Re:SCSI encapsulation for IDE drives: found
on
IDE Co-Processors?
·
· Score: 2
It has already been done, at least as a RAID solution. I was searching for fast, huge storage solutions 3 years ago and found a company that was making SCSI RAID drives based on IDE. I can't remember the company that I talked to back then, but here's one link I could find with a brief search.
I think if you take it to RAID-0 you can array all those IDE drives to look like one HUGE SCSI drive.
But how did the rights pass to the NSA for a patent filed in 1933?
I thought the NSA was created in 1952.
The NSA probably gets all the crypto related stuff by default. It could have something to do with the Cryptologic museum that NSA hosts in Ft. Meade MD. (There was a/. article on it a few months back.)
The patent office did not take 66 years to issue this (or any) patent. With a patent on an invention that is classified, patent is issued in the eyes of the patent office once that invention is declassified.
Realistically, the only way we're ever going to get a lot of low/zero(displaced) emission vehicles is to make it cheaper to drive one. That can happen in a few ways, but it appears that the two big areas are:
Increased fuel cost
Increased taxes
It is political suicide in today's climate to call for increased taxes on anything, and we've seen the uproar that happens when the price of energy goes up dramatically (gasoline in the midwest and electricty in San Diego). People go nuts. They think the right to drive gas guzzling vehicles is written into the Constitution. Those that drive the gas guzzlers have to accept the fact that our fossil fuel supply is finite, and since we live in a capitalist economy (in the USA) that the price will go up as the supply goes down.
I admit- I have a truck with a gas guzzling V8. I'm willing to pay that premium so that I can use it to haul things far too bulky to put into the sedan. I can afford it right now, someday, I may not be able to. When that day happens, I'll accept the consequences.
I have heard an ad on local radio here (in Austin, TX, USA) that offers a price comparison service. You can walk into a store with a phone and compare prices with a bunch of different stores, or enter information yourself. I don't remember the URL- wireless information services are too expensive on the cellular plan I have.
So far, this is the only application I have seen for WAP that I would be interested in using, email would be nice, though I think it would be really frustrating trying to read email on a 1"x1" screen, let alone compose on a numeric keypad.
Correct in respect to Doppler but wrong in its application. A radar gun actually does not measure anything but Delta D over Delta T (change of distance over change of time). Granted it does this quickly but it does not use the doppler effect to measure the speed. For doppler to really become an issue I would think that you would really need to be traveling around 1/10000th the speed of light or even 1/100000th for something like this.
Sorry, *absolutely* correct in its application. The only sort of police "radar" that uses timing to determine distance is a laser radar gun. The traditional RF police speed radar (known as Doppler radar) mixes a sample of the outgoing signal with a received signal and makes a beat between the two. Generally this beat is in the audio frequency range. By beating the outgoing with the incoming it doesn't really matter how much your main oscillator drifts, because over the microsecond or so that the signal takes to make a round trip it won't have drifted far. This sort of radar (as I have described it) can't distinguish between incoming and outgoing targets, but there are DSP based police doppler radars that have this ability, with a different downconversion technique.
Time to go back to basic physics- for a speed much less than c the doppler shift of a signal will be a factor of 1/(1 +/- (v/c)) where v is the radial velocity to or from the observer (- when approaching the observer, + when going away).
For example, with a radar operating at 18GHz, the doppler shift of a car moving at 100 ft/s is about 1.85 kHz. Check out this page for more information on doppler. Things do change as you approach the speed of light, but doppler still does matter, and I think it matters in this situation because of the extreme timing accuracy that this modulation requires. If the timing accuracy goes down, so will the bit-rate.
This is a emf signal, not a sound wave. How fast do you drive?
Doppler happens with any motion. How do you think the nice traffic officer figures out how fast you're moving? With the precision of this modulation scheme, the little bit of doppler that happens will become significant.
From my reading of this, this modulation scheme relies heavily on timing- which would really get screwed up if you happened to be moving, because of doppler shifts. Keeping accurate track of timing is very, very hard when moving. Also, they don't really address interference (intentional or incidental) which will make it that much harder to reach those bandwidths.
VMSK/2 seems to be mostly an academic modulation right now- they need to send it through much more rigorous testing in the real world, with real world components.
I'm skeptical when people talk about overturning Shannon's limit- people would love to disprove it, but it holds up time and time again.
Things are going to change, but a change in politics is going to take a change in our society, and things like that don't happen in weeks or months, but decades. People like to think of revolutions as distinct, sudden change, but for true lasting change, it must be more like an evolution, where things change slowly over a long period of time, and except in retrospect, the individual doesn't notice the change in day to day life. There may be a few specific dates that stand out in political history (like women's sufferage) But that did not "just happen" It was the result of years and years of work, first starting out small, and then getting bigger and bigger, until the pressure to change is overwhelming, and then we get the discrete event, in this case, women getting the right to vote.
I'm all for slow movement in politics- when something works on such a vast scale, quick changes can go both ways, good and bad. If we want a lasting change, we need to be patient. The internet is far from being a mature technology. We must be patient so it can find its lasting place in our society.
I see plenty of comparisons between firewire and USB, but no-one seems to be mentioning the cost of the hardware. Yes, it does appear that firewire is a faster, better protocol, which doesn't require a PC as master controller (if I read the posts below correctly) But realistically, how much is it going to cost to place this hardware on my motherboard and in my camera/hard-drive whatever?
By having a host computer do the work you can significantly reduce the complexity and the cost of the peripheral- On average, there are going to be many more peripherals than hosts. If the peripheral is cheaper, then you have an immediate leg up.
Who's going to win? Probably Intel. Even overlooking price, Intel is the 800 pound gorilla that has intimate relationships with *all* the major PC makers. Intel works heavily on building relationships with the PC makers, so that they can get more than just CPUs in PCs, but chip-sets and other peripherals. Firewire is backed by Apple. Apple doesn't doesn't command as many of the eyes or ears of the PC manufacturer world, by their own design.
The winner of this battle is going to be whoever can put the most ports on the most desktops. Think Beta vs. VHS.
Complete disassembly is a bad idea. I wasted about 5 hours on a $20.00 keyboard... Unless the keyboard is irreplaceable or expensive, consider just replacing it.
Otherwise, Try prying up on the keys, the wonderful old IBM/Lexmark "click" keyboards had keycaps that could pop right off. Take the keycaps off, let 'em soak overnight in a bucket of warm soapy water, and then drain the bucket and place the keys on a towel to air-dry. In the mean-time, carefully clean the gunk you can find that is in whats left of the keyboard. Replace the keys, and you're on your way.
Just spraying a cleaner like windex on the keycaps can cause your keyboard to start behaving really weirdly. (Which is why I tried complete disassembly.) I've also heard of people just putting the whole keyboard into a dishwasher, though some keyboards wouldn't work well for that because they have a rubber membrane that could capture the water.
Thankfully, even if you screw it up completely, even really nice new keyboards are not that expensive. I've been able to pick up nice (but dirty) keyboards at the local Goodwill computer store for $5.00.
If a week has gone by, I'd start complaining- but keep records. In this day and age, email and phone calls don't seem to get people's attention. A good, formal, well written letter will get you very far.
Address the issue clearly, concisely, and accurately without any sort of insult or other denigrating comment. Make sure the letter is specifically addressed to someone, which may take a bit of social engineering on your part- but you'll get better results.
Weather you allow (or don't specifically disallow) port-scanning, many sysadmins view it as rude, and some look at it as a prelude to a cracking attempt. If it goes on, you will hear about it from some sub-set of those scanned. Is it worth your time to investigate these events? You (or your boss, or his boss) will get emails and calls. Is it worth your bosses time?
When I have reported port-scans I have gotten thanks from the sysadmins of the systems because that was the first warning that their system was compromised. Unless I've been notified of it beforehand, I look at all port scans suspiciously, and I would be very happy to hear from someone detecting a scan from my network. New exploits are being developed all the time- you can't be up-to date on everything, all the time.
Is there any sort of legal mechanism for abandoning software? I think abandonment would become more popular if they could declare it "use at your own risk" and prevent others from selling it. This would have to place any and all risk of running the unsupported, undistributed software squarely in the hands of the user. I guess there would have to be some anti-modification rules in there too.
These companies are buisnesses- they are in the game to make money, and to protect the money they already have. They have every right to whatever profits should come from the product. We can encourage them to participate them in this "corprate charity" but it shouldn't be mandatory- it should just be something that they have an option to do to better their corprate image, which may lead to new sales of their current products.
According to this article, solar power costs about 3.3 kWh/W to manufacture. Considering the location of this site (Virginia, I think) they have not chosen a great place to locate a photovoltaic generation facility. My SWAG at how much "full sun" they receive in a year, counting cloudy days, and so on, is about 3 hr/day, about 1100 hr/year. To break even for just the photovoltaics to make up the energy required to produce them, it would take 3 years! (If you have more accurate numbers, please correct me.)
Photovoltaics are really best suited for remote applications, and places where it is really sunny. I think the solar power here is more of a publicity stunt than a "green" application.
I can't say anything about 1) or 3) but 2) is probably not an issue- ozone is produced by brush type motors, and virtually all motors in computer equipment are brushless motors. The computers would have a very hard time passing FCC emission specs with brush motors. The electrical noise put out by brush motors would probably be a really bad thing for the circuits in the computer too.
If they are really trying to be efficient, they would also avoid the lead bearing CRTs for the (electrically) efficient LCD display. There really isn't an economical way to get rid of the lead used in the solder, though there are non lead bearing solders available, they are still expensive, more difficult to use, and largely unproven.
This is a powerful technology, while many will be quick to dismiss it, condemn it, and villify it. It is just a tool. It is inherently neutral. The good or bad that will come from it will come from those that use it. The technology is there, once it has been announced, it can't be taken away, so learn it, use it, understand it, just like so many seem to say about the various hacking/cracking tools.
Too many people are quick to assume that when it is in someone else's hands, they must be evil, but in your hands it would be good. I can see some very powerful uses of this- biometrics for one. How about a home based doctor- maybe you still will need to go to an office, but this machine will tell you which specialty you need to go to- heck maybe an HMO will even support it, since it would mean going directly to the proper doctor, without having to see some sort of gateway practicioner.
Yes, this technology can be abused, but exploring the uses and abuses of technology is what hacking (in the classic sense) is all about.
Though this may be marked redundant- others have supposed this- this is a confirmation- if a patent was initially classified, once it has been declassified, it shows up on the USPTO's records as new, though any patent protection has long since expired, since there is a limit that applies to the amount of time that has passed since the initial application for the patent.
I have heard of people getting deluged from the patent "submission" scams that send bulk mail to each "new" patent award, even though the patent was issued 30+ years ago, and it was only just declassified.
Grounding should not be a problem- Ideally, you should never use the case of a computer as a current return, it should all be done with the wires back and forth from the power supply. Most metal cases are grounded for a number of reasons- if a live AC wire were to touch it, you want the circuit breaker/fuse to blow so you don't create a safety hazard, plus if it was insulated from everything else, it could attract a static charge. It is also grounded to reduce the radiated emissions from the computer, but it would serve that purpose even if it wasn't grounded, since there is probably enough capacitance to ground at the frequencies of interest anyway. If you want shielding find some copper mesh (like window screen, but copper) and line the inside of the case with it- as long as the openings in the mesh are small, it will serve just as well as a RFI shield.
With a truly transparent case, it would be hard, but not impossible to make a shielded case- but you can put conductors on glass- every LCD display has conductors on a transparent surface. For for a while had a (front) windshield defogger that was one solid conductor- radar detectors couldn't see through it, but you shure could.
As to power problems? I'm guessing that this chap had his ground where the neutral ought to have been. Electric utilities frown upon drawing unequal currents from the two legs of your power, and charge a surcharge when that happens, similar to if you have a strongly reactive load- The heaters in large foundries are highly inductive, to correct the power factor, they have huge capacitor rooms to put the current and voltage back into phase. On the other hand, I can't see why a load as (relatively) small as a computer could cause this sort of surcharge.
Though it is a for-pay service, I had the opportunity to look over the shoulder of someone working with Lexis-Nexis. There is an amazing amount of information there, buisness tax and credit records, home sales info (similar to www.domania.com, but domania did not have information for my home here in Texas- Lexis Nexis did. Lexis Nexis is a stalkers dream. I have to suspect many private investigators rely heavily on this service.
Though it is a for-pay service, it is available over the web to anyone that has a password.
Yeah they're still too big and it still isn't single chip- if you look down the page you refer to you find this: "With the Bluetooth Radio transceiver, you'll need to add a baseband controller and non-volatile memory to implement the Bluetooth hardware in your application."
Still- this part is made of pure unobtainium. It is incredibly hard to get any of this hardware unless you are a developer for a huge company (like Nokia, Compaq, etc.), and the terms of being a bluetooth developer are pretty poor, especially from to the free software crowd. If I understand it correctly, you have to agree to hand over all your IP to the Bluetooth group- it only gets released to the other people, like you, who have bought in to the group.
Bluetooth devices do exist. I used one from Cambridge Silicon, but it was big and clunky, (each transciever was an oval about 6 inches across) still far too big to put in any sort of handheld or portable device. They just don't exist for the consumer *right now*.
The news put forth in this article is nothing new- it is pretty common knowledge in the wireless arena that *everybody* is having trouble with their bluetooth solution. But it is not an easy problem to solve. The original delivery dates were far, far too optimistic, but everybody in the industry realizes that the first company to put out a good solution is going to make a boatload of money. #2 and so on will make money, but just not as much.
Bluetooth is a great idea, but it is having some growing pains. The first thing, nobody is able to make a single chip solution (yet). For Bluetooth to work, it has to be small. No one is going to accept a 1 pound headset. Second, it has to be low power, so batteries can last a reasonable time.
The developers kit I used was good- we got 70Kbit/s with the devices about 10 feet apart, through a couple of walls, but it still needed work. There was absolutely no security, once you were connected you could write any sort of information to the other computer (though you couldn't specify where). It did connect flawlessly and work as advertized- but as a developers kit/demo, it cost a heck of a lot- upwards of $10K (I think), possibly as much as $25K.
Bluetooth isn't a cure-all, you're not going to want your internet connection through Bluetooth, or anything that requires a lot of bandwidth. It just isn't fast enough, but for things like syncing your palm pilot, or connecting your cellular phone to your palm pilot, it will be great.
The most important thing to do is do something! Try to hook up with other experimenters in your area- find out where the skills you have now can help someone else. From there you can expand your own knowledge, and start to work on your own. Your best work is going to be done in collaboration with others. Having others to work with can keep you on track, and help you avoid getting bogged down.
You can see all sorts of so-so robot projects out on the net (mine included), when there is only one mind working on it, corners get cut around that person's weaknesses. Sure, you want something you can call all your own, but a part of something is infinitely better than a nothing all your own.
If you can't find others to help? Start small, develop subsections of a larger whole, and then put up a web-page about them- that way you can start developing a group of your own- think of your work as a seed. Use one of the greatest strengths of the Internet- community building.
Slashdot Mirror
It has already been done, at least as a RAID solution. I was searching for fast, huge storage solutions 3 years ago and found a company that was making SCSI RAID drives based on IDE. I can't remember the company that I talked to back then, but here's one link I could find with a brief search.
I think if you take it to RAID-0 you can array all those IDE drives to look like one HUGE SCSI drive.
According to this posting at the USPTO website, a patent is only valid for 20 years after the date of application.
But how did the rights pass to the NSA for a patent filed in 1933?
I thought the NSA was created in 1952.
The NSA probably gets all the crypto related stuff by default. It could have something to do with the Cryptologic museum that NSA hosts in Ft. Meade MD. (There was a
The patent office did not take 66 years to issue this (or any) patent. With a patent on an invention that is classified, patent is issued in the eyes of the patent office once that invention is declassified.
It is political suicide in today's climate to call for increased taxes on anything, and we've seen the uproar that happens when the price of energy goes up dramatically (gasoline in the midwest and electricty in San Diego). People go nuts. They think the right to drive gas guzzling vehicles is written into the Constitution. Those that drive the gas guzzlers have to accept the fact that our fossil fuel supply is finite, and since we live in a capitalist economy (in the USA) that the price will go up as the supply goes down.
I admit- I have a truck with a gas guzzling V8. I'm willing to pay that premium so that I can use it to haul things far too bulky to put into the sedan. I can afford it right now, someday, I may not be able to. When that day happens, I'll accept the consequences.
I have heard an ad on local radio here (in Austin, TX, USA) that offers a price comparison service. You can walk into a store with a phone and compare prices with a bunch of different stores, or enter information yourself. I don't remember the URL- wireless information services are too expensive on the cellular plan I have.
So far, this is the only application I have seen for WAP that I would be interested in using, email would be nice, though I think it would be really frustrating trying to read email on a 1"x1" screen, let alone compose on a numeric keypad.
Correct in respect to Doppler but wrong in its application. A radar gun actually does not measure anything but Delta D over Delta T (change of distance over change of time). Granted it does this quickly but it does not use the doppler effect to measure the speed. For doppler to really become an issue I would think that you would really need to be traveling around 1/10000th the speed of light or even 1/100000th for something like this.
Sorry, *absolutely* correct in its application. The only sort of police "radar" that uses timing to determine distance is a laser radar gun. The traditional RF police speed radar (known as Doppler radar) mixes a sample of the outgoing signal with a received signal and makes a beat between the two. Generally this beat is in the audio frequency range. By beating the outgoing with the incoming it doesn't really matter how much your main oscillator drifts, because over the microsecond or so that the signal takes to make a round trip it won't have drifted far. This sort of radar (as I have described it) can't distinguish between incoming and outgoing targets, but there are DSP based police doppler radars that have this ability, with a different downconversion technique.
Time to go back to basic physics- for a speed much less than c the doppler shift of a signal will be a factor of 1/(1 +/- (v/c)) where v is the radial velocity to or from the observer (- when approaching the observer, + when going away).
For example, with a radar operating at 18GHz, the doppler shift of a car moving at 100 ft/s is about 1.85 kHz. Check out this page for more information on doppler. Things do change as you approach the speed of light, but doppler still does matter, and I think it matters in this situation because of the extreme timing accuracy that this modulation requires. If the timing accuracy goes down, so will the bit-rate.
This is a emf signal, not a sound wave. How fast do you drive?
Doppler happens with any motion. How do you think the nice traffic officer figures out how fast you're moving? With the precision of this modulation scheme, the little bit of doppler that happens will become significant.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Hz mean "per second". Does this mean that we now have 90 bits per second per second?
The author is using a shorthand reference to Hz of bandwidth.
From my reading of this, this modulation scheme relies heavily on timing- which would really get screwed up if you happened to be moving, because of doppler shifts. Keeping accurate track of timing is very, very hard when moving. Also, they don't really address interference (intentional or incidental) which will make it that much harder to reach those bandwidths.
VMSK/2 seems to be mostly an academic modulation right now- they need to send it through much more rigorous testing in the real world, with real world components.
I'm skeptical when people talk about overturning Shannon's limit- people would love to disprove it, but it holds up time and time again.
Things are going to change, but a change in politics is going to take a change in our society, and things like that don't happen in weeks or months, but decades. People like to think of revolutions as distinct, sudden change, but for true lasting change, it must be more like an evolution, where things change slowly over a long period of time, and except in retrospect, the individual doesn't notice the change in day to day life. There may be a few specific dates that stand out in political history (like women's sufferage) But that did not "just happen" It was the result of years and years of work, first starting out small, and then getting bigger and bigger, until the pressure to change is overwhelming, and then we get the discrete event, in this case, women getting the right to vote.
I'm all for slow movement in politics- when something works on such a vast scale, quick changes can go both ways, good and bad. If we want a lasting change, we need to be patient. The internet is far from being a mature technology. We must be patient so it can find its lasting place in our society.
I see plenty of comparisons between firewire and USB, but no-one seems to be mentioning the cost of the hardware. Yes, it does appear that firewire is a faster, better protocol, which doesn't require a PC as master controller (if I read the posts below correctly) But realistically, how much is it going to cost to place this hardware on my motherboard and in my camera/hard-drive whatever?
By having a host computer do the work you can significantly reduce the complexity and the cost of the peripheral- On average, there are going to be many more peripherals than hosts. If the peripheral is cheaper, then you have an immediate leg up.
Who's going to win? Probably Intel. Even overlooking price, Intel is the 800 pound gorilla that has intimate relationships with *all* the major PC makers. Intel works heavily on building relationships with the PC makers, so that they can get more than just CPUs in PCs, but chip-sets and other peripherals. Firewire is backed by Apple. Apple doesn't doesn't command as many of the eyes or ears of the PC manufacturer world, by their own design.
The winner of this battle is going to be whoever can put the most ports on the most desktops. Think Beta vs. VHS.
Complete disassembly is a bad idea. I wasted about 5 hours on a $20.00 keyboard... Unless the keyboard is irreplaceable or expensive, consider just replacing it.
Otherwise, Try prying up on the keys, the wonderful old IBM/Lexmark "click" keyboards had keycaps that could pop right off. Take the keycaps off, let 'em soak overnight in a bucket of warm soapy water, and then drain the bucket and place the keys on a towel to air-dry. In the mean-time, carefully clean the gunk you can find that is in whats left of the keyboard. Replace the keys, and you're on your way.
Just spraying a cleaner like windex on the keycaps can cause your keyboard to start behaving really weirdly. (Which is why I tried complete disassembly.) I've also heard of people just putting the whole keyboard into a dishwasher, though some keyboards wouldn't work well for that because they have a rubber membrane that could capture the water.
Thankfully, even if you screw it up completely, even really nice new keyboards are not that expensive. I've been able to pick up nice (but dirty) keyboards at the local Goodwill computer store for $5.00.
If a week has gone by, I'd start complaining- but keep records. In this day and age, email and phone calls don't seem to get people's attention. A good, formal, well written letter will get you very far.
Address the issue clearly, concisely, and accurately without any sort of insult or other denigrating comment. Make sure the letter is specifically addressed to someone, which may take a bit of social engineering on your part- but you'll get better results.
Weather you allow (or don't specifically disallow) port-scanning, many sysadmins view it as rude, and some look at it as a prelude to a cracking attempt. If it goes on, you will hear about it from some sub-set of those scanned. Is it worth your time to investigate these events? You (or your boss, or his boss) will get emails and calls. Is it worth your bosses time?
When I have reported port-scans I have gotten thanks from the sysadmins of the systems because that was the first warning that their system was compromised. Unless I've been notified of it beforehand, I look at all port scans suspiciously, and I would be very happy to hear from someone detecting a scan from my network. New exploits are being developed all the time- you can't be up-to date on everything, all the time.
Is there any sort of legal mechanism for abandoning software? I think abandonment would become more popular if they could declare it "use at your own risk" and prevent others from selling it. This would have to place any and all risk of running the unsupported, undistributed software squarely in the hands of the user. I guess there would have to be some anti-modification rules in there too.
These companies are buisnesses- they are in the game to make money, and to protect the money they already have. They have every right to whatever profits should come from the product. We can encourage them to participate them in this "corprate charity" but it shouldn't be mandatory- it should just be something that they have an option to do to better their corprate image, which may lead to new sales of their current products.
Photovoltaics are really best suited for remote applications, and places where it is really sunny. I think the solar power here is more of a publicity stunt than a "green" application.
I can't say anything about 1) or 3) but 2) is probably not an issue- ozone is produced by brush type motors, and virtually all motors in computer equipment are brushless motors. The computers would have a very hard time passing FCC emission specs with brush motors. The electrical noise put out by brush motors would probably be a really bad thing for the circuits in the computer too.
If they are really trying to be efficient, they would also avoid the lead bearing CRTs for the (electrically) efficient LCD display. There really isn't an economical way to get rid of the lead used in the solder, though there are non lead bearing solders available, they are still expensive, more difficult to use, and largely unproven.
This is a powerful technology, while many will be quick to dismiss it, condemn it, and villify it. It is just a tool. It is inherently neutral. The good or bad that will come from it will come from those that use it. The technology is there, once it has been announced, it can't be taken away, so learn it, use it, understand it, just like so many seem to say about the various hacking/cracking tools.
Too many people are quick to assume that when it is in someone else's hands, they must be evil, but in your hands it would be good. I can see some very powerful uses of this- biometrics for one. How about a home based doctor- maybe you still will need to go to an office, but this machine will tell you which specialty you need to go to- heck maybe an HMO will even support it, since it would mean going directly to the proper doctor, without having to see some sort of gateway practicioner.
Yes, this technology can be abused, but exploring the uses and abuses of technology is what hacking (in the classic sense) is all about.
Though this may be marked redundant- others have supposed this- this is a confirmation- if a patent was initially classified, once it has been declassified, it shows up on the USPTO's records as new, though any patent protection has long since expired, since there is a limit that applies to the amount of time that has passed since the initial application for the patent.
I have heard of people getting deluged from the patent "submission" scams that send bulk mail to each "new" patent award, even though the patent was issued 30+ years ago, and it was only just declassified.
Grounding should not be a problem- Ideally, you should never use the case of a computer as a current return, it should all be done with the wires back and forth from the power supply. Most metal cases are grounded for a number of reasons- if a live AC wire were to touch it, you want the circuit breaker/fuse to blow so you don't create a safety hazard, plus if it was insulated from everything else, it could attract a static charge. It is also grounded to reduce the radiated emissions from the computer, but it would serve that purpose even if it wasn't grounded, since there is probably enough capacitance to ground at the frequencies of interest anyway. If you want shielding find some copper mesh (like window screen, but copper) and line the inside of the case with it- as long as the openings in the mesh are small, it will serve just as well as a RFI shield.
With a truly transparent case, it would be hard, but not impossible to make a shielded case- but you can put conductors on glass- every LCD display has conductors on a transparent surface. For for a while had a (front) windshield defogger that was one solid conductor- radar detectors couldn't see through it, but you shure could.
As to power problems? I'm guessing that this chap had his ground where the neutral ought to have been. Electric utilities frown upon drawing unequal currents from the two legs of your power, and charge a surcharge when that happens, similar to if you have a strongly reactive load- The heaters in large foundries are highly inductive, to correct the power factor, they have huge capacitor rooms to put the current and voltage back into phase. On the other hand, I can't see why a load as (relatively) small as a computer could cause this sort of surcharge.
Though it is a for-pay service, I had the opportunity to look over the shoulder of someone working with Lexis-Nexis. There is an amazing amount of information there, buisness tax and credit records, home sales info (similar to www.domania.com, but domania did not have information for my home here in Texas- Lexis Nexis did. Lexis Nexis is a stalkers dream. I have to suspect many private investigators rely heavily on this service.
Though it is a for-pay service, it is available over the web to anyone that has a password.
Yeah they're still too big and it still isn't single chip- if you look down the page you refer to you find this: "With the Bluetooth Radio transceiver, you'll need to add a baseband controller and non-volatile memory to implement the Bluetooth hardware in your application."
Still- this part is made of pure unobtainium. It is incredibly hard to get any of this hardware unless you are a developer for a huge company (like Nokia, Compaq, etc.), and the terms of being a bluetooth developer are pretty poor, especially from to the free software crowd. If I understand it correctly, you have to agree to hand over all your IP to the Bluetooth group- it only gets released to the other people, like you, who have bought in to the group.
Bluetooth devices do exist. I used one from Cambridge Silicon, but it was big and clunky, (each transciever was an oval about 6 inches across) still far too big to put in any sort of handheld or portable device. They just don't exist for the consumer *right now*.
The news put forth in this article is nothing new- it is pretty common knowledge in the wireless arena that *everybody* is having trouble with their bluetooth solution. But it is not an easy problem to solve. The original delivery dates were far, far too optimistic, but everybody in the industry realizes that the first company to put out a good solution is going to make a boatload of money. #2 and so on will make money, but just not as much.
Bluetooth is a great idea, but it is having some growing pains. The first thing, nobody is able to make a single chip solution (yet). For Bluetooth to work, it has to be small. No one is going to accept a 1 pound headset. Second, it has to be low power, so batteries can last a reasonable time.
The developers kit I used was good- we got 70Kbit/s with the devices about 10 feet apart, through a couple of walls, but it still needed work. There was absolutely no security, once you were connected you could write any sort of information to the other computer (though you couldn't specify where). It did connect flawlessly and work as advertized- but as a developers kit/demo, it cost a heck of a lot- upwards of $10K (I think), possibly as much as $25K.
Bluetooth isn't a cure-all, you're not going to want your internet connection through Bluetooth, or anything that requires a lot of bandwidth. It just isn't fast enough, but for things like syncing your palm pilot, or connecting your cellular phone to your palm pilot, it will be great.
The most important thing to do is do something! Try to hook up with other experimenters in your area- find out where the skills you have now can help someone else. From there you can expand your own knowledge, and start to work on your own. Your best work is going to be done in collaboration with others. Having others to work with can keep you on track, and help you avoid getting bogged down.
You can see all sorts of so-so robot projects out on the net (mine included), when there is only one mind working on it, corners get cut around that person's weaknesses. Sure, you want something you can call all your own, but a part of something is infinitely better than a nothing all your own.
If you can't find others to help? Start small, develop subsections of a larger whole, and then put up a web-page about them- that way you can start developing a group of your own- think of your work as a seed. Use one of the greatest strengths of the Internet- community building.
But let me re-iterate: DO SOMETHING!