Mobile Wifi Backpack 278
ruzel writes "Julian Bleecker's web site TechKwonDo describes a project that is a wifi base station in a backpack. 'WiFi.Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. It forms a WiFi "island Internet" challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks that are based on physical proximity rather than solely connectivity.' The motivation is essentially subversive but what other uses are there for a device like this?"
That looks horrible (Score:0, Insightful)
What the fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
What the hell does this mean? Sounds like a bunch of buzzwords thrown together about a project nobody wants that solves a problem that doesn't exist.
Setting up workgroups in remote areas (Score:5, Insightful)
Other uses? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anytime...anywhere
A little full of itself? (Score:5, Insightful)
"WiFi.Bedouin is designed to be functional as well as provocative, expanding the possible meaning and metaphors about access, proximity, wireless and WiFi. This access point is not the web without wires. Instead, it is its own web , an apparatus that forces one to reconsider and question notions of virtuality, materiality, displacement, proximity and community. " (Emphasis theirs.)
I can't imagine it will be long before this gets combined with WiMax [wimaxforum.org], and then none of that "not web without wires" will apply anymore.
Don't lose it (Score:2, Insightful)
It seems kind of risky to carry all of that in a backpack. Not only if you drop it, water spill, but for some one to steal.
"island internet" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a mobile WAN! This is a tech website, people, not cnn.com tech news!
the past and future (Score:2, Insightful)
of us connecting via slooow dialup modems.
The real internet is an idea. It's not
the privately controlled backbone that
the government can tap. The internet is
anyone who wants to set up a network and
connect.
Re:What the fuck? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:What the fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
No kidding. I was stumped at the
'WiFi.Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. It forms a WiFi "island Internet" challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi
part.
Disconnected from the global internet!? So you can communicate with a computer, say, 20 yards away? If I were in that situation, I would walk the 20 yards and login there.
Seriously, there might be a few applications out there, but none that I can think of off the top of my head. Unless you're a backyard commando. Then you might be able to come up with some use for it.
So what's the usefulness? (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people use their wireless to connect to the real internet, so what do they gain over the conventional internet. Some of the ideas listed on the website (which is getting thrashed at the moment) are redirecting conventional
Here I am, wanting to RTFA, (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, I wondered (and I have to continue wondering, since the article is /.ed): what's the point? Portable LAN party? One-man mobile tentacle-pr0n provider? Geek chic?
Seriously, without internet connectivity, what's it got? Or are we operating under the delusion that a clutch of wifi afficianados clustering around a self-contained hotspot will spontaneously generate useful, amusing, or at least non-trivial content?
I don't get it.
They got something like that already... (Score:3, Insightful)
(waitaminute - did an April 1 story just get out of the barn a wee bit early?)
Gamers, criminals, and subversives. (Score:5, Insightful)
Change the paradigm, find the game, not find access.
The possibilities for private networks amongst friends that synchronize data when they pass seems pretty high as well. Can you say organized crime?
Re:What the fsck? (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess you could also say the same thing about the Television or the Radio... there wasn't really a problem to be solved but someone designed a "machine" that would allow for the dissemination of information to a vast number of the populace. Granted TV/Radio hardly ever disseminates true information anymore...
Point being, just because there isn't a "problem to be solved" does not mean that the new technology will not be used by millions of people one day.
Re:What the fuck? (Score:4, Insightful)
heh, i wouldn't mind stealing one... but other than that, not very interesting
(-1 Marketing Bullshit)
Multi-cell wifi (Score:5, Insightful)
Future of the Net... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fast forward almost a decade to now, and computers sit behind hardware firewalls with dynamic IP addresses, are assigned rotating NAT internal addresses, run virus protection and spyware removal softwares, must be constantly patched to fix security holes, and people are innundated with corporate media and SPAM.
OK who could have predicted all this back then? Sure some had the ideas that it was coming, but not like this. We lost what was the Original Internet, a thing of innocence and freedom. Much of what bound it together was trust. That's gone.
So this brings up an interesting concept. Rather than having "an internet", we may have our own mini-internets. Companies do this to some extent with intRAnets. But this idea now takes it to the next level. A completely isolated network with strict content and connectivity controls to the outside world. I get the feeling that this is our future, the best way to deal with all the problems that an international connected web of distrust that is the Internat brings: Set up a local web of trust and establish relations with other webs of trust. This is the model adopted by nations in how they interact with each other (in terms of laws, immigration, trade, etc.). Neighborhoods and tribes operate like this as well. And the interesting part of it in this new domain, is that physical proximity and characteristics are even less relevant than before, opening up many more opportunities for multiple memberships and diversification.
Sorry this is a bit rambling (-1 Rambling), but just wanted to float the idea out there that this or something like it may solve a lot of our problems (as well as introducing its own, of course).
A WiFi Fidonet/Freenet, on the run (Score:5, Insightful)
This would also be an interesting application for a freenet-like network. A mobile, distributed collection of nodes could contain a lot of information, possibly distributed backups, local caches of streaming media, etc. AND, you wouldn't necessarily have to tote around backpacks either - stick one of these in the trunk of your car, and you can have a mobile node in traffic.
Lastly, if you give these nodes the capability to smart-mesh traffic if there are enough of them nearby, you could introduce wired endpoints that would turn a collection of semi-isolated nodes into a full interconnected wired network.
Re:Try War Panting. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Try War Panting. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Future of the Net... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, intersting premise . . .
Fast forward almost a decade to now, and computers sit behind hardware firewalls with dynamic IP addresses, are assigned rotating NAT internal addresses, run virus protection and spyware removal softwares, must be constantly patched to fix security holes, and people are innundated with corporate media and SPAM.
OK who could have predicted all this back then? Sure some had the ideas that it was coming, but not like this. We lost what was the Original Internet, a thing of innocence and freedom. Much of what bound it together was trust. That's gone.
You know what? We didn't lose our innocence and freedom. It's just people are a lot more aware of people like you, and now are better able to defend themselves. If you jump to cira 1994, your going to get some old fogie giving you the exact same schpiel "Oh, back in the old days we used to go around and check out boxes and it was all good fun, but now all these damn script kiddies with their ping of deaths and icmp flood tools are ruining everything." You know what? I bet in 10 years all the owners of the zombie nets going around now are going to be going on about their whistful but inconsequential attacks while now "those evil hackers in XXX ruined everything by doing XXX." You remember the internet as more innocent because you were more innocent, not because it necessarly was.
Re:They got something like that already... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Here I am, wanting to RTFA, (Score:4, Insightful)
In this context, there's an incredibly fine line between this and an ATM card skimmer. Particularly if you subvert the paradigm into a portable man-in-the-middle hack attack.
OK, the idea has officially gone from stupid to evil.
Re:Try War Panting. (Score:5, Insightful)
I see this as being of great interest to dissident groups. You disseminate information from the backpack cell. Members just need a laptop, and to be in the vicinity. They don't even have to really know each other, or who the guy with the backback is. The gov't would have to quickly pick up on the ap, and zero in on the signal.. And they wearer can be walking through the street market, as are the people with the laptops busily downloaded the censored information...
Drawing from today's headlines, say the Taiwanese gov't cracks down on the KMT; they could walk through the nightmarket and exchange info. bring the AP to an internet cafe, and not even use the cafe's network, but still have an online exchange.
There's all sorts of subversive uses.
Re:What the fuck? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the first paragraph on the first page seems like randomly connected buzz words. Yes, it stumped the hell out of me.
So I went to the next page and came across graphic [techkwondo.com]:
So... walk into a local Starbucks, wait for people to log onto your SSID, and start serving up bogus Hotmail and bank login screens, collecting passwords and merely printing out stupid error messages ("service down for maintenance", "wrong password, try again").
Now, that is a little bit subversive...