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"[BIG YELLOW CAUTION ICON] CAUTION: FCC rules strictly prohibit users from installing 5-GHz (802.11a,802.11a/b, 802.11a/b/g) Wireless LAN Mini PCI cards. Under no circumstances should the user install such a device. Only trained Dell service personnel are authorized to install a 5-GHz Wireless LAN Mini PCI card."

I wouldn't put it past Dell to say that when it's not strictly true, but there appear to be some fairly stiff regulations in the 5 Ghz area. There's a fairly detailed writeup on just how complex the rules in the 5-GHz bands (there are several 5-GHz bands and two distinct sets of regulations, apparently) get. Caveat: apparently there were changes to the rules in October 2004 that loosened several restrictions considerably, but I don't know if an installer requirement still exists (or ever did).

Get yourself to Colorado Springs, CO and ask a local how to get to Manatou Springs. Your looking for the Barr Trailhead. Leave 9 hours for the ascent. There is no technical climbing here, but you will start at ~6000ft above sea level and end at 14,110ft - a mile and a half up and ~14 miles of walking.

There is a gift shop up there but you lowlanders won't be interested in the trinkets. You'll want to head straight to the back and into the EMS station for some oxygen. Then go have some food.

Bring cash. You won't have the daylight to hike back down to the car so you'll want to take the cog railway down. Unless you are into taking your time.

Just a couple of miles up the trailhead is a campground. Leave the RV, this is by foot only. You can stock up on water here.

Half way up, at the tree line, is an A-frame that will provide good shelter. There is a clean stream there that feeds the black flies and provides home to Giardia, so bring bug spray if you stay the night and filter or treat any water you take from the stream. There should be some firewood stacked nearby for the fireplace in the A-frame. It may be 90 F in the city but it will be cold at 10,000ft. (Pilots use oxygen at 10,000ft.)

From the A-frame you have completed the easy half of the hike. From here everything is uphill and rocky. The mountian looks like velvet from the city but the rocks are half the size of minivans. Watch for Yellow-Bellied Marmots. They are like giant ground squirrels. Cute and funny, the present no danger.

Eat some small snacks along the way, but don't give in to any hunger. Hypoxia is nothing to mess with and it's all the harder on a full stomach.

The last 200ft before summit is stepped - called the Golden Stairway. Stop halfway up these, turn around and sit down. This is the summit you are hoping for. The true summit with it's cog-railway and vehicle access is touristy and detracts from the elation and beauty of the days work. The people up there will ask if you hiked. You'll say yes and they will look at you funny. Just look back and smile. To them this is a check mark on a vacation list. To you it's a lifetime achievement to summit a Fourteener.

There are other trails that spur off of Barr Trail. If you wanted to make a week of the area this is a good way to do it.

Also in town (north end) is the Air Force Acadamy. Worth the tour. Peterson Air Force Base (east, near the airport) is also worth the tour if you can get it.

If you are planning a year ahead you can arrange to have a tour of Norad under Cheyenne Mountain, the next peak south of Pike's Peak. You'll see it coming in to town, it's the one with all the antennas on top.

If you want any info on the trail, what to look out for and where to find resources, contact the AdAmAn Club

The e-rate program is a rip-off. The monies that are provided to schools for Internet access end up right back in the pockets of the ILECs, in the form of "discounted" network service rates. Dave Hughes raised the cry against this years ago when it was first proposed, claiming it was just a pork barrel for the telcos, but it wasn't on anyone else's radar back then.

If the schools instead had gone to wireless networking (entirely possible at the time, as Mr. Hughes proposed), the schools could have cut out the ILECs entirely and provided their own network infrastructure at lower cost. And it wouldn't have required a tax hike... excuse me, service fee to do it, either.

Schwab

Hello,

A couple of months ago I was visiting a client in Old Colorado City (a suburb of Colorado Springs) and he mentioned his next-door neighbor, a wireless ISP named Old Colorado City Communications ISP, was providing technical assistance in this project. Old Colorado City Communications is owned by Dave Hughes, who was a columnist for BoardWatch magazine back in the early 90's.

Dave gave my client a nice color brochure talking about the wireless initiative, printed in both English and Welsh.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

http://wireless.oldcolo.com and http://www.tapr.org/

Don't give up.. the solution to your problem is out there.. If they could wire Mongolia to the net using SS, they can certainly do the same for you..

maybe you could get an NSF grant to do this...

For some interesting historical background on spread-spectrum, check out http://www.ncafe.com/chris/pat2/index.html

I'll forward your post on to some other people who might have some answers..

Chris

For over 10 years, Dave Hughes has been traveling the world, wiring Indian reservations and Russian towns and all sorts of places. He calls his community networking service Old Colorado. And he's been pushing the FCC for years to open up some spectrum. Understands the value of multimedia too.

This is one step toward a fully distributed wireless IP but not the last.

Spread-spectrum wireless ought to take care of the congestion problem. If the power is low enough then the FCC has no business regulating it or requiring licenses--all they should do is certify that the equipment does not have too much noise.

Then each node ought to communicate with its closest neighbors, instead of to a central cell. This way each computer dedicates a bit of its bandwidth and disk to the network, similar to the way Freenet ought to operate, and analogous to the way homeowners are required in many areas to dedicate part of their land for a public sidewalk.

Internet traffic can then hop from node to node, routing around congestion and taking advantage of least-cost routes. Any landlines or satellites used ought to belong to the public and be free to use by all.

I don't know if this is communism or anarchy or libertarianism or just free market capitalism in the extreme, but it sounds to me like the future, and a very interesting one!

For more info on such a project, please see: http://wireless.oldcolo.com/biology/dave-bio.htm, and consult Dave Hughes, one of the real pioneers of computer-based communication.

I'm not opposed to the Macintosh experiments. But we ought to spend some time thinking about how we can take advantage of some of the new technologies such as what Hughes is using, in order to expand our Freedom and use the Internet in a way that maximizes democracy and personal power, at a time when media giants are trying to take it over and make it safe for e-commerce.

[Now you can] have a bewolf cluster linked by radio.

Unfortunately, since amateur packet radio is among the most inefficient digital communication modes known to man, such a cluster would be frustratingly slow. All the really cool stuff, at least with wireless networking, is taking place in the license-free bands because license-free is cheaper and you don't have to answer questions about Ohm's law to get access to them.

For more information about wireless networking, you can start at The wireless field test at Old Colorado City communications/ or you can go to the Wireless LAN/MAN Modem Product Directory.

Wireless networks are the way of the future, it's just that Ham Radio isn't the way to get there.

Jonathan Guthrie, KA8KPN, Amateur Extra class (now grandfathered) since 1980.