Twitter rich115's Recently Played TracksJon Lebkowshy points to a great article on a potential reason for the UK and Australia’s backing of the war against Iraq. For top secret weapons development, such as Anti-gravity. The article is interesting reading on two points. Why the two governments are backing the U.S., but on a more intriguing note, that “the American [...]
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Tatum, over at AlwaysOn (a new blog site that claims to “invite some of the smartest chiefs, geeks, investors, boosters and wonks to come play in our spontaneous and uncensored arena”, and worth checking out) suggests that Wi-Fi isn’t ready for Home Media Networks.
Needless to say, I had to disagree.
“I’m not sure I understand your statement that 802.11 requires “line of site”, so it will only really appeal to dorm rooms or small apartments. In fact Wi-Fi works very well around a good size house. It can of course work through walls.
It’s also interesting to note that 802.11b allows for up to 11Mbps and 802.11g up to 54Mbps. A CD is encoded at about 1.4MBps. Allowing for packet loss and any other overhead, I’d say you’ve got music covered in your home entertainment wireless-LAN. Mpeg-2, the compression used in DVDs requires between 4 and 9MBps, and HD-TV uses 24MBps, so is not so far away when you consider that 802.11g has begun deployment. I can stream a good quality Mpeg-1 video (compression used in VCD with similar speeds as CD) to my laptop over 802.11b with no problems. Not the highest quality video, but better than some VHS I’ve seen.
I’d recommend you give it a go before you suggest its limitations.“
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Not many news sites excite me (except perhaps when I found out Google had a news search beta), but AlwaysOn is very interesting. No more blogging versus journalism. A true blogism web site, that encourages, as the name suggests, an “always on” culture.
Read an article. Rate it. Comment on it. Receive a return comment from [...]
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Awesome.
Matrix Reloaded Superbowl Trailer.
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Due to a worm that infects Microsoft SQL server, the net experience a major slow down on Saturday.
Details at :
“The Internet Has Broken”
Electronic attack slows Internet
Virus-like attack hits web traffic
Internet traffic broadly affected by electronic attack
Microsoft SQL Slammer Worm Propagation
Worm attacking SQL Server causes Internet slowdown
Internet Woes Spread; May Be Receding
Geeky details
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Adding more weight to the argument that ‘03 is the year of Wi-Fi, Business Week picks on the European market for its possible growth (up to 66% this year) in the use of the technology.
“These numbers are drawing the attention of the Continent’s big telecoms. Until six months ago, most ‘were completely freaked out by Wi-Fi,’ says analyst Richard Dineen of telecom researcher Ovum Ltd. in London. They worried that the upstart technology would steal away customers from the 3G mobile services they’re spending billions to develop. Now, carriers realize that the two technologies are more complementary than competitive. Want to access your e-mail or corporate network from your laptop while sipping an espresso? Wi-Fi is the way to go. But if you want to quickly check a stock quote or flight schedule while riding in a cab, your mobile phone is the better option.”
There certainly is a market for 3G and Wi-Fi. I for one can not wait for a 3G mobile that allows me to check my email. However, I’d like to take my laptop places where I can surf the web for longer periods of time. Mobiles are for quick fix info. They are the 30 second ad, where the laptop is the 1 hour sitcom.
“The math is hard to resist. It typically costs less than $1,000 to deploy a hot spot that can accommodate about 10 users at once. That’s only about one-tenth the cost of providing equivalent capacity on a 3G network. End users save, too. Downloading a 20-megabyte PowerPoint presentation over 3G could take nearly 20 minutes and cost $16, while over Wi-Fi it would take about three minutes and cost just $2.50, figures telecom researcher Analysys in Cambridge, England.”
It talks a little about collaboration between providers. I can see an opportunity in all this for middle men. Brokers that will sell you a city wide service that spans several networks.
All this is provided that freenets don’t take off. In the long run a possibility with an open spectrum.
Wi-Fi: Here Come the Big Guns. Thanks to Werblog for the link.
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Sometimes you’ve got to ask, “why didn’t I think of that.”
“Converting public pay phones into terminals for “Wi-Fi” Internet connections.”
Making Pay Phones Pay at Fortune.
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Kevin Mitnick’s girlfriend, Darci, is buying him a Blackberry 6710 for the end of his probation. Tuesday 21 he will be back online, after 5 years jail, and 3 years probation that stopped him from accessing it. Since he went offline, we’ve experienced Netscape, Yahoo!, Spam, Internet Explorer, MP3s, Java, 33.6 Modems, Pentium, Amazon, EBay, ADSL, Script Kiddies, Online banking, Google, Melissa Virus, Napster, Y2K, and Wi-Fi.
Good luck Kevin, “welcome to the real world”.
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The UK government is set to allow unlicensed use of the 5GHz part of the spectrum for low power wireless networks. The article makes mention of some experts who suggest that there is little need for this, because most public WLANs would not need the speed given by 802.11a devices that operates at 5GHz. However, as a start to an open spectrum it could allow for interesting use. “Experts” may have missed the explosion of freenets that could put this type of bandwidth to great use. What about Universities, company LANs, etc. That’s not even taking into account the great uses we haven’t even thought of yet.
UK poised to legalise faster Wi-Fi hot spots.
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I’ve started an Australian Open Spectrum web site for further information and news on the subject.
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