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Comment Re:they start YOUNG (true story) (Score 1) 181

" what are the two basic types of ciphers?" (fwiw I wasn't sure if they meant symmetric vs asymmetric or block vs stream)"

The answer they were looking for was: substitution and transposition.

Straight from the NSA activity book for kids. I have a copy. They give (or gave) them away at the museum next door.

Comment Re:Reasons why I don't like the Internet of Things (Score 1) 252

A cellphone phone is a thing and it's usually connected to the internet. An internet of things no less.

I'm pretty sure that you know that these "things" are things which have a purpose other than being a computer, which a cellphone doesn't. (POTS being obsolete today, though still useful)

I think so. Thing is a pretty broad term.

Comment It's an unecesary label for small things (Score 1) 252

I've worked on 'IoT' but only in the sense that IoT things are assumed to be small and low power, so small, low power designs are needed.

However making something small and low power is also a means of making is embeddable in other ways, such as in many places across a huge chip. The technical problem is the same. The need for small and low power is not IoT. However it is the justification to PHBs for doing what you do even if your primary application is something other than IoT.

In the mega corp I work for, I've been handed two recognition awards (plaque and cash) for meeting IoT challenges (I.E. making a design of mine 20X smaller) when it's primarily so I can put it the middle of other circuits at the point of use rather than bussing data across the chip. This yields many engineering benefits.

But IoT is the thing, so you sell it as an IoT solution and management pays attention.

Comment It was never not prohibited (Score 2) 129

The rules for access to the frequency spectrum used by WiFi require that the device has a mechanism to prevent it interfering with other users of the channel. That is why frequency hopping, spread spectrum and exponential backoff algorithms are all parts of devices permitted to be used in these bands. The devices are not licensed to access the band, they are certified to comply with the rules to access the band.

A device specifically intended to prevent someone else accessing the band is a clear violation of this law. There was no time since WiFi existed that this was remotely legal.

People should be in jail.

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