continental U.S.

But what about solar powered homes? The average home uses 10656 kw/h per year or about 1.21 kw constant load Link. The average aluminum smelting plant uses 300mw of electricity or 250,000 times as much Link. The average chemical plant uses 12mw constant load or almost 1000x as much Link. There are lots of similar industrial users. <sarcasm> Of course, who needs all those plants anyway? Doesn't produce anything usefull? All just pollution right? </sarcasm>

Sure there's plenty of little stuff we can do about the energy problems of the world but I think the problem is far far bigger than most people imagine. So basically given the above, environmentalists really have no solution to the world's energy problem except de-industrialization and I really doubt we are going to go along with that much less China, India, Russia, or Brazil. There you go, with a little math I spoiled the whole alternative energy debate. You have read the last chapter of the book on Global warming: There is no solution (except nuclear!). If you have some alternative examples show me and please make sure they include actual figures in megawatts. Not things like "wind energy potential" but instead, how long it would take to build, how much money, how much energy would be provided, etc. BTW, I'm not saying that some technological revolution isn't going to save us but please, let's get some numbers into the discussion!

So from where I sit, WiMAX can't be killed, because it's not alive.

WiMAX is simply a term used to denote appliances which have been certified by the WiMAX Forum
From their FAQ:

"The WiMAX Forum is an organization of leading operators and communications component and equipment companies. The WiMAX Forum's charter is to promote and certify the compatibility and interoperability of broadband wireless access equipment that conforms to the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16 and ETSI HiperMAN standards"

They have started testing loads of equipment from various manufacturers, as part of their "certification" process. These products should have been certified before the end of the year. Here are some examples:

Siemens "WayMax"
Alvarion BreezeMax

WiMAX is very much alive.

You can check out the images and the details on Siemens site

Note the line "To date, the engineers have been using silicon switching elements to control the device. The objective now is to use a printing process to manufacture the entire display, including the appropriate control electronics, from conductive and semiconducting plastics." The idea of making semiconductor arrays in a printing press has been around for years, but nobody has done it successfullyin production. Siemens hasn't done it either. They're still making the substrate for this in a wafer fab, and it's a big chip. So this is still an expensive technology. It might get cheap, but we've heard that claim before about "e-paper" type technologies.

The "printing semiconductors" idea has been applied to solar cells. There are plenty of announcements of breakthroughs in this area, but somehow, nobody actually seems to be shipping product.

So this requires another breakthrough, and in an area where there have been few successes. It's not here yet.

And this link should take you to the Siemens page about it, which has a photo too.

Looks like the reason they are targeting it at packaging initially is because the images change slowly.

Take the batteries out of them.

These screens sound more and more like the novelty cards, and will need a switch on the page otherwise the batteries will flatten before you buy them.

So... just wait a couple of hours with the page open, and then carefully start hacking.
I think you could have a usable display soon afterwards.

One other thing, I went looking at their methods and this paper is not the same as e-ink, they say on the website (link below) it doesn't hold its display without power.

(On the Siemens
  website, they talk more about it, the method they are using involves electrochromic substances, and there is an example of one such film being built here)

In Europe, Siemens sells the Gigaset M34 USB adapter which lets you use a number of DECT handsets for VoIP. The adapter comes with a (customised) version of Skype. I have not tried this thing yet but I might give it a go, given that I've been using a DECT phone for several years now. Not with Skype though, as I'd rather use something standards-based (ie. a SIP phone like Linphone or the upcoming SIP-enabled version of GnomeMeeting).

http://www.tadspec.com/lifecare/

and

http://communications.siemens.com/cds/frontdoor/0, 2241,hq_en_0_109181_rArNrNrNrN_2%253A3,00.html

Ok, send the squad in, 8 blips in the green.....7 blips peaking heart rate.. air cover now,now ... 6 blips. Pull those men out.
Mark location of 2 down soldiers for pickup.

Course you have to seriously encrypt the blips.

Not so far fetched. According to Siemens (they make the GPRS radio chips) http://communications.siemens.com/cds/frontdoor/0, 2241,hq_en_0_110776_rArNrNrNrN,00.html, the "watch" is to be manufactured by Tadiran a well know military equipment supplier based in Isreal. http://www.tadspec.com/home.php.

Is that like partially owned by Iran? Tad-Iran?

Siemens already has a USB attachment that lets you use VoIP (skype) from your Cordless Phone.

M34 USB

I'm using it now, and it works really well. One thing about using the hack in the article is your phone won't ring when you get a VoIP call... with the adapter it works just like a normal phone.

Yeah this is a just a branding exercise. I have a V800, but unlike the W800, it is 3G and I get download rate of over 30KB/s (yes kilobytes), and a 1G memory stick pro duo. I even had a Siemens SL45 with 512MB 3 years ago.

Nothing to see here.

since nobody mentioned this yet...
i'm thinking of getting a new cell phone, i have an old siemens c45 which served me great for the last 3 years, since i did like the siemens brand (i got used to it) i had a look at their latest offerings.
i found the siemens cx70 to be a good replacement, being thorough i downloaded the manual, and skimmed the contents until i got to a part which says DRM! apparently it has a DRM chip in, which might not allow you to share melodies/pictures/java apps. this is annoying! i didn't know that they already have these chips everywhere these days!
i got pissed off and started to google around, apparently most new phones (if not all) have these chips inside. so basically i'm paying for this chip to be a cop inside my phone that can deny my of some things...
what could this mean? i am a programmer, so if i decide to program on java midp there's a chance that my phone will refuse to run it!?
i'm all aware that there are business/people who make money/living out of this (four billion dollars, WOW) but what's next? your microwave oven will bitch if use a non licenesed brand of food! or maybe they can put them in PCs so that only authorized software runs... oh wait, that already exists http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.html
so now i'm seriously considering just changing the battery & cover of my OLD non-DRM cell phone! am i right, or am i being just paranoid?
here's the an excerpt from the manual:
well i just tried to copy that part, aparently even the pdf is protected! why the hell would you do that for? here's the manual http://communications.siemens.com/cds/frontdoor/0, 2241,hq_en_0_63510_rArNrNrNrN_variation%253A-5_pag eType%253Amanuals_imagePos%253A0,00.html#content

The biggest problem right now is that Skype may not be integrated into the local PBX. But the Skype people seem smart and my guess is they will come up with something soon.

Siemens itself seems to have an eye on them.

Happened to me recently while looking for a cheap GSM cellphone. I bough the Siemens A56 phone, which i thought it was a pretty nice gadget, until i ran onto a site that described how to flash the firmware of the more expensive C56. So i thought 'what the hell'; brought a car adapter (for the data connector) and hacked myself a serial cable.

40 minutes later i have a phone sporting GPRS, Java, keyboard shortcuts, voice dialing, polyphony and sound recording/reproduction, hands free, voice commands, and more avaiable memory. The only thing it lacks it's a color screen, and all for the price of an entry level phone plus 10 bucks. I thought i was lucky, but later found out this is very common for cellphones. The phones are identical (you can even exchange their fronts!), with the difference that the A56 is software crippled.

Thinking it later, it kinda made sense. Suppose you sell the phone for $10; you sell five for $50. Now you introduce a cheaper model for $7 and a more expensive one for $12 (which are all the same internally, with practically zero cost to you other than repackaging). Now you sell three of each, covering more price segments; you made $57. It's a quick example, but it's how it works.

Happened to me recently while looking for a cheap GSM cellphone. I bough the Siemens A56 phone, which i thought it was a pretty nice gadget, until i ran onto a site that described how to flash the firmware of the more expensive C56. So i thought 'what the hell'; brought a car adapter (for the data connector) and hacked myself a serial cable.

40 minutes later i have a phone sporting GPRS, Java, keyboard shortcuts, voice dialing, polyphony and sound recording/reproduction, hands free, voice commands, and more avaiable memory. The only thing it lacks it's a color screen, and all for the price of an entry level phone plus 10 bucks. I thought i was lucky, but later found out this is very common for cellphones. The phones are identical (you can even exchange their fronts!), with the difference that the A56 is software crippled.

Thinking it later, it kinda made sense. Suppose you sell the phone for $10; you sell five for $50. Now you introduce a cheaper model for $7 and a more expensive one for $12 (which are all the same internally, with practically zero cost to you other than repackaging). Now you sell three of each, covering more price segments; you made $57. It's a quick example, but it's how it works.

Sure, but the manufacturer clearly has one. The cordless is a Gigaset SL740 , and for frequency, have a look in the manual at page 62.

Sure, but the manufacturer clearly has one. The cordless is a Gigaset SL740 , and for frequency, have a look in the manual at page 62.

Actually, the new Siemens SX66 quad-band PDA phone (just a rebadged iMate PDA2K sans camera) offered by Cingular is sold unlocked. Instead of locking the phone, they offer price breaks for comitting to a contract -- $50 for 1 year, $100 for 2 years.

1. It's not existing hardware. It needs multiple receivers and multiple transmitters.
2. They use 100 MHz bandwidth, so would expect to get a factor of 5 increase over the 54Mbps delivered by 802.11a simply through that.
3. They use 4x3 MIMO which has been around for a while, see particularly the BLAST work done by Chris Nicol & co at Lucent.

The biggest of trucks are electric. What you say?? here: AC solutions for haul trucks

Gigaset M740 AV: The entertainment box from Cordless Products

The new Gigaset M740 AV Digital Video Broadcasting Receiver marks Cordless Products&#146; entry into the entertainment market &#150; and has already won its first customer: Carrefour Spain has ordered 50,000 of them.

The versatile Gigaset M740 AV brings the future of home entertainment to the living room. It&#146;s a set-top box for receiving digital aerial television programs, a television projector and an MP3 player for the home HiFi system all in one. The set-top box allows users to decide what they want to see and when they want to see it. Because in combination with a hard disk drive, the Gigaset M740 AV affords time-shift television. This intelligent form of TV program recording is a highly practical option if the viewer happens to be called away during an on-air program, for example, but would later like to see what was missed. While the on-air program is still being recorded, the viewer can look at earlier portions of the program that were missed (time-shift function). Moreover, the Gigaset M740 AV is equipped with two tuners to enable one program to be recorded while another is being viewed live. This finally puts an end to one annoying problem with most commercial set-top boxes. In contrast to the Gigaset M740 AV, they&#146;re unable to record one decoder-received program while watching another live on the screen.

The hard disk that&#146;s used to record the program can be attached directly to the set-top box, or the device can interface with a hard disk in a PC via either a cable or cordless link and be integrated into a Wireless LAN. The device can also be used for listening to MP3 music files over a HiFi system and for viewing digital photos and films on a television set. The Gigaset M740 AV will be launched on the German market in October, in time for Christmas business.

Beginning in October, this smart box will additionally be on the shelves of the Carrefour retail chain in Spain. With a contract for over 50,000 devices, Carrefour intends to play a pioneering role in the introduction of digital terrestrial television: In Spain, 90 percent of the population views terrestrial-based television. Carrefour wants to use the device to gain a direct presence on its customers&#146; TV screens to offer value-added services like product and marketing information or for downloading mobile phone ringer tunes.

Cordless Products is using this universal set-top box as the kickoff for a bevy of innovations relating to digitized multimedia content, such as voice, photos, films and music: &#147;We&#146;re working on an extensive product portfolio that we&#146;ll be gradually debuting over the course of the coming months,&#148; says CP chief Clemens J. Joos.

Connection to an antenna for terrestrial reception.

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