More tech history

Since I've been on a pseudo-historical bent with the posts this week, I thought I'd just go for broke and make a post about some interesting tech from the days of yore. This isn't about ENIAC or the Analytical Engine, though, this is about the ever-forward march for convenience through consumer tech.

Below we have some attempts at navigation technology. One is in the form of a watch, and one is meant to be mounted in a car. Both have interchangeable maps that are like little scrolls - the auto-mounted one would advance according to the speed of the car, while the watch one had to be advanced by hand. You could buy maps for different locations and change them out as necessary. The car systems were developed in Bulgaria in the 1930s, while the watch, called the 'RouteFinder,' is from England and was developed a decade earlier in the 1920s.

Next, we have the original version of Google Glass, an over-the-eyes TV set, complete with dials and antenna. This was back in 1963, when there were only three channels and no color TV. Plus, you would need to sit very still otherwise the antenna would have a tough time doing their job. (On a related note, if you're a fan of Google+, you may not be one for long).

If it's 1936 and you just can't wait for the Kindle to make its debut, then why not get these glasses which use mirrors to allow you to read in bed without having to sit up, or even look at the book? These should be released now! They're a good idea.

Have trouble focusing? Maybe you're easily distracted? Kids not getting their schoolwork done? Living in the 1920's? Then get them the isolator! It pumps oxygen into a head covering which also blocks all audio stimulus and limits your field of vision. What could go wrong?

Finally, the oldest known selfie, taken almost 200 years ago in 1839 by Robert Cornelius outside his family's store.

All photos from Distractify.

Warhol art found on Amiga disks

Andy Warhol creating art on an Amiga, with Debbie Harry

Back when we were talking about hardware, I mentioned that I had gone to buy a PC and the salesperson asked if I wanted to purchase an additional 25MB (that's megabyte, mind you) hard drive for $500. I said in response that I had no use for something like that because I would never be able to fill up a 25MB hard drive in my lifetime. The 3 1/2" floppies were enough for me.

That was around 1988 and the PC I was buying was a Commodore Amiga 500. Developed by the same company that had created the Commodore 64 - the best selling PC of all time - the Amiga was well-regarded as the machine to beat. It had 512 MB of memory, expandable to 1GB, an unheard of amount at the time. It's graphical user interface (remember that?) was way ahead of its time and its graphics capabilities were so advanced that television networks used it to make the animations for everything from station identification bumps to the animated opening for Monday Night Football. And of course you could just mosey through dungeons if that was your thing.

At the time, these were the most advanced graphics you could get on any PC

Interesting side note: if you ever saw the movie Wayne's World, Dana Carvey's character Garth Algar was actually modeled after his brother, who was one of the developers of the Amiga program Video Toaster, which not only was a video editor used for the kind of animation just mentioned, the software actually won an Emmy!

The reason I bring all of this up is because just recently, art created by well-known pop-culture artist Andy Warhol - on an Amiga computer using the GraphiCraft program - was just discovered on a cache of floppy disks. He made the creations during a collaboration with Amiga, but they weren't discovered until recently.

Andy Warhol art created on the Amiga

This is the first discovery of its kind that I can remember, that being digital art created by a well-known artist on a vintage PC., and I suspect it will be the last. Many people create digital art today, but Andy Warhol was creating it at the forefront of computer graphics capabilities, over twenty years ago.

I just threw this picture in because I like it. That's an Amiga 500.

E.T. Not *that* E.T., *that* E.T.

As some of you likely already know, when movies are released they often have tie-in video games developed to go along with them. Some are very well done, others not so much.

The fact is, there are many, many games that are movie tie-ins, and most of them are understood to be really bad. But which one is the worst, and why do we care?

Among those who know the industry, it is well-known that the worst movie tie-in game ever released was Atari's 1982 release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, programmed solely by Howard Scott Warshaw in six weeks to tie in with the blockbuster movie of the same name. The movie was one of the new breed of blockbusters (and at this time, Steven Spielberg was responsible for all of them, including Jaws and Star Wars).

With a sure-fire epic hit of a movie coming in, Atari wanted to be part of it. They spent a fortune - $25 million - acquiring the rights, and promptly told poor Mr. Warshaw to design, code, and deliver it in only six weeks, far shorter than the 8-12 month development cycle typical at the time.

Not only that, so mismanaged were they back then, they actually produced more cartridges for the console than there were consoles sold! They felt it would push the sales further, but the opposite happened. The game was so confusing, difficult to control and generally unplayable it resulted in significant returns and unsold inventory. In fact, so serious was their error in judgment that this single game was a major cause of the great industry crash of 1983. It would take years and an unknown company from Japan to repair the damage.

Atari just wanted to forget the whole debacle, and for the 30 years since there has been an urban legend among enthusiasts that they buried excess carts in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico. And recently, an excavation team with the backing of Microsoft studios decided to film an excursion to the landfill and see if the rumors are true, or finally lay them to rest. And guess what they found?


That's right! A horde of buried non-treasure. E.T. cartridges by the thousands, as well as a few Centipede ones thrown in for good measure.

Now we know. Now the rumors can be laid to rest. The documentary will be aired in the future on Microsoft channels, and it should be interesting to see.

One last thing - none of this was Howard S. Warshaw's fault; he was given an impossible task and did the best he could given the circumstances. He has a strong track record and no one considers this a taint on him personally. I didn't even mind the game that much, but I'm easy to please.

And frankly, there are much, MUCH worse games than this.

Ronald McSwagDonald

Here you McGo. You McWanted to know what the new Ronald Mcdonald looks like, here he McIs in all his McGlory. The McNews was announced via McTwitter, if you would like to read all about it and some of the McReactions and much more about than you could ever McWant, then you can follow this McLink.

In my opinion, he's dressed exactly how I always figured executives at McDonald's dressed anyway.

Simpsons fan?

Are you a Simpsons fan? Of course you are, everyone is. One thing you can always count on is that every single person you meet is a Simpsons fan. So let's put it to the test. This isn't some trivia quiz about the show, I could blaze through one of those no problem. No, this is a REAL test. If you visit the site www.riddlydiddly.com, you'll be put to the ultimate test of your fandom; yes, here you can find out how long you can watch Ned Flanders riddly diddly! To paraphrase Creepshow, I can watch Ned riddly diddly a loooong time!

Wearables

I'm still not entirely sure what fitness bands are or what their purpose is or who wears them, although some of you expressed your fondness in a past post. Yet as much as the market appears to be expanding (even Microsoft is getting involved, late as they tend to be), Nike, who manufactures one of the most well-known fitness bands out there, the Nike+ Fuelband, is pulling the plug.

I have to admit the thing looks nifty, but according to this post on Wired, Nike is halting production. The speculation is that they are going to instead throw their support and software development behind the rumored-to-be-upcoming iWatch, Apple's answer to whatever it's an answer to. I'll say it again, I didn't know people still wear watches, but with some commanding prices of well over $100,000 the market is clearly still there.

I find this strange as Nike is a gigantic company, and there is no reason they couldn't supply software to the iWatch while continuing to offer their own brand. They have long had a relationship with Apple, however, and the Fuelband itself was iOS only, so perhaps this is a natural way to cut costs yet still remain in the market.

The Polaroid Museum

You may recall back when we discussed disruptive versus sustaining technology, one of the things we talked about were digital cameras. Specifically, besides Kodak anyway, we talked about Polaroid and its inability to keep up in an ever crowded digital-photography marketplace.

And that was unusual, because Polaroid is a stalwart photography company that has been around for a long time, and made some iconic cameras. The most well known of those, of course, is the Polaroid One-Step line of cameras, in which you'd press the button and a picture would come out. Well, not a picture but a piece of film that you'd have to wave around in the air and the picture would slowly develop; it's sort of like the digital cameras we have now, inasmuch as you could see the picture shortly after you took it and decide if you liked it or needed to take another.

In fact, the design of that film became iconic in culture, as even digital prints are sometimes depicted as having the white border and larger chin of the Polaroid instamatic film. While the loss of the film didn't result in a song by Paul Simon like some other films, there was an outcry, its demise made the national news, and it eventually came back! Apparently people still use those cameras a lot. So it's only fitting that now, at long last, there is a museum dedicated to the Polaroid. And guess where it is? That's right, it's right here in Las Vegas.

I haven't yet been there, but as soon as I get the chance, I will go, take some pictures with my non-Polaroid Icon, and if I don't get thrown out because of it I'll post them here.

It just doesn't get any more Busey than this.

Yesterday I made a post about the Amazon Fire TV with a banner ad featuring Gary Busey. He was great in the Buddy Holly Story, and the World's Dumbest series, and nothing else.

Thanks to Shannon for her comment that opened my eyes to his advertisement for the Amazon Fire, another can now be added to the list. Apparently he also wants voice command, something that smartphone makers are banking on, and now other devices, including the Fire, are as well. The advertisement is a masterpiece of storytelling, character development, and plot arcs. Plus, it has Gary Busey. Bask in the glow of Shakespearean narrative as only Gary Busey can provide. To paraphrase A Charlie Brown Christmas, he's the Gary Busiest!

A couple of thoughts: I also like talking to things! Who doesn't? Sometimes, like Gary Busey, I talk to my pants. Why not? Remember the song Hello Walls? Why not Hello Pants? As strange as it may seem, embedded systems in clothing are already a reality, even leading to pseudo-invisibility. Additionally, voice recognition has become its own domain and of monumental importance to many devices, some of which make complete sense and others that don't. Amazon is putting a lot of importance on voice commands, and they've had great success with their previous devices, so we'll see how it goes.

Hello, pants!

Finally, technology I can use.

Do YOU want to rewind all these by hand?

Look what I found! Remember how it seems like yesterday that you would be renting a VHS from Blockbuster and it had the sticker with the ubiquitous slogan "Be kind, rewind?" Translated, that means "Don't be a jackass to the next yokel that rents this crappy movie." It was so well-known there was even a movie made with that title.

Then DVDs came along, and that slogan went right out the window. But that also means people stopped rewinding their DVDs! How are you supposed to watch that DVD or Blu-Ray you just RedBox'd if the jerk before you didn't rewind it? You'd have to rewind it by hand, and I can tell you that isn't easy.

Not anymore! I have discovered, at long last, the DVD Rewinder. Finally, an automated solution to the problem, much better than that online service that does it over the Internet. I'm just wondering what took them so long. Bask in the glow of the future, today!

(P.S. It's not real. Please don't buy this. There are no refunds of your money or your pride if you do)

Are you ready?

Are you ready for the Amazon Fire streaming console that will be a competitor to devices like AppleTV and Roku, as well as allowing third party software such as XBMC and games? Whether you are or not, Gary Busey is! How could you *not* buy it with that kind of endorsement?

The Time Warner/Comcast Merger

I was going to write a post discussing how the Comcast-TimeWarner deal that we all know is anticompetitive and monopolistic is likely to go through anyway, but there is so much to write about there's no way I could make it a succinct post.

For example, there are countless articles stating why Congress should reject the deal (I agree), but they're more idealistic than legal. Some are more pragmatic in explaining why it's likely to - and even should - happen no matter what.

And then there is article after article after article talking about the effect it will have on Netflix. The VAST majority of opinions are against the deal, but it appears there is no practical legal grounds on which to reject it. Netflix, for its part, is already planning on raising prices, in part because of their increase in subscribers and demand for original content, but also because they believe that *their* prices will rise as a result.

As you all know, I personally am very against this merger in every possible way. Did no one learn anything from the AOL-Time-Warner merger from yesteryear? Luckily we use Cox, but I just discovered that I have a data cap on my Internet service! So me and the cable company soon are going to have a talk. Be careful out there.

If you want to see something really scary, look at the infographic below. It shows the impact of media consolidation. It's a huge graphic, so you'll want to save it, open it in an image viewer, and zoom way in. But be prepared for what it says.

A beautiful use of the Oculus Rift

If you're not familiar with the Oculus Rift, let me provide some background. It's a virtual-reality headset that is expected to be released as a consumer device sometime in the near or far future, we're not sure which. Whenever it happens, though, it will be a big deal, because it considered the first time that legitimate, actually immersive virtual reality will be available to consumers. It received its initial funding of $2.4 million through a Kickstarter campaign back in 2012, and was recently purchased by Facebook for $2 BILLION, much to the chagrin of everyone, myself included, because we are now uncertain as to its future. What does Facebook want with it? They say they'll leave it alone, but many are unconvinced.

It has so much promise that it lured legendary programmer John Carmack away from id, the company he founded and where he developed groundbreaking, landmark games such as Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, to work on the emerging technology.

Although I haven't had the chance to test it myself, everything I have read about it is beyond impressive. Every single description of it from people who have tried it has been that it is a revolution in immersiveness. It is a set of screens that fit over each eye in an enclosed visor, which presents a stereoscopic 180-degree image to immerse you in the environment, and has fully implemented head tracking; that means if you turn your head to the right, the view shifts to the right.

But it has application beyond games. Very serious, useful, and wonderful application beyond games. Consider this story about Roberta Firstenberg. Roberta was fighting a losing battle with cancer, and was lamenting to her granddaughter, a game developer, that she missed the simple things like going outside.

This seems to be a common reaction to the Oculus Rift

That gave her granddaughter an idea: she wrote to Oculus, and asked if she could get a kit for her grandmother who was ill. They lovingly obliged, rushing her a developer's kit with a demo of walking through Tuscany in Italy. It afforded her the closest thing to being there and walking around, just as it will give us the closest thing we'll experience to walking in a spaceship or haunted house (profanity, be careful) or dungeon - or even getting your head chopped off in a guillotine simulator! She got a lot out of it as you can tell in her descriptions, and although she eventually lost her battle everyone believes the virtual reality experience really helped her to cope during that difficult time. I've embedded the video below, but i encourage you to read the full story.

My phone might have a sense of humor

I had to take a picture of damage for the insurance company, and learned my phone is either terrible at facial recognition, or it doesn't have a very high opinion of my friends.

Some interesting behind-the-scenes web stuff

I found an interesting web site I was not previously familiar with. Called CodePen, it shows bits of web content, any of which you can  hover over to get a brief explanation of what you'll be seeing, then click on and view the underlying HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), and .js (JavaScript) if any, in their own window.

If you've ever wondered what goes in to creating some of the things you see on webpages, this is a really interesting site to look around and begin to become familiar with the way they are coded.

A good example to start with is Hyperspace, which you can view at this link. It has no JavaScript, although you see some in the right window, however it is in fact what is known as 'commented out.' Because it is contained within the '/*' and '*/,' it is considered explanatory and ignored by the browser. But you can see the other code that went in to it.

Another good example that does use JavaScript is '100,000 particles,' the first link under the 'popular' heading. It shows what's capable with some actual coding powering the display of a web browser.

The cockroach apocalypse is upon us.

And I'm ok with that. As we should all know, you can't kill cockroaches. They're no water bear, but you can step on them, burn them, freeze them, you can drop a nuclear bomb DIRECTLY ON THEM and they just. won't. die.

So what's a good thing to do? Make them even *more* invulnerable! A team of international scientists has successfully implanted nanobots made from strands of DNA into the systems (remember those?) of cockroaches, and they have been folded in such a way that they can actually carry out logical operations; specifically, upon meeting a specific type of chemical compound, mainly protein, they can unfold and release medicine contained in their folds.

The articles I've read compare this to computing power but never explain it, and that bugs me. Get it? Bugs me?

Anyway, what it means is that these nanobots essentially carry out a single binary decision, for lack of a better word. If there are many of these nanobots carrying out these binary decisions, it's a bunch of binary events taking place in conceptually the same way they happen in a digital device. If you get enough of them in an organism, you could compare it to an actual digital device's computing power, and these scientists have done just that; they say soon they will be able to have the equivalent processing power in these nanobots to give the cockroach the equivalent of an 8-bit computer. That would include machines like the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Nintendo NES.


Live video by Animal Planet L!ve

I couldn't find a video, so here's Animal Planet's cockroach cam.

The process is remarkable, an incredible advancement in nanotechnology and medicine, and if it could be deployed in humans or other mammals, it could theoretically provide cell-specific methods of fighting diseases like cancer, which as of now are only targeted very broadly.

This isn't the first time we've seen cockroaches used in some amazing examples of biotechnology; earlier this year, scientists in Japan managed to equip cockroaches with a sensor that allowed them to be remotely controlled, and they could then be used - as the article states - to look for trapped survivors in places humans couldn't go. They are also rugged and require no power or fuel, making them even more appealing in this regard.

Now *that's* a detailed diagram.

Back to the nanobots, one thing to keep in mind is that mammals risk rejecting the foreign invaders though through our built-in autoimmune response, but surprisingly the scientists are very common that human tests could start in 2015. Exciting stuff!

Fingerprint scanner hacked already.

You know that amazing new Samsung Galaxy S5 you just got? The phone that lets you act superior to all those Luddites still using an iPhone? The one that is at the forefront of smartphone design? Well I have some bad news; the fingerprint scanner has been hacked already.

It only took a few days, but the researchers used a trick employed by a hacking group who bypassed the iPhone's fingerprint scanner last year, and posted a video on YouTube showing them making the breach. They hack involves a photo of a fingerprint and glue, and although they don't say it outright, it's actually very similar to the method for finding latent fingerprints on compromised or porous materials in criminal investigations. Additionally, contrary to what they imply, making the false fingerprint is non-trivial and not something the average low-level criminal would be doing. At least not yet.

By doing this, they were able to gain access not just to the phone, but to the apps included such as PayPal and make purchases and money transfers. The very dryly narrated (VERY dryly narrated) video explaining their process is below. Unfortunately, it really doesn't tell you anything but it's all they gave us.

I knew it!

You know how I always talk about our toasters becoming intelligent and telling us we eat too much toast? Well look what I found! That guy up there is a toaster that can, via an Ethernet connection, become depressed if it doesn't get used enough, and jealous if it finds out other connected toasters are being used more! The future is today!

It turns out Garfield was way ahead of me this whole time, and I think we'll all feel the same if it ever comes to this.

Things you should never, ever do.

Remember our discussion of social networks? There isn't much to say about this, except advise you to learn a valuable lesson from this teenager's mistake: Don't ever tweet a terroristic threat to an international airline, it will never have a happy ending.

You see that up there? That's a tweet that a grossly misguided teenager from The Netherlands sent to American Airlines, and their response. Suddenly, she realized she had screwed up, as she subsequently blew a gasket in return.

And, with a different username, she blocked the FBI and deleted her tweets just to be safe - it's like she and they never existed! 

She wasn't arrested nor did the FBI get involved, she turned herself in when the whole world started commenting on the wisdom of such an ill-informed prank. To be fair, she's a 14 year-old girl, and at that age very few people, regardless of gender, always make the best decisions.

I am so glad there was no public Internet when *I* was 14.

Future War Stuff

What to write about? There's so much going on! For example, the Heartbleed Bug was used as an entry method to steal the data of 900 Canadian taxpayers.  On another note, the FBI intends to have a facial-recognition database with 52 million faces - likely to include yours - up and running by next year. The photos won't only be of criminals, but of regular people with photos plucked from Facebook among other sources.

But I decided to mention briefly what could be a divisive post: the Navy launching what is by far the largest most advanced warship ever built, the $7 billion U.S.S. Zumwalt; The linked article is fascinating, with a full behind-the-scenes look at what the ship has to offer. A massive beast that appears as a fishing boat on radar, it has exceptionally advanced controls (all munitions are launched by computer), in fact most things - even shower pressure - are electronically controlled as opposed to manually as is often the case these days, and will be an appropriate complement for the almost-ready-for-testing railguns that shoot inexpensive projectiles at seven times the speed of sound using electricity only, require only one crew member to operate and do not require an explosive warhead, and laser-weapons for shooting down unmanned drones, both weapons that are going into field-test aboard the U.S.S. Ponce. 

U.S.S. Zumwalt

The computer systems on the Zumwalt are controlled primarily by IBM Blade servers, in enclosures that will protect them from the elements at sea, which is good since ALL sea elements are risks for electronics. Not only that, when the time comes for upgrade or in the case of a component failure, this makes the process of adding/replacing hardware much easier. It even has sensors that can pick up various wavelengths of light and analyze the images to determine if something under or above the water is a threat. That, by the way, will result in fewer crew needed to actively monitor the ship's surroundings.

Although its engines use gas as part of its power, it is actually move through the water by electric propulsion, like a hybrid! It generates so much power so efficiently that there is enough leftover power to operate the railgun mentioned earlier.

This all results in more effective weaponry, more efficient engines, easier and faster data analysis, half the required crew of current warships, and a longer expected service life.

Also, tomorrow's tax day! Get on it, people!

Some random yet (mostly) useful links for random link Friday

I couldn't find a relevant image for this post, so here's the last thing you're likely to see before you die.

We all know there are some oddball sites out there, like omfgdogs.com. WHAT ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THAT SITE?

Anyway, I thought I'd present you with sites that are unusual, but at the same time useful. Ready? Here we go!

Wolfram Alpha

Although the guy who developed it is an arrogant ass, this site is absolutely incredible. Anything you want to know about can be researched here. It will provide information on any topic, answer any equation, tell you any detail, it's knowledge is almost limitless. It is so skilled at providing an overwhelming amount of info on any topic you like that hours can be spent just discovering. Type in anything, and be amazed.

nickreboot.com

If you're around my age, and even if you're not, you may remember the good old Nickelodeon shows that used to be on. Rugrats, Hey Arnold, Ahhh! Real Monsters, Rocko's Modern Life, and many others. Well, at NickReboot, you can watch them all streaming for free! Relive your childhood!

shelterpups.com

On this site, you can send them a picture of your dog and they'll send you a plush version that looks just like it!

Pizzacodes.com

Don't eat pizza! It's bad for you. But if you must, this site lets you enter in your zip code and it will list all the pizza coupons that are available for pizza places in your area. It mainly returns Domino's and Papa John's coupons, but there are occasionally others as well.

Southparkstudios.com

You may remember in class we talked briefly about South Park, and its creators demanding control over all Internet rights to the show. Back in the '90's, the network scoffed and said 'sure,' never realizing what the Internet would become. Because of that control, you can watch all episodes ever created of South Park, online for free, but with advertising. They are in the process of rolling out a new site, so you can even test the beta if you'd like.

myfridgefood.com

Now here's a site that was built for people just like me. On this site, you can check off the random food you may have laying around in your refrigerator or kitchen, and the site will present you with recipes that can be made from the ingredients you selected. So if you're not sure what to do with a leek, applesauce, white onion, chocolate syrup, and peppered turkey, you will now!

Another 'robots will be our overlords soon' post.

DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the government agency that has given us so much including the Internet, and their good friends Boston Dynamics, who have given us such wonderful, cuddly creations as Big Dog from the header picture, are now furthering work on their Atlas robot, a man-sized robot that is capable of navigating over obstacles, running, and maintaining its balance if impacted by an outside force.

Amazing as that is, Atlas is only capable of doing what it does while tethered via lifelines to a control center. However, and this is a big however, now with MIT's CSAIL lab at the helm they are getting ready to have those tethers removed, and Atlas will, if everything goes according to plan, be able to navigate on its bipedal own completely unattached to anything. I VERY STRONGLY encourage you to watch the video in that link (it wouldn't embed, sadly), as it is very interesting and a little unnerving.

This is a big deal, as robots have incredible difficulty maintaining balance if something goes wrong. Humans have well-developed systems that rely on all senses as well as the spine and inner ear to maintain balance, and we all know if they are thrown off even slightly we can become very sick or lose our orientation. Robots obviously don't do those last two, but their ability to balance and recover that balance is it's lost has to be programmed in. Here's another example of Atlas doing his thing.

Heartbleed bug (Very Important!)

As many of you may know, the Heartbleed bug has been outed and is one of the most severe security risks to come along in quite some time. It exploits the Open Secure Sockets Layer (Open SSL) encryption used to protect the identity of sites and encrypt traffic, namely usernames and passwords, and it's the security used on about 75 percent of all websites.

What it does is relatively simple in the end; it extracts bits of memory a little at a time and sees if there is anything of value in the chunk it extracts. It may be nothing, but it may be account information, a social security number, a username, a password, or other important information.

It has affected hundreds of thousands of sites, all of which use the Open SSL protocol. Most of them have now been patched, but it is very important you not use these sites until you can be sure yours has as well. You can contact the site if you have their contact information, or you can use The Heartbleed Test or The LastPass Heartbleed Test to check if the server has been patched up or not. If it has, change your password. If it hasn't, don't change your password until it has, or your *new* password could be taken.

Many popular sites, including Google, Facebook, Tumblr, Imgur, and Yahoo were affected, and many of them should have indicated via email whether they've been fixed up.

This vulnerability and bug has apparently been around for a couple of years, and at least now it is hopefully being taken care of.

Here comes the superfast Wi-Fi

A couple of you sent me links to stories about a new FCC ruling which will open up the channels Wi-Fi is able to use, making wireless network speeds much, MUCH faster.

Wireless connections are, by their very nature, slower, less secure, and more prone to interference than wired connections. If you can plug a cord directly from your device into the router, you'll have a much better experience overall. But with many devices (most, now, actually), that is not an option. You need the wireless connection so you can connect a tablet or smartphone or digital band or whatever other wireless-only device you have.

In a shared environment, in which many devices are using that wireless connection, the connection is actually skipping from device to device very rapidly, giving each device a little bit of connection time before moving on to the next, then cycling back through them all over and over; no two devices have access at the same time.

With this new ruling, which opens up 100Mhz of frequency in the 5.15 - 5.25 gigahertz frequency range, that will no longer be necessary. Now, each device can have its own wireless channel for connecting to and using a wireless hotspot. This will make your connection speed much faster, up to one gigabit per second - or possibly even faster - as opposed to the speeds available now, which at their absolute fastest are 300 megabits, although we all get closer to 25 or 50. It will be as though your device has its own provate commute lane instead of having to share the road with a thousand other cars. This will be especially welcome in public places like libraries or airports or coffee shops or schools to name a few. It applies to 'unlicensed devices' which provide infrastructure-based (remember that word from class?) hotspots and the devices that use them such as routers and baby monitors and tablets. It also removes the indoor-only requirement for these devices. Licensed devices would be those used for regulated data transmission, such as emergency personnel, airlines, etc. and they are not affected by this.

Now you can do both of these things, and much faster to boot!

You may remember we talked about the various wireless protocols in use today; if you look at your wireless router, it likely sys something like 'a/b/g' compatible. It may have other protocols listed as well, such as ab or ag. Those protocols, which all fall under the 802.11 standard, are simply the rules that the router uses to send traffic back and forth. This new protocol hasn't been classified as far as I can tell, but I suspect new devices that can use it will be coming pretty soon, as I'm not convinced a simple firmware update, or flash update (which we also discused in class) will be sufficient.

There's so much information about it I have decided to simply link three relevant articles - you can read much more about the recent ruling and what it means at Cnet, PC World and The Register.

FCC frees up 100MHz of spectrum for Wi-Fi (Cnet)

FCC Clears the Way for Gigabit Wi-Fi (PC World)

FCC doubles 5GHz spectrum in prep for one-giagbit Wi-Fi (The Register, from the UK)