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Frog Design and Motorolla have teamed up to produce some amazing wearable computing prototypes.

Yes please.
- jim 3-13-2003 8:45 pm [link] [14 comments]

Well, his message is getting through. Salon has an introductory piece on the "there's enough bandwidth for everyone" utopian arguments of the oft mentioned David P. Reed. Still, the actual math is so hard - assuming you dig in deeper than the Salon article - that I doubt many people have much beyond a metaphorical understanding of what he's talking about.

Slashdot posted the story. Here's the +5 rated comments (the best comments.) They almost universally savage Reed (in the best/worst tradition of /. commenting.) The message here seems to be: "this guy doesn't know what he's talking about" which is sort of what I was scared of.

Still, while a close reading of all the objections is instructive, I do think most people misunderstand his point. No doubt Salon's intro isn't the best text to base a technical refutation on. Sure, we can't do what Reed says with today's radios. But Reed isn't claiming we can.

Part of what he's saying is that software defined radios are going to allow this sort of thing to happen. Assuming we can build (program) them. And assuming we can change the (soon to be) out of date broadcasting regulations that would disallow such devices. And the first step in changing such regulation is to have people believe that something better is possible.

So perhaps he's overly optimistic (as most /. comments complained) but I don't think he's wrong. Or at least not yet. Let's see how the software comes along over the next year. But a little optimism might well be warranted. I think getting the idea that something wildly better is possible into non technical people's heads will be for the better. And it sure won't hurt anything, since all these claims will have to be demonstrated eventually anyway. It's not like we're going to dismantle the FCC until there's some running code and working gear.
- jim 3-13-2003 12:15 am [link] [3 comments]

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