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Garage Tinkerers Claim Wireless Last-Mile Solution
BrianWCarver writes: "The NYTimes is reporting that two guys in their garage have designed a low-cost wireless broadband solution that can transmit up to 20 miles. (A previous story described a 7km achievement in Australia.) Their company is called Etherlinx and they use the Wi-Fi 802.11b standard in a repeater antenna that people can attach to the outside of their homes. The technology, which apparently costs under $100, has been operating in a small for-pay trial in Oakland, CA for a year. Is this a solution to the 'last-mile' problem, hope for rural areas, and the death of cable/DSL? Read and be the judge."
This early post for Ida! I love you!
Let's have a close look at the costs involved when running a Linux system.
An important factor in Linux' cost is its maintenance. Linux requires a *lot* of maintenance, work doable only by the relatively few high-paid Linux administrators that put themselves - of course willingly - at a great place in the market. Linux seems to be needing maintenance continuously, to keep it from breaking down.
Add to this the cost of loss of data. Linux' native file system, EXT2FS, is known to lose data like a firehose spouts water when the file system isn't unmounted properly. Other unix file systems are much more tolerant towards unexpected crashes. An example is the FreeBSD file system, which with soft updates enabled, performance-wise blows EXT2FS out of the water, and doesn't have the negative drawback of extreme data loss in case of a system breakdown.
According to Linux advocates, an alternative to EXT2FS would be ReiserFS. Unfortunately, ReiserFS is still in beta stage. This means it is not intended for production use (although according to many Linux advocates this shouldn't be a problem, which makes me wonder how (little) valuable they find your data).
The other proposed 'solution', EXT3FS, is nothing more than an ugly hack to put journaling into the file system. All the drawbacks of the ancient EXT2FS file system remain in EXT3FS, for the sake of 'forward- and backward compatibility'. This is interesting, considering that the DOS heritage in the Windows 9x/ME series was considered a very bad thing by the Linux community, even though it provided what could be called one of the best examples of compatibility, ever. When it's about Linux, compatibility constraints don't seem to be that much of a problem for Linux advocates.
Back to Linux' cost. Factor in also the fact that crashes happen much more often on Linux than on other unices. On other unices, crashes usually are caused by external sources like power outages. Crashes in Linux are a regular thing, and nobody seems to know what causes them, internally. Linux advocates try to hide this fact by denying crashes ever happen. Instead, they have frequent "hardware problems".
The steep learning curve compared to about any other operating system out there is a major factor in Linux' cost. The system is a mix of features from all kinds of unices, but not one of them is implemented right. A Linux user has to live with badly coded tools which have low performance, mangle data seemingly at random and are not in line with their specification. On top of that a lot of them spit out the most childish and unprofessional messages, indicating that they were created by 14-year olds with too much time, no talent and a bad attitude.
I could go on and on and on, but the conclusion is clear. Linux is not an option for any one who seeks a professional OS with high performance, scalability, stability, adherence to standards, etc.
FP in the name of Mozilla!
first post!? :|
I wish I had this technology already.
Sounds sweet.
fp ?
=)
Too bad most Iowa towns are still screwed
While it may be HTML over HTTP, the NYT is not a web site.
In fact, you were no way near first post, loser, and you will shortly be modded to -1, redundant.
has anyone noted how arguments about processors never really win anyone over. AMD's good, Intel's good too, the competition keeps the price down, and the consumer wins. yay.
Now just imagine if there were such competition for a certain software company in Redmond...
Your dancing should be classed as an offensive weapon. I think it's given me post traumatic stress disorder.
That was classic intercourse!
As long as major companies like AT&T are gobbling up smaller companies, and Congress is removing all semblance of competition, these companies will continue to gobble up all the bandwidth until just a few companies own it all.
And as long as that is the case, they are going to purposely keep supply short so bandwidth prices remain high which renders broadband-to-the-home just about as useless or expensive as it is today.
If these companies would open up their pipes, or at least 10% of the bandwidth they're holding back, the prices would plummit and having a 10mbps 2-way connection to the house would be cheap.
These companies are actively resisting commoditizing bandwidth. That's the major reason Enron collapsed. Enron was known for commoditizing non-traditional markets. They bet the whole company on trading bandwidth as a commodity and all the big telcos shut them down.
Apparently AT&T and the like prefer colluding with their "competitors" to reduce supply and keep prices rediculously high.
You sir are the wittiest, funniest person I have ever heard of
Screw the broadband... I'll take the wine and the mistress!
Stop being a dick man, it's really not that cool.
Lamer.
Here I suggest you use miles or meters in hexadecimal amounts. It is quite easy, and you won't be ostracized for using decimal.