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Dave Hughes' Campaign To Connect 6 Billion Brains
polarfleece writes "The Asociated Press has a fine story about Dave Hughes, one of my personal heros. For those of you who may never have heard of him, he is THE pioneer in the use of wireless networking for mass connectivity. His main website is at wireless.oldcolo.com." An anonymous reader also point to the profile of Hughes accompanying the article.
Any relation to Howard?
Take Care
A1miras
Dave Hughes certainly doesn't look the part of a technology trailblazer. The burly, 74-year-old retired Army colonel could stuff a scrawny computer geek in his Stetson.
But the real question... How is he at Counter-Strike!
He wants a solar-powered laptop to be buried with him when he dies, which will "analyze" and improve on his past writings and effectively act as him. What a crackpot!
He brought packet radio to the most remote places, Indian Reservations, etc.
Or is that Johnny Internet-seed?
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Good. Now *everyone* can see lactation porn, or women fucking polar bears.
"So he let troops paint tanks in psychedelic colors, drive them in road rallies and bring wives and girlfriends along as navigators. He stocked base hangouts with beer and go-go girls, encouraged black troops to stage Guerrilla Theater and brought in such diverse political speakers as Cesar Chavez and William F. Buckley."
I wonder how "strongly encouraged" his retirement was......
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
we need Johnny WAPseed to travel around the country.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Bloody Hell, Anne Robinson is a /. member cloaked behind the invisibility of an AC posting!!!
You are the Weakest Link.... Goodbye.
For a pioneer of mass connectivity, he sure does have a boring webpage.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
A beowolf cluster of minds
At first glance I thought it said "Collect" 6 billion brains...
/. was going to ask for donations.
I thought
Ah, the Internet of the 1970s! Takes me back to the cyberpunk heyday of writers like Gibson and Stephenson.
Hughes is like some weird combination between the cowboy hackers of Neuromancer and Count Zero, and the dude who was pushing the hive mind project in Cryptonomicon.
Any thoughts? Do you think that Gibson or Stephenson ran across Col. Dave Hughes, USA, Ret., in their research? Think the Cowboy Curser inspired any personalities in Cryptonomicon or SnowCrash? Neuromancer? Count Zero? Mona Lisa Overdrive?
What's your opinion?
One does have to wonder though if connecting previously sheltered cultures, like Sherpas who rarely leave their home area, or small tribes in South America, will encourage them to join the rest of the world. If I had no previous contact with the outside world's mass culture, one look at the internet would scare the living hell outta me. Slashdot alone would convince me all ousiders should be killed on sight.
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
Given the nature of a lot of comments on here, I suspect they're asking the wrong audience.
If we could somehow distribute local WAP distribution points and everyone would have a common mode of connecting with reasonable transfer rates pretty much anywhere in the US, nay the world.
::hitting self in head repeatedly::
OH WAIT THAT SOUNDS LIKE THE 3G CELLULAR NETWORK!!!
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
Quote3: In Soviet Russia...
Quote4: Save me Jeebus.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Someone once said to me, 'cultivate your own garden,'" Hughes says. "I said, I'm going to use a microprocessor as a hoe and a modem as a wheelbarrow."
...and if he happens to come upon /., he'll get plenty of fertilizer to assist in cultivation...
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
According to a story on Google news. Man, I hope /. will survive it.
"Someone once said to me, 'cultivate your own garden,'" Hughes says. "I said, I'm going to use a microprocessor as a hoe and a modem as a wheelbarrow."
And use MS Windows as fertilizer?
What we'd hear from some (in)famous brains of our time:
George W. Bush's brain: I must remember to chew my pretzels. Bomb Iraq. I must remember to chew my pretzels. Bomb Iraq. I must remember to chew my pretzels. Bomb Iraq.
Tony Blair's brain: I must do whatever Dubya says cos Dubya's a smart man and he obviously knows what he's doing. Now where's my leash?
Saddam Hussein's brain: I didn't have anything to do with that attack. Why's George picking on me all of a sudden?
Osama Bin Laden's brain: Boy, am I glad that George's forgotten about me!
Bill Gates's brain: With all these wars to worry about I think the Government's forgotten about me. Time to pull out those plans for world domination again.
Pamela Anderson's brain: Gee, My boobs are looking kinda small. Time to call the surgeon again.
Britney Spear's brain: Damn that Christina's dirty. I wish I was.
Justin Timberlake's brain: Damn, I wish I was Michael Jackson. I'd love to be in his shoes.
Michael Jackson's brain: Damn, I wish I was with Justin Timberlake. I'd love to be in his trousers.
Slashdot editor's brain: Hmmm, yet another duplicate story/obvious hoax/shameless plug for a "me too" product. Now where's that "post" button gone?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
all you need is a cheap box with a long wireless reach that you can attach to your roof or something, that automatically connects to all other wireless boxes, and then we will have free internet. needs wired RJ45 access. maybe usb2/firewire too...
or plans to make our own boxes from toasters or something. easy right?
I left a burrito in the Microwave!
Hey, hi! Ah, Mr. Jones...once again we see that there is nothing you cannot possess that I cannot take away.
Of course, the Hovedos could have warned you, if only you spoke Hovedos...
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
And here I was thinking it was a story about this guy
that was fucking funny - I spat coke on my screen!
thank you for making my day
"Let's all love Lain."
he still has to find 6 million brains. I lost mine on Saturday night.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
We did something like that in college once, only it involved q-tips and a lot of damaged eardrums.
Oh, and beer. Lots of beer.
Michael Sims is planning to make all women grow a cock. I would fight this tooth and nail if I were female. I am still going to fight this tooth and nail regardless.
At first glance, I read the headline this way:
Dave Hughes' Campaign to Connect 6 Billion Brains [in a Beowulf Cluster]
Steve
Ph33r the XM collective!! We will XMillisate you!!
:D
So this will be like a borg collective, nice. Where can I find Seven of Nine?
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
*MWAH* welcome back.
Zombies: Brains. Brains! BRAAAIIIINSSSS!
[Zombie's tap heads of /. readers and Homer J.]
[FX: Hollow echoing sound]
[Zombie's exit stage right in pursuit of more fruitful sources...]
Yeah, brain donations from /. - that'll work....plenty to spare...
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
The reporter is apparently too young to remember that before the Internet was available to the public, there were things called "billboards".
Billboards could be networked in the sense that you could send email or transfer files between them, but it was more like store and forward networking rather than a fully connected net like we have today.
They mention that Colonel Hughes subscribed to The Source. That was a commercial billboard that was around before CompuServe. I guess it went out of business because CompuServe became more popular.
I considered subscribing to the source when I bought an ASCII terminal and 1200 baud modem in 1983, but decided not to because it was exhorbitantly expensive, being charged by the minute of connection time. I couldn't afford that on my college student budget.
The Source was really a big timesharing computer that lots of people logged into, not really a network at all.
I'm pretty sure it took more than ten years for the Internet to have more than a hundred hosts.
Colonel Hughes might have been able to access it if he was still in the military at the time, but it wasn't widely available even to the military.
To illustrate how unavailable the Internet was back then - I got the money to buy that ASCII terminal by working as a summer research assistant for an astronomer at CalTech.
The astronomy department was considering gettings its two VAXen connected to the ARPANet (it wasn't called the Internet yet). I don't mean "two main computers", I mean "two computers" - everyone used vt100 terminal to compute, and took turns at the extraordinarily expensive Grinnel image processing workstations, which had a 512 by 512 resolution and were the size of a refrigerator, mostly consisting of RAM.
Anyway, a couple machine at Tech were already connected to the ARPANet, I believe just the Physics and Computer Science UNIX VAXen.
After quite some heated debate within the department, it was decided that the expense of getting connected to the ARPANet just wasn't worth it. They felt it was a better use of the department's money to invest in research, instrumentation and traditional computing resources.
For example, they bought a third VAX, an 11/750, that was smaller than the two 11/780's we had. It came with a newfangled GUI workstation (that I could never figure out how to use) that was also the subject of much debate, and set the department back $150,000.
It could routinely support a couple dozen simultaneous terminal users. But I don't think it had the computing power of a 33 Mhz 80386 PC.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Is anyone else besides me getting quite tired of this same old joke? Seems like the last dozen stories I've read have had a ``I thought the headline said..." comment that has been modded up to +4/+5 Funny.
Switching a letter or two around has got to be the lowest form of comedy... perhaps just above fart jokes.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
would he use the slashing motion with the knife, or that vicious overhand stab?
I bet he's a bunny-hopper...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Any relation to my cock ornament?
In other words your cock is actually a black hole, much like your mother's fetid snatch.
is right here
i on .html
http://www.west-point.org/academy/dgrad/Nominat
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
The Church of Scientology plans to disconnect 6 billion brains.
"The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."
Isn't this how all the weird/dangerous stuff in the anime Serial Experiments Lain got started? Cool.
Ignorance is bliss and I'm suicidal.
This guy was also written up in Boardwatch - a magazine that started out covering the world of BBSing and tried to expand into Internet issues throughout the 90s.
One thing from the old articles was a mention of something he had gotten installed at a local bar. They had a few booths, and one of them had a RJ-11 jack so he could plug in and dial out with his laptop.
The bar is gone now, but he undoubtedly solves the problem with wireless technology instead.
Okay, first one to make a "beowulf cluster" joke gets this upside the head. You have been warned.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I realize that at 1:31am on a Sunday when the following Monday is a holiday that the Slashdot editors may be drunk, but even then can't they have an automatic spell check built in?
"Asociated Press"...hmmm...is this an alternate spelling?
well, I'm still waiting for 1g cellular, and I live in the USA! I'd say we better at least get that accomplished before we get too carried away with these fancy wireless protocalls.
Oh yeah, while you're at it, could you bring us some broadband too?
mechanicos ergo cogito
What kind of picture is this to paint?
With a long white goatee and stout body, Hughes resembles Orson Welles in his later days...
He sometimes taught English classes at West Point with a parakeet perched on his shoulder...
"He's a military man who says, 'I know where my hill is, and I'm going to take it,' and he didn't really care who got in the way."
Arrrr, me hardies! 100 watts for all and a broadside at those worthless telcos!
He's right, you know.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He won't mix races. Otherwise we'll all end up with fat gums and buckets of fried chicken.
To the mod who gave this a +1 informative...
I was going more for a plus +1 funny and I have a feeling it is for your mod reason I got off topic slapped.
I figured it would be mis-moded but oh well, sorry if you dont catch the reference.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Hence, to get a better the talent pool for documentation writers -- outlaw development of 3D shoot 'em ups like FPS and all other 3D games!
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
I used to be on the WELL back in the '80's, and Dave was on there too (of course - it was the premier online "community" at that time.)
I remember during the revolt in the Phillipines, Dave came on the WELL and demonstrated how you could fax from your PC. The Chief of Staff of the Phillipine military was an acquaintance of Dave's from West Point, so Dave fired up his PC, crafted a congratulatory message, sent it through a gateway into the fax network, and got a response from the Phillipine military acknowledging receipt.
Doesn't sound like much now, but this was in the mid-80's, when this sort of thing was not common.
Dave is no crackpot...He's definitely an online pioneer.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Coffin + solar cell + 802.11 + owner's cadaver == the last word in case mods. Literally.
"Hi, this is Dave Hughes. Wanna chat?"
Um, not really.
"Well could you at least brush the leaves off my solar cells? I'm losing power."
Dude, you're the reason there's 6 BILLION people on this IRC server. I'm fucking stepping on your solar cells!
at the first computers freedom and privacy conference, he got me interested in NAPLPS at the time. He was running a BBS with Native American art that you could buy online.
anyway he started his speech with a "cowboy computer poem", I still remember parts of it...
You know you're never alone
when you hear that modem tone
.
.
keep logging on...
keep logging on...
hopefully this will be implemented in our lifetimes.
What the deuce is it to me? You say that we go around the sun. If we went
around the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or my work.
-- Sherlock Holmes, "A Study in Scarlet"
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