True.  I have no idea how many chipsets that might harbor a hidden support for XR mode might exist in the wild. 

Yes, and that was my point.  Shooting a deer to eat is still profit, and if you can shoot one to eat, why can't you shoot two to sell one?  Don't non-hunters deserve to eat also?  Hunting is a gainful hobby, when don't properly.  The idea that a hunter shouldn't be able to actually make a living doing so is rediculous, and only serves the interests of ranchers who raise meat animals in an enclosure rather than in the wild.

There are two parts to Ripple. One part is a peer to peer credit system, within which any currency unit can be used.  The other part is Ripple, the currency.  It's not even a cryptocurrency, they are just digital tokens.  Yes, they are issued by a central authority, so Ripple (the currency) is centralized.  That doesn't mean that it's a scam, but I wouldn't use them personally.

War is Peace!

XR is not bullshitware.  I've seen it put into practice by hams.

http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/wireless/modify.html

While these guys aren't to keen on it for their purposes, it does work somewhat.  Basicly the timing of transmissions are slowed down, to permit better low-signal copy.  A similar trick can be used with 100baseTX ethernet to extend the cable range limit between two bridge devices.  Your datarate is affected as well, which they admit.  Hams do something similar with very slow computer controlled morse code.

http://www.martellotowergroup.com/The_Martello_Tower_Group/QRSS.html

Within official specs, yes.  However there is an extended range mode that is supported by some chipsets.

http://www.qsl.net/kb9mwr/projects/wireless/atheros_XR_whitepaper.pdf

I have no idea how common such support is for cell phones, but with a receive sensitivity of -107 db the loss of data rate might actually make this thing workable.

That's just the thing, if you have to get a dd-wrt and a directional antenna to receive it, why not just use DRM and shortwave receivers?  Again, datacasting is what DRM was designed for, and it uses a much more "efficient" schema in addition to the much narrower bandwidth (power) requirement.  Sure, it's data rate is slower, but like you said, that's physics.


That's actually not true.  The license free ISM bands are only license free for terrestrial & incidental emitters, and every nation sets a pretty low transmission power limit.  The ISM license free argument, for a low earth orbit sat, fails on both counts.  They might get away with it, if they can get the sat up there and say "opps, sorry", but they won't get away with it if teh FCC gets wind of it.

Hmm, I was going off of memory, but upon checking it seems that 2.45 Ghz isn't the resonate frequency of hydrogen.  Apparently that's actually 1.42 Ghz, or more precisely 1,420,405,751.786 hertz.  And checking oxygen it's 5.85 Ghz.  So apparently I was wrong about 2.45 Ghz having a high attenuation point.  I just got called out, and failed to perform.  Well done, Death.

According to this page, 2.45 is a "good average" between those two, with the goal of permitting the radio signal some degree of penetration into the food, which (according to them) wouldn't be possible with a precise resonate frequency because the signal would dump all it's energy into the first couple of millimeters of the surface.

http://www.schoolphysics.co.uk/age16-19/Wave%20properties/Wave%20properties/text/Microwave_ovens/index.html

In my defense, there does exist a "magical attenuation window" in the microwave spectrum, it's just not at 2.45 Ghz.  So my complaints about high attenution in teh wifi spectrum are without merit.

The best way to make the datacasting idea work with consumer class wifi devices, would be to choose the wifi channel that is the most "distant" from the frequency that microwave ovens use and set it to a quarter channel multicast mode.  Even still, the sat wouldn't be able to broadcast continuously and hit the -90 decibel signal point, it would have to broadcast in scheduled bursts.  That might be okay, but even at -90 decibels, I don't think a cell phone would be able to hear it.  A consumer grade hotspot with a marginally directional antenna pointed up might be able to receive the signal reliablely on a clear night (no clouds in the path, no sunlight induced ionosphere 'crashes' to raise the static background level) but if the guy wanting to receive these datacasts has to buy or build dedicated gear to receive it, then what good is trying to do it using wifi standards and channels?  Datacasting is one of the design goals for DRM shortwave broadcasting.

I'm not convinced that a 10 cube mini sat has the power to push a receivable DRM signal on a continuous basis anyway.  Again, an on-off transmit schedule might be best, particularly with the low earth orbit sats that circle the globe several times per day.  They are usually only 'visable' to any particular receiver for about a half an hour, so perhaps a 10 minute burst of data followed by 50 minutes of rest/solar charging might still work.  Of course, all these kinds of compromises reduce the actual amount of data that can be broadcast.  Eventually we end up back with a normal shortwave broadcasting operation on planet Earth that can transmit continuously from a grid and reflect their signal off the ionosphere.

There are many ways to solve the transaction propogation problem, the datacasting proposal in this thread is to solve the bulk blockchain distribution problem.

That is a full sized sat with much higher power levels.


And this is a full sized sat runing on much higher power levels.  And neither of them use the B/G wifi band, which as I have alrady noted, is heavily attenutated by water and hydrocarbons in a way that the rest of the S band is not, and is the primary reason that said band is unlicesned to start with.

The best comparison that we might have for a setup that would work woudl be a ham radio sat.  Here's one to compare...

http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/satellites/sat_summary/ao51.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AO-51

This one uses several transmitters, but keep in mind that not only is this device using much narrower bandwidths, it's not attempting to transmit continuously.  So putting out a 38 Kbps data signal at 300+ watts RMS for an average of a minute or two per hour is within the power requirements of a mini sat that has a 30 watt solar panel.

Another issue that I can see with using the small 10-cube type sats for broadcasting a wifi signal, even using the 5 Ghz N band, is that wifi channels are normally 20 Mhz wide, which is a particularly broadband signal to produce.  With wifi, this is a good thing, as your signal can cover the office without much interference and signals produced by nearby offices are strongly attenuated before they get into your office, and permits a high data rate.  However, all things being equal, a signal that is twice as broad requires twice the power to be recieved at the same distance under the same conditions.  The wifi standards permit quarter width band signals, but almost no one uses them because they don't help under normal hotspot ranges and conditions.  So, at a minimum, a wifi datacast would have to be 5 Mhz wide.  However, the DRM standard is a digital sound & data standard that uses the bandwidth of the old fashioned shortwave & AM channel standards; which is 9 Kilohertz wide in Europe and 10 Kiloherts wide in the rest of the world.  However, DRM also permits doubled or halved channel widths.  So if we compare the double DRM channel for data throughput versus the quarter width wifi for reduced power requirements and the wifi broadcast would still require roughly 250 times as much power to acheive the same signal quality on the ground versus a double wide DRM broadcast, using the same frequency, sat quality, etc.

And again, the common shortwave receiver is a far better receiver than the common wifi phone chip, so the DRM signal would be much more likely to be clearly received than the wifi signal even if the 10 cube sats could actually produce the 250 times power level.  I'd be surprised if those cube sats can produce a 50 watt RMS output on a continuous basis, and (off the top of my head) I'd say that a DRM transmission would require around 3Kilowatts to properly blanket a 600 mile circle footprint to a clear & receivable degree.  Even a half channel width DRM broadcast (4.5 Khtz wide, minimum) would require at least 1000 watts on an ongoing basis.  Keep in mind, DRM is the digital version of an AM talk radio broadcast.  A local AM broadcaster generally uses between 3 Kilowatts (at night, when the D layer doesn't attentuate the middle wave band) and 20 kilowatts just to cover a major metro area and the surrounding countryside, with a practical coverage radius of 100 to 150 miles.

I'm thinking that mini sats broadcasting a DRM channel in the 15 meter band works well.  Common shortwave receivers are much better at reception than a cell phone wifi chip anyway.

Well, it's either misinformed or deliberately false.  I've had my kids look at this site and another site (waterstep.org) to compare the tech claims of one charity asking for money compared to another, and we've largely come to the conclusion that this outer.in site is a scam designed to illicit donations from well intended.  As my son noted, the first clue is the "for free" claim.  That can never happen.  While it might be free to receive, there would still need be advertisments and such.  And it's not false that low earth orbit sats have used the S band, but that particular section of the S band is where the attenuation from water is greatest.

EDIT:  By "that particular" section of the S band, I mean the sliver of unlicensed bandwidth that B/G wifi occupies.  The S band is very wide, but only that portion is unlicensed, and because it's an ISM band (Insustrial, Scientific & Medical) that is used primarily for purposes besides communication.  There are other ISM bands, but none that are so wide as the one that B/G wifi (and Bluetooth, and several other short range techs) utilizes.  It's that wide because microwave ovens (in particular) use that band due to the fact that the high attenuation of radio waves by hydrogen is useful for heating with radio waves, and microwaves are so paowerful that they produce a lot of 'splatter'.  Until wifi came out, it was largely believed that  the band was useless for communications due to both the high attenuation and the likelyhood of interfereance from microwaves.  Wifi protocols are designed with the likelyhood of occasional interference in mind, however.  So is Bluetooth.  The rest of the S band experiences attentuation due to water in much the same way that radio does in general, in that the higher the frequency the greater the attenuation from water.  Both the US and Russia have massive ultra-low-frequency transmitters, with enormouse power ratings, in order to communicate with submerged submarines via morse code.  There are ham radio geeks called "lowfers" who try to communicate in this range as well, but it's hard to do anything when the wavelength of the signal is hundreds of kilometers long.  So while there are useful frequencies outside of the wifi band on the S band, they generally require more power for the same task than a lower frequency band such as the L band, and less than higher frequency bands such as the K band.  So most of the S band is particularly good for a low power downlink to consumer class receivers, just not within the B/G wifi band.

My point was that the fee was meaningless to those for whom the law was targeted to attract; namely the young, healty and uninsured that are needed to pay premiums to subsidize the older and less helathy with pre-existing conditions.  The young and healty are the majority of the uninsured Americans that this bill was aimed at, that much is fact.  But if you were young, healthy and officially unemployed (but had an unofficial form of income) what value would you see in paying any premium at all, if you didn't see such value before this, and the law specificly exempts you from the penalty because you don't pay taxes?  You could argue that such officially unemployed young with non-taxable incomes is the minority, but the statisics on System D economies says otherwise.

I've found that paying with bitcoin to overstock.com isn't cheap.  The value converter in my Mycelium client consistantly quotes the bitcoin price about 10% higher than what Overstock says it is. 

You answered your own question right out of the gate.  The vast majority of the uninsured are uninsured because they don't have reliable employment to produce such a taxable income.  That is not to say that most of these people don't actually have an income, just not a taxable one.  It's actually not very difficult for a young, single person to make a good living if they don't have a problem with the kind of work that doesn't tend to produce a W2 form with your own name on it.  That kind of work also makes it easier to qualify for government aid at the same time, but to a 20 something hustler with no known medical issues, paying any kind of premium has always been a non-starter.  That's why they didn't bother before.

After checking my own shortwave receiver, which I believe to be fairly representative of the kinds of reciever available most of the world around, is tunable between 19,990 and 30,000 khz using it's third (final) SW band setting.  This encompasses the international shortwave bands of 15 meters (18,900–19,020 kHz) 13 meters (21,450–21,850 kHz) and 11 meters (25,600–26,100 kHz).  All three of these bands are pretty much useless for international broadcasters because it's rare for the critical frequency to spike that high, at least not reliablely enough for a broadcaster to use.  For this reason, 11 meters is a common citizen's band in many countries and 13 meters is a regional AM band in Pacific Asia.  Wikipedia says that 15 meters is rarely utilized, and may be reallocated to DRM broadcasters in the future.

Perfect.

What needs to be done is that someone in a country that is signatory to the communications treaties needs to get a broadcasting license from their country to broadcast in the 15 meter band.  The United States is notoriously unlikely to approve such a broadcasting license, so it'd be better for someone in another country to attempt it.  I might still attempt it, but I'm not going to pursue it if it requires a $10K broadcasting fee, obviously.  The sats would still have to be aware of all licensed broadcasters in this band, and avoid them whenever possible.  I'm pretty sure that this is also a ham band, but not one that I've ever known any hams to use, as local hams use 2 meters and 70 cm while distance hams use 20, 40 and 80 meters.

A modified AM shortwave receiver could simply involve an audio output jack wired to the audio input jack of a computer sound card, with an accompaning app that can fit on a small usb drive and instructions for locating the right frequency and capturing the data stream.

Unfortunately, I can see some very real technical and legal issues with trying to do this as described.

First off, Wifi is possible in only two bands.  Since the higher N band is very new, and many smartphones still don't support it, I'm going to assume that the older B,G band is what they plan to use.  But there was a technical reason that this band was chosen at the time of development; namely that the B,G band was license free worldwide.  But why was that, since such license free technologies didn't really exist before Wifi itself?  Because the B,G band is the resonate frequency of hydrogen.  Thus, energy transmitted in this band is heavily attenuated by any water or hydrocarbons found in it's path, and was considered useless for distance communications.  This is still true, and has much to do with why Wifi is so poor at clear range.  It's also why this band is shared by every retail microwave that I know of, since food is pretty much all hydrocarbons and water.  While there wouldn't likely be much risk of hydrocarbons in the line of sight from low earth orbit, there would be much water.  On average, the Earth's atmosphere has enough water from space to sea level to equate to a 32 foot deep dive under the ocean's surface.  The amount of power that would be required to push through this and be receivable by common wifi hardware on the Earth's surface would be rediculous.

Second, there are also sound techincal reasons as to why wifi multicasting is not commonly used.  Mostly because wifi is a time-sharing technology that (generally) permits more than one unrelated connection to coexist on the same channel.  This is permitted because normal mode wifi requires that the hotspot 'listen' to it's own channel several times per second for other broadcasters trying to share the channel space.  This doesn't always work well, but it does work more often than most people realize.  However, a hotspot in space couldn't coordinate timesharing of all the hotspots in it's radio shadow even if it were possible for it to hear them.  In this case, the sat based signal would effectively 'jam' the chosen channel across the whole of it's radio shadow, and also be a violation of international communications treaties as a result.

Third, the licesne free broadcasting nature of the B,G band is limited to 'terrestrial' transmitters, and therefore doesn't apply to satillites at all.  A new treaty would be required to even permit such a license, since every country has max transmitter powers in the B,G band that would be WAY below what a sat would require.

While using the new N band would reduce the power requirements considerablely, the other two issues would still apply.  Perhaps a lower frequency license free band would work with modified FM band recievers, but I can't see a way around the international communications treaties regarding this.  Perhaps a broadcast stream that can switch around frequencies in the higher frequency shortwave bands would work, but the sat would have to be able to respond to the reflectivity of the ionosphere and changes in the critical frequency.  Most Shortwave broadcasters have to stay below the critical frequency so that their Earth bound transmitters can reflect their signal off of the F layer of the ionosphere, but what about a broadcaster in teh shortwave bands that deliberately stays above the critical frequency so that his signal is not reflected back into space?  Regardless, the data throughput woudl be low due to a narrow usable bandwidth and a particularly 'noisey' radio environment in those bands.

Some of the code impliments the protocol; within exists rules that cannot be broken, and others that are more flexible within constraints.  All the rest of the code within a given client is there for users' ease, and can be modified without problems.  How the client displays the stored value is of the latter type, for the protocol doesn't specify a display unit and isn't even aware of one besides the satoshi, and not even by that name.  There are many aspects of the system that are like this.  This is not an example of centralization.