Actually, I think it says in the press release that the wireless network is completely separate from the internal network... it really is just pure internet access.
I couldn't decide where to post this, but here goes. I am a EE grad in solid-state and microwave devices. I really do this stuff every day. Oh, and I just ready the patent.
This is practically ridiculous (on a number of levels), here's why, quick and dirty. If you want a detailed answer to anything, let me know and I'll bore you to death.
Frequency dependance of antennas: Not only are they in the range of ~500 nm each (which is doable), but they have to work from from IR to UV to stand a chance at converting 90%. Thats around 300-1000 nm. Lets say 100-1000 nm to make it easy. Thats a 10*f bandwidth, which is unattainable with dipole antennas. Maybe with some crazy Yagi design you could pull it off. Not with simple dipoles.
It is currently impossible to fabricate complex structures in the 50nm regime which would be needed.
Second: He needs to college 1 photon at a time (per antenna). It says so in the patent. Give me a break.
Third. He wants to run this through a bridge rectifier? That's his great idea? (bridge rectifier = sophomore level circuits idea). Don't even get me started on the fact that he defines it for the 3 types of diodes that were used in the 80s. He's just covering his bases. There's no way to deal with power levels as small as what a single photon emits (1-5 eV?).
Fourth. Do you have any idea the losses that would occur trying to mix all these millions (if not billions, remember, he's trying to collect 90% of the 10^whatever photons hit his sheet, one at a time) of signals together. Absurd.
Conclusion: All he did was patent an impractical idea, which I guess is the opposite of patenting something really obvious. He takes a basic AC/DC converter as says he'll build it at "light" frequencies (Terahertz... uh huh, we have diodes that go that fast... not! and especially not in '84).
Semiconductors work because they can absord consistently through the bulk. Here, his photon has to drill an antenna array dead on. No way this will ever, ever be built. 90% efficiency will probably never happen in Semis either, but it won't matter because 30-40% is all we should really need (of the 5000W/m2 incident on a sunny day).
I work in the Department of Rectuitment, Transfer Admissions and Scholarships at the University of Michigan College of Engineering. As a PUBLIC UNIVERSITY we are massivly biased to in-state students because 75% of the student body MUST BE IN STATE to recieve state funding. State funding is approximatley 20k per student, which is significant. Now, engineering, being smaller, is only about 70% in-state because the rest of the U makes up for it. But still, you have a massive advantage, as an undergraduate, being a Michigan resident.
Depends on how far. You can take off the shelf antenna's for 2.4 GHz, and as long as you stay below 17 dBi gain on either end, won't violate FCC regulations (assuming most hardware is self limited to 63 mW transmit, which is common. 100 mW transmits also happen, and drop your allowed antenna gain).
If you do this, you can see practical distances of around 5 miles with 2 Mbps speeds without good line of site. True line of site will get either much higher speeds (right up to 11 Mbps) or much further distance (I've heard of up to 25 miles, but I don't know about that number).
I would be surprised if all the compenants in your computer weren't at pretty well sheilded already. Now, I know there is exposed circuitry on everything, but at high frequencies, with all your impedences matched properly, you shouldn't generate too much. Plus, it wouldn't be very good if your video card generated enough interference to cause you sound card to malfunction, would it?
I can't imagine possibly waiting to download a distro anywhere other than my old college dorm. My Cable connection at home wouldn't come close to staying staying stable for that long (yeah, yeah, download managers work), and I don't have to patience to download a distro over a week. Over a modem? My heart breaks for anyone who's had to try it.
On the other hand, I've never "purchased" a version of windows in the sense that I've gone out and bought it (or any other MS product) off the shelf.
At least you'll feel good about yourself supporting a cash strapped distro instead of The Beast of Redmond.
I've done the competition twice, 2 and 4 years ago. I'm now EE at the University of Michigan. Though the competition is heavy on ME, and those guys always get the glory, there are some nifty EE and CS problems to be addressed. On the CS side, there's control. The defaul package is ridiculous. They give you two joysticks, poorly coded, with most of the buttons non-functional. It takes half your control mechanisms simply to drive the robot! We had a great time writing code that would take the input off 1 joystick (an x-value and y-value between 0 and 255) and convert them to values for the left and right tracks (again, between 0 and 255), without going negative at any point. Our first year, we were one of the only teams that used a single joystick AND could push a little up and to the left and have it result in a gentle arc. We wrote subroutines that automated certain tasks. Remembering, the entire time, that the processor in our little, white box has virtually no cycles to spare. Every line of code we wrote slowed down the overall performance of our robot, which is frustrating, when you REALLY WANT to turn left, but you have to wait for it to finish checking the limit switches (those ended up being disabled in the national competition).
EE is indeed harder, doing the control and feedback is the extent of true EE work. But I'm in my 2nd year at a reasonably difficult university, and I can't imagine requiring teams design boards or, in fact, any of the equipment they give us. FIRST is a general engineering competition, and it's amazing. If you own a company big enough to front around $25,000 to support a team (and trust me, that's the low end these days, we did it on $10,000, and it was tough. The big teams, like Motorola, it's rumored, will spend upwards of a quarter million dollars) go to your local high school and find out if they have a team. We took finished top 50 on 10K, top 25 on 23K, and last year (I'd already graduated), they finished top 15. It's a great was to support every kind of engineering, EE and CS included. (sorry, that last part was because this post was getting a little off topic).
The Everest Story got 2.1 Million hits in 12 hours. Just in case this one ever gets truly slashdotted (it's slow at 2:45am EST) here are copies of the files on a nice, quick connection.
Judging through previous experience (3 months with AT&T@Home), even if they could, they won't. I've had several extra machines running on the service. I'm suspecting that this may be more of a legal coverall than a legitimate concern. @Home in my area has entirely static IP addresses, allowing anyone to just select an open number and use it. What's more, there are actual blocks of IP addresses that are never used. While this is extremely simple to detect (ping 'em!), never once has any action to discourage the practice been made. In all reality, this may be a way to avoid having to provide technical support and security for VPNs, just like they did with Microsoft Networking support initially.
The main problem is, simply, that when you burn MP3s to a regular CDm they're still MP3s. The quality can't be any better than the original source, which in this case is most likely 128K. I guess if you're just copying CDs (which kind of defeats the purpose if you already own the CD, and you do, don't you?) or you encoded your library at 256K (kind of cuts capacity, doesn't it?) then there is really is no benefit to leaving the files in MP# format.
However, I've always understood the reason for MP3 CD players to be that you can store so many more files at their maximum quality on standard media. MP3 is what's called a "lossy" code, which means data is destroyed when using compressing files into it. Granted, it's really good at deciding which data to drop, but it's still gone, and still affects sound quality, which is where the whole push to not have to go back to CD format originates.
Another equally fascinating and much more entertaining look at the universe can be had through a book written by Leon Lederman, called "The God Particle."
Though older than TEU, it only lacks proof of the sixth quark. Otherwise, it matches TEU in a understanding and insight.
However, easily its main selling point is Lederman's status as an experimental physicist. Unlike "The Elegant Universe" and "A Brief History of Time" (by Stephen Hawking, also a phenomenal book, though even more focused on the layman), "The God Particle" thoroughly examines what we know in physics, not just what we suspect, and does so in an amazingly entertaining way, yet without pandering to the lowest common denominator. You may feel inclined to skip the first couple chapters that deal with the development of classical physics (which each of these books do exhaustively). "Schroedinger's Cat" and "Schroedinger's Kittens" are both excellent books that cover quantum mechanics very concisely, and are a nice alternative to the complete anthology presented in "The Elegant Universe."
I have read all of the books I've mentioned here, but IANAPMY (I am not a physics major, yet), so I don't vouch that they are completely current in the realm of theoretical physics today. They are all thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining (no kidding, laugh out loud) and educational, and I highly recomment them.
Just ignore the sig, it's not supposed to be flaimbait.
Avid Technologies makes two main versions of their software/hardware packages, each of which is fairly modular and very powerful. The Avid Express version runs on an Apple G3 computer (usually a 9600/300) because the G4 don't have enough open slots for the custom hardware. From there, video capture is up to you. An SVHS deck is fairly common, especially with remote editing capabilities, but many places are moving to DVCPro, which is a little more expensive. A Mackie 1220 is a great mixer for the Avid, nothing too elaborate, yet powerful enough to be professional quality. It'll mix audio from a variety of sources (say the deck, a CD player, a tape/MD player, and a voiceover mic). Avids support dual monitors, and I highly recommend looking at two 19 inch Trinitrons, especially if you're going to be looking for a long time. Throw on any preview screen you want (just about anything bigger than 13" will suffice) and you have a pretty standard rig. Avid alows a host of third party add-ons, from sound effects and editing to some amazing visual effects packages. The basic set that comes with it, though, is more than adequate for the vast majority of editing. Unless you're doing MTV sytle music videos, you'll be fine. Hard disk space is handled via specially formated SCSI disks. For working on the Avid, expect to get about 1 minute of video on 100MB of disk. Yes, about 10 min/gig. A couple of 9GB SCSI drives are expensive, but the avid allows you to save a project and remove the media, then automatically redigitize it later. Very handy if you're working on multiple projects. Of course you can always step up the system to a little more power, but the base configuration is good for producing just about anything. Most schools and universities use the Avid for non-linear digital editing because of it's value and power, while they use the Play, Inc.'s Trinity system for live production. It'll be a trick to add the Avid to an existing system, but if you're willing to build one from scratch, it's definetly the way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I think it says in the press release that the wireless network is completely separate from the internal network... it really is just pure internet access.
I couldn't decide where to post this, but here goes. I am a EE grad in solid-state and microwave devices. I really do this stuff every day. Oh, and I just ready the patent.
This is practically ridiculous (on a number of levels), here's why, quick and dirty. If you want a detailed answer to anything, let me know and I'll bore you to death.
Frequency dependance of antennas: Not only are they in the range of ~500 nm each (which is doable), but they have to work from from IR to UV to stand a chance at converting 90%. Thats around 300-1000 nm. Lets say 100-1000 nm to make it easy. Thats a 10*f bandwidth, which is unattainable with dipole antennas. Maybe with some crazy Yagi design you could pull it off. Not with simple dipoles.
It is currently impossible to fabricate complex structures in the 50nm regime which would be needed.
Second: He needs to college 1 photon at a time (per antenna). It says so in the patent. Give me a break.
Third. He wants to run this through a bridge rectifier? That's his great idea? (bridge rectifier = sophomore level circuits idea). Don't even get me started on the fact that he defines it for the 3 types of diodes that were used in the 80s. He's just covering his bases. There's no way to deal with power levels as small as what a single photon emits (1-5 eV?).
Fourth. Do you have any idea the losses that would occur trying to mix all these millions (if not billions, remember, he's trying to collect 90% of the 10^whatever photons hit his sheet, one at a time) of signals together. Absurd.
Conclusion: All he did was patent an impractical idea, which I guess is the opposite of patenting something really obvious. He takes a basic AC/DC converter as says he'll build it at "light" frequencies (Terahertz... uh huh, we have diodes that go that fast... not! and especially not in '84).
Semiconductors work because they can absord consistently through the bulk. Here, his photon has to drill an antenna array dead on. No way this will ever, ever be built. 90% efficiency will probably never happen in Semis either, but it won't matter because 30-40% is all we should really need (of the 5000W/m2 incident on a sunny day).
This is just dumb.
The full press release is here.
Pretty, high res images here.
Finally catching up with the rest of the world (maybe even sneaking ahead).
I work in the Department of Rectuitment, Transfer Admissions and Scholarships at the University of Michigan College of Engineering. As a PUBLIC UNIVERSITY we are massivly biased to in-state students because 75% of the student body MUST BE IN STATE to recieve state funding. State funding is approximatley 20k per student, which is significant. Now, engineering, being smaller, is only about 70% in-state because the rest of the U makes up for it. But still, you have a massive advantage, as an undergraduate, being a Michigan resident.
Depends on how far. You can take off the shelf antenna's for 2.4 GHz, and as long as you stay below 17 dBi gain on either end, won't violate FCC regulations (assuming most hardware is self limited to 63 mW transmit, which is common. 100 mW transmits also happen, and drop your allowed antenna gain).
If you do this, you can see practical distances of around 5 miles with 2 Mbps speeds without good line of site. True line of site will get either much higher speeds (right up to 11 Mbps) or much further distance (I've heard of up to 25 miles, but I don't know about that number).
I did this research for a class.
And did you notice the part about one of the PCI slots accepting 4x AGP???
You're not kidding it's game time!
Did you notice that their chat forums are down for "routine maintenance"? I'll bet none of us had anything to do with that, now? Did we?
I would be surprised if all the compenants in your computer weren't at pretty well sheilded already. Now, I know there is exposed circuitry on everything, but at high frequencies, with all your impedences matched properly, you shouldn't generate too much. Plus, it wouldn't be very good if your video card generated enough interference to cause you sound card to malfunction, would it?
I can't imagine possibly waiting to download a distro anywhere other than my old college dorm. My Cable connection at home wouldn't come close to staying staying stable for that long (yeah, yeah, download managers work), and I don't have to patience to download a distro over a week. Over a modem? My heart breaks for anyone who's had to try it.
On the other hand, I've never "purchased" a version of windows in the sense that I've gone out and bought it (or any other MS product) off the shelf.
At least you'll feel good about yourself supporting a cash strapped distro instead of The Beast of Redmond.
I've done the competition twice, 2 and 4 years ago. I'm now EE at the University of Michigan. Though the competition is heavy on ME, and those guys always get the glory, there are some nifty EE and CS problems to be addressed. On the CS side, there's control. The defaul package is ridiculous. They give you two joysticks, poorly coded, with most of the buttons non-functional. It takes half your control mechanisms simply to drive the robot! We had a great time writing code that would take the input off 1 joystick (an x-value and y-value between 0 and 255) and convert them to values for the left and right tracks (again, between 0 and 255), without going negative at any point. Our first year, we were one of the only teams that used a single joystick AND could push a little up and to the left and have it result in a gentle arc. We wrote subroutines that automated certain tasks. Remembering, the entire time, that the processor in our little, white box has virtually no cycles to spare. Every line of code we wrote slowed down the overall performance of our robot, which is frustrating, when you REALLY WANT to turn left, but you have to wait for it to finish checking the limit switches (those ended up being disabled in the national competition).
EE is indeed harder, doing the control and feedback is the extent of true EE work. But I'm in my 2nd year at a reasonably difficult university, and I can't imagine requiring teams design boards or, in fact, any of the equipment they give us. FIRST is a general engineering competition, and it's amazing. If you own a company big enough to front around $25,000 to support a team (and trust me, that's the low end these days, we did it on $10,000, and it was tough. The big teams, like Motorola, it's rumored, will spend upwards of a quarter million dollars) go to your local high school and find out if they have a team. We took finished top 50 on 10K, top 25 on 23K, and last year (I'd already graduated), they finished top 15. It's a great was to support every kind of engineering, EE and CS included. (sorry, that last part was because this post was getting a little off topic).
The Everest Story got 2.1 Million hits in 12 hours. Just in case this one ever gets truly slashdotted (it's slow at 2:45am EST) here are copies of the files on a nice, quick connection.
; ; ;
Build1a.avi
Build5a.avi
Car7a.avi
Car9a.avi
Car8a.avi
Judging through previous experience (3 months with AT&T@Home), even if they could, they won't. I've had several extra machines running on the service. I'm suspecting that this may be more of a legal coverall than a legitimate concern. @Home in my area has entirely static IP addresses, allowing anyone to just select an open number and use it. What's more, there are actual blocks of IP addresses that are never used. While this is extremely simple to detect (ping 'em!), never once has any action to discourage the practice been made. In all reality, this may be a way to avoid having to provide technical support and security for VPNs, just like they did with Microsoft Networking support initially.
The main problem is, simply, that when you burn MP3s to a regular CDm they're still MP3s. The quality can't be any better than the original source, which in this case is most likely 128K. I guess if you're just copying CDs (which kind of defeats the purpose if you already own the CD, and you do, don't you?) or you encoded your library at 256K (kind of cuts capacity, doesn't it?) then there is really is no benefit to leaving the files in MP# format.
However, I've always understood the reason for MP3 CD players to be that you can store so many more files at their maximum quality on standard media. MP3 is what's called a "lossy" code, which means data is destroyed when using compressing files into it. Granted, it's really good at deciding which data to drop, but it's still gone, and still affects sound quality, which is where the whole push to not have to go back to CD format originates.
Just my $0.02
Another equally fascinating and much more entertaining look at the universe can be had through a book written by Leon Lederman, called "The God Particle."
Though older than TEU, it only lacks proof of the sixth quark. Otherwise, it matches TEU in a understanding and insight.
However, easily its main selling point is Lederman's status as an experimental physicist. Unlike "The Elegant Universe" and "A Brief History of Time" (by Stephen Hawking, also a phenomenal book, though even more focused on the layman), "The God Particle" thoroughly examines what we know in physics, not just what we suspect, and does so in an amazingly entertaining way, yet without pandering to the lowest common denominator. You may feel inclined to skip the first couple chapters that deal with the development of classical physics (which each of these books do exhaustively). "Schroedinger's Cat" and "Schroedinger's Kittens" are both excellent books that cover quantum mechanics very concisely, and are a nice alternative to the complete anthology presented in "The Elegant Universe."
I have read all of the books I've mentioned here, but IANAPMY (I am not a physics major, yet), so I don't vouch that they are completely current in the realm of theoretical physics today. They are all thoroughly enjoyable, entertaining (no kidding, laugh out loud) and educational, and I highly recomment them.
Just ignore the sig, it's not supposed to be flaimbait.
Avid Technologies makes two main versions of their software/hardware packages, each of which is fairly modular and very powerful. The Avid Express version runs on an Apple G3 computer (usually a 9600/300) because the G4 don't have enough open slots for the custom hardware. From there, video capture is up to you. An SVHS deck is fairly common, especially with remote editing capabilities, but many places are moving to DVCPro, which is a little more expensive. A Mackie 1220 is a great mixer for the Avid, nothing too elaborate, yet powerful enough to be professional quality. It'll mix audio from a variety of sources (say the deck, a CD player, a tape/MD player, and a voiceover mic). Avids support dual monitors, and I highly recommend looking at two 19 inch Trinitrons, especially if you're going to be looking for a long time. Throw on any preview screen you want (just about anything bigger than 13" will suffice) and you have a pretty standard rig. Avid alows a host of third party add-ons, from sound effects and editing to some amazing visual effects packages. The basic set that comes with it, though, is more than adequate for the vast majority of editing. Unless you're doing MTV sytle music videos, you'll be fine. Hard disk space is handled via specially formated SCSI disks. For working on the Avid, expect to get about 1 minute of video on 100MB of disk. Yes, about 10 min/gig. A couple of 9GB SCSI drives are expensive, but the avid allows you to save a project and remove the media, then automatically redigitize it later. Very handy if you're working on multiple projects. Of course you can always step up the system to a little more power, but the base configuration is good for producing just about anything. Most schools and universities use the Avid for non-linear digital editing because of it's value and power, while they use the Play, Inc.'s Trinity system for live production. It'll be a trick to add the Avid to an existing system, but if you're willing to build one from scratch, it's definetly the way to go.