Of course, this is unconstitutional. The Constitution requires that patents only be granted to an inventor. An inventor is the first person to develop a discovery or technology.
Not necessarily. Simply make only the first-to-file eligable for the patent. Another inventor can't patent the invention, but he can invalidate the first-to-file's patent by showing that he came up with the invention first. This would avoid any possible constitutional issues while greatly simplifying the USPTO's job in most cases.
Nobody wants to see commercials, end of study. Duh.
More accurately, nobody wants to watch uninteresting commercials, repeatedly, especially for products in which they are not interested.
Here are my typical ad-viewing habits. If I'm in a hurry, or watching a particularly engrossing portion of a program I will skill all commercials arbitrarily. Otherwise, it normally takes a particularly annoying or off-topic commercial (i.e. As a 20-something male, I don't want to sit through an ad for feminine hygiene products, adult diapers, etc.) to get me to reach for the remote and begin fast-forwarding the program. So: whether or not a particular ad gets viewed will depend on where the ad is placed in the program, and which other ads come before it in the commercial break.
Hopefully, this data will spur advertisers to advertise more appropriately vs. the shotgun approach we see now. If I have less reason to reach for the remote to skip the annoying commercials, I see that as a good thing. (I'm not betting that this will happen, however...)
However, the issue that may arrise here is (at least at the time I was going to use them for a unique project) in the process of using them, you agree that the designs you submit to them become their property. If he is trying to build a prototype, using emachineshop.com effectively hands the rights to the design to someone else.
Here is what is in their current (or close to current, I haven't installed the latest update):
Customer retains all rights to submitted designs and emachineshop retains no rights to submitted designs.
Yes, I suppose that's sort of a "must have" feature when landing a big glider-like object.
If it comes to that, I'm going to guess the priorities are:
1. Don't fall on top of anybody.
2. Don't let the debris become an environmental hazard, a safety issue, or a tourist attraction.
3. Land intact.
Landing gear is only required for #3.
Why wasn't the content of the harddrive encrypted?
Encrypting the harddrive (which it may have been) simply changes the problem from one where you need to destroy the unencrypted information quickly and compleatly to one where you need to destroy the encryption key quickly and compleatly. Destroying the key may or may not be any easier that destroying the data depending on how it is stored. Also, even if the data is encrypted and the key compleatly destroyed, you probably still want do destroy the encrypted data. After all: How sure are you that your enemy hasn't found a way to break your encryption or somehow obtained a copy of the key?
I don't know. My point was simply that the parent comment's assertion that right-to-work laws somehow give employees the ability to bargin away their right to a safe workplace, thus leading to a situation of "get chipped or don't work" that wouldn't be present in the absence of right-to-work laws.
If implanting an RFID tag under an employee's skin doesn't fall under workplace safety laws, then the entire argument doesn't matter at all.
Altho, if you're in a right-to-work state, I can't see why they can't force this on workers. If you agree to it in a contract, well, you had your opportunity to decide against it.
IANAL, but "right-to-work" only means that a state's employment laws don't allow an employer to require that some/all employee's join the union. Even in a right-to-work state, a contract doesn't let an employer off the hook for unsafe working conditions.
Convince your house mates that switching to LCDs in going to save everyone even though they're relatively expensive up front. A 19" CRT sucking down 100W will cost a fortune compared to the operational cost of a good LCD. The less power used means the less heat generated which leads to lower home cooling costs in hotter months.
I don't know about that. A LCD of similar size and resolution to my CRT would cost about $600. Let's even assume that by CRT draws about 200W (the label on the back says 1.7A/120V, but that's going to be worst case.). In my area, electricity costs $0.08 per kWh. The LCD would take 37,500 hours to pay for itself $600/($0.08/kWh)/0.2kW. At that rate, I would take over 4 years for the LCD to pay for itself, even if I leave my current monitor on 24/7/365. To me, the savings just aren't enough to make me rush out and buy an LCD. I might consider it when it comes time to replace this monitor.
Sure, some people will say "What prevents Megacorp YYY from blasting 100,000 watts over every frequency?" That's pretty simple -- energy costs make it prohibitive to transmit anything but profitable data.
No, it's not practical to blast 100,000 watts over ever frequency. I'm not worried about such a shot-gun approach. What I'm much more worried about is the "sniper" approach. Let's say that you're using the newly-deregulated spectrum to provide some service. Perhaps your trying to operate a local public interest radio station, or providing internet service, or selling wireless telephone service of some sort. Now somebody with an interest in preventing _you_ specifically from providing your service comes along. Maybe they don't like the message from your radio station, or are your competitor in the ISP/phone market. All they have to do to keep you off the air is tranmit a signal which degrates the SNR of your signal sufficiently to render it useless. If they're willing to pay a little more for the power to produce their signal then you are for the power to produce your signal, they'll win.
I'd much prefer minimal regulation (i.e. just enough to force licensees to co-operate to avoid and resolve cases of interfearance.) to no regulation.
Ever wonder how your house can have 3 cell phones, 3 cordless phones and 15 wireless accessories work together? It isn't the FCC that's helping this situation, it is manufacturers working with one another so they can all compete.
Of course, the FCC also limits the amount of power each device may trasmit. This limits the effect a single rogue device can have on the other devices around it (licesnced or not). If not for this little regulation, I could solve any interfearance problem quite easily by simply using a little bit more power than the other devices. Sure, nobody else can use their 2.4GHz devices anywhere within 100 yards of my home, but I don't have any interfearance problems anymore.
I can imagine a near-future of open bandwidth, frequency-hopping competitive technologies that walk all over each other yet don't conflict.
Not quite, it would be better to say "...competitive technologies that walk all over each other without degrading each other's singal to unacceptable levels." Keep in mind that spread-spectrum doesn't let us get around basic information theory. A certain bandwidth will allow the transmission of a certain amount of information with a certain signal to noise-ratio. As more devices make use of a particular frequency range, the signal-to-noise ratio will decrease. At some-point, the signal-to-noise ratio will decrease to the point that your receiver can no longer work reliably. Then you have to either find a different frequency range or increase the power of your signal.
A 50,000 watt radio station broadcasting at one tiny sliver of a frequency has a HUGE electric bill. The only way you could stay in business is with advertisers, and who wants to be affiliated with a company that burns everyone's communications?
If I wanted to jam your spread-spectrum signal, I don't have to transmit on every frequency all the time. All I have to do is transmit on the same frequency at the same moment as you are. If I can't predict what sequence of frequencies you're going to use, I'm probably SOL. However, if your intent for anybody to be able to receive your signal, then there must be some means to syncronise the receivers with the transmitter. If I don't like what you're broadcasting, I can use that synchronisation means to track your signal with my own. If I'm willing to spend just a little bit more than you for a more powerful transmitter, better location, etc. I can probably knock you off the air.
Without the FCC, we'd see thousands or tens of thousands of community broadcasters.
Rather than getting rid of the FCC, I think a better idea would be for the FCC to license community broadcasters (without a fee). Require applicants to demonstrate a minimum level of technical competance and provide a way to resolve any interfearance that pops up. Community broadcasters then work together and with commercial stations to ensure that nobody is interfearing with each other. Any broadcasters (community or commercial) which don't want to play nice risk having their licenses revoked.
...but the attacker is injecting and sampling at a rate 100X faster, the attacker's pulse will be so far above the nyquist bandwidth of the endpoints that they will never see it.
Keep in mind that the energy from the attacker's pulse doesn't just go *poof* and disappear. It will be aliased to frequencies within the bandwidth of the endpoint(s) and might still be detected.
In other words, the label shouldn't convey the information "Charge this customer $X.XX", it should convey "Check for item XYZ... Return price."
That is already how the system works for most items. The scam then is to replace the barcode on the expensive item with an valid barcode from another, less expensive, item.
In most newer cars, there is no mechanical connection between the accelerator pedal and any part of the engine resposible for controlling the flow of fuel and/or air. Instead, the accelerator pedal contains two or more (for redundancy) pedal position sensors which report the position of the accelerator pedal to the engine computer. The engine computer then determines based on the accelerator pedal position (and a whole lot of other factors) how much fuel and air to deliver to the engine to produce the amount of torque or power desired by the driver. This is known as an Electronic Throttle Control (ETC) system.
Unlike older cars which have an actuator to physically move the throttle cable when the cruise control is enabled, an actuator would have to be added to the accelerator pedal in order to provide any sort of force feedback to the driver indicating that he has exceeded the speed limit. The addition of an actuator to the accelerator pedal is unlikely to happen for a number of reasons:
Cost. ETC Acclerator pedals are fairly inexpensive to produce. Adding an actuator and control system will double or triple the cost of an accelerator pedal.
Space. The under-dash area of a vehicle is an extremely cramped space. This has pushed the size of accelerator pedals to the minimum practicle size. (Note: I'm talking about the size of the pedal housing which contains the pedal position sensors, return springs, hysteresis force mechanisms, etc, not the size of the pedal pad which your foot depresses) Adding an actuator will increase the size of the pedal so that it wouldn't fit in a modern vehicle.
Safety. The last thing you want to have happen is for any accelerator pedal (ETC or otherwise) to get stuck in any position other than idle. Adding a device to make it hard to push on the pedal seems like a real good way to accidently stick the pedal in an undesireable position (probably the position it was in when the vehicle was going to fast to begin with).
If contracts are limited to one year, you'll see those sorts of offers disappear or go up in cost.
I don't buy it. If that were entirely the case, I should be able to go to any of the wireless provider's website or store and see them advertising bring-your-own-phone month-to-month plans. So far, I haven't seen anything like that. Yes, part of the reason for the long contracts is to pay back the cost of the phone they provide. However, I think ensuring that they continue to get $50+ per month from you for the next two years, even if you no longer want or need their service is the bigger reason.
Also, if the reason for the long contracts is simply to recover the cost of the phone, then the early termination fees shouldn't be much more that the cost of the telephone. An early termination fee which is 6x the monthly fee is insane unless it is simply the pro-rated cost of the phone. A sane value would be an early termination fee of one month's service fee plus the prorated cost of the phone.
My car (2004 Mazda 3) has a fully electronic throttle body. It's all servo-driven, no linkage between the throttle and the gas pedal at all. If I had thought to check stuff like that I wouldn't have bought it.
I hate to tell you this, but I would guess that most new vehicles have electronic throttle controls (ETC) similar to what you describe above. By seperating the amount of air allowed into the engine (the throttle valve position) from the driver demand for power (pedal position), you can provide the optimum amount of air and fuel for the current engine speed and power. This resultes in lower emmissions and higher fuel milege.
It hasn't given me any trouble yet (it's a 2004, it had better not), but just wait until the sensor shorts out and tells the engine that I want to floor it, or vice versa.
Every ETC system I'm aware of uses at least two pedal position sensors. Each sensor must indicate the same pedal position with a very small margin, typically 2% to 4% of total pedal travel, otherwise the vehicle detects a fault and limits engine power. The chance of the pedal position sensor "shorting out" and causing vehicle to believe that the pedal is in the full-throttle position is very, very small, especially compared to the likelyhood that the cable connecting the throttle body to the pedal in a traditional accelerator pedal system will bind up and prevent the entire system (pedal, cable, and throttle body) from returning.
Also, shift-by-wire is showing up in some vehicles. The Toyota Prius is entirely shift-by-wire (no cable connects the shifter to the transmission). Other transmissions use a cable simply to release and engage the parking pawl and shift between reverse, neutral, drive, and low entirely based on an electronic signal from the shifter. Further, once vehicles go to a higher-voltage system, expect to see steer-by-wire systems show up to "veto" excessive steering input and to avoid the need pass a steering column through the dash-board, firewall, and engine compartment. To top it all, I wouldn't bet against seeing full brake-by-wire systems in the future as well. Many stability control systems have the ability to apply some braking force now. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to extend the system to apply all of the braking force electronically.
Keep in mind that there is more than just scancodes availaible via the OBD-II port. The scancodes, even the non-standard ones are pretty much public knowledge. There are plenty of on-line references, and most are, in my experiance, reasonably accurate (at least they are for codes related to parts I work with).
Live data about the vehicle is also availaible via the OBD-II port. The OBD-II standards are mainly concerned with the first 32 or so parameters which are all useful for emmissions testing. These are things like throttle position, vehicle speed, engine RPM, oxygen sensor values, etc. There is a ton of additional parameters availaible via the OBD-II port which, as far as I've been able to find, is not availaible on-line anywhere. There are lots of lists of what parameters are availaible for a particular vehicle, but no data linking the parameter to the PID (needed to request the data from the vehicle) or offset and scaling factors needed to convert the raw value back into a physical value. If you take it a step further and use the OEM's official tools, possibly including engineering use only versions, there is even more you can do. For example, I've been told (but have no way to verify) that if you have the right scantool and software you can remotly control low-level vehicle functions for many current vehicles. The specific example was certain Chrysler models where the various automatic transmission solenoid valves can be opened and closed via the OBD-II port.
You are correct that scan-codes are pretty much public information, whether the automakers want them to be or not. As far as the other capabilities exposed via OBD-II go, little more is publically availaible then what is required by the various standards and regulations. This becomes very frustrating when you want do do something like: Continuously monitor parameters A, B, C, and D via OBD-II, plus the physical values of E, F, and G, and then dump the last 5 minutes of measurements to a file whenever trouble code X, Y, or Z occurs.
However, this also means it *shouldn't* be happening as a result of something common. A low battery-voltage is a pretty common error-scenario. To have something dangerous happen as a result thereof is simply bad design.
It would be interesting to know exactly how a low battery voltage does prevent proper operation of the park interlock. AFAIK, the Prius uses an entirely shift-by-wire transmission. Unlike some other cars where that implement shift-by-wire, there is no cable attaching a shift lever to the transmission to mechanically engage or disengage the parking pawl. It may simply mean that below a certain voltage, they can't guarantee the actuator that engages the parking pawl can do so reliably under all conditions. The article also doesn't specify how low the battery voltage dropped, or whether it was the low-voltage or high-voltage battery that was too low.
The same thing can happen now with some automatic transmission shifters which have a neutral interlock. Depending on the design of the shifter, a broken wire, blown fuse, low battery voltage, etc, could result in a situation where the shift lever can not be moved from neutral to reverse. However, since the shift lever physically cannot be moved past neutral towards reverse, it gives immediate feedback that a failure has occurred. Hopefully, the driver is smart enough not to leave the car in neutral on a hill without the parking brake engaged. The difference here, IMHO, is that the Prius shifter cannot give any mechanical feedback that this has happened, so the warning must be communicated in another way.
I fully agree, though, that the warning could be more specific.
Actually, many newer manual transmission cars have a reverse interlock that ensures that the vehicle can't be shifted out of reverse by accident. It's also much more common to actually use the parking brake in a car with a manual, while almost nobody uses the parking brake in an automatic.
Granted, the transmission may not be working -- but there should be a diagnostic saying "OMFG Battery Voltage Low" first.
IAAAEE (I am an automotive electrical engieer)...
From an automotive safety standpoint, a malfunctioning park interlock system is pretty close to the top of the list of bad things. The part interlock is the system that prevents the an automatic transmission from shifting out of park unless the vehicle key is in the ignition and there is a second input from the driver (typically by pressing the brake). If the park interlock malfunctions, a simple bump of the shifter (or possibly even the vehicle) might cause the car to shift out of park and begin to roll away. Typically, any failure that disables the function of the park interlock is given the highest severity (Severe injury or death occurs without warning) on any type of DFMEA analysis.
By prominitly displaying a warning on the dashboard, this failure drops down a few notches in severity as there is clear warning that a failure has occured and instructions from how to minimize the risk.
As a result, if the Prius is only capable of displaying one fault condition at a time, a fault with the park interlock system is much more important to display than a low battery voltage. That having been said, some sort of indication of a low battery condition would also be a good idea, perhaps via a trouble light on the dashboard or elsewhere.
Basically, someone sets up a remotely-controlled gun and allows others to aim and fire the gun via the internet (or some other remote method). In the examples I've seen, there is an operator at the gun who must enable the physcial gun immediately before the remote gun can be fired.
One reasonable use claimed for this technology is to allow people with disabilities to hunt when they otherwise wouldn't be able to. Whether this is a good idea (vs. simply buying them a copy of "Deer Hunter") is debatable.
I know there are laws in place to keep automobile manufacturers from doing the same thing (since I make auto scantools for a living). That's one of the main reasons why the industry moved towards OBDII - to be compliant with the disclosure law.
AFAIK, the OBD-II requirement involves exclusivly emmissions related data. It's not about allowing vehicle owners to fix their own vehicles or any other purpose. Take a look (since you make scantools) at which PID's are documented and known to the public. Compare that to the number of other parameters the automakers choose to make availaible via the OBD-II port. You'll notice that the publicly known PID's are all measurments needed by, or which are at least useful for, emissions testing.
But there is one upside to this: reduction of election fraud. If you're required to scan in when you vote, voter disenfranchisement should plummet...
Actually, I think that requiring that you "scan a card" to vote makes election fraud easier in some repects. Let say that you have a close race that you don't want to lose. Create a profile of voters who are likely not to vote for you. Secretly load that list onto the voting machine. Reject, at random, some percentage of the voters who fit the profile. Perhaps you can simply discard their votes, rather than not allowing them to vote in the first place.
Today, you could also do this. However, precinct workers might notice that there are a large number of apparently registered voters who are being rejected. If the system is automated, and the precinct workers take the systems decision regarding who may vote as gospel, then you could reject many more voters.
Here's some free clue, lemming: any kind of electromagnetic radiation is made of photons. Yes, exactly what goes for visible light, goes for any other wavelength.
True.
There is no such bullshit threshold where above X watt it's ionizing, under X watt it's not ionizing. If a single photon can cause a transition in an atom or mollecule, it will. That's the only either-or condition.
Also mostly true. Whether or not a particular form of "radiation" is ionizing has more to do with the amount of energy each particle carries. This is related to the frequency of the radiation, not the amount of power behind the radiation source. More power produces more photons, not faster protons.
Electromagnetic waves within the band of frequencies generally referred to as "radio frequencies" are not ionizing. This does not begin to occur until you reach somewhere in the ultra-violet range.
RF exposure is a interesting area. AFAIK, however, there is no conclusive evidence that radio frequency waves cause any harm at athermal power levels.
I think what this might mean is that companies that can hire a patent lawyer team can take individual's ideas and patent them. I hope not, though, please correct me if I'm wrong.
What first-to-file means is that if two inventors file an application covering the same invention, the patent would be issued to the first inventor to file. Currently, if two inventors file an application covering the same invention, the two inventors get to fight it out over who came up with the idea first.
This would mean a huge blow for proprietary software over open source software, because copyright would no longer protect us. Our ideas could be stolen retroactively.
No, because once you publish your software, the idea is no longer "novel", and (at least in theory) unpatentable.
(IANAL...If you're truly concened, you should talk to one.)
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Of course, this is unconstitutional. The Constitution requires that patents only be granted to an inventor. An inventor is the first person to develop a discovery or technology.
Not necessarily. Simply make only the first-to-file eligable for the patent. Another inventor can't patent the invention, but he can invalidate the first-to-file's patent by showing that he came up with the invention first. This would avoid any possible constitutional issues while greatly simplifying the USPTO's job in most cases.
Nobody wants to see commercials, end of study. Duh.
More accurately, nobody wants to watch uninteresting commercials, repeatedly, especially for products in which they are not interested.
Here are my typical ad-viewing habits. If I'm in a hurry, or watching a particularly engrossing portion of a program I will skill all commercials arbitrarily. Otherwise, it normally takes a particularly annoying or off-topic commercial (i.e. As a 20-something male, I don't want to sit through an ad for feminine hygiene products, adult diapers, etc.) to get me to reach for the remote and begin fast-forwarding the program. So: whether or not a particular ad gets viewed will depend on where the ad is placed in the program, and which other ads come before it in the commercial break.
Hopefully, this data will spur advertisers to advertise more appropriately vs. the shotgun approach we see now. If I have less reason to reach for the remote to skip the annoying commercials, I see that as a good thing. (I'm not betting that this will happen, however...)
However, the issue that may arrise here is (at least at the time I was going to use them for a unique project) in the process of using them, you agree that the designs you submit to them become their property. If he is trying to build a prototype, using emachineshop.com effectively hands the rights to the design to someone else.
Here is what is in their current (or close to current, I haven't installed the latest update):
Customer retains all rights to submitted designs and emachineshop retains no rights to submitted designs.
Yes, I suppose that's sort of a "must have" feature when landing a big glider-like object.
If it comes to that, I'm going to guess the priorities are:
1. Don't fall on top of anybody.
2. Don't let the debris become an environmental hazard, a safety issue, or a tourist attraction.
3. Land intact.
Landing gear is only required for #3.
Why wasn't the content of the harddrive encrypted?
Encrypting the harddrive (which it may have been) simply changes the problem from one where you need to destroy the unencrypted information quickly and compleatly to one where you need to destroy the encryption key quickly and compleatly. Destroying the key may or may not be any easier that destroying the data depending on how it is stored. Also, even if the data is encrypted and the key compleatly destroyed, you probably still want do destroy the encrypted data. After all: How sure are you that your enemy hasn't found a way to break your encryption or somehow obtained a copy of the key?
Okay, but what's the metric here?
I don't know. My point was simply that the parent comment's assertion that right-to-work laws somehow give employees the ability to bargin away their right to a safe workplace, thus leading to a situation of "get chipped or don't work" that wouldn't be present in the absence of right-to-work laws.
If implanting an RFID tag under an employee's skin doesn't fall under workplace safety laws, then the entire argument doesn't matter at all.
Altho, if you're in a right-to-work state, I can't see why they can't force this on workers. If you agree to it in a contract, well, you had your opportunity to decide against it.
IANAL, but "right-to-work" only means that a state's employment laws don't allow an employer to require that some/all employee's join the union. Even in a right-to-work state, a contract doesn't let an employer off the hook for unsafe working conditions.
Convince your house mates that switching to LCDs in going to save everyone even though they're relatively expensive up front. A 19" CRT sucking down 100W will cost a fortune compared to the operational cost of a good LCD. The less power used means the less heat generated which leads to lower home cooling costs in hotter months.
I don't know about that. A LCD of similar size and resolution to my CRT would cost about $600. Let's even assume that by CRT draws about 200W (the label on the back says 1.7A/120V, but that's going to be worst case.). In my area, electricity costs $0.08 per kWh. The LCD would take 37,500 hours to pay for itself $600/($0.08/kWh)/0.2kW. At that rate, I would take over 4 years for the LCD to pay for itself, even if I leave my current monitor on 24/7/365. To me, the savings just aren't enough to make me rush out and buy an LCD. I might consider it when it comes time to replace this monitor.
Sure, some people will say "What prevents Megacorp YYY from blasting 100,000 watts over every frequency?" That's pretty simple -- energy costs make it prohibitive to transmit anything but profitable data.
No, it's not practical to blast 100,000 watts over ever frequency. I'm not worried about such a shot-gun approach. What I'm much more worried about is the "sniper" approach. Let's say that you're using the newly-deregulated spectrum to provide some service. Perhaps your trying to operate a local public interest radio station, or providing internet service, or selling wireless telephone service of some sort. Now somebody with an interest in preventing _you_ specifically from providing your service comes along. Maybe they don't like the message from your radio station, or are your competitor in the ISP/phone market. All they have to do to keep you off the air is tranmit a signal which degrates the SNR of your signal sufficiently to render it useless. If they're willing to pay a little more for the power to produce their signal then you are for the power to produce your signal, they'll win.
I'd much prefer minimal regulation (i.e. just enough to force licensees to co-operate to avoid and resolve cases of interfearance.) to no regulation.
Ever wonder how your house can have 3 cell phones, 3 cordless phones and 15 wireless accessories work together? It isn't the FCC that's helping this situation, it is manufacturers working with one another so they can all compete.
Of course, the FCC also limits the amount of power each device may trasmit. This limits the effect a single rogue device can have on the other devices around it (licesnced or not). If not for this little regulation, I could solve any interfearance problem quite easily by simply using a little bit more power than the other devices. Sure, nobody else can use their 2.4GHz devices anywhere within 100 yards of my home, but I don't have any interfearance problems anymore.
I can imagine a near-future of open bandwidth, frequency-hopping competitive technologies that walk all over each other yet don't conflict.
Not quite, it would be better to say "...competitive technologies that walk all over each other without degrading each other's singal to unacceptable levels." Keep in mind that spread-spectrum doesn't let us get around basic information theory. A certain bandwidth will allow the transmission of a certain amount of information with a certain signal to noise-ratio. As more devices make use of a particular frequency range, the signal-to-noise ratio will decrease. At some-point, the signal-to-noise ratio will decrease to the point that your receiver can no longer work reliably. Then you have to either find a different frequency range or increase the power of your signal.
A 50,000 watt radio station broadcasting at one tiny sliver of a frequency has a HUGE electric bill. The only way you could stay in business is with advertisers, and who wants to be affiliated with a company that burns everyone's communications?
If I wanted to jam your spread-spectrum signal, I don't have to transmit on every frequency all the time. All I have to do is transmit on the same frequency at the same moment as you are. If I can't predict what sequence of frequencies you're going to use, I'm probably SOL. However, if your intent for anybody to be able to receive your signal, then there must be some means to syncronise the receivers with the transmitter. If I don't like what you're broadcasting, I can use that synchronisation means to track your signal with my own. If I'm willing to spend just a little bit more than you for a more powerful transmitter, better location, etc. I can probably knock you off the air.
Without the FCC, we'd see thousands or tens of thousands of community broadcasters.
Rather than getting rid of the FCC, I think a better idea would be for the FCC to license community broadcasters (without a fee). Require applicants to demonstrate a minimum level of technical competance and provide a way to resolve any interfearance that pops up. Community broadcasters then work together and with commercial stations to ensure that nobody is interfearing with each other. Any broadcasters (community or commercial) which don't want to play nice risk having their licenses revoked.
...but the attacker is injecting and sampling at a rate 100X faster, the attacker's pulse will be so far above the nyquist bandwidth of the endpoints that they will never see it.
Keep in mind that the energy from the attacker's pulse doesn't just go *poof* and disappear. It will be aliased to frequencies within the bandwidth of the endpoint(s) and might still be detected.
In other words, the label shouldn't convey the information "Charge this customer $X.XX", it should convey "Check for item XYZ... Return price."
That is already how the system works for most items. The scam then is to replace the barcode on the expensive item with an valid barcode from another, less expensive, item.
Unlike older cars which have an actuator to physically move the throttle cable when the cruise control is enabled, an actuator would have to be added to the accelerator pedal in order to provide any sort of force feedback to the driver indicating that he has exceeded the speed limit. The addition of an actuator to the accelerator pedal is unlikely to happen for a number of reasons:
Cost. ETC Acclerator pedals are fairly inexpensive to produce. Adding an actuator and control system will double or triple the cost of an accelerator pedal.
Space. The under-dash area of a vehicle is an extremely cramped space. This has pushed the size of accelerator pedals to the minimum practicle size. (Note: I'm talking about the size of the pedal housing which contains the pedal position sensors, return springs, hysteresis force mechanisms, etc, not the size of the pedal pad which your foot depresses) Adding an actuator will increase the size of the pedal so that it wouldn't fit in a modern vehicle.
Safety. The last thing you want to have happen is for any accelerator pedal (ETC or otherwise) to get stuck in any position other than idle. Adding a device to make it hard to push on the pedal seems like a real good way to accidently stick the pedal in an undesireable position (probably the position it was in when the vehicle was going to fast to begin with).
If contracts are limited to one year, you'll see those sorts of offers disappear or go up in cost.
I don't buy it. If that were entirely the case, I should be able to go to any of the wireless provider's website or store and see them advertising bring-your-own-phone month-to-month plans. So far, I haven't seen anything like that. Yes, part of the reason for the long contracts is to pay back the cost of the phone they provide. However, I think ensuring that they continue to get $50+ per month from you for the next two years, even if you no longer want or need their service is the bigger reason.
Also, if the reason for the long contracts is simply to recover the cost of the phone, then the early termination fees shouldn't be much more that the cost of the telephone. An early termination fee which is 6x the monthly fee is insane unless it is simply the pro-rated cost of the phone. A sane value would be an early termination fee of one month's service fee plus the prorated cost of the phone.
So now, on top of the $1/CPU/hr, we have to buy a license for each of those CPUs.
It might make sense for Sun to work out agreements with software vendors to license their software to these machines on a CPU time basis.
$1/CPU/hr for the CPU time, $X/CPU/hr for the use of (insert high-end software package here).
My car (2004 Mazda 3) has a fully electronic throttle body. It's all servo-driven, no linkage between the throttle and the gas pedal at all. If I had thought to check stuff like that I wouldn't have bought it.
I hate to tell you this, but I would guess that most new vehicles have electronic throttle controls (ETC) similar to what you describe above. By seperating the amount of air allowed into the engine (the throttle valve position) from the driver demand for power (pedal position), you can provide the optimum amount of air and fuel for the current engine speed and power. This resultes in lower emmissions and higher fuel milege.
It hasn't given me any trouble yet (it's a 2004, it had better not), but just wait until the sensor shorts out and tells the engine that I want to floor it, or vice versa.
Every ETC system I'm aware of uses at least two pedal position sensors. Each sensor must indicate the same pedal position with a very small margin, typically 2% to 4% of total pedal travel, otherwise the vehicle detects a fault and limits engine power. The chance of the pedal position sensor "shorting out" and causing vehicle to believe that the pedal is in the full-throttle position is very, very small, especially compared to the likelyhood that the cable connecting the throttle body to the pedal in a traditional accelerator pedal system will bind up and prevent the entire system (pedal, cable, and throttle body) from returning.
Also, shift-by-wire is showing up in some vehicles. The Toyota Prius is entirely shift-by-wire (no cable connects the shifter to the transmission). Other transmissions use a cable simply to release and engage the parking pawl and shift between reverse, neutral, drive, and low entirely based on an electronic signal from the shifter. Further, once vehicles go to a higher-voltage system, expect to see steer-by-wire systems show up to "veto" excessive steering input and to avoid the need pass a steering column through the dash-board, firewall, and engine compartment. To top it all, I wouldn't bet against seeing full brake-by-wire systems in the future as well. Many stability control systems have the ability to apply some braking force now. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to extend the system to apply all of the braking force electronically.
Keep in mind that there is more than just scancodes availaible via the OBD-II port. The scancodes, even the non-standard ones are pretty much public knowledge. There are plenty of on-line references, and most are, in my experiance, reasonably accurate (at least they are for codes related to parts I work with).
Live data about the vehicle is also availaible via the OBD-II port. The OBD-II standards are mainly concerned with the first 32 or so parameters which are all useful for emmissions testing. These are things like throttle position, vehicle speed, engine RPM, oxygen sensor values, etc. There is a ton of additional parameters availaible via the OBD-II port which, as far as I've been able to find, is not availaible on-line anywhere. There are lots of lists of what parameters are availaible for a particular vehicle, but no data linking the parameter to the PID (needed to request the data from the vehicle) or offset and scaling factors needed to convert the raw value back into a physical value. If you take it a step further and use the OEM's official tools, possibly including engineering use only versions, there is even more you can do. For example, I've been told (but have no way to verify) that if you have the right scantool and software you can remotly control low-level vehicle functions for many current vehicles. The specific example was certain Chrysler models where the various automatic transmission solenoid valves can be opened and closed via the OBD-II port.
You are correct that scan-codes are pretty much public information, whether the automakers want them to be or not. As far as the other capabilities exposed via OBD-II go, little more is publically availaible then what is required by the various standards and regulations. This becomes very frustrating when you want do do something like: Continuously monitor parameters A, B, C, and D via OBD-II, plus the physical values of E, F, and G, and then dump the last 5 minutes of measurements to a file whenever trouble code X, Y, or Z occurs.
However, this also means it *shouldn't* be happening as a result of something common. A low battery-voltage is a pretty common error-scenario. To have something dangerous happen as a result thereof is simply bad design.
It would be interesting to know exactly how a low battery voltage does prevent proper operation of the park interlock. AFAIK, the Prius uses an entirely shift-by-wire transmission. Unlike some other cars where that implement shift-by-wire, there is no cable attaching a shift lever to the transmission to mechanically engage or disengage the parking pawl. It may simply mean that below a certain voltage, they can't guarantee the actuator that engages the parking pawl can do so reliably under all conditions. The article also doesn't specify how low the battery voltage dropped, or whether it was the low-voltage or high-voltage battery that was too low.
The same thing can happen now with some automatic transmission shifters which have a neutral interlock. Depending on the design of the shifter, a broken wire, blown fuse, low battery voltage, etc, could result in a situation where the shift lever can not be moved from neutral to reverse. However, since the shift lever physically cannot be moved past neutral towards reverse, it gives immediate feedback that a failure has occurred. Hopefully, the driver is smart enough not to leave the car in neutral on a hill without the parking brake engaged. The difference here, IMHO, is that the Prius shifter cannot give any mechanical feedback that this has happened, so the warning must be communicated in another way.
I fully agree, though, that the warning could be more specific.
Actually, many newer manual transmission cars have a reverse interlock that ensures that the vehicle can't be shifted out of reverse by accident. It's also much more common to actually use the parking brake in a car with a manual, while almost nobody uses the parking brake in an automatic.
Granted, the transmission may not be working -- but there should be a diagnostic saying "OMFG Battery Voltage Low" first.
IAAAEE (I am an automotive electrical engieer)...
From an automotive safety standpoint, a malfunctioning park interlock system is pretty close to the top of the list of bad things. The part interlock is the system that prevents the an automatic transmission from shifting out of park unless the vehicle key is in the ignition and there is a second input from the driver (typically by pressing the brake). If the park interlock malfunctions, a simple bump of the shifter (or possibly even the vehicle) might cause the car to shift out of park and begin to roll away. Typically, any failure that disables the function of the park interlock is given the highest severity (Severe injury or death occurs without warning) on any type of DFMEA analysis.
By prominitly displaying a warning on the dashboard, this failure drops down a few notches in severity as there is clear warning that a failure has occured and instructions from how to minimize the risk.
As a result, if the Prius is only capable of displaying one fault condition at a time, a fault with the park interlock system is much more important to display than a low battery voltage. That having been said, some sort of indication of a low battery condition would also be a good idea, perhaps via a trouble light on the dashboard or elsewhere.
Basically, someone sets up a remotely-controlled gun and allows others to aim and fire the gun via the internet (or some other remote method). In the examples I've seen, there is an operator at the gun who must enable the physcial gun immediately before the remote gun can be fired.
One reasonable use claimed for this technology is to allow people with disabilities to hunt when they otherwise wouldn't be able to. Whether this is a good idea (vs. simply buying them a copy of "Deer Hunter") is debatable.
I know there are laws in place to keep automobile manufacturers from doing the same thing (since I make auto scantools for a living). That's one of the main reasons why the industry moved towards OBDII - to be compliant with the disclosure law.
AFAIK, the OBD-II requirement involves exclusivly emmissions related data. It's not about allowing vehicle owners to fix their own vehicles or any other purpose. Take a look (since you make scantools) at which PID's are documented and known to the public. Compare that to the number of other parameters the automakers choose to make availaible via the OBD-II port. You'll notice that the publicly known PID's are all measurments needed by, or which are at least useful for, emissions testing.
But there is one upside to this: reduction of election fraud. If you're required to scan in when you vote, voter disenfranchisement should plummet...
Actually, I think that requiring that you "scan a card" to vote makes election fraud easier in some repects. Let say that you have a close race that you don't want to lose. Create a profile of voters who are likely not to vote for you. Secretly load that list onto the voting machine. Reject, at random, some percentage of the voters who fit the profile. Perhaps you can simply discard their votes, rather than not allowing them to vote in the first place.
Today, you could also do this. However, precinct workers might notice that there are a large number of apparently registered voters who are being rejected. If the system is automated, and the precinct workers take the systems decision regarding who may vote as gospel, then you could reject many more voters.
Here's some free clue, lemming: any kind of electromagnetic radiation is made of photons. Yes, exactly what goes for visible light, goes for any other wavelength.
True.
There is no such bullshit threshold where above X watt it's ionizing, under X watt it's not ionizing. If a single photon can cause a transition in an atom or mollecule, it will. That's the only either-or condition.
Also mostly true. Whether or not a particular form of "radiation" is ionizing has more to do with the amount of energy each particle carries. This is related to the frequency of the radiation, not the amount of power behind the radiation source. More power produces more photons, not faster protons.
Electromagnetic waves within the band of frequencies generally referred to as "radio frequencies" are not ionizing. This does not begin to occur until you reach somewhere in the ultra-violet range.
RF exposure is a interesting area. AFAIK, however, there is no conclusive evidence that radio frequency waves cause any harm at athermal power levels.
I think what this might mean is that companies that can hire a patent lawyer team can take individual's ideas and patent them. I hope not, though, please correct me if I'm wrong.
What first-to-file means is that if two inventors file an application covering the same invention, the patent would be issued to the first inventor to file. Currently, if two inventors file an application covering the same invention, the two inventors get to fight it out over who came up with the idea first.
This would mean a huge blow for proprietary software over open source software, because copyright would no longer protect us. Our ideas could be stolen retroactively.
No, because once you publish your software, the idea is no longer "novel", and (at least in theory) unpatentable. (IANAL...If you're truly concened, you should talk to one.)