TiO2 and self-cleaning glass
on
The Sexiest Metal
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
One other neat application of Ti is TiO2 coating glass and other surfaces. The TiO2, when exposed to UV light (like sunlight) causes a catalytic reaction oxidizing anything on the surface.
Car windows treated with TiO2 on the outside would literally burn off the gunk that gets on them (insects, bird splats, hydrocarbon grunge) in the sunlight, staying clean.
There has even been talk of using this in medical surfaces (exam tables and O.R.s) - when you are done, flood the area with some UV and burn the microbes off the surface. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=TiO 2+UV+surfa ce+treatment">here's a link to some pages on Google.
Subj: Your "protect your freedoms" campaign - WMA's considered harmful...
I am very glad to see Gateway supporting our freedoms to use our computers how we see fit with the http://gateway.com/home/deals/offers/music/dmz.sht ml website. However, for those of us who choose to be free from Microsoft, you site is a little descrimitory - how about having MPEGs of the movies, as well as WMAs, so that Mac or Linux users can also enjoy the content?
Data packets? You wanting to look at trunking, or mobile term stuff?
Re:CDMA is very hard to hack
on
GNU Radio
·
· Score: 2
Not with the right equipment, like the stuff I help design. Of course, if you buy a $80,000 1900BSA you rather expect that sort of thing....
Re:This won't let you listen to cellular.
on
GNU Radio
·
· Score: 2
I stand corrected - it's just that I didn't see the specs for the hardware, and so I assumed you were pulling the IF out of a normal scanner.
Also, do remember I tend to think not just in terms of decoding a signal, but in terms of performing parameterics on it, and generating the other side of the signal at the same time. Measuring takes more work than just decoding, and I tend to forget that not everybody is building test equipment - you don't have to worry about syncing your transmitter to the TDMA timeslots since you are receive only, you don't have to worry about measuring modulation accuracy, audio distortion, frequency error, burst power, all the while adjusting your own signal parms, running the simulation scenario, and keeping the hardware in cal over temperature. Especially since people seem to think a $20,000 service monitor ought to outperform a $20,000 measuring receiver, $50,000 spectrum analzyer, $5,000 audio analzyer, $10,000 RF signal generator, $5,000 microwattmeter, etc., and do all of the above at the same time.
And as for downloading the code - while I love the GPL, and would dearly love to release the code I do under it, I have to link to things like the DVSI codec - and somehow I don't think DVSI is going to GPL that. So I get a bit cagey about downloading code in that area - that way I cannot violate the GPL unintentionally.
And actually, what you describe is EXACTLY what you do with the Intersil parts - you filter and decimate like a big dog, you just do so with the chip, and save your DSP MIPS for the other stuff.
However, do you REALLY have the CPU to do CDMA at the 1.5 MChip/sec rate? Even with a Athlon 2000, that's not much more than 2000 cycles/chip to do the correlation.
Re:This won't let you listen to cellular.
on
GNU Radio
·
· Score: 2
Depends upon whether you want to do phase 1 or phase 2 - phase 1 is plain old FM, at 4800 baud, 2 bits per symbol. You could do pretty well oversampling by 10, or 48000 ksample/sec, and then picking the sample with the lowest intersymbol interference (that's basically what we do, although we do it at a much higher sample rate.) Then you slice the data to get the symbols and process them.
Phase 2 is QPSK - phase shifted carrier, although you are *supposed* to be able to receive it with a normal FM detector, for backwards compatibility.
The only real problem would be, once you've recovered the frames, you'd need an implementation of the DVSI IMBE vocoder to recover the audio, and if the channel is doing DES, you'd need to crack the DES key on the audio.
Why would you want to look at these signals, except to eavesdrop on the police? Just curiosity - I know why I want to do it (cause that's what I get paid to do), but why do you want to?
This won't let you listen to cellular.
on
GNU Radio
·
· Score: 5, Informative
First, all they are doing is taking the 455kHz IF from an existing radio, digitizing it, and using the computer to do the demodulation. Thus, if your radio won't receive the cellular band, your computer won't either. And if your radio can tune into the cell band, you can listen to AMPS without a computer - it's just narrowband FM.
Now, if you are talking about GSM, PCS, CDMA, or anything other than AMPS, then you will need more than just a receiver that can tune those bands. CDMA is spread over 1.5MHz of spectrum - unless your radio has an IF that wide you are out of luck.
GSM and PCS (which is just GSM at a different frequency) is narrowband, but it's still more complicated than FM- you need to be able to receive the complex (in the a + (srqt(-1))w sense of the word) waveform, and pull the bits out of the air. Then, you need to decode the protocol, run the vocoder algorithm, and generate the audio. We use TI C6X DSPs capable of 1.6BOPS, with special opcodes to help the decoding, and Special chips to do the grunt work and it still takes a lot of work to get it to run in real time.
Now, if you are a ham, and you want to do sideband, PSK31, or other modes, this is a great thing. But don't expect to be able to monitor your neighbor's phone with it.
Besides, if you ever HAD monitored cellular, you't realize it's about as interesting as watching grass grow.
Initial analysis indicates that only four small stainless-steel batteries, weighing a total of 15 kilograms (33 pounds) will survive re-entry.
In other words, the weight of all 4 batteries is 15 kilos, not the weight of each battery. Still, 3.5 kilos at terminal velocity is nothing to sneeze at - perhaps I should buy a large number of pillows from Yahoo!....
That's 130MPH in a pursuit, i.e. not in a straight line keep accelerating until you don't anymore. That's 130MPH in a "subject turning right onto Hydraulic" "Subject turning left onto 63rd" slow down speed up slam on brakes slam on gas chase.
I've seen Crown Vic Police Intercepts owned by the Highway Patrol chasing sportscars on the interstates - and the sports cars weren't pulling away.
Of course, speed is moot in such chases - no matter how fast your car, unless it can make over 3E8m/sec, you cannot outrun the radio.
I agree - I drive a Grand Marquis, with the performance pack, and I love the kids who think that "big boat car = slow". They forget that the police drive Crown Victoria's for a reason - a cop friend of mine had his Crown Vic over 130MPH in a pursuit. 4.6l with EFI can move.
Now, when I have to replace my car, I'd love to get a Grand Marquis Marauder - going from normally aspirated to supercharged would be even better. The only problem is that the Marauder has crap I don't want - leather seats and a very distinctive trim package. I like q-ships - its great fun to surprise a kid with what's under the hood of a normal looking car. Besides, driving an "arrest me red" sportscar gets you far too much attention from the police - they really don't look twice at a sedate-looking sedan, especially one with a 2M antenna and 440MHz antenna on the trunk....
(and a moment of silence for my previous car - a 1973 Mercury Monterey Custom with a 400 that was killed when the idiots at United Engine Specialists, West Kellog, Wichita, USA botched the engine rebuild and the poor thing oil starved, collapsed it's lifters, ate the #2 intake valve and finally siezed solid 700 miles from home. Needless to say, I don't recomend United Engine Specialist's work.)
Screw the Tivo-like functions - I have a Real Tivo and the Tivo software is what makes it good.
What I like about the ATI is that it has fast OpenGL and TV tuner support under Linux with free software drivers! Stable, fast, I have the code and I can tweak it.
If you would like to forward unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) to the Commission, please send it directly to UCE@FTC.GOV without using this form.
So, add that to Securities and Exchange commissions abuse site enforcement@sec.gov and you have some good places to forward your spam.
Send all "Great new stock tip" crap to the SEC, send all the ripoff products to the FTC, and copy Spamcop on everything, and maybe we can crush these bastards.
(Hey, by placing these addresses on a public site like/., they are likely to get harvested by the spammers....)
The so called "Pizza ruling" by the FCC states that an amateur radio operator may use Amateur radio to contact a business for business purposes as long as the amateur has no finacial interest in the transaction.
Ordering a pizza online is OK, since you aren't making money on the deal. Calling a tow truck is OK, for the same reason.
However, *dispatching* a pizza delivery over amateur radio ict verboten.
Also, whatever link you are transmitting on must ID itself via a recognized format at least every 10 minutes if not more frequently. In AX.25, your callsign is a part of every packet you send - I don't see how you could ID on an 802.11 system, as you must send your callsign in an accepted format - I don't think sending an ICMP with your callsign in it would be accepted.
And yes, any SSH, SSL, or encrypted files would be right out, as would porn, or commercial traffic in which you had an interest.
Also, the issue of "third party" communications arises. If my station is talking to another ham's station, all is well, but if I'm reading/. over this link, I am conducting "third party" conversations (unless Cmdr Taco is a ham, which as far as I can tell, he is not). Third party converstations are limited - certain countries are off limits.
Also, going to a 100 watt transmitter is really going to increase the range over which people can intercept your conversations.
The only (ahem) reasons to to this I can see are:
"mine's bigger than yours is"
To completely JAM someone you don't like (normal 802.11 operates under Part 15 rules, hams under Part 97, and (to paraphase the line from Fist Full Of Dollars) "when a radio under part 15 meets a radio under part 97, the radio under part 15 is a dead radio").
The first reason is rather pathetic, and the second is a complete violation of the spirit of amateur radio.
You missed the point. The point is, that with the method I described, you are no more able to get my card number than you would be were I to type it in from the keyboard.
What you CANNOT do is get a worm on my machine, and read (the registry|my home directory) to get my credit card number - you would have to comprimise my machine, and keep it comprimised until such time as I made an online purchase. You couldn't do a quick "smash and grab" - crack my machine, get the data, and who cares if I find the worm fifteen minutes later.
And my point re: P3P stands - the site's XML says "We won't sell your information, we won't trade it, we'll keep it to ourselves. Honest!". Until they decide to change their minds, and sell out to the highest bidder.
Face it: once you give information to somebody, you no longer control to whom they give that information, therefor if you want to control who has your information, don't give it out.
I give my browser all sorts of information about me, some of which I don't want distributed widely
I then trust the remote web site to correctly identify what they are asking for, and that they will use the data in the way the P3P data says it will be used.
So, if I trust the web site to correctly implement their privacy policy, why don't I trust them with my data?
If I don't trust them with my data, why do I trust them to correctly implement a privacy policy?
In fact, this is one of the few real uses for a Cue-Cat I can think of- have your credit card numbers et. al. printed out on a barcode chart next to your computer. You see the pretty shiny thing you want on the web site, they want your credit card number, you scan the paper. I DEFY any 1337 haxor to get that by ownxoring my machine - I have to scan it.
Actually, you'd be surprised. I used to have a 10 disk changer in the trunk, and it would skip at the drop of a hat. I've had no problems with my Neo, and it uses standard drives, not notebook drives.
Remember, the mass of a hard disk head assembly is much less than the mass of a CD laser assembly, and the mass of your car itself provides damping to the system - you get long lasting but low accelerations, rather than the short (10g) shocks that kill hard disks. For normal cars, if you get a bump bad enough to bounce the heads, you probably have other, more expensive things to worry about.
Now, if you are seriously offroading it, that would be different - I'd want a flash based solution for that. But, if you are seriously offroading it, you probably don't need to be listening to music....
You should assign LOGICAL names to services, and then map them into actual hosts via CNAME records.
For example, we have our servers named after the characters from Cheers - norm, diane, cliff, lillith, etc.
We also have functional names - smtp, pop3, dns, etc.
Now, in the DNS records, we have:
smtp CNAME cliff pop3 CNAME cliff dns CNAME norm
As a result, the clients are configured to send mail to smtp, get mail from pop3, but that is mapped into cliff. If we move outbound mail to norm, we just change the cname.
I can hardly wait until a release of Mozilla that fixed the annoying behavior of Mozilla's mail and news system - you cannot select a message without displaying it, thus you cannot forward a spam onto Spamcop without Mozilla starting to render it (and fetching any webbugs in it).
They supposedly have a patch to fix this, but I don't see that bug fix listed in the release notes for 0.9.9
I would assert that a simple "time make -j32 bzImage" (which is what is being quoted) is not a very good benchmark as it is.
Reason? Not enough information as to the options.
What version kernel was he building (actually, the LKML post did give this, but as a general statement this objection still stands)
What were his compile options? Building a kernel with everything possible built as modules will take a great deal less time to build bzImage (the non-module part of the kernel) than would a kernel with everything built in.
Then there's the issue of buffercache - to be consistent you would have to do a "make -j32 bzImage && make -j32 clean && time make -j32 bzImage" in order to have a consistent set of files in the VFS buffercache.
Slashdot Mirror
One other neat application of Ti is TiO2 coating glass and other surfaces. The TiO2, when exposed to UV light (like sunlight) causes a catalytic reaction oxidizing anything on the surface.
O 2+UV+surfa ce+treatment">here's a link to some pages on Google.
Car windows treated with TiO2 on the outside would literally burn off the gunk that gets on them (insects, bird splats, hydrocarbon grunge) in the sunlight, staying clean.
There has even been talk of using this in medical surfaces (exam tables and O.R.s) - when you are done, flood the area with some UV and burn the microbes off the surface.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Ti
a href="
Maybe they should contact these guys?
Bzzt! No, this is what I do.
Data packets? You wanting to look at trunking, or mobile term stuff?
Not with the right equipment, like the stuff I help design. Of course, if you buy a $80,000 1900BSA you rather expect that sort of thing....
I stand corrected - it's just that I didn't see the specs for the hardware, and so I assumed you were pulling the IF out of a normal scanner.
Also, do remember I tend to think not just in terms of decoding a signal, but in terms of performing parameterics on it, and generating the other side of the signal at the same time. Measuring takes more work than just decoding, and I tend to forget that not everybody is building test equipment - you don't have to worry about syncing your transmitter to the TDMA timeslots since you are receive only, you don't have to worry about measuring modulation accuracy, audio distortion, frequency error, burst power, all the while adjusting your own signal parms, running the simulation scenario, and keeping the hardware in cal over temperature. Especially since people seem to think a $20,000 service monitor ought to outperform a $20,000 measuring receiver, $50,000 spectrum analzyer, $5,000 audio analzyer, $10,000 RF signal generator, $5,000 microwattmeter, etc., and do all of the above at the same time.
And as for downloading the code - while I love the GPL, and would dearly love to release the code I do under it, I have to link to things like the DVSI codec - and somehow I don't think DVSI is going to GPL that. So I get a bit cagey about downloading code in that area - that way I cannot violate the GPL unintentionally.
And actually, what you describe is EXACTLY what you do with the Intersil parts - you filter and decimate like a big dog, you just do so with the chip, and save your DSP MIPS for the other stuff.
However, do you REALLY have the CPU to do CDMA at the 1.5 MChip/sec rate? Even with a Athlon 2000, that's not much more than 2000 cycles/chip to do the correlation.
Depends upon whether you want to do phase 1 or phase 2 - phase 1 is plain old FM, at 4800 baud, 2 bits per symbol. You could do pretty well oversampling by 10, or 48000 ksample/sec, and then picking the sample with the lowest intersymbol interference (that's basically what we do, although we do it at a much higher sample rate.) Then you slice the data to get the symbols and process them.
Phase 2 is QPSK - phase shifted carrier, although you are *supposed* to be able to receive it with a normal FM detector, for backwards compatibility.
The only real problem would be, once you've recovered the frames, you'd need an implementation of the DVSI IMBE vocoder to recover the audio, and if the channel is doing DES, you'd need to crack the DES key on the audio.
Why would you want to look at these signals, except to eavesdrop on the police? Just curiosity - I know why I want to do it (cause that's what I get paid to do), but why do you want to?
I do this for a living, and I can tell you this won't help you listen to cellular.
First, all they are doing is taking the 455kHz IF from an existing radio, digitizing it, and using the computer to do the demodulation. Thus, if your radio won't receive the cellular band, your computer won't either. And if your radio can tune into the cell band, you can listen to AMPS without a computer - it's just narrowband FM.
Now, if you are talking about GSM, PCS, CDMA, or anything other than AMPS, then you will need more than just a receiver that can tune those bands. CDMA is spread over 1.5MHz of spectrum - unless your radio has an IF that wide you are out of luck.
GSM and PCS (which is just GSM at a different frequency) is narrowband, but it's still more complicated than FM- you need to be able to receive the complex (in the a + (srqt(-1))w sense of the word) waveform, and pull the bits out of the air. Then, you need to decode the protocol, run the vocoder algorithm, and generate the audio. We use TI C6X DSPs capable of 1.6BOPS, with special opcodes to help the decoding, and Special chips to do the grunt work and it still takes a lot of work to get it to run in real time.
Now, if you are a ham, and you want to do sideband, PSK31, or other modes, this is a great thing. But don't expect to be able to monitor your neighbor's phone with it.
Besides, if you ever HAD monitored cellular, you't realize it's about as interesting as watching grass grow.
In other words, the weight of all 4 batteries is 15 kilos, not the weight of each battery. Still, 3.5 kilos at terminal velocity is nothing to sneeze at - perhaps I should buy a large number of pillows from Yahoo!....
That's 130MPH in a pursuit, i.e. not in a straight line keep accelerating until you don't anymore. That's 130MPH in a "subject turning right onto Hydraulic" "Subject turning left onto 63rd" slow down speed up slam on brakes slam on gas chase.
I've seen Crown Vic Police Intercepts owned by the Highway Patrol chasing sportscars on the interstates - and the sports cars weren't pulling away.
Of course, speed is moot in such chases - no matter how fast your car, unless it can make over 3E8m/sec, you cannot outrun the radio.
I agree - I drive a Grand Marquis, with the performance pack, and I love the kids who think that "big boat car = slow". They forget that the police drive Crown Victoria's for a reason - a cop friend of mine had his Crown Vic over 130MPH in a pursuit. 4.6l with EFI can move.
Now, when I have to replace my car, I'd love to get a Grand Marquis Marauder - going from normally aspirated to supercharged would be even better. The only problem is that the Marauder has crap I don't want - leather seats and a very distinctive trim package. I like q-ships - its great fun to surprise a kid with what's under the hood of a normal looking car. Besides, driving an "arrest me red" sportscar gets you far too much attention from the police - they really don't look twice at a sedate-looking sedan, especially one with a 2M antenna and 440MHz antenna on the trunk....
(and a moment of silence for my previous car - a 1973 Mercury Monterey Custom with a 400 that was killed when the idiots at United Engine Specialists, West Kellog, Wichita, USA botched the engine rebuild and the poor thing oil starved, collapsed it's lifters, ate the #2 intake valve and finally siezed solid 700 miles from home. Needless to say, I don't recomend United Engine Specialist's work.)
Screw the Tivo-like functions - I have a Real Tivo and the Tivo software is what makes it good.
What I like about the ATI is that it has fast OpenGL and TV tuner support under Linux with free software drivers! Stable, fast, I have the code and I can tweak it.
That's what motivates me to buy one.
So, add that to Securities and Exchange commissions abuse site enforcement@sec.gov and you have some good places to forward your spam.
Send all "Great new stock tip" crap to the SEC, send all the ripoff products to the FTC, and copy Spamcop on everything, and maybe we can crush these bastards.
(Hey, by placing these addresses on a public site like
Ordering a pizza online is OK, since you aren't making money on the deal. Calling a tow truck is OK, for the same reason.
However, *dispatching* a pizza delivery over amateur radio ict verboten.
Also, whatever link you are transmitting on must ID itself via a recognized format at least every 10 minutes if not more frequently. In AX.25, your callsign is a part of every packet you send - I don't see how you could ID on an 802.11 system, as you must send your callsign in an accepted format - I don't think sending an ICMP with your callsign in it would be accepted.
And yes, any SSH, SSL, or encrypted files would be right out, as would porn, or commercial traffic in which you had an interest.
Also, the issue of "third party" communications arises. If my station is talking to another ham's station, all is well, but if I'm reading
Also, going to a 100 watt transmitter is really going to increase the range over which people can intercept your conversations.
The only (ahem) reasons to to this I can see are:
The first reason is rather pathetic, and the second is a complete violation of the spirit of amateur radio.
It may have a 60000 word vocabulary, but 30000 of the words are "beedy-beedy-beedy"
And the optional computer to translate for you is another $60k.
In my mind, his actions make it all the more likely he is guilty.
These actions just cry out, "i @M 1337! i \/\/i11 0n><0r j00 1@\/\/3rz! i \/\/i11 h@><0r D 13@g@1 5y573m!"
And that is exactly the sort of attitude that somebody who would have done what he is accused of would have to have.
The 0th rule of law - "DON'T PISS OFF THE JUDGE"
The 1st rule of law - "A man who represents himself has a fool for a client".
The english link is rather thin on information - how is this device supposed to "connect" and "allow access" to my PC?
For my computers, it wouldn't be a big deal to export DISPLAY=tablet:0, but for Windows users how would this work? VNC, perhaps?
Or is this just using your PC as a gateway, and running it's own software.
Any bets on how long until this is running Linux?
A lifesize replica of a Gameboy would be the same size as a Gameboy. This is not - this is much larger than a Gameboy.
</mode>
You missed the point. The point is, that with the method I described, you are no more able to get my card number than you would be were I to type it in from the keyboard.
What you CANNOT do is get a worm on my machine, and read (the registry|my home directory) to get my credit card number - you would have to comprimise my machine, and keep it comprimised until such time as I made an online purchase. You couldn't do a quick "smash and grab" - crack my machine, get the data, and who cares if I find the worm fifteen minutes later.
And my point re: P3P stands - the site's XML says "We won't sell your information, we won't trade it, we'll keep it to ourselves. Honest!". Until they decide to change their minds, and sell out to the highest bidder.
Face it: once you give information to somebody, you no longer control to whom they give that information, therefor if you want to control who has your information, don't give it out.
So, if I trust the web site to correctly implement their privacy policy, why don't I trust them with my data?
If I don't trust them with my data, why do I trust them to correctly implement a privacy policy?
In fact, this is one of the few real uses for a Cue-Cat I can think of- have your credit card numbers et. al. printed out on a barcode chart next to your computer. You see the pretty shiny thing you want on the web site, they want your credit card number, you scan the paper. I DEFY any 1337 haxor to get that by ownxoring my machine - I have to scan it.
Actually, you'd be surprised. I used to have a 10 disk changer in the trunk, and it would skip at the drop of a hat. I've had no problems with my Neo, and it uses standard drives, not notebook drives.
Remember, the mass of a hard disk head assembly is much less than the mass of a CD laser assembly, and the mass of your car itself provides damping to the system - you get long lasting but low accelerations, rather than the short (10g) shocks that kill hard disks. For normal cars, if you get a bump bad enough to bounce the heads, you probably have other, more expensive things to worry about.
Now, if you are seriously offroading it, that would be different - I'd want a flash based solution for that. But, if you are seriously offroading it, you probably don't need to be listening to music....
So, how long until the ICANN board starts calling themselves "General this" and "El Presidente that"?
These are the antics of a banana republic dictator - the same methods should be used to remove them.
Come mister ICANN
Tally me domain name
Alternate root gonna break you down
It's dot-biz dot-per dot-com CRASH
Alternate root gonna break you down
They!
They say PAAAAY-OH
Alternate root gonna break you down
You should assign LOGICAL names to services, and then map them into actual hosts via CNAME records.
For example, we have our servers named after the characters from Cheers - norm, diane, cliff, lillith, etc.
We also have functional names - smtp, pop3, dns, etc.
Now, in the DNS records, we have:
smtp CNAME cliff
pop3 CNAME cliff
dns CNAME norm
As a result, the clients are configured to send mail to smtp, get mail from pop3, but that is mapped into cliff. If we move outbound mail to norm, we just change the cname.
I can hardly wait until a release of Mozilla that fixed the annoying behavior of Mozilla's mail and news system - you cannot select a message without displaying it, thus you cannot forward a spam onto Spamcop without Mozilla starting to render it (and fetching any webbugs in it).
They supposedly have a patch to fix this, but I don't see that bug fix listed in the release notes for 0.9.9
Reason? Not enough information as to the options.
Never the less:
I WANT ONE