I stand humbled. On a per-capita basis, there's probably more 'less-desirable' locales in Vancouver than in Toronto. Which crack-house, you ask? Why, the one with the red door, of course. You know, beside the old Chinese laundry that was burned out in an accident involving dry-cleaning fluid and a mis-delivered shipment of sweet-and-sour sauce?
At any rate, I don't live in Vancouver either, thank God. Not that East Hastings is unfriendly - at the right time of day, it's a VERY friendly place!
Typical Easterner - assumes everyone west of the Rockies lives in Vancouver! *wink*
Actually, one could argue it is not. Some states that we would agree are totalitarian exert higher levels of control over their citizens than others. Cuba, for example, is Mostly Harmless compared to say, North Korea. Egypt is a lot more tolerant than Iran. None of them dictate what you must eat for breakfast if you are doing so between 0600 and 0615 local time. So by a strictly binary description, they would not be totalitarian either.
Yes, we were still a colony at that time, however as at least two of those colonies were known as 'Upper and Lower Canada', I'm comfortable calling the inhabitants at that time 'Canadians'. I'm guessing that if we'd HAD any ice skates back then, we'd have permanently occupied the United States and imposed mandatory toque-wearing as well as replacing your national symbol with the Beaver. I mean, c'mon. We all know up here that America's dislike of us is solely based on its jealousy of our national mascot.
Hmmm. Perhaps I should use the word 'semi-totalitarian' instead? I don't know why you would assume that because I didn't mention Cuba and North Korea in the same breath as 'totalitarian' that I am 'closing my eyes' to the atrocities committed in those states. The discussion at hand is about the United State's socio-political climate that encourages its citizens to make snap judgment calls on the basis of ignorance. I would certainly use the word 'totalitarian' to describe Cuba and North Korea, along with Iraq, Iran, China, and Russia. I would also apply the adjective 'dictatorship' to several of those listed; the US is not a dictatorship (entirely), but while dictatorships are always totalitarian, the reverse is not necessary. As we have seen in the US, a democratically-elected Congress can still enact totalitarian legislation. Perhaps that legislation will be overturned with the installation of a new federal administration, perhaps not.
I don't get the comment about scoring political points. I have no political ambitions, and as I have pointed out before, my own government is following the lead of yours, so it hardly endears me to them if I criticise Washington's example. And I honestly don't dislike the US (my paternal relations are all from the States); I do, however, feel that politicians in the US have used their positions to encourage an environment of distrust between our countries, and this example (the Memorial quarter) is just another case of this attitude rearing its ugly head.
Yes, I'm for real. I assume by that you meant do I have any idea what I am talking about.
Post 9/11, you've gone a LONG way from being an open and free society. I never actually compared the US to states like Cuba or Egypt; while those countries do indeed qualify as totalitarian, they have additional socio-political issues that make them much much worse than the current situation in America. Even I, as a "hysterical" foreigner, understand that.
By the common definition of totalitarian, you're well on the way. The sheer level of control that Washington exerts over people's lives is incredible: we've all read about the NSA's domestic wiretapping program; there have been articles here on/. demonstrating that you can't in fact discuss certain things on your blog without reprisals from government agencies; we see the instances of the TSA's excessive zealousness; we see innocent people turned away from your borders and denied aircraft boarding privileges; we see the Boston Police Department blow up LEDs and traffic counters; and the list goes on. The increasing demands by your government for personal documentation and identification (RFID passports, fingerprinting at airports, etc) is not just taking a tiny step towards totalitarianism, it's already crossed the fence. The mere fact that your President is willing to use his Supreme Executive Power to cancel the wishes of Congress shows his total disregard for your Republic's democratic traditions.
I wouldn't actually be petrified to write what I wrote, even if I lived in a totalitarian state; I was criticising YOUR country, not mine - that's usually permitted by totalitarian governments! *grin*
No, I do not think you would be a neocon or anything like that for pointing out the realities of life in crappy places like Egypt or Cuba, or Iraq. You are completely correct in that those countries are indeed completely totalitarian, and far far worse than the US is.
I personally wouldn't characterise myself as 'hysterical' regarding America's political state. 'Concerned', perhaps? Sometimes hysterical, but that's only after drinking a few beers. Usually just concerned. *grin* And I'm mostly concerned because my own government is showing signs of following right along with yours, so that's why I'm really really hoping you get a slightly less freaky administration this time!
Actually, you did invade us once (back in 1812), but we fought you off, sank most of your ships, and then marched down to Washington and burned down the White House. You wanna piece of this - come git some! *grin*
Well, actually...not everywhere in Canada is friendly. Bev Oda's office, for example; and there are parts of Toronto you'd be better off avoiding. But come on out to the West Coast and have a beer - we'll treat ya right!
The real thing to worry about is the fact that our dollar's worth is rising against that of the US dollar. That's what is really suspicious!
Good, good. Could you please turn your Canadian one-dollar coin (the one we call a 'loonie') to face your television set? I can't get "American Idol" where I live.
given the current state of affairs in the US. When you live in a totalitarian state, you see enemies behind every bush (insert appropriate joke here). To the commenter who said it only takes being right once to make it all worth while I would say "You're deluded, my friend." One of your great statesmen once said that if you give up your freedom in exchange for security, you will end up with neither; this is being borne out as we speak. Americans are not "safe" from terror - they may be safe from terrorism, but as we can see from the daily news reports, Americans are a terrified people. Those contractors who freaked out about our memorial coins were obviously not feeling "safe", and felt it necessary to file a report about their suspicions. (Incidentally, what they assumed were "nanodevices" were likely the ink dots from the printing process; the Royal Canadian Mint isn't known for its quality when it comes to short-run commemorative coins.)
This is just another incident that, along with the Boston Police department's War On Things That Blink, make me glad I have absolutely no reason to travel to the US. For your sakes, I hope you get a new administration with a brain in it next time round!
Knew I'd forget something! We also developed our own system for asset tracking, which is part of our static DHCP control (we input every networked device either by scanning its barcode (in the case of our Mac products, at least) or by inputting it manually, and it gets assigned to the appropriate dhcp table for its location (or locations, in the case of roaming equipment). We also have a system for reporting trouble tickets or requesting assistance with a tech-related issue.
I work for a small K-12 district in British Colombia, Canada. We use Linux for all of our servers (natch), and we have either created in-house, or modified slightly, pretty much everything we need. We do all of our user account admin through one system that takes care of email accounts, proxy accounts, samba directories, groups management, and so on. We have also made our own systems for proxy control (teachers can create their own groups of students or computers on the fly and allow or deny network privileges as needed); we run a multi-user install of Word press that gives every account holder their own blog(s); and we are in the process of rolling out a Moodle install that will be a large gear in our distance learning machine. There's probably more (oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention Koha, the library software), but I'm not the programmer!
As for student information systems, we didn't have to make our own because our province has gone with a "universal" solution (AAL's Electronic Student Information System), which actually sucks quite bad. Really bad. But we didn't have a lot of choice in that matter, really. Hopefully the manufacturer can fix it so it works like a real application should.
Feel free to contact me if you're interested in any of that stuff (we give it away, too!), at my throwaway email address: k12oss@worldsbiggestliar.com
I am an IT worker in Canada. Specifically, northwestern British Columbia. I just pulled up my most recent paystub and here's the scoop:
Total gross income to date (2006) is $47,795.76. Total Income Tax deducted to date: $8561.73 Employment Insurance deductions to date: $729.30 Canada Pension Plan deductions to date: $1910.70 Total Mandatory deductions: $11,201.73, or 23.44% of gross income. My annual salary is in the $53K range.
I am not including my Municipal Pension plan deductions, since those are not "mandatory".
In Canada, we pay a 6% GST on most purchases we make. Exemptions include most kinds of food, and a few other goods. Crazy rules surround the charging of GST that confuse the hell out of most of us, and make the accountants happy because they can charge more for their services. In addition, in BC we pay a 7% Provincial Sales Tax, again on almost everything but labour costs. So you can count on pretty much spending 10% to 13% of your cost-of-living expenses in taxes, except on gasoline, which we pay a whole bunch of other taxes on top of the federal and provincial ones. So approximately 36% (and definitely less than 40%) of my income goes to taxes. Cost of living is possibly higher here in the northern, rural areas of the province, but I really doubt it. Housing is a fraction of what people in the cities pay (especially Vancouver!); utilities are the same cost or lower (6 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity); and there's a lot less fees levied on us for every aspect of life. Quality of life is arguably higher here than most other places on the planet, even for those in lower income brackets than myself. Would I recommend that Americans move to my corner of the world? You bet. There's demand for skilled and industrious workers, even in rural areas. Broadband is quite prevalent, even in rural Canada - thanks to our taxes being spent on widespread communications infrastructure. (Most of the driving force behind broadband expansion is coming from remote First Nations communities, as bridging the Digital Divide is seen as an important step in improving peoples' quality of life.) In terms of politics, we've unfortunately seen a shift towards the Right since our last election, as our Prime Minister seeks to shore up his support in the Bush Administration by sucking up. On the other hand, he has a minority government, which means a lot less power. So that's a good thing. Those people emigrating to Canada can expect to find a country of tolerant, laid-back folks who like their beer and hockey, seldom get excited about politics, and feel quite comfortable downloading music over P2P networks. (Naturally there are exceptions to this Utopian image, but most of those are in Toronto, so stay away from there!) Immigration is a bit tough at times, but skilled people won't experience any real difficulties. It's mind-numbingly time-consuming, though. It seems from empirical evidence that Texans have the least amount of troubles with our immigration department. I'm not sure why, of course - although they will make you leave your guns at home, which can be a bit of a bummer. A bit of information about my social status, just so nobody thinks I'm a recluse or hermit or something: I have two teeaged children, two cars (yes I hate cars, but being rural my only other option is to lock my kids up until they move out!), a wife, and a cat. We own 10 acres of property with a 3000 square-foot house. We travelled to the UK for holidays this year, and will be likely going to France next year. The ratio of computers to people in our household is 2:1, not counting the servers. My children, who are 12 and 13, each have their own laptops (a Dell and a Powerbook), while my wife and I each have a Mac and a PC laptop. Even though we live half an hour from town, our kids have club activities, music lessons, and so on, in addition to school activities. Both of our kids have had extensive orthodontic work (braces) which was paid for by our company's medical insurance. The point is, we have what we consider
Socialism isn't the only that scares the US - the mere thought that the Euro might become the currency of choice for trading oil (and naturally, other commodities), scares the bejezus out of the Americans. So I call Bullsh*t on the statement that the US is not responsible for the (entire) world's economy. Think about it - if we quit buying Dollars to pay our debts and import our OPEC oil, the USA would crumble in a big hurry. So in reality, it's the entire world that is responsible for the US economy. 'Struth.
But this is getting WAY off topic, which is the anus jokes!
I work for a school district in northwestern British Columbia (and that's in Canada, folks - not South America!) We are small, and service isolated communities that only are just now getting access to broadband. Up until this year, we have been the only users of wireless networking technology in our entire area, which has been nice, to say the least. Being small, we have the technical and financial resources to provide our schools with state-of-the-art networking technologies, and one of those has been 802.11b coverage.
Unfortunately, we now have community broadband access that is available to anyone willing to pony up the $40 per month it takes to get a 128Kbps wireless connection, delivered via - you guessed it: 802.11b. Also unfortunately, the WISP doing the delivery lacks the technical expertise to deploy a network of this type without killing every other signal in the band. They crank their power outputs to full in order to provide "adequate coverage", and forget about doing site surveys first! To make matters worse, most of their customers are buying and installing wireless routers, which they naturally leave at the default settings. Then you have both the WISP and the clients all broadcasting their SSIDs, which makes it next to impossible to keep a lock on a particular network. We are countering the threat by several means. Firstly, we are switching all of our administrative wireless networks to 802.11a, which is faster, has more available "channels", and is uncluttered. Secondly, we are disabling the broadcast of SSID, so that our neighbours don't keep jumping on our networks by mistake (We already use MAC filtering to issue IPs). Thirdly, in our school networks, which require 802.11g (we use Apple iBooks for our students), we are tripling the amount of APs we have deployed; dialling back the power output, but making sure we have continuous coverage within the schools. It's a bit challenging to keep the coverage solid without overlapping frequencies, and of course we still have to broadcast the SSID due to user issues (unless somebody can give me a better hint for this!! *grin*), but it seems to be working. Between MAC filtering, static DHCP, and some other cool stuff our server guy does, it's pretty stable. Of course, if we were in a city or urban area, we'd be screwed in terms of security, because you just can't go around throwing APs at the problem when the airwaves are as cluttered as they get in town.
We are still learning a lot as we go, but we have been implementing practises that have kept our network stable and our users happy, which is extremely important in our field!
Thank you for the compliment, and I'm glad you got it. You are the first to ask!
I browsed your website a bit - I appreciate your artistic eye for photo opportunities. Fantastic pictures!
Yeah...I think I mentioned something about microwaves. Sometimes I do wonder about my ham buddies and their 1kW rigs, though, even at 2 metres...*grin*
Exactly. Tranzeo has been selling that stuff for years. Easy to use, cheap, and stable, too. Power-over-ethernet right to the radio unit, bob's your uncle. We use 2.4 and 5.8ghz units, vertical as well as horizontal polarization, at ranges up to 10 km, since they come pumping out 200mW. Configure the radio as an AP, a repeater, a client, or a bridge, it's all done in the firmware. This so-called amazing product (available only in Japan, so it must be amazing, right?) is NO BIG DEAL!
*rolls eyes* All frequencies are regulated by the FCC. Okay, maybe not once you start reaching the visible spectrum, but yeah, just because it's ISM doesn't mean it's not regulated. See that little sticker that says "Part 15" on it (at least here in Canada)? THAT means it's regulated. It's just UNLICENSED, which is what I think you meant. But yes, the FCC would care, if this stuff was anything special, which it ain't. Now, you take and put a 5-watt amp on your Dlink access point, and they'd be all over you like flies on shit.
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I stand humbled. On a per-capita basis, there's probably more 'less-desirable' locales in Vancouver than in Toronto. Which crack-house, you ask? Why, the one with the red door, of course. You know, beside the old Chinese laundry that was burned out in an accident involving dry-cleaning fluid and a mis-delivered shipment of sweet-and-sour sauce?
At any rate, I don't live in Vancouver either, thank God. Not that East Hastings is unfriendly - at the right time of day, it's a VERY friendly place!
Typical Easterner - assumes everyone west of the Rockies lives in Vancouver! *wink*
Actually, one could argue it is not. Some states that we would agree are totalitarian exert higher levels of control over their citizens than others. Cuba, for example, is Mostly Harmless compared to say, North Korea. Egypt is a lot more tolerant than Iran. None of them dictate what you must eat for breakfast if you are doing so between 0600 and 0615 local time. So by a strictly binary description, they would not be totalitarian either.
Yes, we were still a colony at that time, however as at least two of those colonies were known as 'Upper and Lower Canada', I'm comfortable calling the inhabitants at that time 'Canadians'. I'm guessing that if we'd HAD any ice skates back then, we'd have permanently occupied the United States and imposed mandatory toque-wearing as well as replacing your national symbol with the Beaver. I mean, c'mon. We all know up here that America's dislike of us is solely based on its jealousy of our national mascot.
Hmmm. Perhaps I should use the word 'semi-totalitarian' instead? I don't know why you would assume that because I didn't mention Cuba and North Korea in the same breath as 'totalitarian' that I am 'closing my eyes' to the atrocities committed in those states. The discussion at hand is about the United State's socio-political climate that encourages its citizens to make snap judgment calls on the basis of ignorance. I would certainly use the word 'totalitarian' to describe Cuba and North Korea, along with Iraq, Iran, China, and Russia. I would also apply the adjective 'dictatorship' to several of those listed; the US is not a dictatorship (entirely), but while dictatorships are always totalitarian, the reverse is not necessary. As we have seen in the US, a democratically-elected Congress can still enact totalitarian legislation. Perhaps that legislation will be overturned with the installation of a new federal administration, perhaps not.
I don't get the comment about scoring political points. I have no political ambitions, and as I have pointed out before, my own government is following the lead of yours, so it hardly endears me to them if I criticise Washington's example. And I honestly don't dislike the US (my paternal relations are all from the States); I do, however, feel that politicians in the US have used their positions to encourage an environment of distrust between our countries, and this example (the Memorial quarter) is just another case of this attitude rearing its ugly head.
Well...
/. demonstrating that you can't in fact discuss certain things on your blog without reprisals from government agencies; we see the instances of the TSA's excessive zealousness; we see innocent people turned away from your borders and denied aircraft boarding privileges; we see the Boston Police Department blow up LEDs and traffic counters; and the list goes on. The increasing demands by your government for personal documentation and identification (RFID passports, fingerprinting at airports, etc) is not just taking a tiny step towards totalitarianism, it's already crossed the fence. The mere fact that your President is willing to use his Supreme Executive Power to cancel the wishes of Congress shows his total disregard for your Republic's democratic traditions.
Yes, I'm for real. I assume by that you meant do I have any idea what I am talking about.
Post 9/11, you've gone a LONG way from being an open and free society. I never actually compared the US to states like Cuba or Egypt; while those countries do indeed qualify as totalitarian, they have additional socio-political issues that make them much much worse than the current situation in America. Even I, as a "hysterical" foreigner, understand that.
By the common definition of totalitarian, you're well on the way. The sheer level of control that Washington exerts over people's lives is incredible: we've all read about the NSA's domestic wiretapping program; there have been articles here on
I wouldn't actually be petrified to write what I wrote, even if I lived in a totalitarian state; I was criticising YOUR country, not mine - that's usually permitted by totalitarian governments! *grin*
No, I do not think you would be a neocon or anything like that for pointing out the realities of life in crappy places like Egypt or Cuba, or Iraq. You are completely correct in that those countries are indeed completely totalitarian, and far far worse than the US is.
I personally wouldn't characterise myself as 'hysterical' regarding America's political state. 'Concerned', perhaps? Sometimes hysterical, but that's only after drinking a few beers. Usually just concerned. *grin* And I'm mostly concerned because my own government is showing signs of following right along with yours, so that's why I'm really really hoping you get a slightly less freaky administration this time!
Cheers!
Yeah, we have the same problems up here. *sigh*
Actually, you did invade us once (back in 1812), but we fought you off, sank most of your ships, and then marched down to Washington and burned down the White House. You wanna piece of this - come git some! *grin*
Well, actually...not everywhere in Canada is friendly. Bev Oda's office, for example; and there are parts of Toronto you'd be better off avoiding. But come on out to the West Coast and have a beer - we'll treat ya right! The real thing to worry about is the fact that our dollar's worth is rising against that of the US dollar. That's what is really suspicious!
Good, good. Could you please turn your Canadian one-dollar coin (the one we call a 'loonie') to face your television set? I can't get "American Idol" where I live.
Does it say Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on the side of it? Yeah, that's be CSIS, alright!
And the fact that you took it so seriously is the really funny part!
Paranoia is NOT reasonable. Period. By definition.
given the current state of affairs in the US. When you live in a totalitarian state, you see enemies behind every bush (insert appropriate joke here). To the commenter who said it only takes being right once to make it all worth while I would say "You're deluded, my friend." One of your great statesmen once said that if you give up your freedom in exchange for security, you will end up with neither; this is being borne out as we speak. Americans are not "safe" from terror - they may be safe from terrorism, but as we can see from the daily news reports, Americans are a terrified people. Those contractors who freaked out about our memorial coins were obviously not feeling "safe", and felt it necessary to file a report about their suspicions. (Incidentally, what they assumed were "nanodevices" were likely the ink dots from the printing process; the Royal Canadian Mint isn't known for its quality when it comes to short-run commemorative coins.) This is just another incident that, along with the Boston Police department's War On Things That Blink, make me glad I have absolutely no reason to travel to the US. For your sakes, I hope you get a new administration with a brain in it next time round!
Knew I'd forget something! We also developed our own system for asset tracking, which is part of our static DHCP control (we input every networked device either by scanning its barcode (in the case of our Mac products, at least) or by inputting it manually, and it gets assigned to the appropriate dhcp table for its location (or locations, in the case of roaming equipment). We also have a system for reporting trouble tickets or requesting assistance with a tech-related issue.
How the hell did THAT question get modded Insightful? This IS the 21st Century!
I work for a small K-12 district in British Colombia, Canada. We use Linux for all of our servers (natch), and we have either created in-house, or modified slightly, pretty much everything we need. We do all of our user account admin through one system that takes care of email accounts, proxy accounts, samba directories, groups management, and so on. We have also made our own systems for proxy control (teachers can create their own groups of students or computers on the fly and allow or deny network privileges as needed); we run a multi-user install of Word press that gives every account holder their own blog(s); and we are in the process of rolling out a Moodle install that will be a large gear in our distance learning machine. There's probably more (oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention Koha, the library software), but I'm not the programmer! As for student information systems, we didn't have to make our own because our province has gone with a "universal" solution (AAL's Electronic Student Information System), which actually sucks quite bad. Really bad. But we didn't have a lot of choice in that matter, really. Hopefully the manufacturer can fix it so it works like a real application should. Feel free to contact me if you're interested in any of that stuff (we give it away, too!), at my throwaway email address: k12oss@worldsbiggestliar.com
I am an IT worker in Canada. Specifically, northwestern British Columbia. I just pulled up my most recent paystub and here's the scoop:
Total gross income to date (2006) is $47,795.76.
Total Income Tax deducted to date: $8561.73
Employment Insurance deductions to date: $729.30
Canada Pension Plan deductions to date: $1910.70
Total Mandatory deductions: $11,201.73, or 23.44% of gross income. My annual salary is in the $53K range.
I am not including my Municipal Pension plan deductions, since those are not "mandatory".
In Canada, we pay a 6% GST on most purchases we make. Exemptions include most kinds of food, and a few other goods. Crazy rules surround the charging of GST that confuse the hell out of most of us, and make the accountants happy because they can charge more for their services. In addition, in BC we pay a 7% Provincial Sales Tax, again on almost everything but labour costs. So you can count on pretty much spending 10% to 13% of your cost-of-living expenses in taxes, except on gasoline, which we pay a whole bunch of other taxes on top of the federal and provincial ones. So approximately 36% (and definitely less than 40%) of my income goes to taxes. Cost of living is possibly higher here in the northern, rural areas of the province, but I really doubt it. Housing is a fraction of what people in the cities pay (especially Vancouver!); utilities are the same cost or lower (6 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity); and there's a lot less fees levied on us for every aspect of life. Quality of life is arguably higher here than most other places on the planet, even for those in lower income brackets than myself. Would I recommend that Americans move to my corner of the world? You bet. There's demand for skilled and industrious workers, even in rural areas. Broadband is quite prevalent, even in rural Canada - thanks to our taxes being spent on widespread communications infrastructure. (Most of the driving force behind broadband expansion is coming from remote First Nations communities, as bridging the Digital Divide is seen as an important step in improving peoples' quality of life.)
In terms of politics, we've unfortunately seen a shift towards the Right since our last election, as our Prime Minister seeks to shore up his support in the Bush Administration by sucking up. On the other hand, he has a minority government, which means a lot less power. So that's a good thing. Those people emigrating to Canada can expect to find a country of tolerant, laid-back folks who like their beer and hockey, seldom get excited about politics, and feel quite comfortable downloading music over P2P networks. (Naturally there are exceptions to this Utopian image, but most of those are in Toronto, so stay away from there!)
Immigration is a bit tough at times, but skilled people won't experience any real difficulties. It's mind-numbingly time-consuming, though. It seems from empirical evidence that Texans have the least amount of troubles with our immigration department. I'm not sure why, of course - although they will make you leave your guns at home, which can be a bit of a bummer.
A bit of information about my social status, just so nobody thinks I'm a recluse or hermit or something: I have two teeaged children, two cars (yes I hate cars, but being rural my only other option is to lock my kids up until they move out!), a wife, and a cat. We own 10 acres of property with a 3000 square-foot house. We travelled to the UK for holidays this year, and will be likely going to France next year. The ratio of computers to people in our household is 2:1, not counting the servers. My children, who are 12 and 13, each have their own laptops (a Dell and a Powerbook), while my wife and I each have a Mac and a PC laptop. Even though we live half an hour from town, our kids have club activities, music lessons, and so on, in addition to school activities. Both of our kids have had extensive orthodontic work (braces) which was paid for by our company's medical insurance. The point is, we have what we consider
Socialism isn't the only that scares the US - the mere thought that the Euro might become the currency of choice for trading oil (and naturally, other commodities), scares the bejezus out of the Americans. So I call Bullsh*t on the statement that the US is not responsible for the (entire) world's economy. Think about it - if we quit buying Dollars to pay our debts and import our OPEC oil, the USA would crumble in a big hurry. So in reality, it's the entire world that is responsible for the US economy. 'Struth. But this is getting WAY off topic, which is the anus jokes!
The real problem with cane toads
Mirrored here, in case of DDOSing (32MB DivX avi).
I work for a school district in northwestern British Columbia (and that's in Canada, folks - not South America!) We are small, and service isolated communities that only are just now getting access to broadband. Up until this year, we have been the only users of wireless networking technology in our entire area, which has been nice, to say the least. Being small, we have the technical and financial resources to provide our schools with state-of-the-art networking technologies, and one of those has been 802.11b coverage.
Unfortunately, we now have community broadband access that is available to anyone willing to pony up the $40 per month it takes to get a 128Kbps wireless connection, delivered via - you guessed it: 802.11b. Also unfortunately, the WISP doing the delivery lacks the technical expertise to deploy a network of this type without killing every other signal in the band. They crank their power outputs to full in order to provide "adequate coverage", and forget about doing site surveys first! To make matters worse, most of their customers are buying and installing wireless routers, which they naturally leave at the default settings. Then you have both the WISP and the clients all broadcasting their SSIDs, which makes it next to impossible to keep a lock on a particular network.
We are countering the threat by several means. Firstly, we are switching all of our administrative wireless networks to 802.11a, which is faster, has more available "channels", and is uncluttered. Secondly, we are disabling the broadcast of SSID, so that our neighbours don't keep jumping on our networks by mistake (We already use MAC filtering to issue IPs). Thirdly, in our school networks, which require 802.11g (we use Apple iBooks for our students), we are tripling the amount of APs we have deployed; dialling back the power output, but making sure we have continuous coverage within the schools. It's a bit challenging to keep the coverage solid without overlapping frequencies, and of course we still have to broadcast the SSID due to user issues (unless somebody can give me a better hint for this!! *grin*), but it seems to be working. Between MAC filtering, static DHCP, and some other cool stuff our server guy does, it's pretty stable. Of course, if we were in a city or urban area, we'd be screwed in terms of security, because you just can't go around throwing APs at the problem when the airwaves are as cluttered as they get in town.
We are still learning a lot as we go, but we have been implementing practises that have kept our network stable and our users happy, which is extremely important in our field!
Thank you for the compliment, and I'm glad you got it. You are the first to ask! I browsed your website a bit - I appreciate your artistic eye for photo opportunities. Fantastic pictures!
Yeah...I think I mentioned something about microwaves. Sometimes I do wonder about my ham buddies and their 1kW rigs, though, even at 2 metres...*grin*
That's the problem with dead languages...anyways, it basically means "Technology that is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced."
Exactly. Tranzeo has been selling that stuff for years. Easy to use, cheap, and stable, too. Power-over-ethernet right to the radio unit, bob's your uncle. We use 2.4 and 5.8ghz units, vertical as well as horizontal polarization, at ranges up to 10 km, since they come pumping out 200mW. Configure the radio as an AP, a repeater, a client, or a bridge, it's all done in the firmware. This so-called amazing product (available only in Japan, so it must be amazing, right?) is NO BIG DEAL!
*rolls eyes* All frequencies are regulated by the FCC. Okay, maybe not once you start reaching the visible spectrum, but yeah, just because it's ISM doesn't mean it's not regulated. See that little sticker that says "Part 15" on it (at least here in Canada)? THAT means it's regulated. It's just UNLICENSED, which is what I think you meant. But yes, the FCC would care, if this stuff was anything special, which it ain't. Now, you take and put a 5-watt amp on your Dlink access point, and they'd be all over you like flies on shit.