mwilliamson - Slashdot User

Submission + - FCC Rules update July 20, 2007 -- 802.11a concerns

Submitted by

mwilliamson

on Monday April 30, 2007 @03:36PM

mwilliamson writes: "The FCC is will soon require protocol changes to 802.11a to automatically avoid interference to military and weather RADAR systems using the 5 GHZ spectrum. At best, this will probably require a firmware update on your access points. More information can be found at(PDF): http://www.cisco.com.nyud.net:8080/application/pdf /en/us/guest/products/ps5861/c1244/cdccont_0900aec d801c4a88.pdf

Quoting from this article: "In order to operate in the 5 GHZ bands radios must comply with two features that are part of the 802.11h specification-Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) and Transmitter Power Control (TPC). DFS dynamically instructs a transmitter to switch to another channel whenever a particular condition (such as the presence of a radar signal) is met. Prior to transmitting, a device's DFS mechanism monitors its available operating spectrum, listening for a radar signal. If a signal is detected, the channel associated with the radar signal will be vacated or flagged as unavailable for use by the transmitter... [SNIP]...All WLAN products that ship in Canada and the US on or after July 20, 2007 must meet the DFS for FCC requirements.""

Submission + - waiting for: support.intuit.turbotax.com... again?

Submitted by

mwilliamson

on Tuesday April 24, 2007 @01:49PM

mwilliamson writes: "I just got a phone call here at work playing back a pre-recorded message stating I hadn't completed filing with Turbotax and gave me a URL to finish. Like many others, I waited until the last night, could not file electronically so had to opt for the paper route. Although I used their system to download the mailable documents, they don't seem to know. Now the funny part...this URL seems to be down, probably due to overload this time evidently generated by their own call center. Bad turbotax! hehe The URL they had given was http://support.turbotax.com/efhelp."

Submission + - Is lossless re-compression of audio possible?

Submitted by

mwilliamson

on Friday February 02, 2007 @05:29PM

mwilliamson writes: "Although I've not found anything that claims to do this, I've decided to ask the Slashdot community if they think it is possible to losslessly compress previously lossy compressed and de-compressed audio into a form roughly the size of the previously compressed audio.

To clarify:

Audio file (a) raw audio as recorded

lossy compressed file (b), of file (a) (ex. ogg/mp3/wma/aac)

uncompressed file (c) as an unpacking of (b) (ex. winamp play to file)

recompressed file (d) of file (c)

uncompressed file (e) of file (d)

sizeof(d) roughly equal sizeof(b)

files (e) and (c) bitwise identical

The implications for the anti-DRM movement are obvious, but there are plenty of other reasons to persue this. This would greatly help with the age-old problem of futureproofing your audio without having to have support for every know format under the sun in your media player."

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