It is notable that they have now substituted Li-ion batteries for the lead-acid batteries it was using when they did the drag race. This has reduced the weight of the car to less than a ton.
Three years ago, they matched a prototype of this car against a Ferarri, a Corvette, a Miata and a Porche Carerra on a 1/8 mile drag strip. It beat, by 7 lengths, all of these except the Miata. The only reason the Miata won was because the driver of the T-Zero forgot to disengage the hand brake.
CB is around 11m (27MHz). It carries long distances when the conditions are right, but cannot be relied upon to do so. You are limited to 4W on AM or 12W on SSB (Single Side Band). Although it is possible to do so, it is illegal to talk to a station that is past a certain distance (150km, I think?). Data is not permitted. The channels are very overcrowded.
MURS is a 5-channel service around 151-154MHz. FM, SSB and AM are both permitted at 2W, but pretty much only FM is found in the wild. A range of 5 miles is not unreasonable. Data is permitted.
FRS is a 14-channel service around 462-467MHz. FM only, 1/2 Watt. The manufacturers claim a 2 mile range is possible, but 1/2 mile is more like it. Very limited data is permitted.
GMRS is a 15-channel service around 462-467MHz. An additional 8 frequencies are available to use as repeater inputs only. Power up to 50W. Range of tens of mile is possible with the use of a repeater. This service shares 7 channels with FRS, giving rise to some hybrid FRS/GMRS radios. This has caused some trouble in the GMRS community because a license is required for GMRS.
None of these services are well-suited to long distance communications, and only GMRS has a mechanism to easily sanction an obstructive user (by license revocation).
Ham radio, on the other hand, has four license classes:
Technician
Technician with Morse Code, A/K/A Tech Plus
General
Extra
As you move up in the ranks, you gain access to additional frequencies.
All license classes except Technician have access to shortwave or high-frequency (HF) bands, and General and Extra also have access to a mediumwave or medium-frequency (MF) band.
For short-range communicatins, hams have UHF bands around 450MHz, 900MHz, 1200MHz and 2.4GHz (yes, it overlaps with 802.11, and hams have the right-of-way).
For medium-range communications, we have VHF bands around 54MHz, 144MHz and 222MHz.
For long-range communications, we have HF and MF bands around 28MHz, 25MHz, 21MHz, 17MHz, 14MHz, 10MHz, 7MHz, 5MHz, 3.5MHz and 1.8MHz.
Of course, you will be asking why so many. The reason is that propagation characteristics change based on weather, time of day, and frequency. At any given time, you can probably find some band that will get the signal to where you need it.
The HF/MF bands sound like a lot of spectrum, but in fact they are not. The one around 1.8MHz is only 200kHz wide -- the same space taken by a single FM broadcast station. The one around 5MHz is even smaller, consisting of five channels of 2.8kHz each. The largest of the HF bands is the one at 28MHz (called 10m) which runs from 28.000 to 29.700MHz. It is not terribly useful for most of the summer.
Let me finish with an analogy. HAM radio is a beowulf cluster of Pentium 4 machines with 2GB apiece. CB and its cousins are a '386 running DOS.
I'm going to ask a question that may sound snide, but is actually very serious: Why did you go to 800MHz? Were you using VHF-Lo, VHF-Hi or UHF before? What was the coverage like?
I ask this because in my hometown of Selkirk, NY, they use a system that is a hybrid VHF-Lo and UHF system. VHF-Lo (46.06MHz) covers the town, and the UHF is only used as a remote base, with the base radios at the three fire companies talking on 455.6375 and listening on 460.6375. It works very well. My father, who is a member of this fire department, has been fighting a movement to "upgrade" to 800MHz.
At my current locationin Schenectady, NY, they use 460.6000. It works well and has no dead spots that I am aware of. I will fight any plan the city puts forth to "upgrade" to 800MHz.
Nah, this is a technology gap, I think. What's in R&D and what's in production differ. Further, it's encumbered by backwards compatibility. If you go to the new technology, all of your old radios become basically paperweights.
There are technologies for making a smaller footprint. Comparing different signal formats for two-way, you have FM, which, when formatted for 2-way, uses 10-20kHz of bandwidth. Compare that to AM, which uses 6-10kHz, compared to single sideband (SSB), which uses 3-5kHz (usually leaning toward 3).
Also, some digital technologies are intersting. APCO-25 has two protocols, called phase I and phase II. Phase I uses 12.5kHz of bandwidth, and Phase II uses 6.25.
CDMA is the first rolled-out technology that tolerates overlap well. This protocol actually occupies several megahertz (that's megahertz, not kilohertz like I was talking about before) but allows several transmissions to go on at once on the same frequency, and can sort them out at the receiver. Verizon and Sprint PCS (and probably some others) use this technology for their digital phones.
NEXTEL is the prime culprit. The problem stems from what NEXTEL is.
a NEXTEL phone appears to be a cell phone, but legally it is a handheld, trunked two-way radio with full-duplex capability and access to a phone patch. While this accurately describes a cell phone, the evolution differs.
"Cell phones" that follow the CDMA, GSM, TDMA or even AMPS (analog) standards are all using standards that were originally developed for use as telephones. They are licensed as telephones, and use portions of the spectrum that are reserved for telephones.
Cell phones that follow the iDEN standard (this would be NEXTEL) use a protocol that evolved from a half-duplex digital trunked two-way radio system.
What NEXTEL used to be in the business of (under a different name, which I can't recall at the moment) was providing nationwide fleets with trunked digital two-way radio service. Someone in NEXTEL had this brilliant idea that if you could add full-duplex capability and a massive banked phone patch that you could compete with the cellular companies, and this is what they did.
The problem with this is that NEXTEL, being an operator of a Commercial Land Mobile Radio Service (CLMRS), gets to license portions of the spectrum intended for Land Mobile Radio Service users.
...and there is the rub. Police, fire departments, ambulances, tow trucks, taxis, and just about every business except sometimes aviation and maritime businesses, are users of the Land Mobile Radio Service. Like NEXTEL, they license portions of the spectrum that are there for the Land Mobile Radio Service (there is no distinction in spectrum allocation between a commercial and a private LMRS license).
The biggest pain here is involved in that NEXTEL does not operate on the same frequencies everywhere. They go from location to location, licensing 5-20 frequencies in the 800MHz LMRS band (and I think sometimes in the 900MHz LMRS band) in any given location, but the frequency that they allocate in one city may be the same frequency that a police department in another adjacent city is using.
Yes, the FCC probably should have prevented this. However, their allocation scheme was good enough for systems that had a low duty cycle, and it worked for decades. Introduction of a high duty cycle system such as NEXTEL broke the system.
Incidentally, I strongly advocate that police, fire and other services should not move to 800MHz trunked systems if they don't have a serious need to. The fire department in my home town of Selkirk still uses the same frequency (46.06MHz) with no repeater, no trunking, nothing except for a remote base (which communicates to the three firehouses on 460.6375 and 455.6375MHz) and provides complete coverage for the fire district with minimal vulnerabilities, including immunity from interference from NEXTEL.
BTW, WiFi is not a problem because the frequencies are nowhere near 800MHz.
"Have you ever bought anything off an infomercial and been happy with it?"
Yes. Twice.
I bought the Miracle Blade III knife set for my wife (who is a chef by profession). Very sharp, very effective. Not commercial grade, but well above standard consumer grade.
I also bought her a dehydrator. I figured this one was safe enough, since there is not much to a dehydrator (a set of racks with some air flow and a small heater element is just about it). The price was right, and it works well.
I have seen a lot of shit advertised this way, but there is actual good stuff out there.
Who was there on 9/11/01 helping to provide communications where the telephone network had buckled under the load? Oh yeah! That was us, the ham radio operators in the U.S.
And how about the time that the local telephone CO was flooded from a water main break, killing all local telephone service in the City of Schenectady, and most long-distance service for hundreds of miles around? Who was it that patrolled the city on crime and fire watch? Yep, that was us!
And who provides a means during hurricanes and firestorms for people to reach their loved ones and let them know they're OK? yep, that's us!
The internet is less important. I say that as a user of both, and as someone who has been an Internet user much longer than a ham.
I use Sprint PCS, using a 3G phone. It works very well.
My wife uses Sprint PCS using a 2G phone. It works very poorly, with frequent signal drops.
My father uses Verizon Wireless. I get a signal in many places where he does not, and I am surprised his phone hasn't become a projectile yet.
Several of my co-workers use NEXTEL (company issued). They had to install a signal booster just to get the signal into the building. Other Verizon and Sprint users do not have such a need (no, the booster cannot help Verizon or Sprint--Verizon and Sprint use different frequencies than NEXTEL).
My mother uses U.S. Cellular (I noticed they aren't in the article). Her phone is homed in Talahassee, FL, even though she lives in upstate NY (where all of these figures are drawn from) now. Her service seems to be relatively okay, but not great.
My father-in-law uses AT&T. He lives in Tulsa, OK, and when he visits here, his service positively sucks rocks.
For that matter, when I visit him, his service positively sucks rocks. Mine still works fine in Tulsa.
I suspect the worst figures on SprintPCS, which probably clobbered their overall figures, were from NYC and other major metros. They don't seem to do as well there as in slightly smaller metros like Buffalo or smaller. I think it is a capacity problem.
Specifically, they ought to allow unlicensed transmitters below a certain output power (anyone know what the iTrip's broadcast power is?).
Should be a couple of nanowatts. In order to be legal in the U.S., the field strength needs to be under 250uV/m when measured at a distance of 3m. Plugging that into the conversion formula, assuming that it has a 1/4 wave antenna (which it doesn't because the device is too small) this would give you a power level of 18.75nW. Given that the thing has a much shorter antenna than 1/4 wave (1/4 wave would be 75cm long), it may have more power to compensate for this.
(For those that actually look up the conversion formula linked above, we're solving for P, E is 250uV/m, or 250e-6, and D is 3m. A 1/4 wave antenna has a gain of 0.15dB or 1.035X. As such, I set G to 1 as "close enough.")
Sure it makes sense. If you analyse the open-source code and it comes up secure, and the closed-source comes up insecure, then you may have not quite proven, but you have at least bolstered, the assuertion often made by the open-source lobby that open-source code is more secure.
Of course, it also could come up the other way, thus giving closed-source advocates more fuel.
I think this is a valid observation. [sarcasm]Let's ban it, and while we're at it, let's ban port scanners and encryption cracking software. Oh, that's right, we already did that![/sarcasm]
Seriously, though, just about any useful security tool is also a useful cracker tool. This fact is not confined to the field of computers.
At the 2003 Rochester Hamfest, some folks were demonstrating a lower-tech, longer-range, lower-cost concept. They were using the 220MHz band to control a blimp (which has a lower energy cost than a chopper, and is also less noisy), and the 440MHz band to send back NTSC video. This setup has been used in previous years, also.
Of course, it required a license, but the license is easy to get these days, and every geek should have one, because it also makes higher-powered 802.11 legal.
One: Use hexadecimal to encode IP packets. If we assume an equal likelihood of any given of the sixteen characters being picked, the average character length will be 14.375 times the length of dit (including a trailing 3-dit space).
Two: Use the sixteen shortest characters (EITSANHURDM5VFLB) and map them to the same 16 values as in option one. Average character length: 9.375 times the length of dit, a 34% savings.
Three: Base64 with modifications to accomodate the fact that Morse Code has no upper/lower case. I'm not going to calculate that one.
Something wrong with any randomly selected key on the keyboard?
Yes. The keys on your keyboard, if used to tap out morse code, will slow you down tremendously and generate way too much noise. Morse code needs to be tapped out on a key that has a miniscule stroke (often less stroke than that of a mouse button, even) and as close to perfect timing response as possible. Keyboards, on the other hand, don't need to get the timing exact, as long as the keys are recorded by the computer in the right order.
Amateur radio is not about radio so much as communication. What we have here is failure to communicate. I'm not going to go so far as to say you are wrong; it's your repeater, not mine. I might suggest, however, that some re-thought may be in order. If you still reach the same conclusion, so be it, but I think you are missing out here.
...so assuming the standard, that dah is 3x dit, and that the space between symbols is the same as the length of dit, and the space betwen characters is the same as dah, then ELITE is 32 "units" (including a trailing character space after the last E) and 1337 is 68 "units." Sweet!
73 DE KC2IDF
(Rough translation: Best regards from Phreakiture)
If they want to re-make it, it is imperative that they not try to continue where they left off.... If I recall correctly,
Sevalan (the villain) was the only survivor.
Oh, while I'm at it, let me add to the chorus: Avon rocks!
I suspect the claim that this is a cost saving measure is, itself, actually a face-saving measure. I suspect that they are making the claim so that they don't have to admit that they were wrong.
Any operation that takes place with RFID tags takes place under Part 15 of the FCC rules and regs. That is the same part that gives us permission to use 802.11${version} wireless networking, but requires that the general public take a back seat on these frequencies to ham radio operators (because we have licenses for these frequencies, and the general public doesn't)
Part 15 comes with two provisions:
Use of any device must not cause harmful interference (to licensed users of the spectrum)
Any device must accept any interference, including that which may cause undesired operation
In other words, by using the unlicensed section of the spectrum, the users of these devices are setting themselves up for interference from other users of the spectrum.
What I personally would like to do then is construct a set of 13MHz walkie talkies. Not really very practical devices on the whole, but they should work well enough at short range. You and a friend go shopping and just happen to key up the radio each time you pass through the door. You have the legal privilidge to do this, as long as you don't mind the interference to your signal from theirs. They must accept the interference to their signal from yours.
Technical note: The modulation on your walkie talkies should be something that is guaranteed to take up the entire 14 kHz width of the band specified under Part 15. Perhaps some form of digital voice. You need to occupy 13.560MHz +/-0.007MHz inclusive.
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Yeah, I know, but I still want one.
It is notable that they have now substituted Li-ion batteries for the lead-acid batteries it was using when they did the drag race. This has reduced the weight of the car to less than a ton.
I want one of these.
Three years ago, they matched a prototype of this car against a Ferarri, a Corvette, a Miata and a Porche Carerra on a 1/8 mile drag strip. It beat, by 7 lengths, all of these except the Miata. The only reason the Miata won was because the driver of the T-Zero forgot to disengage the hand brake.
CB has three "cousins": MURS, FRS and GMRS.
CB is around 11m (27MHz). It carries long distances when the conditions are right, but cannot be relied upon to do so. You are limited to 4W on AM or 12W on SSB (Single Side Band). Although it is possible to do so, it is illegal to talk to a station that is past a certain distance (150km, I think?). Data is not permitted. The channels are very overcrowded.
MURS is a 5-channel service around 151-154MHz. FM, SSB and AM are both permitted at 2W, but pretty much only FM is found in the wild. A range of 5 miles is not unreasonable. Data is permitted.
FRS is a 14-channel service around 462-467MHz. FM only, 1/2 Watt. The manufacturers claim a 2 mile range is possible, but 1/2 mile is more like it. Very limited data is permitted.
GMRS is a 15-channel service around 462-467MHz. An additional 8 frequencies are available to use as repeater inputs only. Power up to 50W. Range of tens of mile is possible with the use of a repeater. This service shares 7 channels with FRS, giving rise to some hybrid FRS/GMRS radios. This has caused some trouble in the GMRS community because a license is required for GMRS.
None of these services are well-suited to long distance communications, and only GMRS has a mechanism to easily sanction an obstructive user (by license revocation).
Ham radio, on the other hand, has four license classes:
As you move up in the ranks, you gain access to additional frequencies.
All license classes except Technician have access to shortwave or high-frequency (HF) bands, and General and Extra also have access to a mediumwave or medium-frequency (MF) band.
For short-range communicatins, hams have UHF bands around 450MHz, 900MHz, 1200MHz and 2.4GHz (yes, it overlaps with 802.11, and hams have the right-of-way).
For medium-range communications, we have VHF bands around 54MHz, 144MHz and 222MHz.
For long-range communications, we have HF and MF bands around 28MHz, 25MHz, 21MHz, 17MHz, 14MHz, 10MHz, 7MHz, 5MHz, 3.5MHz and 1.8MHz.
Of course, you will be asking why so many. The reason is that propagation characteristics change based on weather, time of day, and frequency. At any given time, you can probably find some band that will get the signal to where you need it.
The HF/MF bands sound like a lot of spectrum, but in fact they are not. The one around 1.8MHz is only 200kHz wide -- the same space taken by a single FM broadcast station. The one around 5MHz is even smaller, consisting of five channels of 2.8kHz each. The largest of the HF bands is the one at 28MHz (called 10m) which runs from 28.000 to 29.700MHz. It is not terribly useful for most of the summer.
Let me finish with an analogy. HAM radio is a beowulf cluster of Pentium 4 machines with 2GB apiece. CB and its cousins are a '386 running DOS.
They are changing the rules. Card counting is now only allowed by the house.
Ah yes, let's throw more technology, ergo more complexity and the accompanying greater chance of a breakdown into the picture.
I have a better idea. Let's abolish networks altogether for emergency, and go back to simplex on the VHF band. It works really, really well.
I'm going to ask a question that may sound snide, but is actually very serious: Why did you go to 800MHz? Were you using VHF-Lo, VHF-Hi or UHF before? What was the coverage like?
I ask this because in my hometown of Selkirk, NY, they use a system that is a hybrid VHF-Lo and UHF system. VHF-Lo (46.06MHz) covers the town, and the UHF is only used as a remote base, with the base radios at the three fire companies talking on 455.6375 and listening on 460.6375. It works very well. My father, who is a member of this fire department, has been fighting a movement to "upgrade" to 800MHz.
At my current locationin Schenectady, NY, they use 460.6000. It works well and has no dead spots that I am aware of. I will fight any plan the city puts forth to "upgrade" to 800MHz.
Nah, this is a technology gap, I think. What's in R&D and what's in production differ. Further, it's encumbered by backwards compatibility. If you go to the new technology, all of your old radios become basically paperweights.
There are technologies for making a smaller footprint. Comparing different signal formats for two-way, you have FM, which, when formatted for 2-way, uses 10-20kHz of bandwidth. Compare that to AM, which uses 6-10kHz, compared to single sideband (SSB), which uses 3-5kHz (usually leaning toward 3).
Also, some digital technologies are intersting. APCO-25 has two protocols, called phase I and phase II. Phase I uses 12.5kHz of bandwidth, and Phase II uses 6.25.
CDMA is the first rolled-out technology that tolerates overlap well. This protocol actually occupies several megahertz (that's megahertz, not kilohertz like I was talking about before) but allows several transmissions to go on at once on the same frequency, and can sort them out at the receiver. Verizon and Sprint PCS (and probably some others) use this technology for their digital phones.
NEXTEL is the prime culprit. The problem stems from what NEXTEL is.
a NEXTEL phone appears to be a cell phone, but legally it is a handheld, trunked two-way radio with full-duplex capability and access to a phone patch. While this accurately describes a cell phone, the evolution differs.
"Cell phones" that follow the CDMA, GSM, TDMA or even AMPS (analog) standards are all using standards that were originally developed for use as telephones. They are licensed as telephones, and use portions of the spectrum that are reserved for telephones.
Cell phones that follow the iDEN standard (this would be NEXTEL) use a protocol that evolved from a half-duplex digital trunked two-way radio system.
What NEXTEL used to be in the business of (under a different name, which I can't recall at the moment) was providing nationwide fleets with trunked digital two-way radio service. Someone in NEXTEL had this brilliant idea that if you could add full-duplex capability and a massive banked phone patch that you could compete with the cellular companies, and this is what they did.
The problem with this is that NEXTEL, being an operator of a Commercial Land Mobile Radio Service (CLMRS), gets to license portions of the spectrum intended for Land Mobile Radio Service users.
...and there is the rub. Police, fire departments, ambulances, tow trucks, taxis, and just about every business except sometimes aviation and maritime businesses, are users of the Land Mobile Radio Service. Like NEXTEL, they license portions of the spectrum that are there for the Land Mobile Radio Service (there is no distinction in spectrum allocation between a commercial and a private LMRS license).
The biggest pain here is involved in that NEXTEL does not operate on the same frequencies everywhere. They go from location to location, licensing 5-20 frequencies in the 800MHz LMRS band (and I think sometimes in the 900MHz LMRS band) in any given location, but the frequency that they allocate in one city may be the same frequency that a police department in another adjacent city is using.
Yes, the FCC probably should have prevented this. However, their allocation scheme was good enough for systems that had a low duty cycle, and it worked for decades. Introduction of a high duty cycle system such as NEXTEL broke the system.
Incidentally, I strongly advocate that police, fire and other services should not move to 800MHz trunked systems if they don't have a serious need to. The fire department in my home town of Selkirk still uses the same frequency (46.06MHz) with no repeater, no trunking, nothing except for a remote base (which communicates to the three firehouses on 460.6375 and 455.6375MHz) and provides complete coverage for the fire district with minimal vulnerabilities, including immunity from interference from NEXTEL.
BTW, WiFi is not a problem because the frequencies are nowhere near 800MHz.
"Have you ever bought anything off an infomercial and been happy with it?"
Yes. Twice.
I bought the Miracle Blade III knife set for my wife (who is a chef by profession). Very sharp, very effective. Not commercial grade, but well above standard consumer grade.
I also bought her a dehydrator. I figured this one was safe enough, since there is not much to a dehydrator (a set of racks with some air flow and a small heater element is just about it). The price was right, and it works well.
I have seen a lot of shit advertised this way, but there is actual good stuff out there.
Who was there on 9/11/01 helping to provide communications where the telephone network had buckled under the load? Oh yeah! That was us, the ham radio operators in the U.S.
And how about the time that the local telephone CO was flooded from a water main break, killing all local telephone service in the City of Schenectady, and most long-distance service for hundreds of miles around? Who was it that patrolled the city on crime and fire watch? Yep, that was us!
And who provides a means during hurricanes and firestorms for people to reach their loved ones and let them know they're OK? yep, that's us!
The internet is less important. I say that as a user of both, and as someone who has been an Internet user much longer than a ham.
KC2IDF
7. Profit!
Also, its Signal to Noise is -92dB, while the theoretical best is -98.08dB.
I suspect you meant +92dB and +98.08dB.... Otherwise, this is the noise-to-signal ratio.
I use Sprint PCS, using a 3G phone. It works very well.
My wife uses Sprint PCS using a 2G phone. It works very poorly, with frequent signal drops.
My father uses Verizon Wireless. I get a signal in many places where he does not, and I am surprised his phone hasn't become a projectile yet.
Several of my co-workers use NEXTEL (company issued). They had to install a signal booster just to get the signal into the building. Other Verizon and Sprint users do not have such a need (no, the booster cannot help Verizon or Sprint--Verizon and Sprint use different frequencies than NEXTEL).
My mother uses U.S. Cellular (I noticed they aren't in the article). Her phone is homed in Talahassee, FL, even though she lives in upstate NY (where all of these figures are drawn from) now. Her service seems to be relatively okay, but not great.
My father-in-law uses AT&T. He lives in Tulsa, OK, and when he visits here, his service positively sucks rocks.
For that matter, when I visit him, his service positively sucks rocks. Mine still works fine in Tulsa.
I suspect the worst figures on SprintPCS, which probably clobbered their overall figures, were from NYC and other major metros. They don't seem to do as well there as in slightly smaller metros like Buffalo or smaller. I think it is a capacity problem.
Specifically, they ought to allow unlicensed transmitters below a certain output power (anyone know what the iTrip's broadcast power is?).
Should be a couple of nanowatts. In order to be legal in the U.S., the field strength needs to be under 250uV/m when measured at a distance of 3m. Plugging that into the conversion formula, assuming that it has a 1/4 wave antenna (which it doesn't because the device is too small) this would give you a power level of 18.75nW. Given that the thing has a much shorter antenna than 1/4 wave (1/4 wave would be 75cm long), it may have more power to compensate for this.
(For those that actually look up the conversion formula linked above, we're solving for P, E is 250uV/m, or 250e-6, and D is 3m. A 1/4 wave antenna has a gain of 0.15dB or 1.035X. As such, I set G to 1 as "close enough.")
Sure it makes sense. If you analyse the open-source code and it comes up secure, and the closed-source comes up insecure, then you may have not quite proven, but you have at least bolstered, the assuertion often made by the open-source lobby that open-source code is more secure.
Of course, it also could come up the other way, thus giving closed-source advocates more fuel.
I think this is a valid observation. [sarcasm]Let's ban it, and while we're at it, let's ban port scanners and encryption cracking software. Oh, that's right, we already did that![/sarcasm]
Seriously, though, just about any useful security tool is also a useful cracker tool. This fact is not confined to the field of computers.
At the 2003 Rochester Hamfest, some folks were demonstrating a lower-tech, longer-range, lower-cost concept. They were using the 220MHz band to control a blimp (which has a lower energy cost than a chopper, and is also less noisy), and the 440MHz band to send back NTSC video. This setup has been used in previous years, also.
Of course, it required a license, but the license is easy to get these days, and every geek should have one, because it also makes higher-powered 802.11 legal.
Three possiblities come to mind.
One: Use hexadecimal to encode IP packets. If we assume an equal likelihood of any given of the sixteen characters being picked, the average character length will be 14.375 times the length of dit (including a trailing 3-dit space).
Two: Use the sixteen shortest characters (EITSANHURDM5VFLB) and map them to the same 16 values as in option one. Average character length: 9.375 times the length of dit, a 34% savings.
Three: Base64 with modifications to accomodate the fact that Morse Code has no upper/lower case. I'm not going to calculate that one.
Something wrong with any randomly selected key on the keyboard?
Yes. The keys on your keyboard, if used to tap out morse code, will slow you down tremendously and generate way too much noise. Morse code needs to be tapped out on a key that has a miniscule stroke (often less stroke than that of a mouse button, even) and as close to perfect timing response as possible. Keyboards, on the other hand, don't need to get the timing exact, as long as the keys are recorded by the computer in the right order.
Amateur radio is not about radio so much as communication. What we have here is failure to communicate. I'm not going to go so far as to say you are wrong; it's your repeater, not mine. I might suggest, however, that some re-thought may be in order. If you still reach the same conclusion, so be it, but I think you are missing out here.
True!
ELITE = dit didadidit didit dah dit
1337 = didadadadah didididadah didididadah dadadididit
...so assuming the standard, that dah is 3x dit, and that the space between symbols is the same as the length of dit, and the space betwen characters is the same as dah, then ELITE is 32 "units" (including a trailing character space after the last E) and 1337 is 68 "units." Sweet!
73 DE KC2IDF
(Rough translation: Best regards from Phreakiture)
If they want to re-make it, it is imperative that they not try to continue where they left off.... If I recall correctly, Sevalan (the villain) was the only survivor.
Oh, while I'm at it, let me add to the chorus: Avon rocks!
I suspect the claim that this is a cost saving measure is, itself, actually a face-saving measure. I suspect that they are making the claim so that they don't have to admit that they were wrong.
Any operation that takes place with RFID tags takes place under Part 15 of the FCC rules and regs. That is the same part that gives us permission to use 802.11${version} wireless networking, but requires that the general public take a back seat on these frequencies to ham radio operators (because we have licenses for these frequencies, and the general public doesn't)
Part 15 comes with two provisions:
In other words, by using the unlicensed section of the spectrum, the users of these devices are setting themselves up for interference from other users of the spectrum.
What I personally would like to do then is construct a set of 13MHz walkie talkies. Not really very practical devices on the whole, but they should work well enough at short range. You and a friend go shopping and just happen to key up the radio each time you pass through the door. You have the legal privilidge to do this, as long as you don't mind the interference to your signal from theirs. They must accept the interference to their signal from yours.
Technical note: The modulation on your walkie talkies should be something that is guaranteed to take up the entire 14 kHz width of the band specified under Part 15. Perhaps some form of digital voice. You need to occupy 13.560MHz +/-0.007MHz inclusive.
Off topic, Flamebait