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DefCon WiFi Shootout Winner Announced
devn2k writes "At the first annual WiFi Shootout at DefCon in Las Vegas, Adversarial Science Lab won the contest to shoot a wireless signal across the Nevada desert, with a distance of 35.2196 miles. The antenna was built from metal poles, window screen mesh, cardboard, duct tape, and aluminum foil! According to the official contest page, the antenna was designed the night before the contest, its component parts were purchased for $98 at Home Depot, and the next day it was built completely from scratch in the desert, on the side of the mountain, in the rain."
the antenna was designed the night before the contest, its component parts were purchased for $98 at Home Depot, and the next day it was built completely from scratch in the desert, on the side of the mountain, in the rain.
This, and watching the US team whip the Brits on Junkyard Wars, is the reason that I'm proud to be an American.
I think I'm about to cry...
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Damn, I guess for US$98 you *can* change the weather :).
Still pretty impressive though. I wonder what they could do about my crappy cable TV service if I have them a $150 home depot gift card ?
If you don't understand anything I post, please accept that I ate paste as a small boy...
The antenna was built from metal poles, window screen mesh, cardboard, duct tape, and aluminum foil!
I think I just felt Procter and Gambles stock dropping (I mean those things aren't good for eating; that's for sure.).
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
You forgot to add "...while walking uphill, in a blinding snowstorm..." followed by the obligatory "... and we liked it!".
I couldn't move a single bit of data between two WinXP Home systems sitting RIGHT NEXT to each other! The damn thing doesn't support netwroking...
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
with a distance of 35.2196 miles
That's one whopping distance! Isn't the radius of Earth about 40.000 km? Or did they point the antenna in the wrong direction?
it was built completely from scratch in the desert, on the side of the mountain, in the rain.
Why buy $98 worth of equipment at Home Depot and take the trouble of making tinfoil emitters when you can just dance to get rain in the desert?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Nobody expects the Adversarial Science Lab! Our main construction material is Metal Poles!
Metal poles and Window Screen Mesh!
Two construction materials! Our Two Weapons are Metal Poles, Window Screen Mesh, and Cardboard!
Our Three Main Construction Materials are Metal Poles, Window Screen Mesh, Cardboard! And Duct Tape!
Among our CHIEF building materials are such diverse materials as Metal Poles, Window Screen Mesh, Cardboard, Duct Tape, and Aluminum Foil!
Oh, bother. I'll come again.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
I was at defcon, and it was 9 million friggin' degrees all weekend (I have the sunburn to prove it).
Unless of course they did it before I awoke at noon each day...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
From this it should be pretty obvious that the pyramids were just early prototypes for pringle cans where someone got their scale units mixed up.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Now that's bad luck.
"but can YOU do it with bubble gum, a piece of thread and a muffin?"
I'd need a small apple and a paperclip, otherwise the detonator wouldn't work properly.
Of course it looks cool, there's a chick in the picture.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Notice that the shape of the winning antenna is a pyramid? There are a lot of theories regarding electromagnetism and the pyramid shape, including a bunch on how the ancient egyptians figured out how to utilize these electromagnetic properties, which is (supposedly) why the pyramids were built that way.
If you want to get kooky, it can also point to the extra terrestrial origins of ancient egyptian civilization.
That makes perfect sense! The aliens, feeling like outsiders in this new place, built gigantic 802.11 antennas to download porn and MP3s from their home planet.
If it wasn't for the unacceptably long ping times, they would still be with us today.
And of course she's posed in the antenna horn with her arms raised. No wonder they caught the signal over that distance!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Easy!
You eat the muffin, stick the bubble gum over your rear end and fart until you have a nice big bubble full of explosive gas. You then poke the bit of thread into the bubble to act as a fuse. Done and ready to light.
NASA scientists make fun of Slashdot users for unit conversion errors...
+1 informative
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
Duct tape and rain don't mix.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Naw, their version of the RIAA took care of that a LOOONG time ago. You think all the people being abducted here are random? Nope, they are interstellar music thieves in disguise.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
People (ahem) were flashing the firmware on their Senao cards to enable them to go up to 249 milliwatt. The entire area was bathed in 801.11 frequencies. Shit, I felt my hair stand up.
It was funny to see a thousand black-clad geeks waving their WiFi antennas in the air, trying to get a signal. If you didn't know better you would have thought it was some kind of dildo festival.
Well, if you do it like these guys, it costs $98, plus 170 miles of wiring.
-schussat
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Some of the WiFi channels are within the amateur radio allocation, governed by Part 97. They could have run a powerful tight beam legally by complying with the rules for the amateur radio service.
:-)
If both ends were run by someone with a ham radio license, and if they used channel 1, and if they didn't attempt communication with the general public, and if they didn't use obscene or indecent language, and if they turned off encryption, and if they didn't forward data for third parties from other countries that don't have third-party traffic agreements with the US, and if they identified transmissions with their callsigns every 10 minutes and at the end of each transmission, and if they didn't transact any business or communicate on behalf of an employer, then it could have been legal.
Simple, really
"Sounds like a lot of sterile geeks in the desert now."
As if they were getting any to begin with.....
Sorry..it had to be said...;)
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.