I have done some research into this area for a project at work. The Intellon PowerPacket uses OFDM this modulates the data in the 4.3 MHz to 20.9 MHz band. This is independant of the 60Hz power signal on the line, and at much lower amplitude(voltages). So it means that this will work during the power outages in CA. Also the security is taken care of encypting your info with a 56-bit DES key. This keeps your neighbors from snooping, but not distributed.net or the NSA. Every powerline on the same side of the transformer as you and in transmission range can be connected. It is also independent of the Frequency/Voltage differences in outher countries. Check out HomePlug for the standard wars to come. In essence they have picked the fundamental ideas from Power Packet.
Here at Slashdot it seems like people only can complain about a service. Most of the posts are rants without understanding of the dynamics below them.
I think we all could use more understanding of the topic. A link to the paper that started it all here.
1. When was the last time that "to" or any other preposition helped the average query. Your Grandmother does not know that this word is meaningles 99.9% of the time, so google ties to improve their relevancy.
2. Google has not sold out. Their ads are the most simple in the industry. They give access to users like you and me at reasonable rate. Who wants to wait for 345x123 pixel banner ads anyways.
3. Have you noticed the spelling feature? Google will correct your spelling. This is a function of the tons of bigrams that they have stored.
4. Here is a link to more papers [Warning: Technical] here.
There are many other ways to get the video display for this unit. I would suggest looking at active LCD units at www.digikey.com . These could be used with out having to insert batteries like ammunition. Overall this was a hack job. A much more elegant solution would be possible with out much more effort. Cool but..
Knowing the difficulties of language translation and the current level of machine translation, there are just to many problems to make this feasable. The proof of concept in this device's creation is a strong example of the power of modern computing, but I feal that long term evaluation will show its considerable weakness. Cool gadget, but not practical. Spend your $2000 on a good translator.
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I have done some research into this area for a project at work. The Intellon PowerPacket uses OFDM this modulates the data in the 4.3 MHz to 20.9 MHz band. This is independant of the 60Hz power signal on the line, and at much lower amplitude(voltages). So it means that this will work during the power outages in CA. Also the security is taken care of encypting your info with a 56-bit DES key. This keeps your neighbors from snooping, but not distributed.net or the NSA. Every powerline on the same side of the transformer as you and in transmission range can be connected. It is also independent of the Frequency/Voltage differences in outher countries. Check out HomePlug for the standard wars to come. In essence they have picked the fundamental ideas from Power Packet.
I think we all could use more understanding of the topic. A link to the paper that started it all here.
Best guess..
There are many other ways to get the video display for this unit. I would suggest looking at active LCD units at www.digikey.com . These could be used with out having to insert batteries like ammunition. Overall this was a hack job. A much more elegant solution would be possible with out much more effort. Cool but..
Knowing the difficulties of language translation and the current level of machine translation, there are just to many problems to make this feasable. The proof of concept in this device's creation is a strong example of the power of modern computing, but I feal that long term evaluation will show its considerable weakness. Cool gadget, but not practical. Spend your $2000 on a good translator.