The GPL is not some weird contract, some new experiment in copyright law interpretation that requries a test in court.. it is a straightforward license (which is different from a contract). it is, in fact, very clearly a license, not a contract.
It DOES NOT take away any rights: Copyright allows you certain things by default. The GPL grants you other rights IN ADDITION to those allowed under copyright law, under certain conditions.
There is nothing to test in court (any more than any license needs to be tested in court).
We are not talking about freedom here.. or the relative freedom of various licenses..
As people keep saying, it's very, very simple. If the GPL is not valid... then show how you had permission to create a derived work from MY code. Plain and simple. Either you had no license to do so, in which copyright law applies, and what you did was illegal, or you have the GPL, which says you can do this, within limits.
- Nothing is totally secure, if it's at all useful.
- Windows is demonstrably NOT secure. IT's been riddled with nasty bugs for years.. and for Joe Average, WHY doesn't matter.
- OS X is without question far more secure than windows, and less buggy. That is not to say it's immune, or that it can't be hurt ever, but several factors both in low-level design, and in user interface design, specifically how easily users can turn on and off certain services, makes it less prone to exploits.
- Yes, it has a smaller market share, and hence, less attention is focused on it, and that certainly IS a factor.. but it doesn't change the fact that mac users don't have to worry about viruses on a dialy basis at the moment. It also isn't the only factor, and hardly means "Oh it's just as insecure as windows"
The #1 insecurities in windows are related to bad design... and a narrow interpretation of how the computer will be used in a network environment. Having all these services listening by default is bad. Having them difficult to shut off is even worse.
I mean I'm no authority on it.. but Morocco is not really one of the "terorrist hotspots" of the muslim world..
The King has been very adamant about keeping muslim fundamentalists out of the country. The chiefly muslim population of Morocco are indeed very muslim, wear traditional garb, etc, but are not fundamentalist weirdos.. they respect others, other religions, and generally don't hate westerners.
Aside from being poor, Morocco was a neat place to visit, and the people were surprisingly well educated about world politics and geography, considering the poverty levels.
There are a lot of ferry rides across between Spain & Morocco on a daily basis. They are usually always packed.
Ferries run from Algeciras to Tangiers and Ceuta
Ferries also run several days a week from Gibraltar to Tangiers (not to Ceuta, I dont' think.. Spain hates Gib)
There is definately money to be had, anyway....
The economic value of such a tunnel would outshine any "spat" over territory...
What are they fighting over, anyway, Ceuta?
(Ceuta is a spanish protectorate/territory/colony/whatever in morocco, basically across the straight from Gibraltar.)
Commercia shipping is probably one of the largest reasons. Right now, the only way to get stuff from North Africa to ship it over the water. That's slow.
This would also give shippers a reason to bring more goods through Spain, as opposed to shipping around Spain (once you have the stuff loaded onto a ship.. might as well use that to your advantage.. why bother with spain at all?)
From Gibraltar or Algeciras to the coast of Morocco is about 15 miles, on a clear day you can see the Rif mountains in Morocco... if you are elevated at all, you can see the beaches and houes of Morocco.
A bridge or tunnel is not THAT rediculous, though given the fact that it's open ocean, and all that implies, it's no easy task.
I think we are still at the very beginning of the information age... I can't imagine what kind of information storage and retrieval devices we will have in 100 years.
I'm not talking star-trek here.. let's look at what is technically feasible now, even if it's not economically viable.
Storing terabytes of information per cubic inch of some material, with picosecond access times.
Communication - Despite regulatory stifling of the internet.. the concept that if we follow standards, and cooperate, we can leverage all kinds of communication mediums, is here now. Speeds are going up and up.. the "last mile" problem is just momentary.
So.. as our ability to store and move information goes up and up.. so what?
We are getting good at digitizing things, too.
Movies. Audio. 3d scanners. Motion capture. Auto-generated 3d meshes from image analysis of 2d images...
Despite no real big noise about it now, there is ongoing progressive work in the field of image recognition.
Teleconferencing. VoIP. Wireless... look at what's happenign there. Look how much 802.11b stuff is changing how we think about wireless.. how many mom & pop outfits are providing services over it.. and that's a TINY, TINY slice of spectrum.. what would happen if we REALLY got serious about open wireless communcation?
Every time we think "Oh I can store lots of movies on a hard drive" or "Lots of music"
I disagree. I think this is the beginning.. the very beginning, of what we will become. People storing terabytes of data at home will be normal, and no big deal. We won't worry about hard drives crashing.
We are still coming into the information age, and to think we have mastered it is silly.
We are still seeing an old economy grasping at bits of data, trying to hold on to their old-world products as we digitize them, and make them available to everyone.
What you say might be true if you are IN the US... as there are lots of more common forms of ID that can be used for basically everything... though your passport will work for all of them as well....
Living abroad, your passpot IS your identification, and trumps anything else you get. Expat living in some other country? You want a bank account? Let's see your passport. Pulled over speeding? Let's see your passport. Need to fill out any kind of local government documentation? Let's see your passport. Need to buy a car? Let's see your passport.
The passport is the most universally recognized form of identification out there. It's federal, and official.
When I go back to Canada, I can use my passport for EVERYTHING. ID at clubs, ID at the bank, etc.. its' one of the three or four officiall photo identifications you can use. Provincial ID, Driver's License, Passport, please. (Firearms Acquisition Certificate will also do... it's federal, has your photo, and has a lot more auditing in order to get than any of the rest.). There are a few government issued employee ids that will also do.. but that's not commonly available.
Actually, the liability is usually $50 MAX *if* the card is stolen, and then, only before you report it.
If it's just fraudulent use, but your card wasn't stolen, you are not liable for a penny.
Further, this $50 liability is somewhat misleading, as the credit card company cannot charge you unless they can prove that you authorized the transaction....
If there is no signature, and no evidence that you yourself received the goods... (say they had no signature because it was an internet purchase, but the shipping address was your house..... thats' good evidence that you authorized it)
they can't charge you a dime.
If your agreement says something other than that, you need to shop around.
Look. Here is what I care about with my credit card:
- If reasonable proof can't be shown that I personally authorized a transaction, I will not be held responsible for it.
That's it. That's all. The line of credit is between me and the issuer... the card is simply a token that represents that. Historically, you had to be there in PERSON to use one.. but everyone looks the other way for convenience, online work, etc.
I don't care what method visa or whoever comes up with to represent that token. If it's less convenient for me, I won't use it. If it somehow rips me off, I won't use it. If it makes me more liable for fraud, I won't use it. If they take all the risks, I don't care if it's a smart card or a credit card or a proximity card.
Now.. that said.. having proximity cards / RFID type cards does bother me.. it seems like a bad move. It doesn't give ME, the customer, anything I really want. So.. it simply won't fly.
I won't have my credit card dictated to me.. its' not about the card, it's about the agreement... and about credit.
I guess I did a quick google, and the first few links came up with an Alan Cox who was a Professor of Computing Science, and I just jumped to conclusions.
The original point still stands... these people do have degrees.
You can rant all you like about how it's not the same...
1) They are clear, up front, about what they are offering, how it works, and what the technical restrictions are.
2) If you aren't a normal mac user, it's not as appealing to you.. realize that mac users tend to already use itunes, and use it a lot, and the store is just THERE.. in the same interface you use to organize ALL your music. You can browse the store the same way, listen to samples the same way, and once you set up your account, which is very, very easy, you can purchase songs with a click.
So.. if you feel it violates your rights, great... don't use it.
what you fail to realize is that not every consumer is concerned with owning everything.. on a tight budget, sure, iTMS is not a great deal, necessarily.... but it IS the first big, working example of how this can work. The fact that the record labels are getting all the cash is simply because all the artists signed with those labels.. did you know any artist can submit stuff to the iTMS to be sold? Those that do aren't under the grip of big labels.. their deal is with Apple.
If you were sitting in front of a Mac, in your office, with a disposable income to spend on "entertainment", you might find that making a couple clicks in the morning to get a couple new tracks to listen to suits you just fine... I mean, what does it matter to you where you can copy it if you are going to do all your listening in one place?
That still does not absolve the state. You can rely on the expertise of a contractor to figure stuff out, but YOU still have to approve it, and make sure it meets your own requirements.
In case you missed it, I said I'm not arguing sco's case.. just pointing out that the reasoning this guy was using is totally full of errors, and is quite uninformed.
There may be perfectly valid analysis that suggests sco is not under attack, but so far I haven't seen it.
I've dealt with huge synflood attacks, in the wild. Most of the things you say you think you know here are simply not true, I'm sorry.
Tools to mitigate synfloods only help to a marginal degree if the attack is done correctly.
First, bandwidth is an issue. Determined hackers can bring GIGABITS of syn requests in... NO, I'm not exaggerating in the least. if you aren't colo'd somewhere with massive bandwidth in the first place, all the "mitigation tools" you want won't help you, as you will be out of bandwidth. Completely. The days of 1Kbps synflood shutting you down may be gone.. but nowadays when attackers want to hit you, they hit you with tens of megabits, to start with.. so not only is it a syn flood, it's just plain a FLOOD.
Provided you DO have enough bandwidth, you need a way to differentiate between valid syns and attacker syns.. which is a fundamental problem. If the attacker has enough hosts he can do full source address spoofing from, you are just plain screwed.. your attack prevention device won't do anything at all, as there is NO way to differentiate between good and bad traffic, fundamentally.
Syncookies increase the rate at which you can deal with syns, but they are by no means a solution to the synflood problem, the problem still exists with or without syn cookies. Let me say that again.. syncookies do NOT solve the synflood problem.. they just lighten the load on the machine, and let it deal with more requests at once.
Putting a box out front that can sink LOTS of syn requests, and only pass valid, established connections through to the real servers HELPS.... but only to a point. only as long as it can keep up with the flood.. which when we are takling about gigabit speeds, is tough.
IN short, if your servers are colo'd at a really, really fast network, and you have really, really good equipment, and people who know how to deal with it, you can deal with this kind of attack, most of the time. You can absolutely build a system or setup that is basically immune to this.... but tha'ts far more engineering and resources than many even very large companies throw at their stuff.
It's nowhere near as trivial as you are making it out to be, and considering the number of attacks I've seen in the last six months, in person, I have no trouble at all believing sco is getting trashed. well, except that everything they say is generally bullshit, but that's a different matter entirely.
Second, when PR people start talking about "can't access the intranet, etc" they may mean "can't access it from outside" or something like that.. give it a rest. Intranet has different meanings to different places..
And you should know, how things SHOULD be designed is rarely how they ARE designed, even by people who should and do know better.
Let's remember something else.. the state puts out the contract for these, and ACCEPTED them.. they were the ones responsible for spending the money wisely, NOT Diebold.
If the state failed to insist on a paper trail, how can you scream at Diebold for not providing one?
Look. You can debate exact definitions all you want, okay?
Joe average cannot legally set up a link such as this, and use it for whatever.
The distance challenge with wifi is all about power, and precision.. if you are allowed to violate FCC regs, I could build you a wifi link to the moon, it's not a problem.
I don't really care what modulation technique is used.. if it's in an unlicensed band, and available to joe average, that's what matters. Nothing more. For that matter, for a point to point link, it doesn't even matter if it's 802.11 at all.. a proprietary protocol in the same band is just fine, and might even work better.
802.11, btw, includes specs for FHSS systems, and is indeed 'Wifi"
Yes, it's cool that some students made an 80km link. But it's not surprising, nor really a large feat of engineering, though I"m sure it was a fun project.
Showing all the calculations for gain, cable & path loss, timing adjustments to the protocol, and showing how it all stays within FCC regulations for joe average would have made a much more interesting read.
I am referring to the setup itself, and whether or not it should be considered a "wifi distance limit".. as it's not legal wifi.
I'm fully aware that with the proper licenses (such as ham) this can be set up and tested. That doesn't change the fact that joe average can't legally go out and set up the same thing, and especially not commercially.
Give that's not hard at all.. I find it funny the students are unaware if they are within FCC regs.. I would think especially a univeristy teaching stuff liket his would have a proper site license for experimenting, and would also be teaching the rules. It's not hard.. highschool math.
They used a 27dBi gain parabolic... so that's 21dBi over 6dBi, so they should have reduced the input power by 7dBi.. Which should be, well, less than 500mW. They siad they used a 500mW amp... so without even doing any more math, it looks like this setup would be illegal in the US.
I suppose if they were using the amp only to overcome antenna cable loss and a wimpy radio to begin with... it would be okay.
Cool.. I didn't think there were differnet specs for multipoint though... how you set up the network, or the particulars of the air protocol used aren't supposed to matter... you could just be broadcasting data over DSSS and that's that...
or maybe I'm misinterpreting what you mean by multipoint.
Respectfully.. did you (or they) do the math and show that it violated FCC regulations, or are you just assuming that because there is an amplifier, it's illegal (which would be wrong)
Just because it's not amplified doesn't mean it's within power limits either.. the amount of transmit gain from the antenna is regulated as well.. though the US restrictions on this are more forgiving than other countries, effectively allowing for longer links.. if I remmeber correctly. Still, it is quite possible to blow the FCC limits without using an amplifier.
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Did you read the article?
The GPL is not some weird contract, some new experiment in copyright law interpretation that requries a test in court.. it is a straightforward license (which is different from a contract). it is, in fact, very clearly a license, not a contract.
It DOES NOT take away any rights: Copyright allows you certain things by default. The GPL grants you other rights IN ADDITION to those allowed under copyright law, under certain conditions.
There is nothing to test in court (any more than any license needs to be tested in court).
We are not talking about freedom here.. or the relative freedom of various licenses..
As people keep saying, it's very, very simple. If the GPL is not valid... then show how you had permission to create a derived work from MY code. Plain and simple. Either you had no license to do so, in which copyright law applies, and what you did was illegal, or you have the GPL, which says you can do this, within limits.
My summary of the situation:
- Nothing is totally secure, if it's at all useful.
- Windows is demonstrably NOT secure. IT's been riddled with nasty bugs for years.. and for Joe Average, WHY doesn't matter.
- OS X is without question far more secure than windows, and less buggy. That is not to say it's immune, or that it can't be hurt ever, but several factors both in low-level design, and in user interface design, specifically how easily users can turn on and off certain services, makes it less prone to exploits.
- Yes, it has a smaller market share, and hence, less attention is focused on it, and that certainly IS a factor.. but it doesn't change the fact that mac users don't have to worry about viruses on a dialy basis at the moment. It also isn't the only factor, and hardly means "Oh it's just as insecure as windows"
The #1 insecurities in windows are related to bad design... and a narrow interpretation of how the computer will be used in a network environment. Having all these services listening by default is bad. Having them difficult to shut off is even worse.
Nope... didnt' notice, only went over a couple times, from Algeciras. I'd believe it, though. Gib ferry wasn't running when I wanted to go.
Where did you get that?
I mean I'm no authority on it.. but Morocco is not really one of the "terorrist hotspots" of the muslim world..
The King has been very adamant about keeping muslim fundamentalists out of the country. The chiefly muslim population of Morocco are indeed very muslim, wear traditional garb, etc, but are not fundamentalist weirdos.. they respect others, other religions, and generally don't hate westerners.
Aside from being poor, Morocco was a neat place to visit, and the people were surprisingly well educated about world politics and geography, considering the poverty levels.
I lived in Gibraltar for a while.
There are a lot of ferry rides across between Spain & Morocco on a daily basis. They are usually always packed.
Ferries run from Algeciras to Tangiers and Ceuta
Ferries also run several days a week from Gibraltar to Tangiers (not to Ceuta, I dont' think.. Spain hates Gib)
There is definately money to be had, anyway....
The economic value of such a tunnel would outshine any "spat" over territory...
What are they fighting over, anyway, Ceuta?
(Ceuta is a spanish protectorate/territory/colony/whatever in morocco, basically across the straight from Gibraltar.)
Commercia shipping is probably one of the largest reasons. Right now, the only way to get stuff from North Africa to ship it over the water. That's slow.
This would also give shippers a reason to bring more goods through Spain, as opposed to shipping around Spain (once you have the stuff loaded onto a ship.. might as well use that to your advantage.. why bother with spain at all?)
From Gibraltar or Algeciras to the coast of Morocco is about 15 miles, on a clear day you can see the Rif mountains in Morocco... if you are elevated at all, you can see the beaches and houes of Morocco.
A bridge or tunnel is not THAT rediculous, though given the fact that it's open ocean, and all that implies, it's no easy task.
I think we are still at the very beginning of the information age... I can't imagine what kind of information storage and retrieval devices we will have in 100 years.
I'm not talking star-trek here.. let's look at what is technically feasible now, even if it's not economically viable.
Storing terabytes of information per cubic inch of some material, with picosecond access times.
Communication - Despite regulatory stifling of the internet.. the concept that if we follow standards, and cooperate, we can leverage all kinds of communication mediums, is here now. Speeds are going up and up.. the "last mile" problem is just momentary.
So.. as our ability to store and move information goes up and up.. so what?
We are getting good at digitizing things, too.
Movies. Audio.
3d scanners. Motion capture. Auto-generated 3d meshes from image analysis of 2d images...
Despite no real big noise about it now, there is ongoing progressive work in the field of image recognition.
Teleconferencing.
VoIP.
Wireless... look at what's happenign there. Look how much 802.11b stuff is changing how we think about wireless.. how many mom & pop outfits are providing services over it.. and that's a TINY, TINY slice of spectrum.. what would happen if we REALLY got serious about open wireless communcation?
Every time we think "Oh I can store lots of movies on a hard drive" or "Lots of music"
I disagree. I think this is the beginning.. the very beginning, of what we will become. People storing terabytes of data at home will be normal, and no big deal. We won't worry about hard drives crashing.
We are still coming into the information age, and to think we have mastered it is silly.
We are still seeing an old economy grasping at bits of data, trying to hold on to their old-world products as we digitize them, and make them available to everyone.
BS.
What you say might be true if you are IN the US... as there are lots of more common forms of ID that can be used for basically everything... though your passport will work for all of them as well....
Living abroad, your passpot IS your identification, and trumps anything else you get. Expat living in some other country? You want a bank account? Let's see your passport. Pulled over speeding? Let's see your passport. Need to fill out any kind of local government documentation? Let's see your passport. Need to buy a car? Let's see your passport.
The passport is the most universally recognized form of identification out there. It's federal, and official.
When I go back to Canada, I can use my passport for EVERYTHING. ID at clubs, ID at the bank, etc.. its' one of the three or four officiall photo identifications you can use.
Provincial ID, Driver's License, Passport, please. (Firearms Acquisition Certificate will also do... it's federal, has your photo, and has a lot more auditing in order to get than any of the rest.). There are a few government issued employee ids that will also do.. but that's not commonly available.
Actually, the liability is usually $50 MAX *if* the card is stolen, and then, only before you report it.
If it's just fraudulent use, but your card wasn't stolen, you are not liable for a penny.
Further, this $50 liability is somewhat misleading, as the credit card company cannot charge you unless they can prove that you authorized the transaction....
If there is no signature, and no evidence that you yourself received the goods... (say they had no signature because it was an internet purchase, but the shipping address was your house..... thats' good evidence that you authorized it)
they can't charge you a dime.
If your agreement says something other than that, you need to shop around.
Look. Here is what I care about with my credit card:
- If reasonable proof can't be shown that I personally authorized a transaction, I will not be held responsible for it.
That's it. That's all. The line of credit is between me and the issuer... the card is simply a token that represents that. Historically, you had to be there in PERSON to use one.. but everyone looks the other way for convenience, online work, etc.
I don't care what method visa or whoever comes up with to represent that token. If it's less convenient for me, I won't use it. If it somehow rips me off, I won't use it. If it makes me more liable for fraud, I won't use it. If they take all the risks, I don't care if it's a smart card or a credit card or a proximity card.
Now.. that said.. having proximity cards / RFID type cards does bother me.. it seems like a bad move. It doesn't give ME, the customer, anything I really want. So.. it simply won't fly.
I won't have my credit card dictated to me.. its' not about the card, it's about the agreement... and about credit.
I guess I did a quick google, and the first few links came up with an Alan Cox who was a Professor of Computing Science, and I just jumped to conclusions.
The original point still stands... these people do have degrees.
You can rant all you like about how it's not the same...
1) They are clear, up front, about what they are offering, how it works, and what the technical restrictions are.
2) If you aren't a normal mac user, it's not as appealing to you.. realize that mac users tend to already use itunes, and use it a lot, and the store is just THERE.. in the same interface you use to organize ALL your music. You can browse the store the same way, listen to samples the same way, and once you set up your account, which is very, very easy, you can purchase songs with a click.
So.. if you feel it violates your rights, great... don't use it.
what you fail to realize is that not every consumer is concerned with owning everything.. on a tight budget, sure, iTMS is not a great deal, necessarily.... but it IS the first big, working example of how this can work. The fact that the record labels are getting all the cash is simply because all the artists signed with those labels.. did you know any artist can submit stuff to the iTMS to be sold? Those that do aren't under the grip of big labels.. their deal is with Apple.
If you were sitting in front of a Mac, in your office, with a disposable income to spend on "entertainment", you might find that making a couple clicks in the morning to get a couple new tracks to listen to suits you just fine... I mean, what does it matter to you where you can copy it if you are going to do all your listening in one place?
Alan Cox has a Ph.D in Computing Science
Linus also has a degree of some sort, I believe.
(strangely, can't seem to google up a reference to it)
It's more like you had to pay $5 every time you went in the park JUST IN CASE you littered, where yesterday you didn't have to pay.
And yes, it would cause more people to litter.. that's how people think.
It means that the attack was targetted at a webserver, and not the ftp server... leaving the ftp server working just fine.
I agree about bandwidth.. if it's all over the same link, it's not just a bandwidth issue if some things arrive.
Please note I'm not defending SCO here... or arguing their case... I'm just debunking some obviously wrong stuff in the parent post.
That still does not absolve the state. You can rely on the expertise of a contractor to figure stuff out, but YOU still have to approve it, and make sure it meets your own requirements.
In case you missed it, I said I'm not arguing sco's case.. just pointing out that the reasoning this guy was using is totally full of errors, and is quite uninformed.
There may be perfectly valid analysis that suggests sco is not under attack, but so far I haven't seen it.
I've dealt with huge synflood attacks, in the wild.
Most of the things you say you think you know here are simply not true, I'm sorry.
Tools to mitigate synfloods only help to a marginal degree if the attack is done correctly.
First, bandwidth is an issue. Determined hackers can bring GIGABITS of syn requests in... NO, I'm not exaggerating in the least. if you aren't colo'd somewhere with massive bandwidth in the first place, all the "mitigation tools" you want won't help you, as you will be out of bandwidth. Completely. The days of 1Kbps synflood shutting you down may be gone.. but nowadays when attackers want to hit you, they hit you with tens of megabits, to start with.. so not only is it a syn flood, it's just plain a FLOOD.
Provided you DO have enough bandwidth, you need a way to differentiate between valid syns and attacker syns.. which is a fundamental problem. If the attacker has enough hosts he can do full source address spoofing from, you are just plain screwed.. your attack prevention device won't do anything at all, as there is NO way to differentiate between good and bad traffic, fundamentally.
Syncookies increase the rate at which you can deal with syns, but they are by no means a solution to the synflood problem, the problem still exists with or without syn cookies. Let me say that again.. syncookies do NOT solve the synflood problem.. they just lighten the load on the machine, and let it deal with more requests at once.
Putting a box out front that can sink LOTS of syn requests, and only pass valid, established connections through to the real servers HELPS.... but only to a point. only as long as it can keep up with the flood.. which when we are takling about gigabit speeds, is tough.
IN short, if your servers are colo'd at a really, really fast network, and you have really, really good equipment, and people who know how to deal with it, you can deal with this kind of attack, most of the time. You can absolutely build a system or setup that is basically immune to this.... but tha'ts far more engineering and resources than many even very large companies throw at their stuff.
It's nowhere near as trivial as you are making it out to be, and considering the number of attacks I've seen in the last six months, in person, I have no trouble at all believing sco is getting trashed. well, except that everything they say is generally bullshit, but that's a different matter entirely.
Second, when PR people start talking about "can't access the intranet, etc" they may mean "can't access it from outside" or something like that.. give it a rest. Intranet has different meanings to different places..
And you should know, how things SHOULD be designed is rarely how they ARE designed, even by people who should and do know better.
Let's remember something else.. the state puts out the contract for these, and ACCEPTED them.. they were the ones responsible for spending the money wisely, NOT Diebold.
If the state failed to insist on a paper trail, how can you scream at Diebold for not providing one?
Look. You can debate exact definitions all you want, okay?
Joe average cannot legally set up a link such as this, and use it for whatever.
The distance challenge with wifi is all about power, and precision.. if you are allowed to violate FCC regs, I could build you a wifi link to the moon, it's not a problem.
I don't really care what modulation technique is used.. if it's in an unlicensed band, and available to joe average, that's what matters. Nothing more. For that matter, for a point to point link, it doesn't even matter if it's 802.11 at all.. a proprietary protocol in the same band is just fine, and might even work better.
802.11, btw, includes specs for FHSS systems, and is indeed 'Wifi"
Yes, it's cool that some students made an 80km link. But it's not surprising, nor really a large feat of engineering, though I"m sure it was a fun project.
Showing all the calculations for gain, cable & path loss, timing adjustments to the protocol, and showing how it all stays within FCC regulations for joe average would have made a much more interesting read.
I am referring to the setup itself, and whether or not it should be considered a "wifi distance limit".. as it's not legal wifi.
I'm fully aware that with the proper licenses (such as ham) this can be set up and tested. That doesn't change the fact that joe average can't legally go out and set up the same thing, and especially not commercially.
I'm not at all saying "they broke the law".
Okay so....
Give that's not hard at all.. I find it funny the students are unaware if they are within FCC regs.. I would think especially a univeristy teaching stuff liket his would have a proper site license for experimenting, and would also be teaching the rules. It's not hard.. highschool math.
They used a 27dBi gain parabolic... so that's 21dBi over 6dBi, so they should have reduced the input power by 7dBi..
Which should be, well, less than 500mW.
They siad they used a 500mW amp... so without even doing any more math, it looks like this setup would be illegal in the US.
I suppose if they were using the amp only to overcome antenna cable loss and a wimpy radio to begin with... it would be okay.
Cool.. I didn't think there were differnet specs for multipoint though... how you set up the network, or the particulars of the air protocol used aren't supposed to matter... you could just be broadcasting data over DSSS and that's that...
or maybe I'm misinterpreting what you mean by multipoint.
how do you determine it was illegally amplified?
Respectfully.. did you (or they) do the math and show that it violated FCC regulations, or are you just assuming that because there is an amplifier, it's illegal (which would be wrong)
Just because it's not amplified doesn't mean it's within power limits either.. the amount of transmit gain from the antenna is regulated as well.. though the US restrictions on this are more forgiving than other countries, effectively allowing for longer links.. if I remmeber correctly. Still, it is quite possible to blow the FCC limits without using an amplifier.