Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic, Phish, Moe, etc, etc, etc all allow live recordings of their work to be distributed in any fashion possible except that you can't charge for the reproduction.
I've got a zillion hours of music, I downloaded it from the internet and the RIAA may kiss my PC's parallel port 'cause its all legal.
Now if you want some icky top forty boy band puke you're S.O.L. Improve your taste in music, or pay the RIAA tax...
Those are four I listen to - excellent music - freely available via Torrent. Plenty more out there if you go looking. Oh, you want ass sucking top forty crapola? Well that, my friend, will cost you $15.98/CD and it won't change.
The bands don't suck, they do what the RIAA member execs tell them. The RIAA doesn't suck, they enforce their copyrights. The fans? Yes, most of the fans suck, and specifically their taste in music is the source of the sucking.
I will now go chill out and listen to some feelgood hippie music I downloaded:-)
This venting is fine, but what are you people really *doing* about the whole situation? I put a post out on the Omaha Linux User's Group http://olug.org this morning - a call for those actively involved in eroding SCO's market share to speak.
We found one guy who killed one SCO box, another guy who is going to remove a dozen from his business by the end of the year, and we discovered THE WORLD'S LARGEST SCO INSTALLATION is right here, infesting our fair city.
I know that this company has already announced internally that they're going to Redhat in place of SCO, but the systems guys are fighting them - Redhat means porting work, while NetBSD is binary compatible.
Is there a binary compat mode for SCO on Redhat? Is there some technical reason why the NetBSD implementation is favored by their techies? Enquiring minds want to know...
I interviewed a sales guy today and the focus is marketing two experienced NT/Netware admins. They'll support the systems they're used to handling but they're going to learn Samba and Mars_NWE and start whacking those systems where appropriate.
I've been 'exploiting' an Open Source OS - just placed a php/postgres developer, and my ill gotten gains from his work are what is going to feed the marketing weasel. Am I an evil corporate scumbag? I wore a t-shirt, jean shorts, and sandals to work today, and nobody said shit about it because I'M THE COMPANY PRESIDENT!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...
Oh! I am a slashdot.heretic - see below:
[panic] ~> uname -a
FreeBSD panic.slashdot.net 4.8-STABLE FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE #13: Fri Aug 1 14:39:01 CDT 2003 puzzled@panic.slashdot.net:/usr/src/sys/compile/pa nic i386
Out of the box most access points are configured for maximum throughput. 802.11b is CSMA/CA - collission avoidance. The CA features are disabled unless you turn on maximum fragment size and some other stuff so that the clients ask the AP for permission to transmit.
802.11 by design assumes that two transmitting clients can see each other. When remotes can't see each other, say in an outdoor access scenario, as soon as the cell gets busy you have to be all over the tuning parameters to keep the complaints down to a dull roar.
I've seen cells with a dozen customers that get excellent throughput, then one node gets added in a problem area and *everyone's* throughput goes right down to the same level as the problem node.
FYI the best DoS for 802.11b is built right in to the MAC layer. If two access points share a channel, each will honor the other's collision avoidance stuff at L2 - WEP, etc do not protect you. All you need to do is modify drivers on your DoS box such that they periodically try to seize the medium without regard for what else is going on - brings the AP you're after to a screeching halt, isn't visible in terms of their SSID, and you only need enough power to get the AP's attention. You'd have to be a guru with kismet and know way more about 802.11b MAC layer than I do to detect this stuff, then you're left trying to DF a low power source... in other words, you're 0wn3d and you might as well give up:-(
I used to own an early model Icom PCR1000 - nice receiver, could hear cell bands, but WHO THE HELL CARES? You get to hear the cell site side of a two way conversation and its usually some yokel who can't afford a digital phone trying to rig a meeting with his girlfriend while his wife is at the grocery store.
Don't violate the FCC's rules to listen to crap like that - just use the thing to tune in to Jerry Springer and you'll see the results of what happens when people make calls on analog cellular.
This guy is right on and that goes double if you're going to be putting the device outdoors.
APs are *stupid* - if you use a unix OS on Soekris you can run current tcpdump + libpcap and *see* low level 802.11b errors. I'm doing this with an eye on a drop in device when troubleshooting is required at an outdoor site.
If you were in Ethiopia in the late 1970s you'd have seen wonders - East German agriculture experts helping the locals plant their hybrid wheat. The wheat grew to an amazing height... and then collapsed because the heads of the plants were too heavy for the root systems that grew in the thin soil. The East Germans went home, the Ethiopians starved.
Giving aid to third world countries might make you *feel* better, but if it is aid given on a regular basis rather than a one time event in response to some sort of natural disaster such as drought, you're just compounding the problem - if a country can't produce enough food, nor enough economic output to buy the food it needs, ponder how cruel it is to those children - the one who would have never been conceived without the food aid.
Its a horrible muddle, and double horrible in sub Saharan Africa, but I think we have to let things work themselves out - if you're over populated, well, you're over populated.
If you want to aid a third world country, create a scholarship fund so natives of that country can attend a first rate university, then let *them* go home and fix the problem. Its cheaper, kinder, and much more effective than recreating the welfare dependence we see here in the U.S.
Various people have spoken up about our mystery ISM band source here in Omaha - here are the details on why its so hard to track it.
The observed signal strength of the problem source on a tower in northern Cass county is the same as the signal from the back of a Maxrad sector with a 250mw amp six feet from the antenna. Yes, we turned off all the other ISM stuff at the site before testing the signal strength on the problem signal, no there isn't anything else near the site.
We know the signal is somewhere in a cone 30* wide centered on 0* (due north). We've driven six or seven miles towards the signal when its active, but the problem is that it is intermitent - comes on for fifteen minutes at a time, then goes away.
I know both of the amateur TV operators in the area and its not them. I know where most of the other wireless ISPs have stuff... since I've heard from them as they try to track down the same problem.
This is happening in Douglas/Sarpy/Cass county - right on top of Offut AFB. Those kids riding in the back of the Rivet Joint aircraft do get bored - a couple of years ago they got caught opening about a third of all the garage doors in Bellevue on climb out, but we've watched and we don't see a correlation between aircraft with big radomes and this problem.
At this point it is really a mystery - the signal is so hot it looks like we're right in the beam from a 4' dish and given the levels we ought to be able to easily see the source's location, but we see it from a broad area so we know its some sort of point to multipoint system. Its way way way too hot to be ATV - looks like several kilowatts of EIRP.
So if any of you gurus out there are watching this subthread speak up... I'd love to nail this one down before the whole city gives up on ISM.
I just got my first Soekris box a few days ago - haven't had much of a chance to play, but they fill the same niche as this northtec stuff *and* they take power over ethernet - very handy for remote deploys - say a router for a wireless network running the MikroTik OS... http://www.mikrotik.com
I founded two of the three wireless providers operating in the metro Omaha area (#53 in terms of market size) and I can assure you that cellular is going to stomp balls on unlicensed wireless services.
What we've seen in the last six weeks in the ISM band here in Omaha is an indication of the future of the whole industry.
Someone, somewhere, which we can't locate, has put up something in the ISM band we can't identify which produces an observed signal strength at a range of ten plus miles that is equal to the signal strength observed *six feet* from a multipoint sector antenna amped to the legal maximum. This has been the final blow for service coming from the second highest location in the city. Crowding and poor practice on the highest point make it equally precarious. Unless you *own* the rights to the ISM band on the structure you're using as a central site, you *will* get screwed... its not an *if*, its a 'how soon'.
The situation in the UNI-I band isn't that grim... yet... but I am aware of several additional point to multipoint installs in that band that are going to compete with the service I built last year. The UNI-I band noise floor is going to reach the same ridiculous levels we see in ISM - it is just a matter of time.
You have to understand the economics of the thing to know why it isn't going to work - even if you don't have technical problems like we're seeing here the only place ISM band wireless is going to succeed is in rural areas.
Customers view wireless as a competitor to DSL and cable and that is a loser's game - if you aren't selling some additional service on your circuit you're pissing away money at the $40/mo mark. The money spot is above a T1 and below a DS3... and with the instability of ISM obviously going to happen in UNI-I no one with the money to drive that sort of activitry is going to be silly enough to get involved.
All that needs to happen for G3 to succeed is for them to provide ISDN like speed to fixed installs... which they can already do for the tougher mobile market and they can not bury themselves in stupid anti-customer policies like the cable modem industry. People are going to pay for a network attachmen they can *use*, not a service for downloading Hello, Kitty skins for their cell phones.
Those are tiny little radios - find out the frequency they use, rig up $10 worth of Radio Shack parts, hook it up to a 9v battery, and go for a walk in the offending store.
If you feed them an order of magnitude more energy than they're designed to take in exactly the band they're using.... *POW*... and they won't catch fire, you'll just toast the chip.
Yes, you can know the operating frequency without a fancy spectrum analyzer - the data sheets on those things are pretty much public knowledge... you don't have to hit it dead on, just get close with more juice than they can take and you've done the job.
Our entire society is suffering from a bad case of collective attention deficit disorder. We see news on television and the broadcaster devotes thirty seconds of time to an issue that the Economist gives four pages of detailed analysis. If you don't know what the Economist is, you're part of the problem:-)
The music artist has for many years crafted records that contain up to a dozen songs and have an ongoing theme. One or two of those songs might become 'hits', while the rest will be appreciated by those who know the artist well enough to purchase the entire recording.
Many of you have heard Jackson Browne's "Running On Empty", but how many of you have ever sat and listened to the entire "Late For The Sky" CD? *All* of this entire album packs the same punch as "Running On Empty" but it is completely unknown.
Our society's view of the world is changing to a sound bite centric, unfocused perspective. The artists can complain, but they're fighting a gigantic force and they won't be sucessful.
What will the landscape for albums look like as time progresses? I'd suggest you look for the recorded material of bands like the Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic, Moe, Phish, etc - these so called 'jam bands' allow fans to tape all their live music and distribute it freely.
I think this move will be freeing for the artists... who produce quality work:-) The sensation of the moment boy bands are going to end up filed next to Abba and the BeeGees, and god willing we'll see no more of them as richer, more meaningful work will be the only thing that makes its way into long term public hearing.
Several carriers will move multicast data - Sprint comes to mind, I think UUNet does, and I hear there are some other tier 1 providers out there, but I don't use them:-)
Only works as long as all the clients are on multicast aware networks... good luck.
I've got my technician license and I mess around on 2 meter and 70 centimeter bands. I'm studying for my general so I can play on the world wide HF bands.
I grew up somewhere famously flat, so I go alpine hiking/rock climbing when I get the chance - next weekend! near Red Rocks! After Widespread Panic show!!!
I've owned a Glock 17, Glock 19, Ruger P85(sucks), a Smith and Wesson Model 19, a Smith and Wesson Model 640, and a bunch of long guns. We've got an excellent range here in the city but I really wish I had an outdoor location where I could use a large rifle.
I've seen Ritalin being sold on the street and consumed by the same crowd that later got in to inhaling methamphetamine. You are consuming a *dangerous* drug and ADHD is not a temporary thing.
Wellbutrin is an even more subtle demon. If you've got the slightest hint of a substance abuse problem you're standing on a very slippery slope every time you put one of those things in your mouth.
ADHD is masively over diagnosed - many times it is PADD - parental attention deficit disorder. Are you *certain* you're not in this category?
I'd try *everything* in the book and make stuff up on my own before I'd accept that diagnosis. I score high on every adult ADHD indicator except 'robbery with confrontation' and my solution was not more chemicals - I just rearranged my career so that my possible 'disorder' became an asset.
If you can't focus around distractions(people) but you hyperfocus and get a lot done on your own, work yourself into a position where this does you good:-)
You've been invited to participate in a "Death March" project - if it fails, the company fails, if it succeeds, you ensure they're going to have you do the same thing again as soon as they find the right opportunity.
If you want to do something about it collective action is the only route and you're leaving yourself wide open to being replaced by contractors. I've been in this place before but I was a one man band... we negotiated in *my* office, with me wearing cut offs, flip flops, and a Dilbert T shirt, and this happened after I cleaned out every single thing and vacuumed the carpet. I doubled my salary:-) YMMV, however.
I don't see anyone posting who is looking at the bigger picture here. Software jobs are getting exported to places like India, where someone younger/sharper than you works for 25% of what you make. Are you nervous yet? This is the same thing that happened to manufacturing in the US in the 1980s and its going to happen to white collar jobs over the first twenty years of the twenty first century.
Globalization got you cheap tennis shoes and you didn't understand that they were going to end up on someone's foot planted in your behind, did you?
Don't be too hard on them, they're getting the same treatment from the management above them, who is getting it from the CEO, who is getting it from the board, who is getting it from Wall Street.
The 'duck' antennas that come on Linksys APs are 2.2dBi - they pretty much radiate in a flattened bubble shape.
If you replace the 2.2 dBi duck with an external 8.2dB omnidirectional antenna you'll have something roughly twice as tall that will put four times as much energy where you need it... think of its pattern as more of a fluffy pancake shape rather than the slightly flattened ball pattern you get with a low gain duck.
I live in an old house with solid wood doors. My desktop provides an adhoc network for my laptop in my room. If either my bedroom door or the office door is open it works with a duck, if they're both closed I get no signal. I had a 17dB panel and the appropriate cable - using this put 32x the energy where I needed it and I get solid connections with both doors closed.
I previously lived in a newer split level. The AP was at one end of the house in the basement, my room was all the way at the other end on the second floor. A 30mw Linksys with a duck was just useless, but adding a 12dB Cushcraft 90 degree sector gave excellent service all over the house.
Some whiny end user type responded to my post about the economics of being an internet provider with a brief rant on how technology should have brought the cost of a T1 down a long time ago.
Lets investigate the reality behind a typical Sprint T1 install at $1,000/month.
A T1 is composed of several components, the first being the local loop to the CO. You've got two or four copper wires buried in the ground, an NIU on the customer end and some sort of gear in the central office. This costs $285/month for on net to off net termination in my city and that is a pretty typical number.
Once you get to that termination gear you've got to negotiate the LEC's metro optical network to reach the point where they interconnect with the ISP's equipment. Despite being #53 in terms of population nationally my city doesn't have enough Sprint T1s on my ILEC to qualify for its own DS3 mux so my Sprint T1 gets drug forty miles south west to our provincial state capitol. This is non trivial, but its priced as part of that $285/month.
Once you get to the ISP's edge equipment you're probably getting 'back hauled' cross country to some location where they've got a Cisco 12000 series or some big Juniper box. You should be reading "WAN line costs", "hardended telco facilties costs", "depreciation on equipment you *can't* get at Best Buy", etc, etc.
This gets you to the ISP's network and their customers. Somewhere, out there, they peer with other top level carriers, and that is how you get to the global internet.
Besides not being able to buy the gear at Best Buy you can't *hire* the geniuses needed to make it all go from behind the counter of a local McDonalds. If you want someone who can pour piss out of a transit autonomous system without refering to the instructions printed on the heel of a Cisco 12008 you pay. If you want someone to answer the phone when the customer calls you pay. Scale that up by ten thousand T1 customers and you can imagine what is required - a real live company, so large it must be publically held to receive the funding it needs.
Bandwidth is like real estate. You can get an address on Skyline Boulevard (Sprint or UUNet DS1), you can move in to section 8 housing at 2209 Jones Street and heckle crack dealers (DSL), or maybe you're upscale enough to get a doublewide at 64th and Grover (cable modem), but make no mistake about how the world is gonna be - you plant petunias in the 'hood (VPN applications), homey's pit bull(Kazaa) is gonna take a dump there the very next day.
I've posted on this so many times I've written it up and placed it in my journal
http://slashdot.org/~puzzled
Here it is again briefly:
A T1 has 24 x 64kb channels. Getting one from a top level provider like Sprint or UUNet will cost about $1000/mo or $40/channel/month.
A 256kb DSL link is four channels and costs about $40/mo. Four channels times $40/mo = $160/mo cost for the ISP. I realize the average math skills of slashdot readers are about eighth grade level, so I'll finish it for you - $40/mo revenue minus $160/mo cost = -$120/mo. This is what happens to ISPs when people doing file sharing of any sort leave their retail connections running 24x7 and consume bandwidth in a wholesale fashion.
Its not about the MPAA or RIAA, evil scumbags that they may be, its just simple cost that is going to do in file sharing. Stop being a whiny end user and pay for some quality bandwidth, or shut the *(&@$(%*&@#$% up about it already.
These guys apparently expect to build a full routed network with their own IP addressing scheme that will encompass the entire US and *NOT* connect to the public internet. Riiigggghhhttttt.
Excuse me, but don't we already *have* a perfectly good public internet? What is the value of LanLinkup? Its good slashdot fodder but what other purpose does it have? None, I say, and I'd like to see anyone come up with a valid counter to this.
If *I* were going to spend time picking fights with windmills, I'd be trying to roll out an IPv6 scheme, I'd certainly let people connect it to the public internet(as if that is something that can be dictated), and I'd avoid 802.11b like the plague - go google for "Icom" and "D-STAR" and see the future - 128kbit connections that can reach twenty or more miles from a well done base station, 10GHz repeater links, voice as well as data...
So, if you *really* want to get involved in hooking stuff together, ignore the wireless lan technology, go get your ham technician ticket, and get with the program.
re: isp-lists - I hear they did raise the rates on isp-equipment, but I hadn't noticed that this had occured on ISP wireless - I'm in the middle of a move and not paying attetion.
The responder is dead right on the part-15.org mailing list - I'd heard about this from Marlon Schafer or Michael Anderson, just haven't had time to get involved.
Slashdot Mirror
Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic, Phish, Moe, etc, etc, etc all allow live recordings of their work to be distributed in any fashion possible except that you can't charge for the reproduction.
I've got a zillion hours of music, I downloaded it from the internet and the RIAA may kiss my PC's parallel port 'cause its all legal.
Now if you want some icky top forty boy band puke you're S.O.L. Improve your taste in music, or pay the RIAA tax
The Grateful Dead
Widespread Panic
Phish
Moe
Those are four I listen to - excellent music - freely available via Torrent. Plenty more out there if you go looking. Oh, you want ass sucking top forty crapola? Well that, my friend, will cost you $15.98/CD and it won't change.
The bands don't suck, they do what the RIAA member execs tell them. The RIAA doesn't suck, they enforce their copyrights. The fans? Yes, most of the fans suck, and specifically their taste in music is the source of the sucking.
I will now go chill out and listen to some feelgood hippie music I downloaded
This venting is fine, but what are you people really *doing* about the whole situation? I put a post out on the Omaha Linux User's Group http://olug.org this morning - a call for those actively involved in eroding SCO's market share to speak.
...
We found one guy who killed one SCO box, another guy who is going to remove a dozen from his business by the end of the year, and we discovered THE WORLD'S LARGEST SCO INSTALLATION is right here, infesting our fair city.
I know that this company has already announced internally that they're going to Redhat in place of SCO, but the systems guys are fighting them - Redhat means porting work, while NetBSD is binary compatible.
Is there a binary compat mode for SCO on Redhat? Is there some technical reason why the NetBSD implementation is favored by their techies? Enquiring minds want to know
I interviewed a sales guy today and the focus is marketing two experienced NT/Netware admins. They'll support the systems they're used to handling but they're going to learn Samba and Mars_NWE and start whacking those systems where appropriate.
...
a nic i386
I've been 'exploiting' an Open Source OS - just placed a php/postgres developer, and my ill gotten gains from his work are what is going to feed the marketing weasel. Am I an evil corporate scumbag? I wore a t-shirt, jean shorts, and sandals to work today, and nobody said shit about it because I'M THE COMPANY PRESIDENT!!! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh! I am a slashdot.heretic - see below:
[panic] ~> uname -a
FreeBSD panic.slashdot.net 4.8-STABLE FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE #13: Fri Aug 1 14:39:01 CDT 2003 puzzled@panic.slashdot.net:/usr/src/sys/compile/p
Out of the box most access points are configured for maximum throughput. 802.11b is CSMA/CA - collission avoidance. The CA features are disabled unless you turn on maximum fragment size and some other stuff so that the clients ask the AP for permission to transmit.
802.11 by design assumes that two transmitting clients can see each other. When remotes can't see each other, say in an outdoor access scenario, as soon as the cell gets busy you have to be all over the tuning parameters to keep the complaints down to a dull roar.
I've seen cells with a dozen customers that get excellent throughput, then one node gets added in a problem area and *everyone's* throughput goes right down to the same level as the problem node.
FYI the best DoS for 802.11b is built right in to the MAC layer. If two access points share a channel, each will honor the other's collision avoidance stuff at L2 - WEP, etc do not protect you. All you need to do is modify drivers on your DoS box such that they periodically try to seize the medium without regard for what else is going on - brings the AP you're after to a screeching halt, isn't visible in terms of their SSID, and you only need enough power to get the AP's attention. You'd have to be a guru with kismet and know way more about 802.11b MAC layer than I do to detect this stuff, then you're left trying to DF a low power source
I used to own an early model Icom PCR1000 - nice receiver, could hear cell bands, but WHO THE HELL CARES? You get to hear the cell site side of a two way conversation and its usually some yokel who can't afford a digital phone trying to rig a meeting with his girlfriend while his wife is at the grocery store.
Don't violate the FCC's rules to listen to crap like that - just use the thing to tune in to Jerry Springer and you'll see the results of what happens when people make calls on analog cellular.
This guy is right on and that goes double if you're going to be putting the device outdoors.
APs are *stupid* - if you use a unix OS on Soekris you can run current tcpdump + libpcap and *see* low level 802.11b errors. I'm doing this with an eye on a drop in device when troubleshooting is required at an outdoor site.
If you were in Ethiopia in the late 1970s you'd have seen wonders - East German agriculture experts helping the locals plant their hybrid wheat. The wheat grew to an amazing height ... and then collapsed because the heads of the plants were too heavy for the root systems that grew in the thin soil. The East Germans went home, the Ethiopians starved.
Giving aid to third world countries might make you *feel* better, but if it is aid given on a regular basis rather than a one time event in response to some sort of natural disaster such as drought, you're just compounding the problem - if a country can't produce enough food, nor enough economic output to buy the food it needs, ponder how cruel it is to those children - the one who would have never been conceived without the food aid.
Its a horrible muddle, and double horrible in sub Saharan Africa, but I think we have to let things work themselves out - if you're over populated, well, you're over populated.
If you want to aid a third world country, create a scholarship fund so natives of that country can attend a first rate university, then let *them* go home and fix the problem. Its cheaper, kinder, and much more effective than recreating the welfare dependence we see here in the U.S.
Various people have spoken up about our mystery ISM band source here in Omaha - here are the details on why its so hard to track it.
... since I've heard from them as they try to track down the same problem.
... I'd love to nail this one down before the whole city gives up on ISM.
The observed signal strength of the problem source on a tower in northern Cass county is the same as the signal from the back of a Maxrad sector with a 250mw amp six feet from the antenna. Yes, we turned off all the other ISM stuff at the site before testing the signal strength on the problem signal, no there isn't anything else near the site.
We know the signal is somewhere in a cone 30* wide centered on 0* (due north). We've driven six or seven miles towards the signal when its active, but the problem is that it is intermitent - comes on for fifteen minutes at a time, then goes away.
I know both of the amateur TV operators in the area and its not them. I know where most of the other wireless ISPs have stuff
This is happening in Douglas/Sarpy/Cass county - right on top of Offut AFB. Those kids riding in the back of the Rivet Joint aircraft do get bored - a couple of years ago they got caught opening about a third of all the garage doors in Bellevue on climb out, but we've watched and we don't see a correlation between aircraft with big radomes and this problem.
At this point it is really a mystery - the signal is so hot it looks like we're right in the beam from a 4' dish and given the levels we ought to be able to easily see the source's location, but we see it from a broad area so we know its some sort of point to multipoint system. Its way way way too hot to be ATV - looks like several kilowatts of EIRP.
So if any of you gurus out there are watching this subthread speak up
I just got my first Soekris box a few days ago - haven't had much of a chance to play, but they fill the same niche as this northtec stuff *and* they take power over ethernet - very handy for remote deploys - say a router for a wireless network running the MikroTik OS
I founded two of the three wireless providers operating in the metro Omaha area (#53 in terms of market size) and I can assure you that cellular is going to stomp balls on unlicensed wireless services.
... its not an *if*, its a 'how soon'.
... yet ... but I am aware of several additional point to multipoint installs in that band that are going to compete with the service I built last year. The UNI-I band noise floor is going to reach the same ridiculous levels we see in ISM - it is just a matter of time.
... and with the instability of ISM obviously going to happen in UNI-I no one with the money to drive that sort of activitry is going to be silly enough to get involved.
... which they can already do for the tougher mobile market and they can not bury themselves in stupid anti-customer policies like the cable modem industry. People are going to pay for a network attachmen they can *use*, not a service for downloading Hello, Kitty skins for their cell phones.
What we've seen in the last six weeks in the ISM band here in Omaha is an indication of the future of the whole industry.
Someone, somewhere, which we can't locate, has put up something in the ISM band we can't identify which produces an observed signal strength at a range of ten plus miles that is equal to the signal strength observed *six feet* from a multipoint sector antenna amped to the legal maximum. This has been the final blow for service coming from the second highest location in the city. Crowding and poor practice on the highest point make it equally precarious. Unless you *own* the rights to the ISM band on the structure you're using as a central site, you *will* get screwed
The situation in the UNI-I band isn't that grim
You have to understand the economics of the thing to know why it isn't going to work - even if you don't have technical problems like we're seeing here the only place ISM band wireless is going to succeed is in rural areas.
Customers view wireless as a competitor to DSL and cable and that is a loser's game - if you aren't selling some additional service on your circuit you're pissing away money at the $40/mo mark. The money spot is above a T1 and below a DS3
All that needs to happen for G3 to succeed is for them to provide ISDN like speed to fixed installs
Those are tiny little radios - find out the frequency they use, rig up $10 worth of Radio Shack parts, hook it up to a 9v battery, and go for a walk in the offending store.
If you feed them an order of magnitude more energy than they're designed to take in exactly the band they're using
Yes, you can know the operating frequency without a fancy spectrum analyzer - the data sheets on those things are pretty much public knowledge
Our entire society is suffering from a bad case of collective attention deficit disorder. We see news on television and the broadcaster devotes thirty seconds of time to an issue that the Economist gives four pages of detailed analysis. If you don't know what the Economist is, you're part of the problem :-)
... who produce quality work :-) The sensation of the moment boy bands are going to end up filed next to Abba and the BeeGees, and god willing we'll see no more of them as richer, more meaningful work will be the only thing that makes its way into long term public hearing.
The music artist has for many years crafted records that contain up to a dozen songs and have an ongoing theme. One or two of those songs might become 'hits', while the rest will be appreciated by those who know the artist well enough to purchase the entire recording.
Many of you have heard Jackson Browne's "Running On Empty", but how many of you have ever sat and listened to the entire "Late For The Sky" CD? *All* of this entire album packs the same punch as "Running On Empty" but it is completely unknown.
Our society's view of the world is changing to a sound bite centric, unfocused perspective. The artists can complain, but they're fighting a gigantic force and they won't be sucessful.
What will the landscape for albums look like as time progresses? I'd suggest you look for the recorded material of bands like the Grateful Dead, Widespread Panic, Moe, Phish, etc - these so called 'jam bands' allow fans to tape all their live music and distribute it freely.
I think this move will be freeing for the artists
Several carriers will move multicast data - Sprint comes to mind, I think UUNet does, and I hear there are some other tier 1 providers out there, but I don't use them
Only works as long as all the clients are on multicast aware networks
I've got my technician license and I mess around on 2 meter and 70 centimeter bands. I'm studying for my general so I can play on the world wide HF bands.
I grew up somewhere famously flat, so I go alpine hiking/rock climbing when I get the chance - next weekend! near Red Rocks! After Widespread Panic show!!!
I've owned a Glock 17, Glock 19, Ruger P85(sucks), a Smith and Wesson Model 19, a Smith and Wesson Model 640, and a bunch of long guns. We've got an excellent range here in the city but I really wish I had an outdoor location where I could use a large rifle.
I've seen Ritalin being sold on the street and consumed by the same crowd that later got in to inhaling methamphetamine. You are consuming a *dangerous* drug and ADHD is not a temporary thing.
Wellbutrin is an even more subtle demon. If you've got the slightest hint of a substance abuse problem you're standing on a very slippery slope every time you put one of those things in your mouth.
ADHD is masively over diagnosed - many times it is PADD - parental attention deficit disorder. Are you *certain* you're not in this category?
I'd try *everything* in the book and make stuff up on my own before I'd accept that diagnosis. I score high on every adult ADHD indicator except 'robbery with confrontation' and my solution was not more chemicals - I just rearranged my career so that my possible 'disorder' became an asset.
If you can't focus around distractions(people) but you hyperfocus and get a lot done on your own, work yourself into a position where this does you good
You've been invited to participate in a "Death March" project - if it fails, the company fails, if it succeeds, you ensure they're going to have you do the same thing again as soon as they find the right opportunity.
If you want to do something about it collective action is the only route and you're leaving yourself wide open to being replaced by contractors. I've been in this place before but I was a one man band
I don't see anyone posting who is looking at the bigger picture here. Software jobs are getting exported to places like India, where someone younger/sharper than you works for 25% of what you make. Are you nervous yet? This is the same thing that happened to manufacturing in the US in the 1980s and its going to happen to white collar jobs over the first twenty years of the twenty first century.
Globalization got you cheap tennis shoes and you didn't understand that they were going to end up on someone's foot planted in your behind, did you?
Don't be too hard on them, they're getting the same treatment from the management above them, who is getting it from the CEO, who is getting it from the board, who is getting it from Wall Street.
The 'duck' antennas that come on Linksys APs are 2.2dBi - they pretty much radiate in a flattened bubble shape.
... think of its pattern as more of a fluffy pancake shape rather than the slightly flattened ball pattern you get with a low gain duck.
If you replace the 2.2 dBi duck with an external 8.2dB omnidirectional antenna you'll have something roughly twice as tall that will put four times as much energy where you need it
I live in an old house with solid wood doors. My desktop provides an adhoc network for my laptop in my room. If either my bedroom door or the office door is open it works with a duck, if they're both closed I get no signal. I had a 17dB panel and the appropriate cable - using this put 32x the energy where I needed it and I get solid connections with both doors closed.
I previously lived in a newer split level. The AP was at one end of the house in the basement, my room was all the way at the other end on the second floor. A 30mw Linksys with a duck was just useless, but adding a 12dB Cushcraft 90 degree sector gave excellent service all over the house.
Bluster, claim to have nuclear weapons, then get food aid. I can't be the only one seeing the parallels.
I see today on CNN that the South Korean Navy fired on 'intruders'. Wouldn't ESR look good in one of those cute little navy uniforms?
IBM should do the math - purchase them, or crush them? I hope the choice is crush, given the behavior SCO has put out over this attempted 'sale'.
Some whiny end user type responded to my post about the economics of being an internet provider with a brief rant on how technology should have brought the cost of a T1 down a long time ago.
Lets investigate the reality behind a typical Sprint T1 install at $1,000/month.
A T1 is composed of several components, the first being the local loop to the CO. You've got two or four copper wires buried in the ground, an NIU on the customer end and some sort of gear in the central office. This costs $285/month for on net to off net termination in my city and that is a pretty typical number.
Once you get to that termination gear you've got to negotiate the LEC's metro optical network to reach the point where they interconnect with the ISP's equipment. Despite being #53 in terms of population nationally my city doesn't have enough Sprint T1s on my ILEC to qualify for its own DS3 mux so my Sprint T1 gets drug forty miles south west to our provincial state capitol. This is non trivial, but its priced as part of that $285/month.
Once you get to the ISP's edge equipment you're probably getting 'back hauled' cross country to some location where they've got a Cisco 12000 series or some big Juniper box. You should be reading "WAN line costs", "hardended telco facilties costs", "depreciation on equipment you *can't* get at Best Buy", etc, etc.
This gets you to the ISP's network and their customers. Somewhere, out there, they peer with other top level carriers, and that is how you get to the global internet.
Besides not being able to buy the gear at Best Buy you can't *hire* the geniuses needed to make it all go from behind the counter of a local McDonalds. If you want someone who can pour piss out of a transit autonomous system without refering to the instructions printed on the heel of a Cisco 12008 you pay. If you want someone to answer the phone when the customer calls you pay. Scale that up by ten thousand T1 customers and you can imagine what is required - a real live company, so large it must be publically held to receive the funding it needs.
Bandwidth is like real estate. You can get an address on Skyline Boulevard (Sprint or UUNet DS1), you can move in to section 8 housing at 2209 Jones Street and heckle crack dealers (DSL), or maybe you're upscale enough to get a doublewide at 64th and Grover (cable modem), but make no mistake about how the world is gonna be - you plant petunias in the 'hood (VPN applications), homey's pit bull(Kazaa) is gonna take a dump there the very next day.
I've posted on this so many times I've written it up and placed it in my journal
http://slashdot.org/~puzzled
Here it is again briefly:
A T1 has 24 x 64kb channels. Getting one from a top level provider like Sprint or UUNet will cost about $1000/mo or $40/channel/month.
A 256kb DSL link is four channels and costs about $40/mo. Four channels times $40/mo = $160/mo cost for the ISP. I realize the average math skills of slashdot readers are about eighth grade level, so I'll finish it for you - $40/mo revenue minus $160/mo cost = -$120/mo. This is what happens to ISPs when people doing file sharing of any sort leave their retail connections running 24x7 and consume bandwidth in a wholesale fashion.
Its not about the MPAA or RIAA, evil scumbags that they may be, its just simple cost that is going to do in file sharing. Stop being a whiny end user and pay for some quality bandwidth, or shut the *(&@$(%*&@#$% up about it already.
I just sent a note to Fred Cohen about this
I didn't realize I worked with such bigshots
Geez, you'd think you guys have never seen a business using a SCO box - they are and have been irrelevant for many years now.
These guys apparently expect to build a full routed network with their own IP addressing scheme that will encompass the entire US and *NOT* connect to the public internet. Riiigggghhhttttt.
...
Excuse me, but don't we already *have* a perfectly good public internet? What is the value of LanLinkup? Its good slashdot fodder but what other purpose does it have? None, I say, and I'd like to see anyone come up with a valid counter to this.
If *I* were going to spend time picking fights with windmills, I'd be trying to roll out an IPv6 scheme, I'd certainly let people connect it to the public internet(as if that is something that can be dictated), and I'd avoid 802.11b like the plague - go google for "Icom" and "D-STAR" and see the future - 128kbit connections that can reach twenty or more miles from a well done base station, 10GHz repeater links, voice as well as data
So, if you *really* want to get involved in hooking stuff together, ignore the wireless lan technology, go get your ham technician ticket, and get with the program.
re: isp-lists - I hear they did raise the rates on isp-equipment, but I hadn't noticed that this had occured on ISP wireless - I'm in the middle of a move and not paying attetion.
The responder is dead right on the part-15.org mailing list - I'd heard about this from Marlon Schafer or Michael Anderson, just haven't had time to get involved.