2007

Tue, Jun 26

<23:57 EEST> My GSM provider Saunalahti is advertising its wireless community called Wippies. Fancy that, a greedy corporation exploiting the hippie ideal ;) Nevertheless, when I first saw the advert aside my phone bill, I got excited at the possibility of getting a new WLAN/modem box to play with for free, as well as pioneering in the early stages of a worthy idea. I'd like to keep my wireless access point open for everyone around, but all ISPs strongly recommend against it, since all traffic through my DSL line would be under my responsibility. Therefore a regulated community like Wippies or Fon would be a good compromise.

For now, the Wippies Homebox is a little too limited for my uses, mainly as it forces NAT so server usage is needlessly difficult compared to the sensible, transparent bridging. This problem may be corrected in the future, if Saunalahti so decides. Of course, with the free hardware bound to a 12-month contract I don't expect a completely Free and Open system, but at least give me something barely usable. They do offer a plain WLAN AP/switch instead, but it has zero interest to me as hardware to play with ;)

Now about this dilemma of wanting to share your connection but being discouraged to do so. All ISPs basically forbid you from sharing, but it's possible to simply ask for permission and get it, which is why communities like Fon and Wippies are possible. But these communities are well regulated, you have to log in with your personal credentials to get online. So understandably they are much better tolerated by ISPs than the true hippie idea of simply opening up your AP for everyone.

In a brief correspondence with my ISP TNNet I was told that Wippies are OK, and in fact any kind of sharing, as long as I know what I'm doing and take responsibility. So I guess technically I could open up the AP, but in case of criminal activity through my systems I would have to help the police solve the case, and it would be much easier if I had a way of keeping track of the users.

I've been pondering upon the open AP idea from the point of view of being an ISP; they are not responsible for my data going through their cables, so why should I be responsible for somebody's data going via my WLAN? Why can't I be a tiny ISP? If I interpret the reply from TNNet correctly, I can be one, as long as I keep track of users so that I can prove their guilt and my innocence in case of criminal activity. This seems to be what real ISPs do as well.

It feels like too much hassle for reasons I don't agree with. After all, when you're walking in the street, you are not constantly monitored just in case of a crime you might commit. Nobody would tolerate that, at least in Finland where we maintain a steady illusion of a free country ;)

This leads me into thinking of a genuinely open, anonymous network. Something like this must already exist, perhaps using wireless mesh networks, and they could be connected via SSH tunnels over bad old commercial bigbrotherhoods. One can dream.

Mon, Jun 25

<21:49 EEST> Saw an interesting documentary on Jeanna Giese, a controversial survivor of rabies. The story has the classical elements of a scientific breakthrough, in my opinion: someone outside the field discovers a new treatment that seems obvious in retrospect, thus enraging (no pun intended) established experts. Religious overtones abound as the case looks like an isolated chance incident. Hopefully the technique is refined and launched into wider use, given that anything is better than the practically full mortality rate of current rabies treatments.

Sun, Jun 17

<19:37 EEST> The strange little movie Owning Mahowny was on telly last night. I was drawn in by the neat electro-jazz score that reminded me of RinneRadio, and by the subtlety of the plot. Even though this seemed like an ordinary North American crime drama, there was something nice about the natural pace of things and the lack of overt action or tension.

Yesterday was a pretty full day of concrete work (pun intended) at our basement. A nice change from my geeky pastimes, which have involved solving math/coding problems at Project Euler and installing a WLAN and Ubuntu. I haven't gotten the RTL-8185 PCI wireless card to work with Linux, but since the Ubuntu install is merely an extra playground on my parents' Windows machine, it's not a huge problem for them. I like to keep Ubuntu as a long-term alternative, and I'll continue working on the problem since there are active opensource drivers.

The WLAN driver issue is a little complex. For starters, I might be able to return the card in exchange for another model, but it's impossible to tell the actual hardware from the make and model. WLAN card vendors don't seem to have any consistency here. The 8185 has drivers that work for many people, so it's a better starting point than many others. Another problem is that of chicken and the egg when it comes to networking. Rigging the wired net back up is a hassle I prefer not to do while my parents are at home.

Obviously I feel a little stupid having such trouble after 8 years of Linux experience :-j I just want everyone to know that if they have some clever advice for me, it's likely that I have already tried it, or I am unable to do it because of limiting circumstances. For instance, I would be much more at home solving the problem with Gentoo, but I don't want to install that for my parents.