...more recent posts
Go read Paul Ford's latest: lucky ducky.
Boing boing has extensive coverage of Larry Lessig's Spectrum Conference. Wow, there's so much enthusiasm (and real projects) it almost makes me forget about the difficulties I mentioned at the end of the last post.
Lots to wade through, but it's important stuff.
Interestingly, David Reed gave the keynote, and boing boing has a nice summary of his ideas amid the other coverage.
As Gibson said: the future is here, it's just not evenly distrubuted. In this case that's because it's all at this conference.
Yet another wireless mesh networking paper. Here's the executive summary. Here's the 3 point and above comments from slashdot.
Seems like even the geeks are still arguing the main point. Can bandwidth really increase as the number of nodes in a given area increases? This is (I think, with my limited math skills) what David P. Reed is claiming (maybe start looking here.) But it seems counterintuitive to most people, so I guess we're really going to need a large scale demonstration to prove the skeptics wrong.
But then there is a second level of problems. Even if it turns out this is possible, mathematically, it won't be as profitable for the entrenched players as the proprietary wires and spectrum model they are now operating under. So it may not be possible to change to a technically better system for purely economic reasons.
One scenario where I could imagine wireless mesh networks really taking off is after some sort of major disruption. Like if the telecoms all went bankrupt. Or some governmental entity shut the internet down. Or any of a couple even worse scenarios. But without the present imperfectly working system going away, I can't see people caring (or even understanding) enough to force this change.
But I can still hope. And maybe it can start, locally, not as a replacement to the internet but as a seperate layer that augments the current global net.
Holy cow! This asking for what I want thing is really working out. I mean, hypothetically, of course, because it's still just a rumor that Safari 0.62 even exists. So, hypothetically, thanks C.M.!
Now that I'm two for two I'm a little nervous. I better think before I ask for anything else. I mean, since it seems like I might get what I ask for.
Hmmm. Everything I touch turn to gold? No wait....