10 Random Thoughts On 12-17-08

There's a Springfield, MA newspaper sports reporter by the name of Gary Brown who writes a weekly column titled "Hitting To All Fields". In the column he lists his random thoughts for the past week. I've always enjoyed Gary's writing and they say imitation is the best form of flattery..... If this format works - it may become a regular Wednesday thing for me:

Wondering who Obama will select as Kevin Martin's FCC chair replacement.

WHAT.... no Steve Jobs at MacWorld 2009 ?

And double WHAT.... no more Apple at MacWorld after 2009 ?

Wondering how those Walmart iPhones will sell.

Some are saying (myself included) broadband access is a human right. Others disagree.

Been hearing the term "social shopping" used this holiday season as if it is something new. Isn't it what we've always referred to as "word of mouth"?

Can the Patriots pull the playoffs off in the next couple of weeks?

It's been a disgusting political and financial week in our country - the rest of the world must be laughing pretty hard at us.

The Feb 18 Analog to Digital Mandated TV Conversion is looking like it might get messy for people who are still watching over-the-air. I'll be writing more on this soon.

Early this morning my blog passed the 100,000 visitor mark for 2008!!!

Happy Holidays and thanks for reading!

Another Day After in New England

Last February 4th I wrote about the day after the Super Bowl in a post titled New England the Day After. The New England Patriots had just lost to the Giants and most of the people I ran into looked like zombies - eyes glazed over in looks of disbelief. Today is not much better for Patriots fans. Quarterback Tom Brady took a hit to the leg in the first quarter of yesterdays game with the Chiefs and blew out his knee. Most reports right now are saying it is a torn ACL and he will be out for the season.



Matt Cassel came in for Brady and played well enough for the Patriots to win the game yesterday. It looks like they are bringing in Chris Simms who will likely be picked up as third string quarterback behind Kevin O'Connell.

In the February post I described an interview I had listened to with Patriots owner Robert Kraft on WEEI radio. One particular quote from Kraft stuck in my head and it is still there "With every crisis comes opportunity if it is managed right".

There's 52 other players on the team besides Brady - we'll see how they handle this one.

New England the Day After

Since maybe week 6 of the NFL season (right around when the Red Sox won the World Series) we've experienced a blur of analysis, hype and confidence regarding the New England Patriots. The past two weeks especially were non-stop leading up to the Super Bowl. Plans were being made for a Duck Boat Victory Parade in Boston on Tuesday with concern about the streets being clogged and people not being able to get to the polls to vote on Super Tuesday. The Boston Globe was pre-selling a book titled 19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England's Unbeatable Patriots. Radio talk stations, newspapers, TV sports commentary, web discussion forums - all were non-stop about how dominant the Patriots would be in the game......

The aftermath..... I think there are a few lessons here for my kids and myself:

Overconfidence - Whether the Patriots players were guilty of it or not - many writers, broadcasters and fans were. Not good. If you start to believe hype it's eventually going to get you.

Preparation - The Giants were better prepared and played a better game.

Ignoring the Hype - Not listening to the majority - Giants once again.

Not Quiting and Believing in Yourself - of course the Giants!

And, with regards to the Patriots team - losing with dignity and respect for themselves and the other team. From what I have seen there have been no temper tantrums by the players or coaches and only praise for the Giants and the way they played the game.

I listened to a great interview with Patriots owner Robert Kraft, last week on WEEI radio. One particular quote sticks in my head and I'll likely remember it and be using it for a long time "With every crisis comes opportunity if it is managed right".

Is losing a football game a crisis in today's world? It's certainly not for me or the people I'm in contact with every day. It probably is for Robert Kraft and the Patriots organization though. Are the best lessons still to come in New England? Time will tell.

I'll get back to writing about technology tomorrow.

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Traditional and Modern Methods of Football Signal Jamming

Those of you that are football fans probably watched the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots play last Sunday. On the first play of the fourth quarter, New England Quarterback Tom Brady threw a successful 14 yard pass to receiver Randy Moss. What was interesting about this play was the crowd noise. If you watched the game on CBS you heard A LOT of noise before and during the play and a noticeable lack of noise immediately after Moss had caught the ball. Here's a clip on YouTube of the play and the catch.


In no way am I implying that the Colts cheated in any way! Crowd noise is one of the home field advantages and is an old-fashioned attempt at lowering the audio signal to noise ratio (SNR). I covered signal to noise ratio in another blog on Monday.

Here's how crowd noise reduces the audio SNR - the visiting team quarterback is calling signals and the crowd is making noise. If the signal (quarterback) strength is weak compared to the noise (crowd) the rest of the offensive team has trouble hearing the signals. The more noise the better as far as home teams are concerned - It's perfectly legal this year in the NFL with a rule change this past spring eliminating a five yard defensive penalty (rarely called in the past) for excessive crowd noise.

Let's get back to the Colts/Patriots game - was the crowd noise amplified or enhanced in some way at the RCA Dome in Indianapolis on Sunday? It appears not - the enhancement was done by CBS for the television viewers. The NFL quickly released a statement on their website, here's a piece of that release:

CBS has informed us that the unusual audio moment heard by fans during the Patriots-Colts game was the result of tape feedback in the CBS production truck and was isolated to the CBS broadcast. It was in no way related to any sound within the stadium and could not be heard in the stadium.

That takes care of the crowd noise - now let's consider the wireless communications systems used at the game. In his press conference after the game, New England coach Bill Belichick said the wireless communications system between the coaches and quarterback Tom Brady was "basically useless". Here's a quote from an AP piece published on Yahoo News:

..... Belichick said he was more concerned with communication problems he said existed between Patriots coaches and Brady.

"Basically, we didn't have a coach-to-quarterback operation, so we had to signal in all of the plays, which is unusual, but that's the way it was," he said. "What all was going on, I can't tell you, but I can tell you that, from a functional standpoint, the coach-to-quarterback was basically useless."

Here's where my mind is going...... I've written about wireless jammers over the past couple of days here and have discussed devices that are small enough to fit inside a pack of cigarettes to ones that are large enough to kill cell phones in large banquet halls. Could a fan smuggle in a jammer with some kind of directional antenna that could be aimed at the sidelines of the opposing team? I'm not accusing anyone of any kind of crime but I believe it may be theoretically possible. I also know nothing about security at NFL games and have not attended one in the past couple of years.

But...... Would a stadium security person have any idea what a jammer was?

And..... Could one be disguised and built into something like a portable TV set that I've seen fans bring to games in the past?

I do think if I was an NFL coach I'd go back to wired headsets and hand signals to my quarterback until these issues get resolved.

Jamming Cell Phones

Jamming cell phone signals is illegal in the United States but not illegal in other countries. As a result, people in the United States are finding and buying these devices on the Internet. The New York Times ran an interesting piece on November 2 titled Devices Enforce Silence of Cellphones, Illegally. The piece starts with the following:

One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.

“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.

Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius. “She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said.

I've written about wireless signal jamming in the past - specifically when I wrote about the New England Patriots video taping scandal that included rumors of wireless communications signal jamming. I have to admit, while watching the Colts/Patriots game yesterday and seeing Tom Brady struggle hearing plays using his helmet headset, jamming was on my mind. It got to the point plays were being relayed in the old fashioned way - was it crowd noise or could it have been signal jamming?

Let's take a basic look at the technology. Communications technicians and engineers are constantly aware of something called the signal-to-noise ratio, commonly abbreviated as SNR. The noise we are typically dealing with in unjammed situations is commonly referred to as Johnson or White Noise and it's always there. If systems are designed properly and when in range, communications signals are stronger than the noise and the noise is less significant because the SNR is high (think divide signal strength by noise strength). Basically, if a wanted communications signal is stronger than the noise then communications happens. If the noise is stronger than the communications signal then communications does not happen. We've all experience this in our cars while driving and listening to a radio station. As we get closer to a station signal source (antenna), the signal gets stronger and we hear the station clearer.

Now back to jammers - in simplest terms, jammers work by sending out strong signals that overpower the wanted communications signals between a cell phone and cellular antenna towers. Basically they generate the equivalent of noise at specific cell frequencies. Phones end up not communicating with the towers and users see a "No Service" type message on their phones.

A quick search of the Internet brings up a number of off-shore companies selling signal jammers. One of the more popular companies is London based PhoneJammer.com. PhoneJammer.com sells lots of different jamming devices ranging from a $149 portable jammer that runs on 9V batteries and has a range of 5m to a $3995 ultra high power phone jammer which is described as the most sophisticated digital cell phone jammer of its class, with tough die-cast aluminum casing and dual inter cooler, ideal for large hall type rooms or outdoor locations. It comes with a high gain base station type antenna.

The New York Times quotes PhoneJammer.com's site operator as follows:

"Victor McCormack, the site’s operator, says he ships roughly 400 jammers a month into the United States, up from 300 a year ago. Orders for holiday gifts, he said, have exceeded 2,000."

I'll write more about different kinds of wireless signal jamming this week. Remember - the devices are illegal in the United States.

New England Patriots Jamming Wireless Frequencies?

Born and raised here I'm pretty much a die-hard New England sports team fan - Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins and Patriots. I've read the reports and listed to the commentary on national TV and a lot of the local radio stations. I found it a little hard to believe the Patriots would break a rule the way they did but it sounds like they did. If you haven't heard the news - here's how I understand it.

Apparently the Patriots had a camera guy taping the defensive coaches as they sent signals out to the team on the field. After each signal recording the guy would pan the camera up to the scoreboard to show the down and yardage. From what I've read the team could then take this after the game and synch up the signals with the down and yardage information. This would potentially allow the Patriots to determining which plays the Jets would run in different situations the next time they play each other.

I'm not sure how much sense this makes - the two teams don't play again until December 16. You would think by then the Jets will have changed their signals in fear of someone over the course of the season figuring out their signals. It only makes sense to mix things up.

Last night, while watching NBC’s Football Night in America before the Patriots played the Chargers I watched the Bob Costas interview with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Goodell had some interesting quotes for Costas - here's a couple taken from a New York Times piece:

“I’ve notified the Patriots that if there’s information that I’ve not been made aware of, or if it’s inconsistent with what I’ve been told, I will revisit” the decision, he told Bob Costas on NBC’s “Football Night in America,” which preceded last night’s San Diego-New England game."

"He said the league was monitoring all the radio frequencies assigned to teams to determine if they were being used properly. NBC showed a crew of frequency coordinators working behind the Patriots’ desk last night."

Why are they monitoring frequencies? Here's more from the Times article:

"Earlier in the day, “Fox N.F.L. Sunday,” which showed a copy of the Patriots’ video that the league confiscated, and CBS’s “The N.F.L. Today” reported that the league may investigate the Patriots’ use of audio receivers to interfere with the Jets’ quarterback-to-coach communications."

"NBC reported that the Patriots might have wired linemen to pick up the Jets’ offensive audibles."

Quarterbacks have been wearing headsets for a while now and I've always wondered if any teams had tried to jam or tap other teams wireless communications. Jamming comes to mind every time I hear a referee try to make a call when his transmitter does not work.

I'm not sure how frequencies are allocated during games but they must be secret. I'm also assuming any communications would be encrypted so listening in could be difficult. It would not be too hard to jam though if you think about it. You are given your frequency and just jam all of the others in the frequency range being used. When it comes to a referee making a call the jammer could temporarily turn the jamming transmitter off.

Looking back on a prior game it would be difficult to prove any kind of jamming of frequencies after the fact unless someone squealed. However, you can bet the NFL will be doing extensive real-time frequency monitoring (and recording) from this point forward.

I'm still a Patriots fan.

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Read Show Notes and listen to Mike Q and my latest Podcast titled Micro-blogging linked here.
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