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Wireless Networks to Native Reservations
akb writes: "Interesting article entitled Native Networking Trends: Wireless Broadband Networks describing a project which provided three Indian reservations near San Diego with wireless broadband connectivity. The collaboration between UC San Diego and the Southern California Tribal Chairman Association has attracted additional funding from HP's Digital Village Program doubling the original NSF allocation, which will allow the network to expand to connect 18 reservations to the Internet and educational facilities. The network sports a 45mbps wireless backbone with 802.11b uplinks." The HPWREN pages have a lot of interesting information, including specifications for their 45 megabit solar-powered relays.
USA out of America! :-)
Money for nothing, pix for free
These sorts of projects are a kick in the teeth to the wireless companies who will soon be trying to sell 3G tech. Or is it that these will become redundant with the advent of 3G.
Personally I can't wait till the day when my laptop has a wireless 3G card that can connect at high speed whenever and where ever I want.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It's so hard to tell what's a 1 or a 0 with smoke signals, thank god for 802.11b!!!
Got Root!
Build infrastructure and let 'em go at it, doing whatever they want? The reason I ask is, although this is all planned to be a "good thing", I worry that it could lead to a "not-so-good-thing", i.e. Virtual Indian Casinos (in competition with brick-and stucco casinos, Vegas, etc.)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
buh
What is most heartening about this news is that these reservations are at the point that feeding and educating the children are not determinants of survival anymore. Contrast this initiative with the rampant poverty usually associated with reservations and it is clear that Native Americans are making large strides in improving their lots.
How cool will it be when this kind of news isn't news anymore?
You'll see banner ads for the new Online Indian Casinos..But really that's quite a task considering some reservations are the size of RI. My question is do the network cards in the computers or devices need to be attached to an external antenna as well? I gained another 1000ft when I attached a standard CB antenna to my access point. I could get Internet access from my apartment across the highway from work. What are some other (cheap) way's to improve distance? Maybe I could get a Seti tower..hmmm
"Get them before they get....
See, now this is cool. Obviously the uses for this developing mode of technology go way beyond the Native American sphere. My favorite thing about it is that it doesn't rely on wires for power OR transmission. A handful of solar-powered relays looks a lot nicer, is a lot cheaper, is much less intrusive, and is much more easily scalable and robust than a bunch of wires strewn everywhere(and thankfully people are finally starting to appreciate that with solar and other distributed power generation).
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
If you look at these pages, we are talking about $3000-$5500 worth of relay equipment sitting out in the middle of nowhere. What happens if someone comes along and decide they'd want some of that for themselves?
Of course no one would ever want to steal from the Indians... Oh, wait, nevermind.
the embarresment of selling new york state for 3 trinkets and small pox blanket.
Until you get a three day rainstorm. It is getting better, but it's not there yet.
Best Slashdot Co
Gambling at your favorite online Indian Gaming casino!
Actually, I'm serious...here in California tribes have already gotten permission to run casinos on their land (although I believe the matter is still going through the courts) so then could the same tribes run their own online gaming?
Do Indian tribes have to abide by the Hague Convention or the Berne treaty or whatever that copyright protection treaty is?
Think about it...Indians are desperately seeking self-reliance, which is pretty much impossible given the crappy ass desert land they were given. So what if they built a few wind turbines and ran a data haven? Do you think Disney et. al. could really bully them?
I would be really intersted in finding out about this. We have been looking for safe havens and if we put Indian reservations on the Internet that sounds like it might fit the bill?
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
We have been planning this for a while and recently rolled it out this year. We have 3 towers for a mid-size city (Springfield Missouri, USA). You can use it anywhere in the city - even in your car. There is a small antenna that hooks up to a special network card.
Our transmission rates are way above T1 and because there is no cost of leasing lines or anything we can provide it cheap (comparatively).
We also put up 1 tower in a nearby town. This one tower covers the whole town. We got funding from the county because the county court system sits in that town and needed to be on broadband but couldn't get to it in the traditional ways.
We just rent space from radio stations on their towers - so the setup is minimal. It really is a great system
Fried
Now you won't need to wire a head for a reservation!
(Sorry, it's a reference to a very bad old joke. I just couldn't resist the opportunity.)
It is amazing that the indians are getting broadband the same time that my city is.
Gaming Shizzle
I'm not wanting to be a PC thug, but here's the entry in the AP Style Book:
Indians American Indian is the preferred term for those in the United States. Where possible, be precise and use the name of the tribe: He is a Navajo commissioner. Native American is acceptable in quotations and names of organizations.
In news stories about American Indians, such words as wampum, warpath, powwow, tepee, brave, squaw, etc., can be disparaging and offensive. Be careful and certain of their usage.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
...Dances with Wireless
Imagine, online casinos create a positive cash flow for Tribal governments, the capital allows for real social change - illiteracy and alcoholism and domestic abuse decline - and every Res in America connected via wireless VPNs to every other Res in America. Best of luck, its a long road.
That sounds nice, but come on - right now we are displaying the power to impose our will on truely soverign nations, what defense does a tribal nation have against that force, no matter how well written their treaty is. The likelyhood that safe havens could be established on tribal lands is pretty slim - particularly if there isn't the ability to distinguish between the principled customer who is in violation of the law but practicing civil disobedience, and the criminal who acts with malice to endanger the populous and the government..
geez, if you really need wireless that bad, what the hell are you doing living on a reservation? just move to the god-damned city.
and to people who think running a casino on an 802.11 network is a good idea, think about the new meaning this will give to 'war peddlaz' (scalping, arrows sticking out of your chest, you get the idea)
...cause they don't work in the future either!
(the aberration known as 'Voyager' doesn't count. That's how we knew it couldn't really be a part of the real Star Trek universe...the idea! Portraying an indian as having a job...)
In Canada they use the insipid term "first nations" when describing indians. First what...? Bullshit! Prove to me that they were on this planet before anyone else! Besides, I was born in North America. By definition, that makes me a native.
You're using her as bait, Master!
the embarresment of selling new york state for 3 trinkets and small pox blanket.
It was goods worth about $20, and had they been able to invest it in some sort of compound interest generating fund at the time, today they'd be able to buy all of Manhattan, including the buildings. A fair trade, I'd say. Besides, if they'd turned Manhattan into a maximum security prison in 1997 like they were supposed to, it wouldn't be worth very much,would it?
You're using her as bait, Master!
I wonder if all the reservations are connectec as an 'Indian' network, does this mean that they are segmented from the rest of Earth society? Will they start killing each other like in Africa... killing life long friends with a already bloodied and skull pitted machete simply because he and his tiny infants are of 'another tribe'.
I don't know about that, but this definitely can let some responsible PEOPLE start the road to freedom.
Many moons ago, paleface bringum think boxes and firewater. Few moons ago, paleface bringum invisible strings for think boxes. Me outum job, no needum smoke signal when think boxes running at 45 megumbits second. Me openum casino now.
Here are a couple of sample sentences from today's front page:
I look forward to your AP Style Book critique of the above!
The great thing about rural networking is that RF spectrum is easily available. You can run megabits for miles without much interference. It definitely beats putting up hundreds of telephone poles per subscriber, which you see in some rural areas.
It was early one morning, my mammy had just woken me, and the sun was shining into the back of the wagon, when we heard the whooping. I'll never forget that sound as long as I live. They came down on us like God's own vengeance, slashing with their machetes and raining burning arrows on our wagons. The camp was in chaos, half-dressed folk running every which way, guns firing, wagons burning. My mammy grabbed me and in all the chaos, ran free of the camp, and hid in a gully. When she came out, everyone was dead. We holed up in a nearby cave - more like a crack in the rocks - and when the sheriff's posse rode in from the next town, we was rescued.
'Course, that was a long time ago. Nowadays, I mostly sit around, trolling on /. and writing perl code. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. When I get bored, I go down to the injun casino near here - I figure one of these days, I'll win big on the slots, and that'll show those redskinned sons of jackals!!
So don't you be tellin me there ain't no injuns. I seen em, alright, I seen em...