Fairfax Doubles Stake in RIMM

[Ben Graham]

Prem Watsa, make sure your new devices have DASH.

DASH promises stutter free streaming video over LTE.

We've all been there: fire up a clip from YouTube or a movie on Netflix and things start out great. But, then, after just a few moments, that LTE connection starts to give up the ghost and suddenly you're faced with unbearable stutturing or a video that just dies mid stream. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications are looking to solve that conundrum with DASH, or Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP. The idea is actually surprisingly simple -- files of different sizes and qualities will be available depending on signal strength and network load, and the stream will be able to seamlessly switch between them as these variables change.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/05/dash-promises-stutter-free-streaming-video-over-lte/

[zgrendi]

http://seekingalpha.com/article/348121-research-in-motion-s-worst-case-scenario

Interesting analysis re valuation. 

[valueInv]

Prem Watsa, make sure your new devices have DASH.

DASH promises stutter free streaming video over LTE.

We've all been there: fire up a clip from YouTube or a movie on Netflix and things start out great. But, then, after just a few moments, that LTE connection starts to give up the ghost and suddenly you're faced with unbearable stutturing or a video that just dies mid stream. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications are looking to solve that conundrum with DASH, or Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP. The idea is actually surprisingly simple -- files of different sizes and qualities will be available depending on signal strength and network load, and the stream will be able to seamlessly switch between them as these variables change.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/05/dash-promises-stutter-free-streaming-video-over-lte/

Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, Netflix, Akamai, etc have already implemented different versions adaptive streaming. So most of the videos you are watching on your phone already have it. DASH is simply an attempt to standardize it and it doesn't look like its gaining much traction.

[Ben Graham]

Prem Watsa specializes in applying a decentralized approach to running the Fairfax business. Is he now applying a robust, decentralized approach to RF-based localization for upcoming new RIMM devices?

Existing approaches to radio frequency (RF) -based localization are centralized (i.e., they require either a central server or the user’s roaming node, such as PDA or laptop, to compute the user’s location) and/or use a powered infrastructure. In a fire, earthquake, or other disaster, electrical power, networking, and other services may be disabled, rendering such a tracking system useless. Even if the infrastructure can operate on emergency generator power, requiring wireless connectivity is impractical when a potentially large
number of wireless access points may themselves have failed (e.g., due to physical
damage from fire).
 
In addition, most previous approaches are brittle in that they do not account for
lost information, such as the failure of one or more transmitters, or perturbations in RF signal propagation. As such, existing approaches are inappropriate for safety-critical applications, such as disaster response, in which the system must continue to operate (perhaps in a degraded state) after the failure of one or more nodes in the tracking infrastructure.
 
In this paper, we present a robust, decentralized approach to RF-based localization,called MoteTrack. MoteTrack uses a network of battery-operated wireless nodes to measure, store, and compute location information. Location tracking is based on empirical measurements of radio signals from multiple transmitters, using an algorithm similar to RADAR. To achieve robustness,

MoteTrack extends this approach in three significant ways:
 
First, MoteTrack uses a decentralized approach to computing locations that runs on the programmable beacon nodes, rather than a back-end server.
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Second, the location signature database is replicated across the beacon nodes themselves in a fashion that minimizes per-node storage overhead and achieves high robustness to failure.
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Third, MoteTrack employs a dynamic radio signature distance metric that adapts to
loss of information, partial failures of the beacon infrastructure, and perturbations in the RF signal.


http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~mdw/papers/motetrack-loca05.pdf