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Technology

Wi-Fi Communicators For the Real World 119

Posted by timothy from the what-about-tricorders dept.
Erik_ writes: "In this most interesting article on MSN Wearable Wi-Fi - The wave of the future?, there is a description of a Wi-Fi Communicator device. Just like on Star Trek (Thanks Gene), these devices provides hands-free, voice-activated communications throughout any 802.11b networked building or campus. The company manufacturing these devices Vocera hopes to begin selling the equipment later this year. Can't wait to get my hands on some of these communicators... Beam me up Scotty."
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Wi-Fi Communicators For the Real World More

Wi-Fi Communicators For the Real World

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  • Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kwishot ( 453761 ) on Thursday June 27, 2002 @05:52PM (#3782295)
    Not like we have cell phones with internet that work nearly anywhere or anything. This is so revolutionary.

    /flamebait (but seriously....this isnt groundbreaking)
    • took the words right out of my mouth. Take any phone with voice activation (voice phrase is user defined) and GPRS internet access and you have a "communicator" that works over half the world versus half the office using 802.11b. Maybe I'm short sighted, but I don't see the functionality of this. I would like to know if it's possibly more economical this way, with the price dropping for 802.11b devices.
      • It'll be a loooooooong time before we have unmetered phones connecting at 10 megabits. And if you say "mary and john", you'll have several million people say 'what?' at the same time. :P
        • look at the device, it has no LCD, no anything sans a button and a mic/speaker combo. What would it possibly do with 10Mbits?

          Furthermore, if you program your voice activation to say "mary and john", then that designated number is who it calls, not some random thing.
          • "What would it possibly do with 10Mbits?"

            It'd help if you used your imagination for a bit. Instead of looking at it like "What can I do with a cell phone to negate the use for this thing", look at it like this: "Interesting, what has nobody thought of yet?"

            The immediate thought that comes to mind is that two buildings could have their communications systems linked together simply by using their internet connection. No more having to call the phone guy out!
          • BTW, it does have an LCD screen. They hint at it on the product page, but the PDF that goes into more detail says there specifically is an LCD Display.

            It's easy to miss heh.

            "In addition, when a live conversation is not necessary, text messages and alerts can be sent to the LCD screen on the Communications Badge."

            Combine this technology with Open Source, and some very cool uses for it will appear.
            • Combine this with server-based voice recognition, and you can dictate an SMS-like message to a person or distribution list.
      • They might be doing voice messaging rather than telephony. That is, you slap your finger down on the little Starfleet logo and hold it, and talk. The communicator stores the info. When you let go, it sends it. No timing problems, no problem if the bandwidth is low. The recipient gets the message with a slight time lag. Then they whack their communicator, reply, and the process repeats. If you want privacy, you use voice recognition to say where the message is going.



        There's no new technology here - my NexTel phone already does every part of this except WiFi. The only thing new is the miniaturization. I think this would be a pretty cool app for an internet company - I work at a company with geeks on two continents, and I'd really like to be able to do this kind of communication with people at work. They have WiFi there, and I have WiFi here, so there's no reason why it couldn't work. You could use SMTP+MIME as the transport layer if necessary.

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Schlemphfer ( 556732 )

      >>Not like we have cell phones with internet that work nearly anywhere or anything. This is so revolutionary.

      >>/flamebait (but seriously....this isnt groundbreaking)

      Sure, but what do you pay a minute (during business hours) for being able to use those full-featured cellphones? I think the groundbreaking part with Wi-Fi is that once you pay for the system, your hourly costs are zilch.

    • I second that. About the only advantage I can see to this is it's "free" once installed. I.E. you don't have to pay out the ass for your minutes.
    • "/flamebait (but seriously....this isnt groundbreaking)"

      Your statement is true if you oversimplify it down to "people talk to people wirelessly."

      Here's what this can do that a cell phone cant:

      - No need for phone #'s.

      - No airtime charge

      - Since it's all TCP/IP, you can link two buildings together via the internet, as opposed to having to use a landline or something.

      - To make a laptop or computer talk on the same network, it's all done via software. No extra hardware needed.

      - Technology like 'video phones' becomes possible and reasonable to try. (again, thanks to 802.11)

      ... and so on.

      I work in a small company, but I'm sure we'd love to replace our phone system with these devices. Picking up the phone when it rings can be distracting. It's easier to hold on to your concentration if all you an do is say "go away."

    • Cell phones... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Cell phones interfere with certain medical equipment. WiFi does not. This will be great for hospitals.
    • I agree that the "communicator" talk is a little weird. But I still think that this is cool. First, there is a distinct possibility that IP over 802.11 will become a wireless alternative to various kinds of monopolies or oligopolies: the small number of cell providers, the small number of broadband ISPs, etc. Paired with mesh networks, there is the possibility of building a peer-to-peer grid to replace the top-down wired grid.

      Another cool thing is that end-to-end packet-based systems are incredibly flexible and have no per-minute charge. You could imagine a "dual-mode" phone (I guess we're up to four modes or something by now). It could make 802.11 calls when you are near a base station and cell phone calls when you are not.

      Anything that pushes the expansion of the 802.11 network is cool with me!
      • Here in SE Wisconsin there's a provider called Nextel -- I'm not sure about their reach, but I'm sure that there are others like them. They use Motorola phones with a "two-way" feature. You can communicate with anyone within your organization with a Nextel phone via Two-Way as much as you want allllllll day every day with no minute-to-minute charges. Sort of like walkie talkies.
    • The real power of these devices will be seen if the potential of wireless networking to be a community resource [consume.net] that takes internetworking out of the hands of the mega-corporates.

      So these have a lot more potential than a GPRS phone.
    • Well I work in a factory doing PLC work and this will save real dollars. We use Nextel phones with outside dialing disabled right now and the charges are high. We also use talkie talkies but they are allway failing. I will be looking into using this in the future for sure.

  • Maybe (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by sheepab ( 461960 )
    I used to work in a place that used those nextel walkie talkie phones, they were a pain in the ass, went out of reach every once and awhile, they were horrible. Maybe these can be replaced, but those nextel phones are damn fun for pranking people.
    • My favorite prank to play on people with Nextels is to wait for them to go into a crowded bathroom and then say (over their phones loudspeaker)something like "and John, don't forget to wash your hands when you are done in there!"

      Gets 'em every time!
    • they were a pain in the ass
      But this is supposed to be convenient [from the article]:
      A trial under way in Michigan, for example, allows a car pulling into the driveway to automatically arm or disarm a home's security system, turn on or off lights in the home, or adjust the home's thermostat.
      Convenient for the guy who steals your car and gets your house in the bargain!

  • One silly patent we won't have to worry about... (Score:3, Funny)

    by WEFUNK ( 471506 ) on Thursday June 27, 2002 @05:56PM (#3782329) Homepage
    ...at least if the examiner is a trekkie!

    I'd love to see the prior art discovery they'd send back to the applicant...

    What's the correct format to quote a TV pilot episode?

    And would you use a stardate?
    • The problem is that the Star Trek communicators didn't use 802.11, so it would not be a prior art. And don't think I'm joking.
    • Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm not,) but aren't the Star Trek communication devices activated with a touch on it?
      • I've always wondered about that "touch start" thing. You must touch your badge to start communicating, but how does the computer know when you've hit the end of the message. On the show, they just start talking to someone else. If the computer is smart enough to know the end of the message, it should be smart enough to know the beginning also. (Kind of like the phone company - "You must press a "1" before dialing the number.) I guess I'll just have to wait for RFC 43532159 to find out.
        • In the tech manuals (yes, I was a lot geekier in high school), it said the computer kept the channel open for about ten seconds, and could tell if you were addressing the other end of the comm. Obviously, that's not presently feasable.
    • Of course, the Star Trek communicators won't exist until the 2400s or whenever...
    • Seriously (for a moment)...

      Prior art can't be just an idea described in, say, an SF novel with no details of how it works. For example, if someone comes up with an inertialess drive, nothing that E.E. Smith wrote would invalidate a patent on it. To get a patent you need to disclose your best preferred embodiment; that is, the best way you know of that the invention can be built or made. Prior art, likewise, has to do the same.

      It'd be nice to see a better understanding of how the patent system worked, especially amongst those who flame it at every opportunity!

      IANAL, but I *do* write technology patents for a living...
      ben
      • Prior art can't be just an idea described in, say, an SF novel with no details of how it works.

        Obviously my comment was only meant as a light joke, so of course you're right, prior art needs to disclose sufficient detail to invalidate the novelty (or unobviousness) of a given claim.

        For the most part Star Trek episodes don't provide a good enough description of the "enabling" technologies to prevent patents in teleportation, for instance. However, certain letters, memos, and works of fiction have prevented (or have been cited by) a number of patents over the years. Arthur C. Clake's famous letter on geosynchronous satellites, and a fictional procedure for raising sunken ships both come to mind.

        All joking aside (for a moment), with so many overly broad technology patents being issued these days, I do think that the example of communicators (along with a lot of other prior art) could bear on the novelty and unobviousness of certain broad claims for a wearable, wireless means for hand-free communication. Narrower claims of implementation would obviously be available, as would design patents for form factor.

        This is analogous to Clarke's description of Comsats. Although technical (and not fiction), his letter was brief and his inability (in 1945, before orbital launches and transistors) to fully describe or enable his invention would have likely prevented him from receiving a patent on his scheme.

        However, his short description was sufficient to prevent Hughes from obtaining broad patents on the geosychronous aspects of their working Comsats in the 1960's. I'm sure that they were able to get numerous patents on more specific details, but Clake's prior art denied them their broadest claim.

        Likewise, while Star Trek or Dick Tracy may do little to describe the inner workings of their technologies, I'm sure that certain fictional ideas can (and do) act as limiting prior art, if only in a very broad sense.

        IANAL either, but I do have some professional familiarity with the system, and I do not try to flame it at every opportunity (just point out flaws, concerns, and the occasional humour).
  • There goes WiFi's reputation as a "Sexy" technology.
    • The badges did look pretty sexy on some of the Star Fleet officers of the fairer sex. If WiFi badges become popular, I might even consider a career as a maintenance person at a suitable WiFi badge customer service point.

      "Here, let me adjust that... Oops! Sorry! I'm not usually this clumsy... Oops, there I go again! Sorry..."

  • Activation (Score:4, Funny)

    by carlos_benj ( 140796 ) on Thursday June 27, 2002 @05:57PM (#3782340) Journal
    So, will we have to slap our left breast and look up at the ceiling while we talk?
    • Heh imagine the sysadmin using 'GOD' as an alias?
    • Deactivation is what I'm most curious about. They never covered that on STTNG. I can just picture the bridge crew calling Riker, and then rolling their eyes while he says goodbye to his date.
      • The computer monitors voice communications constantly, and is clever enough to figure out where to route the transmission to, and when it's completed. Also, it's not strictly necessary to tap the communicator while onboard ship, although it's often done for the sake of habit. It is neccessary on away missions to conserve power.

        Yes, I have the NCC1701-D technical manual. Yes, I remember most of it. Yes, I'm a sad bastard. =)
  • That sounds an awful lot to me like a headset walkie talkie. I guess the benefit is that it's Voice-over-ip. Other than that, it's not that big of a deal...
  • Well, one of these would make our little jaunt into "Warchalking" more useful, now wouldn't it?

  • Won't work, nice idea tho (Score:5, Informative)

    by colenski ( 552404 ) on Thursday June 27, 2002 @06:05PM (#3782393) Homepage
    We are using a switched full duplex 100baseT LAN
    to support our Mitel 3300 ICP with QoS tagging
    and 5020 IP phones and we *still* get chop if the LAN gets super busy.
    You should see the switches go nuts with blinkenlights when someone sends out a page
    Given that my decently designed wired lan bogs down, how well do they think
    it's gonna work on a variable rate unswitched network with 1/10th the bandwidth
    - more than 2 users, and sayanora baby.


    Sig's suck, especially this one.

  • A better story (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Reality Master 101 ( 179095 ) <RealityMaster101@gmail. c o m> on Thursday June 27, 2002 @06:06PM (#3782397) Homepage Journal

    Speaking of WiFi, since Slashdot seems to think this story is interesting (*yawn*) and a much more interesting story doesn't seem to be able to make it to the front page, I recommend checking this story out [nytimes.com]. Bottom line, a couple of garage tinkerers have managed to extend 802.11b's range to about 20 miles. Big deal, right? We hear about this all the time. The kicker is that they are actually deploying it in some neighborhoods, so it appears to be something real rather than something "we hope to deploy 5 years from now".

    We might actually see universal broadband in our lifetimes! (Not that I don't already have a l33t 3 megabit cable modem, but...)

    What I especially like about this is that true broadcast broadband would allow a lot of competing providers in each area, instead of needing massive investment in running wires.

    • We might actually see universal broadband in our lifetimes!

      With a cell size like that it won't be broadband. You can fit a LOT of users within a 20 mile radius.

      These experiments are all well and good but this really only makes sense somewhere out in the boonies, where you and your grandma are the only users.

      • With a cell size like that it won't be broadband. You can fit a LOT of users within a 20 mile radius.

        That occurred to me, but I would imagine that the cell sites don't have to be 20 miles. If you higher density areas, then you put up higher density cell sites cellular-phone style.

        The only question is whether you start getting into huge interference problems at that point. Cell phones seem to have solved these problems, though.

        • If you higher density areas, then you put up higher density cell sites cellular-phone style.

          That's true. These things really aim at making wide area coverage feasible, as it won't make financial sense to deploy a WiFi base station every 100 yards in sparsely populated areas.

          The only question is whether you start getting into huge interference problems at that point.

          As long as everyone behaves and there is some kind of network planning, no. The problem is that WiFi devices operate on unlicenced bands, meaning that anyone who cares can put one up (or hoist a rigged microwave oven up on the roof and just blast noise at you).

          Cell phones seem to have solved these problems, though.

          Cellular networks operate on strictly regulated licenced bands, which makes it relatively simple to guarantee a certain level of service. Even then there are sometimes problems with capacity planning and radio propagatin in difficult terrain.

          Of course, if WiFi access is cheap enough and you don't mind the occasional hickup, you might be fine with it.

    • Re:A better story (Score:3, Informative)

      by shess ( 31691 )
      New to slashdot?

      Try this story [slashdot.org]

      [No wonder there are so many repeats.]

  • Okay, I'll take a karma hit for this, but am I the only one who's annoyed by the gratuitous linking in /. article blurbs? I mean, do we really need "Star Trek" linked to www.startrek.com here? If it were an isolated incident, it'd be fine, but this happens all the time. IMHO hyperlinking should either be used to provide optional contextual content, or serve as a simple, well, link to what's being talked about.

    Many times on slashdot I'll click a link thinking I'm going to get some illustrative example or additional background, only to get a corporate homepage. Not good use of the medium, people.

    offtopic -1 yes, but if I can do my part to stop this nefarious practice it's all worthwhile...

  • from the whitepaper [vocera.com]:

    "Vocera find a blood technician."
    "Finding blood technician."
    "This is sue Sue Harper, blood. tech. I am on 3A right now. How can I help you?"
    "We need blood drawn from a patient in 6-103. Can you get up here soon?"
    "Sure, I'll finnish here and be up there in a few minutes".

    Wi-Fi cracker:
    "Remember to suck all ten litres".

  • Star Trek's Influence on the Future (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RevAaron ( 125240 ) <revaaron AT hotmail DOT com> on Thursday June 27, 2002 @06:07PM (#3782406) Homepage
    I was having this conversation with my girlfriend a while back.

    How much do you think the vision of our future in Star Trek will and does affect the direction, form and function of our real future?

    How will the starship designs in Star Trek influence real shuttle and space craft designs?

    Communicators? Other technology?

    Aaron
    • "How will the starship designs in Star Trek influence real shuttle and space craft designs?"

      Cant say about starships, but the concept of a 'bridge' was introduced on StarTrek and then taken by the US millatary for use on seagoing ships and subs and what have you.

      Pre star trek there was no central command station, other than where the captan happened to be standing on deck maybe.

      Engine room, map/plot room, comm room, etc were all spread out over the ship, with communications between them. In the old old days (sorry) this communication system was just a bunch of pipes one could talk into and sorta hear out of the other side.
    • Do you mean like my cell phone?

      Samsung A400 [sprintpcs.com]
  • I hope the FCC is paying attention. Government regulation of airwaves was a good idea back before cheap digital electronics, and it still has its place, but the clear message here is that non-dedicated frequencies should be the rule, not the exception.

    It seems like the endgame should be some variant ofUltra Wideband. [slashdot.org] It wouldn't broadcast in all frequencies, just a wide swath of them. Frequencies that had dedicated purposes would be outside this range. This would allow much higher transmitter power, which means longer ranges.

    Then let the market jump in. Interference isn't a problem due to lowish power and efficient airwave usage. Let whoever wants to set up base stations. Use p2p mesh networking. Do whatever. The devices are cheap and don't interfere. This may be one of the technology market segments that actually acts like a market.
    • Open all hailing frequencies!

      Curiously, I wonder how in Star Trek they deal with different communication protocols, to be able to handle full screen video each time different species want to talk to each other. Is there a modem handshake involved somewhere?
  • This is the third time in a week or so we have seen people talking about Vocera and their 802.11b based "communicators" on Slashdot. This might have been news the first and second time, but at the third time, it pretty much stops being news.

    I guess that Vocera's marketing is working... nice to know that the money they are spending on it is paying off for them (I guess).

    Just like last time, though, I'll point out that they are not a UNIX shop, and mostly not interested in hiring people from this neck of the woods, to the point that their "careers" page won't load in many versions of Netscape.

    -- Terry
  • will we finally stop saying "Can you hear me now? Good!"?
  • Does anyone know if someone is producing 802.11b IP phones? We have several companies running small 3COM setups with hardwired phones and would like to add some wireless phones into the mix.

    --derek

    gambitwireless.com [gambitwireless.com]
  • Sounds like a great idea. They could create it, patent it, and call it a radio. I mean, how many of you hackers out there have your amatuer radio liscence? Would it really be that hard to make one voice actuated?
    • As an amateur radio operator or ham. I have run accross some troubles you can have w/ a voice activated cicruit (vox).
      Most amateur radios and commercial ones to have a ptt (push to talk) button on them but occasionally some people forget the other aspect which i refer to as rtl (release to listen). Since most radios are simplex or 1/2 duplex you need to unkey the radio to hear the other person (and/or make sure they haven't switched frequencies and left). :)

      A trouble w/ a vox circuit in that implimentation will really show up in a mobile environment. if you go past a construction site you will find that instead of the conversation you were listening to, you are now transmitting all the noises arround you.

      On a duplex conversation, like a phone, it is always transmitting and recieving at the same time. This has an advantage of you can interupt the other person but there's a tendancy to not pay attention to the other's conversation as the tendancy is to ramble on more instead of shorter messages w/ a pause between.

      Additionally for a situation as above like driving by construction some people will forget that they may not be able to be heard over the noise. the natral reaction to that is to talk louder so you can be heard but that only makes things worse. Radios and cellphones have really sensitive micropones these days and talking louder will only distort what you are trying to say.

      Digitally encoding a voice for radio communication has been done and is being done by hams, it's not all that new. It is quite possible to send somtihng like that by 802.11 even using existing technologies. Record the voice to a digital format (ie .wav file) compress it for efficient space (ie .mp3) stream the file to the other machine with oh say shoutcast/icecast. Building something like that into a pda like the Ipaq/Journada or a Palm. While a project like that would be a bit much to build for just a normal conversation the geek factor is quite good.

      my $.02 anyway
      73 de VE6OMJ (= best wishes from me)
      orin

  • ..looks like someone off Star Trek. I'm not talking Federation here.

  • that the name "Wi-Fi" is utter babble?
  • create a pager system that uses Wi-Fi wireless networking

    If I'm reading this correctly, this means that you can only receive (two-way) calls on this device, not initiate your own. So you would still need a phone to contact someone with one of these. Doesn't that make it less useful than a walkie-talkie (VoIP or not)?

  • What about equipment interference? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is probably the main advantage to hospitals: cellular frequencies have been claimed to interfere with medical equipment. With WiFi, do you think there will be any problems? My guess is no, and this is one of the main reasons that this is a big step in hospital communications..

  • Can you turn this thing off, what if you're sitting on the can or taking a leak when the thing goes off?

    it will sound like niagra falls over the com badge
  • What does Wi-Fi stand for? I know it's used to mean short range wireless networks like 802.11a and b, but where does "Wi-Fi" come from?
  • I'm working on a real tricorder. I'll submit the story when it's finished.
  • while you're microwaving a pizza!
  • Look ma, a really expensive, impractical alternative to walkie-talkies and cell phones.

    Seriously, I saw a demo of somebody using Ipaq's with WiFi cards as walkie-talkies. Couldn't figure the point. The setup was about $700/per, only worked when you were within range of an 802.11b base station, and had several seconds of lag (which could probably be reduced with dedicated hardware). Seemed like a technology destined to be stillborn.
  • " there is a description of a Wi-Fi Communicator device. Just like on Star Trek"

    So I'll be able to buy a "cell" phone that will let me talk to anybody in the star system, even and especially without line-of-sight? Sure as hell beats being out of service when I drive more than ten yards from the nearest interstate...
    • The only (and I do mean "only") place my mobile phone has had no service in the last year is on the London Underground. But then, I live in the UK...

      Actually, the point that I was thinking of is "voice dialling". I love watching these idiots with their voice activated phones - they press a button and say "office". Then a moment later, "office". Then, in a more irritated tone "Office!". They continue to try all variants on how they might possibly pronounce the word, getting more and more annoyed. Meanwhile, other people around them have had time to dial 13-digit international numbers and have long conversations...
      ben
  • I don't want to sound stupid, but I've apparently been left out of the loop on the "wi-fi" thing. I didn't get the memo... can somebody please, just tell me what "wi-fi" is?

    thanks
  • Here's the thing about this technology (however massively it's been pimped here lately) that most folks seem to be missing. It's not meant to replace your cell phone, or your pager either (for the most part). This product is targeted first at hospitals where regular cell phones are banned (not sure if the interference things is true or not but it's a risk we don't really need to be taking IMHO). The way that I envision this being used is that docs, nurses, technicians, etc. have these things on and can communicate quickly and easily with each other.

    Think about how inefficient it is to have someone have to take their gloves off in the ER to pick up the phone and dial the blood bank, Radiology, OR, etc., then re-glove and dive back in to trying to keep someone from bleeding out on the table. Imagine that with a voice command, the attending/chief resident, head nurse, intern, whomever could just say, "get me the blood bank" and make the order like that. Not only does it speed things up but it utilizes an otherwise under-used resource.

    The trick of course will be to prevent people from using them to chat with friends..."yo Jim...I'm off in 20, wanna get a beer?" isn't really the best use of this tech.

    E
    • First off, isn't the 2.4GHz band an ISM band? Meaning that there are also medical devices that operate and are prone to receiving interference in this band. It would be hard to believe that something like this is targetted at hospitals. I've done RF interference testing on medical and lab instruments. Generally we did tests with anything that created RF like the maintenance walkie talkies that transmitted in the VHF/UHF range at about 5W output. We would test with radio keyed at the case of the instrument, 6" away, 1' away, 3' away, 10' away and if it still caused some type of malfunctions in the instrument under test we would keep moving further away until it stopped interfering.

      Also, in clean rooms such as ER (I've never been in ER but I've been in other clean rooms down to a Class 100), they use a flush mounted phone that has a flat, cleanable face with no holes in it that can not only be dialled out on, but also has a programmable memory for speed dialling.

      Just FYI
  • As if there isn't enough 'Electronic' Leashes in the world now a days. It looks cool, but I have my doubts if will even play a part in any practical company. Most places that require this type of reliable communication already use Hand Radios (Walkie Talkies), and I don't think being able to give voice commands ("Find me a manager", or "Clean up in Isle 5") will lure most away from something seemingly already dependable. And that's not even talking about the cost to set this all up.

    But I agree, it is a very novel, Star Trek style, gadget, that has some use and meaning, but I don't see it going too far outside the bounds of the Techno-Hip companies.
  • Did anyone else watch the videos on Vocera's site? At the very end when he unblocks all calls, the system asks him to "Please contact Harry Forearm as soon as possible."

    Still don't get it? Say it out loud.

  • My 802.11b PC card had some stern warnings against having the antenna part that protrudes from the laptop against your body for more than about 30 minutes at a time. It claimed the access points and being a few cm away from the antenna were safe.

    So what's the scoop? Were the risks in the manual bogus? Would you want an always-on high power microwave antenna against your body all day, Star Trek communicator style?

  • Wonderful. Now I can be on call even when I'm in the head. Lovely.

    I'll carry the thing for about ten minutes, as long as it takes me to flush the little POS...

  • With omnipresent slashdot, that'd be Mod me up Scotty!

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