I didn't think the 841 supported PoE. So how are you doing that?
I'm trying to do the same thing and I've been toying with the idea of building an adapter but the last I looked at the 802.3af spec it didn't sound like a lot of fun.
Just remember, most of those recruiters will say ANYTHING to get you to sign their papers... so if you're thinking about joining up just for that, make sure you get it in writing that they can "wipe the felony" away.
I don't think the armed forces can actually do that, anyway. On the other hand, if it was small enough and long enough ago, perhaps you could have a lawyer petition the court to have your felony expunged from your record... google 'expunge felony' for a zillion hits.
For whatever it's worth, I blame Orbitz entirely, hoping that they don't pay outside counsel to write these awful things. I ASSume that the TOS and privacy policy are written by in-house marketing weenies and approved by their general counsel.
And you hit the nail on the head about Wal-mart. That's actually what I hate most about dealing with big companies - when someone really fucks up, who do you yell at? The poor clerk? No, and you can never find the guy who's really at fault.
It frustrates me no end that companies keep on changing their TOS and privacy policies. As a person whose free time keeps getting sucked up by Slashdot, I really haven't the time or interest in reviewing every little change a lawyer wants to make in these documents.
And besides, how much do I need to use Orbitz? I don't find cheaper tickets there. I can always go straight to the airline, and if I really don't want to deal with a TOS, I can call them up myself or get a travel agent to do it. Hell, the last time I booked a flight for personal travel, my agent found me tickets that were about $100 cheaper each than the best I could find online.
Even if you do consider the rental car companies, none of them rent to people under 18 nor do they allow drivers under 18. Which means that someone 18 or over must be in the car at all times when it's running, so this is not a good example.
As far as I know, U-haul is the only company that will rent to 18 year olds. All the other companies require you to be 25, unless your company has a contract with them.
In the design of a CPU motherboard power supply, I suppose my two biggest concerns were heat and transient response. In dealing with the heat issue, you have to select the "best" components to make the system work. In other words, the cheapest set that will work. That's not trivial at all. First you decide how many phases to work with, considering that the norm is about 25-30 A per phase maximum. Then you pick a frequency. The operating frequency of the multiphase converter determines the inductors you use, and those get HOT at high frequency, due to core loss effects. Then the MOSFETs, and you parallel however many as are necessary to keep the heat down while also keeping the cost down -- usually an empirical selection process (hours upon hours in the lab learning what works and what doesn't).
On the other side you're dealing with transient response. That is, the CPU is working hard, decoding your DVD's and playing MP3's and all that other sht. And then, suddenly, it's not doing much at all. The load goes from, say, 110 A to 10 A, or at least that's how the design might go. Now you have to select capacitors to deal with that. These capacitors are selected based on some specified parameters, such as raw, bulk capacitance and ESR, as well as some unspecified ones, such as ESL and whether or not you have any in the lab. And they are tested and tested to death. It's amazing how much component placement and orientation can matter.
In the field, you do not have the tools to test the resulting design, so it's not a great idea to dick around with the decoupling solution. But for fun, if you had a motherboard to mess around with, you could try replacing whatever existing bulks with the smallest Sanyo OS-CON's you can find, or some of those sweet Fujitsu yellow caps, I never found a part number. If the total C is at least the same as what you had, it "might" work.
As far as MOSFETs go, to replace them you're mostly worried about heat. For the high side switches, you worry about gate charge Qg and thetaJA, the lower the better. For the low side switches, RDSON and thetaJA, the lower the better. The high side switches aren't on very much (only 1.5/12 of the time) and depending on the switching speed they will generate a lot of heat. So we want good switching capability out of them. The lowside switches are on 10.5/12 of the time so we want them to conduct well, with low resistance.
But if you replace the MOSFETs, and you happen to find low side switches with too high gate charge, the existing drivers may be unable to deal with them, and so you are screwed. Drivers can be tough, depending on whether or not they are standard. There is a fairly standard SO-8 format for driver pinouts that is ignored as often as it is accepted.
In short, there's not a lot you can do. Replacing inductors is too hard to do right, and same with the power design. Best bet, go with the Intel design (and no, I don't and didn't work for them, and I don't own stock in them, I just understand their methodology). If not, then buy the motherboard with the most phases (most big inductors around the CPU). That means the lowest current per phase and, if well designed, the best future CPU upgrading capability.
As another poster pointed out, until a complete shift in technology occurs, this will not happen. Power loss in a wire follows the law P=VI. The lower the CPU supply voltage, the higher the input current will be.
We continue to move to higher CPU switching frequencies and lower CPU voltages. Why? Well, higher frequency means higher clock speed, and greater processing power. Another way to increase processing power is to add complexity to the circuit, which means a larger chip. BUT, you can reduce the size of the chip by reducing the size of the features required to implement your changes. And that, my friend, means you need a lower voltage, or you will destroy those tiny, delicate features (breakdown the MOS gate oxide layer).
The relationship between power loss, switching frequency, and voltage, is straightforward:
P = C*V*f
You can't really work that out for a modern CPU but it is illustrative.
And with upwards of 100 A at less than 1.5V driving your CPU, motherboards will have an onboard VR (voltage regulator) for years to come. I used to test with an old ATX supply (before the ATX 2.0 spec added the tiny 2x2 12 V connector) and after pulling 12 A through the single wire supplying 12 V for fifteen minutes, the insulation became brittle and browned. You would need to more than double your existing wires just for DC... and don't get me started about all those capacitors again!
Actually, the electrolytic capacitors used by most companies are definitely in cents, but they are in the thirty to fifty cent range typically. If you think about that, for the recent P4-type motherboards, you're looking at around 6-12 of these, if they do it right, and depending on a variety of factors. That's $18 minimum! And no vendor can advertise that their motherboard is "rock solid," because something is eventually gonna cause it to crash. So, looking at two boards on the shelf, would you really spend $20 more? Well, you can tell by looking at your existing motherboard. If it's an Intel, then I guess you do.
VRM's cost a fortune. You have to pay for an extra board (cheap, but...), the connector, and more of those expensive capacitors, usually. Even the cheap stuff adds up. VRM's are only appropriate where you have a multiprocessor system and you plan to start with one processor and build up later.
I used to design motherboard power system components, and the author spends a good bit of time talking about that. That is actually the most complicated part of the board design, as it is not at all automated. Most component vendors try to sell a complete solution to the motherboard vendor, easing their job somewhat while helping the sales of the component vendor.
One particularly interesting item of note: all those capacitors the author describes are absolutely crucial, and together form one of the largest cost items on the board. The system is tested using a processor-vendor-supplied "load tool" which simulates the worst case load transients one can ever expect to see. Most of that testing is done by the power system component vendor and then provided as a block to the motherboard vendor. Most motherboard vendors have no idea what they are doing there.
In fact, a lot of the foreign manufacturers (no names) cost-reduce their designs by simply pulling out caps until the system blue screens. Then they put the last one back in and sell it. Intel is the only manufacturer I am aware of that actually sells the worst-case performing design.
Note that I am only aware of products related to Intel-type motherboards. I never worked on the othe stuff.
I can agree with a lot of what I read here. I recently (December 03) had LASEK on my left eye. The "E" in LASEK is for "Epithelial". The difference, medically, is that the surgery is performed closer to the surface of the eye. In practice, the difference is pain (more) and no flap (so all those worries about the army and air force not liking this surgery are crap).
I had mine done at the Mass Eye and Ear Institute in Boston by Dmitri Azar, who was involved in this particular surgery from the beginning. And I met an eye doc there who'd actually had LASIK. I did the LASEK because of a dream of joining the FBI and because my corneas are a bit thin for the necessary correction.
Here's my big thoughts.
1. Things can go wrong. Know that and expect that it could happen. It probably won't, but you might not end up with what you thought you'd get.
2. Night vision issues are a possibility. Spend the extra cash for the wavefront correction (well worth it, I can clearly see things with the one LASEK corrected eye which I cannot even detect with my contact lens-filled eye).
3. If you're the least bit squeamish, be sure you know what you're up against. Remember, you actually have to WATCH what's happening in this surgery. A good doc takes care to not bring a knife straight in at your eye, but rather slips it around the edge of your field of vision. Nonetheless, it's pretty freaky to watch, even on a Valium or two.
4. Interview your docs. Find out how many problems they've had. Especially infections, which can pretty quickly and permanently damage your vision.
5. Know that, if things go wrong, you might not even be able to correct your vision to what you had before with contacts or glasses. Be sure you're ready for that possibility.
6. Don't travel too far for a doc. If there are any issues or problems you want to be able to waltz right in there and kick your doc's ass. Or bitch him out a bit. Basically, get the best guy you can afford within an hour of your home or work.
On the whole, I like it. With my wavefront-laser-corrected eye, I can clearly read things in dim light, like scores on a TV 30 feet across a bar. I can't even see the score BOX on the TV with my contact-lens eye. It's a little confusing to have one LASEK and one contact lens, but you get used to it. I'm just afraid to do the other eye... the LASEK surgery is a lot of mechanical work on your eye that you have to watch.
One other possibility - gas permeable lenses which slowly reshape your eye. You wear the rigid lens sometimes, maybe every night, and it reshapes your eye like a retainer does for your teeth. This is known as either "ortho keratatomy" (Ortho-K) or "Corneal Reshaping Therapy" (CRT). A site which talks about CRT is at http://www.paragoncrt.com/. I'm thinking about doing that for my other eye.
Man, this is a great idea as a learning tool but totally impractical for production purposes. In the end of the paper, section 8, the author writes that this could be used for things like detecting speeds of vehicles on streets or detecting water leaks. There is NO way that such large-scale applications could be made inexpensively with separate individual components like these. I work in the semiconductor industry and margins on commodity components like these would become are razor thin. It's like that because nobody will spend extra money if they can get away with it. Any engineer worth his salt would rather design it right rather than get it done with these kiddie building blocks.
There is definitely no "no-fly" zone around US nuke plants. As the parent points out, this is a good thing - it would be tough as hell to fly out of several airports.
As a private pilot I am aware of the latest rules and, for once, I am prepared to back up these assertions. According to the JCS NOTAM (NOtice To AirMen) office at https://www.notams.jcs.mil/
A0008/03 (FDC 3/1655) -...SPECIAL NOTICE... FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS. PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 99.7, SPECIAL SECURITY INSTRUCTIONS, PILOTS CONDUCTING FLIGHT OPERATIONS WITHIN THE TERRITORIAL AIRSPACE OF THE U.S. ARE ADVISED TO AVOID THE AIRSPACE ABOVE OR IN PROXIMITY TO ALL NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. PILOTS SHOULD NOT CIRCLE OR LOITER IN THE VICINITY OF SUCH FACILITIES. PILOTS WHO DO SO CAN EXPECT TO BE INTERVIEWED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL AT THEIR DESTINATION AIRPORT AND THE PILOT'S NAME MAY BE ADDED TO THE TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (TSA INCIDENT REPORTING SYSTEM. WIE UNTIL UFN
In other words, if you screw around (maybe using the cooling stacks as your reference for "turns about a point," for example) over a nuclear power plant, you can expect that your life will be made to totally suck. I mean, who cares about having to talk to the cops afterwards (probably at gunpoint) -- the TSA "Incident Reporting System" is not a database that I want my name attached to. I have to fly commercially way too much for THAT flag to be raised on me.
My favorite is the picture of the faded wording on the side of a building on chapter 12. It is part of the old Soviet national anthem, roughly translated (my Russian is kinda rusty):
"Party of Lenin, the strength of the people, communism marches solemnly towards us."
Haven't seen that one in years. For some reason nobody likes communism anymore (hmm, wonder why).
The way I see it, at least one good thing could come out of this. If Oracle and Peoplesoft merge, you can save money on certifications. Just think, they could all merge together into Micro-People-Orcl-soft and then maybe there'd be just ONE BIG TEST. And we could all run Linux instead.
The article references using "passive loop shields" - sounds like additional wires running the length of the transmission line. Those wires are expensive!
In school we once did a project similar to this. It turns out that the minimum time-varying flux (voltage) is created below the lines when the three lines are in the equilateral-triangle orientation with the point towards the ground. That way you get some cancellation for free.
I remember my power lab TA from some South American country telling us an interesting story.
Evidently where he is from they often run a different line configuration known as the wye, which has four wires instead of three (delta, like we have here). The extra wire carries almost no voltage and is there for balancing currents. Most of the time as long as everything is okay the extra line is almost unnecessary.
He said all the time people would actually climb the towers and steal the neutral. The value of the copper is worth the risk of cutting the wrong line. Every once in awhile he said they would screw up and try to cut the wrong line. That must be spectacular to see.
A better solution than jammers would be to develop a system which puts cell phones into vibrate-only mode. Transmitters could be placed in areas where quiet is generally enforced, like church, school, library, etc.
You could make a few tweaks on such a system; perhaps the phone could display "Quiet Area", it could limit calls in such a quiet zone to a certain time period to allow for emergency use but not conversations.
Of course this would be an evolutionary change; it would require some infrastructure but mostly the cell-phone manufacturers would have to buy in. Such a monumental change would really have to be legislated, unfortunately.
Personally, I think the main reason people don't like cell phones is due to an innate interest in what other people are doing. It's human nature to be curious and when you can only hear half a conversation, well, it sure bothers MY brain. I also wish I had a way to just zap those Nextels... I had to listen to both sides of a loud, obnoxious five minute conversation about toilet paper.
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I didn't think the 841 supported PoE. So how are you doing that?
I'm trying to do the same thing and I've been toying with the idea of building an adapter but the last I looked at the 802.3af spec it didn't sound like a lot of fun.
Just remember, most of those recruiters will say ANYTHING to get you to sign their papers... so if you're thinking about joining up just for that, make sure you get it in writing that they can "wipe the felony" away.
I don't think the armed forces can actually do that, anyway. On the other hand, if it was small enough and long enough ago, perhaps you could have a lawyer petition the court to have your felony expunged from your record... google 'expunge felony' for a zillion hits.
Okay, now we're really niggling.
For whatever it's worth, I blame Orbitz entirely, hoping that they don't pay outside counsel to write these awful things. I ASSume that the TOS and privacy policy are written by in-house marketing weenies and approved by their general counsel.
And you hit the nail on the head about Wal-mart. That's actually what I hate most about dealing with big companies - when someone really fucks up, who do you yell at? The poor clerk? No, and you can never find the guy who's really at fault.
By this point, I deserve a serious -1 Offtopic.
It frustrates me no end that companies keep on changing their TOS and privacy policies. As a person whose free time keeps getting sucked up by Slashdot, I really haven't the time or interest in reviewing every little change a lawyer wants to make in these documents.
And besides, how much do I need to use Orbitz? I don't find cheaper tickets there. I can always go straight to the airline, and if I really don't want to deal with a TOS, I can call them up myself or get a travel agent to do it. Hell, the last time I booked a flight for personal travel, my agent found me tickets that were about $100 cheaper each than the best I could find online.
So nuts to Orbitz. They can go suck eggs.
Even if you do consider the rental car companies, none of them rent to people under 18 nor do they allow drivers under 18. Which means that someone 18 or over must be in the car at all times when it's running, so this is not a good example.
As far as I know, U-haul is the only company that will rent to 18 year olds. All the other companies require you to be 25, unless your company has a contract with them.
I would say that is one piss-poor argument.
In the design of a CPU motherboard power supply, I suppose my two biggest concerns were heat and transient response. In dealing with the heat issue, you have to select the "best" components to make the system work. In other words, the cheapest set that will work. That's not trivial at all. First you decide how many phases to work with, considering that the norm is about 25-30 A per phase maximum. Then you pick a frequency. The operating frequency of the multiphase converter determines the inductors you use, and those get HOT at high frequency, due to core loss effects. Then the MOSFETs, and you parallel however many as are necessary to keep the heat down while also keeping the cost down -- usually an empirical selection process (hours upon hours in the lab learning what works and what doesn't).
On the other side you're dealing with transient response. That is, the CPU is working hard, decoding your DVD's and playing MP3's and all that other sht. And then, suddenly, it's not doing much at all. The load goes from, say, 110 A to 10 A, or at least that's how the design might go. Now you have to select capacitors to deal with that. These capacitors are selected based on some specified parameters, such as raw, bulk capacitance and ESR, as well as some unspecified ones, such as ESL and whether or not you have any in the lab. And they are tested and tested to death. It's amazing how much component placement and orientation can matter.
In the field, you do not have the tools to test the resulting design, so it's not a great idea to dick around with the decoupling solution. But for fun, if you had a motherboard to mess around with, you could try replacing whatever existing bulks with the smallest Sanyo OS-CON's you can find, or some of those sweet Fujitsu yellow caps, I never found a part number. If the total C is at least the same as what you had, it "might" work.
As far as MOSFETs go, to replace them you're mostly worried about heat. For the high side switches, you worry about gate charge Qg and thetaJA, the lower the better. For the low side switches, RDSON and thetaJA, the lower the better. The high side switches aren't on very much (only 1.5/12 of the time) and depending on the switching speed they will generate a lot of heat. So we want good switching capability out of them. The lowside switches are on 10.5/12 of the time so we want them to conduct well, with low resistance.
But if you replace the MOSFETs, and you happen to find low side switches with too high gate charge, the existing drivers may be unable to deal with them, and so you are screwed. Drivers can be tough, depending on whether or not they are standard. There is a fairly standard SO-8 format for driver pinouts that is ignored as often as it is accepted.
In short, there's not a lot you can do. Replacing inductors is too hard to do right, and same with the power design. Best bet, go with the Intel design (and no, I don't and didn't work for them, and I don't own stock in them, I just understand their methodology). If not, then buy the motherboard with the most phases (most big inductors around the CPU). That means the lowest current per phase and, if well designed, the best future CPU upgrading capability.
As another poster pointed out, until a complete shift in technology occurs, this will not happen. Power loss in a wire follows the law P=VI. The lower the CPU supply voltage, the higher the input current will be.
We continue to move to higher CPU switching frequencies and lower CPU voltages. Why? Well, higher frequency means higher clock speed, and greater processing power. Another way to increase processing power is to add complexity to the circuit, which means a larger chip. BUT, you can reduce the size of the chip by reducing the size of the features required to implement your changes. And that, my friend, means you need a lower voltage, or you will destroy those tiny, delicate features (breakdown the MOS gate oxide layer).
The relationship between power loss, switching frequency, and voltage, is straightforward:
P = C*V*f
You can't really work that out for a modern CPU but it is illustrative.
And with upwards of 100 A at less than 1.5V driving your CPU, motherboards will have an onboard VR (voltage regulator) for years to come. I used to test with an old ATX supply (before the ATX 2.0 spec added the tiny 2x2 12 V connector) and after pulling 12 A through the single wire supplying 12 V for fifteen minutes, the insulation became brittle and browned. You would need to more than double your existing wires just for DC... and don't get me started about all those capacitors again!
Actually, the electrolytic capacitors used by most companies are definitely in cents, but they are in the thirty to fifty cent range typically. If you think about that, for the recent P4-type motherboards, you're looking at around 6-12 of these, if they do it right, and depending on a variety of factors. That's $18 minimum! And no vendor can advertise that their motherboard is "rock solid," because something is eventually gonna cause it to crash. So, looking at two boards on the shelf, would you really spend $20 more? Well, you can tell by looking at your existing motherboard. If it's an Intel, then I guess you do.
VRM's cost a fortune. You have to pay for an extra board (cheap, but...), the connector, and more of those expensive capacitors, usually. Even the cheap stuff adds up. VRM's are only appropriate where you have a multiprocessor system and you plan to start with one processor and build up later.
I used to design motherboard power system components, and the author spends a good bit of time talking about that. That is actually the most complicated part of the board design, as it is not at all automated. Most component vendors try to sell a complete solution to the motherboard vendor, easing their job somewhat while helping the sales of the component vendor.
One particularly interesting item of note: all those capacitors the author describes are absolutely crucial, and together form one of the largest cost items on the board. The system is tested using a processor-vendor-supplied "load tool" which simulates the worst case load transients one can ever expect to see. Most of that testing is done by the power system component vendor and then provided as a block to the motherboard vendor. Most motherboard vendors have no idea what they are doing there.
In fact, a lot of the foreign manufacturers (no names) cost-reduce their designs by simply pulling out caps until the system blue screens. Then they put the last one back in and sell it. Intel is the only manufacturer I am aware of that actually sells the worst-case performing design.
Note that I am only aware of products related to Intel-type motherboards. I never worked on the othe stuff.
I can agree with a lot of what I read here. I recently (December 03) had LASEK on my left eye. The "E" in LASEK is for "Epithelial". The difference, medically, is that the surgery is performed closer to the surface of the eye. In practice, the difference is pain (more) and no flap (so all those worries about the army and air force not liking this surgery are crap).
I had mine done at the Mass Eye and Ear Institute in Boston by Dmitri Azar, who was involved in this particular surgery from the beginning. And I met an eye doc there who'd actually had LASIK. I did the LASEK because of a dream of joining the FBI and because my corneas are a bit thin for the necessary correction.
Here's my big thoughts.
1. Things can go wrong. Know that and expect that it could happen. It probably won't, but you might not end up with what you thought you'd get.
2. Night vision issues are a possibility. Spend the extra cash for the wavefront correction (well worth it, I can clearly see things with the one LASEK corrected eye which I cannot even detect with my contact lens-filled eye).
3. If you're the least bit squeamish, be sure you know what you're up against. Remember, you actually have to WATCH what's happening in this surgery. A good doc takes care to not bring a knife straight in at your eye, but rather slips it around the edge of your field of vision. Nonetheless, it's pretty freaky to watch, even on a Valium or two.
4. Interview your docs. Find out how many problems they've had. Especially infections, which can pretty quickly and permanently damage your vision.
5. Know that, if things go wrong, you might not even be able to correct your vision to what you had before with contacts or glasses. Be sure you're ready for that possibility.
6. Don't travel too far for a doc. If there are any issues or problems you want to be able to waltz right in there and kick your doc's ass. Or bitch him out a bit. Basically, get the best guy you can afford within an hour of your home or work.
On the whole, I like it. With my wavefront-laser-corrected eye, I can clearly read things in dim light, like scores on a TV 30 feet across a bar. I can't even see the score BOX on the TV with my contact-lens eye. It's a little confusing to have one LASEK and one contact lens, but you get used to it. I'm just afraid to do the other eye... the LASEK surgery is a lot of mechanical work on your eye that you have to watch.
One other possibility - gas permeable lenses which slowly reshape your eye. You wear the rigid lens sometimes, maybe every night, and it reshapes your eye like a retainer does for your teeth. This is known as either "ortho keratatomy" (Ortho-K) or "Corneal Reshaping Therapy" (CRT). A site which talks about CRT is at http://www.paragoncrt.com/. I'm thinking about doing that for my other eye.
Good luck with your decision.
You haven't seen a lot of posts because all the people who really care about this don't have internet access 'cause someone stole the cards!
Man, this is a great idea as a learning tool but totally impractical for production purposes. In the end of the paper, section 8, the author writes that this could be used for things like detecting speeds of vehicles on streets or detecting water leaks. There is NO way that such large-scale applications could be made inexpensively with separate individual components like these. I work in the semiconductor industry and margins on commodity components like these would become are razor thin. It's like that because nobody will spend extra money if they can get away with it. Any engineer worth his salt would rather design it right rather than get it done with these kiddie building blocks.
There is definitely no "no-fly" zone around US nuke plants. As the parent points out, this is a good thing - it would be tough as hell to fly out of several airports.
...SPECIAL NOTICE... FLIGHT RESTRICTIONS. PURSUANT TO 14 CFR SECTION 99.7, SPECIAL SECURITY INSTRUCTIONS, PILOTS CONDUCTING FLIGHT OPERATIONS WITHIN THE TERRITORIAL AIRSPACE OF THE U.S. ARE ADVISED TO AVOID THE AIRSPACE ABOVE OR IN PROXIMITY TO ALL NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS. PILOTS SHOULD NOT CIRCLE OR LOITER IN THE VICINITY OF SUCH FACILITIES. PILOTS WHO DO SO CAN EXPECT TO BE INTERVIEWED BY LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL AT THEIR DESTINATION AIRPORT AND THE PILOT'S NAME MAY BE ADDED TO THE TRANSPORTATION SECURITY ADMINISTRATION (TSA INCIDENT REPORTING SYSTEM. WIE UNTIL UFN
As a private pilot I am aware of the latest rules and, for once, I am prepared to back up these assertions. According to the JCS NOTAM (NOtice To AirMen) office at https://www.notams.jcs.mil/
A0008/03 (FDC 3/1655) -
In other words, if you screw around (maybe using the cooling stacks as your reference for "turns about a point," for example) over a nuclear power plant, you can expect that your life will be made to totally suck. I mean, who cares about having to talk to the cops afterwards (probably at gunpoint) -- the TSA "Incident Reporting System" is not a database that I want my name attached to. I have to fly commercially way too much for THAT flag to be raised on me.
My favorite is the picture of the faded wording on the side of a building on chapter 12. It is part of the old Soviet national anthem, roughly translated (my Russian is kinda rusty):
"Party of Lenin, the strength of the people, communism marches solemnly towards us."
Haven't seen that one in years. For some reason nobody likes communism anymore (hmm, wonder why).
The way I see it, at least one good thing could come out of this. If Oracle and Peoplesoft merge, you can save money on certifications. Just think, they could all merge together into Micro-People-Orcl-soft and then maybe there'd be just ONE BIG TEST. And we could all run Linux instead.
Maybe they'll have a super-useful color coding system to let us know how much of a threat to our computers there is.
Boy, that'll be informative.
The article references using "passive loop shields" - sounds like additional wires running the length of the transmission line. Those wires are expensive! In school we once did a project similar to this. It turns out that the minimum time-varying flux (voltage) is created below the lines when the three lines are in the equilateral-triangle orientation with the point towards the ground. That way you get some cancellation for free. I remember my power lab TA from some South American country telling us an interesting story. Evidently where he is from they often run a different line configuration known as the wye, which has four wires instead of three (delta, like we have here). The extra wire carries almost no voltage and is there for balancing currents. Most of the time as long as everything is okay the extra line is almost unnecessary. He said all the time people would actually climb the towers and steal the neutral. The value of the copper is worth the risk of cutting the wrong line. Every once in awhile he said they would screw up and try to cut the wrong line. That must be spectacular to see.
A better solution than jammers would be to develop a system which puts cell phones into vibrate-only mode. Transmitters could be placed in areas where quiet is generally enforced, like church, school, library, etc.
You could make a few tweaks on such a system; perhaps the phone could display "Quiet Area", it could limit calls in such a quiet zone to a certain time period to allow for emergency use but not conversations.
Of course this would be an evolutionary change; it would require some infrastructure but mostly the cell-phone manufacturers would have to buy in. Such a monumental change would really have to be legislated, unfortunately.
Personally, I think the main reason people don't like cell phones is due to an innate interest in what other people are doing. It's human nature to be curious and when you can only hear half a conversation, well, it sure bothers MY brain. I also wish I had a way to just zap those Nextels... I had to listen to both sides of a loud, obnoxious five minute conversation about toilet paper.