I noticed another electrical engineer responded to this as well, and already explained that the skin effect kicking in at 100KHz is dead wrong. I did my masters in RF engineering, and I had access to very expensive cable testing equipment (It was actually a system designed to test just about anything including amplifiers, but you could use it to test cable). Another grad student was wiring his house, and was pondering the same question, so we put the cables on the machine.
The Monstster cables did much better, but above 100MHz, way above anything you could ever hear. We tested 16 gauge lamp cord (YES LAMP CORD). It's spectrum was perfectly flat to within 0.1dB out to in excess of 10MHz. This FAR exceeds the 0.02MHz the human ear can hear. For audio purposes, it will work just FINE. As for shelding, the frequencies that you will pick up from that stretch of cable won't be audible. And if you're paranoid, stick an RF choke coil on your cord (you can get them at Radio Shack. You just wrap the cord through it). Those don't kick in until about 50+KHz anyway.
Video is a different ball of wax though since it deals with much higher frequencies. But after testing several cables, the mid-range stuff was not much different than the high end stuff in the area that counts (below 100MHz). The cheap stuff did start to have some attenuation issues above 10Mhz, but even then it wasn't that severe (1dB or less upto 50+Mhz). However in the higher frequencies, you have to worry about sheilding a little more as the frequencies that it will pick up via radiation could be visible. But any properly grounded coaxial cable will eliminate that.
As for ecording engineers, they are obsessive, but they aren't stupid enough to use straight cable. They use the same priciple as ethernet and twisted pair communications. They transmit the signal and the inverse of the signal and run them side by side. If one side picks up interference, the other side will too. But when you take the difference between the cables, it will remain exactly the same.
Agreed that in its present form it is not that useful, but with a couple of features it would become more useful. All they need to do is only have the kernel recompile when the config has changed, and keep an older working kernel around for a failsafe boot. With those two features kernel upgrades become automatic and safe.
That being said, why not just have it recompile while booted. The install script could install the new kernel in lilo/grub and keep the last kernel for a failsafe. The user would simply reboot whenever it was convienent and it would boot straight into the next kernel.
Bottom line, it could become more useful, but there are already better ways to do it.
Disclaimer: I was a hard core "Mac sucks PC rules" zealot until I was given a G4 with OSX, and I've never lookd back.
I keep hearing arguments like this and I think it ignores one key factor: People generally don't upgrade their PCs. Only a small (geek) fraction do more than upgrade their RAM, HD or videocards, which on a Mac is exactly the same cost/difficulty as a PC (except for video cards which are more expensive). Most people don't have or want 3 NICs.
Once people have a computer they don't really think about upgrading the CPU alone, until it is way too slow. Then they will go for what is current, but the current processor will generally require a new motherboard, which will also require new ram (and possibly more eg: PCI-X video card). When you put all that together then most people forget it and buy a whole new system anyway. This cycle happens every 2-5 years.
So for the geek market, sure iMacs suck for upgradability, but geeks should be looking at a PowerMac anyway. For for the other 95% of the market, they do everything that regular people need. As for pricing, they are a medium to high end system that is priced accordingly. One of the parents said it right, they do compare pricewise to Dell systems with comparable specs. Tack OS X on and I think you end up with the best desktop system on the market of people who don't need the flexability because the won't use it, like 95% of the population.
There is the common comment about "I wouldn't be able to run application X". There are a few apps that I do wish ran on it, but an OSX version doesn't exist. For those I use VirtualPC, which would be MUCH easier and faster if the base system was x86 already. I'm sure that in a matter of weeks someone would create something that would allow you to run windows in a window. This does somewhat defeat the purpose of OS X on the x86 (ie why not just run windows), but i presonally prefer the feel and workflow of OSX for most things, so I would prefer an occasional venture into windows rather than being stuck there.
As for the article question: In a heartbeat. Usability that windows can't touch, with the underlying power of unix when I want a command prompt.
You only missed one thing, while the average solar radiation is 3.3kWh/m^2, you neglect the efficiency of the solar panels themselves. After a quick googling a common number is 4% to 22%. So your argument becomes that much stronger when you facter that in (10.9 kWh at 22% in seattle). Also any dust/grime on the solar panels will only decrease their efficiency further. So you would have to keep them squeeky clean to keep top performance.
They really don't comment on the stats in the article so I decided to figure them out for myself:
If you assume a flat field (from the pictures it isn't that bad of an assumption) and that they fired at 45 degrees, the vertial velocity would have been equal to the horizonal velocity:
Vh = Vv = V / sqrt(2)
The horizantal distance is about 600yards or 550m (according to google) so the horizontal motion is constant and described by:
D = Vv*t = 550
The vertical motion is described by:
y = Vv * t - 1/2 * g * t^2
At the end (the point we're interested in) y = 0 so:
Vv * t = 1/2 * g * t^2 or Vv = 1/2 * g * t
Substuting back in we can find that
550 = 1/2 * g * t^2
Solving for t gives us:
t = 10.5s
Pluggin that back in gives us
Vv = Vh = 51.9 m/s
Or the overall
V = 73.5 m/s or 264.6 km/h or 164.4 mph for you americans.
Given that I ignored air fiction and terminal velocity and all those non-ideal bits, the inital muzzel velocity would have actually been higher!
Yes RFIDs are passive devices, but the problem is that RFIDs are going to be one time programmable. They are programmed at the factory and sent out to be attached to products. I severly doubt that they can be recycled/reprogrammed. Add to this the fact that there is no off switch and you have an effective tracker.
The one part of the RFID protocol that I don't know is weither all tags attached to boxes of whole wheat cheerios will respond with the same number. If they do, they can not provide a unique number to track a person. They can only tell that the signal coming back is from an RFID tag from a box of cheerios.
However if each RFID tag is unique, that would severly scare me.
Put your cash in the microwave for about 1min and watch the RFID tags spark. After that there will be a small scorch where the RFID was but the rest of the note should be untouched.
This guy isn't quite a crackpot. Before you skip this comment you should know that I do have a Masters in Electrical Engineering where I specialized in methods to reduce RF interference.
The jist of the article is that RF waves do not "interfere" with each other. By this he means that two RF waves will not affect each other as they pass by each other in space. This is correct. The two waves will simply pass through each other. The problem is when you try to receive the signal.
When you receive a signal you get ALL the radio waves from the entire spectrum (not quite this simple, but it will do). Then the signal is amplified and the spectrum you don't want is filtered off. The problem is that if your antenna is receiving two RF waves in the same spectrum they will be superimposed.
What he's trying to say is that an intellegent receiver will be able to pick out one of these waves while rejecting the other. Much like when you pick out one conversation in a noisy room. Much easier said than done.
There are currently some schemes to do this, such as CDMA phones which work on a spread spectrum. Each of them transmit and receive on the same spectrum at the same time using what are called "codes" (Code Division Multiple Access). However there is still a capacity issue. When too many phones come into the same area, the noise floor comes up and nobody can receive information. To prevent this the cellular phone comany will limit the number of active cell phones in a given cell and drop any new calls over the limit.
There are more advanced methods, but as many people in this field know, the signal processing that your brain does to pick out only one conversation is mind blowing.
To sum up, he's technically correct. His use of the word "interference" is confusing to say the least. RF engineers talk about interference as the superposition of singnals as you receive them. He talks about interference as the interaction of signals in space.
Section J seems to allow microsoft to say "Releasing protocols X, Y and Z would pose major security problems" (and knowing Microsoft they would), and they are off the hook. If they show that releasing SMB would allow hackers to break into windows boxes easy (even more easy than it is now) they don't have to release it.
They could probably use the same argument for ALL their protocols. Right now in most cases their security is primarily based on obscurity. Of course releasing your protocols is going to impact security.
Bottom line, I don't think we're going to see any major protocols (SMB, Exchange, hell count NTFS, word and other formats in this list) come out of this. They will probably release a few token ones that nobody cares about, but no doubt the rest would compromise security.
Presonally, I would be going to school for the rest of my life. I'd be taking anything and everything that sounds interesting, from theoretical physics, to conversional german. If I get a degree, that's a bonus, but I just want to take the interesting courses.
Don't belive me? I'm a grad student right now wrapping up my masters in electrical engineering. For the last two years I've been making slightly less than $20k, while several people from my graduating class are making around or over $80k now. I can testify that every grad student I know is not doing it because they thought they would make more money (in fact they know that it is costing them far more than the tuition that they have to pay), they're doing it because they want to further their minds.
Grad students are the perfect example of people who don't work for money. They need money, and get paid a small ammount, but they don't work for it.
-James
WANTED: One interesting.signature file. Must be short, concise and not too offensive. Apply within.
This is a prime example of what happens when you overdrive an amplifier. Amplifiers are great things, you stick in 1V you get 10V out, however there is a limit. Typically this upper limit is the power supply rail (or very close to it). If you power the amplifier with 15V, no matter what you do, there is no way to get more than 15V out of it. So if it is a 10x gain amplifier, stick in 1.3V get 13V out, 1.4V in get 14V out, 1.5V in 15V out, 1.6V in 15V out...
However nature hates corners (really hates corners), so as you get closer and closer to the limit, the amplifer begins to saturate early. so while 1.2V might give you 12V out, 1.3V might only give you 12.8V out, and 1.4V might only give you 13.5V. This region that doesn't give you a constant gain independant of input levels is called the saturation or compression region. Any RF engineer will tell you to avoid this region like the black plague (there are a few exceptions but not many).
What happens in this region of the amplifier is that the peaks of the output are squished down. So your signal doesn't have as high an amplitude as you would expect. What happens in the frequency side of things (as those pretty pictures show) is that your signal begins to spread out. This spreading looks like a staircase (as shown VERY well in the pictures) and is called intermodulation.
Judging by the number of staircases, this amplifier was driven HARD into saturation. Bottom line is the amplifier that is in the current LinkSys hubs was probably carefully chosen to provide a nice linear amplification for the default signal. Any higher and you start to goto into saturation, and distort the output. You can't get something for nothing. If you want a stronger signal, you either replace the amplifier on the inside (not a trivial task) or get an external amplifier (don't know off hand what sort of FCC rules you would run into).
Just thought I would add my $0.02(CAD)
"The general public is too stupid to understand how stupid they are." - Anonymous
When I started my current job, they handed me a G4 to work with. Being a die hard x86 user I was not too impressed. I finally figured out where everything is (not too hard, it is a MAC after all), but it was crashing on average every 2-3 hours! Who ever says that MacOS is rock solid and never crashes is big fat liar.
I did a little research and found Yellow Dog Linux for the PPC. When I installed it (about a year ago) they were still having problems with the G4 hardware (most of which have since been fixed). MAC on Linux (MOL) was a great app. Most of the office documentation was done in MS Word for Mac. I prefer lyx but sarcasam I could never convince the office to use it, go figure./sarcasam For me I could spark up MOL, use word and get out.
Recently I've been trying out OS X. I've been very impressed how seamlessly they tied the UI into the underlaying OS. I'm really torn about which to use. I'm VERY familiar with my linux setup, where everything is and how to configure it, but there are still some compatability issues with my hardware. OS X is unfamiliar, but since I've got XonX (an X server for OS X) I can install most of my old apps very easily under OS X.
As for the comments about MOL moving to OS X, what's the point? When ever OS X runs a classic app it starts up classic Mac OS and runs the app in a rootless window on the OS X desktop. You don't get your own classic mac os desktop as a little window, but who needs it when the app runs on the OS X desktop.
Gotta love politics. Somebody suggests somethng that is doomed to fail in order to simply grandstand and look like a hero for suggesting something. Then the rest of the elected sheep jump on the bandwagon.
There are penty of good reasons why it won't work that have been stated here (weakening security, easy to attack, blah, blah, blah) but the most important is that if someone who is going to be sending terrorist plans across the internet WON'T use the "approved" methods. All they would have to do is go and pick up:
Implementing Elliptic Curve Cryptography
Michael Rosing
ISBN 1-884777-69-4
It gives you not only the theory in plain english, but the implementation in C as well. Anyone who is remotely interested in STRONG encryption should pick it up. I knew the information was available before this, but I didn't expect it to be served up on such a nice silver platter.
-James McTavish
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
As someone who is interested in starting my own operating system, simply for the expirience, your OS has been quite an inspiriation with an impressive feature set.
You mention the book Practical File System Design by Dominic Glampalo in your web page (which is an EXCELLENT book), could you reccomend any other OS related design books/references/web pages, that you have found useful or good reading?
As an electrical engineering masters student with experience in cellular communications I would like to make a few comments.
They say that "The SAR level listed in our chart represents the maximum SAR level with the phone next to the ear--obtained through required FCC tests." However most phones and cellular systems use an automatic power control to minimize interference between users. This means that when you are close to a base station that the transmit power on the phone is turned down. The maximum transmit power is rarely achieved unless you are in an area with base stations spaced far apart (rural areas).
As a personal side note, media outlets posting information such as this, accomplishes nothing more than confusing the general public. Even though they put their nice disclaimer:
"It's also important to note that in publishing this list are we in no way implying that cell-phone use is or isn't harmful to your health. The jury is still out, research is ongoing, and we will continue to monitor its results."
the general public does not have enough education to draw the correct conclusion (That phone X puts out more radiation than phone Y, and that is it). Posting this information in a scientific journal would have been more appropriate (and more credable).
Slashdot Mirror
I noticed another electrical engineer responded to this as well, and already explained that the skin effect kicking in at 100KHz is dead wrong. I did my masters in RF engineering, and I had access to very expensive cable testing equipment (It was actually a system designed to test just about anything including amplifiers, but you could use it to test cable). Another grad student was wiring his house, and was pondering the same question, so we put the cables on the machine.
The Monstster cables did much better, but above 100MHz, way above anything you could ever hear. We tested 16 gauge lamp cord (YES LAMP CORD). It's spectrum was perfectly flat to within 0.1dB out to in excess of 10MHz. This FAR exceeds the 0.02MHz the human ear can hear. For audio purposes, it will work just FINE. As for shelding, the frequencies that you will pick up from that stretch of cable won't be audible. And if you're paranoid, stick an RF choke coil on your cord (you can get them at Radio Shack. You just wrap the cord through it). Those don't kick in until about 50+KHz anyway.
Video is a different ball of wax though since it deals with much higher frequencies. But after testing several cables, the mid-range stuff was not much different than the high end stuff in the area that counts (below 100MHz). The cheap stuff did start to have some attenuation issues above 10Mhz, but even then it wasn't that severe (1dB or less upto 50+Mhz). However in the higher frequencies, you have to worry about sheilding a little more as the frequencies that it will pick up via radiation could be visible. But any properly grounded coaxial cable will eliminate that.
As for ecording engineers, they are obsessive, but they aren't stupid enough to use straight cable. They use the same priciple as ethernet and twisted pair communications. They transmit the signal and the inverse of the signal and run them side by side. If one side picks up interference, the other side will too. But when you take the difference between the cables, it will remain exactly the same.
Agreed that in its present form it is not that useful, but with a couple of features it would become more useful. All they need to do is only have the kernel recompile when the config has changed, and keep an older working kernel around for a failsafe boot. With those two features kernel upgrades become automatic and safe.
That being said, why not just have it recompile while booted. The install script could install the new kernel in lilo/grub and keep the last kernel for a failsafe. The user would simply reboot whenever it was convienent and it would boot straight into the next kernel.
Bottom line, it could become more useful, but there are already better ways to do it.
Disclaimer: I was a hard core "Mac sucks PC rules" zealot until I was given a G4 with OSX, and I've never lookd back.
I keep hearing arguments like this and I think it ignores one key factor: People generally don't upgrade their PCs. Only a small (geek) fraction do more than upgrade their RAM, HD or videocards, which on a Mac is exactly the same cost/difficulty as a PC (except for video cards which are more expensive). Most people don't have or want 3 NICs.
Once people have a computer they don't really think about upgrading the CPU alone, until it is way too slow. Then they will go for what is current, but the current processor will generally require a new motherboard, which will also require new ram (and possibly more eg: PCI-X video card). When you put all that together then most people forget it and buy a whole new system anyway. This cycle happens every 2-5 years.
So for the geek market, sure iMacs suck for upgradability, but geeks should be looking at a PowerMac anyway. For for the other 95% of the market, they do everything that regular people need. As for pricing, they are a medium to high end system that is priced accordingly. One of the parents said it right, they do compare pricewise to Dell systems with comparable specs. Tack OS X on and I think you end up with the best desktop system on the market of people who don't need the flexability because the won't use it, like 95% of the population.
There is the common comment about "I wouldn't be able to run application X". There are a few apps that I do wish ran on it, but an OSX version doesn't exist. For those I use VirtualPC, which would be MUCH easier and faster if the base system was x86 already. I'm sure that in a matter of weeks someone would create something that would allow you to run windows in a window. This does somewhat defeat the purpose of OS X on the x86 (ie why not just run windows), but i presonally prefer the feel and workflow of OSX for most things, so I would prefer an occasional venture into windows rather than being stuck there.
As for the article question: In a heartbeat. Usability that windows can't touch, with the underlying power of unix when I want a command prompt.
You only missed one thing, while the average solar radiation is 3.3kWh/m^2, you neglect the efficiency of the solar panels themselves. After a quick googling a common number is 4% to 22%. So your argument becomes that much stronger when you facter that in (10.9 kWh at 22% in seattle). Also any dust/grime on the solar panels will only decrease their efficiency further. So you would have to keep them squeeky clean to keep top performance.
It's called ignorance. Look it up.
They really don't comment on the stats in the article so I decided to figure them out for myself:
If you assume a flat field (from the pictures it isn't that bad of an assumption) and that they fired at 45 degrees, the vertial velocity would have been equal to the horizonal velocity:
Vh = Vv = V / sqrt(2)
The horizantal distance is about 600yards or 550m (according to google) so the horizontal motion is constant and described by:
D = Vv*t = 550
The vertical motion is described by:
y = Vv * t - 1/2 * g * t^2
At the end (the point we're interested in) y = 0 so:
Vv * t = 1/2 * g * t^2 or Vv = 1/2 * g * t
Substuting back in we can find that
550 = 1/2 * g * t^2
Solving for t gives us:
t = 10.5s
Pluggin that back in gives us
Vv = Vh = 51.9 m/s
Or the overall
V = 73.5 m/s or 264.6 km/h or 164.4 mph for you americans.
Given that I ignored air fiction and terminal velocity and all those non-ideal bits, the inital muzzel velocity would have actually been higher!
Yes RFIDs are passive devices, but the problem is that RFIDs are going to be one time programmable. They are programmed at the factory and sent out to be attached to products. I severly doubt that they can be recycled/reprogrammed. Add to this the fact that there is no off switch and you have an effective tracker.
The one part of the RFID protocol that I don't know is weither all tags attached to boxes of whole wheat cheerios will respond with the same number. If they do, they can not provide a unique number to track a person. They can only tell that the signal coming back is from an RFID tag from a box of cheerios.
However if each RFID tag is unique, that would severly scare me.
The windows version of x2vnc (by the same author) is called win2vnc. I've used x2vnc and win2vnc and both work very well.
Put your cash in the microwave for about 1min and watch the RFID tags spark. After that there will be a small scorch where the RFID was but the rest of the note should be untouched.
This guy isn't quite a crackpot. Before you skip this comment you should know that I do have a Masters in Electrical Engineering where I specialized in methods to reduce RF interference.
The jist of the article is that RF waves do not "interfere" with each other. By this he means that two RF waves will not affect each other as they pass by each other in space. This is correct. The two waves will simply pass through each other. The problem is when you try to receive the signal.
When you receive a signal you get ALL the radio waves from the entire spectrum (not quite this simple, but it will do). Then the signal is amplified and the spectrum you don't want is filtered off. The problem is that if your antenna is receiving two RF waves in the same spectrum they will be superimposed.
What he's trying to say is that an intellegent receiver will be able to pick out one of these waves while rejecting the other. Much like when you pick out one conversation in a noisy room. Much easier said than done.
There are currently some schemes to do this, such as CDMA phones which work on a spread spectrum. Each of them transmit and receive on the same spectrum at the same time using what are called "codes" (Code Division Multiple Access). However there is still a capacity issue. When too many phones come into the same area, the noise floor comes up and nobody can receive information. To prevent this the cellular phone comany will limit the number of active cell phones in a given cell and drop any new calls over the limit.
There are more advanced methods, but as many people in this field know, the signal processing that your brain does to pick out only one conversation is mind blowing.
To sum up, he's technically correct. His use of the word "interference" is confusing to say the least. RF engineers talk about interference as the superposition of singnals as you receive them. He talks about interference as the interaction of signals in space.
IANAL But... (most popular quote of the day)
Section J seems to allow microsoft to say "Releasing protocols X, Y and Z would pose major security problems" (and knowing Microsoft they would), and they are off the hook. If they show that releasing SMB would allow hackers to break into windows boxes easy (even more easy than it is now) they don't have to release it.
They could probably use the same argument for ALL their protocols. Right now in most cases their security is primarily based on obscurity. Of course releasing your protocols is going to impact security.
Bottom line, I don't think we're going to see any major protocols (SMB, Exchange, hell count NTFS, word and other formats in this list) come out of this. They will probably release a few token ones that nobody cares about, but no doubt the rest would compromise security.
Presonally, I would be going to school for the rest of my life. I'd be taking anything and everything that sounds interesting, from theoretical physics, to conversional german. If I get a degree, that's a bonus, but I just want to take the interesting courses.
.signature file. Must be short, concise and not too offensive. Apply within.
Don't belive me? I'm a grad student right now wrapping up my masters in electrical engineering. For the last two years I've been making slightly less than $20k, while several people from my graduating class are making around or over $80k now. I can testify that every grad student I know is not doing it because they thought they would make more money (in fact they know that it is costing them far more than the tuition that they have to pay), they're doing it because they want to further their minds.
Grad students are the perfect example of people who don't work for money. They need money, and get paid a small ammount, but they don't work for it.
-James
WANTED: One interesting
This is a prime example of what happens when you overdrive an amplifier. Amplifiers are great things, you stick in 1V you get 10V out, however there is a limit. Typically this upper limit is the power supply rail (or very close to it). If you power the amplifier with 15V, no matter what you do, there is no way to get more than 15V out of it. So if it is a 10x gain amplifier, stick in 1.3V get 13V out, 1.4V in get 14V out, 1.5V in 15V out, 1.6V in 15V out...
However nature hates corners (really hates corners), so as you get closer and closer to the limit, the amplifer begins to saturate early. so while 1.2V might give you 12V out, 1.3V might only give you 12.8V out, and 1.4V might only give you 13.5V. This region that doesn't give you a constant gain independant of input levels is called the saturation or compression region. Any RF engineer will tell you to avoid this region like the black plague (there are a few exceptions but not many).
What happens in this region of the amplifier is that the peaks of the output are squished down. So your signal doesn't have as high an amplitude as you would expect. What happens in the frequency side of things (as those pretty pictures show) is that your signal begins to spread out. This spreading looks like a staircase (as shown VERY well in the pictures) and is called intermodulation.
Judging by the number of staircases, this amplifier was driven HARD into saturation. Bottom line is the amplifier that is in the current LinkSys hubs was probably carefully chosen to provide a nice linear amplification for the default signal. Any higher and you start to goto into saturation, and distort the output. You can't get something for nothing. If you want a stronger signal, you either replace the amplifier on the inside (not a trivial task) or get an external amplifier (don't know off hand what sort of FCC rules you would run into).
Just thought I would add my $0.02(CAD)
"The general public is too stupid to understand how stupid they are." - Anonymous
When I started my current job, they handed me a G4 to work with. Being a die hard x86 user I was not too impressed. I finally figured out where everything is (not too hard, it is a MAC after all), but it was crashing on average every 2-3 hours! Who ever says that MacOS is rock solid and never crashes is big fat liar.
I did a little research and found Yellow Dog Linux for the PPC. When I installed it (about a year ago) they were still having problems with the G4 hardware (most of which have since been fixed). MAC on Linux (MOL) was a great app. Most of the office documentation was done in MS Word for Mac. I prefer lyx but sarcasam I could never convince the office to use it, go figure./sarcasam For me I could spark up MOL, use word and get out.
Recently I've been trying out OS X. I've been very impressed how seamlessly they tied the UI into the underlaying OS. I'm really torn about which to use. I'm VERY familiar with my linux setup, where everything is and how to configure it, but there are still some compatability issues with my hardware. OS X is unfamiliar, but since I've got XonX (an X server for OS X) I can install most of my old apps very easily under OS X.
As for the comments about MOL moving to OS X, what's the point? When ever OS X runs a classic app it starts up classic Mac OS and runs the app in a rootless window on the OS X desktop. You don't get your own classic mac os desktop as a little window, but who needs it when the app runs on the OS X desktop.
Gotta love politics. Somebody suggests somethng that is doomed to fail in order to simply grandstand and look like a hero for suggesting something. Then the rest of the elected sheep jump on the bandwagon.
There are penty of good reasons why it won't work that have been stated here (weakening security, easy to attack, blah, blah, blah) but the most important is that if someone who is going to be sending terrorist plans across the internet WON'T use the "approved" methods. All they would have to do is go and pick up:
Implementing Elliptic Curve Cryptography
Michael Rosing
ISBN 1-884777-69-4
It gives you not only the theory in plain english, but the implementation in C as well. Anyone who is remotely interested in STRONG encryption should pick it up. I knew the information was available before this, but I didn't expect it to be served up on such a nice silver platter.
-James McTavish
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
As someone who is interested in starting my own operating system, simply for the expirience, your OS has been quite an inspiriation with an impressive feature set.
You mention the book Practical File System Design by Dominic Glampalo in your web page (which is an EXCELLENT book), could you reccomend any other OS related design books/references/web pages, that you have found useful or good reading?
-James McTavish
They say that "The SAR level listed in our chart represents the maximum SAR level with the phone next to the ear--obtained through required FCC tests." However most phones and cellular systems use an automatic power control to minimize interference between users. This means that when you are close to a base station that the transmit power on the phone is turned down. The maximum transmit power is rarely achieved unless you are in an area with base stations spaced far apart (rural areas).
As a personal side note, media outlets posting information such as this, accomplishes nothing more than confusing the general public. Even though they put their nice disclaimer:
"It's also important to note that in publishing this list are we in no way implying that cell-phone use is or isn't harmful to your health. The jury is still out, research is ongoing, and we will continue to monitor its results."
the general public does not have enough education to draw the correct conclusion (That phone X puts out more radiation than phone Y, and that is it). Posting this information in a scientific journal would have been more appropriate (and more credable).