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Or, actually, in New Zealand:
5GB per month: Base fee of $40 NZD + $2 per addtional GB
10GB: $49 NZD + $2 per addtional GB
305GB: $285 per month + $2 per addtional GB

We *DREAM* of the sort of caps that you're being 'threatened' with. Howevever, serious commerical users pay per megabit for unlimited use; so cloud-for-enterprise is not so likely to be affected.

Can but ain't. They're all queuing up to opt-in;

Some ISPs, including one of the market leaders Orcon, have clearly stated they will opt out and instead offer voluntary filtering software to their subscribers.

Hopefully we IPREDator before we get the filters

Sorry, but IPREDator in recent discussion, has been flagged as not quite the knight in shining armour. Best we fall back on the likes of Tor or I2P.

I should have figured that you'd be in New Zealand or somewhere equally lacking in decent internet access (South Africa, North Korea, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia...)

You neglect to mention which ISP you are with, but perhaps you might be best to upgrade your plan a step or two:

Telecom (Xtra) has "Go" at NZ$39.95/mo with a 3GB cap, or "Explorer" at NZ$49.95/mo with a 10GB cap.
https://www.telecom.co.nz/broadband/select/1,10627,205728-204466,00.html

TelstraClear has their PDQ Launch 256kbps/Turbo 2+mbit options at NZ$24/mo or NZ$36/mo plus the NZ$2.95/1GB or $11.95/10GB/mo for usage (based on the 1GB cap, can I assume you have PDQ launch+1GB?) http://www.telstraclear.co.nz/residential/homeplan/internet/pdq-broadband/speed-and-usage-plans.cfm

I'm sure ihug, orcon and slingshot all have their plans too - perhaps it is time for a change. ...myself, I could never move back to NZ from my 100mbit/unlimited (or 110mbit with some isps)broadbandy goodness. My bills would sting too much.

3D graphics in Excel: http://vangelder.orcon.net.nz/excel/convex3d.html
Fractal Generated Landscpare Excel: http://vangelder.orcon.net.nz/excel/terrain.html

3D graphics in Excel: http://vangelder.orcon.net.nz/excel/convex3d.html
Fractal Generated Landscpare Excel: http://vangelder.orcon.net.nz/excel/terrain.html

Actually I wanted to suggest a similar thing. There are other people who have done similar things with cheap hardware. It's a very good idea. Though this will not give as much amplification as a 12ft dish, it may be useful: http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

Wok WLAN :-)

http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

Wireless Networking in
the Developing World
A practical guide to planning and building low-cost
telecommunications infrastructure

http://www.wndw.net/

Greetings
Jim Oksvold

http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

Yes, woks can be good enough approximations of parabolic cross section.
And in fact, because of the wave-leght of TV, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.. (signals in the GHz range have centimetric wave-lengths) their corresponding colanders too can be used as cheap antennas, and have the aditionnal benefit of having holes (they are basically metallic mesh) and therefore having less friction against winds (and lower risk of being blown away during a storm). /. have featured a few time ago an article about using wok colanders as dishes for Wifi USB dongles, and a several techniques to check is the parabolic approximation is good enough.
- one technique, which can be done in the shop before buying the colander, is to use a small chain whose shape when suspended at both end and check if shapes match (checking if the shape is "catenary")
- another is to cover the colander in aluminium foil and checking if a parallel light source (the sun) converge to one single point (where the USB dongle should go once everything assembled)

See /. article " 4km WiFi Range w/ $5 DIY Antenna ". TFA is mostly the same idea but applied to a different signal in the same GHz range (microwaves).

It was Slashdotted in the past...

The links to part of the sites covering it are:
http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/
http://www.stanford.edu/~jstockdl/tmp/usbwifi.orco n.net.nz/

I think it's here :
http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

Built-in and unobtrusive certainly are nice, but the laptops I hoped to use these on are old, predate minipci. One has a busted PCMCIA slot (the other's may yet work, but it's flakey). And there's a specific usage scenario I got them for, which I'll admit is pretty esoteric: I used to drive around a lot, editing Slashdot from the front seat of my car at (among other places) many locations of the Flying J truckstop chain, and wanted a USB wireless dongle that I could either mount on top of my car's roof or mount in a dish (or both). (See http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/) USB having no appreciable signal loss would make my parking location less important than my antenna placement.

(Frustratingly enough, the reason that PCMCIA slot is busted, though my own fault, was because I thought I'd be clever and get a 200mw PCMCIA card (Engenious I think is the brand name) and external antenna -- which got tangled underneath and then torqued the slot when I stupidly moved the thing without paying attention to the antenna.)

timothy

t stings to get banned... but realy any MMO is a waste of time, WoW being one of the worst in my opinion.

He should channel all his energy into some more worthwhile waste of time like us sensible Nerds, something like..... ummm.... building a PC case made completely out of fans, or an iPod with a 300gb disk or if he is really masocistic he could try installing Oracle Application Suite on a minimalist Slackware system. One of the aspects of Nerdity is spending so much time indoors doing nerdy things that you begin to suffer from lack of exposure to sunlight and and Warcraft in all its incarnations made the list of nerdy things a long time ago. That being said, techically, you are right WoW is a waste of time.

physical resemblance

Come on, now, what could make you think that?

Instead of a USB antenna, how about a USB wireless thingie and a booster antenna?

http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

I think the "USB antennas" you're talking about are really USB wireless adapters mounted at the focal point of a parabolic reflector.

"I'm feeling lucky" for "USB parabolic antenna" gave me this.

This is another great site on DIY antennas for USB WiFi adapters. I have made this one for my D-Link G122 USB wireless adapter and not surprisingly, it worked really well! :-)

This is another great site on DIY antennas for USB WiFi adapters. I have made this one for my D-Link G122 USB wireless adapter and not surprisingly, it worked really well! :-)

thought you guys might like this.. http://verti.orcon.net.nz/live_cloudmap_2048.kmz

Looks like the old man is enjoying Astrid a little TOO much...as seen here:

http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/umbpara.jpg

... you just need a better case!

This is a well cooled case.

...just add lots of fans

like this: http://www.peteredge.orcon.net.nz/casepics.htm ;)

Nentendo? Is that anything like Nintondo?

I had an Apple IIe clone, with a CP/M card which I used for running wordstar. I tended to prefer running apple's ProDOS, with the built in basic interpreter, though.

I feel really old right now...

Consider these. It's a cheap DIY method to make a ~15 dB gain dish, with Line of Sight for between 3 and 5 kilometers (1.8 to 3 miles). They aren't particularaly prone to wind and such, but may not last too well out in the weather.

A friend pointed the site out to me about a week before it hit slashdot, so by the time the original story broke here, I had built one.

Long story short. They work really well. I've pwned every wireless access point within a 3Km radius of my house. Free Internet anyone? :-)

Try USBWifi

I wont put the link to my site on here because it's on donated bandwidth and the coral cache for it doesnt seem to be working from here.

But anyway: cheap USB wifi adapter (802.11G ones are coming down in price) + USB extension cable + any sort of parabolic metal dish. The guy from the link above is a great fan of Chinese cookware, as these require very little modification.

I made a couple out of mesh food covers and frames of 20x1.4mm aluminium strip. Cheap and easy to build. They're not in continuous use at the moment because I've yet to weatherproof the adapter.

Good luck :)

You're thinking of Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior in the US), which was Enix's RPG series that Final Fantasy was based off of (gameplay style, not storylines or anything).

I'm having trouble finding a more reliable source right now, but http://www.gameboyee.orcon.net.nz/games/games_gbc_ dw3.html has it over on the right side of the screen.

3) when at home put your mobile phone in a wok or umbrella and use a headset.

Images from here

3) when at home put your mobile phone in a wok or umbrella and use a headset.

Images from here

3) when at home put your mobile phone in a wok or umbrella and use a headset.

Images from here

I like to make containers to hold my chips out of my old wireless antennas. I also like to cook my noodles with some of the other old computer parts.

Many folks seem to launch into the misinterpretation that 'unencrypted' == 'insecure'. It does not. Just because your box can talk at layer 2 or layer 3 on my wireless network doesn't mean it's going to be of any earthly use to you.

Case in point: wander around pretty much anywhere in the Haymarket, Ultimo and Broadway areas at the south end of the City of Sydney, Australia - you'll find literally dozens of open, unencrypted wilress access points, all with SSID "UTS WLAN". Natural next step for a geek is "Whoah! open wlan! I'm there!", fire up laptop, connect...

It's shortly after that that you realise that you've just helped yourself to an open, unencrypted, and completely useless wireless network belonging to the University of Technology, Sydney. You know this because no matter *where* you point your web browser, you always get the same page: "Welcome to UTS WLAN, enter your username/password to continue". If you manage to guess a username/password, then you'll get the same page, with red writing, saying something to the effect of "oops, no IPSEC tunnel, no cigar".

That network is opened, unsecured in that you can get your machine to talk on it without authentication, but you can't talk off of it without additional rights.

Now granted, there's holes in my story. One day, some clever kid is going to figure out that he can use the wlan as his own private routed trunk from one side of the city to the other, and then the owners of the network will have to block that. Second, how hard can it be to get a username/password pair out of a drunk undergraduate? Third, this lot isn't *really* in the spirit of the story - I've built the chinese cookware, I've found, literally, hundreds of wireless nets that really are open for all to see, most of them quite likely unintentionally so.

So yes, there are a lot of unencrypted wireless networks out there, but they're not all unsecured.

Behold, the Cidco iPhone... circa 1998 technology... a phone with a web browser and email client included.

Radio doesn't die, radio just is. Experimenters (hackers) for radio will always exist.

http://www.usbwifi.orcon.net.nz/

Case in point, above.

Ham radio's not dying, it's just constantly evolving. It all just depends on your definition of radio and whether or not you continue to experiment with it. Most newer Hams aren't experimenting, and if the "I buy my radios off the shelf and talk on them" aspect of the hobby dies off, I won't shed a tear. I'll still be experimenting with radio, with or without a license.

73 de WY0X

The best explanation for this that I've seen in comics was from Kurt Busiek's Astro City , where the Superman-analog, Samaritan, actually catches things like skyscrapers, passenger aircraft, et c. in something called the "empyrean web," a force-field-like construct that provides support for these structures while they are being carried/thrown et c.

Coupled with the above-noted concept of Superman's clothing being contained in some sort of personal force-field, it makes sense for him, as well.

Note that both Superman and Kurt Busiek's Astro City are published by DC Comics, the latter through their Wildstorm/Homage label.

Adabas is just a database backend and not very important, though I admit it would be nice to bundle one of the existing open source backends just to remove the need to fetch and install one.

Backends that are currently supported by both StarOffice and OpenOffice include MySQL, Postgress, and any data source exposed by ODBC 3.0, JDBC, ADO, dBase, or if you want to go low tech flat CSV files.

When most people say they want an Access-like tool, they mean a frontend, something that OpenOffice and StarOffice already have.

To help you out, the main database section of OpenOffice.org has atips and tricks section.

Then, there are the forums that have some very interesting threads on the subject...

...such as this handy little link

I disagree. Lieberman reminds me more of this other crusading fellow, both in method and end goal.

some noobie comes in *demanding* we help him fix the production mail server he just trashed by installing RH8 or the newest kernel (dev or otherwise).

My god. Someone came to IRC for support. It's not like he's been told "Linux is perfect for buisnesses. It is The Way and The Light.". So he switches, and runs into a problem. So he turns to The Community, because afterall he's been told it's friendly, informative, and always willing to help.

And what does he find? People that say: "How dare you want help from me?" , "RTFM!" , "You shouldn't have done that you idiot."

Now tell me again why linux support is so much better than anything an unnamed megacorp gives.

Basically you start the install from a DOS partition (I used FreeDOS sucsessfully) using loadlin, a Slackware kernel, & the initrd.img from the isolinux dir - you can turn the DOS partition into a Linux swap (or whatever) partition after you've booted the install.

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