global.freifunk.net - syndicating the free wireless communities and blogs of the world

Pro občanská sdružení: Nový O.Z.

freifunker — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:01:00 +0200

Možná bude některá občanská sdružení poskytující internetové služby zajímat, že nový návrh občanského zákoníku ( e.cz%2Fms%2Fsoubor.aspx%3Fid%3D16313&ei=n8GqSIiIKpe00QSohYmwDw&usg=AFQjCNH-mGWmfdi87x6BThI2nM4LUsfRzg&sig2=54lmOIrhA6EpnDn9rfGS1Q... ) neobsahuje institut občanského sdružení. .......

Freies Freifunktreffen im Freien und Draußen 2008

freifunker — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:27:00 +0200

Hallo Welt! Am Samstag den 23. August ist es zum zweiten Mal soweit: Das “Freifunktreffen im Freien” findet ab 15 Uhr auf der Wiese unterhalb der Kanenaer Antennenkopfstation in Kanena bei Halle statt. Link zum Ort

Normalerwiese treffen wir uns zweimal die Woche im Dinner for One, aber nicht diesmal. Diesmal schlagen wir unsere Neugier, Technik, Antennen, Router, Mikrofone und Laptops an Stromers Fernsehmast knapp südlich des Hufeisensees auf. Auf diesem Mast sind mehrere WLAN Antennen in 25 Metern Höhe installiert und verbinden Kanenas um die 25 Freifunkknoten miteinander. Diese rippige Stahlsäule hat durchaus ihr Potential für den Halle’schen Freifunk schon gezeigt, so gibt es von Zeit zu Zeit eine Verbindung in die Freiimfelderstraße und es gab auch schonmal einen Link in die Dieselstraße.

Genug zum Ort. Zur Sache. In luftiger Athmosphäre könnte dort tatsächlich ein entspanntes, erweitertes Stammtischtreffen stattfinden, mit viel Zeit für Detailsachverhalte, Gespräche, WLAN, Radio, neugierige Fragen, Ausprobieren und Wissenvermitteln. Und natürlich schönem neuen Input für alle! ;^) Wir hoffen denn auch auf gutes Wetter, sodass interessierte Hallenser und Freifunker von weiter weg den Weg zu uns finden! Es gibt ein Zelt, Bänke, Speisen, “zu Trinken” und einen 16 Mbit Uplink. Musik gibts bestimmt auch. Spendendose stellen wir hin.

Alle ihr, die ihr über Freifunk mehr wissen wollt oder auch schon involviert seid, seid herzlich willkommen und schaut vorbei! Weiterlesen

Für alle, die eine kleine Reise auf sich nehmen wollen um herzukommen; es ergeben sich bestimmt drei, vier Pennplätze und am Tag danach ist, auch tagsüber, eine sehr gute Musikveranstaltung auf dem Holzplatz.

Bis dann!

One Web Day Comes to DC -- Mark Your Calendars: September 22, 2008!

freifunker — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:58:00 +0200

Here in DC we're gearing up for One Web Day and it's looking to be the most extravagant OWD party I've helped organize yet! Want to learn more -- check out:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT
Nathaniel James
DC OWD Ambassador
Campaign Coordinator, Media and Democracy Coalition
njames@media-democracy.net
p: 202 736 5757
c: 206 954 3040

Morgan Weiland
DC OWD Ambassador
morganweiland@gmail.com
c: 202 256 7480

DC ONE WEB DAY: BLOGGER PREVIEW
Teleconference with One Web Day founder, ICANN Board Member and cyberlaw scholar Susan Crawford, and DC ambassadors

Wednesday, August 20, 3:30pm and 8pm.

Washington, DC—OneWebDay (OWD) is a global event held September 22 celebrating the Web and highlighting key issues about the future of the Internet, with a focus in its third year on online political participation. To celebrate and document the recent flourishing of online political participation in what has become a new "town square," the DC OWD Planning Committee is creating an E-Democracy Time Capsule that will go live online on August 22, one month before OWD. We are building a site where anyone, from all corners of the United States and the world, can mark history by contributing text, images, sound, and video to a tricked-out WordPress blog describing their favorite E-Democracy tools, letters to the future about their hopes for Web-powered politics, and profiles of E-Democracy Heroes.

We stand at a crossroads in the history of online political participation, and the future is uncertain. Policy decisions concerning digital inclusion, net neutrality, and online privacy and security will be made in the coming months and years. We all have a stake in ensuring that when the virtual Time Capsule is reopened on OWD in 2020, the new town square delivers on its promise to become a thriving marketplace of ideas where anyone can participate unhindered by illegitimate gatekeepers and a lack of access to the tools and skills they need to add their voice the dialog.

Join us August 20 for a teleconference with One Web Day founder, ICANN Board Member, and cyberlaw scholar Susan Crawford, and DC ambassadors Nathaniel James and Morgan Weiland to learn about how the E-Democracy Time Capsule can promote the work you do and what role you can play in helping to make this year's event a success. We welcome all bloggers interested in the promise of online political participation. To ensure maximum participation, we will host two calls, one at 3:30 PM ET and a second at 8:00 PM ET.

Teleconference details:

Who
----------------

Susan Crawford
One Web Day founder
ICANN Board Member
and cyberlaw scholar at Michigan University

Nathanial James
DC OWD Ambassador and Campaign Coordinator
Media and Democracy Coalition

When
----------------

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Times
----------------

3:30 PM ET / 12:30 PM PT
8:00 PM ET/ 5:00 PM PT

Dial-In
----------------

(218) 339 4300, password: 425 755

Please dial in 5-10 minutes before call so we can start on time.

More information about OWD is available at www.onewebday.org.

Hacking a commercial airport WLAN

freifunker — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:42:00 +0200

Se han detectado redes de tipo Honeypot que emulan un acceso de pago a una red Wifi. Una vez el usuario esté conectado pueden suplantar páginas web o de simple acceso que soliciten datos al usuario como número de la tarjeta de crédito, accesos bancarios, datos de acceso a diferentes portales ...

Aconsejamos que extremen las medidas de seguridad en este tipo de conexiones, y no visiten o faciliten datos de alto riesgo cuando se vean condicionados hacer uso de servicios de este tipo.

By N3Cr05

Le gadget qui compte les piétons et les vélos - maville.com

freifunker — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:13:00 +0200

Le gadget qui compte les piétons et les vélos
maville.com - Il y a 12 heures
... d'éviter au client de se déplacer pour effectuer les relevés, les données chiffrées sont transmises sur PC via GPRS, le réseau de téléphonie sans fil. ...

Altro che la mia lumaca …

freifunker — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:04:00 +0200

Ricordate il bellissimo video della mia Lumaca ?? Certo quel video era bello Ma c’è ancora tanto da lavorare per riuscire a fare un video bello come questo:

Vediamo se tra qualche anno anche io sarò capace di un capolavoro del genere

Saverio

Known Element Enterprises - A year in review

freifunker — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:08:00 +0200

First let's start with the mission of Known Element Enterprises. I created the company to serve as an incubation firm to take ideas that various people in my social network had and (with the proper analysis/planning/connections/funding) turn them into cash for the members of that social network, based on the amount of effort put into developing the idea.

Let's start off by taking a look at the various ideas that have been tossed around by members of my social network in the past year (Q3/Q4 2007 and Q1/Q2 2008).

SiliconValleySouth - Cyber Cafe

The first idea was for a brick and mortar business called SiliconValleySouth, which would have been a cyber cafe. (Patti and I came up with this idea). After a detailed analysis it was determined the idea wasn't feasible and has been abandoned.

More info can be found at the below blog posts:
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/09/bit-about-svs.html
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/09/brainstorming.html
.html...
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/09/some-thoughts-on-printing.html
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/09/free-wifi.html
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/10/pay-at-pump.html
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/10/another-photo-idea.html

ClickItNoTicket - Web 2.0 project

The next idea that got put out there was ClickItNoTicket (this was co developed at MobileCampLA and won the Entrepreneurial Improv contest. ). After a detailed analysis
it was concluded that the idea had significant issues but could most likely be overcome with funding and a dedicated product team. We didn't pursue turning this idea into a formal business plan, but anyone is welcome to do so.

More info can be found at the below blog posts:
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/11/clickitnoticketcom.html
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/11/brain-dump-on-clickitnoticket.html
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/11/license-plates.html
ml...

OpenSrcLearn.org/OpenSrcLearn.com and OpenSourceDelivery Systems - Educational and professional services

The next idea was OpenSrcLearn.org and OpenSrcLearn.com. After a detailed analysis and various false starts (venue not being available even though it was promised to us, certain people with the project falling through and promising us things that were not quite true) as well as a very competitive market with some large established players, we didn't proceed with the educational idea. The educational idea was tied pretty heavily to the SiliconValleySouth idea as well. A blended revenue stream if you will.

More info can be found at the below blog posts:
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/11/opensrclearnorg.html
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2007/11/opensrclearncom.html
ml...

Infrasbox - IT Automation

The next idea was an IT automation product. After a detailed analysis we discovered a very powerful product called ControlTier which did everything our analysis / product plan wanted.

More info can be found at the below blog posts:

http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2008/02/infrasboxcom-swot.html
http://siliconvs.blogspot.com/2008/03/infrasbox-is-hiring.html

Whew. Late Q3/Q4 2007 and Q1/Q2 2008 was a whirlwind of ideas which on the surface seemed good but after analysis turned out to:

1)Not be feasiable (due to problems with the business model or not being able to differentiate from the existing players (SiliconValleySouth, OpenSrcLearn, OpenSourceDeliverySystems,InfrasBox)

2)Not be feasiable without VC funding and a product team (ClickItNoTicket)

The staff of Known Element Enterprises has certainly learned a lot about the beginning of the product development lifecycle and how to write really good business/operations/product plans :)

Looking forward

After taking a breather from the whirlwind pace of 2007 and Q1/Q2 2008 we have regrouped and came up with our goal for 2009:

KnownElementEnterprises will launch a business process outsourcing platform called BizzBus which will handle all aspects of a business transaction from initial customer engagement to final sale.

More to come on this topic later.

"The Promise of Municipal Broadband"

freifunker — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 23:11:00 +0200

Here's a good analysis on the state of municipal broadband -- from www.progressive.org/mag/aaron0808.html:

"The Promise of Municipal Broadband"

By Craig Aaron, August 2008

When Mayor John Street announced plans to make Philadelphia the nation’s first major “wireless city” back in the fall of 2004, the press couldn’t get enough. “Forget cheese steaks, cream cheese, and brotherly love,” declared The New York Times. “Philadelphia wants to be known as the city of laptops.”

Philadelphia’s goal to cover 135 square miles with a cloud of Internet connectivity was ambitious. But the need was undeniable. High-speed Internet access was fast becoming an economic, educational, and social necessity. Yet most of Philly’s residents were stranded on the wrong side of the digital divide, unable to access or afford a broadband connection.

When Earthlink—a dial-up Internet company looking for a foothold in the broadband world—came forward promising to build a state-of-the-art wireless system without the city paying a dime, Philadelphia signed up. And soon, you couldn’t go a week without another major metropolis—San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Portland, Oregon—jumping on the Wi-Fi bandwagon.
So what happened?

Three years later, many of the projects seem to be sputtering. The tens of thousands of new subscribers didn’t materialize. Getting the equipment up on streetlights and buildings proved more expensive and technically challenging than expected. Chicago and St. Louis scrapped their plans last summer. In Tempe, Arizona, a company called Gobility shuttered the system there and unplugged its customer-service line. Earthlink abandoned projects in San Francisco and Houston, before announcing it was getting out of the municipal wireless business altogether.

With its flagship Philadelphia project still unfinished, new Earthlink CEO Rolla P. Huff announced last fall that “making significant further investments in this business could be inconsistent with our objective of maximizing shareholder value.”

Then the press pounced, with stories appearing in the Associated Press, USA Today, BusinessWeek, and the Times, declaring municipal projects to be floundering, fading failures. One tech writer dismissed municipal wireless as “the monorail of the decade.”

But all the obituaries are premature. A closer look at what’s happening at projects across the country—public and private, wired and wireless, big and small—suggests that it’s far too early to start the funeral arrangements. Much of the media are confusing the collapse of one company—or one model of broadband deployment—with the failure of the entire idea of municipalities providing high-speed Internet services.

“It’s like someone striking out in a boat in 1490, it sinking, and people saying, ‘You know what? This whole ocean travel thing isn’t going to work out,’ ” says Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a Minneapolis-based research group that tracks municipal projects.

Even in Philadelphia, all is not lost. In June, a group of local investors announced they had arranged to take over Philadelphia’s network and offer free Wi-Fi outdoor—but details are sketchy.

Many projects—especially in small towns and mid-sized cities—are thriving. From Hermiston, Oregon, to Scottsburg, Indiana, to St. Cloud, Florida, city-owned wireless systems are up and running, serving local residents and businesses or local police and emergency workers. Places like Sallisaw, Oklahoma, and Kutztown, Pennsylvania, are building their own fiber-optic networks that offer high-speed Internet and cable TV.

In total, more than 400 cities and towns already have launched, or are developing, municipal broadband systems. Spending on municipal networks increased last year and is expected to keep rising. MuniWireless.com projects that annual spending on equipment and services will exceed $900 million by 2010.

Municipal broadband is caught up in a classic “hype cycle”—a term coined by the Gartner Research Group to chart technology trends. It works like this: First, new technology triggers a wave of excitement that builds to a “peak of inflated expectations.” For municipal broadband this was 2005’s heady days of “free Internet for everyone everywhere.”

After the peak, there’s a rapid slide toward what Gartner calls “the trough of disillusionment”—a.k.a. rock bottom or, in this case, the headline in the March 22 edition of The New York Times: “Hopes for Wireless Cities Are Fading.”

Vermont’s Tim Nulty isn’t mourning the troubles some cities are having with municipal wireless. To him, it was never the right technology for the job at hand. “Think about 747s and helicopters,” he says. “Helicopters are marvelous when they’re used for what they’re good at. But you don’t use them to fly thousands of people between Boston and Chicago. For that you need 747s.”

Wireless systems may offer mobility, but a fiber-optic network connected directly to homes boasts nearly unlimited capacity. Fiber is the jumbo jet of municipal broadband. Though conventional wisdom says fiber is too expensive or complicated for cities to handle, Nulty—who spent more than ten years in the ’70s and ’80s on Capitol Hill as the chief economist for the key Senate and House committees that make telecom policy—was recruited out of retirement to help the city of Burlington get a municipal fiber network off the ground.

That project became Burlington Telecom—a city department that now provides high-speed Internet, phone, and cable TV service to some 3,000 residential customers. While revenue from subscribers goes into the public coffers, at Nulty’s insistence the network itself was financed by private investors without any taxpayer money. Not only is the system up and running, but it already has a positive cash flow.

Nulty recently left Burlington Telecom to spearhead a project to bring fiber to smaller towns across Vermont. Twenty-five towns voted—many of them unanimously—to join a venture called the East Central Vermont Community Fiber Network. As in Burlington, the networks will be built without taxpayer funds.

“I’m convinced this is the only way we in Vermont are going to get access to this high-speed stuff,” Jerry Drugonis of Pittsfield, Vermont, told the Rutland Herald after the vote. “We’ve been at the tail end of the dog for a long time.”

It doesn’t necessarily take a city department to bring high-speed Internet access to local residents. Some of the most innovative projects are small-scale, community-based efforts.

“We’re finally coming back around to ideas that were around before the corporate franchise was shown to be a failure,” says Sascha Meinrath, research director of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Program, who launched one of the nation’s first community wireless projects while he was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “So much money was being spent to push the corporate model that it was all cities heard about. There was no PR or marketing for community wireless groups. But unlike the corporations, their focus has always been maximizing the public good.”

In Asheville, North Carolina, the Mountain Area Information Network (MAIN) has been operating as a nonprofit Internet service provider since 1996, first with dial-up and now with wireless broadband. It uses “mesh network” technology created by a company called Meraki to serve hundreds of citizens in nine Asheville neighborhoods.

The network—the same type that Meraki is using to offer free wireless in San Francisco—allows many people in the same area to share one Internet connection. This type of neighbor-to-neighbor sharing is discouraged by the big phone and cable companies, but MAIN has its own connection to the Internet backbone.

MAIN is far from a traditional Internet Service Provider: It’s committed to closing the digital divide and recycles computers for use by local residents who otherwise couldn’t afford them; its website is a community media hub; and the group also runs a local low power FM radio station. Wally Bowen, MAIN’s executive director, sees the future of community media.

“I firmly believe that every public access TV operation, every community radio station, every nonprofit community technology center can be doing this,” he says. “It’s not rocket science. All of those technology-based nonprofits are strapped for revenue. We’ve got to figure out a way to capture some of those digital dollars that are falling out of our communities, and this is it.”

Small-town success stories are encouraging but they don’t answer whether municipal broadband can work in the big city. The recent completion of a citywide wireless network in Minneapolis suggests that cities may be learning from Philadelphia’s mistakes.

Minneapolis has already signed up 8,000 users, and its Wi-Fi network was used by emergency responders after the I-35W bridge collapse. Unlike Philadelphia, Minneapolis agreed to be the network’s “anchor tenant,” committing $1.25 million per year for the next decade.

“Having the city itself as the anchor tenant gives the provider an incentive to set up a good network,” says Esme Vos of MuniWireless.com. “From the get-go, there’s a set amount of money. Philadelphia never had that deal. San Francisco never had that deal.”

However, some in the Twin Cities are disappointed that Minneapolis opted to support a private network rather than constructing its own public one. “If a private company decides they just aren’t going to do it anymore, the community is stuck because it’s privately owned,” Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance explains. “If it’s publicly owned and the network is not going exactly as planned, they can decide if it’s still worth it for their police officers to have access; if it’s still worth it to have inspectors and social workers be able to enter their data remotely; if it’s still worth it for citizens to be able to connect anywhere. They can ask those questions and decide whether it’s good for the community or not.”

However, unlike Philadelphia, Minneapolis did choose a local company, U.S. Internet, to build the network. “That’s key,” Vos says. “U.S. Internet is not investing in a mobile handset project and trying to still provide DSL service and outsourcing their customer service to India. This is their main project.”

Local control—and with it, jobs and revenues staying in the community—appears to be one of the elements of success for municipal broadband projects large and small. The money stays in the community, jobs are being created, and everyone from firefighters to meter readers benefits.

“If you’re not sending money out to shareholders across the country and expecting a huge return on investment,” Mitchell says, “you can already have an advantage in terms of pricing it more reasonably to make sure your businesses and your people can afford to have fast connectivity that’s going to keep the city competitive regionally and globally.”

While municipal broadband projects can’t succeed without buy-in from local stakeholders, ubiquitous high-speed Internet access won’t be achieved via local governments or groups alone. We need a national broadband policy.

Back in March 2004, President Bush called for “universal affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007.” Yet in 2008, we’re nowhere close. And the United States is falling further behind the rest of the world. Much of Asia and Europe enjoys broadband speeds that are twenty to fifty times faster than what we get here—and they pay less for it.

“We have a failure on the national level that’s too important to ignore,” says James Baller, an attorney who represents local governments and public utilities and closely follows municipal broadband issues. “Not to view broadband as a strategic asset is a significant shortcoming. The other leading countries of the world do view broadband in that light, and they are thinking about how to get more of it at much faster speeds and lower rates because it’s a platform for so many other things that are important.”

Policymakers could create incentives for local communities to build telecom networks, spurring new competition and growing the new market for entrepreneurs and innovators, especially in areas bypassed or underserved by the big phone and cable companies. Better yet, says Asheville’s Bowen, these incentives could mandate that systems be locally controlled and nonprofit, ensuring that the investment stays in the community.

Yet, fourteen states currently have laws on the books—drafted by phone and cable company lobbyists—restricting municipalities from erecting their own broadband systems. The Community Broadband Act, bipartisan legislation that already passed the Senate Commerce Committee, would tear down the roadblocks. “The first thing we have to do,” Mitchell says, “is make sure that communities that want to solve their own problems, that want to build the network they need, can do that.”

Congress and the Federal Communications Commission also could improve municipal wireless by setting aside a greater portion of the airwaves for public use. Wi-Fi systems operate on narrow “junk bands” already cluttered with cordless phones, baby monitors, and the like, requiring more transmitters and higher costs to set up a network.

Meanwhile, vast portions of the broadcast TV spectrum—as much as 70 percent in some markets—are sitting unused because of outdated regulations and a misinformation campaign waged by the broadcasters’ lobby. These “white spaces” would allow signals to go farther and travel through obstacles. “If we open up the unused spaces between the television channels, it suddenly becomes possible to deploy the network that we need at a quarter of the cost,” says Harold Feld of the Media Access Project, a public interest communications law firm in Washington.

There is growing bipartisan support for many of these policies. And the nation’s broadband policy—or lack thereof—is even becoming a presidential campaign issue. To his credit, John McCain is a lead sponsor of the Community Broadband Act, though he hasn’t always backed public interest policies during his years on the influential Senate Commerce Committee and voted against restoring crucial “Net Neutrality” protections.

For his part, Barack Obama hasn’t yet signed on to McCain’s community broadband bill. But he supports Net Neutrality and has pledged to make Internet issues a top priority of his administration. In a June speech in Flint, Michigan, Obama declared: “As President, I will set a simple goal: Every American should have the highest speed broadband access—no matter where you live, or how much money you have. We’ll connect schools, libraries, and hospitals. And we’ll take on special interests to unleash the power of wireless spectrum for our safety and connectivity.”

In the end, the biggest obstacles to universal, affordable Internet access aren’t economic or technical. They’re political. Broadband is too important to the economy, education, and, well, democracy to be at the mercy of Comcast, Verizon, or AT&T. It’s time to rethink the approach to these problems and move the discussion past short-term technical fixes and next quarter’s profits.

“We need to start looking at this as an infrastructure issue rather than as a business,” Feld says. “We don’t ask cities and towns to cost-justify bringing in fresh water and having a sewer system when we could outsource it to private companies. Nobody says, why should my town compete with the private water market? I can get Perrier, why should I have water? We treat water as a utility. We do the same thing with electricity. We have to take the same attitude here toward broadband.”

Craig Aaron is the communications director of Free Press, the national, nonpartisan media reform group. A senior editor of In These Times, he blogs regularly about media, journalism, and the future of the Internet at SavetheInternet.com, StopBigMedia.com, and The Huffington Post.

In partenza per il MOCA

freifunker — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:21:00 +0200

La community di Ninux.org è di nuovo in partenza. Ci siamo quasi. Sono passati 4 anni dall’ultimo MOCA, ed non vediamo l’ora di svegliarci il 21 agosto all’interno del Camp a Pescara.

Questi giorni sono all’insegna dei preparativi. Io sto lavorando alle slides per il talk di Ninux.org (Gestione di una Wireless Community Network), Orolab sta preparando tende & fonere

Il firmware basato su IPv6 è a buon punto, ed il camp è un luogo perfetto per tirare su un testbed con qualche decina di nodi. Cercheremo di capire se questa soluzione autoconfigurabile funziona davvero

Ancora non è chiaro quanti Ninux members saranno presenti al camp. Di certo nella macchina con cui parto ci siamo io, orolab, michele e … un ospite americano: John Draper. Ebbene si, il famoso hacker statunitense viaggerà con noi da Fiumicino a Pescara!

Se venite anche voi l’appuntamento è al Camp, altrimenti seguite il blog, perché come al solito non mancheranno video ed interviste.

Saluti, Saverio

Nominations for Committee are now open

freifunker — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 02:20:00 +0200

P2P, Ning Social Networking & More

freifunker — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:37:00 +0200

I was invited by Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation to participate in the P2P Foundation Ning social networking group. He says that “Ning is proprietary, but very flexible and with a sensible advertising policy. He adds, “I think the advantage over Facebook is that is has just the right kind of applications to work [...]

OLSR und pfSense

freifunker — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:42:00 +0200

Da pfSense OLSR unterstützt habe ich gedacht, dass es eventuell möglich wäre, ohne weiteren Access Point an einem Mesh-Netzwerk teilzunehmen. So hätte man eine Backup-Leitung ins Netz, wenn der eigenen Internetzugang ausfällt. Ein bisschen darüber nachgedacht und es könnte auch noch heissen, dass automatisch das WLAN-Interface als WAN-Schnittstelle benutzt wird, wenn der eigene Internetzugang ausgefallen ist und der Traffic über diese geroutet wird. Und wenn der eigene Internetzugang dann wieder funktioniert, die Route wieder geändert wird und ein HNA-Announcement im Mesh-Netz die Verfügbarkeit des Zuganges wieder verkündet. Nur so ein paar Gedanken, welche von einer Umsetzung noch weit entfernt sind.

Aber alles der Reihe nach...zuerst einmal die Konfiguration zur Verwendung mit einem Mesh-Netzwerk auf OLSR-Basis. Die entsprechende Seite für die Einstellungen befindet sich unter "Services" und "OLSR"

ESC Boston giving away free Beagles

freifunker — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:36:00 +0200

"At the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) Boston show on Oct. 26-30, the organizers are giving away free Cortex-A8-based Beagle development boards."

Bookmark this on Delicious - Saved by jadon to beagleboard conference esc - More about this bookmark

Free Edmonton Fringe Festival WiFi

freifunker — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 04:09:00 +0200

We’re struggling a tiny bit with the Fringe WiFi, but it’s an amazing learning experience when working with these routers. We’re learning their limitations and how long they take to touch base, etc. etc. For example we can’t bounce a signal through the corner of a brick building without a pretty close proximity. Also encouraging people to volunteer a power supply is great for practicing our pitches.

The biggest problem has been getting everything deployed at once. It’s easy to get confused which node is where and what MAC address is what when you’re not taking notes and you’re adding a new repeater every hour or so. Next year we’ll be able to tackle something like this quite early and actually get a nice partnership with whichever event we’re supporting.

Here’s a screenshot of the properly working Fringe grounds:

Oh, and the best thing we’re learning is PATIENCE. It’s very easy to get frustrated because a certain node isn’t checking in fast enough or there’s a flutter with some power or whatnot. Just give it an hour and it’ll return to normal, no use running down to the grounds if you don’t need to.

Come check out and enjoy the Free WiFi at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival courtesy of the Free WiFi Project!

Climate Camp snippets

freifunker — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:28:00 +0200

In case you hadn’t heard, last weekend saw the climax of this year’s Climate Camp near Kingsnorth, Kent.

Bristol Wireless was in attendance, providing kit and tech support for the Be The Media centre, including Camp Radio (archive here).

As usual, the event was powered by renewable energy: indeed, as can be seen below, the Bristol Wireless suite of veteran laptops was powered at times by its users, with 5 minutes cycling giving pedallers 10 minutes on the laptop!

The kit arrived back at the lab on Tuesday. Cunningly accompanied by a plea to help unload the van, Mike wrote the following en route:

Hi all,

survived climate camp, didn’t get arrested, didn’t get got at by the trotskyists, corporate moles, undercovers, socialist workers, nor pinko-greeno-conspiracy theorists! All went very well, the suite and the space performed well as usual, the party tent took a battering though, and I’m pretty knackered. Sam’s windmill worked and helped to save the day power-wise……will be driving back later and hope to get to Werbs around 5ish to drop the stuff off.

Hopefully, we’ll have a fuller report in the next few days.

AP Jeřáb - Dočasný výpadek

freifunker — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:12:00 +0200

Na AP Jeřáb můžou být během měsíce srpna dočasné výpadky z důvodů rekonstrukce střech. Případné dotazy na tel: 602 784 976, Jiří Pižl

A closer look at Clearwire’s spectrum

freifunker — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:20:00 +0200

Ever since we put together our first Sidecut Report on WiMax and its comprehensive look at the impact of the New Clearwire deal on the U.S. market, we have been intrigued by the prospect of the 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings that Sprint and the old Clearwire brought to the table.

So instead of just wondering about it, we spent some time asking questions and came up with a new product, something we are calling a Sidecut QuickCut — in this case a 12-page look at the New Clearwire’s spectrum depth, and how it gives WiMax an unquestionable boost over other wireless data operations coming to the U.S. market.

Titled “Deep and Wide: Why New Clearwire’s Spectrum Holdings Give WiMax a Boost in the U.S. Wireless Market 4G Deployment Race,” our “QuickCut” report takes a focused look at the role spectrum holdings play in wireless data services deployment for both Clearwire and its competitors in the so-called “4G” marketplace. Though the shorter form factor makes for a quicker read than our definitive 34-page full Sidecut Report on WiMax, there is still room to learn:

– Why having more spectrum depth means faster wireless services that are easier to deploy

– Why the 2.5 GHz frequency may be better at delivering wireless data than the highly touted 700 MHz band, especially in urban deployments

– Why the big telcos, AT&T and Verizon, are concerned about Clearwire’s spectrum holdings

– How New Clearwire’s spectrum holdings increase the chances for WiMax’s successful entry into the U.S. broadband services marketplace

Need to know more about WiMax? Order our recently updated WiMax report, with full analysis of the “new” Clearwire deal and the motivations for investors Comcast, Google, Intel and others.

Apéro Wifi vendredi 15 août

freifunker — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:09:00 +0200

Avec l'été , les apéros Wifi Bi-mensuel de Marseille Wireless se sont fait plus rare et les deux dernières réunions de fin juillet et de début Aout n'ont pas réellement au lieu , beaucoup étant parti en vacances.

Qu'a cela ne tienne, demain 15 aout une nouvelle réunion de notre association pointe son nez. Donc Rendez vous comme tous les 3e vendredi du mois sur la terrasse de l'olympic bar à Marseille à 18H.

@ Demain !

Compte Rendu

L'Olympic Bar fermait en ce 15 aout à 18H30 donc nous avons migré chez Denis , rue Saint Pierre avec Michel, Denis et Lionel.

Le routeur wifi de l'olympic Bar est tombé en panne il y a 3 semaines, Sylvain l'as changé mais pas reconfiguré à l'identique, il seras réinstallé demain matin à l'olympic.

Réseau Canotiers : La recette de l'installation aurait du avoir lieu en Juin. Mais certains utilisateurs ont encore des problèmes de connections, pour ça on prépare des petits routeurs wifi ( foneras) et en dernier recours ces personnes peuvent les utiliser pour se connecter en filaire. On peut aussi leur proposer des cartes wifi USB plus puissantes & compatibles.

Michel a ramener le GPS bluetooth qu'il a acheté pour l'asso.

Michel a ramener la clé usb 3G que Malorie nous a preté, et il a pris une SIM mobicarte qui devrait nous permettre d'avoir Internet Illimité pour 9 Euros/Mois. Cela reste a tester et a intégrer avec un routeur wifi USB (nous avons deux WGT634U ).

Apéro Wifi vendredi 15 août

freifunker — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 02:09:00 +0200

@ Demain !

T. Clausen's lecture at Wien/funkfeuer.at about OLSRv2

freifunker — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:42:00 +0200

We will start now (19:00 CET, UTC+02) with T. Clausen's presentation
about OLSRv2 in Vienna / funkfeuer.at / metalab.at.
If you are not here you can still join in :

Low quality:

http://superbertram.com/LIVE.html

Better quality + sound:

use VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/), it
can stream via the URL http://supercam.superbertram.com:8080
(in VLC it is important to go to "Open network" and then type in the
URL)

Recordings?

If you want to view the presentation later, please go to
http://sc.superbetram.com/archive/

Have questions?

-> irc: server: p2pchat.net, #funkfeuer.at
I will be there and forward the questions.
In case you have problems with the stream, please send me a mail.

LAN PARTY TOURS 2nd Edition

freifunker — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:20:00 +0200

Les 4 et 5 octobre prochain se dérouleront pour la seconde année consécutive une LAN PARTY qui se situera à l'Espace Leo Lagrange - 90 avenue Maginot à Tours Nord.

Plus d'information : lantours.free.fr

gpl-violations.org report in Financial Times Deutschland

freifunker — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 04:00:00 +0200

The German business newspaper Financial Times Deutschland has published an article about my GPL enforcement work. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first such article in a general newspaper. All previous coverage was in publications or magazines tailored to the IT industry.

However, the content is of very low quality, and the actual facts are wrong in a number of cases. First of all, why go to a personal level and describe myself as having a 'Harry Potter hairstyle', and then calling me "a mixture between bill gates and a heavy-metal fan". I hereby deny any similarity with Bill Gates. I had my hair style like this even in the nineties (before growing it long around 1997-2000 and then cutting it again in 2001). And I listen to a lot of weird music, though heavy metal is generally not on my playlist. Anyway, what is the point of all of that? How does this help people to evaluate the risk of GPL violations?

Further down, the article has claims like "the driver software of the router also contained some lines of code that were originally written by Welte". First of all, it is the firmware, not the driver. Secondly, it is more than a couple of lines (since a couple of lines would probably not constitute a copyrightable work).

The article also explicitly states that I am not fighting for money, but "out of principle". Despite that, it also claims "The first couple of companies are shivering expecting the destruction of their book value". That's illogical.

Furthermore, there are claims that I have focused on companies that only used small amount of open source. To the contrary: The majority of the products that I've enforced so far contain 75% or more open source software. Only small portions were added by the respective vendors.

To the contrary, there was a recent article in the Berliner Morgenpost paper one of the CCC Leaders which was really well-researched and of high quality. Even that one gets some minor facts wrong, but still portrays a realistic picture.

Meraki: end of life for the Standard Edition

freifunker — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:16:00 +0200

Meraki is introducing more changes:

Meraki Indoor
End of life of the Standard Edition line of products
Prices now start at $149

The Meraki Indoor improves upon the Meraki Mini by adding built-in signal strength LEDs, a hardware watchdog for withstanding power fluctuations and a sleeker enclosure with a built-in antenna…

We are also announcing the end of life of our Standard Edition (ad-supported) products, which will no longer be available to new customers after January 31, 2009…

As an existing Standard Edition customer, your networks will continue to operate normally and Meraki will continue providing hosted services for the lifetime of the product. As part of our streamlined product offering, your networks will have certain features enabled in Dashboard which were previously only available in Pro Edition, including custom images on splash pages and unlimited device whitelisting.

Meraki: end of life for the Standard Edition

Now live: The Sidecut net neutrality report

freifunker — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:19:00 +0200

As promised, our report on net neutrality — Net Neutrality Phase II: The Battle of 2009 — is now live and ready for ordering via instant download. By combining our long background of reporting and analysis of the issue with interviews of leading legislators, top policy execs from the biggest companies, as well as representatives of the leading public-interest groups, we have produced a definitive in-depth look at the network neutrality issue, which by all accounts is headed for a big year in 2009.

So what’s in the 34-page report? Starting with the FCC’s recent order punishing Comcast for its blocking of peer-to-peer applications, our report examines all technical and political parts of the debate, and how proponents and their opponents will position themselves following the November elections. Highlights of the report include:

Why the FCC’s recent Comcast order isn’t much more than a starting point for the “next phase” of the net neutrality debate
Why some close observers put the odds of Congress passing some kind of net neutrality legislation “better than even” in 2009, especially if Barack Obama wins the Presidential election
What the big telcos, AT&T and Verizon, are planning to do and say to prevent passage of any new net neutrality legislation
How Google and consumer groups Free Press and Public Knowledge are teaming up to educate the public and regulators on why they think there is a need for baseline net neutrality rules
How any and all outcomes might affect the investment outlook for companies from startups to large service providers
Why the debate is getting less rhetorical and moving toward more collaboration between opposing sides

The report also contains a network neutrality historical timeline, as well as the Sidecut Reports ranking of the “top ten” individuals influencing the network neutrality debate. The new report is available for immediate download.

In case you are new to Sidecut Reports, a little background: We are an independent editorial research company that provides business professionals with deep background, up-to-the minute information, and decision-making analysis on pertinent topics that goes far beyond blogs at a price far less than that charged by traditional analyst operations. Led by longtime industry journalist Paul Kapustka, Sidecut Reports provides in-depth looks into topics at the intersection of telecommunications, the Internet and public policy. The net neutrality report is our second report, following the release earlier this year of our Sidecut report on WiMax, which looks at the current market for WiMax wireless services in the U.S.

August - Air-Stream Wireless - Members Meeting

freifunker — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:11:00 +0200

MeetingSummary20080807

freifunker — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:20:00 +0200

August 7, 2008 Meeting Minutes TOC Meeting Attendees Attendees: Craig Anderson, Heather Stern, Bill Moffitt, Ian Kluft, Warren Rachel Turkal, Tim Utsich, Ed Cherlin ... (last changed by CraigAnderson)

LXDE 的舊金山之旅，參加 LinuxWorld Expo 2008 - Part 3

freifunker — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:10:00 +0200

今天是 LinuxWorld 展覽的最後一天，人潮明顯變少許多，大多數的 Booth 便在這時到處交流呀！換 T-Shirt 或到處換名片、聊天、拿糖果是今天常見的場景。而且今天有免費的 Beer 無限量供應，有人喝得不亦樂乎。

幾張熟悉的背影，明眼人猜得出來是誰嗎？

老是看 LXDE 也覺得無聊，也到處走走逛逛拍的一些照片。

今天的 Debian Booth 更誇張，桌子椅子直接被拖走，被隔壁的 Joomla 罷佔！
最後大家都在到處合照，是很有趣的場景。:)

這次活動，用破爛的英文介紹 LXDE，練成了一點用英文胡說八道的功夫，希望外國朋友聽得懂我在講什麼呀！如果明年有機會，希望還可以再來！就如會場上的標語 See You Next Year!

Vývoj a dění v síti - srpen 2008

freifunker — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:33:00 +0200

Aneb, jak se činíme....

Pokračovat ve čtení "Vývoj a dění v síti - srpen 2008"

LXDE 的舊金山之旅，參加 LinuxWorld Expo 2008 - Part 2

freifunker — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:10:00 +0200

今天是 LinuxWorld 的第二天，依然人潮不斷呀！ LXDE Project 的各位依然努力解說！不少做硬體的廠商和 LinuWorld 的 Speaker 都很有興趣，也有很多教授和外國朋友都說他們知道 LXDE，看來我們還有點小名氣。〔可惡！不知道為什麼我照出來的照片一直有矇朧美 :(〕

話說，這次的 Debian Booth 被 FreeBSD 攻陷了，因為 Debian 的人都去 DebConf ，所以只在 Booth 的桌子上貼了一張紙條：

然後慘被 FreeBSD 催殘呀！被掛上耳朵、桌上放上 DM 和光碟片，慘不人賭。

還有照了很多相，慢慢再來整理吧！

Hatótávolság növelő antenna az 5 GHz-es sávra

freifunker — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:59:00 +0200

A 2,4 GHz-es WiFi sávban működő WiFi 11 antenna sikerén felbuzdulva a gyártó kihozta az 5 GHz-es sávon működő antennáját, amely külsejében és szerkezeti felépítésében teljesen megegyezik 2,4 GHz-es társával...

(Szabó László küldte)