I think there was a company that was planning to release a digital adapter that would replace a 35mm cartridge. I don't think this product went beyond the vaporware stage. Perhaps someone else on slashdot has a better memory than I do and can remember more details about this proposed product.
If you have a large format camera, you may want to look at digital backs from Leaf.
As much as I'd love to be able to drop a digital film replacement into any camera in my 35mm camera collection, I don't think this will happen any time soon. I'm currently debating the merits of shelling out big bucks for a digital SLR with a true 24mm by 36mm CCD or buying an Olympus E-1. Then again, I could pay the bills and the mortgage.;-)
Re:Digital Rebel vs 10D for Astrophotography
on
Digital 35mm SLRs?
·
· Score: 1
A tripod holds a camera steady, but a tripod can't eliminate vibration caused by the camera. Vibration can come from the mirror movement mechanism in an SLR, the film advance mechanism, and the shutter release. The shutter release is usually only a problem if the photographer depresses the shutter button with a finger instead of using a cable release or a wireless remote.
A mirror lock up feature is extremely useful in situtations using a long lens with a small aperature and a long exposure. Locking the mirror up prior to exposure eliminates any vibrations that are created by the movement of the mirror. The vibrations of the mirror movement may also cause problems extreme close ups such as macro shots, copy stands, and microscope mounts.
The Olympus E10 and E20 are commonly known as Zoom Lens Reflex cameras. ZLRs are reall a single lens reflex with an integrated zoom lens. The E20 has been quite popular with photojournalists. I believe that it was used exclusively for a recent "Day In The Life Of..." project. I know that one of the FEMA photographers at the World Trade Center disaster site used an E-20 and produced some great photos.
Olympus has just released the follow on to the E10/E20 - the Olympus E-1. The E-1 has interchangeable lenses that are specifically designed for use with a CDD. The November issue of Popular Photography has a review of the Olympus E-1.
The November issue of Popular Photography also has a review of the Canon EOS Digital Rebel, but the review doesn't seem to be posted on the web site.
Cringley may have nothing new to say to the technical audience that reads Slashdot. However, Cringley is clearly addressing a non-technical audience. Cringley does a nice job of explaining why Microsoft does not understand the open source model. Cringley also does a nice of job of pointing out that software development may meet business goals without necessarily meeting quality goals.
Cringley's article is a good non-technical explanation of why freely developed and freely distributed open source software can and often does work better than Microsoft's commercially developed and commercially distributed closed source software.
The article on the New York Times web site states: "Faxing is, for the first time, a built-in Mac feature. You can have incoming faxes automatically printed out, saved into a folder, sent to yourself by e-mail, or any combination of those."
I think we're seeing a new type of slashdot troll. Post the original article text with slight modifictions. Hopefully someone will mod down the post of the altered article text.
The text of the original article is: "When you use Mac OS X, you feel like it's yours; when you use Windows, you feel as though you're using someone else's toys, and Mrs. Microsoft keeps peeking in on you."
The New York Times article states that "And as with any major system-software upgrade, you'll encounter the fewest bumps and glitches if you install a fresh copy of the operating system rather than just updating your existing one."
The article does not explain the risks of updating from 10.2 to 10.3 instead of installing a fresh copy of 10.3. It seems to me that a fresh OS install might present an obstacle for some users. Can anyone explain why a fresh OS install is preferable to an update OS install?
I think that there can be financial harm resulting from unwanted phone calls. It may not be as easy to financially quantify this harm as it is to quantify the cost of paper and toner used by a fax machine. However, unwanted calls definitely waste time. If that time was to be used for a money making purpose, unwanted calls do have a direct financial cost.
I appreciate that the do not call law is being subjected to conistitutional scrutiny. I would prefer to see a uniform and constitutional approach applied to all unsolicited communications whether they are transmitted via postal mail, electronic mail, fax machine or telephone.
How does the federal do not call list compare to junk fax laws? Do junk fax laws exempt political and non profit groups?
Would an opt-in don not call law be as constitutionalyy objectionable as a an opt out do not call law?
Cringley mentions that Burst's technology runs under Linux and Solaris. He alleges that one of Microsoft's motives might have been a paranoid desire to reduce closs-platform competetion. It will be very interesting to see if this allegation is proven in court.
The situation as described seems to be one of those case where doing it yourself may be a short term savings. However, doing it yourself may produce a long term cost greater than the savings.
If you know that you can perform the work safely and in conformance to local electrical safety codes you should proceed to do it yourself.
The potential for electrocution or an electrical fire is more than enough to make me call a licensed electrician for an estimate.
I'll do small wiring jobs myself. However, I always hire a licensed electrician for any job that involves a distribution panel.
A key selling point is that licensed electricians carry insurance to cover any problems that may arise from re-wiring a distribution panel.
Another key selling point is that a licensed electrician can prepare all the needed components to ensure minimum downtime. I always end up making at least one trip to the hardware store after I've shutdown the power.
ABIT does not say exactly which encryption algorithm they are using. ABIT also doesn't say if the user can specify the key that is stored on the USB key. This raises the potential that the key could be compromised before it even leaves the factory.
I can think of all kinds of potential problems with this scheme beside a potentially weak encryption algorithm. What should the user do to access data if the motherboard dies? How can the user recover usable data if the hard disk dies? If the user makes a back up copy of the hard drive, will the back up contain encrypted data or unencrypted data.
A software data encryption approach using a known robust encryption algorithm makes much more sense than a hardware encryption approach using an unkown encryption algorithm.
Anyone wonder how long it will take RSA to complain about the potential for people to confuse RSA's SecurID with ABIT's Secure IDE?
It is also easier if you treat school and studying like a real job. In other words, pick one place where you study and another place where you play and socialize. It can be extremely difficult to accomplish much if you have a lot of distractions such as surfing the net, talking on the phone, hanging out in the dorm lounge, watching television, etc. This separation between work and play can be physical or chronological. People who are working from home use a combination of mental, physical and chronological tricks to make sure that the work gets done in spite of all the distractions.
However, before taking well intentioned amateur advice from Slashdot, consider doing the following things:
Schedule a physical exam to rule out any underlying medical problems.
Most colleges provide counselors and tutors for students who are having difficulties studying and completing work in a timely fashion. See what is available from your college. Find out if there are any objective tests to determine if you may have a learning disorder that interferes with your ability to study.
Most colleges offer psychological counselling services. A minor problem like an irregular sleep schedule could be masking a more significant problem such as a clinical depression. One of the signs of depression is an inability to concentrate and focus.
Last, but not least, you must have done reasonably well in grade school and high school to get into college. What study habits did you use in grade school and high school? If you didn't have any specific study habits, now is the time to develop good study habits. There are numerous books on the topic of effective study habits. A specific book on study habits should prove to be more helpful than a general book on habits such as the '7 Habits of..."
There's a thin line between knock-off and parody. National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings" and "Doon" were obvious Parodies of "Lord of the Rings" and "Dune." (Second part of sentence gratuitously inserted for the caffeine deprived.) "Harry Potter and Leopard Walk-Up-toDragon" appears to create sufficient confusion by mixing Harry Potter characters and Tolkien characters without permission. This should not be allowed unless it is clearly sold as a satire.
"Tanya Grotter" is clearly trying to ride the coat tails of the Harry Potter hype. Tanya Grotter appears to be somewhat derivative of Harry Potter. However, most "grown-up" reviews of Harry Potter point out that J.K. Rowling's work borrows ideas from all sorts of other previous works. Derivation, in and of itself, is the way that literature advances. It is not a reason to use copyright law to suppress a work.
Ender killed Stilson and Bonzo because he wanted to end each fight. He acted in self defense in both fights. Ender was trying to win fights. He wasn't trying to win respect.
Ender was not aware that he had struck killing blows until he watched Colonel Graff's court martial. Killing in self defense is not morally equivalent to comitting an atrocity.
"It worked, but the point was that Ender wouldn't have done it if he knew it was real."
Actually that was one of the points of the book. Another key point is that the child soldiers were used by the adult soldiers to perform an action that the adult soldiers were unable or unwilling to perform.
"You had to be a weapon, Ender. Like a gun, like the Little Doctor, functioning perfectly but not knowing what you were aimed at. We aimed you. We're responsible. If there was something wrong, we did it." Ender's Game Page 298
Fan's of Ender's Game may want to check out Orson Scott Card's web site Hatrack River.
Sometimes it's easy forget that there is more to ZIP utilities than file compression.
It makes sense to zip multiple uncompressible files in order to package related files. This simplifies the download process for someone who wants to receive all the.MP3 files and artwork files in a single download. This practice goes back to the early CP/M BBS days and such utilities as LU the "Library Utility."
ZIP utilities can also be used to control the presentation of a download. In a previous job, I packaged software updates for download. I often created self-extracting archives with an explicit recommended decompression path. This made life a lot easier for the person downloading the file. This also made it easier support person who had to walk someone through a software upgrade.
I had a similar experience attempting to use a LinkSys 802.11b access point on the rear of second floor of my house to a Linksys 802.11b PCI card on the front of the third floor of my house. Some experimentation with a borrowed laptop showed that the wireless signal propogation was intermittent and of low signal quality. I ended up switching to a pair of Linksys PLEBR10 PowerLine Etherfast 10/100 bridges. The initial configuration software for the PLEBR10 only runs under Windows.
The AP wire story offered a bit more explanation as to why Tom Reilly, the Massachusetts Attorney General, is appealing the Microsoft antitrust case ruling:
"Reilly characterized the settlement between Microsoft and the federal government, which a U.S. district judge approved earlier this month, as a ''loophole-filled deal'' that won't affect the software maker's aggressive practices or send the appropriate message.
''Microsoft has been found to have repeatedly violated the antitrust laws,'' Reilly said. ''We believe that remedy must send a message that breaking the law does not pay.''"
It may ultimately prove futile for Massachusetts to send this message to Microsoft, but it is worth the attempt. The only other way that Massachusetts can send a message to Microsoft is by replacing Microsoft products with other vendors' commercial or open source products.
I contacted Dr. John D. Halamka to see if he could provide more detail on the network outage. Dr. Halamka is the chief information officer for CareGroup Health System, the parent company of the Beth Israel Deaconess medical center. His reply is as follows:
"Here's the technical explanation for you.
When TAC was first able to access and assess the network, we found the Layer 2 structure of the network to be unstable and out of specification with 802.1d standards. The management vlan (vlan 1) had in some locations 10 Layer2 hops from root.
The conservative default values for the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) impose a maximum network diameter of seven. This means that two distinct bridges in the network should not be more than seven hops away from one to the other.
Part of this restriction is coming from the age field Bridge Protocol Data Unit (BPDU) carry: when a BPDU is propagated from the root bridge towards the leaves of the tree, the age field is incremented each time it goes though a bridge. Eventually, when the age field of a BPDU goes beyond max age, it is discarded. Typically, this will occur if the root is too far away from some bridges of the network. This issue will impact convergence of the spanning tree.
A major contributor to this STP issue was the PACS network and its connection to the CareGroup network. To eliminate its influence on the Care Group network we isolated it with a Layer 3 boundary. All redundancy in the network was removed to ensure no STP loops were possible.
Full connectivity was restored to remote devices and networks that were disconnected in troubleshooting efforts prior to TACs involvement. Redundancy was returned between the core campus devices. Spanning Tree was stabilized and localized issues were pursued.
Thanks for your support. CIO Magazine will devote the February issue to this event and Harvard Business School is doing a case study."
The most interesting thing about this incident is that it was publicized. This allows us to have a public discussion of the best practices to avoid network outages and the best practices to recover from network outages.
According to NetworkWorldFusion http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/1125bethisrael.h tml:
"Halamka's candor with his peers suggests he wants to spread the word about potential risks of automation.
"It is not surprising to those of us who know John that he is willing to share his experiences for the greater good," says Meg Aranow, vice president and CIO at Boston Medical Center.
"He is very committed to improving the discipline of healthcare computing," she adds."
Hopefully John Hamalka will write up the technical details of the root cause of the outage and the steps taken to address the outage. It might be worth watching the following sites for more information:
John Hamalka's web page http://informatics.caregroup.harvard.edu/people/jh alamka/
The Massachusetts Health Data Consortium web page at http://www.mahealthdata.org/
I can't think of reasonable and logical restrictions to impose on a public WiFi network. My intitial thought would be to limit trafic to HTTP, ICMP, SHTTP, and SMTP by using a firewall. However, I think many users would find this to be too restrictive. Allowing ICMP and SMTP opens up the possibility of DOS attacks and spamming. An application proxy firewall is problematic because it might require users to change the proxy settings on their computers before they can access the Internet. A firewall that implements stateful packet inspection would allow some level of control without requiring users to change any settings.
I think the best solution would be to implement method of posting a pop-up notice when a computer connects to the WiFi network. This would allow the network operator to display a brief acceptable use policy. Perhaps the pop-up could be extended to require the reading of and agreement to an acceptable use policy or some form of EULA. Presumably this would require some programming by the WiFi NIC vendors and operating system vendors.
I am not sure that the network operator of a public WiFi network will want to take the time and effort to set up and maintain a firewall between the public WiFi network and the Internet. I suspect that any business offering this service will be concerned about the legal implications that arise from any active effort to restrict access or use. Can I reduce my liability if I actively restrict access and use or actively monitor activity on the network? Am I less liable for DOS attacks and spamming that originate on my network if I leave the network wide open?
A BBS is an electronic bulletin board system. The first BBS was created by Ward Christensen who also invented the XMODEM file transfer protocol. A typical BBS allows e-mail, public discussions, and file transfers. Some BBSs allowed online games, typically by loading the game in a 'door' program. Many BBSs were set up to exchange messages using protocols and networks such as FidoNet. Each BBS was maintained by a system operotor also known as a sysop.
There are still some old style BBSs that are alive and well. Some of these BBSs can be accessed via telnet. There are also BBS software packages designed for use on the Internet such as WebBoard.
Thanks for maintaining the historical BBS list. I took a quick trip down memory lane looking at the BBS listings for the 617 area code.
I was quite amused to see all the comments from Winston Smith. He used to be regular on the Boston Bullet TBBS and the Teele Square TBBS.
It's been many years since I had two BBSs running in my living room. Every so often, I'm tempted to dust of my TBBS collection and set up a new BBS.
Slashdot Mirror
I think there was a company that was planning to release a digital adapter that would replace a 35mm cartridge. I don't think this product went beyond the vaporware stage. Perhaps someone else on slashdot has a better memory than I do and can remember more details about this proposed product.
If you have a large format camera, you may want to look at digital backs from Leaf.
As much as I'd love to be able to drop a digital film replacement into any camera in my 35mm camera collection, I don't think this will happen any time soon. I'm currently debating the merits of shelling out big bucks for a digital SLR with a true 24mm by 36mm CCD or buying an Olympus E-1. Then again, I could pay the bills and the mortgage. ;-)
A mirror lock up feature is extremely useful in situtations using a long lens with a small aperature and a long exposure. Locking the mirror up prior to exposure eliminates any vibrations that are created by the movement of the mirror. The vibrations of the mirror movement may also cause problems extreme close ups such as macro shots, copy stands, and microscope mounts.
Olympus has just released the follow on to the E10/E20 - the Olympus E-1. The E-1 has interchangeable lenses that are specifically designed for use with a CDD. The November issue of Popular Photography has a review of the Olympus E-1.
The November issue of Popular Photography also has a review of the Canon EOS Digital Rebel, but the review doesn't seem to be posted on the web site.
Cringley's article is a good non-technical explanation of why freely developed and freely distributed open source software can and often does work better than Microsoft's commercially developed and commercially distributed closed source software.
I think we're seeing a new type of slashdot troll. Post the original article text with slight modifictions. Hopefully someone will mod down the post of the altered article text.
The text of the original article is: "When you use Mac OS X, you feel like it's yours; when you use Windows, you feel as though you're using someone else's toys, and Mrs. Microsoft keeps peeking in on you."
The article does not explain the risks of updating from 10.2 to 10.3 instead of installing a fresh copy of 10.3. It seems to me that a fresh OS install might present an obstacle for some users. Can anyone explain why a fresh OS install is preferable to an update OS install?
I appreciate that the do not call law is being subjected to conistitutional scrutiny. I would prefer to see a uniform and constitutional approach applied to all unsolicited communications whether they are transmitted via postal mail, electronic mail, fax machine or telephone.
How does the federal do not call list compare to junk fax laws? Do junk fax laws exempt political and non profit groups? Would an opt-in don not call law be as constitutionalyy objectionable as a an opt out do not call law?
Cringley mentions that Burst's technology runs under Linux and Solaris. He alleges that one of Microsoft's motives might have been a paranoid desire to reduce closs-platform competetion. It will be very interesting to see if this allegation is proven in court.
If you know that you can perform the work safely and in conformance to local electrical safety codes you should proceed to do it yourself.
The potential for electrocution or an electrical fire is more than enough to make me call a licensed electrician for an estimate.
I'll do small wiring jobs myself. However, I always hire a licensed electrician for any job that involves a distribution panel. A key selling point is that licensed electricians carry insurance to cover any problems that may arise from re-wiring a distribution panel.
Another key selling point is that a licensed electrician can prepare all the needed components to ensure minimum downtime. I always end up making at least one trip to the hardware store after I've shutdown the power.
I can think of all kinds of potential problems with this scheme beside a potentially weak encryption algorithm. What should the user do to access data if the motherboard dies? How can the user recover usable data if the hard disk dies? If the user makes a back up copy of the hard drive, will the back up contain encrypted data or unencrypted data.
A software data encryption approach using a known robust encryption algorithm makes much more sense than a hardware encryption approach using an unkown encryption algorithm.
Anyone wonder how long it will take RSA to complain about the potential for people to confuse RSA's SecurID with ABIT's Secure IDE?
It is also easier if you treat school and studying like a real job. In other words, pick one place where you study and another place where you play and socialize. It can be extremely difficult to accomplish much if you have a lot of distractions such as surfing the net, talking on the phone, hanging out in the dorm lounge, watching television, etc. This separation between work and play can be physical or chronological. People who are working from home use a combination of mental, physical and chronological tricks to make sure that the work gets done in spite of all the distractions.
However, before taking well intentioned amateur advice from Slashdot, consider doing the following things:
Schedule a physical exam to rule out any underlying medical problems.
Most colleges provide counselors and tutors for students who are having difficulties studying and completing work in a timely fashion. See what is available from your college. Find out if there are any objective tests to determine if you may have a learning disorder that interferes with your ability to study.
Most colleges offer psychological counselling services. A minor problem like an irregular sleep schedule could be masking a more significant problem such as a clinical depression. One of the signs of depression is an inability to concentrate and focus.
Last, but not least, you must have done reasonably well in grade school and high school to get into college. What study habits did you use in grade school and high school? If you didn't have any specific study habits, now is the time to develop good study habits. There are numerous books on the topic of effective study habits. A specific book on study habits should prove to be more helpful than a general book on habits such as the '7 Habits of ..."
There's a thin line between knock-off and parody. National Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings" and "Doon" were obvious Parodies of "Lord of the Rings" and "Dune." (Second part of sentence gratuitously inserted for the caffeine deprived.) "Harry Potter and Leopard Walk-Up-toDragon" appears to create sufficient confusion by mixing Harry Potter characters and Tolkien characters without permission. This should not be allowed unless it is clearly sold as a satire. "Tanya Grotter" is clearly trying to ride the coat tails of the Harry Potter hype. Tanya Grotter appears to be somewhat derivative of Harry Potter. However, most "grown-up" reviews of Harry Potter point out that J.K. Rowling's work borrows ideas from all sorts of other previous works. Derivation, in and of itself, is the way that literature advances. It is not a reason to use copyright law to suppress a work.
Ender killed Stilson and Bonzo because he wanted to end each fight. He acted in self defense in both fights. Ender was trying to win fights. He wasn't trying to win respect.
Ender was not aware that he had struck killing blows until he watched Colonel Graff's court martial. Killing in self defense is not morally equivalent to comitting an atrocity.
"It worked, but the point was that Ender wouldn't have done it if he knew it was real."
Actually that was one of the points of the book. Another key point is that the child soldiers were used by the adult soldiers to perform an action that the adult soldiers were unable or unwilling to perform.
"You had to be a weapon, Ender. Like a gun, like the Little Doctor, functioning perfectly but not knowing what you were aimed at. We aimed you. We're responsible. If there was something wrong, we did it." Ender's Game Page 298
Fan's of Ender's Game may want to check out Orson Scott Card's web site Hatrack River.
It makes sense to zip multiple uncompressible files in order to package related files. This simplifies the download process for someone who wants to receive all the .MP3 files and artwork files in a single download. This practice goes back to the early CP/M BBS days and such utilities as LU the "Library Utility."
ZIP utilities can also be used to control the presentation of a download. In a previous job, I packaged software updates for download. I often created self-extracting archives with an explicit recommended decompression path. This made life a lot easier for the person downloading the file. This also made it easier support person who had to walk someone through a software upgrade.
I had a similar experience attempting to use a LinkSys 802.11b access point on the rear of second floor of my house to a Linksys 802.11b PCI card on the front of the third floor of my house. Some experimentation with a borrowed laptop showed that the wireless signal propogation was intermittent and of low signal quality. I ended up switching to a pair of Linksys PLEBR10 PowerLine Etherfast 10/100 bridges. The initial configuration software for the PLEBR10 only runs under Windows.
The AP wire story offered a bit more explanation as to why Tom Reilly, the Massachusetts Attorney General, is appealing the Microsoft antitrust case ruling:
"Reilly characterized the settlement between Microsoft and the federal government, which a U.S. district judge approved earlier this month, as a ''loophole-filled deal'' that won't affect the software maker's aggressive practices or send the appropriate message.
''Microsoft has been found to have repeatedly violated the antitrust laws,'' Reilly said. ''We believe that remedy must send a message that breaking the law does not pay.''"
It may ultimately prove futile for Massachusetts to send this message to Microsoft, but it is worth the attempt. The only other way that Massachusetts can send a message to Microsoft is by replacing Microsoft products with other vendors' commercial or open source products.
I contacted Dr. John D. Halamka to see if he could provide more detail on the network outage. Dr. Halamka is the chief information officer for CareGroup Health System, the parent company of the Beth Israel Deaconess medical center. His reply is as follows: "Here's the technical explanation for you. When TAC was first able to access and assess the network, we found the Layer 2 structure of the network to be unstable and out of specification with 802.1d standards. The management vlan (vlan 1) had in some locations 10 Layer2 hops from root. The conservative default values for the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) impose a maximum network diameter of seven. This means that two distinct bridges in the network should not be more than seven hops away from one to the other. Part of this restriction is coming from the age field Bridge Protocol Data Unit (BPDU) carry: when a BPDU is propagated from the root bridge towards the leaves of the tree, the age field is incremented each time it goes though a bridge. Eventually, when the age field of a BPDU goes beyond max age, it is discarded. Typically, this will occur if the root is too far away from some bridges of the network. This issue will impact convergence of the spanning tree. A major contributor to this STP issue was the PACS network and its connection to the CareGroup network. To eliminate its influence on the Care Group network we isolated it with a Layer 3 boundary. All redundancy in the network was removed to ensure no STP loops were possible. Full connectivity was restored to remote devices and networks that were disconnected in troubleshooting efforts prior to TACs involvement. Redundancy was returned between the core campus devices. Spanning Tree was stabilized and localized issues were pursued. Thanks for your support. CIO Magazine will devote the February issue to this event and Harvard Business School is doing a case study."
The most interesting thing about this incident is that it was publicized. This allows us to have a public discussion of the best practices to avoid network outages and the best practices to recover from network outages. According to NetworkWorldFusion http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2002/1125bethisrael.h tml:
"Halamka's candor with his peers suggests he wants to spread the word about potential risks of automation.
"It is not surprising to those of us who know John that he is willing to share his experiences for the greater good," says Meg Aranow, vice president and CIO at Boston Medical Center.
"He is very committed to improving the discipline of healthcare computing," she adds."
Hopefully John Hamalka will write up the technical details of the root cause of the outage and the steps taken to address the outage. It might be worth watching the following sites for more information:
John Hamalka's web page http://informatics.caregroup.harvard.edu/people/jh alamka/
The Massachusetts Health Data Consortium web page at http://www.mahealthdata.org/
I can't think of reasonable and logical restrictions to impose on a public WiFi network. My intitial thought would be to limit trafic to HTTP, ICMP, SHTTP, and SMTP by using a firewall. However, I think many users would find this to be too restrictive. Allowing ICMP and SMTP opens up the possibility of DOS attacks and spamming. An application proxy firewall is problematic because it might require users to change the proxy settings on their computers before they can access the Internet. A firewall that implements stateful packet inspection would allow some level of control without requiring users to change any settings. I think the best solution would be to implement method of posting a pop-up notice when a computer connects to the WiFi network. This would allow the network operator to display a brief acceptable use policy. Perhaps the pop-up could be extended to require the reading of and agreement to an acceptable use policy or some form of EULA. Presumably this would require some programming by the WiFi NIC vendors and operating system vendors. I am not sure that the network operator of a public WiFi network will want to take the time and effort to set up and maintain a firewall between the public WiFi network and the Internet. I suspect that any business offering this service will be concerned about the legal implications that arise from any active effort to restrict access or use. Can I reduce my liability if I actively restrict access and use or actively monitor activity on the network? Am I less liable for DOS attacks and spamming that originate on my network if I leave the network wide open?
A BBS is an electronic bulletin board system. The first BBS was created by Ward Christensen who also invented the XMODEM file transfer protocol. A typical BBS allows e-mail, public discussions, and file transfers. Some BBSs allowed online games, typically by loading the game in a 'door' program. Many BBSs were set up to exchange messages using protocols and networks such as FidoNet. Each BBS was maintained by a system operotor also known as a sysop. There are still some old style BBSs that are alive and well. Some of these BBSs can be accessed via telnet. There are also BBS software packages designed for use on the Internet such as WebBoard.
Thanks for maintaining the historical BBS list. I took a quick trip down memory lane looking at the BBS listings for the 617 area code. I was quite amused to see all the comments from Winston Smith. He used to be regular on the Boston Bullet TBBS and the Teele Square TBBS. It's been many years since I had two BBSs running in my living room. Every so often, I'm tempted to dust of my TBBS collection and set up a new BBS.