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I think one of the best way to conserve energy would be to generate it with different means as well as using it less, therefore more energy to go round to a shrinking market so there will be lots of excess energy; other raw materials can be saved instead of used.

I have a 2 different torches, neither need a battery and neither will need a battery. One is powered by shaking it for a few minutes which charges some electromagnetic coils (like in Science at school) which powers the torch for 10 or so minutes. The other torch is a better; for about 10 seconds of squeesing this weird thingy sticking out the side (i love technical language) if gives the torch about 10 or 15 minutes of power.

I think there should be other ways that people could do during their everyday lives that generate power. Instead of walking or jogging to keep fit, someone should invent some kind of huge hamster wheel that generates electricity - you keep fit AND generate electricity. Although storing a huge hanster wheel somewhere would be hard.

I remember reading on hackaday a few weeks ago about a Gurrilla Solar (PDF) device.

You should check this site out, among others:

http://www.guerrilla.net/

Did you even bother with Google?

Amateur (ham) packet radio networks have been doing exactly this since the early 1980s. They are designed to be independant of the Internet.

Check out TAPR for more information on that.

Also, check out the Guerrilla Net project by former L0pht members, which uses more modern hardware.

This might show my not so geeky origins (unlike some, I was not conceived at a star trek convention. . . actually, I don't think any one has) but have you ever tried flooring it on an open field of any sort? I was born in Manitoba (yes, we use TCP/OCP) and prairies is something we have plenty of. Unless it used to be an old airport (which makes a great drag strip) or you have a second mortgage to pay for your suspension, it would be a tough mimic of a race way, even baha. And besides, if you have found a place big enough to let you play the simulation, why not turn off the computer and use the realistically rendered graphics of the windshield. Hell, call up a couple friends and get some almost decent AI for the competitors.

(cough) Here's the correctly spelled link. This was from way before 802.11 got popular. It used ham radio frequencies to propagate information with homebuilt hardware. I thought I remembered military surplus hardware as being part of this.

I forgot to metion this in my previous post, but there is currently a group working on this idea.

The Guerrilla.net project is aiming "to provide a networking fabric outside of Governments, commercial Internet service providers, telecommunications companies, and dubius Internet regulatory bodies."

It's already happening.

Here are a couple of links.

http://www.guerrilla.net

http://www.bostonwireless.org

Christ, your moving to Boston for Gods Sake! It ain't like in CA where they're just figuring out that they can do this shit. :) I think Gnet there was one of the first "free wireless network" groups. Been around since before this 802.11 stuff, I think.

-Greg

Linked to from attrition.org (at least that's where I found it), see http://www.guerrilla.net/.

...method!!!

http://www.guerrilla.net/reference/biological/rfc3 043.html

Try logging that! Then again, the company could shoot the birds down or fire you for having birds in the office. Or to make matters worse, the bird getting hurt along the way (like flying into a window while trying to send the packet).

If you're in an area with relatively
good line
of sight to some central
landmark, you could possibly set up
some seriously fun packet radio or
point-to-point 802.11 network feeds.

There are some past articles like
this one that mention point to point
solutions, and places like
this and
this
that have antenna designs for 802.11
that go a pretty good distance...

Others have done similar things with the AUI interface. Here's an RF link using the same technology.

If you want more range from the optical link, I'd suggest putting an optical interference filter (from Edmund Scientific) in front of the receiver. Pick one that matches the color of the transmitted beam, and you'll reject most other light.

I think its great for huge companies to bid themselves into bankruptcy over these new allocations. TV is a vast wasteland, and its 60 year old technology doesn't make efficient use of the bandwidth it has been allocated. But this latest revelation on the size of 3G wireless systems for bandwidth frightens me. I see ham radio being among the first victims, as it doesn't generate any revenue for the government and its lobby (the ARRL) is orders of magnitude less funded than the commercial wireless industry. Time and time again, hams have been pushed off of bands that have 'commercial value', even though hams made a lot of the technical breakthroughs that allowed those bands to be practically used. Ham Radio itself is somewhat to blame. THe numbers of licensed hams has (supposedly) been declining over the past several years. The hobby has a reputation as a haven for a bunch of crotchety old men who talk about nothing but ham radio, and collect postcards from people in small countries that they have done nothing more than exchange callsigns and reception reports from. Ham radio needs to have new blood. Many of the current ham population have pointed out that the thing that attracted them to radio was the ability to contact strange and distant lands, and that these days that role is fulfiled by the Internet. But I am one of those who believe that the community of hams and the community of Internet hobbyists (hobbyists=people who don't use the Internet solely to make or spend money) have great possibilities to merge the two worlds, to a greater extent than has been done.

Enough rambling. You should already know about GuerrillaNet.

Take the amateur radio exam and get licensed (its really not hard, and you don't have to know morse code any more)...then you can add to the ranks of licensed Amatuer Radio operators and make the FCC think twice about selling off the spectrum so we can all have sprint wristwatch TVs (that will still work like shit)