I have submitted valid stories before and had them all rejected -- I suspect if the editor does not recognize your name then you will be passed by for someone who has posted previously.
I think preferential placement in the submission queue is supposed to be an action of karma, but besides meta moderation there's not a lot that ordinary geeks like thee and me can do to increase ours.:)
Myself, I just assume that sooner or later the über-geeks like CmdrTaco or Timothy will stumble over the information I have found and post it. I resign myself to kibbutz'ing out here in the shadows.:)
What frosts my cookies/biscuits is exactly how this stuff is supposed to be stored? If it fissions in paper-thin amounts it has to be a challenge to store, meaning we would produce it en route?
And then we need to paint it to the walls of the reaction chamber without it reacting, let it do its magic/decompose, then make and apply more?
I can see it now, the Mars 1 mission will be staffed by one astronaut, seven nuclear physicists, two materials scientists, and one hazmat worker.:)
It is useless to attempt to evaluate the impact of today's cutting-edge technology contrasted to the impact of 50 - 100 year old technologies. Of course the older technologies will have had greater impact on society -- they have had more time to be deployed and refined.
What value would a light bulb have had for a person in the 1890's who was satisfied with gas lighting -- gas lighting was adequately bright and required no new systems to function. What value would an automobile have had to the same person compared to the more conventional buggy or even streetcar -- with most roads at best being crushed stone but most being deeply rutted mud the average motor vehicle of the time was useless outside of a fairly large city.
Technological innovation and the creation of entirely new technologies proceeds apace, in some ways it is highly accelerated due to the communication and sophisticated data archival technologies that were floating around labs like Cern, Bellcore, and Lawrence Livermore in the 1980's.
What about the Human Genome Project? What about ubiquitous computing? What about higher temperature superconductors? Nanotechnology? For what it's worth, even the white LED could dramatically change power consumption and distribution.
I'll let everyone know which technology was more revolutionary -- that of the first half of the 20th, or the second half -- fifty years from now when we have had the chance to truly evaluate today's bleeding edge and see whether its cuts are shallow or deep.
I think the screenwriter, the director, and the actress went way overboard with Jessica's grief after Leto's death. Yes Jessica wept in the book, but there wasn't all the limp-wristed wailing and sobbing (and gnashing of teeth) that is portrayed in the miniseries. Jessica is a Bene Gesserit witch after all -- I think the screenwriter may have gone too far distancing Jessica from the other Reverend Mothers the miniseries presents to the viewer.
Jessica is flawed by love, but that doesn't make her the snivelling, swooning charicature of Helena Bonham-Carter that we're given from the miniseries.
I finally figured out who the character of Irulan has become -- the screenwriter combined Irulan with Fenrig's wife. In part two she seduced Feyd and she's the one scheming behind the scenes. Fenrig is reduced to a bit player, and his wife is non-existant.
IMHO combining Irulan with Fenrig's wife simplifies things and lets us see more of one of the better actors in the production. BUT, again we see the lesser Bene Gesserit reduced to nothing more than scheming Dynasty wenches. Change the makeup a little bit and Irulan could be Donna Mills.
Could be - but the article was about a wireless network, not an extension of the cellular one we already have.
I can't see this happening without a hybridized solution. I agree with you 100% if we are talking about an entirely wireless infrastructure in addition to our nifty little roaming gizmos.
I think our future holds a hybrid solution: I think we will see very limited power high-bandwidth wireless nodes deployed per residential block/per home, linked by fiber, sat, or copper. This patchwork will give all the appearance of a truly wireless network, and will be less dependent on wires, but wire/fiber will be around for a LONG time.
Our devices will be a bit smarter and we'll be able to roam with them from cell to cell with little or no loss of their functionality -- a video chat started at home would continue when we climbed in the car and had the accident because we were distracted. The web pad might turn off its wireless capability within range of the ER due to increased priority of the ER's data.
As for compression you are correct, but compression + queuing/prioritization can lead to efficient sharing of localized bandwidth. I still believe any wiring besides power cables within homes or small offices will completely lose its purpose within fifteen years.
It's fun to dream -- but I believe there are practical solutions to most of the problems we are facing right now. We're looking up the hill, it looks like a relatively steep slope, but it's no more steep than other slopes we have faced.
Many parts of the electromagnetic spectrum aren't very good for you, or other living organisms. If EVERYONE were using microwave there would probably be a decrease in the bird population, and trees might start dying, more people would get cancer (if we still used lead paint and stayed indoors we might be ok).
We will most likely do other things that will also influence species, including ourselves. Do the potential benefits outweigh the risks? Even with current technologies do we have any actual proof that anything
significantly detrimental will arise from a rise in ambient RF?
Also think of the lag, going from wireless to hardwire isn't terrible, but going from wireless to wireless to wireless to wireless to wireless...and then back again could get ugly.
Assuming we do not get any better at sharing frequencies than we are right now. I recall a time not too long ago when it was common to be able to take your cordless telephone off hook and listen in on your next door neighbor's conversations. Many older model cordless telephones can still be intercepted using a simple scanner.
Newer models cannot.
As for other problems, someone could start broadcasting noise on every frequency they cared to, and it would probably be a harder to find them if there are others trying to use the same frequencies at the same time.
Noise looks and acts different -- anyone broadcasting white noise to block an entire local spectrum would stick out like a sore thumb. I do not think that a wireless network would be any more vulnerable or likely to be targetted than current cell networks, and I personally know of no incidents of individuals blacking out a cell for jollies.
"Martha, the kilowatt soft microwave transmitter I built in the basement will teach all them yuppy dot-commers with antennas growing out of their ears to cut me off when I am driving home from work..."
IPs are and issue but think of what happens if we ever run out of MAC addresses? (probably won't happen too soon, but if we're looking very far in the future....)
Add more bits to the hardware identifier. And stop dragging our heels about implementing IPV6.:)
These are all valid points to address, but they are not insurmountable, and from my possibly-flawed understanding of the current state of bleeding edge most of them already have decent solutions in development.
Actually I always wondered what a maser attached to a C band satellite antenna feedhorn would do as it tracked from position to position along the Clarke belt, but I digress.:)
The frequencies and technologies are already available to implement most of this technology, but with the reallocation -- at least in the US -- of much of the current spectra reserved for television around 2008 (my date may be off) entirely new slices of frequency will probably be made available for general use.
Of course the above statement altruistically assumes that lobbyists won't manage to bribe and cajole their way into the House Telecommunications Subcommittee meetings and railroad the "deliberations" of its money junkies towards assigning vast tracts of "publically-owned" frequency pasture to obscure applications that only have relevance to some megacorporation in Timbuktu.:)
The frequencies and technologies are already available to implement most of this technology, but with the reallocation -- at least in the US -- of much of the current spectra reserved for television around 2008 (my date may be off) entirely new slices of frequency will probably be made available for general use.
Of course the above statement altruistically assumes that lobbyists won't manage to bribe and cajole their way into the House Telecommunications Subcommittee meetings and railroad the "deliberations" of its money junkies towards assigning vast tracts of "publically-owned" frequency pasture to obscure applications that only have relevance to some megacorporation in Timbuktu.:)
We only need a protocol that can flexibly recognize what is "local" and what is "remote."
When we have such a protocol then we can simply extend the current infrastructure to include devices that participate in our ubiquitous local network in a fashion similar to IP Masquerading or connection sharing...
The whole Internet does not need to know every device sharing the IP addy at your.connection.mondo-highspeed-net.com. Every device sharing the IP addy at your.connection.mondo-highspeed-net.com need not speak to the whole Internet.:)
The hard part is making certain that your George Jetson videophonebookpad uses YOUR connection and not your neighbor's, and knows whether or not when it is out of range of your home network it is allowed to connect to the NetWorkAtLarge.
I had a previous comment to another post regarding RF that is pertinent here:
Any electromagnetic field emits RF. Being a digital slave I do not want to live without the benefits todays' technology can bring.
Since the only way to eliminate RF from our lives is to forgo electricity, I'll gladly accept the current low risks for the benefits they entail, even if that means that I might be in the 0.001% of persons who could have the odd malignant tumor triggered by my cordless phone.
I could also be one of the 0.001% of creatures exterminated by an asteroid strike, or the 0.001% of creatures struck and killed by frozen falling airplane sewage...
The sun generates copious amounts of harmful radiation and kills more people per country per year than have been killed by every poorly-shielded electronic device in existence since electricity was first harnessed, but I haven't heard anyone talking about banning it...
The ISP I am refering to is in a small town in Ohio.:)
The sweet part of the setup is that the primary antenna is on a tall building on the highest spot in town, within line of site range of the entire business district. If Lucent's Orinoco performs as advertized I cannot wait to see what roaming is like. There's so much potential (positive and negative) in having city-sized areas covered by a TCP/IP WAN.
I prefer to focus on the positives at this point in time, and deal with the negatives once the system has actually been deployed. <g>
I suspect within twenty years we will have small distance-limited data-carrying nodes connected by wire/fiber to backbone carriers.
You talk about a home-by-home deployment of shared-node transceivers. Ten to twenty years from now if current trends proceed the average home will either possess or be within range of such a device.
Regarding compression technology and embedded processors -- I am not talking about throughput -- I am talking about compression. If I take a newspaper and compress it, it will take less time to transmit, allowing another device more time to use the same frequency. Unless I misunderstand your argument I suspect you are thinking in analog terms, but with digital compression technology we can make one byte count as ten, or twenty, or even fifty, effectively increasing by a factor of ten, twenty, or fifty the total amount of data (depending on type) that can be carried on an available frequency.
As an example the current DiVX compression scheme allows video to be compressed to extremely small files, hence decreasing download times by a factor of ten. In effect this increases apparent bitrate. in regards to compression processor power does have a role in more efficient utilization of available hertz/bps.
As for satellite systems, in higher-end RCA televisions DSS decoders are now built in. At least in the United States many DBS decoders are given away free with a purchase of programming. I bought mine at Radio Shack for $49.95 -- cheaper than a medium grade outdoor VHF antenna.
Regarding upstream data according to current Internet models the amount of data sent by Joe Q. User upstream as he surfs the web is trivial compared to the amount of data he receives. There is no need for a web pad to offer 1.5 Mbps of data per second upstream. Conversely there is no need for an electronic pen to grab 1.5 Mbps of data downstream. If you incorporate handwriting recognition technology into the electronic pen all it needs to do is keep up with the number of characters per second the wielder is capable of writing...
We do not yet know what devices might be a part of a ubiquitous network, but I am certain with a combination of high speed channel hopping, compression, and proper prioritization/queueing of packets such a network will be possible.
The ISP I am working with is using it for point to point, but I note that Canon has a nice 622 Mbps optical link now that might be nice for that application.:)
The 30 mile range I suspect is based on parabolic antenna to parabolic antenna transmission. 512 users as I recall is the limit for the Orinoco equipment.
Whoops... I apologize for making an assertion regarding range based on anecdotal information. The Lucent sales rep says 30 miles -- but I am scouring Lucent's site for anything that even comes close to that.
Basically to extend the range of either BreezeCom or Lucent Orinoco technology you need a reflective external antenna that has been aligned to point directly towards the central omnidirectional antenna.
One provider claiming to be nearing a working 30 mile range is MidCoast.net. From other sources, including ISP Planet the more typical cell size is based on line-of-site, approximately five miles with optimal base antenna placement.
Again I offer my apology for posting anecdotal information.
Heh, with a wireless ubiquitous network the advertisements could follow you around through your day to day life, customized to your known preferences.
When you are within range advertisers could specifically target you with ads calculated to grab your attention -- displayed on public access surfaces...
Any electromagnetic field emits RF. Being a digital slave I do not want to live without the benefits todays' technology can bring.
Since the only way to eliminate RF from our lives is to forgo electricity, I'll gladly accept the current low risks for the benefits they entail, even if that means that I might be in the 0.001% of persons who could have the odd tumor triggered by my cordless phone.
I could also be one of the 0.001% of creatures exterminated by an asteroid strike, or the 0.001% of creatures struck and killed by frozen falling airplane sewage...
I think what will make a ubiquitous wireless environment possible is an increase in the processing power of embedded systems.
We will obviously not have more frequencies available, but I suspect we will be able to use alloted frequencies more wisely, and possibly devise some more robust low power transmission schemes.
Remember how large "wireless phones" were in the early 90's? Remember how terrible the sound could be? Look at how small they have become, and yet their sound has also generally improved significantly.
We have not dumped more wattage into cell transmission technology. We certainly have not dramatically increased the amount of alloted frequency available to place a single cell call. What we have done is to employ technologies like realtime compression and high-speed channel switching/frequency hopping.:)
On a similar note we now cram two hundred plus channels of high quality video into the same amount of bandwidth used by twenty analog video channels -- using advanced compression technology. The set top DSS boxes used to weigh five kilograms and cost several hundred dollars. Now they weigh under a kilogram and cost less than fifty.
With Bluetooth and like technologies in the not-too-distant future a device the size of a wrist watch will hold the equivalent of a PDA -- which will probably network somewhat seamlessly with its surrounding devices. Such a device might enable the strokes of your electronic pen to be stored in your wrist assistant's memory, or to be mirrored by a nearby printing device.
Your body's ability to act as an antenna for RF might allow a scenario similar to the commerical where the shady-looking young fellow is watched by other shoppers as he stuffs items into his coat, only to be stopped by the store attendant as he is leaving "excuse me sir, you forgot your receipt."
As an extreme extrapolation of possibilities, your wrist assistant might be programmed to hold reality interface settings that determine the level of interaction "smart" devices in your immediate environment choose for you.
As an example of what I am talking about, imagine visiting a foreign city for the first time. Upon stepping out of the airplane you set your reality interface to "novice" and into the air say "I need to get to a moderately-priced hotel."
The watch decides it does not have the information you require and so connects to a small transceiver located in a a nearby "smart" traffic sign. It sends an agent out into the local network to find an answer to your question. The agent replies with the pertinent information. After saying "confirm my reservation" your watch messages the hotel, supplies your personal information, and allows the funds for the room to be transfered from your bank account to the hotel. Because your assistant is set to "novice" it inquires whether you wish to walk the 3.5 kilometers to this location, or hail a taxi.
You tell it to secure a taxi, the cab is notified by electronic message, arrives in front of you with your destination pre-arranged, and is paid without you ever having to reach into your pocket or speak a word in the country's language.
Of course any access terminal you step up to will not only greet you in your desired language but will recognize you and conform to your personal preferences.
In your own city a setting of "expert" means that street signs do not provide verbal cues as to your location, and you are not nagged by local ordinance announcements as you commute between locations.
This is on its way -- it's a question of when, not if such technology becomes affordable and widely deployed. I would suspect we could see it in as little as twenty years, but surely within a century I believe such an experience will be commonplace.
is being deployed by many ISP's across the United States as the technology becomes more robust, with the ability to serve up to 512 users per antenna/cell at a distance of up to 30 miles with appropriate amplification.
In areas like mine where telcos are slow to deploy digital services and cable access is perpetually "18 months away" wireless 802.11 provides a relatively high-speed low latency connection compared to MSN/Gilat's access. The provider I am working with plans to provide a fixed IP address with a minimum 1.5 Mbps down and 384 Kbps up for $49.95 a month to subscribers within the equipment's five mile range. The theoretical limit of 802.11 currently maxes out at 11 Mbps bidirectional -- Lucent tells us 24 Mbps is on its way.
Unfortunately 802.11 technology is neither inexpensive, nor is it completely immune to terrestrial interference.
I suspect providers can look for the quality of wireless technology to improve dramatically in the coming decade as wireless technologies mature. I do not recall the name or the source of the article but as I recall in one or more major North American cities a company is now looking to provide a dialtone in competition to local POTS via a wireless antenna attached to the subscriber's rooftop. As I recall, the truly wonderful thing about this technology is that each antenna also acts as a repeater for the service.
Imagine something like this paired with 802.11 that allows an ISP or connection provider to extend their range with each install...
<gloat>
In any case the geek in me suspects that roaming through my home town at 1.5 Mbps with a PDA will be quite sweet. I'll let everyone know in a few months.:)
</gloat>
Slashdot Mirror
to have any posting of mine receiving an elevated score.
I am resigned to being perpetually irrelevant. :)
I have submitted valid stories before and had them all rejected -- I suspect if the editor does not recognize your name then you will be passed by for someone who has posted previously.
I think preferential placement in the submission queue is supposed to be an action of karma, but besides meta moderation there's not a lot that ordinary geeks like thee and me can do to increase ours. :)
Myself, I just assume that sooner or later the über-geeks like CmdrTaco or Timothy will stumble over the information I have found and post it. I resign myself to kibbutz'ing out here in the shadows. :)
What frosts my cookies/biscuits is exactly how this stuff is supposed to be stored? If it fissions in paper-thin amounts it has to be a challenge to store, meaning we would produce it en route?
And then we need to paint it to the walls of the reaction chamber without it reacting, let it do its magic/decompose, then make and apply more?
I can see it now, the Mars 1 mission will be staffed by one astronaut, seven nuclear physicists, two materials scientists, and one hazmat worker. :)
answers three or four posts, maybe tries to submit an article or two, and then gives up when they realize that /. is just another 3r33t "social club."
It is useless to attempt to evaluate the impact of today's cutting-edge technology contrasted to the impact of 50 - 100 year old technologies. Of course the older technologies will have had greater impact on society -- they have had more time to be deployed and refined.
What value would a light bulb have had for a person in the 1890's who was satisfied with gas lighting -- gas lighting was adequately bright and required no new systems to function. What value would an automobile have had to the same person compared to the more conventional buggy or even streetcar -- with most roads at best being crushed stone but most being deeply rutted mud the average motor vehicle of the time was useless outside of a fairly large city.
Technological innovation and the creation of entirely new technologies proceeds apace, in some ways it is highly accelerated due to the communication and sophisticated data archival technologies that were floating around labs like Cern, Bellcore, and Lawrence Livermore in the 1980's.
What about the Human Genome Project? What about ubiquitous computing? What about higher temperature superconductors? Nanotechnology? For what it's worth, even the white LED could dramatically change power consumption and distribution.
I'll let everyone know which technology was more revolutionary -- that of the first half of the 20th, or the second half -- fifty years from now when we have had the chance to truly evaluate today's bleeding edge and see whether its cuts are shallow or deep.
I think the screenwriter, the director, and the actress went way overboard with Jessica's grief after Leto's death. Yes Jessica wept in the book, but there wasn't all the limp-wristed wailing and sobbing (and gnashing of teeth) that is portrayed in the miniseries. Jessica is a Bene Gesserit witch after all -- I think the screenwriter may have gone too far distancing Jessica from the other Reverend Mothers the miniseries presents to the viewer.
Jessica is flawed by love, but that doesn't make her the snivelling, swooning charicature of Helena Bonham-Carter that we're given from the miniseries.
I finally figured out who the character of Irulan has become -- the screenwriter combined Irulan with Fenrig's wife. In part two she seduced Feyd and she's the one scheming behind the scenes. Fenrig is reduced to a bit player, and his wife is non-existant.
IMHO combining Irulan with Fenrig's wife simplifies things and lets us see more of one of the better actors in the production. BUT, again we see the lesser Bene Gesserit reduced to nothing more than scheming Dynasty wenches. Change the makeup a little bit and Irulan could be Donna Mills.
I like my ladies a bit more butch. <g>
My two cents.
Many parts of the electromagnetic spectrum aren't very good for you, or other living organisms. If EVERYONE were using microwave there would probably be a decrease in the bird population, and trees might start dying, more people would get cancer (if we still used lead paint and stayed indoors we might be ok).
Also think of the lag, going from wireless to hardwire isn't terrible, but going from wireless to wireless to wireless to wireless to wireless...and then back again could get ugly.
As for other problems, someone could start broadcasting noise on every frequency they cared to, and it would probably be a harder to find them if there are others trying to use the same frequencies at the same time.
IPs are and issue but think of what happens if we ever run out of MAC addresses? (probably won't happen too soon, but if we're looking very far in the future....)
These are all valid points to address, but they are not insurmountable, and from my possibly-flawed understanding of the current state of bleeding edge most of them already have decent solutions in development.
Actually I always wondered what a maser attached to a C band satellite antenna feedhorn would do as it tracked from position to position along the Clarke belt, but I digress. :)
The frequencies and technologies are already available to implement most of this technology, but with the reallocation -- at least in the US -- of much of the current spectra reserved for television around 2008 (my date may be off) entirely new slices of frequency will probably be made available for general use.
Of course the above statement altruistically assumes that lobbyists won't manage to bribe and cajole their way into the House Telecommunications Subcommittee meetings and railroad the "deliberations" of its money junkies towards assigning vast tracts of "publically-owned" frequency pasture to obscure applications that only have relevance to some megacorporation in Timbuktu. :)
But hey, a guy can dream, right?
The frequencies and technologies are already available to implement most of this technology, but with the reallocation -- at least in the US -- of much of the current spectra reserved for television around 2008 (my date may be off) entirely new slices of frequency will probably be made available for general use.
Of course the above statement altruistically assumes that lobbyists won't manage to bribe and cajole their way into the House Telecommunications Subcommittee meetings and railroad the "deliberations" of its money junkies towards assigning vast tracts of "publically-owned" frequency pasture to obscure applications that only have relevance to some megacorporation in Timbuktu. :)
But hey, a guy can dream, right?
We only need a protocol that can flexibly recognize what is "local" and what is "remote."
When we have such a protocol then we can simply extend the current infrastructure to include devices that participate in our ubiquitous local network in a fashion similar to IP Masquerading or connection sharing ...
The whole Internet does not need to know every device sharing the IP addy at your.connection.mondo-highspeed-net.com. Every device sharing the IP addy at your.connection.mondo-highspeed-net.com need not speak to the whole Internet. :)
The hard part is making certain that your George Jetson videophonebookpad uses YOUR connection and not your neighbor's, and knows whether or not when it is out of range of your home network it is allowed to connect to the NetWorkAtLarge.
I had a previous comment to another post regarding RF that is pertinent here:
Any electromagnetic field emits RF. Being a digital slave I do not want to live without the benefits todays' technology can bring.
Since the only way to eliminate RF from our lives is to forgo electricity, I'll gladly accept the current low risks for the benefits they entail, even if that means that I might be in the 0.001% of persons who could have the odd malignant tumor triggered by my cordless phone.
I could also be one of the 0.001% of creatures exterminated by an asteroid strike, or the 0.001% of creatures struck and killed by frozen falling airplane sewage ...
The sun generates copious amounts of harmful radiation and kills more people per country per year than have been killed by every poorly-shielded electronic device in existence since electricity was first harnessed, but I haven't heard anyone talking about banning it ...
(yet)
This search at IEEE.org yields all of the draft specifications for the protocol, but there does not appear to be an 802.11.org. :)
The ISP I am refering to is in a small town in Ohio. :)
The sweet part of the setup is that the primary antenna is on a tall building on the highest spot in town, within line of site range of the entire business district. If Lucent's Orinoco performs as advertized I cannot wait to see what roaming is like. There's so much potential (positive and negative) in having city-sized areas covered by a TCP/IP WAN.
I prefer to focus on the positives at this point in time, and deal with the negatives once the system has actually been deployed. <g>
This is a fun thread, Bill. :)
I suspect within twenty years we will have small distance-limited data-carrying nodes connected by wire/fiber to backbone carriers.
You talk about a home-by-home deployment of shared-node transceivers. Ten to twenty years from now if current trends proceed the average home will either possess or be within range of such a device.
Regarding compression technology and embedded processors -- I am not talking about throughput -- I am talking about compression. If I take a newspaper and compress it, it will take less time to transmit, allowing another device more time to use the same frequency. Unless I misunderstand your argument I suspect you are thinking in analog terms, but with digital compression technology we can make one byte count as ten, or twenty, or even fifty, effectively increasing by a factor of ten, twenty, or fifty the total amount of data (depending on type) that can be carried on an available frequency.
As an example the current DiVX compression scheme allows video to be compressed to extremely small files, hence decreasing download times by a factor of ten. In effect this increases apparent bitrate. in regards to compression processor power does have a role in more efficient utilization of available hertz/bps.
As for satellite systems, in higher-end RCA televisions DSS decoders are now built in. At least in the United States many DBS decoders are given away free with a purchase of programming. I bought mine at Radio Shack for $49.95 -- cheaper than a medium grade outdoor VHF antenna.
Regarding upstream data according to current Internet models the amount of data sent by Joe Q. User upstream as he surfs the web is trivial compared to the amount of data he receives. There is no need for a web pad to offer 1.5 Mbps of data per second upstream. Conversely there is no need for an electronic pen to grab 1.5 Mbps of data downstream. If you incorporate handwriting recognition technology into the electronic pen all it needs to do is keep up with the number of characters per second the wielder is capable of writing ...
We do not yet know what devices might be a part of a ubiquitous network, but I am certain with a combination of high speed channel hopping, compression, and proper prioritization/queueing of packets such a network will be possible.
-Joe G.
The ISP I am working with is using it for point to point, but I note that Canon has a nice 622 Mbps optical link now that might be nice for that application. :)
The 30 mile range I suspect is based on parabolic antenna to parabolic antenna transmission. 512 users as I recall is the limit for the Orinoco equipment.
Thanks for the pointer to Nokia. :)
Whoops ... I apologize for making an assertion regarding range based on anecdotal information. The Lucent sales rep says 30 miles -- but I am scouring Lucent's site for anything that even comes close to that.
Basically to extend the range of either BreezeCom or Lucent Orinoco technology you need a reflective external antenna that has been aligned to point directly towards the central omnidirectional antenna.
One provider claiming to be nearing a working 30 mile range is MidCoast.net. From other sources, including ISP Planet the more typical cell size is based on line-of-site, approximately five miles with optimal base antenna placement.
Again I offer my apology for posting anecdotal information.
Heh, with a wireless ubiquitous network the advertisements could follow you around through your day to day life, customized to your known preferences.
When you are within range advertisers could specifically target you with ads calculated to grab your attention -- displayed on public access surfaces ...
Good old Sol also emits cancer-causing energy, but I do not see anyone working to regulate it other than Coppertone. :)
Any electromagnetic field emits RF. Being a digital slave I do not want to live without the benefits todays' technology can bring.
Since the only way to eliminate RF from our lives is to forgo electricity, I'll gladly accept the current low risks for the benefits they entail, even if that means that I might be in the 0.001% of persons who could have the odd tumor triggered by my cordless phone.
I could also be one of the 0.001% of creatures exterminated by an asteroid strike, or the 0.001% of creatures struck and killed by frozen falling airplane sewage ...
I think what will make a ubiquitous wireless environment possible is an increase in the processing power of embedded systems.
We will obviously not have more frequencies available, but I suspect we will be able to use alloted frequencies more wisely, and possibly devise some more robust low power transmission schemes.
Remember how large "wireless phones" were in the early 90's? Remember how terrible the sound could be? Look at how small they have become, and yet their sound has also generally improved significantly.
We have not dumped more wattage into cell transmission technology. We certainly have not dramatically increased the amount of alloted frequency available to place a single cell call. What we have done is to employ technologies like realtime compression and high-speed channel switching/frequency hopping. :)
On a similar note we now cram two hundred plus channels of high quality video into the same amount of bandwidth used by twenty analog video channels -- using advanced compression technology. The set top DSS boxes used to weigh five kilograms and cost several hundred dollars. Now they weigh under a kilogram and cost less than fifty.
Technology marches forward. :)
It's a question of when.
With Bluetooth and like technologies in the not-too-distant future a device the size of a wrist watch will hold the equivalent of a PDA -- which will probably network somewhat seamlessly with its surrounding devices. Such a device might enable the strokes of your electronic pen to be stored in your wrist assistant's memory, or to be mirrored by a nearby printing device.
Your body's ability to act as an antenna for RF might allow a scenario similar to the commerical where the shady-looking young fellow is watched by other shoppers as he stuffs items into his coat, only to be stopped by the store attendant as he is leaving "excuse me sir, you forgot your receipt."
As an extreme extrapolation of possibilities, your wrist assistant might be programmed to hold reality interface settings that determine the level of interaction "smart" devices in your immediate environment choose for you.
As an example of what I am talking about, imagine visiting a foreign city for the first time. Upon stepping out of the airplane you set your reality interface to "novice" and into the air say "I need to get to a moderately-priced hotel."
The watch decides it does not have the information you require and so connects to a small transceiver located in a a nearby "smart" traffic sign. It sends an agent out into the local network to find an answer to your question. The agent replies with the pertinent information. After saying "confirm my reservation" your watch messages the hotel, supplies your personal information, and allows the funds for the room to be transfered from your bank account to the hotel. Because your assistant is set to "novice" it inquires whether you wish to walk the 3.5 kilometers to this location, or hail a taxi.
You tell it to secure a taxi, the cab is notified by electronic message, arrives in front of you with your destination pre-arranged, and is paid without you ever having to reach into your pocket or speak a word in the country's language.
Of course any access terminal you step up to will not only greet you in your desired language but will recognize you and conform to your personal preferences.
In your own city a setting of "expert" means that street signs do not provide verbal cues as to your location, and you are not nagged by local ordinance announcements as you commute between locations.
This is on its way -- it's a question of when, not if such technology becomes affordable and widely deployed. I would suspect we could see it in as little as twenty years, but surely within a century I believe such an experience will be commonplace.
is being deployed by many ISP's across the United States as the technology becomes more robust, with the ability to serve up to 512 users per antenna/cell at a distance of up to 30 miles with appropriate amplification.
In areas like mine where telcos are slow to deploy digital services and cable access is perpetually "18 months away" wireless 802.11 provides a relatively high-speed low latency connection compared to MSN/Gilat's access. The provider I am working with plans to provide a fixed IP address with a minimum 1.5 Mbps down and 384 Kbps up for $49.95 a month to subscribers within the equipment's five mile range. The theoretical limit of 802.11 currently maxes out at 11 Mbps bidirectional -- Lucent tells us 24 Mbps is on its way.
Unfortunately 802.11 technology is neither inexpensive, nor is it completely immune to terrestrial interference.
I suspect providers can look for the quality of wireless technology to improve dramatically in the coming decade as wireless technologies mature. I do not recall the name or the source of the article but as I recall in one or more major North American cities a company is now looking to provide a dialtone in competition to local POTS via a wireless antenna attached to the subscriber's rooftop. As I recall, the truly wonderful thing about this technology is that each antenna also acts as a repeater for the service.
Imagine something like this paired with 802.11 that allows an ISP or connection provider to extend their range with each install ...
<gloat> In any case the geek in me suspects that roaming through my home town at 1.5 Mbps with a PDA will be quite sweet. I'll let everyone know in a few months. :)
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