We talked about this stuff here several years ago. Now, like everything else, Moore's 
"law" and wirelessness have had their effects on things...

Cheers,
RAH
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<http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/print_version/prototype0703.asp>

Wireless sensors listen for gunfire. (Photo courtesy of Proxity Digital Networks) 
Shot in the Dark 

If a gun goes off in an abandoned junkyard, does anyone hear it? The police do, at 
least in the handful of U.S. cities equipped with gunshot detection sensors, which 
listen for weapons' acoustical signatures and clock the arrival of sound waves to 
triangulate their origin. But these sensors must be plugged into telephone lines, 
meaning they can't be installed in out-of-the-way places, and a separate detector is 
needed every 300 to 400 meters to produce accurate results. Now New Orleans, LA-based 
Proxity Digital Networks is testing battery-powered detectors that can be clamped onto 
trees and poles and that communicate wirelessly with communications towers up to five 
kilometers away. The Tulsa County, OK, sheriff's department is testing the system, 
which transmits information on the location of gunfire to officers on patrol. It can 
even identify specific types of weapons, which helps police "dispatch a more effective 
response team specific to the situation," says Tulsa County !
sheriff Stanley Glanz. 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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