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Wi-Fi, Now Available On the ISS
Grant Henninger writes "Rejoice! The next time you have an extra $20 million and decide to visit the International Space Station you won't need to leave the window to tell all your friends how cool it is. The ISS now has a new Wi-Fi network, so all you'll need to do is fire up Twitterrific and announce how much better you are than your Earth-based friends."
It has to be AT&T.
Can't wait to see the bills on this one.
That intelligent life has been found.
Nothing would bum our new alien overlords more than finding out our space stations ain't WiFi compatible.
Now they won't have to smuggle viruses aboard on memory sticks... They can just point a dish at the ISS and jump on their network.
Alright, who is going to be the first to start the new war-orbiting trend?
I wonder if it is an unsecured wireless network. Does being far above anyone else who could access your wireless network count as security through obscurity?
did they even bother to secure it?
... Must be one hell of a cantenna.
Fresh pron. (That one tattered penthouse they were allowed to bring up is starting to fall apart).
I record my sleeptalking
New hobby: War-rocketing.
I hope they are using WPA to secure the connection, you know, because WEP is pretty useless for security.
internet pr0nz!!1!
"The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec^2" -Marcus Dolengo
The next time you have an extra $20 million...all you'll need to do is fire up Twitterrific and announce how much better you are than your Earth-based friends
The next time I have an extra $20 million, I won't need Twitterific or even a visit to the ISS to let my friends know how much better I am than them. I'll hire people to follow my friends around town to let them know that fact on an hourly basis.
I'm a big tall mofo.
It'd be neat if (ordinary) people could send messages to the astronauts on the station..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Finally a use for my super-super-cantenna!
It's been 25 years and they are still using the same logo.
You gotta admit though, it matches their corporate personality. They should've been using it all along.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I just built my own high-gain WLAN antenna I want to try out...
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
And NO CARRIER would actually mean something now.
Plain old sigh.
Am I the only one worried about this? Given this recent Slashdot story: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/27/1231224
I certainly hope they cleaned up that laptop first.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
You just know that NASA will probably cooperate with a stunt like this. Heck, they may even hold a contest for engineering students: "Who can be the first to ping our wifi network from a ground station and hold the signal from horizon to horizon?"
Winning team gets a photo-op with NASA engineers, bragging rights, and job interviews when they graduate.
Runners-up have to be content with $250 cash prize and a promise NASA will actually read their resumes.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Whether they have an on-line Internet, or its copy (the whole 'net on 24395432985 DVDs), or only the Internet without porn and mp3 (2 DVDs) :-D
There is nothing inherent in the phrase Wi-Fi that mandates that a network is Internet-connected. Indeed, nothing in the "article" suggests any access to the Internet from the station. This appears to just be an extension of their existing LAN.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
...a slight upgrade to your plan?
Hire SUPERMODELS instead of mere "people".
You can thank me for this small and yet brilliant upgrade by paying me a small sum of US$ 181829.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
This only means they will get more viruses!
Don't want the neighbors stealing our bw!
That would explain why every 90 minutes or so "ISS" pops up on my available networks and then promptly disappears.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
I thought there are fears that once the Shuttles no longer service the ISS in 2010, then access to the ISS will be limited to nations that can say "Da, you can have Georgia" in Russian.
So your friends will have to accept you talking through a Russian interpreter. This may well improve the conversation. I mean, how often can you say 'The earth is a blue and white ball' without getting boring. Whereas, a mistranslation such as 'Why on earth are your balls blue and white?' will at least help.
My 20 mil contract does not say anything about WiFi. Should I buy a cup of coffee to use it?
contrary to what the summary suggests, wifi doesn't mean internet connection.
The Admin and the Engineer
in space, no one can hear you... ahh. forget it
Shouldn't they have fiber by now?
That's what they get for trusting the U.S telcos to deliver.
Finally! The ISS is available to everyone with a Pringles can and a pigtail!
It looks like it might actually be possible to connect to ISS wifi from earth. The ISS is around 350km above the surface, and current records for surface to surface links are a little bit larger than that.
The surface to surface number is for two custom endpoints, not one standard, one custom, doesn't have to deal with the ionosphere, and was between two stationary locations; but it suggests that the challenge isn't insurmountable. A radio astronomer could probably eat this one for breakfast.
I had assumed the ISS was wireless already...
Netgear wireless routers-they're out of this world!
I'll ask them about it next time they passover with my amateur radio rig. W9BJH
Anybody know the operable range of an 802.11g signal in space?
PirateBay is about to move in.
Great news! That means I don't have to use my cantenna anymore!
All that calculating and nanometer-scale positioning it to where my house and router was for those few seconds gets on your nerves after a while..
So does this mean that I can actually frag an astronaut in a FPS? Or pwn them in WoW? Wouldn't that give you bragging rights...
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
... the next supply shipment on the Soyuz will include Pringles
Have gnu, will travel.
, which hosts an onboard amateur station using the callsign NA1SS:
http://www.arrl.org/ARISS/
Many of the astronauts have ham radio licenses.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Can we play Quake on ISS' Internet?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
To: Gfnnrzx
From: Plftspnk
Subject: New WiFi Hot Spot
Hey dude! I was cruising thru the wasteland in my saucer and I found this great open hot spot. Its right near that crazy pile of junk orbiting planet Irth. Just pull up behind them, so they won't see your ship and you can log your laptop onto the Irth Internet and download lots of cool homosapien p0rn. Also, log onto this site called Slashdot and post something about welcoming alien overlords. They'll get a kick out of it.
Later, dude.
P.S.: What's a lap, anyway?
Have gnu, will travel.
seems that it would be hard if it were wired... >_>
Some ISS jokester is gonna connect to someone down on Earth and start speaking in clicks and gurgs. CONTACT!
It seems to me this was installed so astronauts could enter data/comminucate from anywhere, but my question is, why would they have that need? The ISS is not that a dynamic environment; the labs, command center, bunks, etc. don't change that often.
Any info that would have to be quickly communicated from an arbitrary point on the station ("Oh no, a random piece of equipment is failing!") doesn't seem like the type that is complex enough to require entry into a computer. And any complex data that needed digital storage, like mentioned above, would probably occur in areas already wired for network access, or isn't time-critical enough that it couldn't be uploaded later.
Beyond allowing astronauts to blog/webconference from anywhere they wish, it seems that this "improvement" isn't exactly all that beneficial.
For those who are really serious about (or nuts enough) trying to pick up ISS wifi signal.
Check out when ISS will appear over your head using heaves-above.com
Enter your coordinates and it will let you know exactly when and where it will appear over your horizon.
...is it secured? We certainly do not want any alien species leeching our bandwidth.
And yet, the cost of sending all that data back to Earth is still probably cheaper than what my phone company charges for text messaging.
In Space, no one can hear you blog.
so which cell carrier is going to be the first to send a microcell up?
This also means that iphone and ipod touch can now purchase music and apps from Itunes in orbit, wonder who gets dibs on that one....
Unix, an obscure operating system developed by bored researchers in an attempt to get a better game playing experience.
In space, nobody can hear you tweet
Now don't any of you slashtards use "orderly communications" as a reason for jack-booted thugs to knock your door down and force freedom of speech through the barrel of a gun.
Communications is initiated by custom. And if everyone wants to be Smokey or Boulevard Bob *honk *honk then don't talk to them is all I have to say. Every Ham operator I have seen is nothing more than a tyrant of opinions that "believes" and "shoulds" on everyone's shoulder as though he were a diplomat from Hell itself.
Licensing is libel.
To: Plftspnk
From: Gfnnrzx
Subject: Earth porn
When did they started calling the 21-fingered Irthlings "male" and the pouched Irthlings "female." Also, why are the Irthlings *physically* trying to create hybrid caanid, hybrid equine, and hybrid icthyos? Should we consult our overlords of Chyna, the greys, to allow this? Get back to me.
Just remember to load kismet onto the laptop first. The essid is probably hidden, and the person who knows it isn't due back for 6 months...
Aliens leeching on all the torrents.
MABASPLOOM!
Sure, why not. It was established already in Independence Day that aliens use IPv4, so they should just be able to hook right up.
...but Independence Day also established that aliens are vulnerable to earthly computer viruses, so 10 seconds later, they would be pwn3d, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest devices that script kiddies had, in their stupidity, put upon teh interweb.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
I kept seeing a new LINKSYS SSID popping up for about 5 of every 90 minutes. Thanks for the explanation.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
I've seen NASA footage from several years ago of various locations on the ISS where you can clearly see APs (complete with little antennas sticking out) labled as such.