Yeah, I know what you mean...

Seems like I have something in common with this guy. A love for IBM buckling-spring keyboards.

New Helical antenna design.

Caught this off daily wireless the article is on a new helical antenna design. Helical antennas with circular polarization are not new. What is unique about this antenna is the use of "kinks" in the antenna to provide a higher effective loop area ( a 70%) improvement is quoted. What I'm not sure of is how this effects antenna pattern or insertion loss. My undergrad senior project used a helical that was tapered to allow for a higher bandwidth. We struggled maintaining the antenna pattern and a low insertion loss. I later learned (in the real world) that a different taper patten would have solved our problems, but that knowledge was classified or proprietary.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure the kinks are new either, and I'm not sure what the FCC has to say about using circular polarization for wi-fi. At the very least, FCC testing is done with linear polarization. If a device was tested with this antenna, it seems to me that you'd be cheating a 3dB increase in output...like I said I don't think this is 100% legal. Another issue you have is that once you're circularly polarized signal is scattered (one of the dominant modes for propagation in this band) it is essentially linear. So, my assumption is that it's not intended a CP (circular pol.) antenna would be used on the receive side. So yeah, if the equipment is certified using LP (linear pol) to the FCC limit they could be cheating on the EIRP (equivalent Isotropic Radiated Power) requirement. At least to the spirit of the regulation.

If you want a image of the future...Imagine a boot stomping on a human face FOREVER.

There's Bad Religion song with the same title and it's a quote from George Orwell's 1984. I just finished the book on my way back from the 2005 IEEE EMC Symposium in Chicago. Let me just say it isn't the sort of book you read to provide hope in regard to the survival of the individuality in the face of societies demand for conformity. Nope...not at all. It's also hard to really understand the hopelessness of the Bad Religion song without a quick read. The version I have also had a foreword written by Eric Fromm written, I assume, for the 1984 publication while the U.S. was still mired in the cold war. At the time, it was a popular notion that novel was allegory for Stalinist Russia. Fromm correctly points out that Orwell accuses all of modern society of being on the same path.
One thing that struck me was a bit of supposed disinformation in the book that claims that a state of perpetual war is undertaken to consume societies excess production. This in turn keeps the society is a state near poverty so they are easier to control, the war also then becomes a justification for the measures taken by the state. The fact these themes are explored in the book, should be no surprise to anyone who has heard the term "Orwellian" thrown about in describing the "war on terror". The parallels are there and a taking time to read the novel while keeping the war on terror in mind is worth while.