Apple Patent Hints At Wirelessly Charging Your iPhone Via Wi-Fi Routers (appleinsider.com) 144
According to AppleInsider, "Apple is experimenting with medium- to long-distance wireless charging technologies that could one day allow users to charge up their iPhones with nothing more than a Wi-Fi router." From the report: Detailed in Apple's patent application for "Wireless Charging and Communications Systems With Dual-Frequency Patch Antennas" is a method for transferring power to electronic devices over frequencies normally dedicated to data communications. In its various embodiments, the invention notes power transfer capabilities over any suitable wireless communications link, including cellular between 700 MHz and 2700 MHz, and Wi-Fi operating at 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. More specifically, the document's claims apply to millimeter wave 802.11ad spectrum channels currently in use by the WiGig standard, which operates over the 60 GHz frequency band. Theoretically, the proposal opens the door to wire-free charging from in-home Wi-Fi routers to cellular nodes and even satellite signals. Of course, amplitude in a wireless system is normally a function of distance. Like conventional wireless charging techniques, Apple's design requires two devices -- a transmitter and receiver -- to function. Each device contains one or more antennas coupled to wireless circuitry capable of making phase and magnitude adjustments to transmitted and received signals. Such hardware can be employed in dynamic beam steering operations.
Move out of the way (Score:5, Funny)
You're holding it wrong (Score:1)
The access point, not the phone!
60Ghz (Score:2, Funny)
Since the energy density increases with frequency, why not use THz instead of GHz? Put a harvesting panel on the back of the phone and get lots of free charging energy.
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Frequency does not get you around the 1/r^2 energy flux density problem.
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Re: 60Ghz (Score:2, Insightful)
Lol 1/r^2 is all that saves us from being fried. Why don't you put your solar panels 1 meter from the sun surface and see how that goes.
Re: 60Ghz (Score:4, Funny)
Because it'll cost a fortune for the extension cord!
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Why don't you put your solar panels 1 meter from the sun surface and see how that goes.
Because unless someone comes up with cheap room-temperature superconductors, the line loss over ~93 million miles will likely more than cancel out the increase in energy density. You'd be better off building a gigantic solar-pumped MASER and beaming the power directly back to collector arrays on Earth.
Anonymous Cowards confirmed for not understanding Ohms' Law
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You can use the microwaves secret built-in camera to alert you when your phone is done...
Or you could just stand there a few seconds and wait for the bang...
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These "lots" of energy you are talking about are not nearly enough for a modern smartphone.
Even if you would make use of the electromagnetic radiation coming from a nuclear fusion reactor, and position your phone optimally, a harvesting panel the size of a smartphone would barely be able to gain 1W.
Re:60Ghz (Score:5, Insightful)
These "lots" of energy you are talking about are not nearly enough for a modern smartphone.
How many times does this need to be repeated? You are NOT going to be able to collect significant energy by rectifying radio transmissions, unless you plan on collecting for a long, long time. Put another way, your phone is using up the battery WAY faster than you would be able to charge it from wifi, broadcast and whatever other RF you might run across.
EVEN with beam steering, where the whole half-watt of power from the router is aimed directly at your phone, you are up against:
- your inefficient receive antenna
- the inverse square law
- path loss
It's not practical. Why Apple is filing a patent on this, I don't know.
Re: 60Ghz (Score:3)
This is all old and [dis]proven tech. I don't understand what is new and innovative here. Why is Apple even allowed to file a patent on this? Why should society even take the risk, let alone give Apple a monopoly on this?
Steered beam: yes. (Score:2)
EVEN with beam steering, where the whole half-watt of power from the router is aimed directly at your phone,
There's a frenquency range above the 400 THz mark, that can be efficiently steered, and could be collected on the back of your phone : /.ers are not very familiar with this strange energy beem, being basement dwellers ourselves).
it's called SUN LIGHT (Yeah I know we
I think that's what the above poster jokingly referred to when saying to go to higher freqency.
(And for the record, a solar cell the size of a modern huge smartphone could probably collect ~2-3W of power.
There are actual power banks produced with
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The problem with visible light is that it is easily blocked by clothes.
This is unfortunate, in more way than one.
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The problem with visible light is that it is easily blocked by clothes. This is unfortunate, in more way than one.
Not in America isn't not.
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They also didn't disobey the laws of physics or any kind of practical sense.
Ignore all the talk of loss and efficiency an dBs. If you took the antenna output of your router and plugged it via cable directly into your phone charger you'll still be draining faster than charging.
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So people will talk about it (like we are here) and associate Apple's name with cool new futuristic stuff, even if that stuff is physically impossible to produce. A few thousand dollars for a patent application is a paltry sum for the amount of free advertising they've gotten out of this.
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I agree it sounds impractical. So I looked at the patent -- which not being a radio engineer it's perfectly safe for me to do (n.b. -- it's always dangerous to look at what might be bullshit patents in your field because you open yourself up to increased damages for using common sense). But I was a ham radio operator when I was a kid so I do know the lingo.
There are a number of problems with broadcasting power, starting with the fact that it's inefficient to saturate ambient space with enough radiation to
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... demand a huge chunk of their revenue forever
Actually, patents don't last forever.
And its even possible to make a competing product without touching anyones patents.
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How many times does this need to be repeated? You are NOT going to be able to collect significant energy by rectifying radio transmissions, unless you plan on collecting for a long, long time.
We do this all the time at higher and lower frequencies with high or at least usable efficiency. Semiconductor diodes at used at low frequencies up to at least 5 GHz and photodiodes are used at infrared and higher. Rectenna efficiency at high power densities is about 90% at 2.4 GHz.
Put another way, your phone is using up the battery WAY faster than you would be able to charge it from wifi, broadcast and whatever other RF you might run across. EVEN with beam steering, where the whole half-watt of power from the router is aimed directly at your phone, you are up against:
It takes beam steering to get a high enough power density and enough culmination but it makes no difference to the power available except by minimizing loss do to inefficiency.
your inefficient receive antenna
And inefficiency of the transmitter. Generating 60
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@Agripa:
Not sure what "culmination" is supposed to mean here -- is it a term of art, or is it meant to indicate integration?
The inverse square law always applies. Directed beams spread, too.
Path loss is an issue, unless you intend to place your phone near the transmitter.
Oh, but wait -- then you could just plug it in, or place it on a (much more efficient) inductive charging pad.
And orientation of the receiving antenna is another factor. Unless you're perfectly aligned with the transmitter's polarization,
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Not sure what "culmination" is supposed to mean here -- is it a term of art, or is it meant to indicate integration?
That should have been "collimation".
The inverse square law always applies. Directed beams spread, too.
They sure do. The aperture of the receive antenna needs to be larger than the spot size. A larger transmit antenna allows better collimation and a smaller spot size.
Path loss is an issue, unless you intend to place your phone near the transmitter.
And orientation of the receiving antenna is another factor. Unless you're perfectly aligned with the transmitter's polarization, you're going to see a reduction in power transfer efficiency.
The path is short.
I assume they would use circular polarization but dual polarization could work also. Orientation is always going to be a problem but multiple transmitters could handle that.
Oh, but wait -- then you could just plug it in, or place it on a (much more efficient) inductive charging pad.
The whole idea of wirelessly charging your phone in your pocket, while you go about your business, is a fantasy.
I agree that it is a dumb idea compared to an inductive charging pad and larger battery.
Wireless charging? NOT POSSIBLE. Breaks Phys law. (Score:2)
It's really weird how people who know NOTHING about technology assume they can make decisions about technology.
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Re:Wireless charging? NOT POSSIBLE. Breaks Phys la (Score:5, Informative)
t's really weird how people who know NOTHING about PHYSICS assume they can make decisions about technology.
I teach physics. In fact, I teach electrodynamics, off and on. Is it possible to charge a cell phone with wireless technology? Sure. All you need is a big enough tesla coil and a big enough loop and the ability to rectify broadband noise. If you are radiating a couple of hundred watts you can probably pull a watt out of it if you aren't too far away. Of course, you can also cook a hot dog if it isn't too far away.
Now let's consider 802.11 signals. The signal strength is limited to 1 watt by the FCC, but IEEE specs peg it at 23 to 24 dBm (200-250 mW). One whole watt is 30 dBm in decibels(milliwatt), and you can get an effective gain of 6 dBm (x4) or 4 watts with the antenna:
https://www.air802.com/fcc-rul... [air802.com]
Most wireless receivers operate with signal power (coming into the receiver antenna) in the ballpark of -10 dBm to -100 dBm, where at the low end of that range one is likely down in the noise. That is (translating to power) 100 microwatts down to 10^{-13} watts (10^{-10} milliwatts). If one takes the average cell phone's surface area -- maybe 50 or 60 cm^2 -- and compare it to the radiating solid angle of a transmitter just 50 cm away, it is a very small fraction -- order of 50 to 50^2 or order of 1%. So if one starts with 200 mW and receive it with 100% efficiency around a half meter away, one would be lucky to get more than around 1 mW. USB cell phone wall chargers, OTOH, typically use 1 to 2 W, and still take hours to charge a discharged phone. We could anticipate charging times of order 1000 hours, then, at a mW trickle.
The one place and way this MIGHT work, then, is if one places the phone ON the 802.11 transmitter, just outside of the antenna, close enough that the phone subtends at least 1/10 of its radiation pattern. Assuming a 36 dBm antenna signal strength (4 W), picking up 0.4W, with maybe 0.1 to 0.2 W usable power input after accounting for RMS power and efficiencies, you would be to the point where one might be able to recharge a partially discharged phone in a day.
The big question is then, who would want to do this? A normal 23 dBm transmitter would take weeks to charge the phone even sitting on top of it, and the phone itself would be sucking up the signal you need for your devices to operate. It would still take all day to charge instead of a few hours. It would (probably) cost more than existing "charging pads" that do the same thing and charge your phone wirelessly through induction and an inverter. It would interfere with your 802.11 device and likely reduce its effectiveness at the purpose for which it was intended. It's like "hey, we can build an antenna so that if we put your phone in the microwave oven, it will recharge it really quickly, if we shield the phone and don't mind possibly ruining the microwave". Sure, but why would we, when wall-warts and a cable cost $15, when solar chargers that actually work and don't leach power from 802.11 devices cost less than $100, etc?
The one thing you will NOT be able to do is to recharge your phone from across the room, or keep your phone charged by just sitting in the same room as an 802.11 transmitter. You'd need a phased array of antennae a half-meter wide to get enough directional concentration across a room, and it would make your transmitter pretty much useless as an actual transmitter for 802.11 devices long before that. Even if you pulled ALL the power from a 23 dBm transmitter the numbers just don't make sense for this.
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Not sure what phone charger you are using but most are 1-2A not 1-2W.
That makes your already damning case even 5x better than it would actually be.
How long to charge a 4.2V 2.8Ah battery with 1mW? 11700 hours assuming the phone is off, and no charge loss from powered down electronics.
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Oops. You are right and I knew that, with a part of my brain that obviously went unused. But yes, already damning case even worse.
If they want to do something constructive, they could make their damn phones waterproof to 2m by default and make it use an inductive charger by default. Building a phone that not only dies if you get a single drop of water NEAR the charging port but then clicks over to void your warranty was evil from the beginning.
rgb
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I think you did a great job with that write up.
What I do see in common with all the critics is that they base things on the current size of phones, current wifi routers, and current phone power consumption.
A quick side note: I think that even the Qi wireless charging, where the device rests right on top of the pad, is wasteful and pretty silly. Convenient? Slightly, but it could just have some metal tabs and a cradle like old wireless phones. Anyway, moving on...
Someday, we might have a device that uses far
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"The one place and way this MIGHT work, then, is if one places the phone ON the 802.11 transmitter, just outside of the antenna, "
Look at claim 7.
Re: Wireless charging? NOT POSSIBLE. Breaks Phys l (Score:1)
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These "lots" of energy you are talking about are not nearly enough for a modern smartphone.
Even if you would make use of the electromagnetic radiation coming from a nuclear fusion reactor, and position your phone optimally, a harvesting panel the size of a smartphone would barely be able to gain 1W.
These ridiculous smartphone charging schemes keep coming up, and they get no less ridiculous as we go on.
Unless you are in the near field, the amount of energy you could harvest is just about none, and if you are in the near field you don't want living things in it, it you are sending out enough energy to charge phones.
It's a really bad answer to a nonexistent problem.
Joke : Woooosh (Score:2)
These "lots" of energy you are talking about are not nearly enough for a modern smartphone.
Even if you would make use of the electromagnetic radiation coming from a nuclear fusion reactor, and position your phone optimally, a harvesting panel the size of a smartphone would barely be able to gain 1W.
I think you missed the joke because when around a couples of hundreds THz, said nuclear fusion reactor emitting the electromagnetic radiation is called the sun.
So we're more speaking about 3W range. (3.5W for 12x12cm [sunpower.com])
Still not enough to fully power a modern smartphone monster with both CPU and GPU on full gear.
But solar charging is actually really a thing [solarjoos.com].
Bluetooth headphone needs 97% less power (Score:3)
1 watt wouldn't work very well to charge a smart phone with a 3,000 mah battery. On the other hand, a Bluetooth headphone will have a battery of around 100mah. In use, a Bluetooth headphone will use maybe 150mw or so. Idle, much less than that. So a constant charge of 1 watt, or even 100mw, would be sufficient to keep a Bluetooth headphone charged.
Do Apple customers have any use for Bluetooth headphones these days? :)
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Microwave charging (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow I think an Apple employee saw an article about charging the phone by popping it into a microwave and realised they didn't have a patent on the technology yet. That was something easily fixed.
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Don't you need to actually know how to build something to file a patent on it? Or can you just submit a patent reading: "Transparent Aluminum".
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Prior art for your Transparent Aluminum patent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Cretin. X oxide (or anything else ~ide) isn't X.
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Cretin. X oxide (or anything else ~ide) isn't X.
If you'd bothered to read the link, you'd have noticed that the patent office accepted calling it "Transparent Aluminum" in multiple patents. Given that the topic involves what the Patent Office will accept, please save your pejoratives for yourself and them.
Quoting from linked summary:
Transparent aluminum oxynitride and method of manufacture RL Gentilman, EA Maguire U.S. Patent 4,520,116, 1985
Transparent aluminum oxynitride and method of manufacture RL Gentilman, EA Maguire U.S. Patent 4,720,362, 1988
Trans
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I believe your language parser needs upgraded, the name of the product is not just "Transparent aluminum" but "Transparent aluminum oxynitride". These are about aluminum oxynitride compounds, not metallic aluminum. But you know, read things how you want to read them.
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No. You just need to describe how it works, not if it works.
Here: have a laugh: https://www.google.com/patents... [google.com]
Idiocy (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember that your router is limited to 1W output (FCC limits in the US for all 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz devices), fired in every direction. At a mere 1 meter away from the router, even if your cell is placed facing the router (to have maximim surface area), and assuming 100% efficiency... your cell would harvest about 0.0004 watts of charging power.
But it will not be 100% efficient. Your cell will not be within 1 meter of the router most of the time. This entire idea is ludicrous, and anyone thinking that it's a great idea does not know much about physics.
Re:Idiocy (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that your router is limited to 1W output (FCC limits in the US for all 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz devices), fired in every direction. At a mere 1 meter away from the router, even if your cell is placed facing the router (to have maximim surface area), and assuming 100% efficiency... your cell would harvest about 0.0004 watts of charging power.
But it will not be 100% efficient. Your cell will not be within 1 meter of the router most of the time. This entire idea is ludicrous, and anyone thinking that it's a great idea does not know much about physics.
Time for a round of choose the hypothesis:
#1 - Out of the 10,000+ engineers working for Apple, not even one of them knows about physics.
#2 - At least one of them knows not only about physics, but also some other type of technology that would actually validate the patent filed (somehow).
#3 - Patents for patents sake. Even fake news is still a (click) revenue generator. Oh, and is there an app for patents yet? 'Cause we need some patenty app goodness!
Ironic how "dumb" phones have removable batteries that last for a week, and "smart" phones have non-removable batteries that struggle to last a day.
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It's probably something as simple as they plan to bring back their wireless hardware and include some incompatible inductive charging tech, like what we already have. Or maybe the WiFi is just being used as some kind of DRM.
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Re:Idiocy (Score:4, Insightful)
"Ironic" how smart phones have a battery that lasts for a day despite having them having far more memory and far more computing power than a Cray 1 supercomputer which needed a 115 kW power supply.
It's almost like comparing radically different technologies isn't a useful comparison.
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"Ironic" how smart phones have a battery that lasts for a day despite having them having far more memory and far more computing power than a Cray 1 supercomputer which needed a 115 kW power supply.
It's almost like comparing radically different technologies isn't a useful comparison.
The only thing that's "radically different" about smartphone technology today is the fact that the marketing department runs the show, and brought us shit like Bendgate in their idiotic quest for lighter and thinner.
It's not like we can't create a slightly thicker smartphone to dramatically increase battery capacity, or easily create a design that supports a removable/replaceable battery. We can, and we have. We devolved out of pure greed.
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We devolved out of pure greed.
But plugging a phone into a charger or popping it into a dock is soooooo inconvenient.
The law of er's in effect.
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Crays were asynchronous computers. They had to be tuned occasionally, this involved adjusting signal path lengths so that signals would arrive at the same time.
They did have clocks, but things like the ALU ran async (largely). They were pretty radically different.
Very much radically different than a modern computing cluster.
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Except it wasn't the marketing department that wanted thinner, smaller, it was the consumers showing a clear trend to prefer thinner and smaller devices.
If you want the battery capacity of a dumb phone then just enable ULP mode. Last time I went camping my phone was on for 8 days without a charger in sight.
You get to have all the benefits of a dumb phone while still looking like a hipster.
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The damn thing took a full 2 days to hit 50% and even with the faulty battery almost lasted a third day before dying. That's when I realized s
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Remember that your router is limited to 1W output (FCC limits in the US for all 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz devices), fired in every direction. At a mere 1 meter away from the router, even if your cell is placed facing the router (to have maximim surface area), and assuming 100% efficiency... your cell would harvest about 0.0004 watts of charging power.
But it will not be 100% efficient. Your cell will not be within 1 meter of the router most of the time. This entire idea is ludicrous, and anyone thinking that it's a great idea does not know much about physics.
Time for a round of choose the hypothesis:
#1 - Out of the 10,000+ engineers working for Apple, not even one of them knows about physics.
#2 - At least one of them knows not only about physics, but also some other type of technology that would actually validate the patent filed (somehow).
#3 - Patents for patents sake. Even fake news is still a (click) revenue generator. Oh, and is there an app for patents yet? 'Cause we need some patenty app goodness!
Ironic how "dumb" phones have removable batteries that last for a week, and "smart" phones have non-removable batteries that struggle to last a day.
You spelled month wrong ;) My last feature phone lasted 4 weeks on a charge when it was new, and was contemporary with the iPhone 1, but the feature phone had 3G.
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I think you'll find single digits for the former and almost certainly zero for the latter. In this case with 2 GHz there are very special problems associated with having the sort of amplitude required to charge a phone faster than it
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It depends on how many of those "engineers" are from Oregon [slashdot.org].
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Wireless charging stations are all the rave right now. Even it the device needed to be placed on the router to get any benefit, and needed 8 hours to get any sort of a charge, that is a sale-able product (for a few months before the hype dies down).
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Yeah, imagine not being able to do anything for 8 hours. Crazy!
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Yeah, imagine not being able to do anything for 8 hours. Crazy!
Humans used to do this thing called sleep for 8 hours.
Of course, that was before Netflix, YouTube, and online porn.
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There's nothing ironic about dumb phones lasting a long time. If you enable Ultra Low Power mode on an Android device you too can have a battery that lasts well over a week on a device on which you can't even reply to this post.
Also what makes you think engineers are remotely related to patent filings? A very large number of patents are for machines that won't work, won't see the market, or for things not actually related to any engineering at all. Patents protect ideas. Ideas can come from anywhere, even d
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...A very large number of patents are for machines that won't work, won't see the market, or for things not actually related to any engineering at all. Patents protect ideas. Ideas can come from anywhere, even dumb ones like this.
Dumb ideas that won't work? Hmm, maybe I should patent that.
Think about it. One patent could potentially destroy the patent collecting industry that has fucked over ingenuity.
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#1 - Out of the 10,000+ engineers working for Apple, not even one of them knows about physics.
It only takes one who knows neither engineering nor physics.
Re:Idiocy (Score:5, Interesting)
We'll have batteries that last long enough to make this a moot technology before this becomes anywhere near practical. I'm one of the few humans on earth that still uses a not-too-bright flip phone. I charge it once a week whether it needs it or not.
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You're right on the surface of it. But with a frequency in the 60GHz range and beamforming, we could get that number up to .004 watts. :)
You jest but you're actually right. ~10mW would start being useful, and the patent application doesn't say anything about phones. This would, if it were ever practical/economical, be a potential candidate for low powered sensors such as those used in home automation or wearable (medical) technologies. There have been a number of RF energy harvesting scams on kickstarter/indiegogo precisely because there is demand for low power wireless sensors that don't require their batteries to be replaced every year.
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It sounds like they're going to use a focused beam (rather than dissipate the energy indiscriminately in all directions) which can discover and track the phone, always pointing at it. Energy losses by distance will be much smaller with a focused beam (depending on the effic
Re: Idiocy (Score:1)
So it's aiming 1W of RF directly at my pants pocket? Goodbye sperm count.
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Hope you like Roasted Wieners.. Microwave Style!
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Energy losses by distance will be much smaller with a focused beam (depending on the efficiency of the technology, closing on 100%).
Beaming increases the effected radiated power. It doesn't change what happens to the signal after it leaves the antenna. It obeys all the laws of physics pertaining to electromagnetic radiation.
I for one, would rather plug in my phone rather than submit myself to radiotherapy at wireless router frequencies. And where I carry my phone is perilously close to the family jewels.
Which brings up another interesting point. These devices will somehow put out high levels of power and not interfere with nearby
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anyone thinking that it's a great idea does not know much about physics.
What a coincidence, I was about to declare this was an ingenious and flawless plan.
-Posted from my Windows Phone
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This entire idea is ludicrous, and anyone thinking that it's a great idea does not know much about physics.
You can say that Apple stumbles with it too... not accounting for a users hand/fingers interrupting antenna reception. Apparently the phone is awesome, if you didn't hold it.
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Just not sure why we have such a obsession with wireless everything?
Laziness, the single most significant spur to technological innovation... after warfare.
In Seattle... (Score:2)
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...we only have dialup. No wireless. Won't work here.
[Yorkshiremen]
Ooooh! Dialup!
We used to DREAM of dialup.
We had two tin cans and a string, and we were glad to have it!
[/Yorkshiremen]
Re: In Seattle... (Score:2)
Flags? When I was young, we had to start a fire by rubbing a stick in a piece of wood and then use smoke signals from the top of a hill, that's how we played Quake, and we liked it.
The joys of patents (Score:2)
Prior Art! Prior Art! (Score:3)
I think that Nikola Tesla might call this out as an old idea (http://teslaradio.com/pages/tesla.htm,https://www.damninteresting.com/teslas-tower-of-power/) although his designs were a little more grand. If he'd only pulled it off we'd have been wireless for a century now. :-)
Yeah (Score:1)
More radiation, more cancers, go for it!
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How have you been on /. as long as your ID implies and never learned the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation?
Are you just that stupid?
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How have you been on /. as long as your ID implies and never learned the difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation?
Are you just that stupid?
Thanks for the flowers,
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
"Apple is exploring cutting-edge technologies that would allow iPhones and iPads to be powered from further away than the charging mats used with current smartphone"
To charge a cell phone over the air - receiving a couple of 100 mA by radio waves in a room with your cell - maybe within 20' distance - you'll need either a concentrated beam to which you expose your cell or have the whole room covered with a very strong RF field maybe similar what the exp
Dagny Taggart did it (Score:2)
Of course the most ridiculous part was the part where CEOs joined together to create a utopia in Colorado with no poor or working people, just their own bootstraps, where they presumably ate nothing, repaired their own lavish houses, and needed no help from tradespeople, doctors or other "takers" who were not rich CEOs and obviously just wanted a handout
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Is it? The bit where the poor take over the government and piss off the rich seemed pretty far-fetched to me.
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The second most ridiculous thing in "Atlas Shrugged" was that Dagny Taggart invented a perpetual motion train "powered by ambient electricity in the air."
Taggart was just a shrewd businesswoman, Jon Galt invented the engine, and he refused to give it to Taggart once she found out about it because he hated the world. Though it's interesting to see someone complain about a book they either haven't read or didn't have the mental aptitude to take in.
Of course the most ridiculous part was the part where CEOs joined together to create a utopia in Colorado with no poor or working people, just their own bootstraps, where they presumably ate nothing, repaired their own lavish houses, and needed no help from tradespeople, doctors or other "takers" who were not rich CEOs and obviously just wanted a handout.
Nope, the most ridiculous part was how they transformed into Seal Team 6 at the end of the book to rescue Galt from the evil socialist mind control camp. While that point is a matter of subjective perspective (argu
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The second most ridiculous thing in "Atlas Shrugged" was that Dagny Taggart invented a perpetual motion train "powered by ambient electricity in the air."
Taggart was just a shrewd businesswoman, Jon Galt invented the engine, and he refused to give it to Taggart once she found out about it because he hated the world. Though it's interesting to see someone complain about a book they either haven't read or didn't have the mental aptitude to take in.
Galt did not care enough to hate; he simply refused to aid in his own destruction. Dagny Taggart was Galt's greatest enemy but he did not hate her.
Of course the most ridiculous part was the part where CEOs joined together to create a utopia in Colorado with no poor or working people, just their own bootstraps, where they presumably ate nothing, repaired their own lavish houses, and needed no help from tradespeople, doctors or other "takers" who were not rich CEOs and obviously just wanted a handout.
Nope, the most ridiculous part was how they transformed into Seal Team 6 at the end of the book to rescue Galt from the evil socialist mind control camp. While that point is a matter of subjective perspective (arguably,) they had doctors in their utopia (and clearly raw materials were imported as well, given the immense time it would have taken Galt to build his generator on site otherwise. Also, the members of the town were more than CEOs (many weren't even CEOs or businessmen for that matter, but engineers with extreme proficiency in their respective fields,) they also had doctors. The concept was more like that of a bunch of geniuses getting together and forming a town than it was a bunch of businessmen doing so, in fact very few, if any, of today's fortune 500 executives would have made the cut by Galt's standards.
Most were not geniuses or have abilities of the same caliber. They were people who were their moral equals without having their abilities like the truck driver who wanted to become more or the mother who wanted to raise her children. Cherryl Brooks and especially Eddie Willers represent the tragedy of these people on the outside.
Most fortune 500 executives wer
'obvious to one skilled in the art'. (Score:2)
I note from 2009 http://logs.nslu2-linux.org/li... [nslu2-linux.org] ...
'Some brief numbers indicate that 60GHz - power over wifi may not be insane
Jun 07 02:22:58 And at that scale, you can do beamforming antennas on a platform the size of a microSD card'
Or from 2009, " 60GHz or so steered beams are 'easy' - given good 60GHz tech that makes 128 or so channel transmitters cheap."
It's depressing patents like this get granted.
Microwave energy (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Just throw all your Apple devices into a conventional microwave oven and nuke on high power for a few minutes.
You realize that Wi-Fi and microwave ovens operate on similar frequencies. So, technically, you could both charge and nuke it from a distance, like from orbit - to be sure.
Maybe it's to power something else? (Score:2)
Sounds unlikely this could do much to power a phone, but how about something much smaller, like bluetooth (and now wifi?) headphones? Or other small devices?
Just great. (Score:2)
... allow users to charge up their iPhones with nothing more than a Wi-Fi router.
Now I have to carry around a Wi-Fi router and find a place to plug that in. (sigh) Fucking Apple.
Apple Sherlocked Tesla (Score:1)
So your telling me, Apple has basically patented Tesla's invention?
How unoriginals, in form and function.. par for the course.. and not very innovative.
Charging? Probably not (Score:2)
Typical Slashdot Illiteracy (Score:2)
The patent does not make any claim about sending power over WiFI, therefore every comment complaining that you can't send enough power over WiFi is off-topic.
What it *does* claim is sending power using the same antenna array as communications in the 60GHz band. It does not mention a frequency for the power transmision.
What is particularly interesting is Claim 7: "The electronic device defined in claim 6 further comprising a display, wherein the wireless power transfer circuitry is configured to transfer pow
Re: (Score:2)
Or your going to be driving a Pinto running on 3 cylinders with a full tank of gas wearing oil soaked clothes in heavy traffic on the highways in hell.
Hey! That's my fetish!
Re: (Score:2)
Citation needed. I call bullshit.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Sony did it _wrong_ on their Xperia line of smartphones.
Two symmetrical terminals that are always hot. If you hook it up backwards you hard crash the phone. Too cheap to include a rectifier, obviously using a very dumb battery charge circuit.
Don't let the charge terminals touch anything metal. You are counting on USB to detect the overcurrent. Do it with a cheap charger and I bet you could get it to burn.
Still better than opening the 'waterproof' micro USB cover every time.
Re: Cameras and microphones (Score:2)
That would enable spying so if better have some kind of encryption technology.