Slashdot Mirror
Exchange Email Addresses With A Handshake
Eye of the Frog writes "Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. and its subsidiary NTT DoCoMo Inc. have developed a device that attaches to your PDA which uses the body's conductivity to transmit data at an amazing 10 megabits per second."
"Honest, your honor. I wasn't grabbing her. I was just giving her my telephone number!"
If you smoke after sex, you're doing it too fast.
At least in transfer rates........
which uses the body's conductivity to transmit data at an amazing 10 megabits per second
Oh, god. Imagine the new possibilities for porn.
So, if a bunch of people join hands, do they become a Beowolf cluster?
How about the people with pace makers? Are they going to have a warning label on the product or even try testing the product with them? Also, how about any other medical conditions that might present themselves due to this technology?
We could all benefit from my education.
Now you can transfer computer viruses as easy as the old fashioned biological kind.
I can see the T-Shirts now, "Don't touch me! I'm infected with Code Red!"
If you're close enough to TOUCH the person... why not just give a business card or TALK to the person???
Now ask yourself this: What's to stop crackers from using a root-kit that operates through handshakes to steal information from your electronic device and then use that information to break into your stuff? Is this another one of those technologies that will become totally critical in our everyday lives, and that will also become a huge security problem?
at 10Mb/s our body could transmit it's own DNA in 1 hour and 41 minutes.
9 months is a long time compared to that...
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
Yes, but in order to reach full 10mbps you have to have a diet rich in copper.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
Problems: Stores might rig their doornobs to download your personal information as you go in the store. Privacy issue. Or someone could touch you, and have all your information stored. Think potential stalkers/criminals/etc. Scary. Of course you could always turn it off, I suppose, but if you forget it's a problem. I assume I'm not the only absent minded human around.
However, there are some interesting possibilities:
A credit card reader could read your body's electrical signal, as it is also scanning the card. Added consumer security. Even cooler would be if each person had a unique electrical signal their body generates, but I don't know anything about that. Either way, interesting.
You could make long distance calls from anywhere, and have the phone read your calling card number automatically when you pick up the phone.
Possibility of electronic "keys" for car/house stored in PDA. Not so good if PDA is lost or crashes, but if you can call the company and say "My PDA is gone - please scramble my house key codes until we can resolve the issue" it might work. Locking the house would be great - simply disable the electronic circuit from the inside and there is no lock to pick. As for someone who tries to crack it while you're out, simply have the system stop taking input for five seconds if it gets a bad signal. With billions of possibilities at five seconds a try, it wouldn't work real well trying to crack it. If you're paranoid, have it take thirty seconds. No more fumbling with keys or those little remote control keychains, either - just touch and open.
Many issues to resolve, but some very cool possibilities as well.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Does anybody else think this sounds just a teensy bit flaky? The article says the connection works through clothing ... "Apparel and handbags have their own conductivity, allowing an electrical connection to a PDA that can remain in one's pocket..." Huh?? 10 mbps using the cloth of my pocket as a conductor??
I have a suspicion that news.au.com is getting one slipped to them. The closest Google result I could get with "NTT NoCoMo skin" is this article about a cell phone that conducts sound through bone and cartilage, enabling you to listen to the call by sticking your finger in your ear.
Uhhh, okie dokie.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of us!
"Ask me about Loom"
2002-10-07 01:14:50 Download Porn Videos While You Kiss (articles,news) (rejected)
Perhaps now you're starting to understand the importance of a good title.
...but some of the test subjects' "antenna" wasn't quite long enough for decent reception.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
First, 10 Mbps is possible, but that's getting near the theoretical limit. The datarate is limited by the bandwidth, and the bandwidth is limited by the fact that around 50MHz, the signal wavelength is about four times the size of a person, which means the person turns into an antenna, and the whole system becomes essentially a short range radio.
Second, because these systems operate in the near field, the signal travels through a current loop, and not as plane waves in free space. This means that there has to be some kind of grounding path for current to flow back to the transmitter after going through the person. This is why it works so well to put transceivers in shoes -- the ground path can flow through earth ground (or any conductive material in the floor). For devices held in hands, the very small (femtofarad) capacitance of free space is enough, but the signal does suffer more from noise. Devices in purses, etc. also have this problem, and may have difficulty establishing the ground connection depending on the material the purse is made from and the other objects inside it.
One issue that to my knowledge has not been addressed very well is guaranteeing that the signal is received during--and only during--physical contact. There is a large dependence of signal strength on geometry. The devices I've constructed can communicate when they're brought near (~10 cm) of each other, touching or not. There are a few solutions, such as looking at jumps in signal strength, but they tend to be confused when a person without a transceiver happens to touch the object, and a person with a transceiver is nearby. I'm currently working on this problem for my PhD dissertation, so if you have any good ideas or know of related work, I'd love to hear from you.
If you'd like to read more, the first (and most detailed) publication I know about on this idea was Thomas Zimmerman's Masters Thesis at the MIT AI Lab. You find it here: http://www.media.mit.edu/physics/publications/thes es/95.09.zimmerman.pdf
------
Kurt Partridge
Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
A friend of mine had told me (a few years ago) about how his company was working on ways to use body conductivity and the electical fields surrounding our bodies to pass data. This article sounds very familiar.
;) seamlessly.
Passing data from one person to another was one of the uses, but the other I found much more interesting.
Imagine a personal device "cloud" where your PDA, watch, and cell phone all pass data back and forth. Your watch acts as a small display for your cell and/or your PDA and receives time updates via the cell. Your PDA uses the cell for data calls. Your cell uses your PDA to look up names and numbers. All (theoretically
Take it a step further, and create small modules that plug into this personal network. Maybe a keychain of functions all accessable through your watch or PDA. Maybe carry a Quake quarter in your pocket.
Nokia make a lot of press with putting a camera in a cell phone. I haven't looked at the spec, but I'd imagine that like many multi-function devices, it doesn't do either well. Imagine your (dedicated to task) camera taking pics, and storing them on another device (is that smart card in your wallet or are you just happy to see me?), previewing the pics on your phone and sending them from there. You could easily give them to someone else with a handshake.
Quite a lot of possibility. I had often thought that the business card exchange application was the least exciting...
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!