This is simply a wireless ISP using the Nokia Rooftop system that was created by Rooftop Networks three years ago (and acquired by Nokia). It's a mesh 802.11b network on steriods with a routing protocol. If your only way back to the ISP's POP is through your neighbor's unit, and he deactivates his service or trips over the power cord, your service is down.
In summary, the NRC panel members noted that for any SSP program to churn out commercially competitive terrestrial electric power, breakthrough technologies are required.
Yea, like some way to overcome the free space loss formula in which you lose some 96dB of the microwave signal immediately, or a way to make lasers go around space junk and penetrate clouds with no loss. Also, a "technology" is needed to keep this thing from going apeshit when a bogus command is sent and the thing goes spinning out of control and fries everything in its path.
Cellular and PCS phones are made to transmit on one band and receive on another. Making peer-to-peer wireless messaging work would require extensive modifications of existing electronics as existing phones can't "hear" other phones on the frequencies they transmit on. There's also issues of how to tell phones what frequencies can be used, and how to prevent interference to cell sites. This is a good idea that I thought of ten years ago (peer-to-peer voice, though), but it'll take five years for even an interim standard to be developed.
When is someone going to make a patch for the kernel so that you can hot swap kernels, thus preserving your glorious uptime ? Or has someone done this already ?
Not to make a joke of this, but isn't there a song called To Kill an Arab by that depressing band (I can't remember their name) ? I guess it doesn't get enough airplay to warrant being on the list, but I could imagine that some stupid DJ would pull it out of somewhere and play it.
This list is so out there; you can tell someone doesn't have a clue as to what half these songs are actually about. Considering the mood I think much of this list would make a rather good playlist right now. I'm tempted to snarf a couple songs from Gnutella and play them while I work today.
Delorme will also be offering Middle Earth Atlas 1.0 for Windows which will enable you to navigate through middle earth easily and accurately. It has a GPS option for realtime tracking, but they haven't quite figured out how to make it work underground yet. I've been using the beta and have avoided a lot of mine shafts and molten rock pockets. No word on a Linux port.
A good site for getting practice exams is at http://www.aa9pw.com/.
It keeps track of your scores and adjusts the questions based on what you have difficulty with before. I used it to study for my Extra class license.
Everyone has to jump in like they're some kind of expert. Anyone and everyone who has ever fired up a Logitech wireless mouse is now a full-blown wireless engineer with years of experience.
This article is rather useless. First of all, Cisco's coverage range (supposedly) goes beyond LOS (that's Line Of Sight). This is due to VOFDM modulation that is using multipath signals in a non-LOS environment. Yes, this may be total marketing hype, but the author of the article doesn't have a clue about this and totally misses the point, assuming that LOS is the only issue.
Slashdot should really give up any attempts at covering wireless technologies. The editors don't know what is valuable information, and the resulting discussions are rather useless as well.
Oh my God ! You mean in this century, with all this high technology, we haven't found a way to eradicate every animal that could possibly delay our rat race society ! The Electoral College and paper ballots are the least of our worries !!
This rating system is meaningless. It merely gives manufacturers another thing to advertise such a "new and improved", recyclable, and "less fat". Most people won't have a clue what the numbers mean.
"Gee, look honey. This phone is.004 lower than the other. We should buy it. I don't want cancer !"
"Why certainly, dear ! I'll take the Radio Shaft XL-800 cell phone, please"
If you want to know how dangerous cell phones are (RF wise), you need to look at the population of ham radio operators and various professionals who use UHF radios on a regaular basis. These groups are exposed to 10 to 5000 more times the power that cell phone users are. (Hint: They're not -- and this is coming from a ham radio operator who's an environmentalist)
Eeeking another couple bits out of an already over hacked, compressed, digital signal processed bit stream over 1920's technology (copper loops) is still slow 1920's technology. Oh wait...DSL is also the same thing -- a bit stream coated with vaseline, shoe-horned onto a copper pair !
Microsoft still isn't addressing the root cuase of all of this. Windows needs to have a protected environment to execute hostile applications within. This may be halfway possible in NT, but it goes back to the old issue that you basically have to have Administrator rights to do anything beyond creating a file in notepad.
Microsoft will release this "fix" with a whole bunch of media hoopla, reassuring the public of its innovative nature and its desire to protect its customers. A few days will pass and someone will release the successor to Mellisa and ILOVEYOU which will thrive and cause more damage than the previous two. A media frenzy and congressional hearings follow.
Does Microsoft think they're really going to be able to fix this with such a silly solution ?
A billing problem and circuit disconnection shouldn't take down a whole business. In a business you have to do whatever it takes. If they would have scrambled and communicated with customers anyway they could, they probably would have retained 90 % of their clients, IMHO. The billing issue would have been resolved eventually.
This is a case of Darwin's Law at work in business. If this wouldn't have happened, something else would have taken it down eventually. Someone gave up too soon.
The first posts that I see here and quickly scanned don't seem to fully grasp the significance of this event.
Ignore the open source issues, Java is dead, and "Sun screwed us over" stuff for a minute. The stranlgehold that Microsoft has on the desktop is not the OS, it's the office suite. There hasn't been a viable competitor to MS Office yet. Sun acquistion of Star gives this company cash and a respectable name behind it that CIOs, VPs, and managers can mention in an IS Strategy meeting without getting fired.
Merely having a competitor will affect Microsoft. Having it Office compatible is cherry. Having it web-served makes it cross-platform. Sweet. It's free. Damn. MS Office goes the way of the browser.
Take off your open source googles for a minute. This is the silver bullet.
(By the way, thank you M$ for integrating the browser into the OS !!:-)
What I can't understand is why Compaq can't get behind the Alpha and drive it home. It's superior over Intel architecture. Compaq could say "Screw you, M$ AND Intel" and have Alphas on every desktop. Get someone like the people who make VMWare to get Win9* to run on Alpha and start packaging RedHat on Alpha machines. Hell, they bought Digital and Tandem. If they knew how to integrate this vast wealth of knowledge together, they could kick ass, but apparently someone at Compaq just doesn't want to do it.
M$ will get NT working on 64 bits, but obviously they've got egg on their face. So much for portability. This is certainly going to drain resources. How many versions of Windows will M$ be supporting now ?:-)
This guy's on the right track, but he misses the boat. You can extend the number of addressess simply by recognizing that the 1's in the binary respresentation of an address can be small or large values of 1. This will increase the number of available address to 32^2. Do the same with the zeros and you get another 32^2. With this, we can address every computer, man, woman, child, and Clinton mistress.
Of course ipaddr_stretcher.exe in the NT Resource Kit makes this whole discussion rather moot.
Routing a call to a speeding BMW is not the same as getting data to astronauts. The problem with getting a call to a vehicle is that the position is changing and coverage is limited due to terrain. The problems described in getting data to planetary locations is propagation delay.
Transmit and acknowledgement can work in space, you just need larger timeout values, much larger. The article states that connection-based links are impossible. "Connections" are a state of mind, so to speak. You could achieve connections, they would just be very high latentcy. And things like forward error correction can minimize data loss on high noise radio links.
"Off-the-shelf" technology and know-how should be able to solve the problems described in this article rather quickly.
Consider that computers are in most schools and they are integrated into most cirriculums in one way or another. This is true even in some of the most depressed schools in the nation due to federal funding.
Middle-age low income people may have missed the boat in computing, but poor youth are being exposed to computers. Somehow even the most poor in this country can afford a TV set. What's a TV set cost these days ? A used computer system is affordable for those who want it bad enough, even on low incomes.
This isn't a doomsday scenario at all for minorities and low income people. It's not about race or economics. It's an opportunity to escape the jaws of poverty.
The day I live in a community that has a mouse as a mascot, and have to eat at a restaurant that has a clown as a mascot (McDonalds), is the day I go berserk with an assault weapon.
Of course, OSes with cute little penguins are OK.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
This is simply a wireless ISP using the Nokia Rooftop system that was created by Rooftop Networks three years ago (and acquired by Nokia). It's a mesh 802.11b network on steriods with a routing protocol. If your only way back to the ISP's POP is through your neighbor's unit, and he deactivates his service or trips over the power cord, your service is down.
Nothing to see here, people. Move along...
Here's a list of PHAs (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids) and a simulation of the orbit of this particular asteriod.
In summary, the NRC panel members noted that for any SSP program to churn out commercially competitive terrestrial electric power, breakthrough technologies are required.
Yea, like some way to overcome the free space loss formula in which you lose some 96dB of the microwave signal immediately, or a way to make lasers go around space junk and penetrate clouds with no loss. Also, a "technology" is needed to keep this thing from going apeshit when a bogus command is sent and the thing goes spinning out of control and fries everything in its path.
Cellular and PCS phones are made to transmit on one band and receive on another. Making peer-to-peer wireless messaging work would require extensive modifications of existing electronics as existing phones can't "hear" other phones on the frequencies they transmit on. There's also issues of how to tell phones what frequencies can be used, and how to prevent interference to cell sites. This is a good idea that I thought of ten years ago (peer-to-peer voice, though), but it'll take five years for even an interim standard to be developed.
When is someone going to make a patch for the kernel so that you can hot swap kernels, thus preserving your glorious uptime ? Or has someone done this already ?
Is this possible ?
Not to make a joke of this, but isn't there a song called To Kill an Arab by that depressing band (I can't remember their name) ? I guess it doesn't get enough airplay to warrant being on the list, but I could imagine that some stupid DJ would pull it out of somewhere and play it.
This list is so out there; you can tell someone doesn't have a clue as to what half these songs are actually about. Considering the mood I think much of this list would make a rather good playlist right now. I'm tempted to snarf a couple songs from Gnutella and play them while I work today.
Delorme will also be offering Middle Earth Atlas 1.0 for Windows which will enable you to navigate through middle earth easily and accurately. It has a GPS option for realtime tracking, but they haven't quite figured out how to make it work underground yet. I've been using the beta and have avoided a lot of mine shafts and molten rock pockets. No word on a Linux port.
A good site for getting practice exams is at http://www.aa9pw.com/. It keeps track of your scores and adjusts the questions based on what you have difficulty with before. I used it to study for my Extra class license.
CBers call it skip. It's illegal to work skip with CB.
:)
Hams call it DX
A big piece of aluminum foil wrapped over the GPS unit. Problem solved. Big Brother has been been 'foiled' again.... :)
...I know somebody that is actually transmitting stuff over the ether using radio waves....
Everyone has to jump in like they're some kind of expert. Anyone and everyone who has ever fired up a Logitech wireless mouse is now a full-blown wireless engineer with years of experience.
This article is rather useless. First of all, Cisco's coverage range (supposedly) goes beyond LOS (that's Line Of Sight). This is due to VOFDM modulation that is using multipath signals in a non-LOS environment. Yes, this may be total marketing hype, but the author of the article doesn't have a clue about this and totally misses the point, assuming that LOS is the only issue.
Slashdot should really give up any attempts at covering wireless technologies. The editors don't know what is valuable information, and the resulting discussions are rather useless as well.
...I learned playing the Combat Cartridge on the Atari 2600....
A bear! What century is this?
Oh my God ! You mean in this century, with all this high technology, we haven't found a way to eradicate every animal that could possibly delay our rat race society ! The Electoral College and paper ballots are the least of our worries !!
This rating system is meaningless. It merely gives manufacturers another thing to advertise such a "new and improved", recyclable, and "less fat". Most people won't have a clue what the numbers mean.
.004 lower than the other. We should buy it. I don't want cancer !"
"Gee, look honey. This phone is
"Why certainly, dear ! I'll take the Radio Shaft XL-800 cell phone, please"
If you want to know how dangerous cell phones are (RF wise), you need to look at the population of ham radio operators and various professionals who use UHF radios on a regaular basis. These groups are exposed to 10 to 5000 more times the power that cell phone users are. (Hint: They're not -- and this is coming from a ham radio operator who's an environmentalist)
...jimmy crack corn, and I don't care...
Eeeking another couple bits out of an already over hacked, compressed, digital signal processed bit stream over 1920's technology (copper loops) is still slow 1920's technology. Oh wait...DSL is also the same thing -- a bit stream coated with vaseline, shoe-horned onto a copper pair !
Microsoft still isn't addressing the root cuase of all of this. Windows needs to have a protected environment to execute hostile applications within. This may be halfway possible in NT, but it goes back to the old issue that you basically have to have Administrator rights to do anything beyond creating a file in notepad.
Microsoft will release this "fix" with a whole bunch of media hoopla, reassuring the public of its innovative nature and its desire to protect its customers. A few days will pass and someone will release the successor to Mellisa and ILOVEYOU which will thrive and cause more damage than the previous two. A media frenzy and congressional hearings follow.
Does Microsoft think they're really going to be able to fix this with such a silly solution ?
A billing problem and circuit disconnection shouldn't take down a whole business. In a business you have to do whatever it takes. If they would have scrambled and communicated with customers anyway they could, they probably would have retained 90 % of their clients, IMHO. The billing issue would have been resolved eventually.
This is a case of Darwin's Law at work in business. If this wouldn't have happened, something else would have taken it down eventually. Someone gave up too soon.
... .--. --- --- -.- ... .. -. - .... . .-- .. .-. . ..--..
... .... --- ..- .-.. -.. -... . .-- .. .-. . .-.. . ... ... .-.-.-
The first posts that I see here and quickly scanned don't seem to fully grasp the significance of this event.
:-)
Ignore the open source issues, Java is dead, and "Sun screwed us over" stuff for a minute. The stranlgehold that Microsoft has on the desktop is not the OS, it's the office suite. There hasn't been a viable competitor to MS Office yet. Sun acquistion of Star gives this company cash and a respectable name behind it that CIOs, VPs, and managers can mention in an IS Strategy meeting without getting fired.
Merely having a competitor will affect Microsoft. Having it Office compatible is cherry. Having it web-served makes it cross-platform. Sweet. It's free. Damn. MS Office goes the way of the browser.
Take off your open source googles for a minute. This is the silver bullet.
(By the way, thank you M$ for integrating the browser into the OS !!
What I can't understand is why Compaq can't get behind the Alpha and drive it home. It's superior over Intel architecture. Compaq could say "Screw you, M$ AND Intel" and have Alphas on every desktop. Get someone like the people who make VMWare to get Win9* to run on Alpha and start packaging RedHat on Alpha machines. Hell, they bought Digital and Tandem. If they knew how to integrate this vast wealth of knowledge together, they could kick ass, but apparently someone at Compaq just doesn't want to do it.
:-)
M$ will get NT working on 64 bits, but obviously they've got egg on their face. So much for portability. This is certainly going to drain resources. How many versions of Windows will M$ be supporting now ?
This guy's on the right track, but he misses the boat. You can extend the number of addressess simply by recognizing that the 1's in the binary respresentation of an address can be small or large values of 1. This will increase the number of available address to 32^2. Do the same with the zeros and you get another 32^2. With this, we can address every computer, man, woman, child, and Clinton mistress.
Of course ipaddr_stretcher.exe in the NT Resource Kit makes this whole discussion rather moot.
Routing a call to a speeding BMW is not the same as getting data to astronauts. The problem with getting a call to a vehicle is that the position is changing and coverage is limited due to terrain. The problems described in getting data to planetary locations is propagation delay.
Transmit and acknowledgement can work in space, you just need larger timeout values, much larger. The article states that connection-based links are impossible. "Connections" are a state of mind, so to speak. You could achieve connections, they would just be very high latentcy. And things like forward error correction can minimize data loss on high noise radio links.
"Off-the-shelf" technology and know-how should be able to solve the problems described in this article rather quickly.
Consider that computers are in most schools and they are integrated into most cirriculums in one way or another. This is true even in some of the most depressed schools in the nation due to federal funding.
Middle-age low income people may have missed the boat in computing, but poor youth are being exposed to computers. Somehow even the most poor in this country can afford a TV set. What's a TV set cost these days ? A used computer system is affordable for those who want it bad enough, even on low incomes.
This isn't a doomsday scenario at all for minorities and low income people. It's not about race or economics. It's an opportunity to escape the jaws of poverty.
The day I live in a community that has a mouse as a mascot, and have to eat at a restaurant that has a clown as a mascot (McDonalds), is the day I go berserk with an assault weapon.
:-)
Of course, OSes with cute little penguins are OK.
/* this is a joke */