I currently have a Sharp. It won't play the Blue CD-R's but it will play silver CD-RW's. So I think it has much more to do with the Laser than anything else
Maybe I should clear up what I mean by "advance timing" !!!
The current digital Cellular standards - in the US this is VoiceStream, AT&T - including GSM and D-AMPS (Not Sure about CDMA) use some thing called Time Division Multiplexed Access (TDMA). For North America every cellular "channel" ( channel is 30 Mhz of bandwidth) is split into 3 time slots (This is why all cellular companies are moving to digital 3 times as many phone calls in one older analogue - AMPS - channel )
Now if I am 20 km from a cell site it will take 60 micro seconds for my signal to arrive at the antenae. The switch will detect this. If my signal arrives to much out of sync I will squash the signal arriving from someone else using the next time slot. So the switch - through signaling embeded in the downstream link (phone is full-duplex) - will tell my phone to send the digitized voice packet 60 micro seconds ahead of time so that the time to travel to the antanea is taken into account and my packet hits its time slot to perfection. A time slot is in the order of 10's of milliseconds wide - I don't remember.
From this - the switch can know roughly how far you are from the antenae. This info is currently not collected unless you are debugging the air interface - and collecting this information IS CPU intensive on a switch degrading its performance. That is "advanced timming"... should have called it "timing advance inforamtion" or something !!
Currently what they are doing for phone tracking is placing a second receiver on the base station antenae. The switch also know what other antanae are in the vicity of the cell phone (for handoff purposes). On a 911 call the switch will signal these additional receivers on the surrounding base stations to listen and time stamp your voice packet. This information is passed back to a computer that can calculate your location.
In Any given cellular switch ( handles about 60000 simultaneous phone calls !!! ) there is only a handfull of 911 calls - a switch could not track EVERY phone call in a system, it would make the network cost too much!!! And remember AT&T makes no money tracking you... they make money on phone calls. As long as they make more money on phone calls than on collecting and selling this information (Point to point phone calls makes more money than advertising by a long shot - and collecting that info on millions of calls a day would cost a shitload) they will not concentrate on it - they are tracking you because they must - not because they can or want (well they may want to but for cheaper, much cheaper)
This an FCC regualation for Cell phone companies - to be able to locate 911 callers within 10-20 Meters. The mandatory system has nothing to do with placing GPS systems in phone because ALL phones - old AND new - must be trackable. They are doing this using sycronized receivers on the Cellular stations and using time differentials to pinpoint the position of the cell phone.
This is a good example of a "Trusted" 3rd party system. And I mean trusted in teh sense "I trust the information" and not in the sense "I trust the phone company"
Also TDMA / GSM systems use "advance timing" signaling to tell the cell phone broadcasts a packet a little ahead of its time slot so that when the signal reaches the antena from a far off distance, the packet will arrive within its window - thus on digital systems the switch knows how far you are based on timing errors!!
Some people are doing it !! Look at Digital Connections. They have info on Home Theatre PC's - what equipment to use etc. as well as tested home systems.
There is also talk about tweaking the G400 into displaying HDTV signals from DVD's. I have yet to find a card that exploits this, but according to the documentation on the GeForce2, it should be able to display in all HDTV modes (480p to 1080i)as well as record HDTV !!
Look at how Liquid Audio (Micro$oft) was cracked - record the digital audio just before it hits the sound card - at this point it it is no longer encrypted.
Now imagine if the decryption is in the hardware - you would need to physicaly connect to the sound card just after the decrypt is performed. This is out of script kiddy league
That is the purpose of this - copyright protection to the screen (Audio can't be far away !!)- the only way to record it is using the camcorder or hacking the hardware !!
Hmmmm.... Picture genetic implants at birth in your eyes and ears !! As you grow older you get new keys to what you can see - only when you are of legal drinking age can you see Beer ads or Bar signs on the street. Can't jump the fence at Disney - my eyes don't have a key to decrypt what I see. Man gotta stop smokin that stuff... hahah
Slashdot Mirror
I currently have a Sharp. It won't play the Blue CD-R's but it will play silver CD-RW's. So I think it has much more to do with the Laser than anything else
Maybe I should clear up what I mean by "advance timing" !!!
... should have called it "timing advance inforamtion" or something !!
... they make money on phone calls. As long as they make more money on phone calls than on collecting and selling this information (Point to point phone calls makes more money than advertising by a long shot - and collecting that info on millions of calls a day would cost a shitload) they will not concentrate on it - they are tracking you because they must - not because they can or want (well they may want to but for cheaper, much cheaper)
The current digital Cellular standards - in the US this is VoiceStream, AT&T - including GSM and D-AMPS (Not Sure about CDMA) use some thing called Time Division Multiplexed Access (TDMA). For North America every cellular "channel" ( channel is 30 Mhz of bandwidth) is split into 3 time slots (This is why all cellular companies are moving to digital 3 times as many phone calls in one older analogue - AMPS - channel )
Now if I am 20 km from a cell site it will take 60 micro seconds for my signal to arrive at the antenae. The switch will detect this. If my signal arrives to much out of sync I will squash the signal arriving from someone else using the next time slot. So the switch - through signaling embeded in the downstream link (phone is full-duplex) - will tell my phone to send the digitized voice packet 60 micro seconds ahead of time so that the time to travel to the antanea is taken into account and my packet hits its time slot to perfection. A time slot is in the order of 10's of milliseconds wide - I don't remember.
From this - the switch can know roughly how far you are from the antenae. This info is currently not collected unless you are debugging the air interface - and collecting this information IS CPU intensive on a switch degrading its performance. That is "advanced timming"
Currently what they are doing for phone tracking is placing a second receiver on the base station antenae. The switch also know what other antanae are in the vicity of the cell phone (for handoff purposes). On a 911 call the switch will signal these additional receivers on the surrounding base stations to listen and time stamp your voice packet. This information is passed back to a computer that can calculate your location.
In Any given cellular switch ( handles about 60000 simultaneous phone calls !!! ) there is only a handfull of 911 calls - a switch could not track EVERY phone call in a system, it would make the network cost too much!!! And remember AT&T makes no money tracking you
This an FCC regualation for Cell phone companies - to be able to locate 911 callers within 10-20 Meters. The mandatory system has nothing to do with placing GPS systems in phone because ALL phones - old AND new - must be trackable. They are doing this using sycronized receivers on the Cellular stations and using time differentials to pinpoint the position of the cell phone.
This is a good example of a "Trusted" 3rd party system. And I mean trusted in teh sense "I trust the information" and not in the sense "I trust the phone company"
Also TDMA / GSM systems use "advance timing" signaling to tell the cell phone broadcasts a packet a little ahead of its time slot so that when the signal reaches the antena from a far off distance, the packet will arrive within its window - thus on digital systems the switch knows how far you are based on timing errors!!
The Wacky patent of the month by Michael J. Colitz, Jr. a Patent Attorney (His site is going to be Slashdoted... He should get a plug ;-), which I am sure has been featured on slashdot before, has numerous examples of older stupid patents. Such as the Scalp cooling device ro the Tachtical Nuclear Slide Rule patented by the US Government, or even the Pat on the back aparatus!! But my favorite is the Apparatus for Facilitating the Birth of a Child by Centrifugal Force patented in 1965 - at 82.3 RPM, that baby is pushing 7 G's !!! What a trip !!!
Some people are doing it !! Look at Digital Connections. They have info on Home Theatre PC's - what equipment to use etc. as well as tested home systems.
There is also talk about tweaking the G400 into displaying HDTV signals from DVD's. I have yet to find a card that exploits this, but according to the documentation on the GeForce2, it should be able to display in all HDTV modes (480p to 1080i)as well as record HDTV !!
My two cents... Math Faq on Polygons
Now imagine if the decryption is in the hardware - you would need to physicaly connect to the sound card just after the decrypt is performed. This is out of script kiddy league
That is the purpose of this - copyright protection to the screen (Audio can't be far away !!)- the only way to record it is using the camcorder or hacking the hardware !!
Hmmmm.... Picture genetic implants at birth in your eyes and ears !! As you grow older you get new keys to what you can see - only when you are of legal drinking age can you see Beer ads or Bar signs on the street. Can't jump the fence at Disney - my eyes don't have a key to decrypt what I see. Man gotta stop smokin that stuff... hahah