Wireless Freenets As The Parasitic Grid

Lester67 writes: "Infoworld has a pretty cool article on the "the Parasitic Grid," which is basically people (mainly in large cities) opening up their high-speed access through 802.11b to anyone that wants to use it, and how it may threaten telecom profits. One guy has a pretty interesting use for a Pringles(tm) can too (but only after you've removed your hand)." This article ties together several of the recent stories on free-for-all community networking, and fits in nicely with the recent post on bridging networks with 802.11b.

Comments

Errors in the article

[Gaewyn L Knight]

Several people on the Bay Area Wireless User Group mailing list have pointed out a large amount of factual errors in this article.
Such things as that the pringles cans are ANTENNAS not REPEATERS and that you can not get ANY wireless fully 802.11b access points for under about 160$ new (even on ebay).

For some more on this check out the mailinglist archive at
http://lists.bawug.org/pipermail/wireless/2001-A ug ust/thread.html under the subjects "Did you know you were a parasitic grid?","Infoworld writer responds
" and "Unprofessional conduct on the part of Ephraim Schwartz". Definately shows how little this writer actually knows...

Presenting the All You Can Eat Supermarket!

[Hobbex]

Having seen the wonderful success that the "all you can eat" model has had in buffé resturaunts, I started the All You Can Eat Supermarket (tm). The model is simple, people come in to the store every day, and for a low price, they can take as much food as they wish to eat that day.

Of course, on entering, you have to sign the "Terms of Shopping" agreements, that by which you promise not to:
- Take food and then decide not to eat it.
- Share food with others.
- Save your food for another day.
- Eat more than three meals a day.
- Puke after ingesting the food.

If somebody signs these agreements, then they should stick to them, shouldn't they? If they aren't, then they are STEALING from me. If they don't like the terms, they don't have to shop at the All You Can Eat Supermarket (R) at all.

Well, it turns out that there is actually a large population (an you believe it!) of lowlife scum, who come to the All You Can Eat Supermarkey (TM), and then go home and feed their entire families with the food, or refrigerate leftovers and eat them for lunch the next day! If that is allowed to continue, then I will loose business, and people will loose their jobs!

Therefore, I am on my way to Washington to lobby for the passing of strict laws that allow monitoring of all food consumption of all people, so that this wholesale stealing of food cannot be done. So maybe that might hurt peoples privacy, integrity, and freedom - but how will business survive without it?

Washington Square Park/NYCWIRELESS.NET

[toupsie]

Just last night I took my TiPB (Apple Titanium Powerbook) to Washington Square Park (NYU Campus) and hooked into the NYCWireless free 802.11b network (link) at the northeast end of the park using my AirPort card. This was the first time I tried out one of these "Parasitic Grids". I was quite impressed. Sitting out on the grass (ignoring the guys selling grass), I was surfing Slashdot, downloading updates to Fink and chattin' with my friends on IRC. I was quite impressed with the speed of my connection (about 36kps) and my ability to roam from spot to spot in the grass in order to hear the guy playing violin better. Being able to take my computer into the great outdoors, tuning into a free wireless network and getting work/fun done to me has to be one of the best advancements in computers yet. Now the computer does not dictate the environment it works in, I do.

On a side note, any coffee shop that wants to kick Starbuck's ass ought to buy a cheap DSL line/Cable modem and hang a 802.11b base station and give away free bandwidth for the cost of a $4.95 mocha carmel frappa latte skim half-caf double-decaf cappachino.