well okay, there are many many encoding schemes. what about full encryption? i assume some level of it is not outlawed...say 40 bit, which can be cracked. thing is, by the time they've cracked it, it will be too late. even still, how about throwing key letters, encrypted if you want, at regular intervals, into a plain old message. it would just look like spelling mistakes, or, if you're really on the ball you can even make a flawless message.
these sorts of systems would be a joke to would be criminals with half a mind... oh no... i've said too much. they're watching....
perhaps i will speek in elvish....
lasto beth nin, tolo dan na ngalad
Re:Speaking of laptop power savings: LED backlight
on
Via One-ups Transmeta
·
· Score: 1
because cool OLEDs are comming.... don't-cha-know? oh... i guess you should know... since you posted this article back in June.
OLEDs for laptops are a little ways off tho me thinks... a year or two at best. You'll see many ~2" full color OLEDs in Japan's iMode phones within a year. I seem to recall that IBM had a rather large working prototype, but I can't seem to find it anymore. Here's some info on their smaller ones tho.
Post-Nov31:
- peak dl: 5500kbps
- peak up: 550kbps
- latency: less than 40ms
- speedtest at this moment
Apparantly they just upgraded the backbone into my city. It used to be 2 T1's for the whole city. We're not a big place, but that was just stupid. Anyway, all is good now, and Shaw actually started they're upgrades a long way back so they were ahead of the game.
Typically, on the coast (around Vancouver) I get somewhere around 2-3000kbps downloads, but it's been a while since I've really been to put it thru it's paces out there.
Neat.. Health Canada actually has something useful. and... I somehow feel like I'm in a session of parliament, because you should probably quote more of the Health Canada page you linked to:
The power of light emitted by these battery-operated lasers used to be less than one milliwatt (Class 2 lasers). But now the power has increased to between 1 and 5 mW (Class 3a laser) to obtain a brighter beam. Unfortunately, it also makes the laser more dangerous to the eye.
Below 1 mW, even in the worst case situation at night, the eye directly exposed to the laser light has time to activate the blink reflex, approximately 0.25 seconds, before injury occurs. But at levels between 1 and 5 mW, so much light rushes into the eye that it suffers a temporary condition called flashblindness. It is similar to the effect that occurs during flash photography where the image of the flash source remains in the eyes for a few seconds and then fades away.
There is no long-term effect from flashblindness. Normal vision usually recovers after a few seconds. But if one forces oneself to look directly into the beam, then permanent blindness might occur depending on exposure duration. This would be equivalent to looking directly at the sun for a few seconds.
One thing I did forget about is the blinking part. Since 650nm is actually red, the physiological response is to blink. This is one of the reasons class 4 lasers so dangerous: you may be looking directly into the beam and not blink until pain is induced, but by that time it's likely too late and dammage has been done.
There's no doubt that at the Rx end significant attenuation will have occured and it will be harmless. But it's not exactly bright (bad pun) to be looking at the Tx end close-up for more than a second or so. After all, we're talking about 5mW here.
first off. i wouldn't consider a LED any less dangerous than a laser. yes, a laser will generally generate a higher powered and more focused beam, but the "dangerous" lasers used in telecomm very often will not exceed 5 to 10dBm.
5mW = 6.99dBm. i wouldn't trust looking at anything with +dbm fairly concentrated source... would you?
on that note, there's lots of info on laser safety at google
a nice pretty chart courtesy of waterloo pointing out what's at risk:
your retina, your colour vision, night vision, and skin burns. it's skin burns that are unlikely at such low levels, not eye dammage.
here's an abstract from a ubc page:
"Laser light in the visible to near infrared spectrum (i.e., 400 - 1400 nm) can cause damage to the retina resulting in scotoma (blind spot in the fovea). This wave band is also know as the "retinal hazard region"."
STORY TIME:
i had a co-worker that used to tell me not to worry about the 1500nm range, as "it's only the 1310nm range that you have to be worried about, sheesh." i was nutorious for turning off the laser every time was changing connections.
i probably had a over a mil worth of devices and test equipment on my bench. had a nice automated test (LabView) running. 5dBm Tx laser (MZ pumped up to 10gig internal modulation - yeah baby!), a few km (miles, whatever) of fiber, variable attenuator (VOA), and a nice 10gig Rx (APD).
so anyways, the freeking comm cables (HPIB) controlling the VOA went skitzoid or something. the VOA reset to ZERO attenuation. only a few seconds later, and the APD was fried. (currents jumped from low double/tripple digits to four digits. in mA. so yes, that's amps.)
my stomach sank as i saw the bit error rate (on the BERT) go to 100%. several grand. poof. gone... just like that.
THE POINT OF THE STORY:
i got the idea pretty quick that even components designed to handle that stuff get very cranky very quickly. let alone your eyes. you've only got 1 chance with 'em... don't muck it up.
SIDENOTES:
- from then on in my very short distance tests had a 12dB fixed optical attenuator (less than $20?) instead of relying on a VOA (probably a few grand).
- oh... and i stuck to what i was supposed to be testing: over a few hundred km instead of a few km. heh heh hah... oops.
lotsa ways to do this. and you're right, the laser will typically be very similar. (but there are actually many frequencies or wavelengths of lasers)
audio-only cd players have built-in Reed-Solomon error correction. basically this means that there are redundant bits in the audio bitstream. otherwise your cds would skip from even the slightest scratch, fingerprint, or spec of dust.
so, if you wanted to mess up your average cdrom (and some audio cd players as well), you can dilberately throw errors into the bitstream, counting on the error correction to catch it.
but that will just hinder the ripping of cds, not the actual playing, even on a cdrom drive.
another trick that can muck up cdrom drivess, is to include an invalid TOC. basically, this would tell the cdrom that tracks are where they aren't, and are different durations than they are. i belive that the typical audio cd player rather scans the whole disc first, noting where the tracks are.
this too, can generally be corrected by manually setting the track start/ends by a decent ripping program.
now the really hardcore stuff comes in where all these record companies keep top secret. likely, it would involve erronious TOC's (perhaps physically corrupt) so that the cdrom has a hissy fit. additionally, they could inject erros even into the Reed-Solomon error correction in such a way that the audio cd player's decode algorithm plays fine, but the cdrom drive's multi-function DAC goes wonky. this is really clever shiznit.
How about active ISP filtering, similar to the way SPAM is starting to be delt with.
Something like:
1. tech savvy user is annoyed with webpage ad, so he emails Orbz or similar with the offending site.
2. Orbz then publishes the site and work-around to a master list.
3. ISP downloads master list automatically daily, and integrates itself into their proxy (pretty much all ISP's use 'em now weather you like it or not)
4. And voila, Average-Joe mom & pop users are saved from "the man".
Hell, the ISP could even provide proxy options: ilikeadsproxy, and killtheadsproxy. Thence, giving the user a relatively simple CHOICE... and perhaps not ruffling these spam/ad peoples feathers. (I can just see the lawsuits now.)
maybe it will be changed to something like 16-PSK (or QAM-xx).If 3G takes off, it's bound to happen.
"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.
I'm actually going to be doing some study on various mobile comm stuff in 2002: coding, modulation, ECC, SS, mux'ing. (here come's the army of acronymns again!). I knew all that QAM stuff that was barely touched on in my previous years of study would become interesting and useful!
Just like the whole photonic crystal frenzy right now. When I learned about the equivalent in old electrical semiconductors, nothing could be more dry than holes, poles and crystal lattices. Then the other day Scientific American did an article on Photonic Crystals (going to completely revolutionize "electronics" as we know it, btw)... and the guy interviewed was talking about holes and poles again.... but when he started he actually used a regular drill and dielectric material. Can you imagine? That once dry material is suddenly crazy-cool to me!
getting less off-topic...
actual hardware exists, while GSM-based packet data is everywhere.
did you mean circuit switched?
However, you can do handovers from 3G network to 2G, so different technologies can coexists.
oh yes certainly. just like TDMA does handovers to AMPS (1G). (and rogers actually manages bi-directional handovers at that! slick!) but, Rogers (likely AT&T too) has already said their not going to bother with TDMA-GSM handovers. not that it matters, but here's my point: sounds like a pretty poor business decision (perhaps the man at the top doesn't always know best?) to run all these networks:
A. 1G AMPS
B. 2G TDMA
C. 2G GSM / 2.5G GPRS / 2.75G EDGE
D. 3G UMTS
anywho. Thanks for the thread. certainly would be interesting to know where you're working.... and have worked.;)
k. i worked on GPRS. in 1999. that's 2.5G people. OFFICIALLY.
i saw where things were going with EDGE. 2.75G. unofficially?
and we even held non-technical discussions regarding the REAL 3G solution, UMTS. At the time the RF layer wasn't decided... but it is now: WCDMA.
welcome to 2001. pretty much 2002 at that. 3G WCDMA was released months ago in Japan. 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. But why-o-why on earth would any provider in North America (save Fido in Canada) invest less than 3G?? SGSN and GGSN's (search google) are at least going to need s/w upgrades when the switch to 3G is eventually made (a pain!), and the entire GSM RF basestations will have to be replaced with WCDMA. I don't think Japan is technically above the 1mbit 3G barrier (outside of the labs), but at least they have the routing and RF subsystem that's intended to be evolved to.
Sounds to me like these carriers like AT&T and Cingulair going to GSM based networks are going to get burned hardcore in the long run. Rogers AT&T Canada is promising to support both their TDMA and GSM networks in the foreseeable future. How about when they go to WCDMA?
Also sounds to me like CDMA-2000 (sigh yes, the competing 3G standard) is far better positioned with much simpler and cheaper upgrades like 1xRTT (2x, 3x...) on their existing CDMA networks. Hell, all the old phones should still work long into the future. And supposedly CDMA2000 is more efficient for both data and voice. Who cares if Qualcomm makes a few pennies every time a phone is sold. Not I. Which begs the question: if many North American carriers are upgrading their ENTIRE network anyway, why wouldn't they pick CDMA2000 in the first place?
this article may clear things up for those in doubt:
http://www.outlook4mobility.com/asabc/Oct_2_2001 .h tm
please.... rip my post to shreds.... knowledge..... i crave knowledge....
First of all, we want to be able to hear the music in the first place.
So what choices does that give you?
as usual, the majik#8 holds the answer you seek:
8. Walk into your local Future Shop (or Best Buy whatever) and find a cd you'd like to try. Swipe the cd's barcode under a schweet galaxy gizmo located every 10 feet, slap on the headphones, and listen to the cd. In it's entirety. In CD quality.
Once in a blue moon a product I've never heard about jumps into existance and really shocks me. This is one of them. I was truely impressed with this device. This is the first creative step I've seen the industry take in today's "mp3 world".
I'm on Shaw's cablemodem service (previously shaw@home). They've been prepping for this for months now, and everything's up full tilt. Members were encouraged over that time to painlessly switch from @home.com to @shaw.ca setttings.
Great job Shaw.
Yeah, it's damn cheap up here. I'm on my second free month of service now (after my sign up), and when I do start paying it'll be $40/mo CAD. Yes, that's $25 and change in USD.
Oh and, fast too. On my P100 rustbucket, I'm getting 500K/sec down, 300K/sec up rating from [www.dslreports.com/stest]. Durring what I'd call fairly peak time - a rainy Saturday afternoon.
join the revoloution kids. [shaw.ca]
(no... I don't work for them... but they should be paying be for this post!)
I seem to remember that these guys toyed with the launch vehicle concept back in the 1950's. The Arrow had a huge internal missile bay, larger than that of a B-29.
Yes, it was scrapped, and the people there mustn't have had much talent. After all they did end up contributing to the Concorde, Mercury program, Gemini spacecraft, Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR), lunar module, Apollo program, and Mission Control.
Learn all about what almost was... courtesy of your neighbors to the north:
Although it may be tough, with GPRS, EDGE, 1xRTT gaining ground around the world. Word on the street is that Telus Mobility (Canadian) will have 1xRTT up for Q1 next year.
What I'm still trying to figure out is if ONE standard has been chosen for REAL 3G/UMTS. The recent AT&T adoption of GSM/GPRS would suggest that WCDMA is not the way to go?? anybody?
1. feed high-speed data text to the video in
2. compress video
3. send over 28.8 line
4. decompress video
5. OCR out the data stream, and voilla. "broadband"
Slashdot Mirror
well okay, there are many many encoding schemes. what about full encryption? i assume some level of it is not outlawed...say 40 bit, which can be cracked. thing is, by the time they've cracked it, it will be too late. even still, how about throwing key letters, encrypted if you want, at regular intervals, into a plain old message. it would just look like spelling mistakes, or, if you're really on the ball you can even make a flawless message.
these sorts of systems would be a joke to would be criminals with half a mind... oh no... i've said too much. they're watching....
perhaps i will speek in elvish....
lasto beth nin, tolo dan na ngalad
check it check it yo
motorola is already using them
(and i swear that Sanyo or someone will be releasing full-color phones shortly in Japan with 'em.)
eMagin has beautiful dk's available. i want one!
some talk from a year ago.
do you like to dream?
umm... soOOoo cool
because cool OLEDs are comming.... don't-cha-know? oh... i guess you should know... since you posted this article back in June.
OLEDs for laptops are a little ways off tho me thinks... a year or two at best. You'll see many ~2" full color OLEDs in Japan's iMode phones within a year. I seem to recall that IBM had a rather large working prototype, but I can't seem to find it anymore. Here's some info on their smaller ones tho.
Location: Interior BC, Canada
Provider: Shaw High Speed
(Previously Shaw@Home)
Pre-Nov31:
- peak dl: 15kbps (yes, kilobits!)
- peak up: 53kbps
- latency: greater than 1000ms
Post-Nov31:
- peak dl: 5500kbps
- peak up: 550kbps
- latency: less than 40ms
- speedtest at this moment
Apparantly they just upgraded the backbone into my city. It used to be 2 T1's for the whole city. We're not a big place, but that was just stupid. Anyway, all is good now, and Shaw actually started they're upgrades a long way back so they were ahead of the game.
Typically, on the coast (around Vancouver) I get somewhere around 2-3000kbps downloads, but it's been a while since I've really been to put it thru it's paces out there.
Neat.. Health Canada actually has something useful. and... I somehow feel like I'm in a session of parliament, because you should probably quote more of the Health Canada page you linked to:
The power of light emitted by these battery-operated lasers used to be less than one milliwatt (Class 2 lasers). But now the power has increased to between 1 and 5 mW (Class 3a laser) to obtain a brighter beam. Unfortunately, it also makes the laser more dangerous to the eye.
Below 1 mW, even in the worst case situation at night, the eye directly exposed to the laser light has time to activate the blink reflex, approximately 0.25 seconds, before injury occurs. But at levels between 1 and 5 mW, so much light rushes into the eye that it suffers a temporary condition called flashblindness. It is similar to the effect that occurs during flash photography where the image of the flash source remains in the eyes for a few seconds and then fades away.
There is no long-term effect from flashblindness. Normal vision usually recovers after a few seconds. But if one forces oneself to look directly into the beam, then permanent blindness might occur depending on exposure duration. This would be equivalent to looking directly at the sun for a few seconds.
One thing I did forget about is the blinking part. Since 650nm is actually red, the physiological response is to blink. This is one of the reasons class 4 lasers so dangerous: you may be looking directly into the beam and not blink until pain is induced, but by that time it's likely too late and dammage has been done.
There's no doubt that at the Rx end significant attenuation will have occured and it will be harmless. But it's not exactly bright (bad pun) to be looking at the Tx end close-up for more than a second or so. After all, we're talking about 5mW here.
first off. i wouldn't consider a LED any less dangerous than a laser. yes, a laser will generally generate a higher powered and more focused beam, but the "dangerous" lasers used in telecomm very often will not exceed 5 to 10dBm.
5mW = 6.99dBm. i wouldn't trust looking at anything with +dbm fairly concentrated source... would you?
on that note, there's lots of info on laser safety at google
a nice pretty chart courtesy of waterloo pointing out what's at risk: your retina, your colour vision, night vision, and skin burns. it's skin burns that are unlikely at such low levels, not eye dammage.
here's an abstract from a ubc page:
"Laser light in the visible to near infrared spectrum (i.e., 400 - 1400 nm) can cause damage to the retina resulting in scotoma (blind spot in the fovea). This wave band is also know as the "retinal hazard region"."
STORY TIME:
i had a co-worker that used to tell me not to worry about the 1500nm range, as "it's only the 1310nm range that you have to be worried about, sheesh." i was nutorious for turning off the laser every time was changing connections.
i probably had a over a mil worth of devices and test equipment on my bench. had a nice automated test (LabView) running. 5dBm Tx laser (MZ pumped up to 10gig internal modulation - yeah baby!), a few km (miles, whatever) of fiber, variable attenuator (VOA), and a nice 10gig Rx (APD).
so anyways, the freeking comm cables (HPIB) controlling the VOA went skitzoid or something. the VOA reset to ZERO attenuation. only a few seconds later, and the APD was fried. (currents jumped from low double/tripple digits to four digits. in mA. so yes, that's amps.)
my stomach sank as i saw the bit error rate (on the BERT) go to 100%. several grand. poof. gone... just like that.
THE POINT OF THE STORY:
i got the idea pretty quick that even components designed to handle that stuff get very cranky very quickly. let alone your eyes. you've only got 1 chance with 'em... don't muck it up.
SIDENOTES:
- from then on in my very short distance tests had a 12dB fixed optical attenuator (less than $20?) instead of relying on a VOA (probably a few grand).
- oh... and i stuck to what i was supposed to be testing: over a few hundred km instead of a few km. heh heh hah... oops.
lotsa ways to do this. and you're right, the laser will typically be very similar. (but there are actually many frequencies or wavelengths of lasers)
audio-only cd players have built-in Reed-Solomon error correction. basically this means that there are redundant bits in the audio bitstream. otherwise your cds would skip from even the slightest scratch, fingerprint, or spec of dust.
so, if you wanted to mess up your average cdrom (and some audio cd players as well), you can dilberately throw errors into the bitstream, counting on the error correction to catch it.
but that will just hinder the ripping of cds, not the actual playing, even on a cdrom drive.
another trick that can muck up cdrom drivess, is to include an invalid TOC. basically, this would tell the cdrom that tracks are where they aren't, and are different durations than they are. i belive that the typical audio cd player rather scans the whole disc first, noting where the tracks are.
this too, can generally be corrected by manually setting the track start/ends by a decent ripping program.
now the really hardcore stuff comes in where all these record companies keep top secret. likely, it would involve erronious TOC's (perhaps physically corrupt) so that the cdrom has a hissy fit. additionally, they could inject erros even into the Reed-Solomon error correction in such a way that the audio cd player's decode algorithm plays fine, but the cdrom drive's multi-function DAC goes wonky. this is really clever shiznit.
hey... whaddda ya kno...
The Essence Project
http://bpaosf.bpa.arizona.edu/~mark/essence/
If anyone can get their hands on the s/w please post a link.
How about active ISP filtering, similar to the way SPAM is starting to be delt with.
Something like:
1. tech savvy user is annoyed with webpage ad, so he emails Orbz or similar with the offending site.
2. Orbz then publishes the site and work-around to a master list.
3. ISP downloads master list automatically daily, and integrates itself into their proxy (pretty much all ISP's use 'em now weather you like it or not)
4. And voila, Average-Joe mom & pop users are saved from "the man".
Hell, the ISP could even provide proxy options: ilikeadsproxy, and killtheadsproxy. Thence, giving the user a relatively simple CHOICE... and perhaps not ruffling these spam/ad peoples feathers. (I can just see the lawsuits now.)
maybe it will be changed to something like 16-PSK (or QAM-xx).If 3G takes off, it's bound to happen.
;)
"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.
I'm actually going to be doing some study on various mobile comm stuff in 2002: coding, modulation, ECC, SS, mux'ing. (here come's the army of acronymns again!). I knew all that QAM stuff that was barely touched on in my previous years of study would become interesting and useful!
Just like the whole photonic crystal frenzy right now. When I learned about the equivalent in old electrical semiconductors, nothing could be more dry than holes, poles and crystal lattices. Then the other day Scientific American did an article on Photonic Crystals (going to completely revolutionize "electronics" as we know it, btw)... and the guy interviewed was talking about holes and poles again.... but when he started he actually used a regular drill and dielectric material. Can you imagine? That once dry material is suddenly crazy-cool to me!
getting less off-topic...
actual hardware exists, while GSM-based packet data is everywhere.
did you mean circuit switched?
However, you can do handovers from 3G network to 2G, so different technologies can coexists.
oh yes certainly. just like TDMA does handovers to AMPS (1G). (and rogers actually manages bi-directional handovers at that! slick!) but, Rogers (likely AT&T too) has already said their not going to bother with TDMA-GSM handovers. not that it matters, but here's my point: sounds like a pretty poor business decision (perhaps the man at the top doesn't always know best?) to run all these networks:
A. 1G AMPS
B. 2G TDMA
C. 2G GSM / 2.5G GPRS / 2.75G EDGE
D. 3G UMTS
anywho. Thanks for the thread. certainly would be interesting to know where you're working.... and have worked.
(pardon the pun)
...) on their existing CDMA networks. Hell, all the old phones should still work long into the future. And supposedly CDMA2000 is more efficient for both data and voice. Who cares if Qualcomm makes a few pennies every time a phone is sold. Not I. Which begs the question: if many North American carriers are upgrading their ENTIRE network anyway, why wouldn't they pick CDMA2000 in the first place?
1 .h tm
k. i worked on GPRS. in 1999. that's 2.5G people. OFFICIALLY.
i saw where things were going with EDGE. 2.75G. unofficially?
and we even held non-technical discussions regarding the REAL 3G solution, UMTS. At the time the RF layer wasn't decided... but it is now: WCDMA.
welcome to 2001. pretty much 2002 at that. 3G WCDMA was released months ago in Japan. 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. But why-o-why on earth would any provider in North America (save Fido in Canada) invest less than 3G?? SGSN and GGSN's (search google) are at least going to need s/w upgrades when the switch to 3G is eventually made (a pain!), and the entire GSM RF basestations will have to be replaced with WCDMA. I don't think Japan is technically above the 1mbit 3G barrier (outside of the labs), but at least they have the routing and RF subsystem that's intended to be evolved to.
Sounds to me like these carriers like AT&T and Cingulair going to GSM based networks are going to get burned hardcore in the long run. Rogers AT&T Canada is promising to support both their TDMA and GSM networks in the foreseeable future. How about when they go to WCDMA?
Also sounds to me like CDMA-2000 (sigh yes, the competing 3G standard) is far better positioned with much simpler and cheaper upgrades like 1xRTT (2x, 3x
this article may clear things up for those in doubt:
http://www.outlook4mobility.com/asabc/Oct_2_200
please.... rip my post to shreds.... knowledge..... i crave knowledge....
First of all, we want to be able to hear the music in the first place.
So what choices does that give you?
as usual, the majik#8 holds the answer you seek:
8. Walk into your local Future Shop (or Best Buy whatever) and find a cd you'd like to try. Swipe the cd's barcode under a schweet galaxy gizmo located every 10 feet, slap on the headphones, and listen to the cd. In it's entirety. In CD quality.
Once in a blue moon a product I've never heard about jumps into existance and really shocks me. This is one of them. I was truely impressed with this device. This is the first creative step I've seen the industry take in today's "mp3 world".
Here's a Yahoo article I found about it.
I'm on Shaw's cablemodem service (previously shaw@home). They've been prepping for this for months now, and everything's up full tilt. Members were encouraged over that time to painlessly switch from @home.com to @shaw.ca setttings.
Great job Shaw.
Yeah, it's damn cheap up here. I'm on my second free month of service now (after my sign up), and when I do start paying it'll be $40/mo CAD. Yes, that's $25 and change in USD.
Oh and, fast too. On my P100 rustbucket, I'm getting 500K/sec down, 300K/sec up rating from [www.dslreports.com/stest]. Durring what I'd call fairly peak time - a rainy Saturday afternoon.
join the revoloution kids. [shaw.ca]
(no... I don't work for them... but they should be paying be for this post!)
Does anyone remember the Avro Arrow?
I seem to remember that these guys toyed with the launch vehicle concept back in the 1950's. The Arrow had a huge internal missile bay, larger than that of a B-29.
Yes, it was scrapped, and the people there mustn't have had much talent. After all they did end up contributing to the Concorde, Mercury program, Gemini spacecraft, Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR), lunar module, Apollo program, and Mission Control.
Learn all about what almost was... courtesy of your neighbors to the north:
http://www.exn.ca/FlightDeck/Arrow/
Unfortunatley, much of the hardware that was developed for Ricochet has been discontinued. Hopefully the AirCard 400 can be brought up to speed again.
Although it may be tough, with GPRS, EDGE, 1xRTT gaining ground around the world. Word on the street is that Telus Mobility (Canadian) will have 1xRTT up for Q1 next year.
This bad boy can run up to 150kbps on only 1xRTT.
Just wait until 2x and 3xRTT hit the market.
What I'm still trying to figure out is if ONE standard has been chosen for REAL 3G/UMTS. The recent AT&T adoption of GSM/GPRS would suggest that WCDMA is not the way to go?? anybody?
You know... perhaps it is broadband. Just think:
1. feed high-speed data text to the video in
2. compress video
3. send over 28.8 line
4. decompress video
5. OCR out the data stream, and voilla. "broadband"
I wonder what Mr Claude Shannon would have said about this? Here's more info about the master.