You are a computer programmer coming up to a tight deadline. You routinely work late into the night. Tonight you are working on a particularily tricky piece of code. You're stumped, so you decide to take a walk.
You're walking through a commercial neighborhood, It's 3 AM. You are in your most comfortable jeans and a penguin T-shirt. A police officer pulls you over.
Cop: Where are you going?
Geek: I'm just out for a walk.
Cop: Kind of late to be out walking?
Geek: I'm working on a project and I needed to get some air.
Cop: What's your name?
Geek: J. Random Hacker.
The cop seems satisfied and moves on
The next morning the manager of the computer barn down the street discovers his store has been burglarized.
Before noon you get a call from a familiar voice. 'We would like to ask you some questions'
Now you have to explain yourself. If your story dosen't absolutely convince the police you may be considered a suspect, even charged with the crime. As a routine part of checking your story, the cop will call your employer. You will have to explain yourself to your employer.
This alone is bad enough, but suppose, for the argument, that you did a few stupid things when you were younger and got in trouble with the police. Your name pops up on the investigating officers computer screen. Now you can be sure you are on the suspects list.
The perfectly inocent things you do in public can be subject to misinterpertation. Sometimes causing 'inconveniences' like in the above case. Should you stop going out in public late at night? Oh, that's right, you have nothing to hide.
We all know how lousy the service can be from large ISPs. Small ISPs are slow, and usualy can't risk adopting new, unproven technology.
To me, It seems obvious that wireless tech is perfectly suited to short range peer to peer connections in areas with high population density. The sort of stuff consume.net and SFLan are experimenting with.
Keep your ISP connection, stick a wavelan card into a cheap old 486, write some software and share your unused extra bandwidth with local geeks. A couple hundred dollars, some fun hacking and a few likeminded geeks in the neighbourhood and you have built yourself a (tiny) backbone site.
ISPs are just companies, they will always do what's best for their bottom line. There is no reason to believe that what they do will be good for the Internet, their customers, or the free flow of information. In fact there have been many examples of ISPs (especialy the big ones) doing bad things.
Don't wait for the ISPs, do it yourself.
The Internet has been polluted with comercial interests. The only way the Internet will become free is if Individuals take it back.
Think this is a neat idea? Bring it up at your next LUG meeting.
What's with this need to have everything bigger and better? Do you really need to have a car that will do 250 Kph? Does your dinner really need to be ready in 'just five minutes'?
If socialism can get me a 20 hour work week, a nice (not opulent) place to live and reduce the amount of CO I have to inhale on my cycle to work, well then Sign me up!
--'I wouldn't live there if you paid me' - The Talking Heads
Slashdot Mirror
Hypothetical situation:
You are a computer programmer coming up to a tight deadline. You routinely work late into the night. Tonight you are working on a particularily tricky piece of code. You're stumped, so you decide to take a walk.
You're walking through a commercial neighborhood, It's 3 AM. You are in your most comfortable jeans and a penguin T-shirt. A police officer pulls you over.
Cop: Where are you going?
Geek: I'm just out for a walk.
Cop: Kind of late to be out walking?
Geek: I'm working on a project and I needed to get some air.
Cop: What's your name?
Geek: J. Random Hacker.
The cop seems satisfied and moves on
The next morning the manager of the computer barn down the street discovers his store has been burglarized.
Before noon you get a call from a familiar voice. 'We would like to ask you some questions'
Now you have to explain yourself. If your story dosen't absolutely convince the police you may be considered a suspect, even charged with the crime. As a routine part of checking your story, the cop will call your employer. You will have to explain yourself to your employer.
This alone is bad enough, but suppose, for the argument, that you did a few stupid things when you were younger and got in trouble with the police. Your name pops up on the investigating officers computer screen. Now you can be sure you are on the suspects list.
The perfectly inocent things you do in public can be subject to misinterpertation. Sometimes causing 'inconveniences' like in the above case. Should you stop going out in public late at night? Oh, that's right, you have nothing to hide.
We all know how lousy the service can be from large ISPs. Small ISPs are slow, and usualy can't risk adopting new, unproven technology.
To me, It seems obvious that wireless tech is perfectly suited to short range peer to peer connections in areas with high population density. The sort of stuff consume.net and SFLan are experimenting with.
Keep your ISP connection, stick a wavelan card into a cheap old 486, write some software and share your unused extra bandwidth with local geeks. A couple hundred dollars, some fun hacking and a few likeminded geeks in the neighbourhood and you have built yourself a (tiny) backbone site.
ISPs are just companies, they will always do what's best for their bottom line. There is no reason to believe that what they do will be good for the Internet, their customers, or the free flow of information. In fact there have been many examples of ISPs (especialy the big ones) doing bad things.
Don't wait for the ISPs, do it yourself. The Internet has been polluted with comercial interests. The only way the Internet will become free is if Individuals take it back.
Think this is a neat idea? Bring it up at your next LUG meeting.
What's with this need to have everything bigger and better? Do you really need to have a car that will do 250 Kph? Does your dinner really need to be ready in 'just five minutes'?
If socialism can get me a 20 hour work week, a nice (not opulent) place to live and reduce the amount of CO I have to inhale on my cycle to work, well then Sign me up!
--'I wouldn't live there if you paid me' - The Talking Heads