This is mostly BS. First off, the PLL is a small fraction of the power consumed by a modern phone, even though it is running all the time. Far more power is consumed in the rest of the receiver chain, from the LNA (low nose amplifier) and the digital demodulator. And no, this does not do a thing to minimize the demod, as it is running all the time too, to detect an incoming call notification.
Second, the statement that a "phase-locked loop multiplies the pulse from a highly-stable reference clock, such as a quartz crystal oscillator, up to the desired frequency" is 100% false. The function of a PLL is to lock (in phase...) a divided down version of a totaly independent RF oscillator, called a VCO, to a divided down version of the reference clock. The distinction may appear subtle, but it's enormous. Multipliers are large, power consuming IC's, while dividers are fairly small and efficient. There are NO multipliers in a PLL, period. Also, PLL's can already do split division, it's called a fractional-N PLL.
Mobile, battery powered electronics will never achieve decent battery life beyond a few GHz. There are several effects coming into play, from cosmic noise to H2O and O2 molecular resonances to increased multipath effects, and most importantly path loss. RF power spreads in a spherical wavefront, so there is a 1/R^2 power falloff. BUT, you need to recognize that this is in terms of wavelength (lambda), which is mathematically equal to C/f (speed of light / frequency). The net result is that doubling the frequency on a radio link incurs a 4-fold power fallof for a fixed distance.
So if I want to go from say just under 2GHz w/ a current GSM system to say 8GHz, then I need an effective 16 times the power output from my transmitter. I say effective, because you can use antenna gain, but not in the mobile handset (it needs to be omnnidirectional), and base stations directionality is very limited, since they need to support many users on the same antenna, and can't steer the beam to all of them simultaneously. You wouldn't be allowed ot put out that much powr form a safety perspective, never mind the power consumption and heat requirements in the power-amplifier. Handsets are at 600 milli-watts now, we're not going to put out >10 watts!
First, the outdoor, Line-of-Sight spec is 4000', or slightly over 1km. That doesn't jive w/ the RF performance specs of 100mW EIRP and -100dBm sensitivity, which should be a 10km LOS distance @ 2.4GHz (for the math geeks: Transmit Power (Ptx) - Sensitivity(Prx) = Max Path Loss(Lp). Path Loss(Lp) = 32.44 + 20log10(F(MHz)*D(km)). Do that math and they should be 9.9km). So somewhere they're claiming a false spec, or they're leaving 20dB of path margin to account for rain fade, etc, but I've never known an RF manufacturer to claim less than the best possible, never-really-achivable spec.
Second, that's outdoor LOS. Most of us will never have LOS for a km or beyond. A few applications can have that, but those are usually fixed-site applications where you can put higer gain antennas anyway so distances can go even farther. Most people would use this for indoor communications, which reduces the range considerably, although their 300' indoor range sounds realistic. But why, oh why, would you bother to use ZigBee when these things draw far more current than existing 900MHz and 2.4GHz radios from other vendors.
So you think that just knowing who people are is going to make anything safer? Boy are you naive!!
What the hell does knowing who someone is have to do with whether they're carrying a weapon or bomb onboard? Absolutely NOTHING!
I have no problem w/ security screenings, even though they're ineffective at preventing weapons other that large bombs (which can still easily get through too). I could list 5 'innocent' things I can carry aboard a plane to kill someone with, if I were so disposed. I could probably come up with an even longer list of things easily smuggled aboard. But knowing who I am has nothing to do with any of that
If you can show me a page on the NRA's site called "How to kill 50 people before breakfast with a Smith and Wesson BFG-6900 and still have enough ammo left over to cripple a few commies too", I will send you a $10,000 money order right now. Same goes for any page on the site advocating kids wantonly killing people.
If you bothered to actually exercise your human capacity for free thought and checked the website out, you'd find information on safety, hunting, and political action. Whether you agree with the political positions or not, nowhere is there anything advocating criminal activity.
What else you'll find are news articles from independent media detailing people protecting themselves from dangerous criminals. I agree whole-heartedly that guns must be kept away from criminals, but as a law-abiding citizens I have a right to protect myself. The police have no legal obligation to protect me or my family (check the case law), so we're each on our own.
Oh enlightened ones???? Try doing research on recent violence and crime statistics for England and Australia, both of which recently outlawed all handgun posession. VIolent crime is WAY UP, as in high double-digits increase in crime immediately after the guns of law-abiding citizens were confiscated.
And by the way, why is it that half the Canadian provinces are refusing to obey the national firearms registration/confiscation in Canada? Could it be that they agree w/ the yanks????
While the net effect is DDOS-like, we're only doing EXACTLY WHAT THE SPAMMERS WANT! They asked us to visit their webpages, so we did. This is 100% legal, and no court (or jury at least) would see otherwise.
But you've got to watch out for unique tracking images so as not to validate your email address.
This is brilliant. It costs the spammers little bandwidth to send out SMTP messages. But if we start downloading their graphics-rich webpages, and reloading repeatedly, we'll drive their bandwidth through the roof.
The point is not the user's bandwidth, this is really a DDOS, but since the spammer's asked for it (literally, not just figuratively), it's OK.
These camera's are based on the SunPlus SPCA504B controller. They have 8MB of Samsung Flash, and an 8MB TM Tech RAM. The controller code is an an SST 128 kB Flash. See the SourceForge project for the camera controller HERE.
Will post connector pinout/schematic when it's known.
The camera is based on the Sunplus SPCA504B controller chip. There's a SourceForge project in beta for this series of controller. Will keep posted as analysis continues
Whether this is a DMCA "circumvention" or not is irrelevent. There's this nice legal concept in the US called Ex Post Facto. It is normally applied to criminal law, and means you can't be charged with a crime for an act that was not illegal when it was committed.
You could make a valid argument that the same thing applies here. Even if a judge were to decide it *was* a circumvention, you can argue that it was written for legitimate use, and was developed years before DMCA was passed. As long as there's been no substantial improvements or added capabilities since DMCA, you developed a perfectly legal tool, and have been distributing it legally for several years. You even have had a disclaimer for some time indicating the appropriate usage.
In short, for this and all the other reasons, they have no case.
That's exactly my question. That IP is unregistered. Tracert from my DSL shows it much closer to me than slashdot (15 hops), and going through a verio router (my info left off for obvious security reasons): 4 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms t3-customer.qwest.net [205.171.52.242] 5 31 ms 32 ms 31 ms ge1200.ca2.wdc.dn.net [209.207.190.33] 6 31 ms 31 ms 32 ms 209.207.224.245
dn.net is owned by Verio, and since I live just outside DC, we can assume wdc.dn.net is in washington. Since this mystery IP is only one hop from that router, it's most likely on Verio's backbone somewhere. So who owns it, and what's it doing tracking slashdot?
Slashdot Mirror
This is mostly BS. First off, the PLL is a small fraction of the power consumed by a modern phone, even though it is running all the time. Far more power is consumed in the rest of the receiver chain, from the LNA (low nose amplifier) and the digital demodulator. And no, this does not do a thing to minimize the demod, as it is running all the time too, to detect an incoming call notification.
Second, the statement that a "phase-locked loop multiplies the pulse from a highly-stable reference clock, such as a quartz crystal oscillator, up to the desired frequency" is 100% false. The function of a PLL is to lock (in phase...) a divided down version of a totaly independent RF oscillator, called a VCO, to a divided down version of the reference clock. The distinction may appear subtle, but it's enormous. Multipliers are large, power consuming IC's, while dividers are fairly small and efficient. There are NO multipliers in a PLL, period. Also, PLL's can already do split division, it's called a fractional-N PLL.
Mobile, battery powered electronics will never achieve decent battery life beyond a few GHz. There are several effects coming into play, from cosmic noise to H2O and O2 molecular resonances to increased multipath effects, and most importantly path loss. RF power spreads in a spherical wavefront, so there is a 1/R^2 power falloff. BUT, you need to recognize that this is in terms of wavelength (lambda), which is mathematically equal to C/f (speed of light / frequency). The net result is that doubling the frequency on a radio link incurs a 4-fold power fallof for a fixed distance.
So if I want to go from say just under 2GHz w/ a current GSM system to say 8GHz, then I need an effective 16 times the power output from my transmitter. I say effective, because you can use antenna gain, but not in the mobile handset (it needs to be omnnidirectional), and base stations directionality is very limited, since they need to support many users on the same antenna, and can't steer the beam to all of them simultaneously. You wouldn't be allowed ot put out that much powr form a safety perspective, never mind the power consumption and heat requirements in the power-amplifier. Handsets are at 600 milli-watts now, we're not going to put out >10 watts!
First, the outdoor, Line-of-Sight spec is 4000', or slightly over 1km. That doesn't jive w/ the RF performance specs of 100mW EIRP and -100dBm sensitivity, which should be a 10km LOS distance @ 2.4GHz (for the math geeks: Transmit Power (Ptx) - Sensitivity(Prx) = Max Path Loss(Lp). Path Loss(Lp) = 32.44 + 20log10(F(MHz)*D(km)). Do that math and they should be 9.9km). So somewhere they're claiming a false spec, or they're leaving 20dB of path margin to account for rain fade, etc, but I've never known an RF manufacturer to claim less than the best possible, never-really-achivable spec.
Second, that's outdoor LOS. Most of us will never have LOS for a km or beyond. A few applications can have that, but those are usually fixed-site applications where you can put higer gain antennas anyway so distances can go even farther. Most people would use this for indoor communications, which reduces the range considerably, although their 300' indoor range sounds realistic. But why, oh why, would you bother to use ZigBee when these things draw far more current than existing 900MHz and 2.4GHz radios from other vendors.
What the hell does knowing who someone is have to do with whether they're carrying a weapon or bomb onboard? Absolutely NOTHING!
I have no problem w/ security screenings, even though they're ineffective at preventing weapons other that large bombs (which can still easily get through too). I could list 5 'innocent' things I can carry aboard a plane to kill someone with, if I were so disposed. I could probably come up with an even longer list of things easily smuggled aboard. But knowing who I am has nothing to do with any of that
If you can show me a page on the NRA's site called "How to kill 50 people before breakfast with a Smith and Wesson BFG-6900 and still have enough ammo left over to cripple a few commies too", I will send you a $10,000 money order right now. Same goes for any page on the site advocating kids wantonly killing people.
If you bothered to actually exercise your human capacity for free thought and checked the website out, you'd find information on safety, hunting, and political action. Whether you agree with the political positions or not, nowhere is there anything advocating criminal activity.
What else you'll find are news articles from independent media detailing people protecting themselves from dangerous criminals. I agree whole-heartedly that guns must be kept away from criminals, but as a law-abiding citizens I have a right to protect myself. The police have no legal obligation to protect me or my family (check the case law), so we're each on our own.
I am too... In fact I'm a Certified Instructor, and just finished teaching a basic pistol class to a young woman yesterday.
I apologize for missing the subtlety of your post, but it's hard when you're reading all the other garbage.
And by the way, why is it that half the Canadian provinces are refusing to obey the national firearms registration/confiscation in Canada? Could it be that they agree w/ the yanks????
Your likely source for this accusation is "Bowling for Columbine". Why don't you find out the actual facts, not the twisted misrepresentation here.
While the net effect is DDOS-like, we're only doing EXACTLY WHAT THE SPAMMERS WANT! They asked us to visit their webpages, so we did. This is 100% legal, and no court (or jury at least) would see otherwise.
But you've got to watch out for unique tracking images so as not to validate your email address.
This is brilliant. It costs the spammers little bandwidth to send out SMTP messages. But if we start downloading their graphics-rich webpages, and reloading repeatedly, we'll drive their bandwidth through the roof.
The point is not the user's bandwidth, this is really a DDOS, but since the spammer's asked for it (literally, not just figuratively), it's OK.
These camera's are based on the SunPlus SPCA504B controller. They have 8MB of Samsung Flash, and an 8MB TM Tech RAM. The controller code is an an SST 128 kB Flash. See the SourceForge project for the camera controller HERE. Will post connector pinout/schematic when it's known.
The camera is based on the Sunplus SPCA504B controller chip. There's a SourceForge project in beta for this series of controller. Will keep posted as analysis continues
Whether this is a DMCA "circumvention" or not is irrelevent. There's this nice legal concept in the US called Ex Post Facto. It is normally applied to criminal law, and means you can't be charged with a crime for an act that was not illegal when it was committed.
You could make a valid argument that the same thing applies here. Even if a judge were to decide it *was* a circumvention, you can argue that it was written for legitimate use, and was developed years before DMCA was passed. As long as there's been no substantial improvements or added capabilities since DMCA, you developed a perfectly legal tool, and have been distributing it legally for several years. You even have had a disclaimer for some time indicating the appropriate usage.
In short, for this and all the other reasons, they have no case.
That's exactly my question. That IP is unregistered. Tracert from my DSL shows it much closer to me than slashdot (15 hops), and going through a verio router (my info left off for obvious security reasons):
4 32 ms 31 ms 31 ms t3-customer.qwest.net [205.171.52.242]
5 31 ms 32 ms 31 ms ge1200.ca2.wdc.dn.net [209.207.190.33]
6 31 ms 31 ms 32 ms 209.207.224.245
dn.net is owned by Verio, and since I live just outside DC, we can assume wdc.dn.net is in washington. Since this mystery IP is only one hop from that router, it's most likely on Verio's backbone somewhere. So who owns it, and what's it doing tracking slashdot?
Well, this was nicely biased by the President of "The San Francisco Bay Area's Macintosh Consultant and Internet Service Provider"