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DoD Dreams of Efficient Spectrum Usage

Posted by michael on from the spectrum-spectrum-everywhere-and-nary-a-drop-to-drink dept.

Unstrung writes "US Military research agency DARPA is sick of all those static-filled cellphone calls and dropped connections too. The shadowy eggheads are working on a way of using the bandwidth available today more efficiently."

2 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. DOD, DARPA and Inovation by haz-mat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The DOD and DARPA have a long history of bringing about technical innnovation, regardless of how slowly it comes into actual being, the very medium we are using (or abusing) right now is a result of that... unfortunately given the fact that i am at "work" right now, i can attest that they are not interested in efficency, mine is dropping like a rock... TGIF

  2. Re:GSM by Moridineas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ok, I'm going to totally ignore your cell phone bashing which I'm sure others can refute better than I. However I have to make a point with the test of your message.

    You say that "90% of americans don't have passports". Let's check the data--I couldn't find anywhere a specific mention of how many passports in total are issued at any one time. however I could find press releases such as this one:

    http://secretary.state.gov/www/briefings/stateme nt s/970919.html

    Which state that:
    -In 1997 a record number of 6 million passports were issued
    -each year 40 million americas go abroad
    -in 1996 5.7 million passports were issued
    -each year since 1992 has seen more passports issued in 1992, in which 3.5 million passports were issed.

    So, we can assume that 40 million passports is the absolute floor number of possible passports. Also take note that many people who travel to other countries (Canada for instance, one of our two langbased neighbors in the US. Actually I just checked, and a border crossing into Mexico doesn't require a passport either) don't always have passports--I got into canada with a driver's license. So all those "international" travellers (of which there are a large number! don't always get passports).

    Also let's assume that since not everyone who has a passport goes broad every-year (and thus won't be represented in above 40M) that there are 30M who have passports sitting in a box at home. So we have a conservative number of 70M people with passports (I'm guessing the 30M is an under-representation).

    Also, on the web I read that around 16M people from the US visit Mexico every year. I couldn't find a number for Canada, but I'd bet it's similar. So right there we have 40M going abroad, and 30M going to other North American countries. That number alone is practically the population of Germany!! But anyway, disregarding Canada+Mexico (and also Alaska,Hawaii, smaller US islands etc, options most European nations don't have) somewhere around 1/4 of the population (population is around 270M) has a passport by my estimation, and enough people to roughly equal the population of Germany visit another country. And you're complaining about this why??

    This is just fud, fud, fud, us bashing.