Wednesday, September 25, 2002

In Rudy Rucker's books Freeware and Realware, our heroes have personal communication devices called uvvys (pronounced "uh-vy") which work on a model similar to the one proposed by Nicholas Negroponte in the current issue of Wired.  The idea is to have peer-to-peer wi-fi connectivity, such that network traffic is relayed from node to node until it reaches it's intended recipient, rather than routing upstream to the "mother ship" and then back down again.  This would certainly seem to be more efficient.  Today, when I send an IM to my wife or next-door neighbor, the packets go all the way to Virgnia-or-somewhere before coming back down to the other PC just a few feed away.  Under the "lily pad and frog" model, the packets would go pretty much straight there.  The hidden advantage: privacy.  If the packets never cross an upstream router, they can't be recorded or monitored by The Man. It occured to me that this sort of thing might be workable using the hardware and software sitting on my desk today.  802.11b can be configured to work in "ad hoc" mode, two individual PC's talking directly to each other (peer-to-peer) without a hub or router in between.  Win2k allows for the sharing of network connections.  I should be able to have one laptop talk to another via ad hoc wi-fi, with one of them also connected via Ethernet to the wired router, connection sharing enabled.  In this configuration, will the laptop that is not connected directly to the Internet be able to read slashdot? 1:22:12 AM

Trying another pointing device This week I'm trying the Targus Wireless mini-mouse with my P.  It's a spiffy little mouse, with a comfortable grip. However, I think I like the Kennsington mouse better so far.  It's much lighter, as it's powered off the USB hub and hence has no batteries inside.  And it doesn't have to synchronize RF channels, which seems to be less than seemless on the Targus mouse. 12:18:00 AM