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Thursday, January 23, 2003
 


Open source mesh networking: People keep pointing me over the last few days to LocustWorld, a company using and creating open-source software and selling inexpensive boxes to perform mesh networking, which allows multiple routing paths for wireless data instead of single point-to-point or point-to-multipoint connections. I'm not sure why interest peaked again over the last week: they've been shipping software and hardware for months. Any community networking and neighborhood networking project should look into MeshAP as a cheap and interesting evolving solution.

[80211b News]
2:46:54 PM    


Porn Strategy: Share and Snare. The online pornography industry is the antithesis of how the entertainment business is operating these days: It likes the idea of sharing files. By Steve Friess. [Wired News]
2:39:39 PM    


Play with regexps from the safety of your browser. [Daily Python-URL]
2:14:01 PM    


Jason Orendorff: path 1.0 ["The 'path' module provides an object-oriented wrapper for file pathnames. Less typing than os.path, more fun, and a few new tricks."]
10:48:37 AM    


# This function lets you type statements like
# out(foo.bar.blah) and have Python respond
# with not only the value you asked for, but
# also the source code of the expression:
#
#   >>> mylist = ['spam', 'bacon', 'eggs']
#   >>> out(mylist)
#   mylist : ['spam', 'bacon', 'eggs']
#
# How could this work?

10:45:15 AM    


NetLogo. NetLogo. <font color="blue">NetLogo is a programmable modeling environment for simulating natural and social phenomena. It is particularly well suited for modeling complex systems developing over time. Modelers can give instructions to hundreds or thousands of independent "agents" all operating in parallel. This makes it possible to explore the connection between the micro-level behavior of individuals and the macro-level patterns that emerge from the interaction of many individuals. </font><p> NetLogo is related to StarLogo (details) that was developed at MIT (StarLogo was mentioned here in the past, IIRC).<p> Not having tried NetLogo, I am intrigued by the BehaviorSpace tool which provides a way to systematically evaluate the way the different parameters of your model interact, and by the HubNet system that provides support for participatory simulations in which each student controls a part of the system by using an individual device.<p>... [Meerkat: An Open Wire Service]
10:21:23 AM    

Bewitched


BeWitched is a LinuxAccessPoint based on Debian designed to run on the CloneArmy Box and the Soekris 4521 (should also run on 4501 and maybe the 4511). The root filesystem is readonly and the /var filesystem is recreated ar boot, this means that unless there is a hardware failure the system will always boot on power-up. There is also a read/write file system that is not mounted by default that can be used for persistent data, but it is not yet used and the procedure to mount and recover from filesystem errors is not yet in place.

In the case of the SoekrisBox the system resides on a CompactFlash currently 128MB. Currently the CF filsystem is not compressed and contains much data not needed at run-time, it is planned to change this to reduce the size of the system image.

Building the system takes several steps to produce a CompactFlash for the Soekris. The first step is to install and configure Debian on a PC or CloneArmy Box.

BuildBeWitched

at this point the system can be configured if this is the intended hardware, or a tar file of the system can be produced

"tar czf /u/linuxap.tgz bin home lib mnt sbin boot etc initrd opt root usr"

for the next step.

BuildCompactFlash

finally the system is configured for the specific node.

ConfigureBeWitched

--- BrianBeattie

The current package list BeWitchedPackageList


10:17:09 AM    


WiFi Meeting Etiquette [TechDirt]. We've had stories here about how WiFi has made meetings more productive, but there's another side to WiFi in meetings - which is that it can let people goof off. So, just like it took some time for people to learn (and some are still learning) the etiquette associated with mobile phone use, now people are starting to learn the etiquette of using their laptops and a wireless network in meetings. I'm sure it's no surprise that some people get so involved in what's going on in their laptop that they miss what's happening in the meeting, but there's a whole set of phrases developing around what WiFi connected meetings. There's the "basement meeting" of people commenting via instant messenger about what's happening in the real meeting. There's someone who's so focused on what's going on in their laptop that they have a "cache deficit" and need to ask people to repeat things. Finally, there are the ever popular "Google-It-Alls", who use their quick fingers and Google to make sure they're the ones who answer all questions as quickly as possible. [Ecademy : Aggregated News]
10:14:55 AM    


Nashville Wi-Fi [80211 News].

Nashville Wi-Fi: Another regional story about Wi-Fi in the local market. The reporter repeats something mentioned in the New York Times article about Long Beach without mentioning the source or that in the original article it was a speculative based on reports that the article didn't mention: That's why Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose and other tech-savvy cities have committed to creating ''hot zones'' in their downtowns. Although community wireless projects in at least some of these cities are bringing in wireless in larger areas, none of those four cities have municipally supported projects that I'm aware of.

[Ecademy : Aggregated News]
10:06:21 AM    


The Solution. Mark Pilgrim: Regular expressions are the messy solution to all of life's messy problems. Want to parse invalid HTML and XML? Regular expressions. Want to parse invalid RDF? Regular expressions. And may God have mercy on your soul. [Sam Ruby]
10:05:29 AM    


projection keyboards ctd. [image] a review of a whole bunch of projection keyboards about to surface [image] ..and the slashdot entry on the review via the shifted librarian [headmap]
9:54:05 AM    


Weblog and/or aggregator growth and usage stats?. Alright, it's time to invoke the Lazy Web again... If you watned to gather some statistics about the usage and... [LazyWeb]
9:40:24 AM    


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