Disconnect
The biggest disappointment of this week has been the lack of 802.11b access. I was going to just let it go, but I decided I should comment on it in part because of something I saw on Scripting News this evening. Dave commented that wireless access at conferences is becoming normal and expected.
I'd been thinking the same thing until this week.
There were a lot of networks up on the pavilion floor, but they were either not connected to the Internet or were password protected. There was also a hidden network (with spotty coverage) for the new Sharp Zaurus PDA (Linux based, with embedded java support). Nothing however that your average show attendees could use, not even in the area where the Sparc 5 systems were setup as mail stations. Even if I could bring myself to use a web mail solution at a show, why should I? I have my whole world on my laptop and it works everywhere else. I couldn't even find somewhere to go hook up to a DHCP based wired network. It's been a journey back into the stone age of networking which I find interesting given all the hype about web services (and the fact that every room was wired -- adding an open 802.11b connection would have been so simple). It would have also been quite useful; there were a few times when it would have been nice to pull down the docs being discussed so that I had them in front of me as a reference.
10:06:35 PM 
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