Coming Soon: Ultra Wide Band

JScarpace writes: "Robert X. Cringely has a new article in which he talks about Ultra Wide Band (UWB), a new wireless communications technology which may allow wireless networking speeds up to a gigabit per second. Read the article."

Comments

of course....

[fluxrad]

if you have a 48" waist...this technology has been out for years.

Seti Etc.

[Alien54]

The biggest losers, though, would appear to be the radio astronomers. Just as the light pollution from street lamps made work harder for astronomers with optical telescopes, UWB will raise the noise threshold for the radio astronomers.

Not only that, but what if all of the Alien Civilizations are already using the equivalent of UWB for all of their interstellar communication? This is going to be really hard for SETI to deal with.

;-)

Re:I don't normally say this.. but really.

[ssyreeni]

Now you're confusing a whole lot of completely separate things. I don't think you mean to say DNS entries shouldn't be owned -- in the absence of ownership (more likely a lease from the resolution service owner who then effectively owns the domain names), how could you guarantee that yoursite.com would still point to your site, next week? If the name is not owned, there's nothing to stop anybody from reusing it at will.

What you probably meant to oppose was things like the UDRP, with their connotation that domain names have something to do with registered trademarks, considered "intellectual property". That I have a problem with, too. I think homesteading is the way to go in cyberspace as well, not ownership by fiat of specific bit patterns. No matter the context.

Still another problem with your gut reaction is the idea that only physical things should have property rights attached to them. But even if intellectual property didn't exist, there would still be such things as ownership in usage rights, financial instruments and, you guessed it, scarce immaterial resources like the electromagnetic spectrum. We need such rights in order to put those resources into the best possible use.

AFAICT, what is slowing innovation, here, is not lawyers confused over the proper application of property rights, but bureaucrats regulating innovation out of existence. After all, a market in privately owned radio spectrum would admit UWB and other newer modulation technologies as soon as the price was right. If UWB is so useful, the price would be just that. Interference would simply elevate that price, and give a financial incentive to further develop the technology. That's progress.