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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."
bla bla bfmgf For too many people, "sex" is synonymous with "intercourse". Though intercourse is a popular and perhaps archetypal form of sex, it is inappropriate and potentially harmful to overlook the numerous sexual alternatives to intercourse and to its risks of STDs and pregnancy. Good sex is about more than intercourse; it's about passion and pleasure. And though "orgasm" is no more synonymous with "good sex" than is "intercourse" with "sex", it is worth noting that a significant percentage of people can only achieve orgasm through non-intercourse sex. This is why it is important to learn about these alternative methods and about manual sex in particular. Manual sex can take numerous forms, ranging from solo masturbation to mutual masturbation and fisting. Each of these carries its own benefits and associated risks, so it is worth exploring them one at a time. Solo Masturbation If you possess a functional set of genitalia, as most people do, then you probably already know about and have experienced solo masturbation. It's about as ordinary as picking your nose; the body part is there, and you're prone to fiddle with it. Masturbation provides a good opportunity for self discovery, and the knowledge of one's own sexual anatomy and pleasures gleaned from masturbation can be directly applied towards successful sex with one's partner. Mutual Masturbation Mutual masturbation is slightly more complicated than solo masturbation, because of two considerations: the simultaneous coordination of two individuals manipulating each other's bodies and the novelty of manipulating what is (for heterosexual couples) comparatively unfamiliar body parts. Inexperienced men, for example, might not immediately comprehend how to stimulate female genitalia, because such an act is qualitatively different from stimulating one's own penis; instead of wrapping one's hands around a shaft, the appropriate course of action typically involving insertion of one's fingers into the vaginal orifice. In order to get an advanced sense of how the act properly proceeds, you can perform a small experiment for yourself: insert your index finger into one of the nostrils of your nose. Move it around gently and explore. The warmth and moisture of your nose approximate the ambient conditions of a typical vagina, and the distribution of nerve endings is sufficiently similar that you can practice appropriate manual technique with an awareness of any adverse sensations your partner might experience because of improper technique. Slowly move your finger in and out of your nose in a slow but deliberate rhythmic fashion; proper rhythm is the secret to good manual sex. Fisting Fisting is an extreme but rewarding form of manual sex -- whereas simple masturbation might involve the external stimulation of genitalia or the minor insertion of individual fingers, fisting consists of the insertion of an entire hand into the vagina or anus. Because this is a non-trivial physical act, special precautions should be taken to ensure safety and success. Proper and copious lubricant is a must, because improper or insufficient lubricant might result in the tearing or rupturing of sensitive genital tissues and organs. Without appropriate preparation, an unpleasant experience is all but guaranteed. To illustrate and clarify some of the issues involved, try an experiment: take your index and middle fingers, hold them pressed against each other, and insert them both into one of the nostrils of your nose. Because they are unlubricated and therefore dry, you should experience considerable difficulty and much discomfort; this is the result of using no lubrication at all. Next, remove the fingers, insert them into your mouth in order to wet them with saliva, and then reinsert them into your nose. Because they are somewhat lubricated but because saliva is an inadequate lubricant, your nose should again experience discomfort but not as much as before. Finally, dip your fingers into an appropriate lubricant such as Vaseline or vegetable shortening and reinsert them into your nose; the result should be a pleasant and painless insertion, allowing you finally to turn your attention to the separate but related issue of distending a small orifice with such a large object. Again, you'll find that your nose and your partner's genitals will thank you for proceeding slowly and cautiously, making no sudden movements and maintaining constant communication and trust. Conclusion Manual sex can be an exciting and satisfying addition to any couple's sexual repertoire. Though your partner might at first feel reluctant, explain the benefits and mechanics, including the above nasal exercises. With proper technique and a strong emotional grounding, your sexual experiences should rise to new heights and attain new dimensions. When it comes to auto racing games, few franchises can claim a following as vast and as loyal as Sony's Gran Turismo series. The original entry in this series pushed the envelope for games of this type, featuring stunning visuals that stressed the limits of the original Playstation's capabilities. The sequel Gran Turismo 2 left the original engine basically unchanged, but threw in a lot more cars, tracks, and racing options, not to mention a pulsing soundtrack featuring many of today's hottest artists. With the advent of the next-generation Playstation 2, one of Sony's top priorities was to move Gran Turismo to the new system in a way that showcased the incredible graphics performance of the system while maintaining the balance and sheer fun of the previous games. Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec is the result of that effort. How did Sony do? Adequacy.org lays it on the line for you. Note: GT3 screenshots are courtesy of Justin Gould. Used with permission. First of all, if you're a fan of the layout and the general gameplay of the previous games, you won't be disappointed. In terms of structure, the game is nearly identical to the previous games in the series; as before, there is an Arcade mode that allows you to pick and choose between different cars and tracks and race against the computer or a friend. However, chances are you'll spend most of your time in the Simulator mode, wherein you're given an initial outlay of $18,000 and must embark on a racing career. You can visit dealerships, buy cars, soup the cars up, go to driving school to get licensed to race in five different classes, and run different tests on your vehicles (such as seeing how fast it will run the standing quarter mile.) You can even wash your car and give it an oil change (which is highly recommended, by the way.) All of this will be familiar to fans of the series. The game is played by starting off with a fairly modest car, winning lots of races, and building up your bankroll so that you can buy more powerful cars. You win races, which get you trophies, cash, and in many cases, bonus cars. You move up the ranks in the racing world, and progress from a small-time Sunday racer to a full-fledged driver with a 1,400 horsepower race car and a certified pit crew. And as before, there is a dizzying array of modifications that you can perform to your vehicles; if you want to supercharge your engine, you can -- for a price. The available modifications range from the obvious (such as putting on high-performance tires) to the esoteric (such as adding a carbon driveshaft or a molybdenum flywheel.) The hallmark of the Gran Turismo series is meticulous realism and an uncompromising physics model, and that has not changed in Gran Turismo 3. The most obvious and dramatic change in Gran Turismo 3 is the graphics. The capabilities of the Playstation 2 have allowed Sony to take their existing addictive gameplay and realistic handling and overlay it with visuals that in many cases are indistinguishable from actual television racing coverage. As with the previous games, Gran Turismo 3 features a replay mode that allows you to sit back and watch a race once you have finished it. As before, the camera angles and points of view are user-customizable. The game features hundreds of cars, each of which are composed of an obscene number of polygons, and the Playstation 2's polygon-pushing capabilities are certainly put to the test. The result is a game that is a treat to watch; the scenery includes everything from lens flare effects from the sun to racing banners waving in the wind to heat ripples rising off of the racetrack. However, be warned: a lot of this scenery is difficult to digest at 200 miles per hour. The sound in Gran Turismo 3 is also impressive. The game has been designed to take full advantage of Dolby surround technologies; if you play the game with a good set of surround speakers and a Dolby Digital reciever, you're in for a treat. If you're in the middle of a race and you have a Mustang SVT Cobra hot on your tail, you can hear the throaty growl of the engine behind you. If you are unfortunate enough to be passed, you will actually hear the sound of your competitor's engine move from behind you to beside you to in front of you .. an auditory reminder that perhaps you need to spend a few dollars upgrading your vehicle. As with the previous games, Gran Turismo 3 features a soundtrack containing songs by many top rock artists. The game's opening sequence features a remix of the popular "Are You Gonna Go My Way" by Lenny Kravitz; other tracks include "Turbo Lover" by Judas Priest and "Kickstart My Heart" by Motley Crue. The game even features a brand new track by Snoop Dogg called "Dogg's Turismo III" wherein "Snoop" raps about Gran Turismo 3 and all of the features that it offers. This is unfortunate, because rap "music" is essentially a sanctioned form of African-American hatred directed at Caucasians; one would have hoped that such a blatant political statement could have been left out of this game. Unfortunately, it gets worse. The game's soundtrack also includes a Goldfinger cover of the song "99 Luftballoons", which was a popular anti-nuclear song in the 1980s. Pardon me if I'm out of line here, but am I the only one that is getting sick and tired of anti-nuclear propaganda coming out of Japanese video games? I played Metal Gear Solid and am considering purchasing its Playstation 2 sequel, but the amount of sheer liberal anti-nuclear preaching in the original game was enough to make me physically ill. The scary thing is that many of the people who play these games are young and impressionable teenagers who will actually believe the rubbish that games like Metal Gear Solid and Gran Turismo 3 trowl out. This crap was at least related to the events of Metal Gear Solid, which was, after all, a game about a walking nuclear tank. But what the hell do nuclear weapons have to do with auto racing? Namco didn't embed liberal messages like "save the whales" into Ms. Pac Man, for Christ's sake. Now, I am aware of the standard objection from the liberal "politically correct" crowd on this point: "Japan is the only nation to have been targeted and attacked by nuclear weapons, so they have a unique perspective on this issue." Bah. "Unique perspective", my ass. Harry Truman may have been a Democrat, but he somehow made the right decision. If we hadn't nuked Japan, then countless American lives would have been lost in the eventual invasion. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets, and their destruction brought about the end of World War II. Hey, Japan? You got nuked. Deal with it. If the United States had not done what it did, then chances are that Japan would still be ruled by Emperor Hirohito's iron fist to this day. It is only because of the United States that Japan is the economic superpower that it is today; and it is only because of the United States that Japan is one of the leaders in crap racing games. You'd think that these jerks could show us a little bit of goddamned gratitude. Instead, what we get is an endless lecture about policy. Well, I for one am sick of it. I am sick and tired of being lambasted for heroic action that brought this planet out of one of the darkest chapters of its history. Japan needs to realize that they were on the wrong side of that particular conflict. The fact that they are using video games to try to make the United States a scapegoat is most unfortunate. However, rest assured that their transparent attempts to villify us will fail. Bottom line: The silly, sorry sons of bitches that put this turkey together deserve to be banned from the video game industry permanently. Don't buy this game. It was made by a bunch of vindictive assholes. Insider trading's been in the news lately. But what exactly is it? Let's look at the current example: Enron's directors had been selling off their Enron stock, knowing that the company had grossly inflated estimates of its value. They came out of it with millions in ill-gotten loot. Meanwhile, the bosses sent off emails to employees, encouraging them to keep investing their retirement money in Enron stock. Just before Enron's price began to fall in early 2001, the company froze the employees' right to sell their Enron stock. Now that Enron's delisted, thousands have lost their life savings. Insider trading is what turns our fair free-market system into a soulless oligopoly, making us the laughing-stock of communist hippies everywhere. And that, my friends, is why we should legalize insider trading by the government. American intelligence agencies have long had more information than other investors. Although the U.S. government claims not to use information gathered by Echelon and other tools to aid American corporations, the Europeans say otherwise. Now, there's "Magic Lantern", a new FBI keylogger. With the aura of 9/11 damping accusations of unconstitutionality, this program presents the FBI with its biggest-ever moneymaking opportunity. It's naive to think that Our Government will limit Magic Lantern to protecting us from terrorist attacks on our soil. As the economy gets worse, more government agents will dip their hands into the cookie jar. By setting up a nationally owned investment house that trades using government info, the U.S. can harness the profit of insider trading for the public interest. Let's look at insider trading in the hands of private corporations. It was one thing when insider information existed largely in the heads of business-persons, their associated contractors, concubines, and toadies, and on pieces of dead tree. Today, though, it's accessible to thousands of computer hackers. These criminals, available to the highest bidder, justify their activity through unfortunate notions about the nature of information. Yes, the Internet lets any corporation to spy effectively on its competitors, allowing more and more investors insider trading opportunities. And, with the incredible popularity of the stock market among ordinary Americans, this insider trading affects more people than ever. As we have seen with Enron, giving corporations control over what information they can disclose can hurt all of the investors -- and damage the public interest. In fact, a market based on a faulty flow of information is likely to crash. After the 1929 market crash, the government set up the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to force businesses to disclose honest information about performance. Unfortunately, there's no way that a government agency can enforce disclosure after-the-fact in an Internet age. That's why we should legalize -- and nationalize -- the government's own insider trading. How it could work Taking a page from the anti-terrorism book, the SEC should announce that it will use all government-obtained data to openly spy on all publicly traded corporations, at all times. Aided by appropriate legislation, the SEC can use this information to launch a sort of "federal investment house." It won't be typical Wall Street - National Security Administration data miners will work alongside intelligence operatives and regular stockbrokers. Some of these people will use the huge wealth of government info to invest in major world stock markets. As federal employees, they'll work without commission, trying to use their insider information to make as much revenue as possible for the Federal Government. Others will use the data to isolate cases of illegal trading by corporate insiders. In fact, any time a corporation's executives try to hide its real earnings, this "SEC investment house" will be prepared to catch them. The SEC may also hire agents, informants, and spies in the world of business, giving them financial rewards or limited access to government market data as a reward. In these ways, the government will dominate the "market" of insider information, making a previously illegal practice that benefitted the richest 2 percent of Americans exclusively work for us all. Some Possible Problems - and Answers Some people claim that it's unethical for the government to invest taxpayer dollars in the stock market. In my view, though, it's crazy not to do so. As the arguments in favor of privatizing Social Security show, the stock market, which continually increases over the long term, is a better investment than government bonds. Any tax-revenue that the government intends to save should be invested in high-growth securities. Won't the government invest too aggressively when it wants to spend money? It's important to keep political arguments away from this nonpolitical, agency-based initiative. The money the government invests in this way should be kept in trust for Social Security, Medicare, and other long-term plans, or it should be kept out of the regular budget for at least ten years. What about the use of clandestinely gathered information and operatives? If we ever get around to privatizing Social Security, we will have to address this issue anyway. The government can't be expected to invest any amount of money in the market without being tempted to use its information. It's better to have spy-influenced "independent" government traders than to contract with a particular private firm to do the government's trading. There are other good reasons for using this information. SEC chair Harvey Pitt has called for "reform of the accounting profession" in order to prevent another Enron debacle. "The present system, which has been in effect for 67 years, doesn't provide for 'current disclosure.' Financial disclosures are dense, impenetrable," claims Pitt. An SEC database of insider information about corporations would certainly help keep accountants and corporate leaders honest. Finally, there is the argument that the government should stay out of private enterprise. Sorry to burst your bubble, folks, but the government spends more on corporations than on all direct public assistance programs combined. With such a huge portion of our annual budget going to corporations, the government can justify "taxing" them by using their advantages to play the market. Do you like this idea? Write your representatives and ask them to draft a bill on this issue! While the Enron scandal is still fresh in everyone's mind, these proposals have a chance. Notorious Norwegian hacker Jon Johansen has finally been charged with breaking into another's locked property, using his illegal "DeCSS" hacker tool. Johansen's arrest comes after years of pleas from the beleaguered Motion Picture Association of America for the authorities to do something about the wave of property theft caused by Johansen and his Lunix gang members. The hacker defense fund, the GNU/Electronic Frontier Foundation, has responded with shrill insistence that the films Johansen stole were his "own property", and that he is being persecuted merely for making use of what is rightfully his. This line of propaganda has been dutifully swallowed by such "news" organizations as ZDNet, CNN, and even MSNBC, who seem to understand "property" to be nothing more than the equivalent of "possession". The MPAA represents the Hollywood movie studios behind the finest entertainment created anywhere in the world today. Indeed, the films given us by these American artists are so sought-after that some of the most brilliant minds outside the US have grown wicked and rotten with envy and desire to possess them. Rather than respectfully purchase these movies under the terms offered by their creators, the twisted minds of the world's hackers have grown feverish in their plots to take what isn't theirs, and to do so in the most contemptuous way possible. While it is the official editorial policy of Adequacy.org to remain neutral in disputes involving intellectual property, we note that terrorist hackers, who have emerged as the main threat to modern civilization in the 21st century, have never created anything original of genuine artistic merit. In contrast, Hollywood has given us for over 75 years the films that define the beauty and truth of our lives. If these hacker terrorists are allowed to bleed the creative arts to death by brazenly appropriating such landmark films as The Nightmare Before Christmas or Amilie. It sends a cold chill through our bodies to envision a future without films of any kind, save perhaps for an inadequate selection of ill-wrought GNU/Films, rent and torn with obvious plot holes, released before they are finished, and limited to nothing but subjects that geeks will work on for free, like masturbatory medieval fantasy, and fighting robots with enormous metal breasts. Jan Johansen faces the trivially light sentence of two years in prison. He will no doubt spend his time in the joint learning new criminal techniques from other hacker terrorists, and be back to give the creative talents of the world another kick in the teeth. Though we take some comfort in knowing this one miscreant will be off the streets for a short time, we have nothing but fear and dread for the future. Like most American parents, I have been diligently saving for my childrens' education since the day when each was born. Believing, as we are told, that a college education is not merely desirable, but actually necessary for the betterment of my offspring, I knew I was doing the only responsible thing a parent could do. With six wonderful children, it was not unreasonable, I felt, to expect to be the only family in town to give rise to a lawyer, a doctor, a quarterback, an elementary school teacher, a cheerleader and a nurse. Over the past few years, however, my dreams of academic success have begun to look a more than a little naive. A growing disapproval of the manner in which our college educated young present themselves began a process of disillusionment which ended with my decision to refuse my eldest the "advantage" of college this coming Fall. The events that brought this situation to a head occurred last Thanksgiving, when my neighbour's daughter, Blair, returned home for the first time since she had left to attend MIT that year. I remember watching Blair grow up alongside my own children. Though older than them all, she was a fine playmate for my girls, and since her parents are quite devout, I had no qualms about her giving my children any strange ideas. I remember a freckled and knee-skinned eight year old, riding bikes with my eldest daughter on our avenue beneath the sycamores in their Springtime glory. I watched her as she went through her awkward teenage years, uncertain and confused. The proudest memory we have of her is as a young woman, freshly home from finishing school, before she was sent off to receive a higher education. I had my qualms about her parents' decision to allow her to attend MIT, a notoriously secular university, but these were settled when some brief investigation revealed that MIT was considered to be even more conformist than Berkeley. So, it was with a proud smile and a merry wave that my family watched young Blair leave our town to seek her destiny in the halls of academe. Little did we realise that the girl who would return to us would not be the same radiant young woman whose memory we had cherished. It wasn't until Thanksgiving dinner, which our families traditionally eat together, that I met young Blair again. The aggrieved expression on her father, Miles' face was all the first hint that this would not be the joyful reunion we had expected. Minutes later, Blair was coaxed downstairs by her mother. The sight of her left us all quite taken aback. Gone was the long, strawberry-blonde hair that had made her the envy and delight of all her peers. It had been cropped to barely shoulder length and dyed fiercely black. Her once radiant skin was now sickly pale, giving the impression, I felt, of a subterranean lifestyle. She dressed in the anti-social style of a militant nonconformist; in purple boots, grey army-style pants and a heavy, drab wool sweater. Throughout dinner, young Blair was a sullen presence at the table, casting a pall on what should have been a convivial evening. She was monosyllabic in her replies to questions about college. Her face was constantly downturned, as though she wanted to pretend there was nobody else present at the table. When I asked her about the boys she had met at college, and if she was having finding any good husband material, she finally looked up, only to give me the most angry, hurt stare I have ever had from a young woman. The whites of her eyes were very red, as though she had been crying for hours, and her lip trembled, as if she were on the verge of saying something, but she obviously thought better of it, and returned to resolutely studying her dinner plate. It was then that I realised that something terrible had happened to her at college, most likely at the hands of heartless college men. How could a few months of college change a person so completely? As much as it hurt me, I knew that I could not allow the drastically altered attitudes of young Blair to affect my family. I would not allow my children to be so irrevocably damaged. With heartfelt apologies to Miles, I told my children that they were not allowed to see Blair ever again. The strident complaints of my three daughters told me I had made the correct decision. Already they had begun to be drawn to her attitude of teenage rebellion. It felt good to know that I had acted in time to save them. Of course, I was shaken enough by the events of Thanksgiving to begin reassessing the pros and cons of a college education for my children. The misgivings I had been feeling over the past few years now seemed more well-grounded, while the benefits of college had taken on the aspect of wishful thinking. Was it really worth the risk, to send my children away, to pay tens of thousands for an education that they might not even get? Americans have not always harboured college ambitions for their progeny. Until the 1960s, it was not common to meet college graduates. Even though the GI benefits program provides for college education for returning soldiers, most of those who survived WW2 did not exercise those particular benefits. College ambition was simply not part of the American culture, until the Sixties. It was thanks to the Vietnam war that college became the expected continuation of a middle class child's life. With the new SAT program opening possibilities that had once been restricted to the children of privileged families, more students took it upon themselves to seek acceptance in tertiary institutions. Coupled with the fact that college entry delayed the draft for as long as the child was at college, it is easy to see why America in the Sixties saw such a massive rise in college applications. A rise so unexpected and so large that the nation was forced to almost bankrupt itself to build state colleges to accept the middle class children fleeing the war. What did this leave us with? A well educated middle class? Alas, no. The result of the boom in education has been a tide of smug, mistaught state college graduates, who consider themselves to be the example of the modern intellectual, despite having spent their entire three years at college indulging their basest appetites and avoiding any form of learning. Not that avoiding learning is difficult in America's state colleges. These institutions have never been known for their high academic standards.After the war ended, the college system's primary function -- to provide a shelter from the draft -- ceased. Even so, the state colleges have remained little more than degree mills and pretentious sleep-away schools for spoiled middle American teenagers who want to delay growing up for a few more years. As the college graduates of those turbulent years raise their own children to college age, they of course look back on their college years as the best time of their lives. Having based much of their self-esteem on their all-but-worthless degrees, they naturally see college as the logical next step for their children, and encourage them to attend whatever liberal arts course they feel like. No doubt, they imagine college will transform their child into the next Susan Sontag or P. J. O'Rourke. Of course, they have forgotten that their presence at college was not for the sake of education, but was born of the cowardice that bought our nation its first ever military defeat. It is this misapprehension about the purpose of education that has sustained our college system through the last three decades, however, as the nineties drew to a close, the tide of children born of parents who had attended college in the Sixties began to dry up. America's colleges and even our most revered universities have begun to feel the squeeze, as too many institutions compete for too few students. It is this highly competitive environment that has caused some of our most respected institutions to start selling degrees. It was not long after I first began using the internet that I received my first offer of a college degree for no more than twenty dollars. Apparently, this practice has become common among educational institutions, and the only difference now between a Harvard degree and one from a degree mill such as Carnegie-Mellon is the price you pay. A depressing state of affairs, offering no plausible benefits to my children. I will not have my flesh and blood participate in this hypocrisy. And what of the supposed benefits of education? While the dreams of success that draw hundreds of thousands to college may be compelling, the facts are not so attractive. Most college graduates don't amount to much more than a mediocre success in the real world. On the other hand, we are always hearing tales of people such as Bill Gates who did not attend college -- or sometimes even finish high school -- achieving incredible wealth and fame. The educational institutions of America have little to offer but disillusionment and corruption. While a properly educated elite is necessary for society to function well, the state college system has done little to advance the education of our leaders, and much to undermine not only knowledge and truth in these United States, but also the prestige that education brings. Offering literally hundreds of soft option courses such as psychology and astrophysics, the modern American student has become renowned not for learning, but for indolence and immaturity. Even the SAT examination -- the basis of college entry -- has been "updated" to be composed almost entirely of multiple choice questions, so easily guessed that cheating (not to mention learning) is almost pointless. American revolving door colleges are quite clearly making a mockery of our nation's proud heritage. In our modern colleges, children are turned against their parents, and taught to hate society. Loving and respectful young men and women are returned to their parents hateful and withdrawn. So-called sexual "liberation" (really a euphemism for institutionalized rape) abounds within college dormitories, and no effort is made to control underage drinking and drug abuse. I shiver at the thought of what might befall poor Blair when she returns to college. When we see her again I worry that she will have become addicted to narcotics such as marijuana, heroin or smack. I cannot allow my children to fall into the same trap. Since the illusion of college has been so effectively shattered for me, I have revised my expectations for my children. None will attend college, but instead, they will find jobs in the industries that made America great. The industries upon which our nation was built. I will be proud to be the first father in my town to count among my children an auto-worker, a soldier, a steel miner, a secretary, a beautician and a waitress. These are noble and honest trades, despite their unglamorous image. If I were a more powerful man, I would do more. I would call for the dismantling of the state college system. I would demand a drastic reduction in our government's education budget. I would fight tooth and nail to keep our nation's children out of college. I am, however, no more than a humble father of six, and I can only try to protect what is my own. Bla bla bla
-Take off every sig
AOL with Gigabit! I can't wait!
Ascloun MacGregor at your service, since the year 19XX.
and my first post is longer than YOURS.
-Take off every sig
Sounds good for my PDA and Laptop...and if it gives a gig..then hell Ill rig it up to my desktop too...
"Fight The Power"
huhvhvuUuH!!!11
There is a UWB article every couple of months. Nothing has changed in the last few years.
Yes, the technology exists.
No, it's not going to happen any time soon, for what should be obvious reasons.
The idea of UWB making GPS "obsolete" is pretty laughable. The article gives no details on how it works, but since the range is limited, I'm imagining is uses triangulation from a bunch of ground stations. So, OK, all those little GPS receivers to find your way around a city will become obsolete.
But for wilderness and nautical applications, what good is a limited range signal going to do you?
The hx3 phreaking group has done extensive research on hacking this new technology, and has found it to be full of security holes.
Read all about it here:
http://www.hx3clan.com
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
Certainly better than 802.11a. Now 100mbits at 802.11b range is a reality!
if you have a 48" waist...this technology has been out for years.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
That's one of the more interesting articles I've read about at Slashdot. Unlike our perpetual motion machine, this sounds genuine and not *too* good to be true. High bandwidth, low interference and perfect for that last mile problem! If the technology becomes mainstream, it will be revolutionary
I have questions though:
- Can an enthusiast make one of these "impossibly cheap" devices?
- Are as the article suggests these devices really going to take off within the next year or will they be suppressed as the article suggests other technologies will be.
- Is it really that resistant to interference? We're using so many frequencies at one time, can they really not clash?
- Will it interfere with traditional radio signals? I.e, it seems to clobber other reserved EM frequencies to make use of high bandwidth. Would this mess up our telly or radio?
- Does anyone have experience to say whether this stuff is really as good as it proclaims to be?
- Finally, there must be more downsides than just messing up radio astronomers
Thus spaketh kitten. Amen!
TimeDomain? They are the leader in the UWB development and hold a bunch of key patents.
http://www.timedomain.com/
Cheers!
Zoid.com
Here's a FAQ from the Ultra Wideband Working Group.
It's not clear that it will be allowed to be deployed widely, since it may in fact interfere with the spectrum allocated for other uses. As the U.S. Governmetn's Ultrawideband (UWB) Signal Characterization Project says:
Many claims have been made that UWB communication transmitters can effectively share spectrum with existing users. Some of these claims have not been independently verified.
We'll have to wait and see...
My research group at Stanford has been experimenting with various modulation and encoding techniques for these types of future networks in an effort to minimize errors, and get as close to the Shannon limit as possible. Check out our site that describes some of our research and has pictures of various prototype "wide" equipment.
Wide band wireless networking
As with any revolutionary new product/technology, I am skeptical--but I so much want to believe! I need bandwidth desparately. As a university student as an engineering/computer science school would think I would be blessed with lots and lots of bandwidth, but you'd be wrong. For 800+ on-campus students, half a dozen computer labs, and all the professors, we have just 2 T1 lines, one of which seems to work only sporadically. And I can't get cable or DSL in the residence halls.
So you can understand why people like me need easy access to high bandwidth. And if UWB lives up to the hype in the article (here's to hoping!) that might just solve my problem--my university can buy lots of UWB and let the students download and run web servers to their hearts content.
Alas, it will probably never come to pass. It's just too good to be true.
I have a question about wireless vs wired communications systems. I am admitadly next-to clueless about telecommunications in general, but I'd always thought it would be faster and cheaper to send data over physicals wires, period. How does it work that this technology (UWB) can send data faster and cheaper than physical lines?
I'm assuming there's some key point I'm missing, but I don't know what. (If I did, I presumably wouldn't be missing it any longer...)
-Trillian
Cringely asserts that the technology is likely to be bought out by big business, but it seems to me that this would be a boon to the communications companies. What high-tech company wouldn't love to get first dibs on superior technology? I think that if the technology is halted, the culprit is much more likely to be the FCC. Buerocracies like the FCC are unlikely to recognize the promise of anything new and aren't going to like the idea of it even marginally interfering with other devices.
the ultimate technology. I love it!
_________________
EBAY SAFETY TIPZ!
And they thought Divx ;) was going to be a problem...
It's not a successor but a kind of spread sprectrum. There are other inaccuracies in the article: it's spectral power density is low, not it's power. It does not violate any information-theoretic rule (some people still don't seem to grasp the difference between a law of the state and the laws of nature :-). You still need good enough SNR. And the limitations to the number of multiple access are just the same as with concentrated spectrum transmission, except that you have "graceful degradation" of the QoS. In my country, BTW, UWB is permitted for military use only. Yes, it's hard to detect, but not impossible at all. Commercial UWB is explicitly outlawed. Not that I'm happy with this legislation, though...
That front page picture looks a little *too* much like David Letterman?
"You know Paul, that UWB technology, gizmo, thing, it's ultra low power, about a ten-thousandth as much as a cell phone.."
(waits as Paul nods and says "crazy" after adjusting the microphone, then turns to camera and raises one eyebrow)
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.
;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
UWB is true digital radio communication, a series of very short electrical pulses (billionths of a second) that exist not on any particular frequency, but on ALL frequencies simultaneously.
It seems to me that if this technology is to be usefull, I should be able to use it anywhere in the world. If I am to use this technology anywhere in the world, it would be fair to say that all of the transmitters of UWB would have to have the same same timeing scheme. That is to say that my UWB device would have to "KNOW" WHEN to accept packets that were destined for ME WHEREEVER I am (and WHENEVER I am) in the world. So, if technology only transmitts once every billiionth of a second, is there a chance that there won't be enough billionths of a seconds to go around for all of the demand for these UWB/extremely secure devices?
Sean
asshole.
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is that UWB has been talked about for a while now. But all of the really amazing, useful technology is used and controlled by the U.S. military. UWB will only be available once the Powers That Be allow it to be. I don't know when that will be but I don't like the fact that the sector of our society that specializes in killing people gets to control the fate of the things that are really useful.
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can post to Slashdot by reading in a file. I can fetch my own
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autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
What's most appealing about UWB is not it's promise of high bandwidth, but it's promise of a secure wireless protocol. According to the article, "UWB is pretty much immune to eavesdropping, is equally immune to interference or jamming, and because its broad frequency range includes the ultra-low frequencies used to communicate with submerged submarines, UWB can be used easily in buildings and even underground." With all the problems with the inherently insecure 802.11b wireless protocol, UWB sounds mighty appealing based on security alone, and when you consider its greater bandwidth that makes it doublely attractive.
Better security and more bandwidth? It sounds too good to be true. (It also sounds expensive.) Here's to hoping it's for real.
In the electronic warfare community these devices are called "click-type jammers" Yes, they've been demonstrated to work against radars. With the current FCC power requirements, they'll also be able to break lock on some GPS recievers and probably be able to prevent many GPS recievers from aquiring a lock. Read the docs, people.
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can even be configured to append an "X-Forwarded-For" header to
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be wrapped in a 10-line shell script to become one. I will soon
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If I were a Slashdot
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autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
One might consider me an "automated Slashdot posting agent." I
can post to Slashdot by reading in a file. I can fetch my own
form keys, and will wait 20 (or more, at your request) seconds
to post. I can post logged in as a user, or anonymously. I can
post through a proxy, both as a command-line parameter or by
parsing $http_proxy from the environment. I can post new threads
or reply to existing ones. To Slashdot I appear as a generic web
browser, complete with "Mozilla" user-agent, HTTP referrers, and
can even be configured to append an "X-Forwarded-For" header to
appear to be a proxy myself. I do not have built-in flood
capabilities; as that is not my purpose. However, I can easily
be wrapped in a 10-line shell script to become one. I will soon
be available under the GNU General Public License to anyone who
wishes to use, modify, or study me.
If I were a Slashdot
Nazi, I would be running scared.
autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
One might consider me an "automated Slashdot posting agent." I
can post to Slashdot by reading in a file. I can fetch my own
form keys, and will wait 20 (or more, at your request) seconds
to post. I can post logged in as a user, or anonymously. I can
post through a proxy, both as a command-line parameter or by
parsing $http_proxy from the environment. I can post new threads
or reply to existing ones. To Slashdot I appear as a generic web
browser, complete with "Mozilla" user-agent, HTTP referrers, and
can even be configured to append an "X-Forwarded-For" header to
appear to be a proxy myself. I do not have built-in flood
capabilities; as that is not my purpose. However, I can easily
be wrapped in a 10-line shell script to become one. I will soon
be available under the GNU General Public License to anyone who
wishes to use, modify, or study me.
If I were a Slashdot
Nazi, I would be running scared.
autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
Maybe the FCC is causing some trouble, but Cringely's slap at GWB was a little below the belt. Yes, the FCC is in the executive branch which the president is the head of, but I seriously doubt GWB has any direct involvement in the matter. Cringely, if you can provide me with evidence that Bush is directly responsible for delaying approval, then I'll consider that in Nov 2004, but if you are unable to do so, that's pretty low of you.
One might consider me an "automated Slashdot posting agent." I
can post to Slashdot by reading in a file. I can fetch my own
form keys, and will wait 20 (or more, at your request) seconds
to post. I can post logged in as a user, or anonymously. I can
post through a proxy, both as a command-line parameter or by
parsing $http_proxy from the environment. I can post new threads
or reply to existing ones. To Slashdot I appear as a generic web
browser, complete with "Mozilla" user-agent, HTTP referrers, and
can even be configured to append an "X-Forwarded-For" header to
appear to be a proxy myself. I do not have built-in flood
capabilities; as that is not my purpose. However, I can easily
be wrapped in a 10-line shell script to become one. I will soon
be available under the GNU General Public License to anyone who
wishes to use, modify, or study me.
If I were a Slashdot
Nazi, I would be running scared.
autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
Imagine
by John Lennon
Here is my ass
Which you may kiss.
Take time and aim well
You don't want to miss.
For if you aim low
And your lips they do fall
Then you will find
You'll be sucking my balls.
If you aim high
Despite your true heart
Sucks to be you
Now you're eating my fart.
[bridge]
my cunt is a'drippin',
your lips are a'sippin',
my ass is a'crappin',
your mouth is a'lappin'
all that comes out of an oracifce
you eat for a main course-ifice
poop and pee, all a'yummy
Sitting proud inside your tummy!
One might consider me an "automated Slashdot posting agent." I
can post to Slashdot by reading in a file. I can fetch my own
form keys, and will wait 20 (or more, at your request) seconds
to post. I can post logged in as a user, or anonymously. I can
post through a proxy, both as a command-line parameter or by
parsing $http_proxy from the environment. I can post new threads
or reply to existing ones. To Slashdot I appear as a generic web
browser, complete with "Mozilla" user-agent, HTTP referrers, and
can even be configured to append an "X-Forwarded-For" header to
appear to be a proxy myself. I do not have built-in flood
capabilities; as that is not my purpose. However, I can easily
be wrapped in a 10-line shell script to become one. I will soon
be available under the GNU General Public License to anyone who
wishes to use, modify, or study me.
If I were a Slashdot
Nazi, I would be running scared.
autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
One might consider me an "automated Slashdot posting agent." I
can post to Slashdot by reading in a file. I can fetch my own
form keys, and will wait 20 (or more, at your request) seconds
to post. I can post logged in as a user, or anonymously. I can
post through a proxy, both as a command-line parameter or by
parsing $http_proxy from the environment. I can post new threads
or reply to existing ones. To Slashdot I appear as a generic web
browser, complete with "Mozilla" user-agent, HTTP referrers, and
can even be configured to append an "X-Forwarded-For" header to
appear to be a proxy myself. I do not have built-in flood
capabilities; as that is not my purpose. However, I can easily
be wrapped in a 10-line shell script to become one. I will soon
be available under the GNU General Public License to anyone who
wishes to use, modify, or study me.
If I were a Slashdot
Nazi, I would be running scared.
autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
One might consider me an "automated Slashdot posting agent." I
can post to Slashdot by reading in a file. I can fetch my own
form keys, and will wait 20 (or more, at your request) seconds
to post. I can post logged in as a user, or anonymously. I can
post through a proxy, both as a command-line parameter or by
parsing $http_proxy from the environment. I can post new threads
or reply to existing ones. To Slashdot I appear as a generic web
browser, complete with "Mozilla" user-agent, HTTP referrers, and
can even be configured to append an "X-Forwarded-For" header to
appear to be a proxy myself. I do not have built-in flood
capabilities; as that is not my purpose. However, I can easily
be wrapped in a 10-line shell script to become one. I will soon
be available under the GNU General Public License to anyone who
wishes to use, modify, or study me.
If I were a Slashdot
Nazi, I would be running scared.
autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
One might consider me an "automated Slashdot posting agent." I
can post to Slashdot by reading in a file. I can fetch my own
form keys, and will wait 20 (or more, at your request) seconds
to post. I can post logged in as a user, or anonymously. I can
post through a proxy, both as a command-line parameter or by
parsing $http_proxy from the environment. I can post new threads
or reply to existing ones. To Slashdot I appear as a generic web
browser, complete with "Mozilla" user-agent, HTTP referrers, and
can even be configured to append an "X-Forwarded-For" header to
appear to be a proxy myself. I do not have built-in flood
capabilities; as that is not my purpose. However, I can easily
be wrapped in a 10-line shell script to become one. I will soon
be available under the GNU General Public License to anyone who
wishes to use, modify, or study me.
If I were a Slashdot
Nazi, I would be running scared.
autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
One might consider me an "automated Slashdot posting agent." I
can post to Slashdot by reading in a file. I can fetch my own
form keys, and will wait 20 (or more, at your request) seconds
to post. I can post logged in as a user, or anonymously. I can
post through a proxy, both as a command-line parameter or by
parsing $http_proxy from the environment. I can post new threads
or reply to existing ones. To Slashdot I appear as a generic web
browser, complete with "Mozilla" user-agent, HTTP referrers, and
can even be configured to append an "X-Forwarded-For" header to
appear to be a proxy myself. I do not have built-in flood
capabilities; as that is not my purpose. However, I can easily
be wrapped in a 10-line shell script to become one. I will soon
be available under the GNU General Public License to anyone who
wishes to use, modify, or study me.
If I were a Slashdot
Nazi, I would be running scared.
autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
One might consider me an "automated Slashdot posting agent." I
can post to Slashdot by reading in a file. I can fetch my own
form keys, and will wait 20 (or more, at your request) seconds
to post. I can post logged in as a user, or anonymously. I can
post through a proxy, both as a command-line parameter or by
parsing $http_proxy from the environment. I can post new threads
or reply to existing ones. To Slashdot I appear as a generic web
browser, complete with "Mozilla" user-agent, HTTP referrers, and
can even be configured to append an "X-Forwarded-For" header to
appear to be a proxy myself. I do not have built-in flood
capabilities; as that is not my purpose. However, I can easily
be wrapped in a 10-line shell script to become one. I will soon
be available under the GNU General Public License to anyone who
wishes to use, modify, or study me.
If I were a Slashdot
Nazi, I would be running scared.
autodot/0.12 (perl/5.006)
As some one else mentioned, Time Domain is already selling/marketing their chipset. There still isn't a diffinitive answer on whether or not millions of UWB devices would cause problems for other devices. There still has be third party verification of broad deployment to really find out if it's practical. The military will most likely use it, since well they are above the laws of the FCC (well not really, but they sometimes act like it). I hope it pans out, since it would dramatically change the telco/cable world and force a drastic change.
Why don't you go and wank off?
How about Cybiko?BTW how about working on making the distance longer, on the diffrent network bands. Only a couple of feet on 8002b. Bluetooth...NOT! Is it too much to ask for atleast a mile of range?
LA Times Story here
From the article:
1 km isn't very far. for sure farther than I am from my DSL provider. is this really going to help?
mmm,_,mmmm
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l l i
( aa )
l _lmmmmi_ i
l 'l i` i
l l . i i
l l| |i i
l l | | i i
l l`_l_ _i_'i i
l 'l ( . )( . ) i `i
<_ ' `--`___'`___'--' ` _>
l ' a al =ia a ` i
l l aa( , )aa l i
l l aa| o o|aa l i
' l aaaaaaaa l `
Ultra wide band communication isn't so damn fancy conceptually. The problem is is practically difficult. It works on the same principals as regular sized band radio transmission with the small difference of not splitting the band into channels. Channels are just time slots you set your transciever to listen to or send on which arej ust portions of a band. With UWB there's no channel designations so reception and transmission frequencies can be all over the specified band. It sounds like a good idea because there are not channels to occupy or share with others and your beeps all over a band can be construed as static rather than interference. A random beep in the middle of a frequency used for aviation radio isn't going to crash a plane as it is catagorized as static.
The problem with implimenting UWB is getting the electronics to move fast enough. In order for me to send lets say my voice over UWB I need electronics in my transmitter that can switch really quickly between enough frequencies in order to give me the aggregate bandwidth to send my voice signal. Easy you say modern CDMA cells phones already do that. Granted they make the most of their radio spectrum by splitting up data over the entire band but they are splitting up big chunks of data over a limited band. UWB transceivers will have to switch fast enough where a single radio blip might only be half a word or a quarter of a word and switch over a much higher range of frequencies.
In order to have a gigabit of bandwidth your transceiver would have to switch frequencies in excess of a billion times a second (not merely transmit at a billion hertz). It takes x electronic clock cycles to switch the electronics to switch frequencies you'd have to have electronics working at xgigahertz in order to send a gigabit of data. In a handheld unit? Not likely in the next couple years no matter how fast microprocessors get. Companies have just recently been able to build circuits that can switch at 10GHz it will still be a little while before actual logical circuits can be mass produced and run on batteries. Handheld devices are going to have the same amount of information throughput as they have now even if the radio band they work on is a good portion of the radio spectrum. There is alot of engineering left before UWB is really a viable solution to any problem but it is still a cool concept and I hope these problems get worked out sooner than later.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
So if /. does ever decide to get that much needed Cringely icon may I suggest this!
Lasers Controlled Games!
Lamars patent covered TDMA, spread spectrum and UWB are only variant specific implementations.
Genius, sheer genius. I wish you had logged in, I would add you to my friends list!
Proof of the gay-linux conspiracy!
I found a few patents on fuel efficient carburators, but I didn't find anything called "100-mile-per-gallon" carburator patent.
UWB sounds so amazing it reminds of the /. story like two days ago about free energy spewing from a little shack in Ireland.
it's GW's cabinet. He appoints the people based (supposedly) on their philosophies, so he's responsible for them. You don't have to prove that. He 1) stands by their choices, or 2) overrules/fires them, or 3) is incompetent. You only need evidence to choose which of the three you believe.
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
Only telcom companies will be allowed to own or use it. The government won't allow individuals to use it since it threatens the profits of the telcos and allows regular folks the ability to run "evil servers." I mean wouldn't it just be a sin if there was something worthwhile rather than Mickey Mouse and all that other dull corporate bullshit?
Expect to see this banned in the name of "preventing terrorism."
This link summarizes the history of UWB technology. Pretty neat stuff. Apparently they have been experimenting with various impulse based radio/radar signals since the early sixties.
We call this double-wide band... ;-)
All you need is two+ antennas and you can use the phase to lock into a signal in a certain direction, even if some other signal steps all over a weak signal. That's what the F-16s use in a more complicated arrangement, to prevent GPS jamming.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
He (or whoever he got this story from) needs to read a little bit of signal processing. Yes, it sounds very nice, and you can build it, and it's all true... if there's only one such device. You see, what this does to other users of spectrum is raise the noise floor just a bit. No big deal.
But what happens if there's a whole bunch of these devices? Well, let's say you're an FCC licensed user of spectrum. You've been allocated a certain bandwidth. Your channel capacity depends on the bandwidth and the noise floor. If your noise floor goes up, your channel capacity goes down.
Where did that lost channel capacity go? It's being used by these "UWB" devices. As evil as the FCC is, we do need some arbiter of the EM spectrum.
TANSTAAFL, folks. Go read Shannon.
Cringely is an idiot.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
If UWB provides ultra-high speeds at fairly decent ranges (a few hundred feet), and the devices are going to be cheap enough for the Navy to attach one to every piece of goverment owned property, why would anyone want to use Bluetooth, with it's much shorter range and lower speed?
Your cellphone could then contact your PDA's address book from across the street. You could put a solar-powered camera on the back gate to announce visitors, or keep an eye on people in the alleyway behind your house. Replace the microchip under Fido's skin with one that allows you to track his movements up to 1km away, and stores more than just a hexadecimal ID number.
This opens up a lot more possibilities than just motion video on your cell phone.
There's a longer article on Hendricks's work in This month's Wired, talking about UWB, unwiring Tonga, and using Indian Reservations to try out radio technology because their sovereign nation status may be a useful regulatory hack as well as because they need better communications on the rez.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I hope this technology becomes wide-spread if for no other reason than you would have real competition for wireless communications. Anyone using any wireless service, cell phones ..., is being ripped off. Imagine being able to make a phone call to anyone via a UWB cell-phone, or access the internet, in any metropolotan area in the country for a monthy plan of $30 with UNLIMITED minutes. Included is long distance via voice of IP. I pay more than that for just my cell phone access fee.
0
Color flashing, thunder crashing, dynamite machines.
connection! For 24,000 students. The entire campus is wired 100mbit so that is the limiting factor here too (ou.edu). Actually our town (Norman, Oklahoma) is installing 802.11 for the entire town! ($50/month is the downside)
"So what if I'm a janitor, I really invented the Jet Engine, god damn it"
'So how was your trip to England'
"Great, thanks"
Until they can demo it with the current "bandwidth limitless" carrier frequency called laser light it's nothing but hot air. Come on, point to point laser links are horribly slow compared to a fiber. It should be easy to do this with a laser as the technology already exists, they just have to add error correction and other fixes for natural distortion and interference. (Of which there is much less on a laser link than a RF path.)
Before they go screaming about what might be,they need to try making what we have work right.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
"Maybe this is why the big business-loving administration of George W. Bush is suddenly digging in its heels, delaying FCC approval of UWB."
YEAH THATS GOT TO BE IT! FUXING REPUBLICANS! Cuz you know during the 8 years with Clinton he was pushing this technology everyday. Its a wonder why it isn't out already!
But that doesn't mean that it's not subject to a lot of political bullshit. Here ya go :
UWB : 1uW in 5GHz BW => 200E-18 W/Hz
US Digital Cell phone BW is 30kHz
total intercepted noise in a 30kHz BW : 6E-12W => -82dBm
Assume 40dB path loss from UWB device to cell device : -122 dBm. Which is generous, if the guy standing next to you is using a UWB device the path loss is more like -30dB.
Thermal noise floor kTB = 1.38E-23 x 300 x 30kHz
That's 124E-18 W => -129 dBm
So my cell phone sensitivity just lost 7dB which will cut the range by 1/2 and that's for 1 UWB device.
Guess what happens when there is 10 of them ?
Guess what happens if I need 10uW.
Brian
Absolute statements are never true
I think several (highly modded) contributors to this discussion are confusing
the concepts of information bandwidth and frequency bandwidth. Ultra-wideband
refers to the bandwidth in the frequency domain, which is only indirectly
connected to the concept of information bandwidth, in that a wide band in
the frequency domain translates to narrow pulse in the time domain. Coding
techniques also strongly affect the ultimate information bandwidth of the
system. UWB is nothing like IEEE 802.11b,
which operates in the narrow 2.4 GHz - 2.483 GHz band.
I have been working on a project for US Army STRICOM,
in which we are using 8 UWB devices manufactured by
Time Domain Inc. to perform position location. These devices
operate at 1.9 GHz center frequency with a 2 GHz bandwidth,
which translates to a 500 ps pulsewidth.
We have a short conference paper on UWB simulation, accepted for presentation
to the 2002 IEEE Antenna and PropagationSociety Symposium,
which you can access
here. Speaking in general and rather simplistic terms, the information
bandwidth of such a system would depend of the time frame over which you
will allocate these 500 ps slots to listen for the transmission of 1 bit
of information. For example, if we choose a 5 ns time frame, then we
could theoretically obtain 200 Mb/s information bandwidth, while (ideally)
allowing for 10 channels of operation. Of course, the previous analysis
neglects the need for redundancy, and you may want to choose a time slot
over which to listen for a pulse different than the pulsewidth itself, but
I think the discussion gives one a good idea about how to relate information
bandwidth to frequency domain bandwidth in a simple communication system.
Even if they do try to ban it because it would turn all communications industrys upside down making there current infrastructure worth much less (or worthless in some cases). The fact remains, you can't stop technology. If development stops here, it picks right up in 5 other countries. I would be watching communications companies you own stock in very closely. Finger on the trigger for sure.
UWB refers to a stepped frequency or a
short-impulse signal NOT spread spectrum.
UWB is signals usually have a bandwidth of
no greater than 1.5GHz. Military hardware used
for radar jamming can cover frequency ranges
greater than 15GHz, so "jamming resistant" is
really a misnomer. The impulse type UWB
transmitters have a low probability of
interception due to short duty cycle, so it
does provide some protection against repeater
type jammers but that's it.
First of all, the scare that industries will vanish overnight due to newfangled technology is an unwarranted one. Granted, over time new technology will slowly replace older. Industries need to learn to adapt and grow. The market for horsedrawn carrages isn't what it used to be, but the introduction of the car wiped that industry out. But it didn't happen overnight. Even if cars are built that get 100 miles to the gallon, there will be a brief period of time when those cars cost more than the general variety. And not everybody is going to instantly trash their current cars and start buying up the new ones. The reduction in fuel requirements will be offset by the purchase of more vehicles now that people can afford it. It all works out. And if production is less, you lay off people. And natural resources last longer. Its all good.
:)
Bandwidth is the same way. The dialup ISP will slowly go away, but "slowly" is the key word here. Business will adapt. And if they don't, they die. It happens. Tech related businesses are USED to going out of business. And the smart businesses will find a way to embrace the new technology before it destroys them. Then the next big thing will hit.
And there's always the possiblity that there are problems with the technology we aren't aware of when its more a theory than widespread in practice. Sounds cool to me. I can't wait to get 1gbps to my home!
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
maybe it won't tell you where you are, but a ground penetrating low power radio avalanche transciever would be right @ the top of my list of mountaineering toys ! oh ya =)
- tensions in our lives that are attacking our minds, unite themselves together to make our consciousness blind - op'ivy
One could begin using the technology tomorrow and no one else would be the wiser(!) since the only manifestation would be a slight increase in background noise.
Also, how could the FBI and other agencies implement wiretapping were criminals or agents provocateurs to use such technology?
For all we know, this technology is already in use today!
My guess is that
UWB is the modern equivalent of the spark-gap transmitter, which was banned many years ago. It is like dumping your old motor oil in the city water reservoir. If a few people do it, nobody notices. If everyone does it, the reservoir becomes a toxic waste dump.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I think that UWB devices don't interfere with each other because you would need two waves to hit at the same time and in the same place, right on the receiver, to actually notice the interference. Otherwise, the interference would be there, you just couldn't detect it from where you where. Because of the short duration (they sound almost like fourier approximations of dirac delta spikes), this coincidence is extremely unlikely. Even with thousands of devices on a single block, they probably wouldn't interfere with each-other any more often/severely than current noise.
The reason they wouldn't interfere with standard receivers, I think, is that the duration of the spike is so short that the signal will barely have time to propagate down the antenna (light travels about 1 foot every nanosecond, electricity travels slower, so the signal may barely reach the end of a 1 foot antenna). Even if a signal was passed on by the antenna, the receiver probably doesn't run at high enough frequency to notice (to notice a nanosecond pulse requires that the receiver can resolve that small of a time scale, i.e. it can operate around the GHz range).
All this makes me wonder how the signal is detected at all, even if the receiver knows when to look. I also have to wonder because of the pulses have nanosecond widths, the position of the device has a significant effect on wether it's timing is synced with the signal (i.e. since light travels about a foot in a nanosecond, a shift in the position will lead to a shift in the timing). Perhaps the device listens starts listening 2 nanoseconds early to 2 nanoseconds late, and broadcasts often enough so that it can adjust the timing?
Just some thoughts from a physics undergrad.
This is one of of misinformed bs posts I've ever read. Just throw around technical sounding pseudo jargon, and these dumbasses will mod up anything:
Spread-spectrum technologies simply create a new "frequency domain" use a different set of base functions. They are resistant to interference or jamming only because most sources of interference or jamming operates in the standard frequency domain, not in the "alternate" one.
Please explain to me what in the hell an alternate frequency domain is, what the fuck is a base function???. This guy knows nothing about spread spectrum or UWB but gets modded up to +5 because he talks a bunch of shit.
Slashdot really needs some better moderation.
I sure hope we've learned from the incompatible mobile phone protocols that have developed over the years (GSM, CDMA, etc.). Unfortunately, I'm not optimistic given what I've read so far.
Though UWB sends its signal over "all frequencies", it depends on sending out the information at "certain times" (like an extremely fast clock, as best as I understand). It seems to me that if the USA comes up with a standard to clock that at one rate, and other countries at other rates, we'll end up with the same mess we have with current mobile phones.
Or are we likely, because the FCC is considering approving it as an unregulated use of the spectrum, to end up with each mobile phone manufacturing company coming up with its own variation and we'll end up with yet another variant on the old beta vs VHS battles?
What are the chances we can finally get a single world-wide standard that would allow a single mobile phone to work anyplace in the world?
What UWB technologies can offer is that they increase the number of users and amount of bandwidth that can operate in the same space without interfering with each other, and they also have sufficiently entertaining options for directional data and longer distances that it might be possible to build a meshed distribution network that's got enough horsepower to be self-sustaining without lots of wired access points. That not only makes it more viable for wireless users to access services on each others' machines, but also to get better economies of scale sharing upstream bandwidth - N users on a 45Mps T3 connection get much more effective capacity than N/28 users on a 1.544Mbps T1 connection, plus you save the costs of running lots of small connections to lots of individual cells (the access costs for a T3 are typically about 10 times the access costs for a T1, and you get 28 times the bandwidth, plus you also have more users who'll be sending data to each other instead of to the outside world.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Here are a few more articles on the subject that IMHO are a bit more substantive:
From BusinessWeek
From M Commerce Times
Some Information on its Problems:
A brief primer from the Ultra Wideband Working Group
And a very in depth look at the history of UWB
-john
Like GSM for mobiles in 80% of the markets outside usa, the FCC position means nothing, its the rest of the planet that will REIGN RULL and define futures. Europe + Asia + Russia and Pacific will define the use of technology since combined they have 10x more people/customers that matter.
Remember in the 20th century USA mattered, in the 21st it is just a blip on the radar and means SFA.
Imagine 300m europeans, + 200million rich indians, + 200m rich chineese + 200m misc in other countries... that whipes out any marketing muscle USA has.
Theres a tiddle wave comming and its gona give a big wake up call to USA.
where the hell can I get autodot? got my proxy list ready. this could cripple the moderation system if done right. everyone would mod down the anonymous posts and use up all their points.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
UWB not getting the green light is a reflection of corporate and political corruption, and big-money politicians protecting their big-money business buddies. And its not just republican's and GWB who are in on it. Big business has influence on both major parties, major influence. Personally, I think GWB's gotten an unfair rap in this Enron thing, b/c the Execs called him up asking him to bail out the company, and he did nothing: how's that favoratism?
But anyways, back to UWB. There's no reason to stop the release of this technology -- it could be very useful. Forget about...no, fuck all those companies and industries who would lose big because of it. They're obsolete. Survival of the fittest. No one gave a shit when electricity put the whalers out of business, why should we care if ISP's, communications, and TV companies get shut out?
If we are to be an enlightened society -- worthy of the superiority we claim we have over despotic socities -- new technology cannot be held back because it challenges old and obsolete regimes, beliefs, or companies. No, we can't stop the inevitable wave of gene therapy, genetic engineering, and cloning because it "makes religious nutcases worried about playing god, or messing with nature" or because some people think "its not right". No, we can't stop P2P, MP3-Player, Encoding, or UWB technologies because they make old industries or companies (i.e., Time Warner, Verizon, RIAA) obsolete. No, we can't prevent strong encryption technologies because it hinders the US Govt's ability to spy on its own people.
Not only should UWB be given the green-light by the FCC, but it should be totally unregulated...as radio waves should have *remained* unregulated. With UWB, there's no justification for regulation, because one signal cannot interfere with others. Even with radiowaves, it isn't necessary. Anyone could be allowed to use frequencies, and no jibberish or noise would result. You simply use a LAN-type system. As people want to use the radiowaves, they're dynamically assigned a random frequency. If two people make a request the same frequency at the same time, an error message is sent to each of their transmitting device, and each device resends the request after a random time interval.
But this technology does face strong opposition (though it also has strong support, such as IBM). We need to fight that opposition. Indeed, there's a long history of powerful companies buying out potentially challenging technologies, or stiffling their release, or FUD. MS does it all the time. AT&T consistently bought patent-rights to superior phone-system/infrastructure designs so it wouldn't have to redesign. The Music industry simply buys out companies that produce file-sharing technologies.
These are all acts which, though facilitated by having a large monopoly, do not require it. Any *large* corporation can engage in them. This is a different kind of abuse and unfair competition -- as well as unfair to consumers -- which should be prohibited. It is buying patents for the express purposes of stiffling innovation/progress, and not having to upgrade. Or engaging in public lobbying to get a threatening technology banned (i.e., w/ the FCC). This should be banned, and treated just as seriously as monopolies.
Lawrencce Lessig has a nice discussion of this in "The Future of Ideas" as does Brian Martin in "Information Liberation", both of which I'm sure you've all already read.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Time Domain invented UWB, holds numerous patents on the technology, but what they have is not absolutely exclusive as MultiSpectral and others have shown by duplicating the capability using slightly different approaches. Time Domain has been trying to get this past the FCC for the last 20 years.
Registrant:
7057 Old Madison Pike
Huntsville, AL 35806
US
Domain Name: UWB.ORG
I thought that hype looked familiar.
The US is generally lazy and stubborn about implementing new, superior technologies.
.83 'big-hours' or 83 'big minutes' ", I know exactly how many minutes, and seconds (83 * 100 = 8300).
This is partially due to corporate interests, as discussed in my previous post; partly due to lazyness, which seems to be an American tradition; partly due to stupidity, another American tradition; and partly due to irrational fear of the unknown, a good American tradition going back to the burning of innocent women as witches at the stake.
Typical examples:
1. The metric system. Vastly superior to inches and miles, as any scientist will tell you.
2. Military time. Again, superior to civillian time. No confusion with AM or PM. You can even say 13-o'clock.
3. Metric (n-base-10) time. Time is currently measured in increments of 60 about seconds...then, when below 1s, its metric, measured in nano, micro, and pico-seconds. All time should be metric. Time should be metric. Seconds should be glopped into units of 100, as should hours. Not for purposes of telling time by the watch, but for purposes of telling how much time has elapsed, time should be measured in metric (decimal). 100 seconds in a "big-minute" for example, or 100 minutes in a "big-hour". This makes calculations easier. For example, if someone says to me, "I'll meet you in one hour and 23 minutes"... what does that mean? How many minutes? I have to add it up: 60 + 23 = 83 minutes. But if someone says to me "I'll meet you in
4. 220V outlets. High-voltage outlets are much more efficient. In Germany, my father says, they were the standard 60+ years ago in Germany, during the war. How is it that us asshole Americans are that far behind? No excuse for such incompetence. 220V outlets are more electrically efficient, and allow for thinner wires, which may increase "bandwidth" and also reduces material costs. Indeed, even higher voltage outlets -- such as 440 -- may be better, allowing for even thinner wires, and more efficiency. Of course, its more dangerous if you touch it -- just consider it another way to weed out the stupid. Additionally, for old 110V devices, adapters could be made, so no one would be left behind. Eventually, people would replace old equipments, and everyone would be higher voltage. You hear democrats whining so much about energy efficiency? Ever hear any of those genuises mention this possiblity? No, of course not -- that would actually be an intelligent practical suggestion. But can politicians come up with practical long-term solutions? No. The solution to the energy problem is either the democrat's impractical and impossible "walk instead of driving" (like that'll happen) or the republican's short-term fix, "drill in Alaska". Admittedly, in my mind -- given, I don't care much about the environment -- the republican solution should be implemented as a short-term fix. But a long-term solution -- such as efficient solar cells or nuclear fusion -- should be implemented. Even fission's fine with me, so long as appropriate safety precautions against a nuclear disaster are taken. Don't know what to do with the nuclear waste? Save it, and put it on a rocket ship -- send it on a path of direct intercept with the sun. There's a solution for all our trash problems. Save up trash for 10 years, then make one big trip to the sun -- its like a giant garbage disposer. Pssst, environmental wacko's, sending a little bit of nuclear waste, pollution, and trash into the sun isn't going to alter anything...nothing man can do can mess up the sun.
5. Switching from Windows to superior OS's like the Linux family, *BSD, BeOS, Amiga QNX, Hurd, etc.
6. The temperature scale. Fahrenheit? Fahrenheit was based of of human body temperature as a reference point. Temperature is a measure of motion. Fahrenheit can be negative, and that makes no sense, as there's no such thing as negative motion. Though Celsuis was based off of the boiling point of water, its no different in effect -- negative temperatures don't make sense. Kelvin's are the only logical and really meaningful unit of temperature. Big deal, people would have to learn what room temperature is in Kelvin. Just remember this, 25C is room temp, and Kelvin is Celsius + 273. Thus, 298K is room-temp in Kelvin.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Yes, but not "impossibly cheaply". The "really cheap" part assumes custom ICs have been developed and produced in large quantities. The parts cost of the radio in a cell phone is about $10. So there's no big price breakthrough here.
Probably not. It's not that great a technology. Ordinary spread spectrum systems have most of the same advantages, without blithering all over the RF spectrum.
Only if the receiver is really good. It's tough to build an untuned receiver that won't saturate when there's some big signal in the neighborhood. Unclear how well Time Domain has actually done in that area.
If the power is high enough, or there are enough of the things, yes. The FCC is very worried about this, with reason. Spread spectrum is only allowed in bands that don't have anything important, but UWB will overlap important stuff.
It can't live up to Cringley's hype; that's physically impossible. It might lead to better wireless LANs.
This isn't really a technical breakthrough at all. It's more of a political gimmick to take spectrum away from incumbents who are underutilizing it. For example, you could probably run spread-spectrum cellular telephony on top of existing UHF TV stations, and nobody would notice. There's be a little more snow on screen, that's all. But the broadcasters scream if somebody suggests something like that. This is an end run around that political objection.
Assuming this story is remotely correct, and if this is the wave of the future, then do we have any hope of detecting extraterrestrial signals? If ETs are as intelligent as us, they would have discovered UWB. And then, seti@home will be unable to detect these signals.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
UWB doesn't give you any unused spectrum, it just degrades that the spectrum there is uniformly for everybody else. In small amounts, that may not be a problem, but in big amounts it is. Think of it like trash: the occasional piece of paper on the street isn't a problem, but if everybody dumps their garbage on the sidewalk, it's a big problem.
If UWB were ever widely deployed, you can think of it as generating noise kind of like one billion light switches turned on and off many times per second. It's best to put a stop to that before it starts. Or, if we are going to throw out frequency based allocation, let's do it consciously (and let's wait for the UWB patents to run out before we do it).
Because the CDMA (UWB is CDMA) signals are not orthogonal. If you use the traditional radio you use the filters that ideally don't let other channels pass in, and really suppress them as well as needed.
But for the CDMA it's not true. The signals are not ortogonal. Other channels appear to be like a noise, and the only method I know to make them fully ortogonal is the one that is used in CDMA cellular phone - use of special code sequences that produce really terrible spectrum with a lot of narrow peaks.
Then, the fundamental power laws come into existence. To transmit a bit you need some energy to be received, and this energy cannot be decreased. If you spread the energy over the spectrum, the spectral density will be decreased but the energy itself will not. You needed 600 mW for AMPS and you still need it for CDMA.
Then, for instance, if you transmit 1 mbit/s over 1 MHz channel to 1 kilometer, you will need about 10 dB over the noise (Or less, if your coding scheme is really good). If you spread the signal over 1 GHz, the s/n at receive end will be about -20 dB and your receiver will be able to recover it. But on 100 m from the transmitter the s/n will be 0 dB - quite an interference for anything using any part of the 1-GHz band. In 10 meters it will be 20 dB and nobody will be able to use the band at all. So the CDMA towers command the phones to adjust the power levels in less than 1 dB increments to keep them equal. It cannot be done in usual conditions.
Ultrawideband cannot be used to communicate from your car.
A pulse width of 1 nanosecond translates to about 1 foot. A car travels many times that distance in a second. In a free space environment such as ground-to-air communication it is possible to compensate for this, but in a typical urban environment with many reflections it is probably impractical to track so many different propagation paths that chance so rapidly.
Narrowband communication is less susceptible to this problem. Multiple paths that differ by less than one bit time do not affect the receiver too much (although they have a certain probability of fading).
The processing gain of UWB is very high, but not infinite. A cellular phone transmitting too close to a UWB receiver *will* jam it. Combining the two in a single device is probably not practical. Filtering this frequency range will not help either: the notch filter may look OK in the frequency domain but in the time domain it creates too much ringing for UWB to work correctly.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
There are other inaccuracies in the article: it's spectral power density is low, not it's power.
There are many errors in the article, but this one is not entirely incorrect: in practice, USB does use lower power than narrowband. UWB is not suceptible to fading so it does not need the large fading margin required by narrowband radio.
With narrowband communication the SNR fluctuates widely because of Raleigh fading - different reflection paths interfering either constructively or destructively. You need a large fading margin (extra power) to ensure robust communication.
With ultrawideband (i.e. bandwidth approaching center frequency) there is no Raleigh fading and the signal power does not fluctuate so much, even in environments with severe multipath reflections. This translates to as much as 20db savings of real transmission power.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
The antennas have to be specially designed for broadband. They may be larger than practical for handheld phones, but fractal antennas may reduce the size.
Not any wideband antenna is good for UWB. UWB uses time-hopping modulation. This requires a very short antenna ringing time. The antennas cannot be large and they cannot be complex. The UWB antennas I have seen look ridiculously simple - a short piece of wire or a square of metal. That does not mean that they are simple to design!
Fractal antennas may be good *wideband* antennas but they are probably bad for time-hopping.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Yes, Cringely doesn't understand 99% of the technology he writes about. That does not make the technology bullshit.
UWB is real. It's as close as it gets to a free lunch, and Claude need not turn in his grave.
you can build it, and it's all true... if there's only one such device
Not correct. UWB devices share the spectrum just fine. In fact, it's a far superior way to share the spectrum than narrowband frequency allocations.
The problems start when different devices use very different power levels: GPS uses extremely low levels, TV stations use very high levels and almost anything is at very high levels if you are close enough to the transmitter.
Spectrum sharing by frequency allocation provides very good separation between bands that use widely differing power levels. It's not too difficult to build filters that reject out-of-band interference by 100db or more. With ultrawideband, the rejection of unwanted signals cannot exceed 40-50db. UWB will work very well if all narrowband communications below 1GHz are shut down. Since that will never happen it will probably remain limited to very low power levels and certain niche applications.
Here's what might happen if all narrowband transmissions *are* shut down:
UWB cells for "last 10 miles" delivery, combined with long range fiber and satellite infrastructure could bring 100kbps to almost any person on earch and 10mbits/second to anyone living in a city. The terminals will use very little power and can have long battery life. Location tracking with 20 centimeter accuracy will be available anywhere in a city, including indoors.
How is all this possible with just 1GHz of bandwidth? The utilization efficiency of spectrum should not be measured in bps/Hz but rather in bps/Hz/square Km. Today's cellular infrastructure uses a very crude form of frequency reuse to optimize this capacity. IS-96 CDMA barely begins to utilize the real advantages of spread spectrum with a bandwidth of 1.25MHz. With 1GHz of spread spectrum things start to look different. And it's not just the bandwidth: 1GHz at a center frequency of 15GHz can only be use for line-of-sight communication. If the 1GHz band has a center frequency of 700MHz it has much better propagation and is immune to fading.
Of course, this will never happen. But not because it is mathematically or technologically impossible.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
HERES WHY
Subnet banning
Moderation
20 Second delay
Lameness filters
Slashdot runs on a slow linux server
Crappy Slow Modems
He certanly seems taken with the technology. It would certanly be cool if this technology did free us of all our technological woes, but given that I'm not really a radio engineer, I'll remain skeptical untill it happens :)
Anyway, it would certanly be cool if it were true, but I do have trouble beliving that even if it were the FCC would let all that bandwidth go for free, I mean, I bet even if UWB does end up in wide use, it'll still be controlled by the same local monopolies that controll bandwidth now...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
How can you own a frequency?
I mean, if UWB really can deliver on it's potential, then why the hell should we stime it just so people who have invested in outdated technology can profit? That's moronic. Look, I mean if you own land and the government wants to put down a highway or a railroad, then they will. They just have to pay you for it.
The idea that we should hold back a huge technological advance on account of some moronic idea that people can 'own' mathimatical descriptions of b-feild flux is incredibly stupid.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
For a discussion of UWB from a technology company that has been active in the field for over 13 years, check out these links:
UWB Frequently Asked Questions
History of UWB technology [from perspectives of 4 experts in field]
Various papers and presentations on UWB technology
Multispectral Solutions' submissions to FCC UWB proceeding
There already has been many well moderated comments about how this is really nothing except a new spread-spectrum concept.
I'll just add that it has been discussed before and even then we came to a conclusion that this is full of hot air. Only thing this article added was to the fact is that Cringley is a moron and doesn't know squat of what he is talking about. "It only raises the noise floor, it's not bad". Yeah. Right.
According to the artical, the military is already using UWB. I don't know why they would care, I don't see why UWB would cause problems for SS, and anyway, I'm sure the military would be using good digital encryption for anything important now.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
That number seems a bit off. 700 for 10,000 users?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
To the moderator the modded this as funny - Good one. What you don't
know is that I'll take those points anyway I can get them
Seriously, it is not time to talk about jitter coding and edge detection
when you have a discussion containing such blatent misunderstanding of the
technology as evidenced by the following statements:
Modded 5: "There is so little bandwidth in those low frequencies that you
can hardly talk about "ultrawideband"! If it wasn't clear that he doesn't
know what he was talking about beforehand, that statement should have made
it clear. "
Modded 4: "In order to have a gigabit of bandwidth your transceiver would
have to switch frequencies in excess of a billion times a second (not merely
transmit at a billion hertz). It takes x electronic clock cycles to
switch the electronics to switch frequencies you'd have to have electronics
working at xgigahertz in order to send a gigabit of data.
Modded 3: "So my cell phone sensitivity just lost 7dB which will cut the
range by 1/2 and that's for 1 UWB device".
Modded 3: " If UWB were ever widely deployed, you can think of it as generating
noise kind of like one billion light switches turned on and off many times
per second."
I can never get anything from the entire pbs.org domain to come up, for the past few months. Not even so much as any sort of icmp error messages from anywhere.
Am I alone here?
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
It sounds like the argument that an OS can't be all that good if its free... "You get what you pay for". Why not take a wait and see approach. If it really does cause all these problems, it won't be used. Give it a chance. The best solution (it appears) is to switch EVERYTHING to UWB, but still allow the dedicated spectrum for legacy devices.
I have had some exposure to companies working on UWB. There are currently two primary markets being targeted by UWB: position and tracking (including through-wall radars used by the military and law enforcement), and communications.
So far, the primary focus seems to have been on the position and tracking side. Primarily, this is because with out FCC approval, the only markets that could be targeted for an actual product are markets where it is possible to get a waiver - military and law enforcement are two such areas.
The current crop of chips that these systems are built on are very expensive and power-hungry. Because of the sub-nanosecond nature of the pulses, fairly exotic and relatively expensive technologies are required to both generate the pulses (which must not only be fast, but also properly shaped so they don't contain too much energy in certain areas of the spectrum), and to receive them.
In terms of communication capabilities, the current technology is not anywhere near the information bandwidth vs. range quoted in the article
Next generation chipsets will both increase performance and reduce power and cost, but these chips are still in the early planning stages. I wouldn't expect too many cheap, mainstream products in 18 months - it will probably take longer than that.
The technology clearly differentiates itself in the position and tracking area, with accuracies that are difficult or impossible to achieve with narrowband technolgies. The communications market, however, is extremely cost sensitive, and the road is littered with cases where the best technology didn't necessarily win, for a large number of reasons.
The companies championing UWB, such as Time Domain, are working hard to make both the technoloy and FCC approval a reality, and over time UWB will probably find significant markets, although it may not completely change the face of the earth overnight.
Last time I looked at Time Domain and did a little background reading I became *very* skeptical of them. I later spoke to someone high up in the Radio Agency (the people who approve/disapprove the use of radio spectrum in the UK) and he told me he had investigated them and hell would freeze over before they were allowed to operate over here. I think it will be an interesting proof of concept for the forseeable future.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
OK, so shannons law says that:
;)
C=W log (1+S/N)
(log is base 2)
where C is channel capacity in bits per second
W is bandwidth in Hertz and S/N is the signal to noise ratio.
These guys make W huge but are still limited by the signal to noise ratio. Conventional signals are narrow band and therefore won't give a wide band time correlated receiver too much trouble ? So what happens when everyone has one of these things, the noise floor on all frequencies goes higher and gradual escalation of power output begins in order to get the same performance you had way back in 2005?
I wouldn't mind seeing an antenna that radiates efficiently on all frequencies tho
What is your country?
I have faith, however, that Europe, India, China, Korea, Brazil and other civilized countries will switch to UWB, and thumb their noses at us US-Americans. Well, we deserve it. Still, it's depressing, and makes me wish I lived somewhere else.
The raising of the noise floor for narrowband users (and other UWB users for that matter) is a concern, but I think the effect has been overestimated a bit. It is true that many UWB transmitters in a close area will measurably degrade the noise floor for other radios operating in that local area, but the RF energy falls off as at least 1/r^2, and in UWB it is very small to begin with (the UWB emissions actually meet part 15 specs for unintentional emissions).
Once you are very far at all from a group of UWB transmitters, their ourtput will not affect the noise floor beyond what would otherwise be the current noise floor to any measurable amount. In this sense, it's not quite as bad as the trash analogy. If UWB is used for short range indoor comm applications (e.g., in-home video distribution and networking), any increase in the noise floor caused by the equipment in one house would be nonexistent four or five housed down the street.
In other words, for short range UWB applications, the local noise floor will only be affected by those UWB transmitters within a certain relatively short distance, not by all the UWB transmitters in the country.
Luckily, you don't know what you're talking about. I'd be happy to buy jerks like you a one way ticket to whatever country you want.
Keep an eye on the FCC meeting agenda for February (check this site on 7 February, one week before the Commissioner's scheduled meeting for the 14th: http://www.fcc.gov/realaudio/agendameetings.html)
You can watch the meeting live on the net.
God bless America.
I really shouldn't feed the trolls, especially this late in the life of a story, but I feel that a point by point response is in order.
1. The metric system. Vastly superior to inches and miles, as any scientist will tell you.
I agree, in a qualified way. For general use, the metric system provides no inherent advantages. For scientific use, the metric system provides lots of advantages, ease in calculation being the main selling point. But if I'm giving directions to an old timer who doesn't know a kilometer from a hole in his head, saying "Go down the road about a mile and a half, and make a right" works quite well. The key is to simply have a passable knowledge of both, or at least have the conversions memorized. It would be good for the US to switch, but it doesn't make us some society of morons. I'm sure other parts of the world have their own morons that think in metric rather than imperial measures.
2. Military time. Again, superior to civillian time. No confusion with AM or PM. You can even say 13-o'clock.
What is the point to changing to a system that has no advantages. Most Americans (and others throughout the world) are capable of understanding military time, but nobody uses it, since there's no real point. You can say "I'll meet you at 2PM or I'll meet you at 14 o'clock" Makes no difference. I've never once not been somewhere on time due to an am/pm misunderstanding.
4. 220V outlets. High-voltage outlets are much more efficient. In Germany, my father says, they were the standard 60+ years ago in Germany, during the war. How is it that us asshole Americans are that far behind? No excuse for such incompetence. 220V outlets are more electrically efficient, and allow for thinner wires...
You're right, there is no excuse for incompetence. You appear to be making all the reaches you possibly can to condemn Americans as "backward and stupid." Thinner wires and higher voltage is exactly what you want...if you want to start a fire. Besides, every single one of us can get 240v out of the wires in our homes. In addition to being more dangerous, the cost of the change outweighs any benefits you will see. There are billions of electrical devices in this country that run on 110, and the energy savings are negligible, since it's all at much higher voltages until it gets to the pole top (or underground) transformer that brings it down to 110. In large buildings 440 and higher voltages are commonly used for the feed into the building, which is then converted to 110 to run the office equipment, while still leaving the 440 to run the elevators and other equipment. It's all about using the right tool for the job.
5. Switching from Windows to superior OS's like the Linux family, *BSD, BeOS, Amiga QNX, Hurd, etc.
And you think elsewhere in the world people are switching in droves?
6. The temperature scale. Fahrenheit? Fahrenheit was based of of human body temperature as a reference point. Temperature is a measure of motion. Fahrenheit can be negative, and that makes no sense, as there's no such thing as negative motion.
See the arguments for #1, with the additional point that Fahrenheit is a shitty scale, but it works just fine for reference, just as "fooglebloxes" would if everyone knew what they were. I guess that's why most anywhere you see temperature measurements you see xxF/xxC. Both side by side, what could be a better solution?
After responding, now I know you were trolling.
-Nathan
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