I don't know where she is going to live exactly, but in general student housing is not all that luxurious. Anyway, (depending on climate of course), get her an air conditioning device to keep the place cool. A fan is of course useful too, but an A/C is much better. Especially when most models can also be used as a heater (very useful in certain places with large temperature variations...).
Anything related to computing might not be worth it, because there is always the upgrade cycle. This one should last througout the entire study period:)
3) Certifications aren't as valuable as they once were. The last boom in certifications was the Cisco program and that has stagnated as the technology and programs have become entrenched. It's all cyclical with certification programs anyway. You have to be in at the beginning to reap the benefits.
Actually, with Cisco, there is a clear asset for an employer to have an CCIE in the workforce. Currently, Cisco alters pricing based on the number of CCIE's working for a company (In the case of telco's and other big players with large contracts, at least). So if you are into telecommunications sector, CCIE is a nice thing to have if you are applying for a job in a firm that has lot of Cisco equipment and support contracts.
(Correct me if I'm wrong - as I have understood it, this was the situation at least six months ago)
Of course, most of the Computer stupidities deal with stupid users (and they have some really funny stories), but the above page is about "role reversal" and stupid tech support being a pain for a computer-literate user seeking help.
There is a section about stupid salespeople as well:)
Patricio Tambolini, subsecretary of transportation, told the local media that drivers should not expect a normal green light until Monday, when things may be straightened out. About half of the 800 derelict traffic lights were operational by Thursday evening, thanks to a backup version of the software that controls the lights, but no word on when the job will be completed.
So yes, they do indeed have a backup, it just takes a while to get it up and running.
They do. As the other post says, they are the TOS/Diffserv byte. However, the quality of service can only be assured inside the network. They are starting to be adapted into corporate networks where the WAN links are provided by an ISP. Within the ISP's domain they can guarantee certain priority processing on packets, but it all depends on contracts. There are no global standards.
There are several queuing mechanisms that take into account the Diffserv byte. Cisco has CBWFQ (Class based weighted fair queuing), PQ (Priority queuing), and others. With this you can, for example say simply that VoIP packets are always delivered immediately while the others must wait. Or, you can guarantee that, for example, from a 512/512k DSL link 50 kbps is dedicated for VoIP.
But, like said, all these rules and settings reach only so far as the nearest peering point for the operators. There really aren't any global rules. I doubt there will be for quite some time. That is why most of real QoS is done on link layer, by allocating ATM virtual circuits with different traffic parameters and letting them do the rate limiting and such. The IP layer only participates by routing the packets through the right VC (which from the IP level's point of view is just a bit-pipe, a point-to-point link) based on destination.
It remains to be seen whether new technologies, such as MPLS, can bring change to this.
Just a suggestion - since Slashdot regularly links to articles in NY Times, couldn't they just simply get an affiliate status and DIRECTLY provide the registration-free link?
NATO Commander was one of the early ones.
on
HIstory of RTS Games
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Herzog Zwei? That's a new one.
Doesn't anyone remember NATO Commander? Published in 1984, for Commodore 64. It was an RTS. No mouse driven interface, but it was real-time. Brilliant game (of the era) about the good ol' red storm rising and NATO and Warsaw pact fighting it out in the central Europe.
I think we should have a server feature that is configurable from the client. The client would be able to tell the server that if a message has certain characteristics, the server should respond to the sender in the same way it would respond if the address didn't exist at all.
There are such possibilities in corporate mail systems. The one I use at work is I think the most common one - MS Exchange. Other options are, for example, HP's OpenMail.
When I set up rules in Outlook 2000, OL tells me if the rule is "client side only"-rule or the server can work it out before I even receive the e-mail. The server-side rules are quite flexible - enough for identifying spam if necessary.
I don't use these rules to filter spam (I don't get any at my work e-mail address), but I use them to forward all the mail to our local Linux box in our team's lab and leave the calendar entries into the Exchange server (So I can check them using Outlook and use Pine or whatever I wish to read my regular mail). Anyway, it works.
There already has been many well moderated comments about how this is really nothing except a new spread-spectrum concept.
I'll just add that it has been discussed before and even then we came to a conclusion that this is full of hot air. Only thing this article added was to the fact is that Cringley is a moron and doesn't know squat of what he is talking about. "It only raises the noise floor, it's not bad". Yeah. Right.
Use MP3 - with PlusV the bitrate is no issue.
on
Non-MP3 Codecs?
·
· Score: 1
Just use MP3. It's standard that is supported by everyone, everywhere, in everything.
And also, here's a recent addition, PlusV, that allows you to halve the bitrate without loosing too much quality. There are already plug-ins for winamp, lame and mpg123. It's downward compatible (if your player doesn't support plusV, it just sounds like a regular MP3 with a halved bitrate).
Now...Ogg Vorbis? Who has ever even heard about something like Ogg besides a couple of geeks with OSS-glasses on?
Okay, most of the folks here seem to be bashing NASA and jumping to conclusions that the probe is lost. No damn way. They'll come up with a solution soon enough - for one thing, a similar incident occured with the Stardust probe earlier this year. Just take a look at the status reports.
Start at somewhere aroud May 4,2001 and go backwards (by that report, the problem had been fixed). I bet the glitch on Cassini will be fixed just as easily. Note that the problem occured just before christmas, so they probably just tried a "quick fix" to see if it just went away. Like said, they have until 2004(!) 'till Cassini is at its destination to try a number of things. They'll probably get rid of the contamination just by turning on the heaters for a couple of months, but they don't want to start the operation and immediately leave for a christmas vacation (in case something comes up).
"If 3G takes off"... IF is the key word. What once seemed like such a sure thing business-wise, now seems so far off. Although I can still "feel" it hapening.
True. However, businesses (telcos and equipment makers) are going to push it. Nokia, for example, is changing it's role from an "bare" equipment provider (that just sells phones on the street and some network stuff to operators). They are developing stuff to (hopefully) ensure that UMTS get a good start. One example is, a billing model based on "good" data - instead of per minute (as in circuit switch) or amout of megabytes transferred (as is currently the model in GPRS). When you have broadband wireless, and transfer an e-mail with a bloated MS Word attachment - if the transfer gets interrupted, the customer is probably not going to be satisfied if he is billed for 10 megs of bits ending up nowhere.
This is just aspect among many, but equipment makers are fighting for their very survival in hoping that 3G gets off the ground.
actual hardware exists, while GSM-based packet data is everywhere.
did you mean circuit switched?
No, I was referring to the radio interface. As in "GPRS over GSM" vs. "GPRS over TDMA". The latter one does not exist in practice (for now).
Thanks for the thread. certainly would be interesting to know where you're working.... and have worked.;)
I'm working for one of those telcos that put loads of money into UMTS licenses around Europe:). Doing stuff related to 2.5G/3G core.
The question is, why even bother with less than 3G stuff at all in North America? When I posed this question to my colleagues back in 1999, they described how things would gradually evolve: GSM-GPRS-EDGE-UMTS. Ok, that's fine for the rest of the world where GSM is de facto.
You are correct. The upgrade path from GSM -> GPRS -> EDGE -> UMTS is something like
"Establish GSM network"
Install Packet Unit to basestations and on the core network, install packet data components (SGSN/GGSN)
=> Get GPRS
Install new TRX's to basestations
Install additional trunk connection to basestations (unless you want to saturate the E1 and ditch the speed advantage)
=> Get EDGE (Only gain is the tripled bitrate.)
Install new basestation infrastructure (RNC's, BTS's, rest of three-letter-acronyms). Some revamping in core required ("multimedia gateways", etc).
=> Get UMTS
(Install additional stuff to the core network, get UMTS beyond version 3..(Version 5 even has visions about WLAN and xDSL(!) as the subscriber interface))
- In maybe 2005-2007 we will see a similar concept with WCDMA technologies as with EDGE today, a change in the radio interface to increase transmission rates. At the moment UMTS is using 4-PSK modulation - maybe it will be changed to something like 16-PSK (or QAM-xx). If 3G takes off, it's bound to happen.
You're correct that an operator can bypass *any* of those steps to reach 3G. It's a *business* decision, not a technical one. At the moment only problem is with TDMA networks - standards for GPRS/EDGE are in place but no actual hardware exists, while GSM-based packet data is everywhere. However, you can do handovers from 3G network to 2G, so different technologies can coexists.
(Okay, so I simplified a few steps). As for the terminology, the lines are a bit fuzzy, but if you want to be absolutely sure that you're talking about the upcoming WCDMA technologies, the term is IMT-2000. CDMA-2000, UMTS and the one technology in Japan (forgot the abbreviation) are different approaches to it. Generally, "3G" is used for IMT-2000 concepts, but as this article show, even that is no longer a "neutral" term.
Don't even get started about "4G"...and a certain guy I know of is already hyping about 11,5G (== 2+2,5+3+4).
This is GPRS/EDGE-network, delivered by Nokia, and only 3G in an american sense. Cingular is moving from old TDMA system to GSM-based technology simply because they want to enable GPRS/EDGE (packet data) services. In theory, this could be done with TDMA as well, but there is no hardware available from any vendors.
As for the bit rates, 470kbps is reachable...in a test lab. In GPRS, depending on the encoding (CS-1 to CS-4) you get 10 to 20kbps per timeslot. Note, that this is the rate on PHYSICAL layer. You lose a slice for all the overhead caused by the protocol stack, of course.
One TRX (tranmitter/receiver) means 8 timeslots on a 200 kHz band. The newest GPRS phones are "4+1"-devices, using 4 timeslots for downlink, 1 for uplink, with CS-2 encoding, yielding about 40 kbps bitrate - in optimal conditions. This means that there are no other users and you get those timeslots completely for your own use.
EDGE brings in a new modulation (8-PSK instead of GMSK), in which the bitrate is tripled (symbol rate/baud rate stays the same).
So, in optimal conditions, with CS-4 encoding and EDGE, you get about 80 kbps. This means that for 470kbps you need 6 timeslots. Right. That means almost one whole TRX for a single user.
Either Cingular invests a LOT of money (well, since they are switching their entire infrastructure to a new system, they are doing that already), and brings in one TRX/user, those rates are unreachable in any real world environment.
Of course, EDGE is not ready yet, and in GPRS only CS-1 and CS-2 encodings are implemented anywhere (CS-3 and CS-4 coming in on H1 of 2002), so the maximum bitrate at the moment is about 40kbps.
Check out the monthly reports. They are quite fun to read, because they are written in a "layman" fashion. Especially the parts where they are putting together the "using science camera for navigation"-kludge. And rebooting a system half a solar system away and hoping it comes up again after an OS upgrade.
It's kinda sad that all the public focus is on the Mars missions, when there's stuff like DS1, Galileo, and NEAR that just keep on going..
For one thing, because UWB pulses don't actually use a traditional radio signal, called a carrier, UWB transmissions don't take up any of the radio spectrum.
Third, because UWB operates in the electronic "noise" area of the spectrum, it requires little power.
So, it's just like a regular spread spectrum technology. Yay, let's everyone use this! We'll just add loads of background noise to wherevere we use this technology. "We're not using any radio spectrum" is pure bollocks. Of course they are using it, just for an extremely wide range of frequencies, so it seems like background noise. Fine as long as you only have one or two transmitters. How do you think it would work with existing system when there are many more users?
You're a troll, but I'll bite...
What I don't understand is that somehow, gaming, especially PC gaming, is *still*(despite gaming business going beyond movie business back in '95) considered, if anything "childish". People will "grow out" of games, and if they do play games it's merely a 30-minute breather after work before dinner is ready.
Considering that men, and especially geeks are eternal children, I really don't see the point of bashing those having fun in the immersion of a computer game. With an immersive game I mean something that truly gives you the 'being there'-feeling). Counter-Strike, Falcon 4, Operation Flashpoint, Thief, Ultima V:). You can really feel that you are part of the game universe. No matter if the realism is sloppy as in CS, or the graphics are outdated as in U5, the FEELING is there. I want to escape from this world to a world of fantasy at least for a few hours per day, not just a breather - or even worse - watch TV for Bevery Hills 90210 reruns...
So, keep on gaming and be proud of your hobby:)
Actually, what I learned in broadband networks course (about ATM and SDH, mostly), the definition of broadband was "anything above T1/E1". In effect, anything above 1,54M or 2M, because that's the highest speed available to the end user on "traditional" (PDH) systems. There was also something about N-ISDN and B-ISDN, but "narrowband" IS a legitimate term and means T1/E1 and everything below.
Baseband is a term used in signal processing, and it's opposite is a modulated signal, ie. baseband is the information signal itself, and it's trasmitted, but with a modulation it's raised to a carrier. A standard composite video signal is baseband. An RF signal that you get to your TV is exactly the same signal, but its modulated to TV frequencies (VHF/UHF).
Re:Might As Well Go EVA, There Ain't No Test Tubes
on
ISS Airlock Installed
·
· Score: 3
This won't change until we get a crew escape vehicle (currently the Russian Soyuz, a 30-year-old design) that can carry more than three people back. Guess what - there isn't even a funded plan to build such a vehicle!
Only, that the X-38 just completed a test flight. See http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/07/10/X38.test. flight/index.html for details. You must be confusing this with the X-33 that was cancelled... (Altough that may be picked up again by the USAF, as well).
Nice troll. NASA does not do any commercial launches. They are handled by private companies, like Boeing, Arianespace(Commercial arm of ESA), Russian Energia, Sealaunch, et cetera.
Publicly funded organisations (NASA, ESA, etc) launch only their own scientific missions (in some cases as joint operations, such as ISS).
At least in Finland, Elisa Communications has for a long time (ie., from the summer 2000) been offering Gigabit connections to homes. They are building the connections in a joint effort with some constructors (so it's only available in newly-built houses at first).
There isn't much information available in english yet, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know where she is going to live exactly, but in general student housing is not all that luxurious. Anyway, (depending on climate of course), get her an air conditioning device to keep the place cool. A fan is of course useful too, but an A/C is much better. Especially when most models can also be used as a heater (very useful in certain places with large temperature variations...).
:)
Anything related to computing might not be worth it, because there is always the upgrade cycle. This one should last througout the entire study period
3) Certifications aren't as valuable as they once were. The last boom in certifications was the Cisco program and that has stagnated as the technology and programs have become entrenched. It's all cyclical with certification programs anyway. You have to be in at the beginning to reap the benefits.
Actually, with Cisco, there is a clear asset for an employer to have an CCIE in the workforce. Currently, Cisco alters pricing based on the number of CCIE's working for a company (In the case of telco's and other big players with large contracts, at least). So if you are into telecommunications sector, CCIE is a nice thing to have if you are applying for a job in a firm that has lot of Cisco equipment and support contracts.
(Correct me if I'm wrong - as I have understood it, this was the situation at least six months ago)
I know what roman numerals are, thank you very much. It seems that you don't know what the SI prefixes are.
m
For your reference:
http://www.math.com/tables/general/numnotation.ht
Have a nice day.
Roman numerals? What are you talking about?
m = milli (1/1000)
k = kilo (1000)
M = mega (1000000,or 10^6, or million)
G = giga (1000000000,or 10^9, or billion)
So, $10 M = 10 million dollars.
Outsource everything to Elbonia.
Savings: $10 M in reduced workforce costs.
Additional losses: $50 M spent in hunting all the bugs from the software with your own workforce.
Check out the good old Rinkworks at
:)
http://rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_stuptech.shtml
Of course, most of the Computer stupidities deal with stupid users (and they have some really funny stories), but the above page is about "role reversal" and stupid tech support being a pain for a computer-literate user seeking help.
There is a section about stupid salespeople as well
According to the article:
Patricio Tambolini, subsecretary of transportation, told the local media that drivers should not expect a normal green light until Monday, when things may be straightened out. About half of the 800 derelict traffic lights were operational by Thursday evening, thanks to a backup version of the software that controls the lights, but no word on when the job will be completed.
So yes, they do indeed have a backup, it just takes a while to get it up and running.
They do. As the other post says, they are the TOS/Diffserv byte. However, the quality of service can only be assured inside the network. They are starting to be adapted into corporate networks where the WAN links are provided by an ISP. Within the ISP's domain they can guarantee certain priority processing on packets, but it all depends on contracts. There are no global standards.
There are several queuing mechanisms that take into account the Diffserv byte. Cisco has CBWFQ (Class based weighted fair queuing), PQ (Priority queuing), and others. With this you can, for example say simply that VoIP packets are always delivered immediately while the others must wait. Or, you can guarantee that, for example, from a 512/512k DSL link 50 kbps is dedicated for VoIP.
But, like said, all these rules and settings reach only so far as the nearest peering point for the operators. There really aren't any global rules. I doubt there will be for quite some time. That is why most of real QoS is done on link layer, by allocating ATM virtual circuits with different traffic parameters and letting them do the rate limiting and such. The IP layer only participates by routing the packets through the right VC (which from the IP level's point of view is just a bit-pipe, a point-to-point link) based on destination.
It remains to be seen whether new technologies, such as MPLS, can bring change to this.
Just a suggestion - since Slashdot regularly links to articles in NY Times, couldn't they just simply get an affiliate status and DIRECTLY provide the registration-free link?
Herzog Zwei? That's a new one.
:)
Doesn't anyone remember NATO Commander? Published in 1984, for Commodore 64. It was an RTS. No mouse driven interface, but it was real-time. Brilliant game (of the era) about the good ol' red storm rising and NATO and Warsaw pact fighting it out in the central Europe.
Try it out on your C-64 emulator
I think we should have a server feature that is configurable from the client. The client would be able to tell the server that if a message has certain characteristics, the server should respond to the sender in the same way it would respond if the address didn't exist at all.
There are such possibilities in corporate mail systems. The one I use at work is I think the most common one - MS Exchange. Other options are, for example, HP's OpenMail.
When I set up rules in Outlook 2000, OL tells me if the rule is "client side only"-rule or the server can work it out before I even receive the e-mail. The server-side rules are quite flexible - enough for identifying spam if necessary.
I don't use these rules to filter spam (I don't get any at my work e-mail address), but I use them to forward all the mail to our local Linux box in our team's lab and leave the calendar entries into the Exchange server (So I can check them using Outlook and use Pine or whatever I wish to read my regular mail). Anyway, it works.
There already has been many well moderated comments about how this is really nothing except a new spread-spectrum concept.
I'll just add that it has been discussed before and even then we came to a conclusion that this is full of hot air. Only thing this article added was to the fact is that Cringley is a moron and doesn't know squat of what he is talking about. "It only raises the noise floor, it's not bad". Yeah. Right.
Just use MP3. It's standard that is supported by everyone, everywhere, in everything.
And also, here's a recent addition, PlusV, that allows you to halve the bitrate without loosing too much quality. There are already plug-ins for winamp, lame and mpg123. It's downward compatible (if your player doesn't support plusV, it just sounds like a regular MP3 with a halved bitrate).
Now...Ogg Vorbis? Who has ever even heard about something like Ogg besides a couple of geeks with OSS-glasses on?
Okay, most of the folks here seem to be bashing NASA and jumping to conclusions that the probe is lost. No damn way. They'll come up with a solution soon enough - for one thing, a similar incident occured with the Stardust probe earlier this year. Just take a look at the status reports.
Start at somewhere aroud May 4,2001 and go backwards (by that report, the problem had been fixed). I bet the glitch on Cassini will be fixed just as easily. Note that the problem occured just before christmas, so they probably just tried a "quick fix" to see if it just went away. Like said, they have until 2004(!) 'till Cassini is at its destination to try a number of things. They'll probably get rid of the contamination just by turning on the heaters for a couple of months, but they don't want to start the operation and immediately leave for a christmas vacation (in case something comes up).
"If 3G takes off"... IF is the key word. What once seemed like such a sure thing business-wise, now seems so far off. Although I can still "feel" it hapening.
;)
:). Doing stuff related to 2.5G/3G core.
True. However, businesses (telcos and equipment makers) are going to push it. Nokia, for example, is changing it's role from an "bare" equipment provider (that just sells phones on the street and some network stuff to operators). They are developing stuff to (hopefully) ensure that UMTS get a good start. One example is, a billing model based on "good" data - instead of per minute (as in circuit switch) or amout of megabytes transferred (as is currently the model in GPRS). When you have broadband wireless, and transfer an e-mail with a bloated MS Word attachment - if the transfer gets interrupted, the customer is probably not going to be satisfied if he is billed for 10 megs of bits ending up nowhere.
This is just aspect among many, but equipment makers are fighting for their very survival in hoping that 3G gets off the ground.
actual hardware exists, while GSM-based packet data is everywhere.
did you mean circuit switched?
No, I was referring to the radio interface. As in "GPRS over GSM" vs. "GPRS over TDMA". The latter one does not exist in practice (for now).
Thanks for the thread. certainly would be interesting to know where you're working.... and have worked.
I'm working for one of those telcos that put loads of money into UMTS licenses around Europe
The question is, why even bother with less than 3G stuff at all in North America? When I posed this question to my colleagues back in 1999, they described how things would gradually evolve: GSM-GPRS-EDGE-UMTS. Ok, that's fine for the rest of the world where GSM is de facto.
You are correct. The upgrade path from GSM -> GPRS -> EDGE -> UMTS is something like
"Establish GSM network"
Install Packet Unit to basestations and on the core network, install packet data components (SGSN/GGSN)
=> Get GPRS
Install new TRX's to basestations
Install additional trunk connection to basestations (unless you want to saturate the E1 and ditch the speed advantage)
=> Get EDGE (Only gain is the tripled bitrate.)
Install new basestation infrastructure (RNC's, BTS's, rest of three-letter-acronyms). Some revamping in core required ("multimedia gateways", etc).
=> Get UMTS
(Install additional stuff to the core network, get UMTS beyond version 3..(Version 5 even has visions about WLAN and xDSL(!) as the subscriber interface))
- In maybe 2005-2007 we will see a similar concept with WCDMA technologies as with EDGE today, a change in the radio interface to increase transmission rates. At the moment UMTS is using 4-PSK modulation - maybe it will be changed to something like 16-PSK (or QAM-xx). If 3G takes off, it's bound to happen.
You're correct that an operator can bypass *any* of those steps to reach 3G. It's a *business* decision, not a technical one. At the moment only problem is with TDMA networks - standards for GPRS/EDGE are in place but no actual hardware exists, while GSM-based packet data is everywhere. However, you can do handovers from 3G network to 2G, so different technologies can coexists.
(Okay, so I simplified a few steps). As for the terminology, the lines are a bit fuzzy, but if you want to be absolutely sure that you're talking about the upcoming WCDMA technologies, the term is IMT-2000. CDMA-2000, UMTS and the one technology in Japan (forgot the abbreviation) are different approaches to it. Generally, "3G" is used for IMT-2000 concepts, but as this article show, even that is no longer a "neutral" term.
Don't even get started about "4G"...and a certain guy I know of is already hyping about 11,5G (== 2+2,5+3+4).
This is GPRS/EDGE-network, delivered by Nokia, and only 3G in an american sense. Cingular is moving from old TDMA system to GSM-based technology simply because they want to enable GPRS/EDGE (packet data) services. In theory, this could be done with TDMA as well, but there is no hardware available from any vendors.
As for the bit rates, 470kbps is reachable...in a test lab. In GPRS, depending on the encoding (CS-1 to CS-4) you get 10 to 20kbps per timeslot. Note, that this is the rate on PHYSICAL layer. You lose a slice for all the overhead caused by the protocol stack, of course.
One TRX (tranmitter/receiver) means 8 timeslots on a 200 kHz band. The newest GPRS phones are "4+1"-devices, using 4 timeslots for downlink, 1 for uplink, with CS-2 encoding, yielding about 40 kbps bitrate - in optimal conditions. This means that there are no other users and you get those timeslots completely for your own use.
EDGE brings in a new modulation (8-PSK instead of GMSK), in which the bitrate is tripled (symbol rate/baud rate stays the same).
So, in optimal conditions, with CS-4 encoding and EDGE, you get about 80 kbps. This means that for 470kbps you need 6 timeslots. Right. That means almost one whole TRX for a single user.
Either Cingular invests a LOT of money (well, since they are switching their entire infrastructure to a new system, they are doing that already), and brings in one TRX/user, those rates are unreachable in any real world environment.
Of course, EDGE is not ready yet, and in GPRS only CS-1 and CS-2 encodings are implemented anywhere (CS-3 and CS-4 coming in on H1 of 2002), so the maximum bitrate at the moment is about 40kbps.
http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/
Check out the monthly reports. They are quite fun to read, because they are written in a "layman" fashion. Especially the parts where they are putting together the "using science camera for navigation"-kludge. And rebooting a system half a solar system away and hoping it comes up again after an OS upgrade.
It's kinda sad that all the public focus is on the Mars missions, when there's stuff like DS1, Galileo, and NEAR that just keep on going..
From the article:
For one thing, because UWB pulses don't actually use a traditional radio signal, called a carrier, UWB transmissions don't take up any of the radio spectrum.
Third, because UWB operates in the electronic "noise" area of the spectrum, it requires little power.
So, it's just like a regular spread spectrum technology. Yay, let's everyone use this! We'll just add loads of background noise to wherevere we use this technology. "We're not using any radio spectrum" is pure bollocks. Of course they are using it, just for an extremely wide range of frequencies, so it seems like background noise. Fine as long as you only have one or two transmitters. How do you think it would work with existing system when there are many more users?
I just find it strange that CNN buys the hype.
You're a troll, but I'll bite... :). You can really feel that you are part of the game universe. No matter if the realism is sloppy as in CS, or the graphics are outdated as in U5, the FEELING is there. I want to escape from this world to a world of fantasy at least for a few hours per day, not just a breather - or even worse - watch TV for Bevery Hills 90210 reruns...
:)
What I don't understand is that somehow, gaming, especially PC gaming, is *still*(despite gaming business going beyond movie business back in '95) considered, if anything "childish". People will "grow out" of games, and if they do play games it's merely a 30-minute breather after work before dinner is ready.
Considering that men, and especially geeks are eternal children, I really don't see the point of bashing those having fun in the immersion of a computer game. With an immersive game I mean something that truly gives you the 'being there'-feeling). Counter-Strike, Falcon 4, Operation Flashpoint, Thief, Ultima V
So, keep on gaming and be proud of your hobby
Actually, what I learned in broadband networks course (about ATM and SDH, mostly), the definition of broadband was "anything above T1/E1". In effect, anything above 1,54M or 2M, because that's the highest speed available to the end user on "traditional" (PDH) systems. There was also something about N-ISDN and B-ISDN, but "narrowband" IS a legitimate term and means T1/E1 and everything below. Baseband is a term used in signal processing, and it's opposite is a modulated signal, ie. baseband is the information signal itself, and it's trasmitted, but with a modulation it's raised to a carrier. A standard composite video signal is baseband. An RF signal that you get to your TV is exactly the same signal, but its modulated to TV frequencies (VHF/UHF).
At the man's homepage.
http://www.nersc.gov/~dhbailey/
Check out the piqp.c in the middle of the page.
This won't change until we get a crew escape vehicle (currently the Russian Soyuz, a 30-year-old design) that can carry more than three people back. Guess what - there isn't even a funded plan to build such a vehicle! Only, that the X-38 just completed a test flight. See http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/07/10/X38.test. flight/index.html for details. You must be confusing this with the X-33 that was cancelled... (Altough that may be picked up again by the USAF, as well).
Nice troll. NASA does not do any commercial launches. They are handled by private companies, like Boeing, Arianespace(Commercial arm of ESA), Russian Energia, Sealaunch, et cetera. Publicly funded organisations (NASA, ESA, etc) launch only their own scientific missions (in some cases as joint operations, such as ISS).
At least in Finland, Elisa Communications has for a long time (ie., from the summer 2000) been offering Gigabit connections to homes. They are building the connections in a joint effort with some constructors (so it's only available in newly-built houses at first).
There isn't much information available in english yet, though.