There's been a lot of talk (and newspaper articles) of late about the possibility of establishing city-wide wireless coverage, allowing cheap or even free internet access for all. Its being discussed in several cities nationwide, not just Los Angeles.
As a PR move, it seems like a good idea on the surface. I'm just not so sure about the practicalities of trying to cover an area as vast as Los Angeles. Ironically, my boss' boss' boss was asked to join the committee tasked with figuring out how to handle making LA a giant wireless hotspot. Wireless coverage on this sort of scale has the same problem as cell phone coverage; there will be dead zones aplenty, and always in the most inconvenient places. Another thing to think about is that the folks who can't afford an internet connection also probably can't afford a computer to connect to the wireless. Plus of course there's the ever-present oxymoron of the technology: wireless security. The vast majority of people out there have no idea just how unsecure wireless is. Give them free internet access, and they'll jump at it, sending credit card info and all manner of other important information flying through the air. At that point, one doesn't even need to be in a building to steal stuff; sitting parked on the street at a meter would be quite sufficient. In something of this nature, its unlikely WEP or VPN will be employed, and while neither provides complete security, both offer more protection than completely unencryted packets flying through the air.
Will we be seeing wireless like this in the future? Absolutely. Wireless is spreading like wildfire (one only has to look at this university campus to see that demonstrated in graphic detail). Are there still kinks to be worked out? Absolutely. We'll see what the future brings.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Eh, so I have to post...
Internet Technologies... well, I've covered wireless 1,000 times over, so I'll do something else this time.
One of the things I spend waaaay too much time on is World of Warcraft. Over 9 million people pay to slay pixels now, all over the "tubes" the Internet is made of. WoW is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) that has exploded since its launch two years ago. People from all over the planet connect to game servers using everything from dial-up to broadband (although I dare say I wouldn't want to actually try much beyond fishing over a dial-up connection... yes, you can fish in this game). This game is real-time. Of course, those of us with a fast pipe and a 4 ms ping time to the server have rather an advantage over those who are trying to play with a 2000 ms ping time and who are dropping packets left and right. That's just the nature of online gaming though. If you want to know more about the actual game, check out Blizzard's website.
One of the things that arose out of WoW is entire communities of people that call each other friends and meet nightly... all without ever having set eyes on each other in real life. People join guilds in-game. Most guilds have (back to the Internet again) their own website set up somewhere. My primary character is Jamoyah, a level 67 human paladin, who belongs to the guild "Apotheosis" on the Windrunner US server. Apo has its own website and forums here. We've even got a wiki set up, which lets us whip up pages to do just about anything we want. Another thing Apotheosis has is its own Ventrilo server. We may not have met each other in person, but we've certainly heard each other's voices. Ventrilo is a program that allows you to have voice communication with other people, all using your computers rather than your phones. Its main target is the online gaming community. (TeamSpeak is another popular voice program for gaming.) Both these programs are similar to Skype.
One of the great things about WoW is that the game interface is customizable. Don't like the default UI? Download UI modifiers (mods) or make your own. WoW supports user-created mods using the LUA scripting language. There are even websites out there (such as curse-gaming.com and ctmod.net) who specialize in hosting mods other people have written.
Even that isn't the end of it. Want other people to be able to check out all about your character with a click of a button, without even having to log into the game world? Easy. That's what sites like CTprofiles and RPGO are for.
So, some examples. Here's Jamoyah's CTprofile and RPGO link (admittedly out of date, but I've had other things to worry about besides updating profiles.) I also have a level 64 night elf hunter named Starstalker who you can see here (and yes, that's him in the pic up above).
Yes, she's standing on a table. At least her horse isn't standing on the table too. These pics had the game user interface hidden. So, since I mentioned customizing the interface, I figure I might as well put some pictures of that too.
So the above pic is the default UI. Here's roughly what I'm using these days (my actual UI is a little different, but I don't have a screenshot handy for it. Maybe if I find time I'll take another screenie and add it. 10 points to anyone geeky enough to identify the encounter in the below screenshot.
One of the things I spend waaaay too much time on is World of Warcraft. Over 9 million people pay to slay pixels now, all over the "tubes" the Internet is made of. WoW is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) that has exploded since its launch two years ago. People from all over the planet connect to game servers using everything from dial-up to broadband (although I dare say I wouldn't want to actually try much beyond fishing over a dial-up connection... yes, you can fish in this game). This game is real-time. Of course, those of us with a fast pipe and a 4 ms ping time to the server have rather an advantage over those who are trying to play with a 2000 ms ping time and who are dropping packets left and right. That's just the nature of online gaming though. If you want to know more about the actual game, check out Blizzard's website.
One of the things that arose out of WoW is entire communities of people that call each other friends and meet nightly... all without ever having set eyes on each other in real life. People join guilds in-game. Most guilds have (back to the Internet again) their own website set up somewhere. My primary character is Jamoyah, a level 67 human paladin, who belongs to the guild "Apotheosis" on the Windrunner US server. Apo has its own website and forums here. We've even got a wiki set up, which lets us whip up pages to do just about anything we want. Another thing Apotheosis has is its own Ventrilo server. We may not have met each other in person, but we've certainly heard each other's voices. Ventrilo is a program that allows you to have voice communication with other people, all using your computers rather than your phones. Its main target is the online gaming community. (TeamSpeak is another popular voice program for gaming.) Both these programs are similar to Skype.
One of the great things about WoW is that the game interface is customizable. Don't like the default UI? Download UI modifiers (mods) or make your own. WoW supports user-created mods using the LUA scripting language. There are even websites out there (such as curse-gaming.com and ctmod.net) who specialize in hosting mods other people have written.
Even that isn't the end of it. Want other people to be able to check out all about your character with a click of a button, without even having to log into the game world? Easy. That's what sites like CTprofiles and RPGO are for.
So, some examples. Here's Jamoyah's CTprofile and RPGO link (admittedly out of date, but I've had other things to worry about besides updating profiles.) I also have a level 64 night elf hunter named Starstalker who you can see here (and yes, that's him in the pic up above).
Yes, she's standing on a table. At least her horse isn't standing on the table too. These pics had the game user interface hidden. So, since I mentioned customizing the interface, I figure I might as well put some pictures of that too.
So the above pic is the default UI. Here's roughly what I'm using these days (my actual UI is a little different, but I don't have a screenshot handy for it. Maybe if I find time I'll take another screenie and add it. 10 points to anyone geeky enough to identify the encounter in the below screenshot.
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