What a weird business model this is...
on
Homogenized Music
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Look at what most of you are asking for: You all want someone to play your favorite eclectic brand of music that doesn't suck. Only problem is that there are hardly two or three of you who can agree on just what they'd like to listen to.
Remember, folks, they're in this for MONEY. So they're looking for widest appeal. That's right. The bland stuff. The stuff that offends as few as possible while retaining an interest group.
Look at it another way: You pay to see bands you like. A bar would book a band that attracts their clientele. If the band is good, expect a cover charge.
That's all well and good. Now do this without the cover charge, for a population of hundreds of thousands, on a daily basis. Do you even begin to see the problem?
Yeah, radio is bland. It's mostly boring because you really don't like what they're putting on the air.
But don't let me stop you. If you feel so strongly, why not put your money where your mouth is, and rent some radio station time for a month. Try to come up with music that will amuse and engage your listeners every single day. Oh, and while you're doing this, try to come up with some way of attracting advetisers to pay your bills.
This isn't just an issue about legislating ADC chips. This is an issue about respect for the law and respect for the people.
Legislators need to realize that with their power to legislate also comes the responsibility to understand the issue. If they fail to understand the major ramifications and issues they're legislating, then some form of the Hippocratic Oath ought to hold: "First do no harm."
When literate, educated people are forced to frequently violate laws because they are impractical and unreasonable, it will lead to a general disrespect of all laws good and bad. This is the slippery slope toward anarchy.
Were this the only such misguided proposal floated in front of Congress I would say it's the industry association's fault or it's congresscritter ____'s fault. But this is not unique. It happens at all levels of our government on a regular basis.
The problem is that the technically literate people are not adequately represented in government. We do not normally review stupid legislative gaffs unless they're so egregious that they would change the lives of everyone in our society for the worse.
The technical groups in our society are getting soft. There is more to this fight than working for the EFF. The EFF only fights the dumb laws already on the books. Other organizations ought to advocate sustainable, reasonable technical policy and legislation. The issue isn't whether a decision benefits liberals or conservatives, but whether it is understood well enough, and whether it can work at all.
With stuff this egregious, where are organizations such as the IEEE or ACM? Can't organzations such as these have point out that this legislation is impractical and misguided without passing judgment on the RIAA's and MPAA's efforts?
The Internet is good for making points of view available. But anyone who thinks this will automatically improve understanding is too busy singing Kumbaya to realize that something else is missing.
Before reading another point of view, one should understand one's own. And damned few people know enough about themselves to make an honest apprasial of someone else's beliefs.
Exactly WHY are devices, such as the 2.4 GHz Part 15 devices mentioned in the article, required to accept all interference? What is gained by not allowing products to be [shielded] from unwanted interference/RF signals?
Good question! The answer is this: 2.4 GHz is as we say in the radio business, an Industrial-Scientific-Medical or ISM band. It's described in 47CFR15
These are bands designed as a place to make RF noises. For example: diathermy machines, microwave ovens, RF lighting, cordless telephones, the remote control for your car doors...
These are all incidental things which are too numerous to license and coordinate. So the FCC wisely made spaces in the RF spectrum to put such things. Basically, the idea behind it was "you're on your own, nobody's coordinating a damned thing, good luck --don't cry to us if someone stomps on you."
Well, over the years, people have been getting tired of the usual FCC licensing bureaucracy. And they're not wrong. It is tedious, pointless in many cases, and just plain onerous. I say this as one who has seen the whole process take place. So instead, they figure they'll take their chances on the ISM bands.
So here we are, people are placing highly private, and often mission critical information on a band for which such things were never intended --all because nobody feels like tackling the real problem: The entrenched bureaucracy of the FCC's licensing procedures.
I've said this in several places and I'll say it again here: Just because the FCC is doing its job poorly doesn't mean the job is not worth doing. We really should coordinate our frequency usage for digital devices. We really should have spectrum just for this sort of thing and it should be devoid of other such gagets. Unfortunately, nobody seems to feel strongly enough to take up an issue like this with those wonderful folks in Washington. Instead we huddle in the ISM bands and the bitch scream and yell when someone else comes up with a legitimate use of the spectrum.
Anyone want to shine a light on a better solution?
That's the point. We don't know what the effects are. It seems only common-sensical that if you don't know if something can make you really sick, you don't use it every day until you find out if it will make you sick. There's even a fancy term for this: The Precautionary Principle.
YES, but in order to have a precautionary stance you need to identify exactly what you suspect the danger might be. So far, the only danger we know of in a physical sense is limited to localized heating effects. This is not a chemical that can react with other chemicals. This is not ionizing radiation which can break chemical bonds. What is the anti-EMF crowd scared of?
THEY DON'T KNOW!
They're looking for a boogeyman. They don't have a clue where to start. There is no shortage of statistical studies on this subject and yet none have turned up anything consistent and repeatable.
Before legislating precautionary safety limits, shouldn't we at least have an idea of what we're scared of?
Dont be silly. The physics of this similation are entrirely plausible. (In fact your rat cage example, is the example of the same multiplying effect caused by the train car.
Plausible? What kind of controls are you thinking about? Reality check: the wavelength is 33 cm or less and the volume of the rail car is what? An overtone resonance like that would be very difficult to accurately simulate, particularly with all those bodies, fabric, plastic, windows and people moving around. Put one extra suitcase in there and everything changes.
There is no way to model a consistent RF behavior with a train car and a 33 cm long wavelength. All you have to do change one cell and the whole prediction falls flat on its face.
The way your body gets cancer from radiation is when a photon oxidizes a phosphate group on your DNA.
Pardon me, but I have to hit you with a really big clue stick too.
Photons do not Oxidize anything!
They ionize, but only if the energy of the photon is high enough. Ionizing Radiation starts at UV and includes X-Rays, Gamma-Rays and other high energy photons. Look at a spectrum chart. Where are microwaves? They're below UV, they're below infrared, they're orders of magnitude less energetic than UV radiation. They can not ionize anything.
You can't get cancer as you describe from non-ionizing radiation.
The article looks like it's just a simulation of what may happen (with some microwave propagation tool), it would be more interesting to perform a measurement
Yes, and this is so much like the anti-RF crowd: "Let's conduct a simulation because we wouldn't understand a hard measurement if it hit us over the head." This policy began with the flawed assumptions of Wertheimer and Leper, who made one of the first studies indicating that powerlines might cause Lukemia. The problem was that they didn't measure the actual radiation --they assumed it would be propotional to the class of powerlines near each house. Wrong.
This policy of simulate instead of measure has continued to this day. And those who do measure often get it wrong. You see, none of them are RF engineers. One study using lab rats actually exposed the lab rats to 10 times the radiation level they thought they were using. Our esteemed researchers forgot to take the metal cage in to account...
The anti-RF crowd are mostly a lot of believers who think they have indentified a statistically insignificant danger and now they're looking for a theory to back it up. Instead they find statistical artifacts and use these spurious correlations to get more funding. The only known hazard of RF radiation are heating effects. Those who discover anything else deserve a Nobel Prize, if for nothing else, PHYSICS!
This is a classic example of a foolish notion that radio communications ("wireless" for those of you who didn't realize what technology this is) can be made private. Yes, our Federal Communications Commission (and many other such agencies world wide) believes that you'll be a good citizen and not monitor your neighbor's juicy conversations.
This goes against everything we've known about radio for the last century. However, given this sort of legislation, nobody can hold Best Buy or any other retailer liable for sending your credit card information out over the airwaves where everyone can see it.
No, "the government" wants you to build a critical thing such as a house so that it meets minimal safety standards. You can't draw conclusions from these experiences to say that DIY is dead. It's merely sidelined to areas where public safety is not at stake.
You can still solder pipes if you want to. You can still wire up your attic or basement if that's what you want to do. You can even build a shed in your back yard if you want to. Remember, Home Depot is making big bucks. They're not selling exclusively to contractors either.
And in case you haven't looked recently: TVs don't have tubes any more. They have very few adjustments and they rarely break. I suggest using your gumption to fix things that need fixing --not living in yesterday's technology.
Nonsense. You're just lacking in imagination and drive. Ever read how much Henry spent on building his first electromagnet (money he barely had)? Ever read a history of the Wright Brothers? How about the likes of Alexander Graham Bell?
None of these folks started out as anything other than very interested amateurs.
Besides, you would be surprised what a bit of scrounging can do for you. Sure, this stuff is expensive if you buy everything new and have others fabricate your stuff for you. But don't overlook surplus markets.
It takes imagination, curiosity, and drive. Apparently you don't see that very often in a research institute.
1) Near/Far problem. If you're listening to a broadcast farther away and you're traveling closer to a transmitter on the same band, but a difference sequency, the noise level will rise until you won't be able to hear the distant station. Process gain is nice, but it can't obliterate that problem.
2) Inter-Modulation Distortion. This is a general class of problems resulting from non-linearity in amplifiers. It manfests itself on a spread spectrum link as noise --just like the near/far problem. Your options for getting around this problem in a spread spectrum receiver are few: Basically all you can do is build a higher power front end amplifier (consume more power). With narrowband systems you can take advantage of resonant circuits as well.
3) Sequency management. Someone has to coordinate these things somehow. Many are embracing spread spectrum as a way to get rid of the FCC. That's unfortunate. Yes, they're doing their job quite poorly and yes, it's been this way for a long time. That doesn't mean anarchy is better, or that the FCC's mission is irrelevant.
4) Data transmission != spread spectrum. Efficient use of spectrum is laudable. That doesn't mean that you must spread to be efficient, however. There are plenty of very well known modulation techniques which can be used for data transmission. The discussion of data broadcast or point to point data transmission has no bearing on whether one ought to use spread spectrum or not.
5) Making a transition from narrowband communications to spread spectrum communications systems is too expensive, difficult, and impractical to consider. You simply can't change every aircraft radio and air traffic control facility overnight. You can't just shut off all broadcast stations and tell everybody to buy new radios. You'd have a major riot on your hands.
6) Current Broadcast programming sucks. Did adding all those channels to Cable TV improve regular TV programming? Does anyone think XM radio will do good things for FM radio? Get real.
Most of the discussion on spread spectrum right now is more about the disadvatages of narrowband when scaled up and the advantages of spread spectrum on a small scale. However spread spectrum doesn't scale up any better than narrowband communications has. The technologies and limits are still the same. This is not a magic solution. This is merely one method out of several for signal multiplexing.
I can imagine a day when spread spectrum systems will be more common. However it does very little to solve issues such as re-engineering the FCC to be less flaccid and useless, sending high speed data over the airwaves, or how to improve broadcast programming. It's just a technology, it's not a way of doing business.
...they take substantial amounts of industry time to process. In other words, while progress is taking place at breakneck speed, if an examiner isn't aware of the state of the art, capable of issuing a patent which is understandable by average industry users, and do so in a timely fashion that doesn't impede the industry waiting for such things, then we must question the utility and purpose of the process itself.
RMS is right about several things: the pace in which this happens is too slow and too fraught with opportunity for honest mistakes to happen. It's also filled with conceptual ideas which are so broad that they have no business being there. However, it's far too expensive for the little guys out there, or even someone trying to defend an open source project.
As to whether it's like a symphony or not --who cares? That's just a vehicle to try and explain the situation to those who don't know the difference between an algorithm, a concept, or a functional block of code...
I am quite troubled that my government pays for research for crowd control measures. (you may as well call them population control).
Just a minute: crowd control measures are reasonable. Would you prefer an all out riot instead? And what's wrong with research for better measures? The goal is to disperse an unruly crowd with the least amount of force and harm to all. What's wrong with that? And what on earth do you mean by "population control"?
While some sports fanatics may be a problem, they can be dealt by the usual police methods, of wearing riot gear and restricting them until their highs decrease.
Using what? What "usual methods" are you suggesting? Night sticks? CS gas? Rubber bullets? And you think a bunch of slippery goo is a bad idea?
Sports riots are also not a federal problem (unless they happen in dc which is bnot very likely).
Yes, but who is going to do the research? Local police authorities can't afford programs such as that.
These methods are clearly aimed at protesters. Which means that the government is using our taxpayer money to research new ways to silence its critics.
And how do you know this? I can think of all sorts of applications beyond controlling unruly political protest crowds.
Whatever you may think of the anti-WTO protesters for whom this invention is clearly made, i hope you will agree that people like them have the right to criticize the government, and make their voices heard.
Sure. Whatever. What does the anti-WTO crowd stand for anyway? They rioted all throughout Seattle, costing the city millions, and for what? If you guys had anything coherent to say, you would have been welcome to put it on the Television networks or in print in major newspapers. They were eager for an explanation too. But there was nothing but a bunch of random voices from all sorts of fringe causes.
In any case, the anti-WTO bunch are no more coherent than a sports riot. Don't kid yourself. The research program in to non-lethal methods was started decades ago. To say that it was designed just for anti-WTO purposes is simply delusions of grandure.
Well, I think it is doing something. We're seeing the beginning of a pent up demand. However, I think you're impatient for a solution. The problem is that an alternative, competing market doesn't yet exist. Keep things moving as they are, though, and this demand will change the market for intellectual work overnight.
Two things are needed before this happens: Commonplace high bandwidth Internet connections, and a working business model that allows for free copying (like the copyleft).
Those things aren't going to happen overnight. All the popular business models are based on the one to many distribution systems, not the many to many copy models common on the internet. It will take a lot of financial strife to force those older distribution companies to realize that they can make more money by charging minimal to no fees on the Internet than they can by restricting distribution.
This war is just getting started. Things will have to get a lot uglier before they get better.
The reason spam is so popular is because the bandwidth is so cheap. I think that even if one charged a small fraction of a penny per e-mail, you'd discover that spam would drop dramatically.
The other reason spam is popular is because in perhaps one out of 100,000 messages a spammer might hit paydirt. Now, suppose there were a bandwidth charge each country imposed on various governments based on the percentage of spam reported. And naturally, as SPAM levels increase, the bandwidth connection costs charged will go up exponentially.
THAT will get their attention --and ours. If you don't keep your own act clean, expect the costs to go up! And by the way, this isn't really that different from snail mail. If you're in the habit of sending bulk mail from overseas, expect to pay a premium as shipping and processing costs go up.
Take a look at another difference between Open Source and Closed source: With Open Source, you have motivated programmers and software engineers who have strong ideas of what they want from the code designing software to do exactly that mission.
It's usually tight code because the programmer is doing this for the love of the art itself, and for the notoriety of publishing their code in public.
Contrast this to how a lot of corporately driven software is designed: Committee decisions, Edicts from ignorant higher-ups, and programmers who have no stake in doing a good job because almost nobody appreciates good clean code or even knows enough to recognize a crufty block of garbage.
I'm not suggesting that ALL corporately written software is done this way, nor am I suggesting that ALL Open Source software is good either. But the typical motives behind the origin of the software and thus the design itself are quite different.
One of them encourages good code and the other one doesn't. Is there any wonder why it's so expensive for Microsoft to find and fix a bug, while open software tends to be pretty usable even on beta releases?
...but most of us married folk love it. Don't listen to the nay-sayers. They either can't hack it or just don't know how to keep one going. It's a lot like Linux...
Congratulations you two. Now you'll experience geekiness squared. It'll be great!
Have you forgotten where the Internet came from? How about those nice folks at Goddard Spaceflight who work on Beowolf clustering technology? Did I mention NSA's Linux distro?
They do contribute more than you may realize. And once Linux gains institutional momentum, you're almost certain to see a flood of contributions. And who knows? You might be the one making them via a Government contract!
OK, let's assume these wavelets can do what Rainmaker says they can. I have doubts, but let's say they're up to speed.
How does one amplify these wavelets without distorting them with group delay and linearity problems?
Seems to me that nobody has put much thought as to how this stuff ought to scale up. Oh yeah, I forgot, this stuff was supposed to ride on existing infrastructure. Riiiiight.
Don't throw your money at these guys yet; I smell some half baked bullshit here.
Dear folks: if you think the only reason why that fuse was soldered in place was to save money, think again. Modern switching supplies have internal fuses to prevent complete self destruction (as in catching fire) in the event of switcher failure.
These fuses won't blow unless some parts inside the power supply have failed. Replacing that fuse will not help and may result in some rather interesting pyrotechnics.
I know these labels often get used frivolously, but this doesn't happen to be one of those cases.
You could find shielded underwear in a Sears catalog as far back as the early 20th century. Back then, ignorance about this issue would have been quite understandable.
Today, it's nothing short of laughable. If someone could actually prove that any such electrosensitivity existed, they'd be strong candidates for a Nobel Prize. At the very least they'd have discovered something new in molecular biology, if not physics itself.
Despite that obstacle, this issue has continued to resurface year after year ever since that yellow journalist, Paul Broduer wrote "The Zapping of America" and Wertheimer and Leper conducted their seriously flawed and irreproducible study back in the 1970s.
It seems to me these folks must think innuendo is a valid criterion for evaluating scientific research (Broduer used this technique very nicely). Since it's awfully hard to meet their demands in this country, I invite them to join the Taliban in their nice Faraday cages at Camp X-Ray. I hear the accomodations aren't too shabby...
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Remember, folks, they're in this for MONEY. So they're looking for widest appeal. That's right. The bland stuff. The stuff that offends as few as possible while retaining an interest group.
Look at it another way: You pay to see bands you like. A bar would book a band that attracts their clientele. If the band is good, expect a cover charge.
That's all well and good. Now do this without the cover charge, for a population of hundreds of thousands, on a daily basis. Do you even begin to see the problem?
Yeah, radio is bland. It's mostly boring because you really don't like what they're putting on the air.
But don't let me stop you. If you feel so strongly, why not put your money where your mouth is, and rent some radio station time for a month. Try to come up with music that will amuse and engage your listeners every single day. Oh, and while you're doing this, try to come up with some way of attracting advetisers to pay your bills.
Good Luck!
Legislators need to realize that with their power to legislate also comes the responsibility to understand the issue. If they fail to understand the major ramifications and issues they're legislating, then some form of the Hippocratic Oath ought to hold: "First do no harm."
When literate, educated people are forced to frequently violate laws because they are impractical and unreasonable, it will lead to a general disrespect of all laws good and bad. This is the slippery slope toward anarchy.
Were this the only such misguided proposal floated in front of Congress I would say it's the industry association's fault or it's congresscritter ____'s fault. But this is not unique. It happens at all levels of our government on a regular basis.
The problem is that the technically literate people are not adequately represented in government. We do not normally review stupid legislative gaffs unless they're so egregious that they would change the lives of everyone in our society for the worse.
The technical groups in our society are getting soft. There is more to this fight than working for the EFF. The EFF only fights the dumb laws already on the books. Other organizations ought to advocate sustainable, reasonable technical policy and legislation. The issue isn't whether a decision benefits liberals or conservatives, but whether it is understood well enough, and whether it can work at all.
With stuff this egregious, where are organizations such as the IEEE or ACM? Can't organzations such as these have point out that this legislation is impractical and misguided without passing judgment on the RIAA's and MPAA's efforts?
Before reading another point of view, one should understand one's own. And damned few people know enough about themselves to make an honest apprasial of someone else's beliefs.
Good question! The answer is this: 2.4 GHz is as we say in the radio business, an Industrial-Scientific-Medical or ISM band. It's described in 47CFR15
These are bands designed as a place to make RF noises. For example: diathermy machines, microwave ovens, RF lighting, cordless telephones, the remote control for your car doors...
These are all incidental things which are too numerous to license and coordinate. So the FCC wisely made spaces in the RF spectrum to put such things. Basically, the idea behind it was "you're on your own, nobody's coordinating a damned thing, good luck --don't cry to us if someone stomps on you."
Well, over the years, people have been getting tired of the usual FCC licensing bureaucracy. And they're not wrong. It is tedious, pointless in many cases, and just plain onerous. I say this as one who has seen the whole process take place. So instead, they figure they'll take their chances on the ISM bands.
So here we are, people are placing highly private, and often mission critical information on a band for which such things were never intended --all because nobody feels like tackling the real problem: The entrenched bureaucracy of the FCC's licensing procedures.
I've said this in several places and I'll say it again here: Just because the FCC is doing its job poorly doesn't mean the job is not worth doing. We really should coordinate our frequency usage for digital devices. We really should have spectrum just for this sort of thing and it should be devoid of other such gagets. Unfortunately, nobody seems to feel strongly enough to take up an issue like this with those wonderful folks in Washington. Instead we huddle in the ISM bands and the bitch scream and yell when someone else comes up with a legitimate use of the spectrum.
Anyone want to shine a light on a better solution?
YES, but in order to have a precautionary stance you need to identify exactly what you suspect the danger might be. So far, the only danger we know of in a physical sense is limited to localized heating effects. This is not a chemical that can react with other chemicals. This is not ionizing radiation which can break chemical bonds. What is the anti-EMF crowd scared of?
THEY DON'T KNOW!
They're looking for a boogeyman. They don't have a clue where to start. There is no shortage of statistical studies on this subject and yet none have turned up anything consistent and repeatable.
Before legislating precautionary safety limits, shouldn't we at least have an idea of what we're scared of?
Plausible? What kind of controls are you thinking about? Reality check: the wavelength is 33 cm or less and the volume of the rail car is what? An overtone resonance like that would be very difficult to accurately simulate, particularly with all those bodies, fabric, plastic, windows and people moving around. Put one extra suitcase in there and everything changes.
There is no way to model a consistent RF behavior with a train car and a 33 cm long wavelength. All you have to do change one cell and the whole prediction falls flat on its face.
The way your body gets cancer from radiation is when a photon oxidizes a phosphate group on your DNA.
Pardon me, but I have to hit you with a really big clue stick too.
Photons do not Oxidize anything!
They ionize, but only if the energy of the photon is high enough. Ionizing Radiation starts at UV and includes X-Rays, Gamma-Rays and other high energy photons. Look at a spectrum chart. Where are microwaves? They're below UV, they're below infrared, they're orders of magnitude less energetic than UV radiation. They can not ionize anything.
You can't get cancer as you describe from non-ionizing radiation.
Yes, and this is so much like the anti-RF crowd: "Let's conduct a simulation because we wouldn't understand a hard measurement if it hit us over the head." This policy began with the flawed assumptions of Wertheimer and Leper, who made one of the first studies indicating that powerlines might cause Lukemia. The problem was that they didn't measure the actual radiation --they assumed it would be propotional to the class of powerlines near each house. Wrong.
This policy of simulate instead of measure has continued to this day. And those who do measure often get it wrong. You see, none of them are RF engineers. One study using lab rats actually exposed the lab rats to 10 times the radiation level they thought they were using. Our esteemed researchers forgot to take the metal cage in to account...
The anti-RF crowd are mostly a lot of believers who think they have indentified a statistically insignificant danger and now they're looking for a theory to back it up. Instead they find statistical artifacts and use these spurious correlations to get more funding. The only known hazard of RF radiation are heating effects. Those who discover anything else deserve a Nobel Prize, if for nothing else, PHYSICS!
This is a classic example of a foolish notion that radio communications ("wireless" for those of you who didn't realize what technology this is) can be made private. Yes, our Federal Communications Commission (and many other such agencies world wide) believes that you'll be a good citizen and not monitor your neighbor's juicy conversations.
This goes against everything we've known about radio for the last century. However, given this sort of legislation, nobody can hold Best Buy or any other retailer liable for sending your credit card information out over the airwaves where everyone can see it.
No, "the government" wants you to build a critical thing such as a house so that it meets minimal safety standards. You can't draw conclusions from these experiences to say that DIY is dead. It's merely sidelined to areas where public safety is not at stake.
You can still solder pipes if you want to. You can still wire up your attic or basement if that's what you want to do. You can even build a shed in your back yard if you want to. Remember, Home Depot is making big bucks. They're not selling exclusively to contractors either.
And in case you haven't looked recently: TVs don't have tubes any more. They have very few adjustments and they rarely break. I suggest using your gumption to fix things that need fixing --not living in yesterday's technology.
None of these folks started out as anything other than very interested amateurs.
Besides, you would be surprised what a bit of scrounging can do for you. Sure, this stuff is expensive if you buy everything new and have others fabricate your stuff for you. But don't overlook surplus markets.
It takes imagination, curiosity, and drive. Apparently you don't see that very often in a research institute.
2) Inter-Modulation Distortion. This is a general class of problems resulting from non-linearity in amplifiers. It manfests itself on a spread spectrum link as noise --just like the near/far problem. Your options for getting around this problem in a spread spectrum receiver are few: Basically all you can do is build a higher power front end amplifier (consume more power). With narrowband systems you can take advantage of resonant circuits as well.
3) Sequency management. Someone has to coordinate these things somehow. Many are embracing spread spectrum as a way to get rid of the FCC. That's unfortunate. Yes, they're doing their job quite poorly and yes, it's been this way for a long time. That doesn't mean anarchy is better, or that the FCC's mission is irrelevant.
4) Data transmission != spread spectrum. Efficient use of spectrum is laudable. That doesn't mean that you must spread to be efficient, however. There are plenty of very well known modulation techniques which can be used for data transmission. The discussion of data broadcast or point to point data transmission has no bearing on whether one ought to use spread spectrum or not.
5) Making a transition from narrowband communications to spread spectrum communications systems is too expensive, difficult, and impractical to consider. You simply can't change every aircraft radio and air traffic control facility overnight. You can't just shut off all broadcast stations and tell everybody to buy new radios. You'd have a major riot on your hands.
6) Current Broadcast programming sucks. Did adding all those channels to Cable TV improve regular TV programming? Does anyone think XM radio will do good things for FM radio? Get real.
Most of the discussion on spread spectrum right now is more about the disadvatages of narrowband when scaled up and the advantages of spread spectrum on a small scale. However spread spectrum doesn't scale up any better than narrowband communications has. The technologies and limits are still the same. This is not a magic solution. This is merely one method out of several for signal multiplexing.
I can imagine a day when spread spectrum systems will be more common. However it does very little to solve issues such as re-engineering the FCC to be less flaccid and useless, sending high speed data over the airwaves, or how to improve broadcast programming. It's just a technology, it's not a way of doing business.
RMS is right about several things: the pace in which this happens is too slow and too fraught with opportunity for honest mistakes to happen. It's also filled with conceptual ideas which are so broad that they have no business being there. However, it's far too expensive for the little guys out there, or even someone trying to defend an open source project.
As to whether it's like a symphony or not --who cares? That's just a vehicle to try and explain the situation to those who don't know the difference between an algorithm, a concept, or a functional block of code...
Just a minute: crowd control measures are reasonable. Would you prefer an all out riot instead? And what's wrong with research for better measures? The goal is to disperse an unruly crowd with the least amount of force and harm to all. What's wrong with that? And what on earth do you mean by "population control"?
While some sports fanatics may be a problem, they can be dealt by the usual police methods, of wearing riot gear and restricting them until their highs decrease.
Using what? What "usual methods" are you suggesting? Night sticks? CS gas? Rubber bullets? And you think a bunch of slippery goo is a bad idea?
Sports riots are also not a federal problem (unless they happen in dc which is bnot very likely).
Yes, but who is going to do the research? Local police authorities can't afford programs such as that.
These methods are clearly aimed at protesters. Which means that the government is using our taxpayer money to research new ways to silence its critics.
And how do you know this? I can think of all sorts of applications beyond controlling unruly political protest crowds.
Whatever you may think of the anti-WTO protesters for whom this invention is clearly made, i hope you will agree that people like them have the right to criticize the government, and make their voices heard.
Sure. Whatever. What does the anti-WTO crowd stand for anyway? They rioted all throughout Seattle, costing the city millions, and for what? If you guys had anything coherent to say, you would have been welcome to put it on the Television networks or in print in major newspapers. They were eager for an explanation too. But there was nothing but a bunch of random voices from all sorts of fringe causes.
In any case, the anti-WTO bunch are no more coherent than a sports riot. Don't kid yourself. The research program in to non-lethal methods was started decades ago. To say that it was designed just for anti-WTO purposes is simply delusions of grandure.
More likely, you'll see it used in ansynchronous computing --and that will take some time.
Two things are needed before this happens: Commonplace high bandwidth Internet connections, and a working business model that allows for free copying (like the copyleft).
Those things aren't going to happen overnight. All the popular business models are based on the one to many distribution systems, not the many to many copy models common on the internet. It will take a lot of financial strife to force those older distribution companies to realize that they can make more money by charging minimal to no fees on the Internet than they can by restricting distribution.
This war is just getting started. Things will have to get a lot uglier before they get better.
The other reason spam is popular is because in perhaps one out of 100,000 messages a spammer might hit paydirt. Now, suppose there were a bandwidth charge each country imposed on various governments based on the percentage of spam reported. And naturally, as SPAM levels increase, the bandwidth connection costs charged will go up exponentially.
THAT will get their attention --and ours. If you don't keep your own act clean, expect the costs to go up! And by the way, this isn't really that different from snail mail. If you're in the habit of sending bulk mail from overseas, expect to pay a premium as shipping and processing costs
go up.
Blocking is overkill. Make them pay.
It's usually tight code because the programmer is doing this for the love of the art itself, and for the notoriety of publishing their code in public.
Contrast this to how a lot of corporately driven software is designed: Committee decisions, Edicts from ignorant higher-ups, and programmers who have no stake in doing a good job because almost nobody appreciates good clean code or even knows enough to recognize a crufty block of garbage.
I'm not suggesting that ALL corporately written software is done this way, nor am I suggesting that ALL Open Source software is good either. But the typical motives behind the origin of the software and thus the design itself are quite different.
One of them encourages good code and the other one doesn't. Is there any wonder why it's so expensive for Microsoft to find and fix a bug, while open software tends to be pretty usable even on beta releases?
...but most of us married folk love it. Don't listen to the nay-sayers. They either can't hack it or just don't know how to keep one going. It's a lot like Linux...
Congratulations you two. Now you'll experience geekiness squared. It'll be great!
They do contribute more than you may realize. And once Linux gains institutional momentum, you're almost certain to see a flood of contributions. And who knows? You might be the one making them via a Government contract!
...if Linux weren't GPL'ed?
I doubt M$ has the guts to use a half-baked statistical white-wash such as this against another party that could sue them --such as HP.
How does one amplify these wavelets without distorting them with group delay and linearity problems?
Seems to me that nobody has put much thought as to how this stuff ought to scale up. Oh yeah, I forgot, this stuff was supposed to ride on existing infrastructure. Riiiiight.
Don't throw your money at these guys yet; I smell some half baked bullshit here.
These fuses won't blow unless some parts inside the power supply have failed. Replacing that fuse will not help and may result in some rather interesting pyrotechnics.
I know these labels often get used frivolously, but this doesn't happen to be one of those cases.
Today, it's nothing short of laughable. If someone could actually prove that any such electrosensitivity existed, they'd be strong candidates for a Nobel Prize. At the very least they'd have discovered something new in molecular biology, if not physics itself.
Despite that obstacle, this issue has continued to resurface year after year ever since that yellow journalist, Paul Broduer wrote "The Zapping of America" and Wertheimer and Leper conducted their seriously flawed and irreproducible study back in the 1970s.
It seems to me these folks must think innuendo is a valid criterion for evaluating scientific research (Broduer used this technique very nicely). Since it's awfully hard to meet their demands in this country, I invite them to join the Taliban in their nice Faraday cages at Camp X-Ray. I hear the accomodations aren't too shabby...