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Would that object influencing the observed object not need to be inside your light cone for you to even observe the influencing that it is doing?

No, it wouldn't. All that is necessary is that the influenced object be inside the light cone of the influencing object. In a way, it's similar to the wifi hidden node problem.

BTW, the funniest Adsense I saw was on the Hulk'in Lunar Eclipse page where ads were offering Lunar Real Estate for Sale

The funniest one I saw was on the FAQ on the Ethereal Web site, wherein the references to "Fibre Channel" and "Fibre Distributed Data Interface" in the list of protocols it can dissect once provoked Google to put an ad up for a product that does contain fibre, but it's not in the product to help unclog your data network, if you know what I mean and I think you do....

(At this point, it appears that WildPackets has paid a trillion or so dollars to make sure they're the only thing advertised when you go to any page on the Ethereal Web site, so you no longer get ads for Colon Blow(TM).)

Yhat 100$ (never seen a 100$ one, but have seen quite a few 30$ cables) cable is important to some (in an audio system it can reduce transmission errors. There are different cable types, with fundementally different properties http://www.wildpackets.com/compendium/Fiber/L1-fib er.html are you using the right cable?). Anyhow, in a computer system, especially one with a high end video card and the latest CPU, a PSU with a tonne of rock solid stable rails is important, particulary if you enjoy overclocking. don't like it? don't buy it.

OK. Time for Wireless security 101.

Just because you aren't broadcasting your SSID doesn't make you less vulnerable by any means, at least to the windows newbie who relies on netstumbler.

I'll try to explain this in non-technical terms. Netstumbler simply tells your wireless card to send out broadcast SSID's, basically saying to everyone, "hello? if anybody can hear me - i'm looking for access points to talk to". If you have SSID broadcasting enabled on your access point, it will respond and say, "hello, i'm an access point with the SSID of linksys". If you have SSID broadcasting disabled, the access point will ignore the request.

There is a diagnostic mode that is part of the 802.11 specification that allows your wireless card to virtually become a scanner (like a police scanner). Thanks to proprietary drivers, you won't be able to get this to work on Windows, (although there is some pretty cool commercial software that includes drivers that will do this, but you will pay alot for it).
However, under Linux, there's a vast number of cards supported that allow you to put your wireless card into monitor mode.

OK, so what can you do with monitor mode?
If you aren't broadcasting your SSID, this means that in order for a wireless client to connect, they have to know your SSID.

In this scenario, your wireless card will say "hey, cloaked access point linksys, if you're there, i want to talk to you". Then, your SSID-cloaked access point will respond and setup a
connection.

If you are running in monitor mode on your wireless card, you can observe this conversation between the wireless client and access point taking place, thus exposing the cloaked SSID. Once you know the SSID, you can connect. Keep in mind that wireless connections can and will drop, and it can take as little as a few seconds of observation to decloak the SSID.

Kismet is excellent software that takes advantage of this (on operating systems such as Linux that have drivers that can tell the wireless card to go into monitor mode). This is one of the many things that makes Kismet far superior over Netstumbler. Also, monitor mode is also how WEP is possible to crack, by observing the physical layer traffic flowing over the network.

Guess what -- your friendly university network admin probably will use kismet or a similar tool in monitor mode to survey wireless networks.

If you want a really cool distributed sniffer I'd suggest checking out OmniPeek.

That said I use numerous open source programs including most of the ones already mentioned. They work in a snap if you are used to them. If you really want to delve into the guts of a packet and have it readily able to read (decoded) then you want a tool like EtherPeek. Excellent product. I rarely recommend commercial products when there are open source alternatives. Sniffing tools is one place I make an exception. It's got to work when you need it.

The South Pole research station has a bunch or radio telescopes. Like this

Of course, the prevalent wireless standard is 802.11, and 802.11 networking (also being based on radio frequencies) isn't allowed at the station because it messes up the telescopes.

I understand they have problems with people setting up rogue access points anyway. They track 'em down with this.

" ... as well as a device called EtherPeek, which manages network traffic. ...."

EtherPeek is a well-known LAN traffic monitor from WildPackets. Interesting to see it mentioned in this context: I can certainly see how writing a custom module or two for it might save The Protectors Of Our Freedom a bit of work. Or is this just a case of a confusingly-chosen name?

A company called WildPackets (formerly known as the ag group) makes a program called Etherpeek that has some of the analysis that you are looking for.

If need something it doesn't do, there is a nice plugin interface so you can write a tool to analysize data.

The main problem with Etherpeek is that it costs a grand. There is a free demo you can download though. I believe it is only time limited.

A company called WildPackets (formerly known as the ag group) makes a program called Etherpeek that has some of the analysis that you are looking for.

If need something it doesn't do, there is a nice plugin interface so you can write a tool to analysize data.

The main problem with Etherpeek is that it costs a grand. There is a free demo you can download though. I believe it is only time limited.

I was searching on the web, and found a program call AiroPeek that does wireless LAN sniffing, etc.
the beta is at ftp://apwbeta:frenzy@ftp.wildpackets.com/root/apwb eta
Bring on the script Kiddies!!

C:\
C:\Dos
C:\dos\run