Last night I was flipping through the new issue of Business 2.0, and one of the “new products” caught my eye. It’s really not the kind of thing that would catch most people’s eye but it definitely caught mine. It was a 2-way radio which used 802.11b for transmission instead of typical radio waves.
The reason this caught my eye is that we have a 2-way radio system at work which costs us 6K/month in subscription fees, so anything we can do to get those costs down is likely to catch my eye.
The problem, obviously, is that 802.11b doesn’t have a very fantastic range at all. So, I looked around for a company that might have technology that could increase the range while still allowing decent throughput offsite so that these 2-way’s might be worth getting.
I came across an article in an old Wired magazine which talks about just such a company.
The article is a bit old, so I called the company up and they’ve started pushing consulting more than this particular product, but they do still offer it.
It’s an idea I’ll leave on the shelf for now until our general wireless initiatives have matured a little, however it is an interesting technology as, theoretically, you could outfit one entire “metro campus” with just 3 of these devices, and connect over 3000 PC’s to it.
Yes, that’s right, you could outfit an entire University for Wi-Fi with just 12K in equipment.
Anyone using Linux will at one point or another need to look up how to use a particular command. The age-old favorite ‘man’ command (short for manual) comes in handy for green lads and grizzled veterans alike. The variety of applications that can be made using simple commands is astounding, with a bit of creative attributing – a term I just now made up referring to the use of the many attributes that make each command flexible.
Here’s this week’s Linux tip.
man -k keywords
Instead of just browsing the manual one page at a time looking at commands, run an in depth search for the command you are looking for. Also particularly useful when you don’t know what command you are looking for…
Running the following command generated a list of all the manual pages with consecutive string of letters – xml – in the command:
man -k xml
Hope this helps.
A free E-Book. We didn’t write it, we’re just mirroring it.
What Should Google Do?
Edited by Seth Godin, part of our blogroll. I’m not entirely done reading it, but it’s a good, solid, even-handed evaluation so far.
Gas prices are high. Really high. Well, at least here I know they are, and I’m told they are uncharacteristically high everywhere.
The Angry Economist has something to say. Having managed a gas station I know about supply/demand/volatility/covering your next tanker, etc. That still doesn’t explain a recent 20c/L increase across the city of Toronto in a period of 30 minutes.
I wouldn’t mind anything so much if there were the differentials TAE is describing. Apparently where he lives you can save 15c/G by shopping somewhere cheaper. Here you can’t. Everywhere’s the same in a given neighbourhood. There are oddities around the city, but you’ll generally drive 50 miles to save 1% of your total bill.
For instance, here’s a comparison between where myself and Aaron live.
The price, after calculating exchange rates and converting the measuring units is nearly 50% higher here in Toronto. The cost to extract, refine, distribute and sell gas is cheaper. There is less market volatility and less national volatility. Yet I pay 50% more for my gas over Aaron.
Alright you say, maybe Aaron’s area is just more stable. Maybe because of the power outage in Toronto, right? Well, here’s a comparison between us and New York City which was hit far worse.
Not only is gas still far cheaper in NYC, the price it’s at now is basically our lowest price in quite some time. (here’s a 6-month history of Toronto’s gas prices)
Maybe it’s just the different economies of our nations, which is possible. I just hate that I pay 50% more for gas and more than 100% more for insurance than Aaron does. Ah well, he pays for health care so it basically evens out.
And he owns a house, which must be incredibly stressful. I don’t envy Aaron, I just dont’ want to hear him or any American complain too much about gas prices!
For all you .NET guys who are sick of not having a decent RSS class library, here’s RSSMaster.
A recent interview with Wired is short, but is certainly likely to confirm many people’s fears.
Wired interviews SCO Chief Darl McBride.
Ever wanted to go to MIT? How about if you could go for free?
I had never heard of this, but since last year MIT has been offering “OpenCourseWare”. Basically, OpenSource learning. You can get lectures, lecture notes, study notes, tests, test prep, etc all for free as part o fthe OCW program.
The trial was a year long and was, according to MIT, a “total and complete success”. While other universities were trying to make money from distance learning, MIT is trying to let the world benefit from it’s great storehouse of knowledge.
As of September, MIT will be opening up a much greater array of courses. Fully 25% of courses will be available on the OCW site. Next year every course will be available.
2 points that MIT truly stresses is that this is not a degree and it is not an “MIT education”.
If you are fine with those limitations though, the OCW initiative is absolutely phenomenal.
Here is the MIT OpenCourseWare website. Enjoy!
SoBig hit many with a hammer – heck I know it hit some with Thor’s Hammer.
But this columnist Adam Gaffin is offering a mousepad to those with the best SoBig stories.
I look forward to hearing some of them.
hah, I just got my mailing of NetCraft news, and it seems like www.sco.com has been down for the last few days. DDOS, mayhap?
Jeremy is a very picky person who want my links to work in low resolutions becuase he uses a monitor from 1991 blah blah 
Some interesting links and gear from around the web a little bit:
Best Home Speakers Ever: The BeoLab 5’s by Bang & Olufsen are superb, and for 16K each they should be. Look for these to start showing up in Lifestyles any day now.
TracVision Gives Web Access On the Road: A full satellite dish system including high-speed web access. Not too badly priced either, considering.
Aqua Dock is apparently evil: I’ve heard rave reviews from Mac users about this, so hearing the opposite perspective is enlightening to say the least.
SCO Finally Shows Us The Code: Now the allegations are more specific. So’s the lawsuit.
