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Warchalking Visual Cues To Urban WLANs
Posted by
chrisd
on Tue Jun 25, 2002 02:17 PM
from the making-internet-cafes-obsolete dept.
from the making-internet-cafes-obsolete dept.
elucidus writes "Matt Jones has put out a PDF and EPS outlining symbols to use in Warchalking the WLAN nodes of your community. Here's a pic. Ben Hammersly dubs them Hobo Runes." Brings to mind pictures of scruffy individuals around a fire with picturebooks, taking a pull from some ripple while reading slashdot.
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Warchalking Visual Cues To Urban WLANs
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I'll stick to stumbler (Score:2)
Choose the "reconfigure" option and go!
Here's a simple idea to increase security (Score:5, Funny)
Despite the catchy slogan, sometimes obscurity can provide a small measure of security. The first step in securing wireless networks should be making the transmissions uninterceptable by hackers. Therefore I would like to invoke the concept of "guided wavefronts". What you do is you provide a contained medium that is impervious to casual break-ins within which the signal can propagate.
The scheme could prove bulky, so I propose that the contained medium should be made of some material that will conduct an electric charge quite well, such as metal. If this is done I suspect the guided wavefront containers could be made as small as 1/8"-1/4" in diameter. Also, there will be a certain amount of secondary leakage because of electromagnetic radiation produced by the contained signal, but making the container out of some kind of shielding matter would solve this issue.
I haven't seen anything like this concept on the market but it seems like a good idea. How come nobody is working on it?
don't even try this (Score:5, Funny)
Linked picture (Score:5, Funny)
"Breast viewing permitted from 1-5 pm only"
"Caution, cleavage overhead"
And look what they are doing to streetsigns (Score:1, Offtopic)
http://www.tackamarks.freeservers.com/ [freeservers.com] - how street signs tell the military what resources are where.
Re:And look what they are doing to streetsigns (Score:4, Funny)
With a 30mm cannon, and a combo of hellfires and 70mm rockets, I think the answer is "wherever it damn pleases".
Heh, laugh (Score:5, Interesting)
One of our other jobs was to survey routes and determine their suitability for passing military traffic. We would prepare "route reports" that would indicate widths, overhead clearences, the strength of the road surface (tanks chew up roads pretty quickly) and how much weight bridges could carry (we were taught techniques for inspecting bridges and making guesses as to how much weight they would hold.)
Certain types of "resources" would be noted on the reports, but they tended to be things like "gravel pit here" (for repairing roads torn up by tanks) or "harbour site here" (a good place to park vehicles off the route)
If anybody were to know about "secret peacekeeper sign codes" it would be us - and I can state categorically that there is no such thing.
There ARE some military signs around, but in North America they are temporary, not permenent. If you see a sign with a card suit on it, and an arrow (or sometimes a unit patch) that is a convoy route mark sign. It helps keep the poor non-recce types from getting lost while moving from one place to another, and they are removed once the convoy is complete.
In Europe, you'll see a lot of "bridge classification" signs that will have a tank, and a number, and possibly a truck, and a number. The number is the number of tons the bridge will support, the tank represents "tracked vehicles" and the truck represents "wheeled vehicles"
But these guys are absolute loons.
Feel free to laugh.
DG
bah (Score:1)
Checking out the competition.. (Score:1)
Hmmm...that reminds me...I should go check our Wireless configuration.
How Times Change (Score:5, Interesting)
During the Depression, hoboes used signs to signal where they could get a meal. Nowadays, geeks use signs to signal where we can get a decent 'Net connection. We're hungry, but we're informed.
/. fix.
Who cares about eating as long as I get my
Interesting Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Gasp! (Score:1)
I was so shocked by this insinuation that I nearly dropped a handfull of beans!
Next Battleground: Freedom of Speech! Do I have the right to shout on a crowded street, 'Kynance, open node, 1-5' ?
Oh great... (Score:5, Funny)
Lain's world of the wired (Score:1)
kinda like when the wired and the "real world" is being blended together.
which, really, it's true. in a can-be-very-helpful-but-still-somewhat-creepy kind of way.
What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
Warwalking
Warchalking...
Warhopscotch
Warsitting
Wardrinking (If there's a glass with a coaster on top of it on the bar, there's an open WLAN)
WarSegwaying
Wargeocaching [geocaching.com]
Dude, spell my damn name right! :-) (Score:5, Insightful)
As Matt's server screams in the dark London night, you could spell my name right...HammerslEy
Anyhow, the pic on Matt's site shows the rune to my wireless node [benhammersley.com]. It's in Kensington, just round the corner from Imperial College. A T1. Help yourself.
Warchalking? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Slash dotted (Score:4, Funny)
There has to be a simpler way to do this (Score:2, Insightful)
(WiFi Logo Here)
www.domain.com/wifi
If you saw this on the side of a building, you should have enough to go on. If that site wants you to use their system, then the URL would point to a page telling you everything you need to know to share their system.
Theft of services? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't anybody worried about a "tragedy of the commons" effect here? One or two people chancing upon an open WiFi link is one thing, but a systematic method of exploiting bandwith amounts to a denial of service attack upon the poor network that's targeted.
This is F***ing ridiculous. Go buy your OWN damn access and stop taking others' just because you can.
How Long Until... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sort of a chaff-defence, but i'm pretty sure it would work...
This is hilarious... (Score:2)
Nice neighbourhood, and embassies every six feet. The Kuwaiti and the Iraqi embassies were just down the street from each other on Queen's Gate and about a block away from each other. A friend of mine used to go to Imperial College during the Gulf War and said it was a pretty interesting street...
SSID (Score:3, Funny)
More Permanant than Chalk? (Score:2, Insightful)
1.) The chalk will be easily washed away, and the location lost. (not to mention they warn the local network administrators)
2.) You have to just walk around and randomly find one of these markings.
A better solution would be somewhere online that warchalkers could upload locations (GPS maybe) and then you could easily find the access point nearest you.
- RG
==================
Don't pet the burning dog
What the fuck? (Score:1)
Is this some annoying "west coast" bollocks again or what?
The IBM fiasco (Score:3, Insightful)
Now we'll see love/peace/linux/<802.11b info>.
Free lov^M^M^MBandwidth for all!
-Pete
wow. (Score:2, Funny)
boy does that bring back memories!
WEP node (Score:1)
Why the need for graffiti? (Score:2)
If these people are so technically clued-up, why not use computers to do the work? Store the geographical information in a file and download it to your machine once a week or so. Then either use GPS or just type in the street name.
Wha?? (Score:1)
I am a bit annoied by this... (Score:5, Interesting)
I want the local computer users near me to buy wireless cards and log into my node, they aren't going to buy the cards if they think somebody is going to use them to steal their data.
Great (Score:1)
anybody thinking Blade? (Score:1)
limbo.
YES!!!! (Score:1)
I already have one place to warchalk, and its gonna get bigger as time goes by. YAY, I finally have a reason to buy a nice wi-fi card
hee hee hee
--whats a sig file?-- >:-}
Re:In the Clutches of Project Faustus! (Score:1)
Re:Stencil graffiti (Score:1)
Re:In a few thousand years... (Score:2, Insightful)
'Were' being the word, here. I.e. they were open, they were visited, some exciting thing happened and their obit was printed on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Probably not so dramatic, but imagine someone doing a drive-by of Arthur Andersen or Enron and pilfering a few online documents...
You're concept also gives me pause to think about all the nuts who hang around old ruins in the world, e.g. Stonehenge, and feel there's some great power eminating from them... most likely they're markers of where (political) power was concentrated and is all used up by now. Ah, well, if they weren't oohing and ahhing and buying into some cult they'd probably be sending spam, too.
Re:Stencil graffiti (Score:2)
Re:Stencil graffiti (Score:1)
Also, don't think that if you get "spray chalk" that it will actually wash away. I know that OSU students are probably familiar (Woohoo! ALTERNATIVE thingy on May 18th!) with this. Some of our Undergrad Student Government candidates spray chalked the sidewalks asking people to vote for them. The elections are long over and still, the plea remains. I think they won, so they don't look like *complete* idiots.
Re:Stencil graffiti (Score:1)
http://www.core77.com/reactor/tagmaster.html [core77.com]
Okay, not actually. Neat toy, but I'm all for impermanence in this case. Someone already pointed out the transient nature of nodes, and you don't want the tag outlasting its validity.