OnLive Founder Claims "Impossible" Wireless Breakthrough

[Treblaine]

OP: I think you mean the "Shannon-Hartley theorem" as "Shannon's Law" commonly means laws against firing gunshots into the air.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon%27s_law_(Arizona)

My Bullshit detector always sparks when it comes to OnLive, they have made so many outrageous claims that imply something very different from what they actually do. Many of their claims have not lived up to expectation, like very high quality games and resolution, but compressed so much that it might as well be in standard-definition.

 

[bbad89]

Hank, is that you? This is Dagny Taggart, and I'm waiting for you.

 

[koroem]

I would love to see this working, be proven true, and become the new standard. But as it has been said before big companies will resist this with all their might and shut it down. Or they will adopt it and find a way to make it so ridiculously expensive, that most people won't bother with it.

I would love to see new start up companies release this tech and just destroy all the current cell phone providers. Just drive them into the ground, dead. The same way I would love to see an alternative fuel and engine design destroy the oil business.

Wishful thinking though.

 

[Olrod]

Yeah... proof first, belief after.

Making claims and hypothesising is all very well and good, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, not a mere explanation.

 

[twaddle]

if the cell phone conglomerates and the Illuminati don't crush u i look forward to this next evolution of technology

 

[MajorDolphin]

Smells like a hype story to draw attention to their lame streaming service.

 

[MrStab]

No matter how fast they say they can make it go I will bet anyone all the internets that it will not be able to go faster than C (the speed of light).

 

[lion el jhonson]

Now... I love the xbox and PS3 but people Onlive is the future I have it on my laptop and it works perfectly. I am telling you people the tech may be new but it works well. There may be some kinks but I am sure they will be worked out.

 

[xerounlimited]

Rearden eh? Someone likes Atlas Shrugged.
Yet, you could compare this to the Rearden metal in the book. It's considered impossible, and can completely change the market if used right.

We'll see, established laws of physics don't tend to be disproven easily, but I'll be optimistic about this one.

 

[Soviet Steve]

I'll believe it when he becomes a trillionaire.

 

[broli4000]

yes i was surprised by OnLive too, until i found out you need really good internet and living in a good USA city to have a good reception. OnLive right now is the equivalent of high class restaurants. Sure, theyre good and worth it, but only if you live in the big city where they are. Otherwise, taking a hundred mile trip just to eat filet mignon at 100 dollars isnt worth it. and neither is OnLive.

I have OnLive and they have had their connection issues when they first started (the occasional timeouts and lag). At this point though, its really easy to connect and play at a fairly fast rate. I have cable internet, but its Comcast and has download speeds as fast as 8MBPS (at 2AM when no one is on) and as slow as 1-2MBPS (normally) and OnLive works just fine for me. Now, is this for super competitive gamers that are used to perfect connections and crazy smooth frame rates?.... No, but it hasn't been advertised as that either.

They offer gaming to people on a budget and more casual gamers in a much better package than buying a $60 game to only beat it in 2 days. Again, they are still working out the kinks, but it is a really interesting service that if expanded upon (a game developed just for OnLive, with lifelike graphics, more titles, etc.) could really make some waves in the industry and take it to another level.

 

[DannibalG36]

"Rearden Companies"

I see what you did there.

 

[DracoSuave]

In this thread:

1- People who claim what certain things have calculated as impossible aren't... without knowing WHY it's impossible. PROTIP: Planck's constant is involved. If you know your physics, you know that there ARE microscopic limits on observable events. Transmitting information through radio waves is in every way, a series of observable events.

2- People who claim that certain things calculated as impossble are completely impossible, and cannot have a way around the problem that doesn't involve the impossibility principle. PROTIP: Fifty pipes of water can carry fifty times as much water flow, no matter what the limit of a single pipe may be.

3- A handful of people who understand both.


You should probably ignore persons 1 and 2, and instead, listen to 3. They're the ones being rational here.

As far as i understand he didn't break any laws of physics and The Escapist should remove that mention from this article.

All he does is go -around- the problem. I.e. you cant go faster than light, except if you move space (aka Alcubierre Drive).

The maximum transmission problem has to do with frequencies of binary data transmission on one band, and if i understand his claim correctly, he just proposed distributing the bandwidth onto several bands.

This would be the same principle as cloud-computing in general.
There is no single one-core (silicon) processor in the world capable to reach petaFLOPS, and never will be - its physically impossible, but supercomputers do reach petaFLOPS through distributed computing of thousands of processors.

What he proposes is, simplified, a dual/quad/hex-core just for WiFi and not processors.

THIS.

 

[MajorDolphin]

Now... I love the xbox and PS3 but people Onlive is the future I have it on my laptop and it works perfectly. I am telling you people the tech may be new but it works well. There may be some kinks but I am sure they will be worked out.

Really? Hows the multiplayer?

 

[Alar]

If this is real, IF THIS IS REAL, it would possibly be the greatest communications leap in this, or perhaps even this and the last decade. It would be amazing for both cellphones, wireless Internet, and... hell, modern technology in general.

I really, really want this to be true.

 

[samsonguy920]

This is the technology that has been long awaited. No caps, no slowdown, no ugly towers being built downtown or on rural barns. Even if DIDO gets panned by the big communication companies, all Steve has to do is sell it privately with the proper FCC licensing that would be no different than HAM radios.
DIDO would definitely make OnLive more profitable as it would allow access to more people. Right now it is probably most usable in the same places AT&T's service is. Not counting the Alltel acquisition as I haven't heard anything of how that has changed things yet.

Is it just me or does this sound a little like a Tesla claim?

That is a good comparison. Nicola Tesla maintained that alternating current was safer and more efficient than direct current, which Thomas Edison stood in opposition to. Tesla wanted to provide to the world his practices, but Edison took many steps to suppress that. It's a shame that the guy who invented the light bulb turned out to be a big bully.
You can bet that cellular companies and other communication companies would prefer DIDO technology go away. Much as there would be money in providing such a service, there wouldn't be as much profit as what stands now with the much less efficient cellular and wireless service we have now.
I wouldn't expect the first salvo to be from Verizon. You can bet AT&T will start throwing civil litigation at Steve Perlman. Which might not be wise as right now AT&T is starting to approach its monopoly bubble it already hit before. That was quite the pop heard around the world. What would suck though is the thought that Comcast will be there ready to scoop up some of the pieces. But that's another story.

 

[John the Gamer]

Copyright holders might not like this, as it would massively speed up download times, so games will take minutes instead of hours or days. That might be bad for the industry.

I could be perfect to get large-scale cloud computing of the ground though.

 

[mcnally86]

You know this was the plot of a book. Once enough people used the phones the world blew up.