Wireless Mania

burnsy and others sent in links to stories about 802.11b that are cropping up everywhere. The New York Times has one. (Well, two, actually.) Salon has one. InternetNews has a piece about Boingo, a new wireless start-up, that's also covered in this Forbes article. (The NYT article above also mentions Sputnik.) Both Boingo and Sputnik are trying to leverage the existing community wireless networks to speed their network build-outs. MIT's Tech Review has an interesting piece about a wireless start-up that has already tried and failed. Fixed wireless is also booming, according to an industry study.

Comments

bah

[Morphine007]

humbug... what a waste of time... I'd personally rather see more initiative in securing wireless networks, instead of proceeding in a definitely windowsesque fashion and just ship ship ship the damned thing... who cares if it's ready??

Re:bah

[Aaron_Pike]

I'd personally rather see more initiative in securing wireless networks, instead of proceeding in a definitely windowsesque fashion and just ship ship ship the damned thing... who cares if it's ready??

Nah, it's a scam by apartment management companies: "Free internet access with every downtown apartment!"

Look at it this way. Differently clued execs sell more wireless networks and related equipment. Differently clued people buy them. Clued people support them and make money. This could be the next economic bubble.

Re:bah

[baka_boy]

I'm sorry, but I don't think that the network infrastructure level is the place for security to go. Ignoring 802.11 because WEP is ineffective would be like saying that Ethernet or TCP/IP are inherently broken because you can sniff any packet on the wire.

We have to get the connections up and running first, though. Once you have the wire-level link up, *then* you can worry about security. Set up a VPN link through your personal firewall, or do everything over SSH port tunelling.

Of course, a network with no users is inherently the most secure. It's also pretty damn boring.

Wireless.

[saintlupus]

Ah, what a time to have AirSnort. And I hear CompUSA is going to be putting Access Points on sale soon!

--saint

Re:Wireless.

[SDotter]

WEP is not the most secure way of encrypting the
data as it combines hardware and encryption.

Therefore, I am using IPSec for my WLAN and
the accesspoints are in plaintext-mode.

By using FreeSwan on the gateway and
ssh-sentinel on the laptops, the network access can
be controlled by issuing and revoking certificates.

Unfortunately, that's not the kind of
software which comes with AccessPoints.

Wireless is great!

[Xafloc]

Wireless is just fantastic. I love sitting down on the couch, powering up my Dell (no cables attached), and watching as I recieve my DHCP assigned address. Unfortunately, I only get 26% on the quality of my connection. After all, I am connecting to my neighboors D-Link 150 feet away :)

Seriously, these people have not changed the admin password from "admin" in their Router, and they aren't even using WEP. Of course, I won't be the one to tell them they should :)

Re:Wireless is great!

[saridder]

Well hopefully RFC 3118 (Authentication in DHCP) will be implemented soon, meaning less unathorized addresses passed out. I doubt your neighbors would use it, but it is avail for vendors to implement in their access points.

Re:Wireless is great!

[boopus]

From my memory, there are only three distinct non overlapping chanels in the 802.11b spec. So if your neighbors all chose the the equidistant chanels, you'll max out at three connections. But you'd probably do better looking for one good signal.

Re:Wireless is great!

[stripes]

Well hopefully RFC 3118 (Authentication in DHCP) will be implemented soon, meaning less unathorized addresses passed out.

Ugh, what a stunningly bad idea. Now rather then having people stumble across your network and use it without getting in your way they come over have to run tcpdump, guess your netblock and DNS server, and pick an "unused looking" address. If they guess wrong one of your machines could be inaccessable.

As I see it people using your DHCP server is doing you a huge favor, they don't get in your way, and they get logged with the IP address assigned, so you can later figure out what happened. Now all you will know is some mac address wanted a DHCP lease and was denied, lord only knows what IP address they picked out after that!

Re: Wireless is great!

[elemental23]

I know about WEP not being perfect, but it's better than nothing. In my case the short range is an advantage as well. The only people remotely close to my house are two neighbors and I know neither of them would attempt to connect to or sniff my network, mainly because of their complete lack of computer knowledge. Anyone wandering around with a laptop would be noticed pretty quickly.

MAC address filtering though... How can it be bypassed? (other than randomly guessing one of the addresses on the allow list, extremely unlikely as that is)

Make Boingo for PalmOS

[5u5h1]

Boingo sounds like a good idea, but what they really ought to do is make it available for PalmOS. There's already an 802.11b SD card available, and this could be the perfect application for it.

Meanwhile

[wiredog]

The Supreme Court is going to review the decision allowing NextWave Telecom Inc. to hold on to its spectrum licenses that were thought protected in the bankruptcy proceedings. This could delay the use of that bandwidth for as long as two years.

No killer app yet

[Jack Admiral]

There still isn't a killer app for wireless access yet - either for cellphones, PDAs, or PCs, so I can't see wireless networks becoming successful. I can't imagine why one would use 2400 bps to connect when I can connect at 160 kbps at home unless you're on the road and can't use anything else. Probably the best use for wireless access are cellphones and yet even these haven't taken off. Of course, wireless networks would succeed if they were free which gives a 2400 bps/0$ (infinite) price performance ratio compared to 160 kbps/50$.

Re:No killer app yet

[Conspiracy Theorist]

No killer app?

Do you have dozens network drops in every room of your house or aparment? Does every conference room in your office building have a network connection for everyone in a max capacity environment? Have you ever surfed the web or checked your email while sitting on the front lawn, enjoying a summer afternoon? Wireless LANs themselves are the killer app.

Re:No killer app yet

[Jack Admiral]

Do you have dozens network drops in every room of your house or aparment?

Why would I need dozens of network drops in every room of my house? My family has 6 PCs and laptops in different rooms spanning two houses (close together) and planning to add more PCs and yet we still use cables. We probably will stick with cables until wireless is cheaper and has better peformance and consistency. For longer distances, I'd rather dial-up to my PC at home even if I had to pay for an extra phone line. The only time I'd choose wireless is if I didn't have a phone to use in an isolated location in which case I wouldn't be really thinking of using my PC.

Does every conference room in your office building have a network connection for everyone in a max capacity environment?

From the articles posted, the wireless network seems to be more consumer-oriented rather than business-oriented. Most wireless services today target consumer applications - cellphones and PDAs. A wireless LAN is very useful but for widespread use of wireless technology, I still believe in a killer app. From where I come from, the killer app for the widespread use of cellphones was text messaging.

Have you ever surfed the web or checked your email while sitting on the front lawn, enjoying a summer afternoon?

If I were outside trying to enjoy a summer afternoon (which is pretty rare for me), I'd be reading a book. ;-)

Re:No killer app yet

[miracle69]

P2P is one of the killer apps.

The worst part about Broadband currently is upstream is usually capped. With wireless, all of a sudden, your p2p transfers have the capability of being really fast on download and upload.

Anyone remember this?

[Sapphon]

IIRC, there's a group in Australia who have been forming their own little wireless network with rooftop antennas. The trouble they have been facing is the amount of space between nodes, but they were well on the way to having a network between Melbourne and Adelaide (though several users in Albury/Wodonga were isolated in their own little network)

Re:Anyone remember this?

[Nessak]

This group in Australia helped develop their own homemade helical antennas for there networks. Pretty cool stuff, as the antennas are pretty easy to make and cheap. (Here is a link to the page with instructions: http://205.159.169.11/reference/antennas/2ghz_heli cal/index.html)

There antennas are basicly a peice of PCV piping raped with the correct amount of copper wire with a reflector. (Pie pan works well.) These things are mounted horizontaly in the direction of the other connection.

Now here is the funny part. They started finding that the network would sometimes go out without warning. They went outside and looked at the antenna only to find a bird (Magpie I think) sitting on the antenna! This is one of the few cases I know where pirched birds have been responable for network issues.

There used to be a great page with pictures of all this, but it appears the page has since been removed and all that remains is an ISP error page.

This might be very good.

[Krapangor]

All these electromagnetic waves everywhere might make our brains grow and more intelligent. So we might look in the end like the aliens from "mars attacks".

And we all know that electromagnetic waves make flowers grow. At least light is electromagnetoc waves and flowers don't grow without light as you might know. So, all electromagnetic waves might be very very good for them.

Fixed Wireless is booming huh?

[Aexia]

I guess *that's* why AT&T Wireless laid off its entire Fixed Wireless division.

There goes my brainstorm...

[rbeattie]

I had this great "million-dollar" wireless idea a few months ago that I quickly emailed to all my friends and got all excited about. The idea was to provide software and a service that would let anyone with a wireless access point set up a custom access server where they could easily charge for use of their bandwidth. Not just businesses, but anyone with a good network connection and a WiFi hub. Any wireless users that wanted to use the network could sign up to service where they could buy hours or credits. Then the local server keeps track of the time spent using its bandwidth and the proceeds are split between the server owner and the billing service. The idea is that instead of relying on "free" networks to sprout up, this would give incentive for people to open up their wireless connections by allowing them an easy way to charge for it (making them franchisees in a sense). Also it would give users a bunch more access points for reasonable charges.

However, according to this quote from the TechReview article, I've got the business model upside down:

One of the most surprising things we learned from launching our Internet startup was that providing wireless Internet service is really cheap. What ended up bankrupting the company were all the ancillary services we had to develop--credit card billing, technical support, the corporate Web site and the various security measures we had to put in place to prevent unauthorized use of the network by nonsubscribers. Organizations that aren't trying to make money providing wireless Internet service can do away with all of these measures and offer the service for free.

It seems that providing the infrastructure is the cheap part (the part that I was trying to solve) and doing all those "extras" is where the costs come in. Doh! Was really excited about it for a while though...

-Russ

Re:There goes my brainstorm...

[Rick the Red]

Let me get this straight: They were charging enough to cover the cost of providing the service but not enough to cover the cost of running the business, and were surprised when they went broke? And this is a surprise to you, too? Weren't you paying attention about a year ago (do you even get this reference)? You really should stay out of the market if you don't understand this fancy-schmancy economics stuff. "Buy low, sell high" is not a new idea.

Future applications

[Sapphon]

I'm wondering about the prospect using Wi-Fi to transmit streaming video or audio, perhaps to a car-mounted computer screen (like the head-rest TVs currently in top-end cars), would that be viable?
Of course, the staff at Starbucks might get a bit suspicious if you just keep circling the block around their store until you've finished downloading your favourite espisode of Futurama... but you could email them and ask them to bring coffee out to your car *grin*

Re:How long?

[CaffeineAddict2001]

There is no wait. People are already doing it, and uploading their findings to databases and giving GPS coordinates.

Bridging the Wireless gap

[cameronk]

I've tried using consume.net and sflan.com. I even used to enjoy Ricochet. I was unable to connect to either free ISP because their node maps were either innaccesible or just wrong. I have visited the consume.net page many times and the node database has not worked for at least a year. At SFLan.com they actually have pictures of base station locations, yet when I have sat in immediate proximity to a base station, no signal at all is available. The problem with the anarchistic, volunteer, free wireless lan projects is that they do not, and perhaps cannot, provide even the most basic quality of service. It should not be easier for me to "hack" (and I use that term very loosly) into an unsecured wireless base station than to connect into a legitimate station. As well, the free base stations tend to be in houses and offices. Although I spend quite a bit of time in my house and office, that someone twenty miles away has a working wireless setup really does not amount to a hill of beans. I think that most of us here on Slashdot would give several major bodily organs to have true pervasive free wireless internet, if only in places like SOMA or SoHo. For even this pipe dream to sober up, we need to vastly increase the signal strength of the wireless access points. Instead of concentrating on building wireless ghettos, we should try to lobby our congress, and for you non-Americans your legislative bodies, to increase the broadcasting strength of our wireless access points (wap). Perhaps it might even be prudent to have two legally allowable types of waps. A legally non-open hub facing the current power restrictions and a hub open to the public, by law, that would have ten times the signal power. That would cause this movement to gain resonance.

Re:Bridging the Wireless gap

[GigsVT]

You aren't very familiar with radio, are you? 802.11b works right now because not many people are transmitting at higher power. Once a certain group of people starts using higher power, it's just a game of constant, "I can scream louder than you", until people are running 500 watt amps to even have a usable setup. Just look at CB.

Re:Bridging the Wireless gap

[GigsVT]

The parent was proposing a new class that was licensed for 10 times more power.

Boingo

[beth_linker]

I took a look at Boingo's sites in Massachusetts. They're great if you spend a lot of time in Boston-area hotels, but otherwise forget about it. At this point, the target audience seems to be travelers, not cafe-frequenting locals.

I don't know that my favorite local coffeehouses are going to spring for wireless anytime soon. I might spend more time at them if they had wireless, but I don't know that I'd drink that much more coffee. It's not a matter of being cheap so much as a matter of how much caffeine I can have in an afternoon before my hands start shaking. And plenty of other people are cheap. So, even if they had access to free bandwidth, there's not much of a case for encouraging wireless users to fill up their tables (unless those tables are empty to begin with, which is rare these days with so many people out of work).

What Boingo should do

[Colin Smith]

Is stop including free WLAN sites in their database, especially after they've been asked to remove said entries.

WiFI looks great, but...

[lfourrier]

... all those community networks seems quite anti-american to me.

(at least anticorporateamerican ;)

Try joining the mailing lists, numpty.

[Colin Smith]

The consume *network* doesn't exist yet. It's a work in progress.

One problem...

[Xamdam_us]

One problem with 802.11b is that someone using a hand held 2.4 GHz phone can cut off the signal. If a person walks between an AP and a user it will cut right through the link.

Re:How long since!

[Russ Nelson]

Dude, people have already been doing this. Not only that, but with a 24dB dish, you only need line of sight.
-russ

What we need is...

[swordboy]

It would be really great if they would start releasing 802.11x telephone PBX equipment. Blanket an area in wireless internet and telephony. Now *that* is my idea of sticking it to the Comcasts and Ameritechs...

2400 bps?

[Colin Smith]

1-2Mbps at long range. 11Mbps at short range.

Re:What about range?

[lanalyst]

I've been experimenting with different APs and cards - range issues seem to be related to the quality of the card, not the AP. The Cisco 350 for example seems to get a great signal most anywhere inside or out while other cards can't seem to maintain a good signal in the next room - all from the same AP. YMMV.

Re:Just got wireless yesterday

[richieb]

So where did you get WiFi cards for $42? What make are they? Are you using them with Linux? Inquiring minds want to know....

Like anything else, Your Milage May Vary

[greensquare]

I see a couple of postings from people complaining about WiFi Stuff. One guy says the public Access Points don't work. And he wants to increase signal stregth. Somebody else is bitching because his range is only 40 feet.

This is just like anything else.

If you put your stereo and your TV right next to each other and try to play music and watch TV at the same time, it is going to suck. If you put your 802.11B 2.4 Ghz Access Point right next to your 2.4 Ghz Wireless phone, and your microwave oven that you use to do all of your cooking, then your throughput and your range are just going to suck.

If you put your stereo in your bathroom, and then close the door, you can't hear it for shit out in your living room. If you put your Access Point between the fishtank, and your metal filing cabinet, your range and throughput won't be too good. ( 2.4 Ghz can't go through metal or water very well.. )

If you leave your linux box on an open network, and leave the root account without a password, and then tell people to log into it, soon it will be trashed by someone, either on accident or on purpose. If you leave your admin account on your Access Point unprotected, and tell people to use that access point, pretty soon it wont work either.

In my opinion 802.11 B does work pretty well in terms of range and throughput. Using an off the shelf Cisco access point with only a standard rubberducky antenna, and PC Card with an integrated antenna in a laptop, I have maintained 1 and 2 Mb/s connections at a range of 1800', in direct line of sight, and through a glass window.

In a typical cube farm office environment ( 5' high partitions made of metal frames, and cloth/cardboard ) I have demonstrated a good reliable 5 - 11 Mb/s connections in a 150' radius.

In a home, 40' radius should be no problem, assuming typical drywall/stud construction.

Kevin

Is it, or is it not, easy?

[bourne]

"Conventional wisdom" says that hooking up to WiFi networks on the fly is as easy as falling off the turnip cart. But as the Salon article notes, for the average joe that isn't the case.

I'm not down at "average" - I eat TCP/IP for breakfast - but I haven't figured out wireless yet, either. I've got a ZoomAir card but none of the interesting software (NetStumbler mostly, but others too) seems to support it. I'm probably just missing some totally basic groundwork, and making it too complex because I'm used to delving details.

What's the general experience? Is this stuff easy and I'm just on the wrong page? Or are the only people who're surfing like mad the people who understand this shit inside out?

Can anyone recommend wireless primers for regular usage as well as um, more 'dynamic' usage?

Re:Is it, or is it not, easy?

[laserjet]

Most likely, you just haven't had enought time to play with 802.11b. Once you do, it is a cakewalk, and proably the best money I have spent on computer equipment since my first modem (2400baud).

head over to 802.11 Planet and look at their tutorials to get started.

there is nothing like surfing on your ibook from your couch, playing an mp3 in the background streaming from your linux box. i leave my inernet connection wide open 1) because I want people to use it. My internal network is protected behind a good firewall, but anyone in the area can have internet access. and 2) i think it's the right thing to do to help the community. think if everyone shared their connection. it would make the world a much better place.

Re:Is it, or is it not, easy?

[ryanvm]

i leave my inernet connection wide open because I want people to use it. My internal network is protected behind a good firewall

Your firewall may protect you from the World, but, out of curiousity, how do you protect your internal network from anonymous WLAN users? Do you have more than 1 internal network (e.g. one for CAT5 and one for WLAN)?

I'm asking because I share my Internet connection with my neighbor but I've: changed the WAP defaults, enabled WEP, disabled SSID broadcasting, only allow certain MAC addresses, etc. It certainly isn't "wide open".

I did this because I didn't have an simple way of protecting my internal network from "bad" neighbors.

Re:Is it, or is it not, easy?

[laserjet]

I really don't, and I really don't care if I get cracked. I never have before, and I don't have data that I can't lose. I reload my OSes every couple of weeks usually, and anything I need to keep is burned on CD-R. I keep mission critical files on disks and computers not on any network.

Insecure., yes. Do I care? nope! In fact, when someone cracks my system, I will just slap a new OS on and say, "I have some fellow geeks in my neighborhood!"

Assuming everything is free...

[Thunderhorse]

From the Tech Review article: "Assuming an organization already has a high-speed Internet connection and has spent $100 for a wireless transmitter, the only real cost associated with providing this service is the negligible..." T1, T3 and backbone connections are free, YEA! To my eye, that is a BIG assumption. His startup went broke providing security and other services. Protecting users from each other must be free for the organizations that are allowing free connections. Am I liable for data loss from one user cracking another on my 'free' network? HUMBUG.

MIT Economics?

[skeptic]

I don't understand how the MIT author believes offering bandwidth for free will not drive up marginal use.

Whenever something is free people use it as if it's free, that is to say freely. This is not a good recipe for an economical campus (or office) network.

In economics this is known as the Freeloader problem, and is ubiquitous amongst public goods.

Remember, nothing is ever entirely free, someone always pays. In this case the MIT author's bandwidth was being paid for by students.

It's actually illegal in the UK

[Colin Smith]

You are not allowed to use the unlicesed bands "by way of business". Despite that, Boingo still included UK Consume nodes in it's database, without permission.

Check the Consume mailing list archive for the furore it caused.

Go for the Orinoco

[BLKMGK]

Several very good programs support it including Netstumbler and it will allow the use of an external antenna. If you use Linux then consider the cheapo' DLink which has a Prism chipset that will support Airsnort. It can accept an external antenna with a bit of soldering :-)

So far as I can tell - it's not so much the card as it is the antenna. I own a DLink, Orinoco Gold, and Sony VAIO card right now. Using a crappy DLink AP (BIG mistake!) all of them work somewhat well but as range increases I can slap my antenna on the Orinoco or Sony cards and increase my signal reception easily. Do yourself a favor and spend a little more on the Orinoco card, get say a Linksys AP, and be happy. It really is a pretty neat technology. Portable too - my AP is going to BlackHat with me again this year ;-)

Stumblin' along...

[BLKMGK]

While some folks think that 350feet is the max I've spoken to folks who have gone MILES. Just like those stupid baby monitor\bugs that people put in their house - the antenna on the reciever makes a BIG difference. While the moron that's using the crappy baby monitor reciever can only go a few feet with it before reception is lost anyone else with a decent antenna can pick it up blocks away! Same with 802.11b - I can pick up APs hundreds of yards away while driving along a 75mph down the road using NetStumbler. (shrug)

Interesting to see how many companies think they don't have wireless on their networks but DO because some bonehead slapped it on without telling the IT staff. 75% of the APs I find don't run WEP and those that do probably aren't patched. The smart ones don't beacon - most DO beacon. Airsnort should find all of them though but I've not YET tried it out. There's only one good sniffer I've found for Windows but it's expensive (WildPackets.com).

Go look at the nationwide map over a NetStumbler. http://www.netstumbler.com/nation.php Friends and I have contributed several hundred APs and I've "stumbled" a few others out doing the same thing. 802.11b is incredibly common these days. I used to pick up 2 APs between my house and the main highway, I picked up 8 this past weekend after not having checked for a month! One trip alone netted 66APs and that was a short trip. People are starting to map this stuff with MapPoint and convert the data for other programs too. Heh, it's fun actually. Amazing how many of those APs give out DHCP addresses too. It's almost easier to go find an open AP attached to a cable modem than it is to use my crappy modem at home to DL the big files (sigh).

Anyway, it's easy and it's fun. Judging from my logs it' also pretty popular in my area as I come across others doing the same...

Re:How long?

[laserjet]

I have been doing it for quite a while now. You would be VERY surprised how many free internet connections there are available. You will see the light.

Re:Just got wireless yesterday

[laserjet]

Good question. I use these exclusively and they work perfect. I have always been fond of netgear.

Netgear MA301NA WIRELESS PCI ADAPTER 802.11B

$38.95 @ buy.com

link here.

just slap your favorite

Re:How long?

[praedor]

Where you been? This has been happening for a while. I use kismet. You can also use airsnort, prismdump, prismsnort and give a shot to wavestumbler - for the linux side. There is netstumbler for the windoze side. I've found dozens of networks in my city, most of which are totally wideopen. A few use strong WEP, others use VPN. I've parked outside an apartment complex I found on my way home from work one day within which someone had set themselves up with a wireless lan/AP. I connected no problem.

I've sat in airports (Detroit and St Louis) and picked up wireless networks there - though they were all encrypted/using strong WEP and there was no data transfers at the time so I couldn't get ANY real useful information from them. This has been going on for a while.

How long indeed.

Some tips...

[BLKMGK]

Check your vendors site for a WEP patch, turn ON WEP (this will hurt bandwidth...), filter on MAC address, consider using static IPs for Wi-Fi clients, turn OFF beaconing on your AP. In addition change the default infomation on your AP and try not to use really descriptive strings with say your name in them (ahem). Something like "noneofyourbusiness" is a bad idea too - some turkey in my area has that one with WEP turned on and I'm VERY tempted to take him out ;-)

Oh yeah, and I pray you didn't but a damned DLink AP. I've yet to figure out how to turn off beaconing on mine and the config program locks up my PC or the AP as often as it manages to make thc hanges I've requested! No ability to add an external antenna ability either. Grr!

For some fun goto NetStumbler.com :-)

The Church of Scientology OWNS Sky Dayton

[SimHacker]

Sky Dayton is the Church of Scientology's poster child. Earthlink and Boingo are run by dyed-in-the-wool Scientologists.

Scientologists Reed Slatkin, who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in American history, and Sky Dayton are co-founders of Earthlink, which is presently the third largest ISP in the USA.

I hope Sky Dayton's new company Boingo fails where other companies survive. I don't want the Church of Scientology running any wireless networks in my neighborhood, thank you.

-Don

Hah! Just got mine today!

[Jack William Bell]

Funny! Just got back from CompUSA and I see this /. post. Still haven't hooked it up, but I picked up a Linksys BEFW11S4 combo Wireless AP/DSL Router/Switch for $169 and a Linksys WPC11 Wireless PC Card for $79. At these prices it was barely more than I originally paid for the failing hub that I am replacing.

Jack William Bell

Beanie Hats

[mmkhd]

I guess this means we can look forward to people carrying large foldable/portable antennae along with their notebooks? Or mounting huge ones on their rooftops?

The return of the Wi-Fi enabled Beanie Hat (TM)!

I think these Lucent Range Extenders would look great mounted on a baseball hat...

Let the brain frying begin!

[Fantastic Lad]

Wow.

Talk about a total conquest. The sales job is complete. And the (one would think), otherwise intelligent geek elite has bought it hook line and sinker. (Control the geeks, and you control the world.)

Of course, people can choose wishful thinking and ignorance; they can surround their brains with as much electromagnetic fog as they choose. It can be a little frustrating when you watch people you care about put themselves in harm's way, but hey, life is all about free choice and letting people learn from their own mistakes. So sure, let the people microwave their heads with their dandy little toys. Fine.

However. . , when all the hobbits start re-defining our COLLECTIVE environment through said ignorance; that is, when I have to sit next to a microwave emitter/amplifier, (tastefully concealed behind some innocuous wall or potted plant), in my local coffee shop, bus shelter, library, etc., then I start to get annoyed.

Hobits en mass are extraordinarily dangerous. And let me count the ways the ignorant have poisoned the water I drink, the food I eat, the air I breathe and have altered my city in a thousand ways which serve to bring down the quality of life for me and everybody around me. . ,

The only reason people are now allowed to have thin-screens is that CRT EM has been replaced by the far more effective and ubiquitous cell phone radiation. Cities are turning into low-level microwave furnaces designed, in conjunction with a dozen other attacks, to turn people's awareness, strength of mind and decision making abilities to mush. Welcome to zombiville.

Before you knee-jerk, do some reading and exploration, and (horrors!), thinking. And don't turn on the indoctrination station. Science-news television is the among the slickest forms of propaganda. If you've been watching and believing everything without question up until now, you've been duped and controled.

And watch: When you poke at the more sensitive spots, that's when you can expect the harshest auto-attacks to spring from people's programming. The intensity of auto-response is directly proportional to the importance of the lie.

-Fantastic Lad --Why has the media been so careful to make sure that those with concerns look ridiculous and 'uncool'? Tin foil hatters, indeed!

Re:Just got wireless yesterday

[richieb]

Looks good. Does it work with Linux? I want to use a old toshiba laptop as an router (one wireless card, one normal card) and the other would go into my Linux laptop. I have Debian on thee router-to-be and RH on laptop.

Thanks for the info! --However. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Some good notes there; thanks!

One of the points I regularly find that people miss, however, is that the dangers of EM are not only heat related; indeed, heat in the case of Cell Phone hand sets is undoubtably one of the lesser concerns.

I like to put it this way: The human body is about 70% electrolyte. The human brain and nervous system are electrochemical in nature. EEG machines work for a reason.

Based on everything we currently know regarding the behavior of electricity, electromagnetism, inductance, etc., it is either a vast oversight or simply downright foolish not to consider the non-mechanical effects of EM on the human nervous system.

There have been many studies; by private groups of varying degrees of reliability, by governments, (the Swedish and Polish studies being among the few which have seen public light). --There have been studies leaked from the American military. (As well as counter-studies by such agencies as the U.S. Airforce which has spent a great deal of effort to scientifically 'de-bunk' that which hardly anybody in the public arena is even aware is going on in the first place.) --Of course, little damning research has surfaced among peer-reviewed material in the journals of the publically accepted version of science. (Peer-review being a concept, unfortunately, very much bought and paid for by Corporate interests and Governments, and therefore of questionable reliability when dealing with matters of Big Money, Public Health and Political Ramification. --I have a couple of friends who work in a couple of different areas of science, and they tell me of the bald-faced corruption they witness regularly in order to maintain funding and professional credit.)

In any case, more than enough data has been raised to worry anybody who bothers to investigate the whole Cell Phone phenomenon.

-Fantastic Lad

Re:That's the adapter, not the card....

[laserjet]

You are correct. I meant to say "just slap your favorte wireless card in" and you're ready to go, but I hit the wrong button and posted to early.

Re:Theft of Service

[Xafloc]

Never said I used it...just that I found it out. :)

Why would I use their connection at 1/4 the connection quality of mine?