Slashdot Mirror
Embedding Data Signals In White Noise
Anemophilous Coward writes "ZDNet has the following article which describes a company that 'has devised a method for sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't hear them. With this same technology, radio stations can unobtrusively transmit ads, Web site URLs, or information about music and artists to in-car cell phones.'" Here is some further reading about the company, Intrasonics.
We all know this is just a cover story for the REAL secret messages in the static!
what kind of bandwidth would this get? (early cop-out post)
sig - .
....more invisible voices urging me to do bad things.
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"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
I only hope Mozilla can make a popup blocker for my phone.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Blow your mind
I've often wondered if I could transfer PSX ISOs to people on newsgroups by finding the ISO data in the digits of PI and posting a message like "PI, offset 23094820394802394829384982736481723681736498237948 273948239482793847293847", read 187MB. Enjoy!"
[A company] has devised a method for sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't hear them.
Yeah, but how much is dog insurance going for these days?
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
And life for all dog's everywhere will never be the same.
I want an in depth analysis of the Beatles' White Album immediately! Charles Manson was right!
Is this really possible? - I guess so, as long as they're only "tansmitted", and never converted into a form that can be picked up by my eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose, ...
insteading of worrying about first posts and slashdot and all that rot, focus on what's important. masturbation. go do it right now, you'll feel better.
who will be the first artist to embed lyrics, trivia, etc in their CDs?
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Advertising everywhere... no escape. I remember reading a short sci-fi story about this many years ago. Unfortunately, it looks like somebody else read it as well...
The pr0n industry should be all over this. You can watch a movie at home with a special "doll", responding to commands...
Where can I buy stock?
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
I wonder if this technology could be modified to watermark the source of the signal?
But if they are saying that it is random pops and cracks how will converting it into MP3s affect it?
I guess also, how would extra noise because one has a lousy stereo do to the signal?
This is just like that time that the phone police were sending me those messages through the rings, man. Exactly the same, except different. Man.
How effective can an ad be if it's unobtrusive? And if an ad is ineffective, the who would pay for it?
I suspect that this will become a method to obtrusively transmit advertisements.
This could be used to watermark audio, in order to try to track pirates. Granted, if they are actually using psychoacustics, then psychoacustic compression systems like MP3 or Vorbis would strip the extra data, but this would be good for basic audio.
However, I doubt this is "inaudiable" - rather I suspect it is "unobtrusive" - you would hear it, and if you know what to listen for would identify it, but you wouldn't find it objectionable in most cases.
But keep it the hell off my CDs!
www.eFax.com are spammers
Wireless phones don't just pick up random waves in the air, they pick up signal being sent to their phone number only. So how will this work?
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Let me guess, by using the correlation of psuedo-random noise sequences summed with the signal.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
I'm here all week.
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"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
This is an interesting idea, using psychoacoustic modeling to open a data channel in audio. The article describes some applications, and I'll certainly admit that some of them sound irritating or possibly dangerous (from a security standpoint.) Others sound better.
But not everything interesting to do with this will be done by the company involved, because it may not make good business sense or they may not have thought of it. I'd be interested in what slashdotters can think of to do with such a channel. The obvious use of embedding artist and recording information is mentioned, and I like that one a lot. It would be great to have a radio displaying those things, and to be able to scroll back and look at the last N songs. This would let you find out what that song you heard the end of was, or do a statistical analysis of a station's playlist, whatever you want.
A use that occurs to me is adding the information to advertisements so that adverisers can automate the task of making sure that they get what they pay for. Even performers could use an "ad id" check to make sure they get their voice-over royalties and the like.
Of course, voice of america and similar programs could use this right away. First they start adding this hidden content to all programming, using encrypted books, articles, or any other easily accesible source. They can then easily put a specific message with a specific key into a program that certain people can unlock. There's no entropy difference between the "real" message and the usual dummy ones to detect.
Hmmm lots of fun to be had here...
Using a seemingly innocuous message as a carrier wave for a truly useful message you don't want other people to know about is an old-news crypto technique, of course. But here's a fun, new place to apply it.
And you don't even need to seem to be doing anything funny during decoding (the message would obviously have to be enciphered; pass it in the clear and anyone who owns a cell tower between the two points can read it); build that into the phone/PDA. With the ridiculous proliferation of the damn things, no one will blink if you receive a call, chat for a few minutes, and then tap a few buttons. For all they know, you're sending an SMS, even if you are entering your passphrase.
All it really takes to do 3DES or Blowfish in software in a reasonable period of time is a StrongARM or similar (my Newton's got one, you cell phone must), though you'd get far better performance doing it in hardware. (Watch out for escrow, though!)
Do you have a
Ignore the messages embedded in this whitenoise.
You will Loooooooove Microsoft
You will Haaaaaaaate Open Source
Linux is eeeeeeeevil
War on Iraq is goooooooood
"As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue." ~A. Einstein
Hm, could someone send a mass-broadcast virus this way?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
I find it sad that everytime a new technology such as this is developed, the first instinct of the marketing people tasked with selling it is to figure out a way to make it push ads into my perceptual environment, almost guaranteeing an initial cynical reaction..
Except for the fact that the article SPECIFICALLY states that it doesn't work on the same principle as dog whistles as the sound couldn't be transmitted through ordinary speakers.
** And as it took 5 minutes to download PDF with only marketing jargon, analysis of an Slashdot Effect.
Really, somehow the Intrasonics thing sounds like even more outrageous marketing stunt than for example posting a link to a slashdot effect analysis. Or, if someone from the company is listening, please do provide some real technical specifications on the thing.
"I can hear it, can't you?"
-dameron
from the article: Does the company's technology work on the dog whistle principle, using sound waves that are below the threshold of human hearing? No. If it did, you couldn't send the signals over standard audio speakers. Instead, the technology revolves around what's called psycho-acoustic masking. Humans tend to filter out what they don't want to hear, especially the pop, fizz and hum of white noise. Intrasonics essentially takes and digitizes recorded messages, and then masks them as nuisance noises. The signals are spread over the audible spectrum and then disguised into the soundtrack. During a crescendo, the signals can be louder than quiet moments and still remain undetectable. A processor, equipped with specialized software, in the receiving unit then reassembles the message and delivers it accordingly. Tests reveal that people don't hear the signals.
Will my pet Hamster Fred, freak out ? Inaudable usually means higher sound frequencies. If it is audible but comes off as white noise
Outside of Marketing meetings, I can't see how anyone would actually *want* their devices to respond to commands imbedded into audio noise. OK, a "Talking Tina" doll that acts the part during the airing of a Twilight Zone would be funny the first time around, but that's about all I can imagine the end-user wanting the technology to do (silly little tricks with "intercative" robots). I don't think that ANY consumer would want their cells to ring with the "ad of the day" transmitted over the air muzak at their favorite retailer.
Wait, I just thought of a use... a prankster's dream come true. Imagine 40,000 cells all ringing at the same time during the playing of a *special* version of "Black in Black" during a major sports event. Or even playing a *special* CD in a boombox, laughing as everyone within listening range has their cell ring and deliver them a message that has been imbedded into the CD sound. Good luck tracing that obscene phone message.
Right. No, your other right. No, the other other right.
Mirror provided by Mr HOSTBOT
RudeDude
Perl/Linux/PHP hacker
Can someone test if setti@home can decipher these messages? ;)
Why does this sound so familiar?
--
[insert standard flame here]
Last time my TV blast some uncomprehensible signal, my cat had nearly had a heart attack. For a while, I couldn't figure it out what was causing it!!
Finally, I just gave up watching this horrible show...
Now, my cat is on the road to recovery.
Coderz 4 Life
Can someone please tell me how to remove this pop-up ad that's sticking out of my ear? Everytime I think I've gotten rid of it it comes back.
The Radio Data System has been around for ages and it allows precisely that: transmitting extra information with normal radio signals... Because it works by putting digital signal into inaudibile frequency, it should do exactly the same, as long as speakers have any response at 20-40Khz.
Embedding Data Signals In White Noise Posted by timothy on Thu Nov 07, '02 04:34 PM from the literally-subliminal dept. radio stations can unobtrusively transmit ads, Web site URLs, or information about music andescribes a compsignals over ordinary audio signals over ordinary audio any that 'has dedescribes a company that 'has devised a method for sending wsignals over ordinary audio ireless speakers so that humsignals over ordinary audio ansAnsignals over ordinary audio emophilous Coward writes "ZDNet has the following article which following article which describes a company that 'has devised a method for sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't hear them. With this same technology, can't hear them. With this same technology, radio stations can unobtrusively transmit ads,Coward wAnemophilous Coward writes "ZDNet has the following article which following article which describes a company that 'has devised a method for sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't hear them. With this same technology, rites "ZDNet has the vised a method for sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't hear them. With this same technology, radio stations can unobtrusively transmit ads,Coward writes "ZDNet has the d artists to in-car Coward writes "ZDNet has the following article which describes a company that 'has devised a method for sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't hear them. With this same technology, radio stations can unobtrusively transmit ads, Web site URLs, or information about music and artists to in-car Web site URLs, or information about music and artists to in-car cell phones.'" Here is some further reading about the company, Intrasonics. Embedding Data Signals In White Noise Posted by timothy on Thu Nov 07, '02 04:34 PM from the literally-subliminal dept. Anemophilous cell phones.'" Here is some further reading about the company, Intrasonics. Coward writes "ZD company that 'has devised a method for sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't hearNet ha company that 'has devised a method for sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't hears the following article which describes a them. With this same tec company that 'has devised a method for sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't hearhnology, radio stations can unobtrusively transmit ads, Web site URLs, or informa company that 'has devised a method for sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't heartion about music and artists to in-car
"With this same technology, radio stations can unobtrusively transmit ads, Web site URLs, or information about music and artists..
Humans tend to filter out what they don't want to hear, especially the pop, fizz and hum of white noise."
So if I understand this correctly, the technology can transmit advertisements, spam, and pop music completely unheard by the human ear by disgusing them as advertisements, spam, and pop music?
Shameless plug for my photos on Flickr
White noise was in fact something you can hear, it's just that it sounds like static. So what they're saying is they've found a way to add static to your music and give you pop-up adds to boot.
This message brought to you by SublimiSonics, Inc., Ltd. LLC.
A long time back, I was reading some hardware reviews on sound cards. 1 of the reviews mentioned a card that was rather nominal, but came with a special set of headphones. In about a page of article, it glanced over the soundcard and then went into rave reviews of the headphones, which apparently used "white noise" to block audible frequencies except for the music/etc coming through the headphones.
My guess would be that this could be used to create a signal, and block it from human perception but perhaps still allow it to be picked up be electronics.
One question I have though, if they're making such advanced uses of white-noise technology now, and these headphones/soundcards came out over a year ago, why haven't I seen rave reviews on the technology and white-noise headphones available at every radio shack? From what I remember, including the price of the card the 'phones weren't that expensive.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
I had a friend who worked for defense contractor..he worked on very high clearence stuff...they were mostly a software shop...he used to tell me about some of his projects...sometimes "crossing the line" in our conversations....he eluded to the fact that the government posseses very similar technology to this...but instead of cleverly piggybacking existing signals to plant ads...they are using much more subtle techniques to actually modify behavior on both small and large scale....some may laugh...but I knew this guy for a few years....he was uber...MIT graddy...he said they used to call going to work "dreamtime" because they were working with stuff hundreds of years ahead of what we have yet to see in the commercial marketplace...scary....
It'll get published by 2600 and then every kiddie will be encoding messages and sending them out through their little radio shack fm transmitters as mommy and daddy roll down the highway, making the technology useless (or even more useless)
isn't white noise like britany spears, nsync, backstreet boys,etc?
oh wait...you mean the OTHER white noise
nbfn
Others have already observed that it's not a frequency thing, but let me expand on that.
Frequencies are already optimized for human hearing, and it's not usually possible to send, say, a 40,000Hz signal on most anything you can think of, analog or digital. Standard phones have a bandwidth of something like 3 K Hz. CDs of course top out around 20,000Hz, give or take a bit. (It's not a perfect cutoff at 22050, it's a curve, so there isn't quite a point you can say is "the limit".) I don't know for certain but I'd bet FM can't transmit those frequencies and be compliant with FCC regulations. (Of course the tech could do it in theory, but the radio station may have to leave their allocated frequencies to do it; I don't know for certain.) AM could do it in theory but based on the low quality of the signal I hypothesize that something is preventing high frequencies from getting through.
Finally, the coup de grace is that our speakers are optimized for human hearing, pretty much no matter what. Covering the bases from 20Hz - 20,000Hz is a hard enough problem without pushing the required range up another couple of octaves.
In fact, what the company is proposing seems to be in some sense the inverse of MP3 coding. MP3 coding strips the signal of things that you can't hear through by analysing what is psychoacoustically masked in the original signal. The MP3 encoding process can then focus on just the parts of the signal you do hear, which is obviously going to require less space, except in some pathological cases where the whole sound is perceivable (like a pure sine wave tone).
From what I understand of the marketing, the part of the signal that an MP3 encoder strips out is exactly where they would place their data. They can stick any data they want in there and we just plain won't hear it, but a computer+microphone doesn't have this problem.
Interesting corrolary: The time frame this will work in is limited, as digital transmission usually uses compressed audio, and the act of compressing the audio will preferentially eliminate this data. (Or does digital radio transmit an uncompressed stream?) They'd better get marketing this now, so that there's an installed base and they can try to later create receivers that will re-add their signal on the receiving side. Of course, if all anybody is using this for is advertising, I can't imagine we're going to go out of our way to buy "Advertising Enabled!" digital radio receivers.
Does this mean that driving around with my car stereo blasting would now be considered "advertising"?
OTOH, has anyone heard what compression this technique has? Is it just good for short text strings, or what? I'm picturing a time when a compressed ogg is broadcast along with the song... get replay, get your own copy... at a lower sample then digital, of course, but enough to encourage radio listeners and drop p2pers.
OTOH2, encrypt it, and then sell the decryption code.
*shrugs* it's been a long day. Don't blame me for the insanity, blame me instead.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
...sending wireless signals over ordinary audio speakers so that humans can't hear them....
Is it just me, or does embedding data in white noise "sound" like it's already happend? Every time I pick up the phone when someone else is using the line for a dial-up connection, I am abruptly reminded of the transmission of data using seemingly random noise....
$ # Patent pending...
$ bzip2 -c </lib/libc.so.6 >/dev/audio
And how is this diffrent from steganography + a pair of 2,400 buad modems?
Besides, elephants have been doing this for millenia (with their feet instead of over their THX system).
moto411.com
Without having read the article (Shock! Horror!), I think they'll probably be using "Spread spectrum" techniques.
These are techniques for mixing your signal with Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) for two purposes:
a) When the communication is intercepted, the signal is so intentionally, but randomly, garbled by AWGN, that it is almost impossible to be recovered, unless
b) The intended recipient knows exactly what AWGN to remove, from which parts of the signal to remove it and how to go about it.
These techniques are very widely used in the military, especially by the US military, for wireless communications.
There has been research lately, examining whether these techniques can be used in conjuction with 3rd and 4th generation communication systems, to improve the quality of mobile communications generally, for all.
/. Where the truth
I'd rather listen to white noise than the crap they put on the radio these days anyway!
Good thing my speakers can barely play music let alone sounds I can't hear.
A hot new startup in California has announced a technology for encoding color information in black-and-white television broadcasts. The extra signal is encoded such that black-and-white receivers don't notice it, using a proprietary technique referred to as a ``subcarrier''. Millions of Slashdot kiddies are smitten with awe.
Put earplugs in ears. Cover eyes with blindfold. Ah, the bliss of not seeing those pop-up ads or oncoming cars...... CRASH!!...
-SheWhoWalksWithToesLikeCobras Please enter any 11-digit prime number to continue...
I tried sending this image to a friend but here is what he got.
Eating up my precious amplifier power with ad content? I'll charge them by the microwatt.
Isnt this the story of the Movie The Ring?
It wont be long now until you walk into a walmart/fred myers/kmart/whatever store and those lovely tunes they play as background musak push their own advertising to get you to buy the latest X-Box games or get your oil change done there rather than your normal place.... its called mind control ladies and gents... and its unconstitutional by that nature... it circumvents our God given right to say "I OPT OUT" thus forcing us to hear their ads.. I believe for that matter (since I opt out of all advertising) that if I am given no choice but to 'hear' their ads I should be paid a listening fee.... kinda like spam email.
I mean DAMNIT wasnt this a free country at one time before it became this awful land of marketing?
I didn't know there were advertisements in Eminem's music!
I have to get out more.
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
I love those radio contests where you have to tell them last x songs/artist they played... this would rock... Calculus has ruined my brain!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
"Embedding Data in White Noise"...isn't that an apt description of the Internet?
One of the things that came with the cuecat kit was a rca cable that was meant to go from your computer to your sound card. Apparently, while watching TV they'd embed a signal into the audio that the cuecat software would pick up, and it would take you to their site.
Since one of our local channels was owned by the Belo corp (who owned a LOT of Digital Convergence stock), they pushed it HEAVILY, and embedded URLs in the news program.
So, nothing new.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
A software-only 'upgrade' to add this to a cellphone will mean the microphone audio circuits
and the DSP processor (normally used for voice compression in GSM phones) will be on all the time.
A couple milliamps extra current will take hours off the standby time.
The company has discovered that by adding static and degrading your music quality they can send data over sound waves! Woohoo! You know, like a modem! Err, actually it's only half a modem, it's only one-way! I'm going to use another exclaimation point!
After a pretty thorough search I was unable to find a data rate for this new top sekret modem technology. I'll confidently wager it's going to be between 10 and 100 baud, as in a 0.01K modem or 0.1K modem.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Yes, except that the little girl tells you to buy Windows XP.
Finding God in a Dog
...we can embed links and advertising about Linux (oops, GNU/Linux) in Richard Stallmans' Free Software song?
/. Geek Club membership schedule says today I don't care about free software and love the MPAA, RIAA and Microsoft. Nevermind.
Wait a minute, my
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
By definition white noise has al multitemporal cumulsants delta correlated (if all cumulants of order higher than two are for any times zero then the noise is also gaussian). Embedding signals leads to noise with cumulants different from zero for different times, and thus the noise is not white anymore, it becomes colored.
Embedding signals leads to noise with cumulants different from zero for different times, and thus the noise is not white anymore, it becomes colored.
Your display probably isn't true white either; it's made of tiny red, green, and blue dots. This article is about perceptually hiding information in audio that humans hear as "white" but that machines can pick apart. It's steganography.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Like song title/artist for display ON the head unit of your stereo. Could also give out the radio station name when you tune to it, as well as their phone number/request line.
During commercials you could add some value by displaying the product/company name, website, or phone number.
Start rolling out head units that can do this, and it would be very useful for everyone.
Most speakers (read: every consumer device) cannot output all the way up to 20,000 Hz. Now, I can hear beyond 20,000 Hz. How is it that I won't be able to hear these sounds that *must* be below 20,000 Hz? Are they raising the noise floor and putting the information in there? Seems broken to me.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
If they're just discovering the applications of this technology now,
Who the hell's been speaking to me all this time!!??
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
I remember having an album entitled "The sound of white noise" but I don't remember who did it. I want to say Anthrax but I don't think that's right.
The instant a cell phone becomes nothing more than an intrusive marketing tool I will crush it under my boots and never use it again! The instant someone wants to put a GPS tracking chip in my phone, I'll tell them to take their government spy tech and crap it up their... Well, you get the idea.
At our school, we don't earn a degree when we graduate—we earn pi/180 radians
Wouldn't something like this easily fall into it? It'd be interesting to do a study to see if people responded to stuff transmitted just on the fringe of their hearing range.
/; insert microsoft XP CD.
This kinda scares me a bit. I feel the sudden urge to rm -rf
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
The one thing I can't stand about cell phones is the paucity of advertisements. It's really difficult, I go into withdrawal sometimes while on the phone, because there are no ads telling me what to buy. It's almost like being in a forest or cave! Thank goodness they are finding new ways to infiltrate the mental environment.
Thats right, you are a FAILURE. The real first post is miles away. Truly yours is an EPIC FAILURE the likes of which the world has never seen.
Why is it that when a new technology comes out, the first thought is "How do we use this for advertising?". Don't we have better things to worry about? Can't we figure out new technology that doesn't have advertising applications? I'm tired of being advertised to by everyone at every moment. When I go to the supermarket, the little things that separate different people's purchases have ads on them (someone on/. surely knows the technical name for those things). At the height of the .com boom, the whole BART stations were wrapped in advertising for one company. Now the toy I buy for my kids is going to start yapping "Buy Doritos, Buy Doritos" everytime Buffy comes on. Who knows what it'll say if I accidently turn on a Christian station.
That's gotta fit into your schema somewhere
In europe, there exists a similar technology called RDS for "Radio Data System". It's on the air for about 10 years now and allows for these cool features since then:
- Show the Station name in your radio display
- Show what's playing
- Certain stations are transmitted over several frequencies. RDS knows the alternative frequencies of your stations and automatically switches to the best frequency
whoever develops a blocker for this spam-like feature will make lots of money.
http://www.g-ir.com/generics/presentations/intraso nics.ppt
[watch out for the space SD puts in the URL,OO will read the ppt]
I remember a broadcast I watched on TV half a year ago. It was how to use infrasonic soundwaves to create atmosphere in cinemas. With all that THX and Dolby-stuff around two sound engineers who had worked together as close friends suddenly started to fight each other over something in the sound studio. Afterwards they realized that their mood had been seriously affected by unherable infrasonic soundwaves they used for the movie they were working on. The reporter said that this is used in pretty much every new movie to create an atmosphere of fear or rage among the viewers. I wonder how far this could be taken...
There also seems to be a strange deep sound around in Europe. Nobody, not even the scientists measuring some American farts deep into the bavarian woods, was able to determine the source of that sound yet. Over 1000 people in Europe seem to be affected by that. They even made some conlusions about global soundwaves created by military sonar and stuff. Pretty scary...
So I'd like to know about every stupid signal I will get, purely encoded data or else. I'm not a technophile but those stuff scares me because I won't be able to switch off the router or TV anymore...
0 001 11 1
Radio is limited to about 16 Khz on FM. Most of us can easily hear that. So they up the noise floor a little to make room for ads?
Does this mean we get fewer audio ads in trade for the lower quality?
Pipe your radio through lame, output through sound card, information gone all done!
Blogging because I can...
Doesn't this seem to depend too much on the speakers faithfully putting out whatever sound they're "supposed" to, based on the radio/electrical signals they're receiving?
Could a signal be embedded in the trailers at the beginning of a movie that would automatically turn off all the pagers, beepers, and cellphones in the audience?
So, when I buy the hot new Britney CD I've been waiting for, I will have to deal with the noise^H^H^H NEW FEATURES! embedded in the track from both the copy protection and the ads from this new system.
How long before we can barely hear the music at all because of all the interference noise?
What's That? That new Britney CD is just 47 minutes of static anyway? There never was anything close to music on the disc?
Hmmm. Never Mind.
"Buy the CD... Twenty-five dollars is cheap... Go ahead... You know you want to... Uh huh... Buy two copies - you need a legal backup... Come on honey... Hilary needs a new Cadillac... Only thieves copy music... Copy music and go to jail... Turn in your neighbors who copy music... Oh yeah, baby..."
Sigs are bad for your health.
Wouldn't this be illegal in the US and UK as something that 'might be useful to terrorists'?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
It sounds to me like this is an application of spread spectrum technology at audio frequencies.
:)
This also brings up the question of how a cellphone can pick up audio signals? I would guess that the microphone has to be able to pick up the sound in order for this to work. A push-to-talk switch (or something of that nature) would render it useless right quick
Thinking more about it, the phone would HAVE to be an acoustic transport, unless the phone will be modified to receive the EMI from the speakers...
Here's a point to consider...if it is audio, and you're on the phone talking to somebody with this sort of signal being received by your phone...do you think that the phone on the far side would pick it up as well?
This is great that they are coming up with more ways to give us a ton of advertising, but I want to know what about existing technology? For example I have a PCS Vision phone (just got it the other day and kind of sad seeing how another phone will be needed to take advantage of this technology) with GPS or location tracking built in. When am I going to start seeing the apps that function like a GPS? Such as goto some WAP site enter where you want to go and your phone will direct you to the location by using a map database and the location from your phone. I would like to see current technology being taken advantage of instead of new technology being developed, while the current technology is still being underutilized. Btw, this sounds great! But until I see current technology being utilized it always is going to stink to be on the bleeding edge.
Another method for the delivery of spam. Guess we'll have to start work on the anti-white (black) noise generator.
As many times as this has likely already been said in this thread, just another way for people to send me crap I don't want in places I don't want it. "Holy Shit, its Tom Fucking Bombadil!" TheoD
Haven't music bands already been doing this?
Check out the Portable People Meter from Arbitron. It can recognize subaudible watermarks in music including over radio, Musak, and even some streaming audio compressions. Arbitron uses it for ratings purposes.
Of course, then there is IBOC from Ibiquity which is an on-channel digital enhacement for AM and FM signals, part of which could be used for datacasting, as part of most DTV signals will.
Who wants to connect their radio to their computer? Ever get one of those CueCats. They sucked, they looked horribly gay, and all they did was bring you to advertiser websites of things like diapers and coke. Now if we were watching porn...
The above statement assumes that the digital watermark is intended to be used as some identifier that is different for otherwise identical songs. Something like adding your name to the song you downloaded, and sending in the jackbooted thugs when the file with your name on it shows up on Eddie's warez server.
If, however, you're using a watermark for some kind of authentication of the source of a file (like a PGP signature that this really is the latest song from artist X), then that's certainly possible. But I'd say that you're not making a watermark in that case, you're just embedding data.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
...due to the recent FCC decision to allow digital radio. Why would someone upgrade their radio to deal with this when they can upgrade to one that handles digital. It would be like upgrading from 8-track to audio tape when CDs are just being released. Also, they would have to get FCC approval as well. Not a quick proposition.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
MP3 and OGG are essentially based on filtering OUT audio that would be not be heard due to psychoacoustic masking :) ..... so.....guess what? :)
:) OSS to the rescue fighting unwanted ads again!
Just chain a realtime OGG encoder to the incoming music stream and it should strip the info! HEHE
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
If the CD digitally stores 44,100 samples a second, why isn't 22,050 an absolute cutoff? I would imagine it would HAVE to be, since it's not physically possible to make the wave go up-down-up-down any faster than 1/2 the sampling rate.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Imagine, the universe is filled with spam. Ahhhhh!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This technology could encode bits in it that tell recording devices they can't record. I know what you're thinking: use old technology. But what if you record this and then all the new cd players detect this flag? Any other thoughts on this?
that this system could lead to some sort of audio snowcrash scenario!
Quick, block up your ears before its too late!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Yeah, right.
seibab tae dna stnerap ruoy llik
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Define 'unobtrusively'.
This is Push technology, so you could do any kind of push you do with channels now you can do with this. Here a couple of idea's I had:
Song Titles - How about ID tags so you can actually see the exact title of the song your listening to? You can keep a 10 song list like caller ID. You can see the last few songs you listened to. For advertisers you would keep one text line scrolling on the display.
Second Audio Channel - A secondary program at AM quality on an FM station. Kinda like how HDTV can have up to 6 lower quality channels.
Radio for the Death - Close Captioning of radio lyrics. 'Nuff said.
Emergency Broadcast Technolgy - Give both a readable text warning and GPS cordinates of pending danger.
Exact Station Date and Time - Isn't that what you really want half the time you turn on the radio anyway.
Weather and News Broadcasts - Get the local or national news in an instant.
Automatic Request line # - Never have to listen for those damn # to call while your driving.
Possible interactivity - Broadcast a survey to a cellphone, you log your answers, and then you transmit your results.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Embedding data signals in white noise is the easy part. It's getting them out that they haven't figured out yet.
Wouldnt it be great if the first signal a alien race recieved was an encoded pop-up ad for AOL...our race would be doomed.
I once shot a man who posted too many, "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these"
Considering that a modem carrier sounds like noise anyway, it seems that this was only coming soon to a mall sound system near you. But does this mean that the bells I hear in Robinson's May while my wife is shopping will be carrying other data? =)
This sig no verb.
Eureka! You found the solution to the 'white' spam. Now, quick, you better hide before they realize you said that, 'cuz otherwise, Best Buy won't be able to sell people on the Audio DVDs and accompanying $4,000 sound system.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Isn't this the same idea as DSL? Using audio frequencies outside our hearing range to transmit data?
Just FYI: The audio bandwith of stereo FM radio is about 18kHz or less. The stereo pilot signal is at 19kHz, and the Left-Right signal is centered at 38kHz. So the radio receiver is going to need some pretty good filters to produce the full audio bandwidth, and eliminate the 19kHz pilot.
AM radio stations are only 10kHz apart so you are limited to less then 5kHz of clear audio bandwidth.
This web page has some good info. It shows only 15kHz of audio bandwidth for FM stereo which is probably typical, but that is not a limitation of the specification.
This is really interesting from a watermarking perspective. Think of any Industrial song that makes use of sampled static. Just because it is noise, does not mean it gets filtered out by the codec. The noise is part of the signal.
You may expect steganographic stuff to get munched, but what if the watermarking software identifies noisy passages and replaces them with apparently random "noise" that is your watermark? Unless you knew about it and delberately munged "noise", your codec would try its best to *preserve* that signal. Filter too much of the timbre (aka noisiness) out of your signal and it starts sounding lifeless.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
This is nothing new. Call it what you would,
stenography, data-hiding, digital watermarking.
People long before have already used DSSS
(spread spectrum) techniques plus psychoacoustic
modelling to embed "noise" into media. Just check
IBM patents.
Ok, on the bad side, the music had more "noise" in it. On the good side... Um, there is no other good side, now your cellphone has more reasons to spam you.
This is already in place in radio stations. How do you think local IDs, spots and events are triggered over a syndicated program via satellite? Through the normal audio stream...
And don't forget DSL. That transmits lots of data over noise.
i only hope noones does from our speakers
I have always liked when I put a CD into my player and the name of the song and the artist comes up on the LCD screen. Wouldn't the use of the "White noise effect" allow radio stations to transmit this information to radios for the same display purpose?
*song is ending* "Damn, I love that song, I wish I could remember who sings it. Maybe the DJ will say the song title before the next song comes on." Oh wait, DJ's don't do that anymore...Just show it to me on the LCD!
-Krnl
http://krnlpanic.com
That pretty much describes the state of radio since deregulation, doesn't it?
"Clear Channel walks in, only one station walks out..."
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
those are vocals. lyrics are words, vocals are sounds that sometimes resemble the lyrics.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Heh, I can see that human beings are going to have a lot more brain tumours after this technology becomes available. First it was dangerous to have a cellphone, now it's going to be dangerous to listen to music? What next?!
The Welkin: Online Music Reviews
Kinda sounds like the audio equivalent of Blipverts.
Mmmmaxxxx Head head headroom
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Actually, embedding data in commercials is something both radio networks and radio stations have been doing. The technology, called Watermarking, has been around for several years now. One company, Verance (http://www.verance.com), does it rather nicely, but it can effect the audio quality of the spot if it is broadcast on a station that has a lot of audio processing or signal compression - especially if the studio to transmitter link is using MPEG2. The initial idea was to provide "proof of performance" that the commercials were actually broadcast in a particular market. Nowadays, the "proof of performance" is strictly a person at the network or station sending a written affadavit to the advertiser that says, "Yes, your Alpo spot played on our station at this time".
Any white noise of the same tonality, ranges, volume, stereo position and stereo width sounds like any other white noise with the same characteristics, even above the ATH. This is a very useful characteristic.
Any lossy codec must ipso facto destroy white noise, otherwise it could not compress it (a result of Shannon) - lossless codecs will try to predict it and will usually fail, producing an expansion (which will be minimised by a good encoding). It can be compressed to an acceptably lossy level by recording, with any level of fidelity you like, the above data and reproducing noise with an approximation of the same characteristics. This is usually done spectrally and usually doesn't require very special treatment unless the codec is particularly clever (not all codecs work this way, I know of at least one that works in the time domain which would mangle the noise even more).
This stego technique would NOT survive any lossy audio codec (at least, not any decent audio codec - a codec that wastes bits on reproducing white noise more accurately is a deeply stupid codec, unless it really has bits to burn, has constant bitrate frames, and doesn't have a bit reservoir - maybe really stupid Xing-encoded MP3). It wouldn't be suitable for digital broadcast audio over DAB or digital television.
It wouldn't be suitable for watermarking either, because it would be too easy to detect, resynchronise and remove using existing anti-stego techniques - a public watermark detection method (including the key, if there is one) serves as an effective public watermark removal method, and to date, no-one has thought of a really good way around this.
Anyone know the max bandwith and SNR of NTSC audio?
it is the same as FM radio. approximately 15kHz bandwidth and probably 60dB S/N - at best.
Apparently this is done by Motorola's DVP - Digital Voice Privacy(tm) See bottom of page at http://home.bendcable.com/scanrite/scramble.html
Thus spake the master programmer:
"Let the programmers be many and the managers few -- then all will
be productive."
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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