2001-12-04»
Morning genetically-modified roundup:
A look at Naked
News Obscure
Store - they want to introduce naked foreign
correspondents.
"The tone was always to be news naked," Pinckert says. "The nudity was a metaphor for getting down to the bare facts, the naked truth, if you will." In other words, the nudity doesn't undermine their credibility, it enhances it.
Fat
has a taste. Science
Daily - making it the sixth sense (after sweet, salty,
sour, bitter and umami.)
Just got the official announcement from AT&T that my Net connection is
back up (it's been up since yesterday lunchtime, but you can understand them
waiting until everything cleared). I've been quite impressed by the
switch-over. If the DHCP reconfig didn't work, the AT&T engineers set up
fake @home DNS and News servers that tell you to manually change your
settings. The DNS hack is clever and the newsserver is a sign they were really
paying attention. ISP's never remember the newserver.
2001-12-03»
Feh. Just when I promised myself to be a bit assiduous on the blogging,
AT&T
ceases to be @home. Back up now, thanks to some stealthy listening
for ARP calls on the cable circuit.
Evening scan:
Blah, blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah.
Journalist
Thrown Off Flight for Taking Photos wartimeliberty.com
Appears to be more extenuated than first meets the eye (the
paranoid Guard, it's implied, is a undercover drugs officer).
Worrying though - and I know someone is going to say "Well,
serves the journalist right. He shouldn't have been practicing Yoga".
Al Qaeda Spokesman Abu Ghaith Seriously Wounded al
jazeera
The
laptops for schools pilot project mefi that lead to a general rollout of
PCs to Maine's
kids says wireless networks made it a success:
"If they had to plug the laptops into a wall someplace to get Internet access I don't think we would be seeing the impact we have," said Priest. "Untethering the technology has been key, so that it is as easy as using a pencil and piece a paper."
On the other hand, judging from another pilot project in VA, it's not all beer
and skittles
In the past four weeks, we have discovered that some students have been using the Internet excessively for personal use during school time. This has put a tremendous strain on the network, creating network traffic which is preventing the effective usage of iBooks for their intended educational purposes.
\.
discussion on Cingular's 2.5G mobile rollout. I was at the same 802.11
conference that GlennF blogged so
finely, and I agree with him: it was eye-opening how the
US mobile telcos are coming to the unlicensed side of the
Force.
One speaker mentioned that telcos planning 2.5G/3G networks really didn't
want wandering desktop apps on laptops consuming large amounts of
bandwidth over the cellular net. They want to charge by the packet on 3G, and
applications that would require hours of data transfer would make those rates
look ridiculous. Customers, the thinking goes, will be happy at paying a $1
for a minute long video clip, but would seriously balk at $60 an hour for
file-sharing.
Somebody else I spoke to - again from a big mobile telco - mentioned that
the cost-effectiveness of the 802.11 base stations compared to 3G. Even though
the range is so crummy, 3G basestations currently cost >$100,000. "I'd
much prefer to rollout an 802.11 based network.", he said, unprompted.
This fits in with a comment by Monica
Paolini that real estate owners are the people who will determine the
nature and cost of large scale 802.11 rollouts - with such short range,
there's a lot more negotiating and partnerships with the people living under
your basestation to be done.
2001-11-29»
The morning rounds:
Fancy schmancy Scandi wireless
mag, with great wireless
poster.
Despite being Mr Privacy Man a lot of the time, I've often wondered exactly
how the "creeping loss of rights" game plays out. Do soft concessions like
widespread CCTVs really lead to more pernicious abuses? I'd say this
case might be a good litmus test of public reaction:
Litter
louts to be filmed, have their pictures published.
London's growing army of litter louts are to be named and shamed in a special
"rogues gallery" as part of a groundbreaking new clean-up campaign.
Merton Council, in south London, plans to use its 60 CCTV surveillance
cameras to zoom in on anybody dropping litter.
