Bob George wrote: > By the way, your last post to the isp-wireless list was priceless. :)
Oh, I'm sure. Just wanted to go on the record. But there are a lot of Armageddonites and others who are concerned about the concentration of power and our growing dependance on the Internet. In part because the Net runs on equipment users dont own, and have no control over. As compared to Fido, which did not have nearly the problem because the userbase/sysops owned a larger share of the equipment. We have seen a similar planned obsolescence in the PC platform, which has gotten increasingly complex with increasing triviality in added functionality. It begs the question of what the minimum would be to do ASCII email, which most of us agree is the critical app. And nowthatcha mention it, what I think I'd like to see is a user owned cellular communications system that included enough wireless to be beyond the capabilities of terrorists to interrupt it. It is the instinct of the Capitalist powers that be, to concentrate power as much as possible so as to maximize profits. There certainly have been benefits to the process, with a monopoly establishing a standard. Such as Big Blue did with the PC in the first place. I am not taking a moral position, but simply note that there are significant numbers of others who do, and *they* are perfectly willing to see the whole internet come down. No doubt there are Kazinsky cases out there right now who may stumble across a way to do it. Like Rainman, a tunnel vision of the mind can be increadibly powerful. But if we users could establish an open source design standard platform that includes significant wireless transmitter power, we'll be able at least to be able to communicate with friends and family in our immediate local area in the event terrorism crashes the net. And if we further, establish a user owned (COOP) network, then we are far less likely to be a target of terrorism. Moreover, we dont need to get caught up in the struggle; if we own our own hardware and servers, then we dont havta include Carnivore, or whatever other insanity the Powers That Now Be (PTNB) come up with trying to improve what passes for 'security'. And I think it is abundantly clear to others here, that the hardware and software needed to provide email in a crisis are no where near as complex or vulnerable as what the entrepeneurs are selling people. The cheapest motherboard you find offered for sale in the ads in the 'Computer Shopper' are gross overkill. And we all know that DOS BBS software is about as bulletproof as it comes. The risk, of course, is impossible to evaluate; we cannot tell if the data we have about it is accurrate. But I take the news that the latest sabotage out there now against Microsoft was not written by a 'script kitty', but is hardwired assembly. Shades of Rainman. One report I saw said that Windows is now over 95 *million* lines of code. That some hacker has spotted something in all that and knew how to access the X86 interrupts, just blows my mind. If you need a clearer understanding of what he did, then download Ralf Brown's 'Intervue'... The WISP (Wireless ISP) guys wont be happy either. Just as we saw jackasses in urban areas putting 1000 watts on a CB channel just so they could brag about it all the way from Chicago to New Orleans, so we'll also see them ignoring the FCC and whatever gentlemen's agreements entrepeneurs now have. Geeks'll be hacking into their servers, cell towers, and any other access point they can find to the Internet... where they will be able to put whatever it is that they want... anonymously. A Wireless and/or cable user owned network wont have that problem. They are not in it for the money. Without the money, they are not nearly the target. Such a network could use SurvPCs running DOS. Not only is it harder to crack, it just dont have the same bragging rights as hacking into some transnational communication company's servers. Nor would the COOP care whether you ran the latest software and owned the newest hardware needed to run it on. Once it gets to your desktop, it should not matter whether you are running DOS, OS/2, Win, Nix, Mac, or even Amiga. Suit yourself. My personal experience suggests that there are efforts by Microsoft to make users upgrade, in part by monkeying with the PPP driver. However, much of that may simply be due to the incompetence of the technicians in obscure rural areas. I dont doubt that their NT servers could be setup to facilitate DOS/Arachne logons. But... there's no money in it. Hypertech, for instance, *sells* new hardware and software. Another thing to consider are the power requirements. I have surfed the net with a 486 I built that ran off solar panels on only 20 watts, with another 8 watts for the LCD and 5 when I wanted something stored on the IDE. All the cheap motherboards I've seen available these days run 50 watts or more. Which translates into *much* less run time on a battery backup. And if we do see a significant Internet crash, either from sabotage, stupidity, or Murphy's law, chances are the power grid will be interrupted as well. I dont expect that it would be expensive to add the transceiver equipment and antenna to a desktop to empower it to connect with the cellphone network. But if that, and/or the Satellite system get caught up in the disruption, there's no reason you couldnt rotate your antenna and connect directly to the other real *people* in your area who might know what is going on.
